All the time Ooh yeah baby I should show you a good time Thank you. It's 3 o'clock, and I'll go ahead and call to order the Lexington Fayette Urban County Council work session. Today's February 28th, 2023, and the first item on our agenda is public comment. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Council Member Fogle, you are signed in. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council, I would like to make a motion that we have Ms. Diane Mabson. By it being the last day of black history and my birthday, we'd like to make a motion that Diane Mabson open us up with one verse of the black national anthem. Second. You're making it for now or before the... Yes, for now, right now. Okay. And we have a second from Vice Mayor Wu. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Welcome. If you'll come to the microphone... Can we all stand? If you need to adjust the microphone, it's adjustable. All right. Thank you. Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring. Ring with the harmony of liberty Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening sky Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Facing the rising sun of a new day begun. Let us march on till victory is won. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now we'll go on to public comment for issues on the agenda. and it looks like we may have some folks signed up. We do have a few people signed up to speak to issues on the agenda. and the way this works the council rules ask you to when your name is called to come to the podium and state your name and your council district for the record and you'll have three minutes so first is josh england welcome josh josh england council three today i'm speaking on behalf of the Lexington farmers market specifically with regards to business item Z on the agenda. Which withdraws the funding awarded to the market for the permanent site in Davis bottom. I first want to thank the city council for asking the community to dream big as part of planned use for the ARPA funds in 2021. This allowed citizens and organizations to have a platform to share their ideas, concerns, and hopes for improving the city they call home. The city continues to face many of the same systematic and long term planning deficits that became apparent during the initial waves of the COVID pandemic. As reflected in the proposed adjustment, affordable housing is growing more and more out of reach for many of the Lexington community. Construction and repair costs have ballooned and homelessness continues to be a growing concern. Parking and transportation are also at the forefront of many businesses and citizens daily concerns. And we thank you for working and listening to residents and businesses that would have negatively been impacted by the parking authority changes. So where does this leave the Farmer's Market Project? Without this critical piece of funding, we must stop the project and evaluate what the future looks like for a dedicated permanent facility. We aren't necessarily giving up on the project, but the withdrawal of this funding does represent a serious obstacle. We want to thank those in the community that have rallied to the support of this goal, especially Omni Architecture and the Lexington Community Land Trust. While we agree that as plans progressed and construction costs increased nationwide, the overall projects initially presented to the council would not have been feasible in the time frame provided by ARPA, as it was based on fully funding a $10 million site designed to serve multiple numbers of broader community needs, we were hopeful that a phased or pared-down initial approach to the project could be completed by the required deadlines and sought out and shared estimates and projections that suggested that objective would be feasible. All that being said, despite this setback to our long-term sustainability plans, we intend to continue to work to provide a living wage for farmers, sustain farms and farmlands, provide Lexington with fresh, high-quality, accessible agricultural products, and stimulate the local economy. Our regular markets, events, and food access programs will continue in Tandy Park for the foreseeable future, and on Southland Drive and on Alexandria Drive. Finally, we will continue to work to provide a safe, welcoming space for all of our neighbors and friends to have year-round dedicated permanent access to food that we feel is a vital part of a resilient city. We will also continue to advocate for the Lexington community and would encourage the council to find a way to use the part of the withdrawn funds to promote local small businesses and support accessible use of downtown spaces by the whole community by providing things such as bathroom facilities and additional parking. Thank you. Thank you so much, Josh. Next is Jess Bowman. Welcome. Happy birthday, Tana Fogel. Council Member Tana Fogel. Jess Bowman, Council District 9. Today we'll hear from LPD an update on flock camps. They'll say their data shows a reduction in days for recovery of stolen vehicles. Upon receipt of materials produced on an open records request, I asked a data specialist to look at it along with the data on the packet form today. Their analysis is that the data provided is incomplete. There does appear to be a decrease in days for recovery of stolen autos, but it's hard to confidently say that's because of the readers based on what's been provided. We need to know specifically if the readers were utilized for the stolen and recovered autos. Ideally, we would see data showing every single stolen auto with identifying markers in a column that says recovered yes or no, as well as whether it was recovered using the LPR. One suggestion is that council plan to hire an independent statistician to deeply analyze the data. This would be necessary to determine that there is indeed causality between LPRs and recovery days. Correlation does not imply causation. Another concern would be what demographic data is being collected for stops made using LPR cams. It's important that we have clear data on who is being primarily stopped using this system. That would be collected for all stops made using LPR, not just ones that result in an arrest. But are specific stops using LPR which lead to an arrest being flagged as such in their arrest record? Is there info indicating the arrest was made using an LPR? Additionally, with the goal of transparency in mind, it would be beneficial for council to create a civilian oversight board for all things related to policing and public safety. Audits of the LPR system are currently done by LPD with no independent oversight body. I once again ask that you slow down the implementation of the additional 75 cameras until there are more guardrails, more of the guardrails in place. And since I have a minute left, on another line of thought regarding police accountability, recently someone was promoted an officer was promoted to sergeant who is part of a lawsuit against the city because it's being alleged that they were racially biased against five football players i am so sorry to interrupt you this is time to speak to the council about issues on the agenda. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next is Josh Fain. I'm sorry. You don't want to speak right now? Okay. Thank you. Next is Angelia Drake. I'm getting a sign so I can speak as well, Your Honor. For an issue on the agenda, sir? No, no, no. Public comment. For an issue on the agenda or not on the agenda. Thank you. I guess it might be. I'll come back. Thank you. Yeah, did you sign in too? So, Angelia Drake, hi, welcome. I'll be passing my three minutes to Mr. Wilson. For an issue on the agenda. He said it's not on the agenda. So we have two different public comment times. Right now, people are speaking for issues on the agenda. At the end of the meeting, we'll have folks who want to speak for issues that are not on the agenda. Yes, ma'am. do you do you want to speak of something on the agenda you want to speak at the end okay she she can help you right over there okay it's yeah because if farmer building on the agenda no sir so it's after the meeting then you would speak at the end. Great. Great. Need more time. Yes. Thank you. Alright. So Ms. Drake, I apologize. Did you want to speak at the end? Yes. Okay. She's giving her time to hear about it. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. All right, that finishes our list for folks who want to speak about items on the agenda. So we will now continue with the agenda. And next is there is no docket or rezonings today. So there is a summary to be approved February 14th, Council Work Session. Could I have a motion? Motion approved. Second. Council Member Ellinger moves approval. Council Member Reynolds moves second. Are there any questions or comments? All those in favor of approval say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. There are no budget amendments today. and there are no budget adjustments today. So that takes us to new business, and I'll welcome a motion to approve. Second. Thank you. Council Member Plowman moved and Council Member Sheehan seconded. If you have a question for new business, if you'll log in, please. First up is Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. and council members I think you received an email yesterday. I'd like to make a motion to amend item Z under new business items to provide six million dollars of ARPA funds shall be reallocated as follows one million dollars to the Black and Williams Community Center gymnasium building improvement project two million dollars to the office of affordable housing for affordable housing projects one million dollars to the Phoenix Park reimagined and $2 million to the community land trust for a proposed community center. So moved. All right. Council Member Reynolds seconds. Are there any questions or discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you for moving the ARPA funds ahead. All right. Next is Councilmember Legree. Mayor, I simply wanted to give a disclosure about the item that we just amended, if that's okay? Because I'm on the board of the Lexington Community Land Trust, the Ethics Act requires that I publicly disclose my board membership, but does not require recusal because it is a nonprofit organization. And in addition, I do not have financial interest in the Community Land Trust. Thank you very much for that. Councilmember Gray. I have a question about O. The item is regarding our constables and its bond. I think that's this director. Oh, okay, Commissioner Speckert. Welcome. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember. Thank you, Commissioner. I have spoken with said a couple of the constables, and it's been stated regarding the bond that they would like to send it back to the people instead of receiving that actual bond. Is that possible? That, I'm not sure. So let me, can I ask a clarifying question? Well, Constable Eddie Sparks is here. maybe he can help clarify describe what what the question is that would be great eddie please constable eddie sparks please stand and take the mic welcome good morning or good afternoon the the new ordinance that passed it requires for the city reimburse us for our bond i don't want to be reimbursed for the bond or for my deputies we don't get any fees taken from the the city. We operate our own budget stuff. So I don't want to waste taxpayers' money. So I'd rather be returned back to the people from my office only. Commissioner, are you understanding? I think so. You would like the city to give this money to the people? So the mayor and council members, the bond is required by state statute and the amount of the bond was set by the council. So the bond is required by law to be posted. Thank you for the clarification. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. I just have the same disclosure statement as Council Member Legree, that I'm on the board of the Community Land Trusts, and the Ethics Act requires that I disclose my board membership, but does not require a recusal because it's a nonprofit organization, and also I do not have any financial interest in the community land trust. Okay, very good. Thank you. Any other questions about new business? All right. Okay, Council Member Ellinger, you're always up for a question. I will. I am. Thank you, Mayor. Number R, please. Is that Jennifer Carey? Director Carey. Welcome. Could you explain this to me? I didn't really understand this program. I can, but James, you might be able to explain it a little clearer than I can and take further questions if you have any. But this is similar to what we did in 2021 when we purchased a set of shares. We purchased 20 at that time on behalf of one of the fire stations. And we started small to kind of make sure that the billing would be correct and that they would be gauging the solar output and giving us the right credit, so to speak, on our bill. But I'll let James expand a little further. Welcome. Afternoon. James Bush, Energy Manager within Environmental Services. The solar share program is offered by LGKU. This is for customers who want access to renewable energy, but for whatever reason, perhaps the facility is not amenable to solar. Think shading or the roof's not pointed the right direction. or they don't want to hassle with the installation costs. So hearing interest from customers, LGKU is building out a solar farm, which you may see it's along I-64 near Shelbyville. They build that out in phases, and customers may lease the output, a share of that solar farm. So you can purchase any number of shares. There is a high limit. but that by leasing that you get the attributes i.e the the energy associated with the production from that share as an offset on your bill we size our number of shares so that we're we're fully utilizing that offset to to the best of our ability this gets into pricing but but so the selection of 24 shares is purposeful, and that is to kind of optimize the economics. We've chosen building number two at Versailles Road. You have to associate your share with a particular account. So we're associating it there because that handles e-waste primarily, which is under urban services, and we had funding available in our urban service account for energy and utility conservation projects so by purchasing these shares we will see an offset on the bill associated with the e-waste facility if you will and that will occur it it's in our best interest to purchase them up front, hence it's a one-time fee that you see in this recommendation. And each bill, each month for 25 years, will have an offset against the energy we've used. And those shares are transferable if for some reason that account is closed or the building removed. I think I understand. So this is about solar. No, I'm kidding. I understand. Okay. So how does this relate to number T then, or does it? I believe T would be fire station number nine. So this is a facility in which we have good solar exposure. My group has been doing aerial surveys of all of our facilities and overlaying the energy profile, we call it, with the output of solar to find sweet spots, economic sweet spots for projects. station number nine fits that bill i.e. it's a direct southern sloped roof they have good consistent electric use at fire stations and so in this case it's in our best interest to own the asset rather than a lease that expires in 25 years I think that helps explain I appreciate it you're welcome i'm glad we're making some money here and saving some money so thank you okay any other questions while james is at the podium okay thank you um councilmember baxter thank you mayor i have a question about item a director martin welcome director martin i i'm just curious if there is precedence for us awarding stormwater grants to fayette county public schools yes there is there is okay yes they've been a frequent user of the grant program since its inception along with many of the other educational we've done montessori schools and things like that as well so this is not unusual um i think if you look back actually fayette county public schools is probably our second largest rate payer okay all right i appreciate it thank you thank you mayor thank you councilmember gray I would like to call Commissioner Speckert back up for clarification about O, I'm assuming. Thank you very much, Council Member Gray. Constable Sparks and I spoke, and I have a better understanding of what he's proposing, and I want to just explain very briefly how the bond payment works with our county officials. essentially the bonds are required they're set and the county official pays the premiums on those bonds and then they can seek reimbursement from the urban county government and what constable sparks has has given notice of is that he does not intend to seek reimbursement of the premiums for his office very good now it's all clear thank you thank you commissioner spigard and mayor thank thank you councilmember ellinger i'm done you're done okay does anyone else have questions about new business all right all those in favor of approving as amended please say aye is anyone opposed all right those items pass now we'll go on to our continuing business and presentations and first i will entertain a motion to approve neighborhood development funds approve council member ellinger moves council member reynolds seconds are there any questions all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right thank you that passes next is council member james brown with a budget finance and economic development report thank you mayor budget finance and economic development committee January 31st, 2023 summary of motions report out. The meeting started at 1 p.m. on time. The election of the committee chair, the selection of vice chair, the meeting began with the election of committee chair, a motion by Fred Brown, seconded by Ellinger to elect myself as the budget finance and economic development committee chair, and the motion passed without dissent. on behalf of the committee, I so move. Second. Excuse me. Who seconded? All right, Council Member Baxter. Any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. I've then appointed Council Member Chuck Ellinger as vice chair the approval of the November 29, 2020 committee summary. Next, the committee unanimously approved of the November 29, 2022 committee summary. Commissioner Hensley introduced the FY23 quarter two financial update. Director Holbrook highlighted payroll withholdings actuals and emphasized approximately 55% of overall general fund revenue comes from payroll withholdings. There are 46,000 registered businesses in Lexington, two-thirds of which pay net profit taxes typically in April. Overall, top four revenue sources show strong growth. Other areas to note, bank deposits went down during the annual tax assessment, the first time since the pandemic began, which could be an indicator of pressure from inflation. EMS service fees have increased this year, and the corrections fees have decreased. Director Luecker shared the city is spending more on personnel and remains below budget but is catching up to estimates. Operating budget has seen savings and salt expenses from the Malwinner looking at actuals for the first six months of the year. There are savings from personnel vacancies but over budget and overtime categories. Divisions are budgeted for attrition at an average of 93%, but actual attrition is 86% for field positions. The city is seeing savings in the professional services category from contracts at the detention center and supply savings. Insurance claims expenses are over-anticipated numbers and will be corrected with the budget amendment. When comparing FY23 actuals to FY22 actual, more has been spent than previous years due to personnel enhancements. Overall, the city is under budget but well above prior year actuals. No committee action was taken on this item. The ACPR, Jenna Jones from Strothman and Company presented on the annual comprehensive financial review. Jones mentioned this year's audit format is different than in prior years due to changes in professional standards. There were no uncorrected misstatements or no difficulties in dealing with management this fiscal year. The overall audit review opinion is strong. Jones also shared new government tool accounting standards boards, accounting standards that go into effect this year, which include GASB 91, 94, 96, and 99. Jones noted that the leases should be counted as related liabilities and expenses. Operating leases in the past would be a disclosure as opposed to an asset and liability. No committee action was taken on this item. The following items were removed from committee. Efforts to reduce barriers to second chance and re-entry employees, consideration of two-year budget cycle, franchise fees, and streetlight fund, review of current tax district change policy, local small business economic recovery program 2021, budgeting models and LFUCG budgeting, review of financing options for code stream, council budget review process. The meeting was adjourned at 2.07 p.m. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Are there any questions for Council Member Brown? All right. Thank you. Next, we have a special presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Tyler Morton to join us at the podium. Tyler. He knows nothing about this. Hello. How are you? I'm well, thank you. So we are here to honor someone very important in your life, Tyler. your life Tyler and I'm going to present this proclamation to Tyler it's a proclamation in memoriam recognizing his grandmother Mary Ann Henderson Adams and step right up here and I will read this proclamation whereas Mary Ann Henderson Adams was the first African American to earn a degree while attending the University of Kentucky and whereas she completed her master's degree in education in 1950 before UK fully opened to African Americans in 1954 and whereas Mary Ann Henderson Adams was a school teacher in cynthiana and lexington who retired in 1989 and there she is on the screen and whereas she received the torchbearer award from uk in 2006 and whereas until her death in 2021 she was the matriarch of her family and to this day is a positive influence in their lives now therefore i linda gorton mayor of Lexington do hereby honor the life and many accomplishments of Marianne Henderson Adams. Thank you. All good. All good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. his twin is here. Well come on, what's your name? Taylor. Taylor? All right, come on. You're Tyler's twin? Yes ma'am. Taylor and Tyler. Well welcome. Would you like to say a few words? I just want to say thank you so much for doing this for my grandma. This is very big to us. It means a lot to us. I know that she would have loved to have this recognition. So I do want to say thank you. Special shout out to my twin brother. He's doing a great job up here and just And thank you all for everything that you all have done for him and for my grandma. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Fogle, did you want to say a couple words? So what a great way to end black history for February, even though we know that black history never ends. For God to have set someone like Tyler Morton in my lap to be my legislative aide, and then to find out that his grandmother was the first black person, woman, to graduate from the University of Kentucky, just added like a cherry on top. This young man that the council sees all the time represents true honor, integrity, and I am so blessed that I can't run my office without him. So Tyler, you helped me sneak and get everybody else up to the podium. And now I would like to thank Sharon Murphy out of Council Brown's office for helping me to sneak past you to honor your grandmother today for black history. Thank you all. Shall we get a photo? Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next, we have our final presentation. Council members, you will remember, some of you will remember, that the council requested a flock safety LPR update for your information. And I believe Sergeant Tyson Carroll is here to give the presentation. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. And there is a timer. Were you told there's a timer? I hope it's this timer right here. It is that timer. You have 14 minutes and 54 seconds. I'll do my best. As you said, my name is Tyson Carroll. I'm a sergeant with the special investigation section, and I'll be presenting this slide deck on flock safety to you today. so flock safety lpr license plate readers the ones that we have installed are they're set to take six to seven still images of vehicles as they pass on a public right-of-way it essentially what it reads is the license plate and then the the camera itself will determine the color make model of the vehicle. The system is tied into the NCIC network and NCMEC network for Amber alerts and also any agency specific custom hot list. So when it gets the data, it then compares the data, the license plate itself, to the database to determine if there is a need to alert an officer. So what that looks like is this. And you'll see up in the top left plate. We've redacted this because it has sensitive information. So for an example, it'll have the plate. This one's a Kentucky plate. It'll have a date and time followed by what source the alert comes from, what that source determines the alert to be. This instance is a stolen vehicle, a description of the vehicle, and then where that camera is located, and that's in the top right. Below that is an image of the plate, which is redacted here, and the image in the middle, I hope you can see it, it looks dark from my view, of the vehicle itself. And the plate is just, it's a zoomed in part of that image in the middle. And then the map on the far right, that is generated from where the camera is, and it's static to whichever camera shows the alert. so there's some some things that the LPR isn't used for it's not used for speed or red light enforcement it's not used for targeted enforcement in neighborhoods it's not you or it's it's placed evaluated based on patterns of reported sets calls for service violent crimes throughout Fayette County and here in a later slide I'll define violent crimes for They are movable, however, not highly movable. So they're placed permanently, but if crime patterns change, these can be moved to adapt to crime patterns within the community. We lease them from the company Flock, and that's a yearly lease. And they handle any maintenance on the devices. So if one gets damaged, they will replace it. And they are powered by solar with a cell card attached. So that data then is transmitted that way. We have an LPR policy. It's available on the transparency page. It outlines the use of the LPR system, specifically for legitimate law enforcement and public safety purposes. It's a violation of our policy to use it for anything other than that. We have an audit system that we'll detail here in a minute, but for that audit system, officers are required to enter a reason for any search they perform. we have a definition in that policy for a hot list and those have to be submitted by request to the special investigation section intelligence unit with a supervisory approval on the first line so that would be wherever that submitter comes from the user and then the second level of supervisor approval comes through the intelligence unit most specifically me to then make sure that that request conforms to policy and procedure. As we developed our policy we met with the NAACP, ACLU, Human Rights Commission. Input was considered and taken to develop of the policy itself. Training is very important to the Lexham Police Department. As such for the LPR we required that officers complete a um online training course through uh through our course called power dms they have to then review and comply with the department policy and pass a test over the material before they were given access at all to the system now as part of continued education and using the audit system we we developed training for 2023 there's a 40-hour course that officers are required to go through two hours of which is for flock lpr and the use of technology and we're currently going through that we've had one class and a class this week going through so for our audits audits are completed each quarter and then we place them on the transparency page where anybody in the community can see them we review the hot list entries weekly i have a detective task to do that and then ensure justification that means reaching back out to the requester to make sure there's no information that's changed and acting accordingly or removing the entry if necessary the investigative searches they're examined to make sure the policy requires that's part of our audit process and so we have the hot list or a custom field that officers are allowed to request any other agency can have their own hot list at the lexon police department we chose to regulate regulate any hot list from any other agency and vet it so we then pull information from that as pertinent and necessary for our community we don't just post a hot list it has to come through us and it has to be uh according to our policy and procedure before we'll individually post what might come from a hot list as part of community education like i said the policy is posted to our transparency page we have partnered with flock to produce a video that's not ready yet when it is ready we'll we'll publish that and make that available to you and then like I said the transparency page has much more information on it some of that's going to be in these next few slides so for law enforcement sharing we are able to share data with other law enforcement agencies on the network and we do we're currently sharing with 107 other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation the reason this is important is we're able to view not just our data but data that is important to investigations going on in our jurisdiction we're able to collaborate with other law enforcement agencies to ensure that there's a greater impact if you think of jurisdictional bounds we have lexington but we also have our surrounding counties that are very important to us and for traffic that's moving in and out of Fayette County. We have the ability to audit every piece of data that any other agency looks at, and we are. And if we find that they violated an agreement, we can suspend their use of our data into the system. So these are our regional communities, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Scott County, Richmond, Versailles, Louisville. There's more in the state of Kentucky, but these are the ones that we regionally are using quite a bit of data between the two agencies. This is a list of other agencies nationwide that we've worked with to ensure that multiple violent offenders have been apprehended. Each one of these is a violent assault or murder. and so one particular for that bottom one Detroit Michigan we used the LPR system to locate a murder suspect from Detroit in Lexington Kentucky that murder suspect was wanted and being searched for by the United States Marshals we then gave that information to the local Marshal's office and they were able to apprehend again a murder suspect in our community whether their crime happened outside of our community. And that story is really, we could just kind of change the name for each one of those agencies through there. So we published this information to the transparency page, but you can see from the slide, we've recovered to date 129 stolen vehicles. We're getting close to $2 million worth of recovered property. What we use the Kelly Blue Book value determine what that vehicle's worth um we the statistics have shown that the length of time for recovery vehicles has been has been dramatically reduced uh from looking at 2021 2022 and then this and then 2020. uh 15 people have been located that were missing we've seized 45 firearms pursuant to investigation after the stop that had some nexus to the lpr system we were able to further 10 of the 45 homicide cases in 2022 using the lpr system and that's part of that's going to be the several gun related crimes mentioned in the final bullet there small print that's hard to see so we have an average for 2020 and 2021 of 95 vehicles stolen monthly with 64 and 63 recovered those numbers are pretty pretty right on 67.5 percent 68 percent is a uh those are the recovery rates and then can you shift did you scroll that down or did i i zoomed in a little bit can you move it down just a hair i want to i think there's a bottom line there we go so so then you look at 2022 there's an average monthly stolen rate of 113 with a recovery rate of 80 percent and that's a 70.5 percent rate of return i'm sorry not 80 80 total, 70.5%. So a slight increase on rate. And then now I don't have the ability to... There we go. So then here's that recovery rate that I referred to earlier. Days before recovery. 2020, 2021, you're looking at 11.7 days. And then in 2022, 6.8. the the importance there is the efficiency to the victim right it's important that people get their cars back so again talking about efficiency and it's easy to read here that this is efficiency just the lexon police department but again i i want to remind you this is efficiency that's directly passed to the victim. So for the first one, there's three stories I want to give you. The first is a violent assault with a knife. And in this case, in each of these cases, I'm not going to go into very specific details because all these are still subject to open records requests for the court system and whatnot. All right. So with the first one, we were able to identify within two hours of the occurrence of a person stabbed in our community. We were able to identify the vehicle using private surveillance that was then given to the police department to then see an image of the vehicle and then use the lpr system to see a unique identifier the license plate and then pass that or then investigators were able to use that to later identify the suspect arrest and charge them for the crime we estimate that the lpr system probably gave us an extra 20 hours worth of investigative work for that the next one is the sexual sexual assault investigation and so for for this one a victim was and I spoke about this last time I spoke in front of the council a victim was sexually assaulted was able to give us a little bit of detail a description of a vehicle we're able to get again private security in an area that captured from the travel that that vehicle took the victim gave us we're able to get some very specific details about the vehicle but nothing that identified what that vehicle was we then use the LPR system to identify a possible lead for a vehicle matching that description gave that lead to investigators they were able to positively identify that that lead matched the vehicle and bring justice to that victim it happened fairly quickly in about a matter of two weeks as an investigator that's worked both murders assaults like we talked about before sex crimes i'm gonna say that that type of work we may not have solved that case had it not been for the lpr tool it absolutely brought something so there is no attributed value to ours to that i think that is kind of binary without that information that may not have been solved and finally have a patrol investigation i talked about two one is a uh i've talked about two one is a is a um or they're both violent this one's not violent it's a property crime it's a property crime and that property crime uh was where a person's vehicle was entered by a suspect items were taken from the vehicle i'm sorry there's a system for these things that that goes off and everybody's just hit. We might owe you a couple more seconds. So is everybody going off at once? Except for mine. I turned mine off before I came up here. What's happening? All right. So a patrol officer used the system after it was learned. After it was learned that credit cards were used, a patrol officer went out, again, sought private surveillance, found an image of the vehicle and then used the LPR system to identify that. They were then able to give property back to the victim. Again, very important. All right. We used violent crimes. This is a list of the violent crimes we used. Murder, rape, robbery, sexual assault, assault first, assault second, stalking, strangulation, violation of protect order, violation of stalking order to determine a heat map and then overlaid that over the city and determined where we were going to place the cameras from there. After all of the cameras are, I'm sorry. Your time's up, but the beeper didn't go off. I think it was all those other beepers. Now it's off. Would someone like to make a motion to give Sergeant Carroll 30 seconds? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right. Thank you. This will be quick because I have just this last slide. We finalized the permitting process since the last council meeting, and we're ready to begin installing the LPRs. The locations, after all 75 are installed, they'll be released on the Transparency Bridge. That concludes my presentation. All right. Thank you very much. And now we'll have questions from the council. and first up is Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Sergeant for that presentation. Yes sir. I have actually a whole bunch of questions but I'm going to try to keep them brief as possible. We'll start with your last page. What is the installation timeline in terms of when you expect them to start and when do you expect the last of the 75 cameras or readers to be installed? We don't have a set timeline. We expect them to start essentially today and then and then we've we've had discussions with Flock before this and we wanted to get into into the purchase early with them so that they could go ahead and have the supplies on hand. They've assured us this will be a quick installation. Okay. One of the issues that have come up with a lot of community comments and concerns is the location of these cameras. When will the 25 original pilot program camera locations be listed? They'll be listed along with the 75. So once all 100 cameras are installed, it'll be a full listing of every camera. okay i guess this goes to my um timeline question then because with the 25 um readers uh when they first rolled out it took a serious a period of months right so if if all 100 locations are going to be released after all 100 are installed what are we talking about there is it a matter of weeks is it a matter of months is it the end of the year that's kind of the concern that a lot of people i think i have i i understand that welcome chief hello and uh happy birthday um no um if you recall when we first started the whole country was uh uh in a little bit of shambles with supplies and everything like that and that was a little bit of a little bit of a slowdown um i think uh flock has overcome that and we'll be looking at it and if it seems like it stretches out and we get get a a number up and we feel comfortable with that. I feel confident we could probably post them but I also feel confident that they'll work as quickly as they can to get them up and we won't have that kind of delay. Thank you Chief. I think having that little caveat of if there are delays and you have a number of them up to kind of put them, put those locations up incrementally I think would ease a lot of people's concerns on that. Let's see. You all mentioned that you share this information with 107 other law enforcement agencies. I don't need you to name them right today. Is there a place for us to go, maybe the transparency page, where we can see what those agencies are? Currently, we don't have that listed on the transparency page. Looks like my chief wants to talk. I think what we have to do is we have to look at our agreement with FLOC and see if we can put those other agencies up. My feeling is that if we can, we'll put them up as soon as we can, and then we'll probably, if we're allowed to, we'll probably update those quarterly, too, because, you know, people are going to be coming on and things like that. So that's what I envision for it. Okay. And in that same vein, are most of these other agencies just other local jurisdictions, other police departments from other cities? The quick answer is no, not just local. It's a nationwide network that we are able to share with. However, it's more local than not. It's more along areas that are going to have an impact with Lexington. Okay, but there are also federal and state agencies as well, I assume. Yes, there are federal and state agencies that have access to that. My last question goes to your audit. So I went to the transparency page, and I pulled up the two audits that are available right now, which is Q3 2022 and Q4 2022. And there's not a whole lot of information available here. On the Q3, there's a listing of number of searches for the three months, I guess, that covers. And then in the Q4 report audit, there's the number of searches done each month and the number of users conducting a search in the system. is there other information that you're getting out of these audits that are not publicly shared or published so we're still learning how we're going to specifically do the audit and for each so we have what two iterations of the audit and so we're learning what we need to audit and how we need to adapt our research to then publish it as with most anything i'm sure that there's other information that we can drive, we're still learning that. Okay. Yeah, I think the general gist, I think, from the public and from the communities are the more information we can share, the better. So I appreciate that. Thank you, Sergeant. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Sergeant, for the presentation to update. One of the things that was shared in the presentation was the information about the, well, maybe it was mentioned and not shared, was about the heat map kind of guiding the department on where to locate the cameras. When we first did the the trial I thought the I guess the the we placed the cameras where we had reports of violent crime and not necessarily calls for service. Has that changed at all? Are we looking at calls for service or these actual reports of activities that have taken place? Because I think it's different. I think calls for service can address some of the, is what some folks are concerned about. Yeah. No, it's not based on calls for service. It's based on actual crimes reported to us by victims. Okay. And Chief, are those crimes where we don't have any leads and it's still an open case, are these crimes that were reported that that came to an end but still registered as an incident happened in this part of town in this area it's a it's a mixture of all i mean once it's once it's on there uh we don't we don't necessarily look to see if it's solved so when they got on there some of them may have been open and now closed so okay yeah well i guess the the thing that i was most interested in is knowing if they were calls for service or actually really substantiated actually substantiated any other important part to remember is um you know as crime patterns shift the cameras might change too that's the reason why we're going to do the quarterly update on those because we don't know when that could happen okay okay all right thank you thank you mayor thank you councilmember reynolds thank you mayor and thank you sergeant for putting this together And I know you all worked really hard on this presentation and took a lot of feedback, and I really appreciate that. So I've received several questions, so I'm just going to reiterate questions that constituents have brought to me. So when we talk about who is able to access these videos, does FLOC have access to these videos and this information? information, can they get into these photos and use them however they want, or is it only accessible to the LPD? As per our user agreement, all of the data is owned by Lexington and accessible to those that we give access to. And what I'll tell you is I've had many service calls with the vendor flock, and each time I talk about a specific incident, they can't look at the data. So I'm confident to say that at least within the retention period and certainly after the retention period, they don't have access to the data. And that's 60 days, is that right? Yes, 30 days by our policy, 60 days is set by the state. So we go by the state policy for that. By the state. Okay, so this flock group is not able to just get a hold of our data whenever they want. They don't have access to that is what you're saying, right? Correct. As per our user agreement with them, they do not have access. They do not have access. Okay, thank you. And then something that I think is hard to get our minds around in a time when people are taking videos of us and putting it on social media with or without our permission, there's cameras everywhere we go now. Now, I've even had neighborhoods request cameras at stoplights, which are not legal in Kentucky, that are in some other states that take photos from the front and the back and then send people violations if they run a stop sign or a stoplight. Right. So do we have the right when we I mean, you all wear body cameras and that's something that is generally liked so that there's kind of more accountability. In this case, we know that these cameras are not taking pictures of people and they're not going after. And you all showed me quite a few photos. They're not going after who's in a vehicle or or other things in the frame. It's really just focusing on the license plate reader in the back of a vehicle. So there's but there's not some sort of idea that we all have a right to privacy outside of our home is correct. There's there's nothing that states that we have a right to to that. Is that correct? Correct. This is all public property that the images are taken taken on and it's all publicly viewable. So there's no reasonable expectation of privacy where the images are being taken. And so I think, you know, my pushback previously was on the rollout of these and taking a while to do it. And we're reaching that year mark. The information that I received, I feel more comfortable with the program than I did previously. And its ability to kind of really help with some of the crime that we're trying to deal with as a city. I just think we're entering into this age of what is targeting, what is allowable, what is not allowable when it comes to images, when it comes to surveillance. And I think it's a really confusing time for everyone. But I think that this can be a tool for good. So thank you once again. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Thank you, Mayor. so can we start off with what is meant by targeted enforcement and is that phrase defined in the policies targeted targeted enforcement is not that phrase not particularly defined what's meant by that slide and where we said we're not doing targeted enforcement in the neighborhood is we are not doing bias-based policing and in fact we have a policy that states that we don't do bias-based based police and we do unbiased based police and i'm just going to ask you to speak up because I think I missed some of that, and this question is probably something that you just answered, which is what policies and procedures are in place to prevent targeted enforcement? Unbiased policing would be the name of the policy. Okay, and so I'm just going to just move quickly because five minutes goes really fast. When you reported, and I really was intently listening for some updated information. I know you gave us information about what happened when you guys were here with the last council and you did a presentation. I want to look at the missing persons report that you all always put out. Was an Amber Alert reacted when someone was missing? Not within, so the statistics that we have, I think it's 15 people. We don't have an Amber Alert that is part of that. And was any of those children? Yes, juveniles are listed in that statistic. And was any of that because of a boyfriend took the girlfriend and the mother didn't like it? Was it anything like that? And then they called it in, the child didn't come in on time? Was that part of the missing person? I don't have the knowledge of the specificity for that missing person, if that's one of the statistics. Well, that's a shame, because I would have wanted that data. Well, I know transparency is really important, and I commend all the work that you all do, and I'm entering this with love. I am so sad that it has taken 60 days. I have asked you all for specific data. I have not gotten it yet. So how do I trust that you're going to be transparent with the community that supports you and want to support you? And as I continue to try to build bridges, that is an issue for me. So I just want to, I mean, I'm just going to put that out there. And I want to just jump over here when you talked about the audit, and then you made the statement that you really don't have the audit in place. So then we can't really, I can't support the audit information that you gave. And the other thing that I would like for you to know is that I work close with the NAACP and I work close with ACLU and they are not in agreement with this. So when you use their names, I would like for you to report the truth that they stand by. And that's all I want to put out there. Come on, Chief Weathers, I'm waiting for you. That was the truth. We did consult with them. As far as data requested, we've said several times that we don't gather information based on council districts. It's by sectors, so we try really, really hard. Sometimes we even go above and beyond that. If it's not the information that you want, I'm sorry, but sometimes it's information that we just don't maintain. Well, Chief Meathers, if you all are reporting that the flock camera is either reducing, preventing, have an active case. If you all are presenting to this council that these flock cameras is making a difference and that we should support more flock cameras for this work to be done. And if you all don't track the data that in my community, if I'm trying to build a bridge with the police department, and I'm trying to find out the information to help prevent crimes with people in the community, and you don't track that it's happening in the first district, and you give me something that says in this sector, then that's an issue for me. I don't know about the rest of the council. I'm just talking about I would perceive that I have the highest incidences. And so we're just trying to figure this out because Lexington is beautiful and first district is rolling right now. I'll make that in my council comment about how we are improving. And so that's the point I'm trying to make. And it's an overall view. I haven't heard any updated data since the last time council met till today. Not even recovering people who were missing. And you don't have that data. No, and we stand out for questions. And sometimes you've got to ask those beforehand. We wouldn't have it right here. We wouldn't know you're going to ask it. As far as data for districts, we can give you the data for sectors, and you can go through that and pull out the ones related to your district. We can't necessarily, we don't have the mechanism to do that. So I would suggest that whatever data we give you, look at it and research it and pull out what you need, and that would show you. So everything that we provided you, there should be data there relevant to your district. Yes, sir, and respectfully, 60 days is, that's all I've been in office and I've asked since I've been here. So that may not be enough time for you all to get me the information. I'm sorry. Well, I don't know if you've asked for that information specifically, but I do know that we've tried to give you the information that you've asked for as best we can. So thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor. and thank you all for the update. I shared some comments last time we had a presentation. I still feel encouraged and enthused about the results thus far. In my mind, I think that's the bottom line, especially with a police force that's down 125. I think we need the resources that are available and to use them wisely. One of the things that I think the perception might be is that this is surveillance by a video, and this is not. These are still shots of license plates. They're not filming or videotaping in action. These are license plates and I think it's really important for our community to know that and I think probably we need better communication out there. I'm glad to see that you're doing a video on the whole FLOC program and I encourage you to send that to each of us. We have our Facebook pages, we have our newsletters and we can get that word out there but I think people need to know where to go to find out more about these but um you know i'm i support the flock cameras i think that they're a great resource um it's we're still in our infancy i think we're probably still learning but again the results speak for themselves i have had neighborhoods i just last week i had another neighborhood call me up and said how do i find out more about the flock cameras um my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong is that they do direct directly work with the flock business the flock organization is that correct you're correct okay so they need to contact them have do you know if they've been successful in other um other parts of the country working with neighborhoods uh yes we we do know that they've been successful we toured a couple of agencies and spoke to them about how neighborhoods involve themselves and and use lprs in conjunction with their law enforcement departments overall successful are do they stand up well against the other resources out there in terms of cameras uh in comparison yes but it's also in conjunction with many other technological resources so they're private um privately owned video cameras in conjunction with yes so those are video but what we're talking ours we're talking about still images right now still images is what we're talking about so i think we need to get that out there i think folks think that you're walking into a store you're on video for you know 10 minutes or whatever that's not what these are so um yeah it's different this is in a public accessible area with no regional expectation privacy all righty well just wanted to share comments and ask the question about the neighborhood so thank you thank you mayor thank you councilmember sheehan thank you mayor um thank you for the presentation i i have the transparency website open here and i i've been scrolling through it i looked at it a a little bit earlier too and i appreciate um that you have put the heat map up there because i think that's very useful information um and some of the graphs with the data one of the questions that i have and i i hear that um you have limited data at this point and and that you know some of the access to data or splitting it the ways that um we might have asked is is difficult based on the way your data is collected i i understand that what i would be interested in seeing and and maybe this can be put on the transparency website or not is something like what you have for the recovery of a stolen vehicle. Like you have two graphs here with like the average number of days to recovery of a vehicle. My question for the future, it doesn't have to be answered today, is if it's possible to put information like that for some of the examples that you gave on violent crimes. So is it possible to have the average length of time for apprehension of a suspect that's in relation to a violent crime when an LPR is involved in the investigation or the apprehension of that suspect versus when it's not or what that was in past years versus now what you have here? Because I think it's great that we have this information about the stolen vehicles, but i would like to see some of that applied to these other types of crimes that these have been useful used for so i would appreciate that but again i know you don't have that today but would like to see that in the future if possible i took a note on it and so you know those updates that you mentioned those came from direct response from the council so we are open to that sort of that type of a request yeah and i had gotten some questions too about the whether when the locations would be posted and if we could post the partnering agencies and and that kind of stuff too so i was interested in hearing those responses today too thank you okay thank you councilmember gray thank you mayor sergeant um i just have a comment um just my preference is i love comms work And I really need for the police department to really do a great job with PR with this because there is a lot of misinformation that is out there. I know that my district, after redistricting or after the additional cameras are added, will have a tie with the first district with the most flat cameras there. I believe so. This is off the top of my mind here. but I live in a district where when I go to the schools, the students beg me to stop the violence in their communities. Not too long ago, I had an elementary-age student who was in her bed and was shot. Flock cameras, despite what my beliefs are, it's about what's best for the community and best for my young people to be safe in their neighborhoods, to be free from violence, free from gun violence, free just to be a child or just live in their neighborhoods. So that is, but I need a better PR because, like I said, there's a lot of misinformation about how long information is kept, where does this information go, and it's our job to be as crystal clear as possible about what we're doing and what we're doing with the information that we do keep. That's my only request. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fogle for a second time. Thank you, Mayor. Is it possible, since we've had the 25 flock cameras in a pallet program for quite some time now, is it possible to release at least those locations? Seeing as if the other 75 could take, I don't know how long, but just trying to gain some confidence in the first district and hopefully in the city. I know some of us sitting on the shoe don't have to even worry about flight cameras in their districts. but we do so is it such a like really big secret that we keep them hidden from the community right now chief right now the 25 I'd rather keep secret because if I give them out now before we get the other ones up people might destroy mine I get that I want to have quite a few in place so at least making it difficult if people did destroy some of them still making it difficult if they're involved in criminal activity get passed I just discussed with the sergeant it shouldn't take them long but I'm gonna go ahead and say and I haven't discussed this with my staff but I'm gonna go ahead and say you know I'll look at it in two months and see where we are and then I'll look at it in three months and by that third month I'll go ahead and disclose what we have up yes sir and And if the fear is that they're going to be destroyed and you're going to release and be transparent when you get them all up, that same fear is there. So does that mean we're going to waste a quarter of a million dollars? I don't know if that fear is there. I listen to Council Member Gray. You know, I think the fear is unjustified because all it is is license plate numbers, and it's not video, and we're only going after people that are vehicles, actually, that have been reported used in a crime. No, I was talking about the fear that you mentioned about the police department and destroying the cameras. I'm not talking about the community. You're talking about the destruction of cameras? Yes. You know, and that's why I said I'll look at it two months from now, see where we are, if we have enough. And I feel comfortable that even if we have some get destroyed. No, sir. Eventually you're going to release the location of all the cameras. That was your statement, right? Yeah. So once you release them, they're going to be... Your question was time, and I'm addressing the time factor of it. So I appreciate that, but it still stands. If I get all 100 of them up in a month, you'll know where they are. And if they're destroyed, what happens? If they get destroyed, we'll just have to get them replaced. I realize that- And who pays for that? I guess we're going to have to pay for it. Who we? The city. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Just like everything else that gets destroyed. I apologize. Street lights, all that kind of stuff. That's the cost of doing business and the cost of keeping this city safe. I don't think we should spare any expense. Yes, sir. And thank you for all the hard work the LPD does. I appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. My question goes to we're on a one-year lease. When does that start? When does that stop? And when will you come back to us if we have to? Because will we get them all done in the one-year time frame that we have? Yes. And so we have kind of two agreements. We had that first 25, and that agreement ends on August 31st because the last camera was installed on August 31st. As far as the agreement that we recently signed for the next 75, I'll have to get some clarification on when that starts, if it starts at the end of it. But I believe the idea is that we will have them all installed quickly, and so that agreement will be a year from installation. So it starts from when all 75 get put in for the next agreement? Again, I need to clarify and make sure that it is to the last camera's installation. But the idea is that they will be installed quickly so that they all fall on the same one-year agreement. So will this be something that will be, and I guess I can ask this to the mayor too, about putting the budget to finance them going forward then? It will be in my budget. Okay. That answered that question. Thank you, mayor. You're welcome. Anybody else have a question or a comment? All right. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Sergeant, for your presentation. I don't have a question. I just have a comment. We have worked really hard on this program since its inception, and I want to commend the department for pivoting whenever we need to pivot and learning as we go and developing policies that will only make the department better because our ultimate goal is to serve our community, as Councilmember Grace said, and to keep our community as safe as possible. So I agree with Chief that I will bar no expense to maintain cameras or implement new technology moving forward. there is not a price tag that we can put on safety especially the safety of our children and i am here in this seat because i want to protect the future for my kids so i'm going to get upset because i'm talking about my kids but i just want to say thank you you guys have been open and you have invited us to ask you questions and give you feedback on this program and And we couldn't be where we are today without the joint effort of council and the community and the police department. So I commend you for your hard work, and I look forward to a continued, very successful program. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. and uh chief if you'd come up the podium i'd like to give you an opportunity to clarify i think a comment that you were trying to make about the 25 that are in place now and as always and correct me if i'm wrong but having been following this since its inception the thought process of not disclosing those 25s because they were so few that by letting their location be known immediately during the pilot program would jeopardize the integrity not only of the use of the tool but also what we could learn from it and how we could make that policy the policy surrounding it better is that correct exactly correct sir and then if i remember from previously you have said that once the hundred are in place when the new 75 come in that you believe the city will be adequately covered that even if individuals know those locations and try to disrupt that the city will still be covered well enough that that same level of of investigative uh integrity and and the policies around it will be able to be implemented is that correct right if i only have 25 up and three of them get destroyed that's detrimental if i have 100 up and three of them get destroyed i think we can still carry on business and replace them and then a follow-up to that is once the city gets more adequately covered generally then there should be a fairly good disbursement across the city of these cameras correct yes sir and when you have when you have those then you could increase what these 25 are doing even more so i noticed that this 1.9 million dollars in recovered value and if you need to pull the sergeant back up for the details feel free but as i recall just the last time we had a presentation on this the end of 22 that number was only 1.3 million so we are already seeing that much of a jump in recovered stolen property is that correct yes the the curve is certainly more of the exponential scale as we increase and when you look at the statistics that you've provided i think councilmember sheen makes a great recommendation that some of these other highlights to see the statistics before and after are incredibly beneficial because what is pretty profound to me is that it used to take on average 11.5 days to recover a stolen vehicle and when you look we're recovering more stolen vehicles anyway and i think that's could be attributed to the department's acumen but in the use of the flat cameras and you attribute this directly to the use of the flat cameras tell me if i'm wrong it only takes on average 6.8 days to recover stolen so it's five days that that vehicle could be further used in a crime damaged or forever lost to its owner is that correct That is correct. There is correlation, and as to a comment earlier, causation hasn't been fully determined. LPRs 100% have had an impact. The scale of that impact, we're still studying. And I'd like to go back to the individual that was wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service from the murder in Detroit. So this is an alleged murder suspect that is found here using the LPR system. Is that correct? That's correct. So absent that individual committing another crime here or doing something of suspect value here without the LPR system, do you believe that individual would have ever been discovered in Lexington? No, and I think that there's multiple examples of that where we wouldn't have discovered somebody without this being there. Now, there could be a time where an officer's behind a vehicle and runs a plate, but if we look at past experience to current, this is another added layer to that. And in that one example, at least, you attribute directly the LPR system to taking a wanted murderer from another jurisdiction off the street here in our jurisdiction where that individual could have committed a crime here. Absolutely. Thank you, officer. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Does anyone else have a question or a comment? All right. Thank you very much, Sergeant Carroll and Chief Weathers. We appreciate it. Next, our council reports. So if you'll log in, please. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor. I have two items under my council reports tonight, and I have the graphics, if I could have the first one, Chris. This is a week from the Saturday, March the 18th. This is the 40th annual Fayette County Farm Bureau's Farm Equipment Consignment Auction. And I know Mayor and I have attended this many times, and I wanted you to see the scope of this because there's so much equipment. And I encourage you to check it out. I mean, it's not just farm equipment, there's golf carts, there's all kinds of things. But it's a week from Saturday, but I wanted to share that with you. On the next visual, the next item I have, Council Member Fogle at the beginning of the month said, she would appreciate and she would like us to bring different items to the table during this special Black History Month. So I had made a presentation. We've made a presentation on a campaign that is, like I always keep telling people, it's a cool campaign because we're trying to recognize and celebrate the historical impact of the hamlets, mostly that were in the 12th district, but there were others. So since that presentation and that several that were on council at the time saw that, and then since then I've met one on one with most of the new council members. And I just wanted to give you an update of what we've done since a few months ago. So what you've got here is we've got, let's see, we established a 12-member steering committee that meets biweekly to define our goals, expand our networks, and brainstorm. And it's a good representation from the community. We named Adrian Thacker, Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation, as working chair of our community. We distributed an introduction letter that provided an overview of the project to all of the pastors of all of our black churches, area churches, so that they could share this project and the communication with their different members of the church. We met with Bluegrass Community Foundation to secure a campaign account for donations so that they can be tax deductible. We have named the campaign and that name of the campaign is a sense of place, remembering and celebrating the history of Fayette County's rural black hamlets. We're in the process right now of developing that graphic and there will be a Facebook page as well as a website coming shortly. We also have our first community at large meeting at the old Cadentown church on March the 21st at 630. There are flyers, and this is an example of one. There'll be posters in all of the churches, all of our black churches out there. And let's see, Tiffany Brown, we will be presenting the project to the LFUCG Commission Committee on Racial and Equity, and that's going to happen on April 6th. And we are planning on kicking off the campaign, raising the monies on, well, actually, as part of the Juneteenth community celebration, and that obviously is in June. So I wanted you to all be aware of all the activity. It's an exciting project for our community, and I wanted to make sure that you all knew about it, and we'll keep updating you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to, for all my members of the 6th District who are watching this very informative meeting, and you're sitting at the edge of your seats, I want you to know that or remember that we have our first district meeting. Go ahead and pull out your calendars and I'll wait for you. Okay. You do. You have it out. Go ahead and put in your calendars 6 p.m. on Monday, March 13th. You're going to be at Mary Todd Elementary for our first district meeting. I want you to come and bring all your questions and bring your neighbors too. See you on Monday, March 13th at 6 p.m. at Mary Todd Elementary on Parkside Drive, maybe. See you then. I see the cheerleader coming out. Yes. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. and thank you Councilmember Fogel for challenging all of us to highlight individuals of note for Black History Month. I have an individual who I'd like to talk about and the person I'd like to recognize today is Sweet Evening Breeze, born James Herndon. Originally from Scott County Kentucky, Herndon moved to Lexington as a child and then was abandoned at Good Samaritan Hospital after suffering an eye injury. After growing up and spending a lot of time in the hospital, Herndon worked as an orderly there for over 40 years, and this is based on the history shared by the NKAA database through the UK libraries. Sweet Evening Breeze was a remarkable Lexingtonian and member of the LGBTQ community who called 186 Prawl Street home. Born in the late 1800s, Sweet Evening Breeze lived in a racially segregated city where homosexual acts were illegal throughout their lifetime. Starting in the 1920s, Sweet Evening Breeze hosted public drag performances and became well known in our city and is considered by some to be the originator of the Lexington drag scene. Sweet Evening Breeze was a trailblazer and is celebrated in Lexington in many ways, including with a mural entitled Mother of Us All here in downtown Lexington at 161 North Limestone. And that's in Lexington's 3rd District, which I'm really proud of and happy about. And this mural was painted by Gaia, and just last year a plaque was erected so that all who passed can read the story of Sweet Evening Breeze who passed away in 1983. Starting now with what is happening in our state with various pieces of legislation, I think it's important to share the words or re-share the words that John Coleman, who's the director of the Faulkner Morgan Archives, spoke at the plaque dedication. Quote, you're not the first and you're not alone. You're part of a grand, grand story. I think Sweet Evening Breeze represents the persistent fluidity of human sexuality and gender which we now think of as a contemporary talk as contemporary talking points or political posturing but in actuality it's a deeply human story that sweets represents so well unquote that's my first bit of sharing so thank you for um listening and and the other thing i wanted to share was an announcement related to the third district i wanted to say a big thank you to nicole seda first for her service to former vice mayor steve kay and then in my office during a time of transition for our office nicole i'm very grateful for your intelligence for your work ethic and for your investment in the success of the district and i have no question that you will continue to make a big impact and today i also want to give a very warm welcome to hannah idon who has officially joined the third district as my legislative aide hannah i hope you know that i'm very excited to work together and for the many many strengths that you'll bring to this role and to our office mayor that's it wonderful thank you councilmember lynch thank you mayor In honor of Black History Month, I don't want to honor just one person, but several people, actually. And these several people live in a very historic neighborhood, and that would be St. Martin's Village. St. Martin's Village was one of the first large-scale African-American subdivisions here in Lexington. And it is a subdivision that has housed generations and continues to house generations of African-Americans, Most notably, our beloved Harry Sykes is from that subdivision as well as our former council member, Robert Jefferson. St. Martin's Village was a home to African Americans here in Lexington when they couldn't have homes in other places in this city. And there's a thriving, dynamic cultural history right in that neighborhood that continues today. They continue to give back to their neighbors. They have a food pantry, and they really work hard to meet the needs of their neighbors. And so I want to lift up St. Martin's Village today because they are doing dynamic work. And it's a historical neighborhood that we need to continue to remember and to honor. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to take a few minutes and thank Council Member Fogle for lifting up Black History Month around this dais and this horseshoe and challenging Council Members to recognize folks in the community. I've been on council for years and I don't think it's ever been an emphasis on it, like on Black History Month like it has been this year. So thank you, Council Member Fogel, for pushing us to do more. Thank you, council members, for stepping up and accepting the challenge. Maybe we need to do this every month, with every, because I think what is next month is Women's History Month. So I'll let one of the ladies make that challenge to the council members. But I think it's good to continue to learn. And then I didn't say anything at the podium because I thought it was appropriate for Tyler and his family and his grandmother to get that recognition. But that's a special thing. I've seen Tyler getting emotional, him and his sister and his mom were here. They're proud of their grandmother and what she did and the trailblazer she was in this community. I'm from Lexington. I think I've got family all over the place. But when Tyler was interning with me, we would go places and people were waving. I thought they were waving at me. They were waving at Tyler. So Tyler's family has a huge history and there's a lot of them in his community. And I think what he's done as an intern and now as a council aide is pretty remarkable. And I'm going to have to talk to Sharon about sneaking around, helping you out. But that's a good thing. And I just want to say thank you for that and for recognizing Tyler and other folks in the community. so thank you thank you mayor thank you councilmember Worley thank you mayor as the chair of the general government planning committee and place two items in the committee and both of these are tentatively going to be set to be heard on our March 7th agenda next week one is the one-stop Lexington program I believe Kevin Adkins and his team are working on that and the other as at the request of administration is a proposal on vacation leave balance increase both of those will be heard tentatively on march the 7th thank you mayor thank you councilmember sheehan thank you mayor i just want to quickly say thank you to councilmember legree and state representative chad all for working with me on a neighborhood meeting that was held on sunday we had some neighbors who had all along the like kind of new circle road where the neighborhoods back up to that had some concerns about their neighborhood and noise levels and safety and so we all came together I want to just say thank you to the to the representatives like councilmember Ligri and Chad our state representative all for participating in that rep all brought a lot of information about new Circle Road and the projects that are going on there for the future and was able to answer a lot of the neighborhood questions. So thank you to them and thank you to everyone who attended. That's it. Thank you. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to say thank you to a few neighborhoods. The Cardinal Valley Neighborhood Association had a chili cook-off a few days ago, I guess the week before last, and it was really fun and a lot of really good chili. So hopefully that is an event that is annual. And then the Garden Side Neighborhood Association had a big potluck on Saturday, and we have not gathered together like that since the pandemic, really. And before that event was a really well-attended big event, and so we had a pretty good turnout, and it was really nice to connect with that neighborhood and talk to constituents. And then I wanted to just give a little plug for a performance that is going to happen this Friday at the Lyric Theater at 7.30 p.m. It is Headspace by Allegro Dance Project. And council members, you should have gotten an email about it today. Allegro Dance Project is a company. They have a performing group, but they also do classes in schools for children with disabilities. every sort of disability or even some physical challenges. And they're adaptive dance classes, which is really pretty amazing. And they're in schools in everybody's district. And the director happens to be one of my close friends, because in a past life I was a ballet dancer. And we both danced professionally here in Lexington at the same time. And I just have to say what they do is incredible. They get kids to move that can barely walk. They get kids to move that don't usually have the opportunity to. And then they get to perform in one of the pieces when the professional group performs. So it is a modern dance group mixed with some aerial arts. And so if you get the chance, please check it out and support a good cause on Friday. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. I've got two brief items. This past week, we started a new class of the Citizens Fire Academy with the Lexington Fire Department, and I'm lucky enough to attend it with my fellow council members, Gray, Sheehan, Baxter, and some of our partners and some of our aides as well. So we've only done one week of a seven or eight-week, I don't know, training program, academy, but we're really looking forward to it. And I personally am really looking forward to putting on some of this gear and hosing off some buildings and cutting apart cars and, you know, all the really fun stuff that brings out the kid in you. And I would encourage anybody who is interested to sign up for Citizens Fire Academy. They do it multiple times during the year. And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we technically don't have a birthday baby today. That's right. she actually will not have a birthday for another few years i think uh so uh council member tona fogel you are 15 16 years old something like that i'm 16 i'll be 17 in 2024. there you go so it's our leap year baby so happy birthday to our favorite teenage council member thank you I was acting like one too today. I was acting like a teenager. Sorry, Chief Weathers. Thank you. We'll ask Council Member Fogle the birthday girl. Yes, and I'm going to make this quick. I just wanted to thank everyone that made it to the See Me, Hear Me, Know Me breakfast. And I know that some of you already had previous engagement. So we're going to hopefully, we would love to spread it around to have council bring their community out and let us come to your community for breakfast and so that we can hear and see folks in the in every community and so i wanted to mention that and and mayor gordon let me just take a moment to say thank you you have shown up i mean i turned around and there you are and i'm like go on girl but anyway um i just want to say thank you very much and no disrespect about go on girl that's just my birthday language um but i wanted to mention about ltms um down their black history was off the chain last week and we celebrated at ltms they had drummers and they had dancers and uh speakers and it was awesome of course i got up during the drumming went and got the principal and made him dance with me in the middle of the floor And the students just went crazy. And so that was a great time there. And then I was going to talk about John Shelby. I need to just disclose, John Shelby was a smokescreen, so Tyler wouldn't know that he was going to be, his grandmother was going to be proclamated. Later on, I would love to give John Shelby a proclamation. He is one of the most outstanding ball players from Henry Clay High School. Started his professional career in 1981, has won several national champion baseball, excuse me, baseball rings. And see, I'm a basketball player, so he's won. So I just wanted to lift him up shortly, just a little bit today, and thank him for his service in our community. Came right out of Smithtown on Smith Street, and so he's a great athlete. And I just want to say thanks. The other thing that I wanted to mention was what happened today. Just in case you missed it, the mayor was there, gave a great speech. were there CM Lynch was there and they uncovered this fantastic art piece of Breonna Taylor and what an emotional beautiful event it's at the Met please go down and see that artwork in the history and the last thing I will say is Father Norman took us in a community at Henry Clay Estates and they're doing excavation and they are already finding where slaves have been buried and artifacts out on Henry Clay and so that is an amazing piece of work that's happening right now in our city just in case you all didn't know that so thank you. On Richmond Road. And the the Brianna Taylor art piece was carved by Kipto taroos who many of you have enjoyed his art it is it's stunning yes so i hope everybody gets to go by there and see it thank you any other council reports all right thank you there is no mayor's report there is no price contract bid document so that That brings us to public comment for issues not on the agenda. And we have a few people signed up. First is, and let me just repeat the council rules, when your name's called, if you'll go to the podium and state your name and your council district, you'll have three minutes. First is Rock Daniels. Welcome. Brock Daniels, 11th District. So the Lexington City Government failed to take account the findings of a 2015 housing study brought by the local realtor association and the city. The study found that if the city did not produce 600 houses per year between 2015 and 2025, we would be even further short on housing with little to no housing for sale or rent. Despite this warning, necessary measures were not taken. The city did not open up some parts of the urban service boundary or implement some inclusive zoning and increase housing production. This inaction has contributed to the current housing shortage crisis that we're experiencing in Lexington. The city did receive $120 million in the form of ARPA funds from the federal government this last year, which could have been used to increase affordable housing options way more than we did. However, the city failed to allocate enough money to this crucial issue, further exasperating the housing crisis. Additionally, if landlords are priced out of the business of doing their our business, the homes will sell and be absorbed by the shortage in the housing market for primary resident homeowners as many of you on council know. This will further decrease rental housing availability and affordability, resulting in less housing overall. It is imperative that the city government take action to address the housing crisis in Lexington. This includes opening up parts of the urban service boundary, such as outbound Richmond Road, implementing more inclusive zoning practices, and allocating more funding for affordable housing. Failure to do so will result in harm to renters and homeowners alike. The government needs to prioritize providing affordable housing options to ensure that everyone has a safe and stable place to call home. You know, my father came to this country from Pakistan in 1967 with just two changes of clothes and a dream for a better life. And through hard work, dedication, and perseverance, our family has grown our real estate portfolio from poverty to something that's much greater than that. And as a first-generation immigrant, my father knew the value of hard work and determination. He instilled these values in our family, and we have used them to create a better life for ourselves. However, despite our success, we know that not everyone in our community has the same opportunities. It's important to ensure that everyone in our community has basic needs such as food, shelter, and transportation. But we also need to be mindful of the impact of our actions on small businesses like those in the housing industry. We're not asking Don Jacobs to rent cars to people without doing a background check or a credit check. And we're not asking restaurants in downtown Lexington to give away free food. So we can't do the same thing towards landlords in our community because we're just small business owners. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jim McKenzie. Welcome. Thank you. Hey, Jim McKenzie. I'm one of the landlords. I'm the president of the Landlords Association in town, and I was here to talk about the Tenabila Rights, which is, and talk about a couple, well, there's many things I want to talk about, but I'm just going to focus on one item, is on the Section 8. one of the things the tenants think is that they're going to force landlords to take section eight and that's going to be a magic bullet that's going to make their lives better matter of fact i think would be just the opposite if they force landlords to take section eight that don't want to take section eight which is undue burden for that landlord whether that landlord will get out of the business or have to adjust his rent because he's got to learn this new focus that he doesn't know anything about me personally i love section eight so if you make section eight like where I can't ask about it it makes an undue process for the tenant that I'm looking for a section 8 I mean if you have a section 8 you say hey and I get people call me every day and they're like hey so-and-so said maybe you have a place and I said oh so-and-so and they say I'm on section 9 I said great fantastic because I know the process and the process is very easy and we teach the process and I have people call me every day about how the process works and I run them down the process but if we make it just like and I'll go back to this just like the home stabilization program we had this homeless station stabilization program that some landlords didn't know how to they didn't know how to do it and we had a lot of people there's gonna lose their place because they weren't taking the home stabilization work because they didn't know how to do the the forms they didn't know how to do all the paperwork on it so we had to walk them down the process I had a couple of the council members call me and say hey Jim we really need to get this process going how are we going to get the information out these landlords so they'll take this process So we all gathered together as council members, as the landlords, and we walked people down in the process and hopefully we kept a lot of tenants that would have been out of a place in a place. To me, the process was very easy, but we're dealing with people that don't know how to use their phone. They don't know the difference between a W-9 and a W-2. That's just the way it is. They don't know. Even when we're doing this here, right here, we had a big, a little controversy before we even started, like public comment, no public comment. But we've got, at the end of the day, we've got to keep landlords in the business so we can protect our tenants and keep them in affordable housing. We've just got to. But forcing somebody to take something that they're not comfortable with is not going to be an answer. I know Section 8 very well. If I didn't want to take Section 8 and you forced me to do it, they would throw me off the program because I have to follow their guidelines. I don't have to follow their guidelines. But I wouldn't have to, but they would eventually just throw me off of it anyway. So it's kind of a mute issue anyway. If we force us to take Section 8, it's not going to solve anything. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Joe Markham. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for the time, Council members. I've received word that there are very few but vocal members. Excuse me. I'm sorry. For the record, will you state your name? Yes, absolutely. And your council district? Yes. I'm Joe Markham. I'm a housing provider in multiple districts in Fayette County. I have units in District 1, 11, 12, 6. I've sent an email with some further details because we are time limited here. So I've received word that there are very few but very vocal members are pushing their agenda, trying to eliminate source of income discrimination as part of this tenant bill of rights. I think it's bad policy and needs further evaluation and a thorough review of the intended and unintended consequences that such an abrupt change in law will cause. I run a small business as a rental housing provider, and I want to urge caution in pursuing this matter for a few reasons. These measures aim to force the rental housing providers to do business with government agencies like HUD and Lexington Housing Authority. These agencies are slow and incredibly non-responsive to issues for both the rental housing providers and the renters alike, oftentimes. There is an increase in paperwork, the notice in inspection periods or re-inspection periods delay, they all slow down the rental process and create additional burdens for rental housing providers. This type of friction provides and causes many delays, and those associated costs pass directly to the renter and make housing less affordable. If it's passed, it's going to hit renters without the HUD or LHA vouchers or other assistance the hardest. These individuals represent a much larger population of renters in Lexington, and they will be even less able to compete with voucher holders if this passes. There's already an acute shortage of all rental housing and there's a shortage of housing vouchers as well. The waiting list for Section 8 is years long. So why would the city choose to target such a small population as Section 8 renters or housing vouchers rather than focus efforts and attention on increasing housing supply? I think the money would be much better spent on studies in emphasizing increasing the availability of housing by building additional housing. The only way you solve a shortage is to increase the supply. This type of measure claims to do that by supposedly making more housing available, but it does not. It simply slices the existing housing pie into smaller pieces and gives no real solutions to the issue. So it's mislabeled as well. It's not income. It is a form of public welfare. It's paid directly to the housing providers. It's not income to the renter. They don't receive 1099s or pay taxes on it. So I'm not against the participants in the program, and I emphasize with their situations individually, but I am against being forced to deal with the issues the program agencies themselves present in the relationship between the housing provider and the renters. The relationship between the housing providers and housing authorities is bad. There is no single point of contact for the housing providers, and the agencies see themselves as tenant advocates, not as neutral third-party participants. The Section 8 process is slow and cumbersome. So, once again, I'm going to run out of time. It does nothing to actually address the future success of program's participants. It actively punishes people in the program for attempts to better their positions by constantly reevaluating their income standards. Jim, did you sign in? You didn't? Okay. Thank you very much. We appreciate you. Next is Angelia Drake, and I believe, are you still here, Angelia? Okay. So I have Angelia Drake and Reverend Michael Wilson. Reverend Wilson, apparently Angelia is no longer here. I'm sorry. Sir? Is, sir, the podium? Sir? Sir? Yes. If you'll go to the podium and state your name and your council district, Reverend Wilson. And you'll have three minutes and the timer will go off when your three minutes is finished. Welcome. Thank you, thank you. My name is Michael Wilson. I live at 317 Wilson Street. Serving on the Urban County Council for 10 years, something, whatever it was. Some 20, 30 years ago. But it's good to be here. I didn't use up, that was just an introduction. Please go ahead. Okay, but that was just an introduction, that was too, I had to give my name and et cetera. That's included in the three minutes? Yes, sir. God almighty, that's a shame we just got three minutes. And then your name is in it. Okay, a couple things right quick. I had about six sheets. One of them was two pages. A couple of them were two pages, but I will dismiss with that. I come here this afternoon because I'm really upset over the fact that I got a notice about the project at the corner of 5th and Chestnut. And it said that discussion on the future's use of property at 400 East 5th Street Catholic Action Center Building. It is not the Catholic Action Center Building. It is the Palmer Building. This information was signed by Mr. Brown. detention center in your office. What is his name? Glenn. Glister Brown and Mr. Ford. This was sent out saying it is the Catholic Action Center something, something, something, something. That is not the name of this building. This is the Palmer Building. Historically, because a black man, Dr. Palmer, had a drugstore etc. in the building when at a time when black folk couldn't go to places like this downtown and otherwise to get things. I know I went with my mother at downtown and we'd have to sit stand on the outside on the end of the counter and get food and leave. So Dr. Palmer had this he We had this situation here. Damn. 36 seconds. Okay, that's all I have. But then, of course, there are some other things that I had, but three minutes is nothing to say what I need to say. I'm pissed off because they called it this because the city needs to- Excuse me. I'm sorry. What? Some folks in this room ask for a higher standard of language. I'm not, I'm not, I am not ruled by, by judo, judo Christian. But you are in the council chamber. No, but, but unless, unless I'm in disorder because of some technical reason, I can say what I want at 73. Your time's expired. Oh, okay. That's fine. Thank you. I don't know why I'm out of line, but I'll. Next is Quinn Mulholland. I was going to give my time to Jeff Bowman, but she has a meeting. Did you want to speak? All right. Thank you. All right. I do not have anyone else signed up. So it's time to adjourn. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Is there a second? Thank you, Council Member Fogle. All those in favor, please say aye. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you.