I remember when I was young, me and Susie had so much fun, holding hands and scabbing stones, had an old girl shatter and a place on my own. But the biggest kick I ever got Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock While the other kids were rocking down the clock People hopping and bobbing to the Crocodile Rock Well, try to rock out I smell the chocolate when your feet just can't keep still I never knew me about all the time And I guess I never will Out of the world, I'm a spider-nose A super wonderland leader Crying rock and water out of sight Thank you. People try to put us down Talking about my generation Just because we get around Talking about my generation Things they do look awful Talking about my generation I'm gonna die before I get old Talking about my generation My generation My generation, baby Why don't you all Fade away Don't try to dig what we all say I'm not trying to cause a big sensation I'm just talking about my generation This is my generation This is my generation, baby Thank you. Thank you. I love you. Shalalala Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm going to give us just a few more minutes and then we'll get started as soon as we have quorum, which I think is right now. So I'll give it two more minutes. The End Bye. Bye. ¶¶ Good afternoon, everybody. I would like to call this meeting to order. Welcome to the January 24th, 2023 Social Services and Public Safety Committee meeting, our first one. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I know we're kind of rushing to get back from the event that we had, so I appreciate everybody coming over here quickly. And I really want to thank each of you and my colleagues for electing me as the chair of this committee. And I would like to thank Council Member Baxter for agreeing to serve as my vice chair. I look forward to working with all of you and closely with social services and public safety for issues and concerns that they have and that make a huge impact on our city. If you refer an item to committee, I will ask that you be specific as possible so that in committee we know what your intent is and what you would like to see for presentations. And we'll talk more about committee items later. I ask everyone to be respectful of the time that they have to speak and of others. And today, our main committee item that we're going to talk about is a One Lexington program update. This is something that I am excited to have on our agenda. It's my item in committee, and I really appreciate One Lexington for putting this program together for us today to go over. I had this item in committee because I felt that it was really important that each of us had the opportunity to talk about the work that One Lexington does, because we often don't realize all the things that they're doing, and I wanted to keep it to the forefront of our work. and I wanted us to also be able to support them if they had needs from council. So with that I would like to ask Mr. Cromer, Mr. Payne and Mr. Johnson to come up and thank you for joining us and go ahead with your presentation. Good afternoon. How y'all doing? Good, good. First, just wanted to thank the committee, Jennifer, for the invite, allowing us to come communicate, not just the work that we are doing, but the work of our community partners. Because of the nature of the work that we do, We really don't get too many opportunities publicly to really get in the weeds of what we do. And so we try our best to communicate it responsibly. But there's just a lot of stuff that we just can't share publicly. But I think we put together a presentation that can give you all a good idea of the work that we do, as well as the public. Also want to thank Fayette County Public Schools, been a huge supporter of us. public safety, sheriff's department, police department has been huge. Everyone in the mayor's office, you'll get to meet Kenneth and obviously Larry as well as part of the OneLex team, all of our community partners and our peer support. And so with that said, I'll go ahead and get started. Hopefully I'm pushing the right button. Okay. So OneLexington, just to give you a little background information, It's a city initiative that was created, I believe, in 2017 in response to a teenager getting shot and killed. And it was really high profile. It was the daughter of Olympic track star Tyson Gay. And so I believe one Lexington was birthed out of that. But then a couple of years later, the pandemic hit. And like everything else, the program was kind of, I don't want to say forgotten. But just along with everything else, it was put on pause. And so coming out of the pandemic, Lexington, like a bunch of urban cities across the country, saw a huge spike in gun violence. It'll be another two, three years before we get the hard data back on how the pandemic impacted us in a lot of ways. But just being knowledgeable of what was going on, what other sectors were seeing. We just believe that the pandemic had a huge impact on gun violence in the community. Like any other pandemic, a war, stock market crashes, any catastrophe in society is always going to hit those populations that are already systemically challenged, already oppressed, already dealing with disparities. And that's what we saw with gun violence. And so I joined the team in June of 2021. The week that I joined one Lexington, I believe five juveniles got shot that week. We were in the middle of a huge spike and we were in crisis. And that was back in 2021. We obviously didn't have a staff yet. We had just missed the budget cycle. And so we were creative as possible. We built a lot of great community partnerships. and we were just really just trying to make our way through 2021. But 2022 is when we began to really get our footing. We did a lot of research in 2021. We studied what other cities were doing pre-pandemic, post-pandemic. We were looking at evidence-based approaches. We talked to other mayor's offices. Obviously, GVI and other strategies were thrown out there, so we were calling around the country seeing how it was working there. and we started to compile what we were learning from those other places along with the data here in Lexington. One of the reasons that won Lexington and you'll see up there that we focus on youth and young adults is because in 2021 looking back at the five years prior about 65 70 percent of the gun violence was being driven by that age group and also the individuals that were being impacted were in that age group. And so we wanted to be as intentional as possible, especially with our capacity being so small. And so that's why we focus on that age group. Upon our research, we saw something that even in recent talks with Chief Weathers, I think he went to a big public safety conference recently, and he heard that the cure violence model was like the wave of public safety, that that's what a lot of people around the country were doing, this kind of community-oriented approach to reducing gun violence. And upon our research, that's what we were finding. Out of that Cure Violence model is we pulled the peer strategy, which is prevention, intervention, enforcement, and re-entry. Here's just a couple of bullet points from our year in review coming out of 2022. As the mayor mentioned earlier, we did see a decrease in gun related homicides amongst youth and young adults. Just in the nature of being responsible, really you shouldn't look at data like this year to year, to be honest. Really you should look at three year trends, five year trends. But I felt that this was significant because we really took an intentional approach, us and our community partners, to really focusing on youth and young adults. And so these are statistics, but we were getting a lot of anecdotal stuff, too. A lot of community center schools were reaching out and saying that they could feel the impact, that they could feel the connectivity with community partners. And so, you'll see at the bottom too, and that actually kind of surprised me because last year was so challenging for all of us. It just felt a lot worse. But to know that we had the same gun-related homicides in 2021 and 2022 and even less shootings just didn't feel like it because there were so many things going on. Let me keep moving. I've broken our year and review down to kind of give you an idea of some of the things that we did in each component of our peer model. And so this first one is just some of the things that we did from a prevention standpoint. And so one thing that we were hearing from the community is we don't know what the city, we don't know what community partners are doing to reduce gun violence. Also, they felt like their voices weren't being heard. And so we were really intentional about getting out in front, going straight to the people, whether it be community forums or community service. And that really helped us to impact our work. It helped us devise our strategic plan, which Larry will talk about a little bit later. And we even took that approach into the schools because we want to know what these young people who are in this cycle are dealing with and how they're feeling. Larry and I attended the Cities United convening, which is a big national partner of us. They've been great coaches. They've been great guides in helping us build our strategic plan. And in Baltimore, we were again able to talk to several people all over the country to see what's been working this year, what hasn't been working, what strategies are you seeing? And then the next bullet point is some of our interactions. In 2022, we had over 3,000 total interactions with youth between the ages of 12 and 17 through our It Takes a Village mentoring program. The next bullet point is something we really want to expand this year, and that's our We Are One Poem program, which actually incentivizes and encourages young people to talk about their personal experiences with gun violence. and we did it at LTMS in 2021. Last year we had the opportunity to do it at Crawford and these are young people who have lost family members to gun violence, who have experienced gun violence and we even had one of our participants who was shot themselves previously who shared about the impact gun violence had on their life. Another preventative tool that we're using is education. How can we incentivize young people to be a part of the solution instead of just talking about it? 2020 was great. It showed young people that they could come out, they could protest, they could be heard, but what about being a part of change? And so with our partnership with GALS, we incentivized rising seniors from Bryan Station High School to get a renewable $20,000 scholarship but they were pursuing a criminal justice degree. The statistics are out there. There's a national wave of trying to get more people of color into the criminal justice system, and this is a way for them to be a part of the solution. And then finally, One Lexington convened three strategic planning sessions that helped us devise our strategic plan. These sessions lasted over four hours. We had everybody from public safety to the justice system, those that have been impacted by gun violence, the school system, street outreach workers, nonprofit sector, business community, faith community, all come together in these breakout sessions to help us devise our strategic plan. And again, Larry will get into that a little bit later. Good evening, Council members. Be on the slide, yeah, intervention. The first bullet point we have here, it speaks to our violence intervention work group, which weekly we have a meeting with a collaborative meeting with our community partners. some of these in partners entail the Lexington Police Department, Fayette County Sheriff's Office, Fayette County Public Schools, UK Trauma Center, Fayette County Attorney's Office, Lexington Fire and EMS, Lexington Rescue Mission, and several other community partners. And what's really important about this meeting is it allows us to be more efficient in helping families who have been victim of gun violence be more efficient in helping them with their dire and immediate needs. A lot of times what we've found is that there's a situation, some of our community partners already have a relationship with some of these families. So therefore, we can send them out to work with these families because they have a relationship with them. And that allows us to be more efficient and effective in our efforts in that. The next bullet point talks about some of the referrals that we have received from families that have been impacted by gun violence, many of which, as it says, from our weekly, we learn about them from our weekly intervention meetings. We found out about them, and then we send out aid in whatever capacity that we can. And also the third bullet point is it speaks to mediating conflicts. A lot of times we're seeing this in schools. Schools will reach out to us and let us know that there's some type of conflict. Maybe they're aware of it prior to it happen or it could be happening then. And we have some community partners that are able to go into schools, ourself as well, kind of mediate those so it doesn't spread. Because a lot of times we're seeing where they're going and they're meeting at the schools. is a lot of these kids who have conflicts, they go to the same school. So they're meeting at the school. There may be threats, and we're able to go in. Our community partners are able to go in and kind of mediate that and keep it from spreading because we realize if it spreads, it becomes a bigger issue and a bigger problem. And not only affects those two groups, but it can affect a broader group of people. So we've been able to work on that and been successful with that. The next bullet point speaks to how we were able to transition successfully safety net to Lexington Rescue Mission. We realized a lot of those pieces they were already doing and they're already in the community. So we're able to support them and their efforts to be more impactful in that as they're already in the community and doing that. And the last bullet point speaks to our neighborhood engagement walk program, which has been very, very good because the community, as we go out in the community and they see our faces and become familiar with us, they're more open to not only receive resources from us, but to have communication with us and let us know what their concerns are so that we can be better, we can be more effective and efficient in helping in those needs in the community. And another piece to that, it allows the community to kind of step up and take more control of their community because they realize that people are there supporting them and care about what's going on in their community. So that kind of empowers them to kind of step up and stand against some of the violence that is going on in their community. So we're seeing that that was very, very effective, those neighborhood engagement walks. So what we would do is we'd get some food and different resources, toiletries, and we'll just go into neighborhoods that have been recently affected by gun violence, and we'll just walk around, hand it out, show that presence, hand out food, hand out those resources, and it seems to be very, very effective. So that's been a good thing that we've done and we will continue to do in 2023. Good afternoon. One of the things I want to make sure that is clear is that though we address enforcement as part of the peer model, we are not sworn officers. We do not go out and arrest. We do not go out and get involved in any of those kind of activities. That's completely with our partners in public service. What we do is we support citizens and communities who have been affected or impacted by an incident, a gun violence incident, immediately. What our partners with the police do is to help us identify where we need to be, who are those, I hate to use the word victims, who are those that have been affected and impacted, and then we work to see how we can support them with both services and supports, as Kenneth mentioned. Whether that's bringing food, whether that's providing temporary housing or supporting temporary housing or relocation, whether that's getting those young people critical need of mental health services and mentors and other services. So our efforts on the enforcement end is to support citizens and communities who have been impacted by and immediately following gun violence occurrence. So that's what we do when it comes to that. again with our young people we work with trying to make sure that they get the services we work with the school system Fayette County law enforcement and helping them to know who those young people are helping identify the schools and letting those schools know who is in need of handle with care opportunities when it comes to re-entry part of the peer model I want to say that under Mr. Karama's leadership, we have forged really good relationships with the court, especially the juvenile court. Judge Melissa Murphy, Judge Lindsay Thurston, and Keevee, who is working both with the courts and with Fair County Public Schools. We work with them again to identify those young people who are in need of services. As you know about ACEs, one of the critical need is for young people to have positive role model, positive influence, someone to talk to, someone who can engage them in positive activities. We work to make those connections. I want to mention one other activity which is really, really, really new, and that's your third bullet. we were approached by Judge Carl Devine, who was very interested. He kind of saw where men who were in his court for child support often get there late and end up being incarcerated, which takes them away from the home. Sometimes they lose jobs. Sometimes they lose connections with their families. He's working closely with us, and we have pulled in our community partner in this situation, the Lexington Fatherhood Initiative. Please understand, we're a team of three. What we do is try to build the collaborations, try to identify those community resources, and the Lexington Fatherhood Initiative, David Cozart and his team have been critical to us. All of our community partners are critical to carrying out the work. We help make those connections. So as part of reentry, we're working with Judge Carl Devine And before the young men or those people get into a situation where they have to be incarcerated, we try to work with him, with them, to get them into the resources that they need to prevent them and prevent that disconnection between their families and between employment. Jennifer, we'll need more time. May I have a motion? I had five minutes. 10 oh how many minutes do let's go for 10. okay because today since it's the only item we can do that um so do i have a motion thank you all in favor opposed there you go all right thank you um that last bullet point um and i'm always careful whenever i talk like this my mother is here, but that last bullet point hits home for me because I was somebody that got caught in the child support cycle. And that impacted me, and that is what led me to making some decisions in the streets that I probably never would. And so that kind of hit me personally when Judge Devine reached out to us. And to me, there was no programming or space like that. So to be able to provide some support for these young men who are struggling to make ends meet, trying to do the right thing, but get pushed towards doing some of the wrong things to try to do the right thing, I personally understood that. And so that's just an example of some of the more creative things that we've done. This slide, before we get into just a couple of programming things, talks about our spending. As mentioned, in 2021, I think for the last half of the year, we had about $20,000 to spend through One Lexington. And we were as creative as possible as we could be with $20,000. But because of the partnerships that we were able to develop, because of you and the mayor, we were able to get a budget of around $350,000 for 2022, or this fiscal season. And so we spent about half of that so far. We still got our grant program coming, which we'll talk about in a little bit. We got some donations that were given to some of the friskies in schools that are in high crime areas. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But I put a couple bullet points just to show you where the majority of that was going. So about $60,000 was spent on our It Takes a Village mentoring model. And we served over 400 underserved youth. About 87% of our summer program kids lived in the East End area. 100% of all youth that we serve are on free and reduced lunch. And so that is the most responsible way to kind of figure out and legitimate free and reduced lunch. Because I know post-pandemic, I think that option was for all kids. But 100% of our kids, free, reduced lunch kids. So all of them are underserved. and the majority of them, and this is one of the reasons we got Kenneth Payne on the team, but the majority of those kids have been directly impacted by gun violence. And so we want to have exact number of kids, but the majority of the kids we serve have been impacted by gun violence. Also, you'll see at the bottom about $55,000 was spent on crisis response. So when Kenneth talks about, which I think he's going to dive into here in a little bit in a couple slides, That is our neighborhood engagement walks. That is a single mother whose oldest son was shot and killed and helped her to pay the bills. She lost her job because she missed work because she was depressed and losing her son, and now she's got four kids at home that she's got to take care of and no job. So we might come in, us and our community partners, and help her with their utility bills or help her with her rent to sustain her while also trying to help her find employment and mental health services. So crisis response all goes into that. One thing that we, I feel like we are finally on the right track towards, especially now with a solid staff and so many community partners that are excited to be a part of this, we really want to get completely away from programming, to be honest. The original mandate for One Lexington was leverage government resources, community partnerships to reduce gun violence. To me, that's the role that One Lexington should be playing. We should not be having a bunch of programs. There are plenty of good, solid people out here on the ground each and every day that are already doing the work and been doing the work. So I believe our role is to build their capacity and make them more equipped to continue doing that work so it can be sustainable. And we'll talk about that in a little bit too. But two programs that we are going to stick with for the time being is our It Takes a Village Mentoring Program. Because of the trust that we built with the school system, this is something that we want to use as a model potentially for other organizations who want to do in-school mentoring programs. And I'll be candid with you and honest. One of the roadblocks that we are actually currently in the middle of is how do we bring, because remember, our mandate is to reduce gun violence. It's not a mentoring organization. It's those young people who are most vulnerable and likely to be in the cycle of violence or they are already there. So what we are in the middle of now is how do we get mentors into the school building that have the lived experience that can relate and speak to these young people that are in that cycle. But also Fayette County Public Schools has its own rules and their own background checks. And so we're at a crossroads right now in regards to that. And so that is something we'll continue to collaborate with our friends at Fayette County Public Schools to see how we can continue using that control space, right? There's only two control spaces to get to these young folks. And the other one is prison. And I would prefer to talk to them in school than in prison. And so this is an important piece that hopefully we'll be able to figure out as a community. But this has been vital for us to not only get to those who have been impacted by gun violence, but also provide wraparound services for their family. You see some of the schools we've serviced. And this was just last year. So Frederick Douglass, Taste Creek, Success Academy, Alternative Program, Winburn is up there, the Learning Center, Family Care Center. So these are already schools that house some of our most vulnerable young people. and it's just a couple pictures there we we short for time so y'all can go to the website look at the pictures we just skip on through those but these are just pictures of a lot of our our young people and again I think we're about 94 percent children of color but it's open to children of all races 100 free reduced lunch and the majority of the kids we serve are in the east end area. The reason being so many of our crisis response efforts have been in the east end, especially back in 2021 when there was a huge spike out there. And so naturally we connected with so many family members, or excuse me, so many families in the east end area. And then our We Are One Poem program, which we spoke about earlier, so I'll pass by that if that is okay. One thing I would like to mention before bringing up Kenneth to talk about our crisis response, which he'll be leading, is one thing we're thinking about doing with our summer program is actually switching our efforts to the Taste Creek area. The reason being is there are so many community partners that are working in the East End area and we don't want to duplicate, I know my boy Gio and O'Mat is in the East End area. Tanya Lindsey's been doing great work. So why not amplify them so they can do summer programming in communities that are already a part of, while we continuously hear that Taste Creek is lacking programming for young people. So since we have a structure, we are seriously considering taking our efforts out there to the new community center that I believe Parks and Rec is operating. and making inroads in the Taste Creek area. So we're seriously considering that. So I'm going to bring Kenneth Payne back up, and he's going to talk a little bit about our crisis response efforts. Okay, I'm going to summarize slides 17 through 21 as it relates to our crisis response. We have contracted three crisis response advocates who are already part of our community. and I'm going to highlight one story that happened about two weeks ago. We had a Hispanic family that they were affected by gun violence, one of the sons. And so we have a community partner who is from the Hispanic community and I went out with him to the home and we spoke with the family and seen what their needs, what their dire needs were. And afterwards he contacted me. He said that the family had expressed to him that they were really grateful that we came and helped them out because they were under the impression that some of the resources that the city had, they weren't privy to and they didn't have access to. And they said that some more in their community felt the same way. So with us being able to go to that family and offer them those services and resources, that was something that was really big for their community. So like I said, we have three crisis, right now three crisis response advocates who we have contracted with whenever there's a situation that happens that relates to gun violence, we're able to send them out to the family, directly to the family, speak with that family, see what the dire needs are, and then we go from there and see what resources we can offer that family. So the crisis response is very critical to our work because a lot of times the quicker you can get to the people that are affected and see what is needed, maybe it's temporary housing, you know, help with bills and things like that. The quicker you can get to it is it alleviates a lot of stress for the family. And so we're seeing that by being more strategic in our crisis response is very, very effective and helpful. Thank you so much. Are you able to wrap up in the next few minutes? Yes. Is that all right? Okay. Thank you. I think I can do this in about 30 seconds. I just want to point out that we work very closely with the University of Kentucky Trauma Center. Their job at UK Trauma is to deal with the wounds, deal with the physical, deal with that healing. But what's next? What's next is our safety net program. They contact us and let us know those who have been victimized by gun violence. And we provide those supports. Again, we work very closely with the Lexington Rescue Mission. to give them support once they leave the hospital. In many cases, while they're still in the hospital, we may go visit and offer support to them and to their families. Lastly, we work very closely with Cities United and with the UK Innovation Center, that's Brian Haynes, to develop a strategic plan. We've included youth voices, the businesses, partners, the community, victims, and all, to develop our three-year strategic plan. If you have questions about that, It's a living document, we will be revisiting that over and over again and updating that to identify needs and to make sure that we're being intentional about this work. What's on the horizon for 2023? We'll close with this. As we mentioned, as Larry mentioned, the implementation of our OneLex strategic plan to reduce gun violence amongst youth and young adults. Our OneLexington grant program, which applications opened up on MLK Day, and that is to get money into the hands of those organizations on the ground already doing the work. We also have another grant program that will be partnering with Cities United that will focus on two of our biggest gaps, two of our biggest gaps last year when we sat and we thought back. One was victim support, right? So many victims, most recently we had a gunshot victim who was paralyzed who needed help with an adjustable bed and a shower seat and so many things that may be outside of what government is allowed to assist on. So how can we get funding into the hands of organizations who have a little bit more freedom to do more for those impacted by gun violence? And then reentry work. Back in 2021, we were unable to get into the jails because of COVID. And then there was a shortage in staffing. And so now we're just getting back in the jails and working again, also with judges. And so reentry is definitely something that we want to see ramped up in the community. We budgeted $1,000 grants to go to Friskies in schools located in areas most impacted by gun violence. Anybody who knows anything about the school system knows that our family resource centers and youth service centers, they are the ones that take care of our kids outside of academics. They're the ones that's giving them toiletry items. They're the ones that provide wraparound services at home. And so we want to expand their capacity to support young people who have been impacted by gun violence. That can be programming or it can be direct services. We want to continue to sponsor activities in collaboration with community partners for youth that have been directly impacted by gun violence and or with incarcerated parents. Compensating street outreach workers. I'm not sure that Lexington has ever done that before in regards to gun violence. And so we are building a model for that. Back to the capacity building part. One Lexington wants to pay for a series of trainings that are pivotal to gun violence reduction work. We've already had one and we got another one this weekend that will be virtual. We had a trauma-informed care training, which was great. It was facilitated by trauma-informed care counseling of Lexington. We had over 20 partners in that training, which everything we do has to be informed by the trauma that people are dealing with. This weekend, as mentioned earlier, we're seeing a huge spike in domestic violence, so we're partnering with Green Dot. I think we got over 40 community partners signed up for that bystander awareness training, and that's this Saturday, 10 a.m. I'll make sure I send another email out in the next couple days. and in restorative justice practices, conflict resolution, violence disruption. We want to make sure all our community partners are equipped to continue doing their work. We want to cover that cost, and we all want to be using the same language and some of the same strategies to do this work, even when we're not working together in the moment. And then again, our biggest gap in 2022 was reentry support, So we look forward to more partnerships and ramping those services up and amplifying those that already exist. So Kenneth just whispered in my ear, was like, bro, we needed an hour for this. But thank you all for the opportunity to share. Apologize for going over a little bit. Hopefully you got some good information. And we are here for questions as long as you would like. And then obviously you can always call and e-mail us. so. Thank you so much, Mr. Karama, Johnson, and Payne. You all are very busy, obviously, and have a lot on your plate, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us, and I thank my colleagues that don't serve on this committee that came today per their request so that everyone could hear what they have to say. And with that, I will take questions. I see we already have some council members signed in. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Chair. and Devine and Larry and Kenneth, you know, I get kind of worn out reading everything you're doing. You've got so much going on. I remember the first time, first presentation, I think Council Member Ellinger even said, my gosh, you're going to get burnt out. But you haven't. You stayed the course. And now that you've got two other folks in your office, you can see how all of this is gelling and moving forward at a fast pace, but also at a very thorough pace. I'm really impressed by the deduction of 50% to the demographic, 13 to 29, because when you get them younger, you can change behaviors later in life. I know you need so many resources working all at the same time, but what are your thoughts about middle school with mentoring? And is that just a lack of manpower, womanpower at this point? So actually the majority of our mentoring programs with us and community partners are actually in the middle and high schools. What we've kind of been looking at, which is below our age purview, but as we get into the schools, we're realizing that this generation is different. We really probably need to be in the elementary schools, to be honest. And to your question, that would be the issue, just the bandwidth. with a lot of those who are passionate about this kind of work and have that lived experience you know a lot of those people are still underserved they're still barely making it day to day that was me prior to getting this job right having to work 40 50 hour weeks but still get back to your community so just trying to get more people finding more people we're really considering a partnership with some students in the cld department at uk some of those college students do have a little bit more, a little bit more bandwidth than we have. But yes, we're actually thinking about going down to the elementary school level. Yeah, I would think that you're molded at that age. I mean, you really are molded, and your behaviors that go beyond that are so influenced by those early, early years. One other thing I was going to mention, you and I met recently, and we talked about our resources that we have. We have newsletters that go out to thousands of folks, and we could be ambassadors, and And we talked about you letting us know what the needs are so we can put that out and more aggressively address the community with specific needs and how to attach to those needs or how to be part of meeting those needs. So I hope we will. You can continue to do that. And as I told you, I put that on me. One of my biggest struggles last year was communicating with you all, letting you know the information outside the biweekly reports. But we want to be a resource for you all, too. And so now that, you know, we got more of a team, I want to do a better job of communicating with you all. So I've gotten a couple tips on how to get information out to you all, so we'll make sure we do that regularly. And whatever info you need from us, always hit my jack, email me, whatever. Yeah, I think if we had a regular communication, and you do send out your Mondays, don't get me wrong, but if there were succinct items that you really need, we can get that word out for you working together. I agree. Thank you so much. And Kenneth, welcome to you again. And Larry, welcome. We're still glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Wow. I feel like we came on about the same time. And I remember, similar to what Councilmember Plowman said, was I had this grave concern that you guys, well, you, were going to get super burnt out and just abandon this program. program and the way that we all as a team have come together and realized what you need and what the program needs is like I want to pat all of ourselves on the back because I am so thrilled with the success that you've had I also want to commend you guys for realizing and recognizing what your strengths are and where there's duplication in the community because I think need to do that throughout the community in general i think there is a lot of duplication of services and i think you recognizing that lexon rescue mission can handle safety net because they're already doing something similar frees up our resources frees up your all's bandwidth to do great things so awesome job there realizing that other people can do things and you don't have to do it all. I have a few questions and some clarification, just because I don't understand how some things work. But you said early on in the presentation that we shouldn't be looking at annual statistics. Can you kind of clarify what you mean by that and what a best practice is or what your recommendation would be on what stats we should be looking at? Yeah, I would leave really explaining it in detail to the police department. But they were one of the ones, because I would talk to them regularly. I'd be hitting Schnelly and different ones up. Can you send me some stats? And we're always working and looking at trends and different things. And I'm not saying there's zero value in year to year, but it's a lot more accurate, and you really start to see the trends when you look at things in a three to five year. And so that's about as best I can give you. And so I trust them. Well, and that's what I assume, I mean, that's kind of what we look at for other statistics across the board. So I just was curious if there was a best practice in your specific field. I would say that I think that when you're talking about a small demographic that we are intentionally targeting, there may be a little weight to it because we were very intentional about this specific age group. But even in that, just in being responsible and helping the public understand this work, because so many people just look at headlines. They look at nothing and they don't really look at it comprehensively and responsibly. So if we're not doing that as public servants, how can we expect people to? So we just try to be honest. Sure. Okay. So I want to shift my conversation to our relationship with Fayette County Public Schools. Yes. So I know that we work hand in hand with them and I think that's great. I'm looking at your one specific point about our grants to the family resource centers. Yes. Okay, so can you clarify to me whether or not the resource centers are funded by the school system? So they are, but ours has stipulations on what this funding can be used for. Okay. Okay, and I'll let Larry follow up. And just my maybe seven, eight year experience working with the family resource centers prior to this job, But they were doing a whole lot with very little. And usually they have to meet the immediate needs of the students. And so our funding for them is specifically geared towards either violence prevention programming. That could be messaging, it could be events, it could be trainings for staff, it could be whatever, or youth that have been directly impacted by gun violence. Okay. I also serve as a chair for one of the resource centers. Several years ago, the resource centers were getting money based on free and reduced lunch and based on the need. I think it was about two or three years ago, the state kind of changed the way they were doing that. And now all schools are having resource offices. And now they're sharing that same pot of money, which means that the schools who were most in need do not get a sufficient amount of funding. They get less because now it has to spread across the whole county to all those schools. Thank you, Isla. We just support it. So I just want to make my point is that I just want us to be really cognizant of the funds that we are putting into our school system. I feel you. Because. Because. I already know. They got their own money. Yeah, they do have a little bit larger budget than we do as a city. So I just want to make sure that we are spending our taxpayer dollars appropriately and not providing funding to programs who already have support through the Fayette County School Board budget. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman. Devine. I mentioned to you yesterday I will be asking you some questions. Yes. Could you give me some more demographic information regarding the students that you've reached? I know you spoke about the fact that majority of your students or most of the young people that you've been reaching have been in the East End. However, what about, say, the Wimburn area or Eastland? Yes. Liberty Road area. Yes. Sixth District area is what I'm referring to. And I wish I could, you know, I love the kids. I wish I could get all the areas. Correct. But our bandwidth was just too small. For a long time, it was just me, and then Larry joined us, and I think Kenneth just joined a couple months ago. And so we can't control our community partners, but we do try to influence them to get to these other pockets. And so with our program, just the summer program, we focused on East End. That was just naturally. We were already working at William Wells Brown at LTMS. We were doing the after-school walks at LTMS. And so, so many of the parents that we were already engaging were the first that jumped on the opportunity when we did the summer program. So it was really just about where we were, I think, where a lot of our efforts already were. But our It Takes a Village in School mentoring program is all over the city. So if you remember, we're from Frederick to Ida J. Hayes to Winburn. We did some stuff at Crawford. And so we're still touching kids all over. But I think with our summer program, that's where it gets a little tricky. We open it to everybody. But I think those that we work with regularly are usually the ones that take advantage of those type of opportunities. And I would even say this. I think that that's an opportunity for community partners. And speaking of community partners, when I was, I attended the 7th District Community Talk on Violence at the Eastside Library. And one of the things I mentioned was the fact that people in our community don't know who these community partners are or how to reach out to them. What efforts are being made so that the community knows exactly who these partners are so they can reach out for assistance? One thing I'll tell you about a lot of community partners we work with and this isn't all of them but a lot of them aren't self promoters which I've been accused of being but one thing we encourage them is it's not me being a self promoter but we are doing God's work This is a calling and so you're not necessarily promoting yourself, but you're promoting the opportunity to engage more people with the services that you have. So we have been working with individual organizations, working on PSAs. We funded two or three. I don't do no PSAs, but you got to. There's people out there that need what you have to offer. Another thing that we've done this year is the media is constantly coming to One Lexington when there's a shooting. But this year we've made a rule that we're not doing any news interviews unless they're also going to interview one of the community partners that we work with. But one thing I'll say about a lot of the people that we work with, they just don't want to get in front of the camera. They don't know how to promote their services. They're just focused on the work. And so we are trying to help them understand the importance of getting their name out there and being amplified. Or a website or where there's a link where they can actually get the information, like a phone number, an address, something like that. So we're working on a landing page now. So we're working with Amy. So we're working on the landing page. That way people can just come. Go ahead. As the landing page, it will be where people can go. And also our idea of it is, say there's something that they need specifically, they can type it in a search bar, and it will bring up which community partners have resources for that. And we're also looking at getting some, maybe some little cards that we can hand out when we go out to the community that have QR codes where people can automatically, once they click on the QR code, it will take them to that landing page and they can get the resources and community partners that way as well. Okay, thank you. And I have a special relationship since I'm the only reformed educator on city council. I'm formerly worked with Fayette County Public Schools. Coach did all of that. And so my connections with Crawford Middle School, LTMS are deep. There's been one strong word that's been out there is lack of follow through. What? Lack of what? Lack of follow through. Follow through. Our students at Crawford and LTMS need love the most. And they need people to show up and show up, no offense, without the cameras. I wouldn't take offense to that. There would be no reason for me to. I know you wouldn't. Go ahead. Okay. Council Member, you're out of time. Can you sign back in? And then you can comment again when everyone else has gone through. Your five minutes are up. Thank you. I will recognize Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. While I'm not on this committee, I thank you for allowing me to ask you questions and engage in this dialogue. Thank you to Divine, to Larry, and welcome to Kenneth for doing the work. I appreciate the thoroughness of your presentation, and I just have a few questions. One thing that caught my eye was the crisis responders that you are contracting with. I have a crisis response background, so I would love to know more. How are they trained, and are they trauma-informed trained? So, yes, they are trauma-informed trained. That was one of the first trainings that we had. What was your other question? How are they trained? Is there a specific curriculum or model that they use for their training? Cities United has a crisis response model that we follow, but we want to go a little bit deeper than that. When we study and talk to other cities, there are two trainings that all outreach advocates have to have that we just haven't been able to secure yet because they're really hard to secure. They're intensive. They're like weeks-long training, and that is violence, disruption, and conflict resolution. We had a brief conflict resolution training for our outreach workers last year, beginning of this year, but we need something just a little bit deeper than that. And so we've been talking to Dr. Woods in Louisville. We've also been talking to a gentleman coming out of Oakland, California. And the reason we're being real responsible about that is we don't want somebody from here doing the training. It's a Lexington thing. We just prefer to have somebody from outside of Lexington to do that training. But then also, we want everybody moving the same way. And so if you notice, when Kenneth talked about our crisis response, he didn't mention violence disruption. Because we're not engaging in something that we haven't responsibly trained for yet. Now, a lot of our crisis response advocates, community partners have that background and that relationship with a lot of these young people. and they can use that to mediate conflicts, but we are not at this moment doing any violence disruption because we have not been formally trained yet to do so. Are the crisis responders accessible 24 hours or just during specific time periods during the day? So right now, and we have talked about that, but right now it's not 24-7. And we do our weekly violence intervention team meeting, and that's where we hop on Police department gives us the incident that happened a week prior, and then we respond based off of that information. So we don't get a call from the police when an incident happens. It's usually just in our weekly meeting. We get the information, and then we respond. One thing I will say about the police department, though, is if they do feel, because I just got an email just a second ago, So if they do feel it's something we need to respond to before our meeting on Wednesdays, they always send us an email or give us a call. So we do have that opportunity if it's needed. Awesome. And then my last question is I noticed on your 2023 plans was to bridge the gap between law enforcement and underserved communities. Have you thought about, I know it's early 2023, but have you thought about what your first steps are going to be towards that goal? First step is we're going to work with Stephen Overstreet. He does a lot of great work in the West End. Again, we don't want to reinvent anything that doesn't need to be. And he has already started these small conversations with community members and law enforcement. We want to see if we can work through him to see if we can replicate what he's already doing. And so, like I said, we've got a great relationship with public safety, but he's already got a platform. So I think we're just going to partner through him and work with him. Wonderful. He's a wonderful addition in the 2nd District, so I appreciate that. Thank you all for your work. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for your presentation. And Shayla, thank you that you gave me a great segue into what I wanted to say. I love the points that you were making about Judge Devine, and I hope judges are talking because Judge Bell has an awesome child support enforcement program that even allows child support folks to have expungement at the end of their completion. And I had a great deal of respect for that and I served on that committee and worked as a reentry coordinator. So what I am here to offer is First District is loving this. And we would love to be part of that bridge that gaps law enforcement with the program that you're serving. Due to the fact of the trust issue and the broken trust issue that plagues First District and the city of Lexington. I also want to touch on the fact of the systematic vicious cycle that we have. And that's the communication and the relationship with the school board. I heard you say about getting folks into the schools to help you. Now, I'm just going to tell council about a personal reflection. I have a 30, at that time it was 30 years, it's more now, non-violent charge. And I wanted to go to the pumpkin patch with my children. And I was denied access into the schools because of that record that I had. Even though I was a community leader and serving and doing great work in the community, because the school board has this system that they go by. So I would say, let's build a relationship, present to the school board, show them that people who have made mistakes but are not mistakes in their past, can come and be a great servant inside the schools. And maybe our traumatized children who are now seeing law enforcement inside the schools with the same guns that just, not their guns, but guns who just violated their families. And we're not just talking about families, we're talking about the whole community. When someone dies, we're losing our children. And so I support this effort, in my opinion, and I'm a newbie here. I think you need some more funding. I know that you three have done a great job, but it's just you three. First district is bringing volunteers to help you, and hopefully we can bridge that gap. The other thing is we want to break every chain. Thank you for that 94% of people of color. All children are worthy to be safe. That's right. We deserve to be safe in our neighborhoods. Right. But we know that our community has been affected more than anyone. My son was shot six times, and he was recording music. And so he survived. So I know what this means to our community. I know what it means to this council. I heard CM Baxter and her beautiful questions and her support. And so I hope being a newbie as we gather together, that we continue to support your efforts and other efforts that's going on. And I'm pretty sure I'm so used to that three minutes, I'm going to keep saying it. I know I got five, but I believe I'm done right now. So thank you, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. And now I will recognize Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me because I'm not on this committee. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Kenneth. I really appreciate everything that you are doing. I know we're talking about a team of three. It feels like a team of 30. And I know that you're working with all of your community partners. And I just want to touch on that a little bit. Sure. You have talked about building capacity of these programs out in the community. And I want to say that I see you doing that work. So one of the things that is oftentimes hard for these community programs that are just getting started is that they're not a nonprofit. And the nonprofit status is a way that they are able to more easily get funding through grants and things like that. You always have to have that 5013C status. Right. But I just saw an email that you sent out this week to connect these community partners with training for fiscal sponsorship by people who do hold that 501c3 status. They can partner with these programs so that then the financials can go through the proper nonprofit channels. And I appreciate you doing that, but I also appreciate you using one of our partners, which is the Kentucky Nonprofit Network. They are there to help these nonprofits and to get them trained. So I just want to let you know that I see that work and I appreciate that you're working on that building capacity. Because you can only do so much as a team of three. But we know that these kind of effects can snowball as we get more people involved and that impact really grows fast. It's exponential. So I appreciate you, I appreciate all of your work and thank you. One of a lot of the people that do this work, I remember telling my mom, like, man, we're trying to provide services that my family need. So a lot of people out there doing really good work, but they got to decide between trying to pay their rent, put gas in the car, and do what God calling them to do. So my bad. but um that's why that's emotional to us because um i know what these organizations is and these individuals are fighting through every day to answer that call that god put on their life so i just feel like as government our job is to continue to amplify them and build their capacity because they can really change the world like you know and so i appreciate that thank you council member thank you and now council member james brown thank you chair and thank you divine uh kenneth and larry for all your work um today's presentation and uh i appreciate you bringing your mom here today she don't see me dressed like this often you look good you look good um i'm glad to hear that um you're shifting and going to refocus one Lexington to be more of a coordinator of partnerships and programming. I think when you first came into the job, we were in the pandemic. There were a lot of agencies not functioning, and I think picking up the program end of it was something that was needed at the time with the Texas Village. But I think now that you have been in the job and kind of got a better vision and perspective of the landscape, I think this is a good refocus. I'm also glad to hear that you're going to refocus on or continue the work with building relationships with our law enforcement, police department, and public safety partners. Personally, I think one of the things that has hindered or has slowed that relationship building down is the lack of neighborhood resource officers that we had. That one time I think we had maybe eight or nine of them. I think right now we're down to three or four. And hopefully the investment that this council has made and the mayor has made and our refocus on public safety will get some recruits in and give us the opportunity to get those neighborhood resource officers. Because I think they play a big role in building confidence and building relationships in our community. Thinking about this year, and I don't want to get too far out ahead of the budget process. But I think we made a large investment in one Lexington last year due to the ARPA funds and some of the things that we were doing. Do you think your budget request to the mayor is going to be comparable to the size that it was last year? Or are you going to mainly focus on making sure that we have the money for the salaries for you three and not so much towards programming? What are you thinking? Well, we'll be requesting less of a salary for Larry. No. No. No, I think we are right now, Kenneth, we're really going through what we've spent, what we got left to spend, and we're trying to be as responsible as possible. I will say that I think we're going to request a little bit more, not substantially more, because, again, we can only do what we have the bandwidth to do. So our proposal will only be within what we feel we can do. And so, again, we're looking at the numbers now. We're still spending money that we have from the last budget, and so we're literally in the middle of looking through the numbers now. And so I would have a better answer probably in the next couple weeks. Okay. Okay, I just wanted to know if y'all had already started planning and thinking through. I will say this one thing just to put this out there. Our grant application is open and it's a total of $50,000 that goes directly into the hands of grassroots organizations doing this work. That's got to be higher. So that's definitely one thing that we want to look at. But again, we want to be responsible too. But we do feel that that grant program needs to be a higher amount and get into the hands. Because now that we're doing this capacity building workshop with some of these grassroots organizations that couldn't apply this go-round, these are people that's doing great work that are going to be coming the next time. And so we do want to see an increase in that. But, again, it will be a couple weeks of us doing a little bit more studying and breaking the numbers down, and we can let you all know. Okay. The other thing I'll ask, too, is in regards to mentorship and getting into schools, I know that's one avenue to touch young people. safety net we outsource the safety net program to the lexington rescue mission are y'all is that completely separate from you all or we are one lexington still one of the partners they offer to the families when they reach out to them through the safety net program so we yeah we work hand in hand so it it operates separately but we work together because a lot of times what we offer they don't and vice versa. And I don't believe they have any of the mentoring opportunities that we have. Theirs is strictly crisis response. They're helping with housing. Julius and some of the other ones are trained to do some of the things that our outreach advocates are not. But the mentoring piece, I don't believe that is a part of the safety net model. Okay, okay. All right, well, I appreciate all you do. I think you've heard it today from this committee, and I think Council and Holt fully supports and is willing to step up and give you the resources you need to get the job done. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. I'm going to recognize Council Member Sevigny because he hasn't spoken yet, and then Council Member Gray and Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Devine and Larry and Kenneth for your presentations. we spoke about this in the office the other day and i just think for the record i think it's important to um like i go to a build church and you know build is a very active and and vocal group and they uh they use their name bill i've heard yeah you don't know if you've heard of them but um i think it's kind of cool for you to if you could contrast like they've got they want us to do this GVI thing. I think that's what they call it. And kind of what we're doing. Yeah. And if you could just compare and contrast those in a nice summary, that would be helpful. Sure, I may need your help a little bit on this, Larry. No, but first, shout out to Bill. I have a great communication with them, relationship with them. We just disagree on something. And to me, that's just an opportunity, hopefully, for us to come together. For us, GVI is something that, and I want to be respectful, but to me, it is an old school approach to reducing gun violence that is not going to work in 2023. That's just my belief based on the approach. The relationship between law enforcement and street outreach advocates is different than the one that Lexington uses. which has the perfect separation but also the perfect collaboration on the back end. To me, GVI does it in a way that puts the community at risk but also puts law enforcement at risk. A lot of the outreach components are there. The only difference is what they do and how they utilize law enforcement in a relationship as it pertains to outreach workers. But then also, here's the biggest reason. I'm a data person. Every city that GVI was working in was pre-pandemic. You have to go back years, even decades, to see success stories where it was working. And even when it worked for a year, the long-term impact, because it really hurts the relationship between law enforcement and the community, you saw the violence get worse. And so we're trying to figure out what's going to work that is responsible for communities that are underserved and law enforcement today. But then also what is working post pandemic? Don't give me numbers in 2015 because we're still trying to work through and figure out how this pandemic is impacted and leveled our community, especially those that were already hurting and underserved. And so now we want to come in heavy-handed in a different way and burn street outreach workers. And just from a practical standpoint, I don't believe it's what's best for Lexington. But then the data suggests that it isn't what's best for Lexington. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Is that all, Council Member? Is that all? Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Gray. Thank you. I concur about GVI. Just for those who don't know, it's a form of community-based intervention, GVI is. And it's more like Devine did say. It is outdated. And looking at the numbers, for example, Cincinnati, they stopped their numbers in 2015, 2016. Looking at Columbus, their numbers stopped as well. And other areas that I research with GVI, it's over at some places a decade. old. So I concur. But what I didn't get a chance to say is thank you. Thank you for all that you all do in our community. I work with as a mentor and I still go into the Fayette County Public Schools and you all are saving lives. I know that I'm critical. That's just because I love my students. I love the kids in our neighborhoods and I want to make sure that they're safe and they grow up to see an adulthood that's successful. So thank you for all that you all do, and I look forward to working with you. You too. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and I'll be brief. I just wanted to kind of clarify my statement earlier because I was rushed. I 100% agree with us partnering with Fayette County Public Schools. I don't want to misconstrue my comments in any form or fashion. We are all living in the same community. We're all raising the same children. We are all living our day to day issues that we have. And that partnership is instrumental in our success. Yes. So I wanted to be perfectly clear that I am in full support of a partnership with Fayette County Public Schools. I just want to make sure that there is a differentiation between funding sources. And also, I just wanted to say thank you again. you're you understanding that you exist to connect the dots and be a bridge builder is wonderful and that will allow your all's office to be even more successful going forward so like everyone has said if you need us we're here and we're in full support of you and we appreciate everything you're doing for the community thank you thank you thank you chair thank you council Councilmember. And just to wrap things up, I have a few of my own comments. And first off, I want to thank each of you for your role in One Lexington and for being here. And for, I know there was some question about where to give this presentation. I really appreciate you all doing it in committee because it's a committee item. And more than anything, I hope that you feel the love today of all these Councilmembers supporting what you do. And I know that sometimes you don't know that. you don't know that we support you and you don't know what we're doing and we don't know what you're doing and so as i've said over the past two years i just want to create that relationship that we feel like we can work with one another and i i appreciate all the hard work that you do i had a lot of questions but my amazing colleagues asked most of them so the two that i had left one was can you talk very we all have five minutes and that's that's our time so can you Can you talk very briefly about the strategic plan and where people can go to get more information about that? So the strategic plan is actually on the website. So people go to www.lexingtonky.gov slash one dash Lexington. That is our website page and it's got our crisis response advocate. It's got our programming videos, all of that stuff. But then if you scroll down a little bit, there's a tab that says strategic plan. And when you click on it, it pulls up the PDF. And then if anybody wants to come to the government building, we do have physical copies. And the strategic plan is our guide through the next four years of reimagining the relationship between public safety and underserved communities. What type of innovative prevention programming can we instill into the city? How can we, it's just got a lot in there. And so it's probably a whole other presentation, but it is accessible. Anybody can go and look at it. And if they have questions, they can hit us up. And then, like I said, our next step is how do we implement it? How do we pull community partners to see what role they play in the strategic plan? They all were great at helping us build it. Now in 2023, we're like, all right, you helped us build it, but now we need you to be in it. and be a part of it. And so that's our next step. We also have been working on a summarized, highlighted one pager that would show you kind of the, some of the critical, important pieces of the Ford strategic plan. And also on the back of that, it has a QR code that will lead you to the full strategic plan as well. I think that's great because our constituents want to know what you all are doing. They want to know what we're doing in terms of gun violence. So I appreciate you explaining that for everybody. And then very quickly, it's been mentioned that one of the reasons why we've seen kind of a rise in violence, especially by youth, is the lack of youth activities in our city parks. And I know we have gone back and we're doing more in some of our community centers than we were doing, but there's still a lack of programming and sports in some of our parks. Is that something that you all are working on with Parks and Rec, or is that something that we need to move forward? I will say this. I'll let you speak to it. I'm going to just say this. The biggest issue comes down to peer support, and are we going to allow those with lived experience to come into the community centers to leave programming? Are we going to allow those with lived experience to come to the parks and come into the schools? That's what it boils down to. We could build a state-of-the-art community center with everything, right? But if we don't have the individuals that these kids who are in this cycle connect to, they ain't coming. And so I think Parks is doing great. I think the upgrades they're doing, I think what they're doing at Dunbar Center is great. Like, I think we're on the right path. I love what they're doing with Parks. Hopefully we'll collaborate with them again this summer. And so I think we're on the right step as far as elevating that. I love the basketball games at Dunbar Center, you know. But we got to do something about engaging peer support. When we go around the country and talk to different mayors, that's the game changer. It's those with the lived experience being able to come into spaces that, quite frankly, in Lexington, they're unable to come into. We need those individuals that can relate. I can relate to a lot of these kids. It don't matter if they street kids or not. But there's some that I'm not going to touch the way my boy over here is going to touch him. And so to me, that's the difference maker is who are we bringing into these community centers and parks that's going to get the youth that we need in the parks and in the community centers. Wow, that's really helpful information. I appreciate that. We're working with Breakthrough Ministries and some others who are community partners. Like I said, it's really about the community to help them identify locations and do some of that work. Our community partner grants, violence prevention grants are available. People can apply for up to $7,500 for that. And we also have scholarship awards, $37,000 to get kids who have been affected by violence and whose parents are incarcerated into programs. Wonderful. Well, thank you once again. I'm going to keep this in committee as a yearly update. But like I had said, if there's something else that you feel like is important to communicate to us or that comes up, please let us know. And I'm happy to look at that as well. And I look forward to working with you all with the Gun Violence Task Force tonight. I look forward to working with y'all. Thank y'all for the opportunity to present. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to the next item on the agenda. And it is a review of our items in committee. and you will notice that several of those items need a sponsor or can be removed from committee. If you are interested in sponsoring an item or you have a motion, please log in when I come to an item. And let's see, and if an item needs to be removed, it will need to be in the form of a motion. So going to our list, everybody should have in their packet an expanded list of our items in committee. And the first item is number one is expand the adult mental health court with an aftercare program. This was sponsored by Council Member Lamb who is not here anymore. Is there anybody that would be interested in sponsoring this item? Go ahead. We don't need a motion if you want to take it over. Yes, ma'am. Okay, then we will have Councilmember Fogle for the Adult Mental Health Court with an aftercare program. Thank you, Councilmember Fogle. And now number two is substance abuse intervention update. That is Councilmember Sheehan's item. I would like this to stay in committee, especially with the opioid settlement coming through. I know we have an upcoming presentation, but I think this is something we should be continually reviewing. I agree. Thank you so much, Councilmember Sheehan. Item three, a review of potential handoff of juvenile probation officers to the state. This was Councilmember Kloiber's item, and he's no longer here. Is anyone interested in taking this over or removing this item? Councilmember Fogel, did you sign up for this one, or is that the last one? That was the last one. Okay. That's the last one. Okay, that's fine. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I move to remove item number three from committee this time. Second. Okay, that was moved by Council Member Baxter, seconded by Council Member James Brown. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, item three has been removed. Now we go to item four, which is a review of all social programs and potential duplication with nonprofits to see if there are partnerships that can be enhanced. That was Council Member Kloiber's item. Council Member Baxter, are you signed in for this item? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I move to remove item number four from committee as well. All those in favor? All those opposed? That motion passes. Thank you, Councilmember Baxter. We are on to item five, ban on rental income discrimination. The current sponsor is Councilmember Kloiber, who's not here. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Sheriff, for recognizing me, even though I'm not on this committee. I wanted to speak on this item because we are taking it up in a different form with a different sponsor to be determined. Yeah, thank you. Okay, is there a motion to remove this item? Council Member Civigni. Yeah, I make the motion to remove this item. Second. Thank you. Okay, motion by Council Member Civigni, seconded by Council Member Gray. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, all those opposed? That motion carries. Thank you very much. Item six is the Tenant's Bill of Rights. This was by Council Member Maloney, who's not here. I think Council Member, or Vice Mayor, excuse me, Wu, you wanted to speak on this? Yes, thank you, Chair. So this generally, our approach with the Tenant's Bill of Rights is we are basically splitting it up into different items, different committees sponsored by different council members. because the items here that we want to look at kind of apply to different committees. So they don't all really belong very well into one. And I think this is going to be helpful for us to split off the work as well. It's going to be a little more efficient as well. So I will be working on the eviction diversion and right to counsel. I will be sponsoring that to this committee. And I think, yeah, we have other council members working on other items of it. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Lynch, did you want to speak to this item? Thank you, Chair. Although I'm not on this committee, I am interested in this topic and especially the part regarding the roles of tenants on our local boards and commissions. I think that's very important, and I'm interested in doing some research with my colleagues to figure out, assess out what's going on with that and how we can make improvements in that area. That's great. So we can entertain a motion to remove this entire item, and then what you all will do is make a motion during work session to put your item into the appropriate committee. That being said, is there a motion to remove this item in its entirety and break it up? from this committee. I'll make the motion to remove this item from committee. Okay, is there a second? Second. Council member Fred Brown has seconded. Council member Baxter made the motion. All those in favor? Opposed? That motion carries. Moving on to number seven, reduction in technology. This is the flat cameras and Council Member Baxter is the current sponsor. At this time, I think that we should leave this in committee just for any future updates that we may need. That sounds good. And when did you say the next update you thought would be? I think it's February the 28th. Okay. Wonderful. Perfect. Thank you very much. Moving on to number 8. division. I'm sorry. I apologize. I didn't see you. No, you're fine. No, I was going to ask Council Member Baxter a question. So the next update that's going to come to us is going to come to the full council at a work session. So I was, so we, you know, I guess if there was any other opportunity to speak about or any other issue, maybe we ought to put it back in committee, but I don't see any reason why we couldn't take it out if you wanted to. Well, after speaking with police and it really being crime reduction technology in general, and we just have been focusing on FLOC currently, I would kind of like to leave it in committee just in case new technology presents itself, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're on to item eight, Division of Community Corrections Update. The current sponsor is Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. I think we'll have a presentation ready for the March meeting. Okay. That's great. Thank you. We'll leave that in committee. Next is item nine, improve enforcement of traffic laws, speeding, stop signs, crosswalks, et cetera. Council Member Legree is not here. I think she wanted to keep it, so we'll just leave that as it is. And the next one is also hers. I think she also wants to keep an assessment of enforcement of noise ordinance. So we'll leave those for now. And just so the new council members know, at any committee meeting at the end, we usually go over the list. And if you want to remove something, you can do that at any time. And then 11 is review of outdated civil defense ordinance. This was Councilmember McCurns, and I see that Councilmember Sevigny has signed in to speak. Councilmember? Thank you, Chair. I actually thought of doing this one, but I've changed my mind. Okay. So I'm sorry, I'm going to move to remove this one. Second. Okay. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. All right. Any opposed? That motion carries. That was by Sevigny and then seconded by Council Member Gray. Next, we have a review of golf cart policies by Council Member Sheehan. I would like to keep this in committee. And also, if any of our new colleagues or returning colleagues have any issues with golf carts in their district, I'd be happy to chat with you about your ideas on this. Thank you. All right. These are some annual or periodic updates. Our next 13 review of housing rehabilitation grant programs. Council Member Brown? James Brown? Thank you, Chair. Let's leave it in committee right now. I'm thinking I may move it to budget committee, potentially. Okay, but you're not sure. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much. Back to Councilmember Sheehan. I know you expressed interest in keeping this item. 14, Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Annual Report. Yes, this is actually a required annual report that we need to do each year. Okay, thank you very much. Next is the number 15, Annual National Alliance of Mental Illness, NAMI. This is the Fayette Mental Health Court update. This is Council Member Lamb's issuing committee. Is anyone interested in taking it? I would. Okay, to take that. All right. That is then Council Member Gray will take that. Thank you, Councilmember Gray. Now we go on to 16. This is an annual LFUCG affordable housing fund initiatives and project update also by Councilmember Lamb. I can always keep it in as an update myself if no one is interested, but if there's anyone interested, I will be happy to. you're not sure i'm not sure but i would like i will let me overwhelm myself yes okay all right we have council member gray for those two thank you very much all right uh next i think is the annual juvenile treatment court update number 17 you also had interest in that yes i do okay Council Member Gray will take that. And then, uh-oh, I see Council Member Sevigny. Did you? It's on the next one. I've just jumped. Okay. Y'all are confusing me. It's all right. We got it. All right. So you're on item 18, Council Member Sevigny? Yes, Chair. Okay. Thank you. That's an annual update on recruitment, retirement, and retention for Department of Public Safety. Go ahead. Yes, I'd like to do that one. Okay. Thank you very much. And that brings us almost to the end of the list. We have 19 as the annual update on community paramedicine program. That will be coming up, I think, next month, and I am keeping that in committee for annual review. Also, 20, annual review of code enforcement. And 21, we just did that, one Lexington program update. And annual division and program reviews. We had kind of a pilot program of reviews last year, but we have kind of not decided if we're keeping it or not in terms of different divisions giving presentations in committee. So we're going to keep that in and look at that still, right? And I think that is it on that. Okay. Thank you very much. colleagues. Thank you for those of you that took on things. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Chair. I want to circle back around to Item 13. I will make a motion to remove that from committee. We just had an update a couple of meetings ago, and I think if any other issues come up, we can put it back in committee. So moved. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you very much. That comes to the end, but I just have something I want to say about public comment. I want to state that I am a big fan of public comment, and we are currently looking at expanding how we receive public comment. But in this committee right now, I'm going to follow our council agendas, along with the other chairs, that we will not have public comment because it is not on the agenda. And I know that we've made exceptions in the past, but for the sake of time and allowing us to work on committee items, you can see we had one item today and it took almost the whole time. I'm going to hold off on having public comment in committee and suggest that people comment at work session and email us about committee items. I just want to be clear to the public and their expectations and make sure that they know that we are working at looking at our council rules and we're looking at expanding and changing the way we look at public comment, but we have not come to any decisions yet, and that means that as of right now, we will not have public comment in this committee. But if someone is here to speak today and they did not know that rule, I'm willing to recognize you. Was anybody here to speak today? Okay, thank you. That concludes our business for today. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. All those in favor? All right, we'll see you in a few minutes.