# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - March 14, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 14, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5783 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5783?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-03-14 - **Last revised**: March 14, 2023 - **Length**: 18,084 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services and Public Safety Committee convened on March 14, 2023, at 1:00 PM with J. Reynolds presiding. The committee reviewed three informational agenda items focused on key public safety and social service programs within the community. The meeting included updates on the Community Paramedicine Program, Substance Use Disorder Intervention Program, and Community Corrections, all presented for informational purposes rather than requiring formal action. During the session, the committee took one formal vote and heard no public comments. All three agenda items were informational presentations designed to keep committee members informed about the status and progress of these critical community programs. The meeting provided an opportunity for committee members to receive updates on ongoing initiatives that serve vulnerable populations and support public safety efforts in the jurisdiction. ## Attendance The following members were present at the March 14, 2023 meeting: • J. Reynolds • W. Baxter • J. Brown • C. Ellinger • T. Fogle • D. Gray • F. Brown • D. Sevigny • K. Plomin **Absent:** • B. Monarrez No members arrived late to the meeting. Nine members were present with one absence recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took one formal vote during the March 14, 2023 meeting. **Approval of January 24, 2023 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:01] - The committee voted to approve the summary from their January 24, 2023 meeting - **Outcome:** Passed by voice vote - No individual vote counts were recorded for this voice vote - No members voted against or abstained from the motion The vote was conducted early in the meeting and passed without opposition, allowing the committee to proceed with the remainder of their agenda items. ## Community Paramedicine Program Update [timestamp: 00:02] Captain Lockhart and Chief Wells presented an update on the Community Paramedicine Program during agenda item II. The presentation focused on the program's effectiveness in reducing emergency medical services (EMS) call volume and outlined future operational requirements. The speakers highlighted the program's positive impact on the community, demonstrating measurable reductions in EMS call volume through proactive community health interventions. The Community Paramedicine Program represents a shift from traditional emergency response to preventive care delivery in community settings. During the presentation, Chief Wells and Captain Lockhart addressed future funding requirements necessary to sustain and expand the program's operations. They also discussed staffing needs, indicating the program's growth trajectory and resource requirements for continued success. The agenda item was classified as informational, with no formal action taken by the governing body. The presentation served to update officials and the public on the program's current status and future planning considerations. The Community Paramedicine Program update provided transparency regarding the initiative's performance metrics and operational planning, allowing stakeholders to understand both the program's achievements in reducing emergency call volume and its ongoing resource needs for future sustainability. ## Substance Use Disorder Intervention Program Update [timestamp: 01:30] Amy Baker and Commissioner Speckert provided an update on the county's ongoing substance use disorder intervention efforts during this informational presentation. The discussion covered current initiatives to address substance use disorders in the community, with particular focus on naloxone distribution programs. Naloxone, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, has been a key component of the county's harm reduction strategy. The speakers also addressed the impact of national opioid litigation settlements on local intervention programs. These settlements, resulting from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies and distributors involved in the opioid crisis, are providing additional resources for communities to expand their substance use disorder treatment and prevention efforts. Baker and Commissioner Speckert outlined how these settlement funds are being integrated into existing programs and what new initiatives may be possible as a result of this additional funding. The presentation provided an overview of the current state of substance use disorder intervention efforts and how the county is positioning itself to address ongoing challenges in this area. This was an informational item with no action required from the governing body. The update served to keep officials and the public informed about the progress and evolution of the county's substance use disorder intervention programs. ## Community Corrections Update [timestamp: 02:30] Director Colvin provided an informational presentation on the current status of the Community Corrections division during the March 14, 2023 meeting. The update centered on three primary areas of focus for the division: • **Staffing challenges** - Director Colvin addressed ongoing personnel shortages affecting Community Corrections operations • **Recruitment strategies** - The presentation outlined current and planned approaches to attract new staff members to fill vacant positions • **Jail operations improvements** - Efforts underway to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of correctional facility operations Director Colvin served as the primary speaker for this agenda item, delivering the comprehensive update to meeting attendees. The presentation was structured as an informational briefing, providing stakeholders with current data and strategic direction for the Community Corrections division. The discussion focused on operational matters within the correctional system, with particular emphasis on human resources challenges that are impacting service delivery. Director Colvin outlined both immediate concerns and longer-term strategic initiatives designed to address staffing gaps and improve overall system performance. This agenda item was designated as informational in nature, meaning no formal action or voting was required from meeting participants. The update served to keep stakeholders informed about the current state of Community Corrections operations and the division's efforts to address identified challenges through targeted recruitment and operational improvements. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of January 24, 2023 Committee Summary --- ## Full transcript The End Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ We're going to get started. It is 1.01 PM and I will now call to order the March 14th, 2023 meeting of the Social Services and Public Safety Committee. Welcome everyone and thank you to all of our speakers that are here today. The first agenda item is the approval of the January 24th, 2023 committee summary. And it is in the packet and so before we move forward, are there any additional items or corrections that need to be made? Okay, hearing none, is there a motion to approve? Second. There's been a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? All right, hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes. All right, the first presentation that we have today is from our community paramedicine program and they are going to give an update. This is an item that I referred to committee in July of 2021 and with the support of many other council members. And it's a program that I think is transformational for our community. And I really have heard nothing but positive things about it and how it has been helping our city. And I've heard from community partners and the health department, even in a meeting that I was in last night, just how instrumental this program is in helping take care of our community. And here with us today is Captain Lockard and Chief Wells to give us an update. So thank you and welcome. Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee. We're very, very excited to be here. I want to just take a moment to commend you all because the amount of research that you've done and the amount of outreach that you've done to learn more about this program has been phenomenal and I think in many ways unprecedented. So we're very, very excited to present this. I'm going to let Captain Lockard take over for most of it, and then I'll chime in just a little toward the end. But we do have several members of the team here. I want to just have these folks stand up. Firefighter Tariq White, who's been temporarily assigned to the Bureau. Our newest, Firefighter O'Leary. And Firefighter Branham. Detective Smith. And Maria Sloan. And Mackenzie Gross. And Captain Lockard. Thank you. So thank you all for allowing us to come talk about what we do and how we do it and what it means to our community. We really value the time and appreciate your all's time and attention to this. To kind of highlight where we began, we began with an AFG grant back in 2017. About a quarter of a million dollars, $272,000. And that really was the seed money to get us going. And we didn't know what we didn't know. we started officially went live March 1 of 2018 after we'd gotten the Kentucky Board of EMS's approval to start as a pilot program. And things started rolling quickly from there. In December of 2018, we pitched to Chief Weathers about adding a police officer. And in August, we added a detective from the police department. Also in August of 18, we actually became a practicum site for the College of Social Work. And it was great because they social work brings such a unique perspective in dealing with this population. And they helped us so much that as much as we gave them an educational venue, they taught us how to engage the population so well. In 2018, we were able, the city was awarded a Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant. And that actually allowed us to hire our first social worker, Maria Sloan. She was actually one of our first students. And it was the longest job interview that anybody's ever had. So she spent a whole couple of semesters with us. And so we did hire Maria. It was for a two-year period of performance. In 2019, Mayor Gordon, in her budget address, wasn't sure how we were going to be able to keep funding this. And it actually brought the hospitals together and the three hospital systems committed to keeping it going for 2020 with a $200,000 commitment from the three of them. The crazy thing that happened was COVID, and that really impacted our individual desires to be off. So that money ended up lasting about 17 or 18 months. So it really didn't make it a long time. And then 2020, we also had an opportunity to apply for a second BJA grant that kept Maria going and were able to hire a second social worker who was also our student, Mackenzie Gross. we were able to articulate the impact of COVID had in the substance use space and how much it impacted. As I say, in February of 2020, we were making, they were actually having days that we were not having overdoses that 911 was called for. It was amazing. And by the middle of April, the number had gone to six or seven a day. So we were now kind of sliding backwards. And then finally, through great conversations that Maria Sloan had with the Department of Behavioral Health at the state, we have been supported by CORE for the last two fiscal years. We anticipated getting another round of awarding for them come July 1. So we'll be able to keep that funding as a source as well. Should be able to keep that funding as a source as well. How we take our referrals. One of the things we do is generate an internet form internally. So we take referrals from our crews. When we originally began this project, our first population was our high-utilizer group. We were looking at how many individuals. We were great about collecting this data, but we never dived into it. And we realized that less than 0.1% of our population, I'll say that again, less than 0.1% of our population accounted for 9% of our ambulance runs. So that was our easy get. We really realized that we needed to also, you know, we're only seeing a small segment of this population. So our firefighters, our paramedics, the police officers are on the street engaging with this population on the daily, needed an avenue so they can email us or send us referrals. And I didn't realize at the time how much of a letoff that is. It's a great referral source for them because they are engaging these individuals that might need extra help, and their toolbox is only so big. And so not having a place to send those referrals to, we have a bigger toolbox. So now they don't have to burden themselves or worry about could they have done something different. You know, what's going on with that individual if they can send them over to us. So we do get referrals from both the police department and fire department personnel. We also work very closely because of that opportunity for funding. We work closely with the hospital case management teams and the emergency departments as they're seeing a lot of our, you know, sometimes our high utilizers are getting through our cracks, but they show up. Or maybe they have, you know, perceived needs that a hospital has identified, and they'll call and say, what's the story? And we are able to navigate that as well. And then we take some social service agencies. We work closely with the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention, Lexington Rescue Mission, most of the congregate shelters. So we are trying to solve a lot of people's problems. And then finally, as I said earlier, we look at our data. We are constantly looking at our information that we get from our ESO. ESO is our patient care reporting software that our ambulances use. So we're constantly looking at that stuff, looking at numbers, looking at information. And the great thing about having, like Maria and McKenzie within the fire department, is our ambulances are making those overdose runs. And so now we have maybe a home address and a name and an address and a date of birth, and we can go back and maybe knock on those doors. So how we respond. We generally don't work as an individual. We do work in teams. Being teamed up provides such a unique perspective. As a paramedic, I by no means am I the smartest medical person, but have been around the block enough that I have a good medical background, as does Firefighter Branham and Firefighter O'Leary. But the social works provide a different perspective to us, so we will try to team up together, work together to address the concerns and the issues that an individual may have. And so depending on the circumstances, depending on the scenario, we usually are two people together. That's a firefighter, social worker, firefighter, paramedic, social worker, paramedic. It just kind of depends on the circumstances that we are going on. What we're not is we're not crisis response. We're limited in staffing. We are a resource for the first responders that are on that crisis situation, You know, the police and the fire units that are on scene, but we're staff limited, so we can't provide that service all the time. So we do support those on scene crisis response situations. And in 2022, we served over 350 unique individuals. That does not include the over 1,800 people that we followed up on an overdose that experienced a nonfatal overdose in Fayette County. The police department, we process over 300 referrals from them. In addition, we've seen crisis intervention reports. Our detective does review those, and it's good for them. The number has increased by over 1,000 since 2020, and I say it's good because by having that record, we can start to look at trends and see what's going on. It helps us to build a story, maybe a history of what's going on with an individual over a period of time. And so it's great that those reports are coming in and being filled out by the police department. I think. If it's okay, I'd like to bring up Firefighter Branham. He's going to kind of tell a little bit about what we do, a recent story, a recent scenario that we've faced, and kind of give you a rundown of all the different entities that we worked with. Thank you very much for having us. It's been an honor to have a few of you along with us. You're welcome to come anytime. I can tell a lot of stories. It can take a lot of time. We're a little passionate about it. So a couple of weeks ago, we received a call from Lighthouse Soup Kitchen, and we'd also received a referral from one of the ambulance crews that were concerned about a gentleman who was deaf in a wheelchair and pretty much blind. His device that he used to help him communicate had been broken, and he had really no way to communicate to see where he was going, to navigate. He was sitting in a wheelchair when we found him in the road. He had been to the hospital. He had been discharged. He'd been back to the hospital. He'd been discharged again. We had sent him one of the times and talked to some case managers there, but he still, once he was treated, he was back out on the street. They provided him a ride to the lighthouse, and they had talked to the Catholic Action Center and some other people, and they contacted us. At the time they contacted us, we got him to the hospital that second time, and then followed up with him the next day and found him again at the lighthouse. We were able to contact the Office of Homelessness Prevention Intervention, Jeff Heron, who worked with Community Action, Lexington Rescue Mission, several other agencies together. I think we had about five or six different agencies together at one point to try to figure out where to go. We were able to get him immediately then into a hotel program, and then from there transition into transitional housing, some space to just open up. So the most vulnerable people, the people that are struggling the most, that literally can't see, that can't hear, and they have nowhere to go in no direction, we're able to meet those people and say, as a community, you're worth it. We care about you. And so that's one example, but that happens from million-dollar homes to the people on the street. There are a lot of people in our community that don't have anybody, and there are a lot of people that have people, but they don't know what to do. So navigating the resources of the community to help the people that are struggling the most not only says that we care, but is a more efficient use of our resources. Thank you. So those of you who have had the opportunity to come right along with me and those who will have heard me or probably seen me on a whiteboard with a dry erase marker try to show you this data. And it was all kind of anecdotal because I was just pulling the numbers out of my head. But we did have the numbers. And here are the cold hard statistics. So from 2010 to 2017, we saw an increase from about 33,000 ambulance runs to about 52,000 ambulance runs. That's a very significant increase over the course of seven years. And annually, that accounts to about 7% to 8% per year. About every three years, we have to add an ambulance just to keep up with the call volume. Between 2017-2018, when they started doing a little bit of outreach, 2018, the program actually began. Not only did we not see that 7% to 8% increase, we were seeing a small but still yet significant decrease in EMS calls. So it was going down to 2.5%. That was true until about 2021. And at that point in time, I believe that the team just became saturated. So going from 21 to 22, we saw a bit of an increase. 22 to 23, we're also starting to see that same trend hold true. So we are busier now than we've ever been, but just imagine had we stayed on the track without the intervention of community paramedicine, we'd be north of 60,000 calls a year right now for service. And as we have discussed in the past, there's really two ways to attack this problem of EMS volume. One is we continue to throw ambulances at it, and that's going to have to happen at some point. We're going to have to continue to keep up with the volume. But the other option is to try to prevent the EMS call from happening in the first place. And so the more people that we can meet where they are, the more gaps that we can fill, better off the community is as a whole. So why this program works? It works because Seth and Patrick built it, and they built it for our community. And it is built based upon the needs of this community. It is defined by what we need here. It is unique amongst community paramedicine programs. There's lots of different shades of programs of this style across the country. But their agility and flexibility to team up with Detective Smith or a social worker or whoever to meet the needs of that individual is what makes them unique and, quite honestly, in my opinion, one of the best programs anywhere in the country. They're responsive to the extent that they can be. I don't think they ever turn their phones off, although we tell them they should. They're just too bought in. So what does the future look like? We would first ask for those social worker positions to become permanent. I know that's something that we have discussed at length. And then the future growth of the program. What are the additional roles? I've said many times before that my version of what public safety in Lexington looks like is the community decides what level of public safety they want through their elected officials. It is my job to take the resources that you give me and try to be as innovative and efficient as I possibly can. So what does it look like to you? What does it look like to the community? And we will do our very best to respond to the needs. And then, of course, people. Yes, throw people at us. We like that. I think Captain Lockhart and I are here for any questions that you may have. And we had four seconds to spare. Thank you so much. Great tag teaming. Okay, please log in for your questions, council members. Council member Pullman. Thank you, Chair. I think this is a wonderful program. I remember when we kicked it off, I think three or four years ago? 17 and 18, yes. Okay, I remember being somewhat new and coming to it, the kickoff and thinking how wonderful it was. So how long do you follow up with an individual after they've had a crisis? So it's so unique to an individual. Unfortunately, some of the people that we meet and work with, they'll let us meet with them a couple of times and they quit engaging. Others, we will work with them as long as they're willing to work and we can get them to a kind of a foundation that's a little bit better situation for them. It's very unique for every individual. We meet them where they are and try to get them to someplace. Some people would like to work with them longer and they just don't want to engage with us. So there comes a point where we're kind of just spinning our wheels and we have to make an evaluation of is it time to move on to somebody else or not. So no defined criteria, just kind of fill it out for every person. Is there ever like a handoff to another agency, for instance? So we do a lot of, if we are handing you off with another agency, if we're handing you off to, we do transportation to treatment providers, we're not just saying go there. We usually are providing at least the first round of transportation, even to primary care doctors, providing a ride to the primary care doctor and making what's called a warm handoff, describing the story, letting them know. One of the things we like to do is advocate for our individuals, the people that we're working with, teaching them how to have their own voice so we can be that voice first, but we can't be their voice forever. Well, that's great to know that. And I had one last question. You feel you would like to see additional staff? Is that the social worker addition or just sustaining what we have right now? Yeah, we'd love to add some staff. There's actually a grant that we're going to look at that we actually are looking at currently. And we're building our budget to see what the staffing model will be for that grant proposal. But one of the things that we're looking at, this is also another BJA grant in the opioid use space. and one of the things we're looking at is maybe a peer support person. We don't have that spot in our team right now, but maybe looking at a couple of social workers, a peer support person. We're going to play around with the numbers to see how it works out, to fill that gap that we identify and see how we can go from there. Are you going to be able to access any of the opioid money that's coming to the city? Do you know yet? I don't know that answer yet. The opioid money is going to be managed by, and I can't speak as eloquently about it as Amy Baker probably can, but there's going to be a group of individuals that will be submitting, receiving proposals that will be submitted, and they'll be making the decision on how that all happens. Yeah, we think there'd be some consideration in terms of how many folks that you deal with. Yes, ma'am. Great, thanks for all your answers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you chair. This might be a little bit of a summary. I'm looking at talking about EMS vehicles. I call them buggies. Am I correct? Your terminology is what we use as well. Yes. Okay. Well we got 24 stations now in existence. And I believe 12 buggies. That is correct. Yes. And, you know, we're the basic ambulance service for Fayette County. Yes. And I've gotten some feedback that 12 buggies is just not enough. Are you putting any new buggies in your budget proposal? So we did not put one in our budget proposal this year. We did request some additional personnel, but it will be in our FY25 budget if we're not able to find a better answer. One of the things that we have to look at is, are there creative ways that we can meet this run volume other than maybe a 24-hour ambulance? So we want to be as efficient as we possibly can. We're looking at what the state law requires, what we could potentially do. But, yes, we are going to have to request an ambulance at least next year to keep up with the run volume. I think we'll be north of probably 60,000. I'm getting a little bit of feedback that there is burnout in this position. And the ones, the firefighters that are actually on the EMS, I mean, they're 24-7. and their shift is 24 hours, but they may be working the full 24 hours depending on what's going on. How are you approaching that to alleviate that and make some more fairness among all your other firefighters? Well, typically what happens, and I think many of you may not know this, but our members go through their recruit academy training, and then they spend their first year on an engine or an ambulance. then oftentimes they'll go to paramedic class. So some of our youngest members then have gone through class, they're assigned to an ambulance, and some of those ambulances are making better than 5,000 calls a year. You're talking about that's 18, 20, 22 calls in a shift, which is very, very high. And so we're looking at some different things. I think we're attacking it from a lot of different angles. We just held our first EMS summit where we asked all of our members that are assigned to the units to come in and talk to us about what we can do better. We're talking about possibly some rotations or some things to ease that burden for those members who are assigned for that period. If this council or this government could give you two buggies, would you take them? Absolutely. And I say that in that when we get into links, and I'm not on that link committee, but I think that you all need to look at that real seriously because of what we've got. And if we've got the manpower and we can put them in there because this is a definite need for this community. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Dave Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I just have a few questions. Is your capacity of employees, is it less than the capacity of the calls that are coming in? Like, so if you had more people, could you do more? Or are you pretty much filling the need? Is this specific to community paramedicine? Yes. I'll let Captain Lockhart handle that. I think we're at capacity. I think my team would probably agree with me. We do a lot, and so adding more work to us means things are going to be dropped, things are going to be missed. Other areas are going to fill that pain, and so having more personnel would allow us to meet that demand and that need. Okay, so are you getting more calls than you can handle? That's kind of what I'm wondering. We don't respond to calls. We respond to referrals. And I think that our response time to those referrals is getting longer. A few years ago, we would get a referral within a day or two that we would be in somebody's door. Some of that is inching up to a week or week and a half. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Have you guys done any sort of strategic plan on the paramedicine program, like other offerings that you might, like areas that you find that there's a need? I will say that we have done some brainstorming, but as far as actually putting it down on a strategic plan, our last strategic plan was 2018 to 2023, so we'll be revisiting our department-wide strategic plan this year, and I'm certain that that will be a part of it. We can throw out lots of great ideas that we brainstorm, but nothing is solid. Sure, I get it. And then the last one is, I know that Organization Build is interested in mental health support, mostly in intervening with people to get them to understand that they need to get to their medical appointment so that they can stay on medication and see specialists. And I don't know if that would fit into paramedicine or if that would be a different type of social service because I could see where it could fit. I think there's probably a fingering in the paramedicine program. I think there would be a bunch of different other agencies as well. I mean, I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all type of thing, but I think there's a possibility. Okay. Thanks. That's it. Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you. And Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. You all know that I'm a huge supporter of this program, and I just can't speak enough to how wonderful it is to have a cross-disciplinary team that addresses so many issues in our community. And truly, I don't think that we would be the community we are today without you guys. So thank you all for your hard work. Our current CORE grant, what is the term on that? When does it expire? It is really a contract. We provide services to the state and it is our fiscal year, July 1, June 30th. And then when do we apply? Are we currently applying for the grant? We submitted some paperwork back in December that here's what we'd like to do again. It's a continuation, a little different paperwork this time. And I anticipate hopefully getting an award sometime in April that we can get through the blue sheet and get through the approval process. And then can you tell me what, and I'm going to use this in quotes, our current program hours are? 24 hours a day. Yeah, but that's why I said hours. So we generally, our scheduled work hours are like 7 to 6 at night between all of us. But that's Monday through Thursday. And we don't do Friday. A lot of us work Fridays, but we don't try to go see people. And we found that a little mental health protection for us. If I find somebody that has a need at 2 or 3 on a Friday afternoon, I struggle finding a resource for that person. Because Saturdays, the next day is the weekend in a couple hours, and you just start losing the connections because people are winding their weeks down. And so if I find somebody at 2 in the afternoon on Thursday, I can come back in and start working on Friday morning and try to navigate them. But if I find somebody Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock, then now I'm bearing that burden for the weekend. So we realize that maybe it would be better to spend some evening, you know, 6 o'clock hour as opposed to, you know, doing 5-8s, doing 4-10s. Well, I commend you all for protecting your – this is a question that I've had for you all for a really long time on how you protect yourself. So that's really important. And then my last question is, Captain Walker, you mentioned that you guys are transporting some individuals to appointments. Do you feel like there would be an opportunity for volunteer advocates, like community volunteer advocates? That may be a possibility. The biggest concern always that I have is safety. Putting somebody in a car that they may not know each other is always a risk. Then we also have always had the barrier of, you know, PHI, protective health information, the HIPAA, making sure that we can clear that hump. Okay, just a thought, and that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me, even though I'm not on this committee. I've gotten to meet this team and gotten to talk to you all a little bit and have heard a couple of presentations from you all, and I'm always very impressed by the work that you all do and very much appreciated. We talked a little bit about kind of self-care and boundaries there. Are there, and maybe this is a Chief Wells question, are there sort of structural institutional supports that you all have built in for folks in terms of just that sort of either peer support or support in terms of the mental and emotional toll that you have to go through with this kind of job? So I'll try to be succinct because I know we are on a time frame. I could talk for days about this. We do have a very robust peer support team. It's been up and running full strength for a couple of years now. And we're actually doing some research with the University of Kentucky on mental and behavioral health with our members. So certainly they are always available to our community paramedicine team. But I think one of the things that we've learned through this process is how valuable the team can be to each other. Being a cross-disciplinary team, there's law enforcement embedded, there's social workers embedded, and there's some pretty senior firefighter medics embedded. And they really have formed sort of their own peer support team. We've got the resources available for them. We have mental and behavioral health folks that are available to them anytime that they need them, but I think they are oftentimes their own first line of defense. I appreciate that, and I hope you all definitely take advantage of that sort of system because we know how important that is. And I appreciate you talking about looking into the U.K. research, too. I think I've found our public safety in the city has been really good about just being very proactive and going out and looking for all the newest best practices, especially taking care of our teams. We addressed this a little bit with Council Member Savigny's questions. Do you all have for this team any sort of like a three to five year plan in terms of how you want to grow it? Or are you taking it kind of year by year and seeing what the needs look like? Yeah, we've been taking it year by year. We're so funded by grants. That's, you know, like out of our team, one of our firefighters is supported through the core grant. our two social workers are funded by the BJA grant. And so when you start looking long-term, long-term is to make everybody permanent, right? To make sure that our social workers, and then we can start looking at building. Never have put together a plan. Nobody's ever asked me. So I never thought about it, so good points. Well, if it's funding-related, I mean, if you all had a more stable, reliable source of funding, would that help you all be able to to kind of chart that growth a little more further ahead i i think it would and i think we also probably would be remiss if we didn't now if that happens reach back out to you and say what what is your vision what is the community's vision for their paramedicine program what you know we captain lockard and i at one point in time had talked about a 24 48 position so that there's always somebody on duty and topically i think that's really good, realistically, they are oftentimes navigators with entities that close their doors at 5 o'clock. So is that not the most efficient use of resources? I don't know. It depends on which way we want to take this program. Are we going to, at some point in time, be a crisis response? Because now they're not. So I think there's a ton of opportunity for us to really look at what the community needs are. And I think it's important also, though, that we don't lose the flexibility that they have. Yeah, and I appreciate that flexibility, the creativity, and that responsiveness. That kind of leads into my last question. Aside from just getting more staff, aside from amping up this team, do you all have any other ideas or innovations that you want to kind of really get creative with this program based on either best practices from other communities or based on the experience that you've had so far? Jump in. Yeah, I have some outlandish ideas. I, I, I, those are my favorite. One of the things that I, you know, if I had a, one of the things that we hope to do this year is like we do Narcan leave behind and we want to push the Narcan leave behind into the ambulances. So when they're actually on scene, having give somebody Narcan, um, we want to be able to have a packet set up that they could live with the individual or the family members. And I think this is direct offshoot of this program. Um, when you start looking at, you know, we talk, we're not crisis response. We saw Patrick and I, when we started, you all supported a trip to Colorado and Colorado Springs. When they started their program, we were there in November, December of 2017. And when we were there, they had between 25 and 30 people working their program. One segment of their program was a crisis response team. And it comprised of a police officer, a qualified mental health professional, a paramedic. And they were pulling off the mental health runs that first responders were making, the police and the fire were making, and navigating, maybe solving the problem on the scene. But if they couldn't solve the problem, putting them in an unmarked vehicle and driving them to the appropriate facility. And it's a great concept that I think would be – I think mental health is struggling in this community right now. I think we're going in some really good directions, but I think that's a great program that would benefit the individual. It would free up police officers to be available for other runs, free up ambulances to be available for other runs, and providing the appropriate resource at the appropriate time. Yeah. Well, thank you all so much. We appreciate your work. Thank you. The only thing I'll add to what Captain Lockard said is so often we don't know what we don't know. And I remember in a conversation with firefighter Branham, and I think Council Member Brown and I actually talked about it at one point in time, asking him, what do you envision for the future? And one of his responses was a facility with a bathroom and a shower because so many people who are experiencing homelessness don't have a safe place to clean up. Another was just an exam room, a clean exam room where we could talk and have those discussions. So those are some of the conversations that have been had, and we don't even know the extent of what we can do yet. It's exciting. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I want to say thank you, Chief Wells, and to the paramedicine team for attending last night's 6th District meeting. I've already received a compliment of you. I had an individual who had one concern, and that was paving. And Council Member Brown, Fred Brown. But he just sent me an email, and he said, where's that comment? But I really enjoyed learning more about the Lexington Fire Department and the Police Department, and how you all are dealing with the opioid crisis here in Lexington. He said that your comments opened his eyes about the severity of this problem, especially in the 40505 zip code. But I just thought that you should know that you have made an impact just by being there last night, by giving some information. So you're currently, the paramedicine team is currently located in the 6th District on New Circle Road. How is that facility working for the paramedicine team? It's working okay. It's an old building. It wasn't designed for what our needs were per se. When we started, we didn't have an office space, and that building had been vacated, so they let us move in there. It's enough room for us. Maybe not the best layout for us, but it's definitely enough room, and it works out okay. I think one of the things that we didn't anticipate is the number of people that have walked by or a number of people that have shown up that have needed help in one way or the other. And I think that was kind of an enlightening thing for us because that's still viewed as a fire station in the community. and people still show up wanting help, all magnitudes of help, from car seats to having people experiencing an overdose to individuals needing help getting set up for insurance. So it's kind of interesting. Insurance. Yeah. It was just a randomness that happened. Welcome to the six. But also, along with your current facility, I'm thinking about the future and the growth of the paramedicine team and how that facility will work or not work long term. Which brings me to an issue regarding staff. You mentioned you would like to make your social workers permanent members of the staff, which I agree. But what number of staff would you need to be at optimum capacity? Because it was mentioned that previously when you received a referral, you were able to go out. But now that time in between has lengthened, which means lives possibly at stake. So I'll give you my uneducated opinion, which is it's going to be really difficult to quantify the number of personnel until we have a better grasp on what all things we might want to do. Based on what they currently do, I would say that we would continue to apply for grants, and we'd be lucky if we could get a couple more social workers and a couple more firefighters, and I will not speak for Chief Weathers because I know that they are understaffed, But we're very, very thankful for Detective Smith. I will say that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for putting this item in committee. I think the community paramedicine program has been a heaven sent to this community. I appreciate you all being at last night's District 6 meeting. I think the more people in this community that we can get in front of and explain to them what all you do, the better. Because I think a lot of people don't know what it is that you all do. Thank you, Chief, and thank you, Captain, for the presentation. And thank the team. I think you all are pretty modest about the workload and what you all do. I think there's a lot of people in this government that are overwhelmed. But I know you all are because I think you experience and work with some of the most vulnerable in our community on a daily basis. We're past the pilot phase. We're past all of that. This is something that we have to commit to as a government to invest in. I think this is something that our community has told us that they want and need. And I think we have to be reactive as a government to make sure that we give you all the resources you need to do the job. In regards to expansion for this program, I think it's people. I think we've got to give you money and resources to get the right people in position. We talked about a facility. I think that's something that we need to do as well. We can set up shop over here. We can set up shop over there. We can renovate older buildings. We can build a new building. But I think building a new building and actually defining the location and giving you all the tools that you need to do it there, I think that sends not only a message to our departments that partner in this work, but I think it sends a strong message to our community. If this is something serious, this is the government investing in something that we know is truly making a difference in a lot of people's lives as we go forward. And I think we can talk about where and what's the best place to be as we go forward. But a lot of the work that you all do is not going to be in that facility. I think that's going to be or needs to be a place that's open and welcoming to the folks that need to come there and for you to do your work. But really, you all are out in the community every day doing it all over this community. I've got the time, so I'm going to share a story, and I'll be brief. One of the first times as I was an adult and I seen a fire crew or EMS or a buggy respond to a call, it was just coincidence that it was at the baseball field right in front of Mary Todd's school. Somebody had got out of a, they had pulled up to a baseball game, got out of the truck, and it looks like they had a heart attack and went down. So we called 911. It took about three minutes. A buggy pulled up. And I was expecting the workers or the firefighters or EMS to jump off the truck and run. But they didn't. They got their equipment, got off. They were moving in a fast pace, but they weren't running. They were looking at the scene. They were looking at all the things that they needed to address before they got to the victim. They got down to the victim, administered aid, got that person up, and got them on their way. And I said something to one of the EMS workers. I said, why weren't you running? And he said, we don't run. He said, we move intentionally to address the job, and then we're looking around to see what else may need to be addressed. I think that's what this program is. I think this is us really being intentional and reactive to what the need is in providing wraparound services. The other thing that that firefighter told me that day, too, is they said this gentleman's a frequent flyer. maybe not at that location, but they had called EMS and 911 multiple times. And this service is something that could help alleviate that going forward and get that person the real services they need. So that was all coincidence. It just came to me. So thank you for all you do. And I think this council and this committee supports everything that you do and will work to get you the resources you need. So thank you, Chief. Thanks, Chair. Thank you. And thank you for your input on this item as well. And now, Council Member Fogel. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Brown. You were hitting on some of the things that I wanted to hit on. First of all, let me say thank you. And thank you, social workers. You are so important to the work. And I'm the Council Member of the First District, and I know that you all make enormous amount of runs for 508-11. And so I thank you for everything that you have done. You know, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. And there's another passage that says, write the vision and make it plain. So you have a vision. We can make it plain if you tell us and show us and lead us to what you want. I know that we need a building, and we know that a lot of things got torn down on 3rd Street right across from the Farm Department, that something could be put in that empty lot, your program. But anyway, so I'm here just to say thank you for the story, and I can even get personal. My son was found unresponsive, and you guys showed up. You took Tanar Campion. You gave him a dose. You saved his life. And there's nothing that I would love to vote on more than giving you guys the money to save more lives. And so my son is still alive. So I'm so transparent. I don't care. I have to tell the story so people can understand how personal it is. And now he has wraparound services. He has a probation officer, but he also has a social worker. And he has a child support counselor, and he has all the things that he needs. But he wouldn't have had it if y'all hadn't have shown up. While he was there unresponsive. And so as a mother and a council member, I definitely will vote for but whatever you bring before us. And I tell these stories so I can put a human face to something that was so tragic to me. And what I went through in just those few hours when I got the phone call that he was found unresponsive. And what happened after that? So thank you all for all you do. I can't breathe right now. Do y'all have something to help me? I need oxygen. Thank you very much for sharing. I know it is their goal that we help not only on the front end, like we were able to in that instance, but also to ensure that the individuals are getting complete care. Thank you. Council Member Allinger. Thank you, Chair. And I'll keep my comments short. It's hard to follow that right there. But I had my own experience, too, and before this, a precursor to this is, and I would suggest all of you all do a ride around in a buggy. You realize how long the day is and how many different times you are called out. It's a long day. You think 12 hours doesn't last long or 24, but there's a lot that happens in that. And prior to this program, which is one of my favorite programs, one that I always tell people about, and I'm always, I think, excited to say the things that we do in government, and this is one that I always am so proud of, is when I did do a buggy ride, and we did do a frequent flyer that they said over 400 times in one year this person had been contacted. And actually, when we got there, the person was not even supposed to be on the second floor because they said, we told them that you're not supposed to be in that person, had passed out. We had to take the person to the emergency room, and it took 12 people to resuscitate this person and had a blood sugar of seven. You know, it was unbelievable. And they said, how many times have we done this? And I said, well, this seems like something that we could do by being proactive on this. And from that, I think paramedicine has grown, and now is one of our, I think, one of the best programs that we do that is one of the most efficient and one of the most proactive and see so many benefits from it. My only issue is that we have to rely on grants and we need to make this a full-time, and I'm glad I'm sitting on that, Council League, and I look forward to any requests that are coming from you all because this is one that I think that is money that is so well spent that we get so much back more than what we put into it. And I want to thank you all for what you do, and I'm so proud to talk about this program and let the community be aware of it, because I see firsthand how it does save lives. And hearing from Council Member Fogle, like I said, it's hard to follow that, but you are saving lives, so thank you. I remember your ride-along, Council Member, and that was a long, long shift. I just want to have a few comments to close. But first of all, I want to thank each of you for being here and for what you do every day. You work very long hours. And I recently went on a ride along with the paramedicine program. And I knew what you all did. But when you see it, it's different. It's like when you know something exists, but when you witness it, it changes you. And it was really emotional to see that some of the people that have the most need in our community were being cared for by this team and by city employees. And just for them to realize that their city cares about them makes all the difference. And so I think that paramedicine, similar programs across the country are the future of public safety, working together with police, fire, and social workers. And so I think you all have heard that I'm not alone in asking for more staff for this program in the budget this year, in addition to other items and a committed funding source. And so we just want you to know that you have a lot of support and that we're grateful for you. So thank you and thanks for listening to all of our comments. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. We have kind of a heavy agenda, really, today, in both emotionally and in content. So now we have a substance use disorder intervention program update. First, we're going to have Amy Baker with the Department of Social Services and then Commissioner Speckert with the Law Department. Thank you very much. Thank you much for the invite. I'm sorry. Excuse me. And I wanted to let Councilmember Sheehan introduce the item that she worked on. I apologize. Thank you, Chair. So just a little quick background. Substance use, including but not limited to the opioid crisis effects. so many individuals and families in our community. So last year I had asked Ms. Baker to present to us about the varied programs from her office addressing this issue through interventions and recovery efforts. And we had that presentation last March. I did look it up. So just about a year ago. And I kept this item in committee at that time because I feel it is one that we need to keep being continually educated and updated on. So I'm happy to have Ms. Baker here today and Mr. Lewallen, right, to talk about what efforts they have from their office at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. And we've had this conversation long before you were a council member, and I've talked with many of you at many different times about this issue. Before I get started, I have to just echo what you say about the community paramedicine program because we get to work with them almost every day, so we're the luckiest of all. and they are doing great things and they've grown just tons since Patrick and Seth first walked into our conference room. So I'm going to go ahead and kind of go quickly over these. Seth kind of covered this. We talked about substance use disorder. To be in recovery, we didn't really talk about that, but that's improving the health and striving to be better and reach full potential. Harm reduction, you'll hear me say it's just a set of practical strategies aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with substance use. An example of that would be the syringe exchange program at the Fayette County Health Department, which, by the way, has exchanged more than 4 million syringes. Just a brief description about naloxone. We just did a naloxone training for you guys about a month ago, I think. So I know a lot of you have it already and you know what it is. But just in case you don't, it's the drug that reverses an opioid overdose, if we are lucky. Naloxone is kind of a crazy drug in that when we first started talking about this, it was $4 a dose, $4 a dose. And then it went to $13. And then it went to $75. And then it went to over $100, back down to $75. and right now it's currently $47.50. And I mean, we were so happy when they got reduced to $47.50, which is still an insane price, 10 times what we originally paid. But we can help so many more people. In our budget, we budgeted at $75 a dose. So at $47.50 a dose, we were able to get many more doses. And I think we did the training at orientation and then also the CPR training. So Council Member Ruth, thank you for setting that up. I really appreciate it. I don't think it was out of the goodness of their heart that the makers of Narcan lowered the dose. It's because they have competition. So if you were trained with us, you got two four milligram doses, which is what you see in that picture. And now there's an eight milligram dose out and I think there's going to be a 10. I think so. So Seth talked a little bit about what was happening in 2020, 21, and 22. We all know what happened then. And folks with substance use disorder were hit really hard when COVID came along. And there's a number of reasons for that. I won't go into all of them today because it'll take way too long and I can say so much about it. But a lot of support services for folks with substance use disorder went away. To protect people from contracting COVID, AA and NA meetings stopped. Some were shuttered and have never opened up again. The one at my church never opened again. and so when you are looking at that as primary support it's very difficult when that goes away a lot of our vulnerable people and Council Member Brown and Council Member Reynolds both said vulnerable people and that's exactly who we're working with here a lot of them were front line workers hospitality workers so they lost their meetings and then eventually lost their jobs So we were looking at an increase in depression and an increase in anxiety, which turned into an increase of use. And what happened in Lexington happened across the country. And for the first time in 2021, we had more than 100,000 overdose fatalities in this country, which is staggering if you look at 2014. And I checked before I came to the meeting, in 2022, we're up to 107,477. So we didn't go in the right direction, sadly. But what does that look like here? So this was included in your packet, so I won't spend too much time on it. But if you'll notice the COVID years, the COVID years, they surpass, overdose fatalities in Lexington surpassed 200 two of the three years. And almost, I mean, in 2020, we got really close with 198. And we are doing everything we can with our partners. A lot of what you heard Seth talk about, it happens with folks that he works with in the city. Scott and I work, we very much depend on the community and our partners because we couldn't do this without them. There's absolutely no way. We don't provide treatment here. We don't provide meetings here. We don't provide needles here. So we are out with the community. If we didn't have partners across our community, we wouldn't be able to reach the goals that I'm getting ready to share with you. So a big deal, a big thing that we do is we try to get as much Narcan as possible in the hands of folks who need it. And at that point, I think that's pretty, now I think it's pretty much everybody could benefit from having it. So in October 2018, we were awarded a $2 million Naloxone grant to strengthen our overdose prevention infrastructure. And we hope to distribute 12,000 kids in that four years. We ended up distributing over 14,000. 314 community naloxone trainings were held, lots of those thanks to Scott. And 250 people were referred to treatment, lots of those thanks to Scott. And countless folks referred to services. We were concerned about what was going to happen in October of 2022 because we were putting more than a quarter million dollars a year in Narcan on the streets. And so that would affect our entire city if it went away. But for some reason that we're all very grateful for, we received another grant from SAMHSA for another $2 million to continue the work that we're doing. So now it's the expanded first responders and community partners grant. With the grant, Seth talked a little bit about the grant in 2018 that hired Maria. And with that grant and the grant that we just finished, we started an advisory council to help us talk through the grant and advise us on the grant and look at different ways of doing things. And it's been a great part of this experience. So in 2020, that advisory council transitioned to the Mayor's Substance Use Disorder Advisory Council. And it just got a little bit bigger. I won't read this whole list to you, but hopefully when you read through it, you'll see that diversity is extremely important to me and Scott. Representation is very important. Lived experience is very important. Folks who have benefited from or need services, very important. People don't wear signs when they come into our meeting, so you don't really necessarily know who is who. but we like to have everyone represented. So it just gives us a better, it allows us to work better with our community. And so we're grateful for this council. Just very briefly, in October of 2020, also during the pandemic, we were able to create a program called Recovery Supportive Living Assistance. And we were able to assist folks who were entering or continuing in a residential recovery program. And that was a huge barrier during the pandemic because so many jobs were lost and folks didn't have the money to enter or continue. So we were lucky enough to be able to implement a program where folks once every two years could get $400 in assistance if they were entering or continuing in a program. And since that time, more than 1,000 people have received that assistance. And so we're very grateful. And that continues to this day. And so briefly also, just another grant I want to tell you all about, the Barrier-Free Reentry and Recovery Initiative. We were awarded that in late 2022, just over $600,000. And there's a lot of great things this grant is going to do. But one thing it did was it bought two vans and a car. In a car or an SUV? Two vans and an SUV for community paramedicine because they need them to take folks to treatment, and we're very grateful that they're able to do that. And we also call on them to say, can you take a person to treatment? And they almost never say no, especially Patrick. So, you know, this work cannot be done in City Hall. It has to be done in the community. Nobody knocks on the door downstairs and says, can I have naloxone? Can you help me get in treatment? Well, sometimes that don't happen, but Scott says I kicked him out of the nest day one. I didn't. It was his second day. But we couldn't do what we do without community partners. And I don't even want to start mentioning who they are because there's so many. I don't want to offend somebody by forgetting someone. But Scott spends his days with community partners. And is there anything you want to say about them? I will. Sure. It's true. The second day on the job, Amy said, get out there and start doing some work. So I had a previous relationship with New Day Life Center. So I knew they would be receptive. So I went down to New Day Life Center. And like I said, I knew the folks down there. And so we began a partnership there. And that quickly expanded like Lex and Rescue Mission and the Lighthouse and the other day shelters here in the city. And we were able over the last five years get dozens and dozens of people literally direct services off the street into treatment or sober living, whatever it was called for. And it's been a very beneficial and fruitful relationship. And we continue to have those relationships today. They know they can call us anytime and help the people that are in need. My job is really threefold. Like I said, we did over 120 community Narcan trainings last year in the community. So that's the main impetus of my job. I'm out at the Ridge and Schwartz Center weekly, and again with other community partners like Shepherd's House, the other ones I've mentioned. And we work with 50 or 60 sober livings here where we cycle through and train there and also have a referral relationship with them when we meet folks that need to get into sober living. That's just been cultivated over the years. And we're, you know, sober livings are popping up left and right. We just try to keep track with it. It's hard to do that, but we try to keep track of that and maintain relationships. And then also implement the sober living assistance program. say for somebody, I'm out at the Ridge doing a Narcan training, I always talk about that program and we get a lot of referrals from the Ridge, Schwartz Center again, and just cold calls. I've been able to put out a lot of business cards out in the community and I'll just get phone calls here and there about people needing to get connected to services. And that's what my day looks like, just trainings, outreach. Amy and I are down at the Syringe Exchange Program Monday and Thursday. We We connect with people down there. Recently, I was asked by Jenny Ramsey with the Catholic Action Center to start doing trainings Friday night at the Safe Harbor Program at Lighthouse. We've been able to do that three times and to get Narcan to those high-risk individuals. Again, we want to grow this and are open to any referrals, any connection. We've trained employees at Malone's and restaurants and church groups. So we're open to anything. And we try to, like we've been in every zip code in town, every district in town, again, to meet folks where they're at and to, again, get them connected to services and first and foremost get naloxone into their hands. So none of that was at City Hall, as you can see. In fact, Scott got his hair cut a couple weeks ago and trained two people in naloxone. At the barbershop. At the barbershop, yeah. So I'm going to stop right here. I don't know if you want to go ahead and start with Susan or do questions now. How do you want to do it? I'd like to go to Susan next, please. I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Susan Speckert. She's going to talk about the national opioid litigation nationally and how it trickles all the way down to here. Good afternoon, Chair and Council members. First, thank you for the opportunity to give you some good news, which folks in the law department don't always get to give people. So I want to just give a little bit of history and then kind of tell you where we are in the national opioid litigation. Back in 2017, LFUCG joined with about 30,000 other cities and counties around the country and joined in a lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of opioids. We are represented by national counsel, and the action is what's called a multi-district litigation. So all of the 30,000 cases were consolidated into one. How much time do you think you need, Commissioner? Ten minutes. Okay. I move to give Commissioner Specker ten minutes. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Combined all together into one big case. I'm going to skip that. what we're generally, this is the cases are resolving in three different ways. There have been trials. You all have heard in the news about some high profile bankruptcies being filed. And then we have the settlements, which is what we're really here to talk about today. In 2021, the first settlement was reached with four of the biggest defendants, Johnson and Johnson and distributors McKesson, Amerisource Bergen, and Cardinal Health. The framework that was developed for the settlements was developed by a consortium that included states' attorneys general, including Attorney General Cameron, and attorneys for local governments. The settlements are intended to be global when they come down. So what that means is that for each state, every municipality, city, and county, they're all kind of combined together. The framework that we are using in Kentucky was negotiated, and it is codified in law and also agreed upon in an agreement with the Attorney General. And any proceeds that are received from a bankruptcy, a settlement proceed, or any other kind of resolution is split 50-50 between the state and all of the local governments. So when you hear that Kentucky is getting $483 million in settlement, what that really means is that the state is getting 50% of that, and the other 50% is being distributed among local governments. Lexington gets approximately 6.26% of the 50%. How was that figured out? This was a distribution formula that was developed as part of the litigation that was meant to be objective and impact-based. So if you think back to tobacco and other big settlements, they were more population-based. But in this case, you have some very, very small communities that have been just decimated by this crisis. And so what they looked at was the rate of opioid use disorder, opioid-related deaths, and the quantity of opioids distributed into a municipality, and that included both pills and dosages. And they came up with percentages. The criteria for uses are laid out in the legislation, and it's extremely broad. The bottom line, though, is that it has to be related to opioid use disorder. There can be co-occurring substance use disorder and mental health issues, but the proceeds are coming from an opioid litigation, and these are manufacturers and distributors of opioids. So there has to be that tie-in with opioid use disorder. So we have received, we are already receiving payments from the first four defendants with which settlements have been reached. Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, Amerisource Bergen, and Cardinal Health. This is a very complicated litigation, as you can imagine. And every defendant has a different settlement term. So one defendant may, in an agreement, agree to pay out over five years, another over 18 years, another over 10. They can also choose to aggregate those payments. And we don't know if they're going to do that or not. So what that means is that they may, in the agreement, say they're going to pay out over 10 years. but then one year they pay three years in one payment. So we know when the settlements are agreed upon that we're going to get X number of dollars, and they have up to X number of years. But it's difficult to predict when they're going to make the payments. So at this point, we have received the total required disbursements from Johnson & Johnson. they had up to five years, they paid it in one year. And from the three big distributors, and so the bottom line is, as my dear friend and colleague, Commissioner Hensley would say, it's one-time funding over a period of time. And I will also say it's not enough money, right? I mean, the scope of this is so massive that it's not enough money, but it is something. And it also gives us the ability to leverage our funds with other funds to try to do some impactful work. So there has also been a publicly announced proposed settlement with four other defendants. And we are in now what's called the opt-in period. So municipalities, governments have to opt in. And that is the period that we're in now. Once that is over, then we will have a clearer sense of timelines and amounts. This that you see on your screen, the information on your screen, is what has been announced at this point, but it could change. So the settlement is with two manufacturers, Teva and Allergan, and three of the big pharmacy distributors, CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. And those totals that you see are nationwide. So the next steps are, as Ms. Baker had, I believe, alluded to the mayor's commission, and that is becoming, there's sort of an offset of that that will come to you all to get established as a commission. to sort of have a structure in place to manage these funds, particularly since they're going to be, you know, it's going to be many years that we'll have to manage these funds. And I believe that when we spoke about this last time, Commissioner Alan Bryant mentioned that we would undergo a needs assessment to try to pinpoint exactly what our needs are here in Lexington. And I will keep you all informed as the settlements progress and the bankruptcies, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Commissioner. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add? I'm going to ask colleagues if you could keep your comments as brief as possible so we can hopefully get to our third agenda item. That would be great. And I will go with Council Member Baxter. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and they're very brief. So you mentioned one of the potential or one of the options that settlements were coming to was based on bankruptcies. Okay. So then what happens if in the payouts a company goes bankrupt or goes under before we receive payment? That is so pessimistic. Well, you know, somebody realistic. Right. Right. So this is what I can say about that. I don't, this is, and I'm not going to say this in the, maybe Council Member Brown, who's a CPA, can help me with this. But this is an obligation that would appear on the financials. And so I don't know the answer to that. That's okay. Let's hope that doesn't happen. It would just seem very convenient, in my opinion. Well, I think that there were discussions when some of the defendants, the particularly high-profile defendant, filed for bankruptcy prior to any kind of judgment or settlement agreement. I think that is more convenient than after settlement. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. I just have a remark going back to the presentation earlier. We saw a chart where it was broken down by gender. However, I'm going to break that down even furthermore. The number one group that is dying of opioid overdoses are members of the black community. In Lexington, the zip codes where people are dying at the fastest rate reside in 40505, 40511, and what's your zip code, 1st District? 08. And 08. So I just want to make sure that's clear to everyone that's watching and everyone in this room, because that's something that we don't talk about. We don't typically, when we talk about opioid overdoses, we think of eastern Kentucky. We think of people who don't look like me. And it needs to be abundantly clear and known the facts of who's dying at the highest rate so that we can actually attend to that community as well. That is all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. First question for Commissioner Specker, and thank you for making a very complicated situation fairly clear to us. I always appreciate that. Do we have any clue, and is it maybe too early to ask this question, do you have any idea how the state of Kentucky is going to spend their half of the money, how that's going to be distributed? I know that they are already distributing money. And so what they did is in the legislation, they created a commission, and people can apply to it. And so they are undergoing that process right now, and they've made awards. Okay, so is it going out to individuals, and it's not going to be relative to they're not distributing it again to municipalities? We could apply for funding. I mean, it is open to, it's broadly open to organizations, business entities, municipalities. I do think that because Lexington has received one of the larger percentages, the only larger one is Jefferson County, that the opportunity to partner with other municipal governments, other surrounding counties, for example, would probably make us more competitive. But we can apply for funds. Okay, that's good to know that we have some opportunities beyond that $15 million. My other two questions are for Ms. Baker. When we looked at the stats on overdose fatalities, I did some back of the napkin math, and it looks like Lexington's folks are dying at twice the rate of the national average. We are dying at a disturbing rate, yes. And we're seeing that nationally. It's disturbing what we're seeing. Yeah, well, I guess my question is, do we have comparative data in terms of Lexington fatalities versus state of Kentucky versus nationally? Where are we on that? We do. In fact, by law, every year, the Office of Drug Control Policy in Frankfurt, they have to do an overdose fatality report, which looks at all of those things. So we get one every year, usually in May or June of that year from Van Ingram and his staff. Do you know where we are on that comparatively? Just off the top of your head? That's the top five in the counties. Okay. And then my other question is, do we track non-fatal overdoses? And if we do, do we have it in relation to where the Narcan training and the Narcan availability? Sure. Sure. We can track some non-fatal overdoses. We can track the ones that Seth and his team and the entire fire department and the police department. Our police department has provided naloxone more than 600 times since they started carrying it in 2017. We know that when we, with our partners at the health department, give a dose of Narcan to someone and they come back and they say, we use this, and now nobody uses just one because just one won't work anymore, sadly, because of the toxicity of the drugs. But we do know some, but there's other agencies in town, Heal, Core, Voices of Hope, they are all distributing naloxone. And we don't know what their follow-up data is. All we know is ours. So I would love to track that. I have heard Kiprik is trying to come up with a way to develop a number that's accurate, and I'm really ready for that. I appreciate that. I appreciate your work on all of these challenges. And I want anybody who's watching this right now to know that Narcan training is about the simplest thing, simplest training that you'll ever go through. And, you know, stick it in your purse and pocket and you could save somebody's life. Appreciate it. I just want to add one more comment to Councilmember Gray. When we first started working on the first SAMHSA grant, the percentage of folks, individuals of color who we were working with was at 4%. And I'm so happy to share that when we finished up in October of 2022, we were at 14%, which was 2% higher than our goal. And so we're super excited about that. And you're right, it's happening to women. It's happening to people of color, and we have to pay attention. And so I appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you. Council Member Civigni. Yes, thank you, Chair. It'll be really quick. I just wanted to note that I do think that over 200 overdose deaths, I do think that the public isn't as well aware of this because it's not covered by the media well. And I don't know if it's we don't provide the information well. But I know on the campaign trail this last year, all I heard about was shooting deaths. And I kind of kept saying, do you realize that overdose deaths are probably about four times, four or five times the amount. And so I think sometimes we just have to make sure the public understand it and understand what a predicament and a problem it is. And I'm glad we have some money to address it. I wish there was a silver bullet that we could use. And I look forward to hearing from you guys telling us, you know, whatever national programs are working, you know, that we can use this money for. Thank you so much for all you do. I will say to that, in 2019, we were down to 128 overdose fatalities per year, which is still far too many. But it was a nice reduction, and we were very happy. So when 2020 rolled in with over 200 fatalities, we were all pretty devastated. It was hard to take, but you just have to keep working, keep pushing, keep doing the work. Well, thank you so much to you both for that really important information and all that you all do every day. And now we've come for time for an update from our Division of Community Corrections. And this item was referred to committee by Council Member James Brown. So we have Director Colvin here, and I'm going to let Council Member Brown give an introduction. Thank you, Chair. This item was put in committee after the assessment from the consultant was completed last year. So I'll turn it over to you, Director. Go through. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Members, good afternoon. I'm Scott Colvin. I'm the Chief of Community Corrections. I'm here to brief you on the NIC report that consultants performed on the Division of Community Corrections back last year. Let's see if I can work this. First, I'd like to become humble this afternoon and would like to say thank you to a few people. First of all, obviously, Mayor Gordon and the CAO's office, public safety, everyone who has come to you on my fourth month anniversary, my fourth month as the chief of the jail. And I've got nothing but support, resources, good advice. I thank all the council members that have went to the trouble of coming out to the jail and entering the jail and talking to the officers and supervisors that are running the facility and seeing what the state of operations are on the ground there. and lastly I'd like to thank my administration. I feel like I hit the lottery when I got this group of commanders to work with. Deputy Chief Hector Joyner can't be with us this afternoon, but as you all know he's a retired Federal Bureau of Prisons warden and a consummate professional. Glenda George has joined us at the division as an HR manager. You know her from being with City Law for several years. Major Courtney Spencer is with us this afternoon as a Bureau Commander for Inmate Services. Next to him is Major Jacob Crawford, who is the Bureau Commander for Professional Standards. And lastly, Major Matt Lamonts, who many of you all know, is the Operations Bureau Commander for the division and also the serving public information officer. So consultants from the National Institute of Corrections, Gary Rainey, a retired sheriff from Boise, Idaho, and Stacy Sinner, who I know I worked with her on a NIC project when I was at the Sheriff's Office in New Orleans, conducted a walkthrough and study of the operations. They were interested in six areas that I'd like to touch on this afternoon. So, from the report, it states performance research shows current staffing is unsustainable. We certainly have our staffing challenges. It's not improving the staffing, recruiting qualified members to the Division of Community Corrections right now is not everything. It's the only thing that we're focused on because through it, we solve a lot of other problems or challenges that we've incurred. My plan is simple. It's the three R's. It's retention of veteran staff. It's the recruitment of new officers and to envision ways to reduce the current jail population that makes it a more safe and secure facility with the available manpower resources that I currently have. Recruitment and retention. You know, I've only, I've been doing this 35 years. I've only really seen it recruited two different ways where they'll come out with an ad or they'll try to recruit a group and say, hey, corrections, it's a good job with good benefits and overtime. And the second way is where they will go heavily with the law enforcement theme And I think that there's a third rail here in recruiting. And I don't think a lot of other jurisdictions have reached this yet. But what research tells us is that many of the millennials are not particularly interested in pursuing a career in the military or even the paramilitary services. but they are interested in pursuing a career that has social or that help people on a social or community scale. I don't think that the social work aspects of corrections have really been highlighted or accentuated, focused on, and recruited on, And I'm interested in doing that. And that will be the centerpiece of my recruiting initiatives going forward with the division. So our target groups to recruit from, and we've already started, is the faith-based community. And we are seeing initial results that are positive and encouraging. The veteran communities, there are two large military bases in Kentucky, Fort Knox and Fort Campbell, and we are in contact with their transition group there for when service members get out. We'll send a recruiting team over there and try to bring them to the division. And lastly, higher education. I'm particularly interested in reestablishing the relationship of Kentucky State University that I had the first time I was with the division. I found them to be a very great group to work with. They allowed us to recruit right out of the student center. We had access to high members of the administration. They've got a great criminal justice program, and they're only about 20 miles away from here. Obviously, EKU, it's the home base of law enforcement in our commonwealth, and then here locally, BCTC. And then we need to raise the profile of community corrections officers in the city of Lexington. There are so many hardworking, honorable people doing good things day and night inside that county jail, but their citizens never get to see them because most of this effort takes place behind thick walls and steel doors. So it will be an effort for the administration to get members of the division out into the community. We can do this in a number of ways. We just stood up our color guard again. We're going to make that open to civic organizations or anybody else in government that needs a color guard. Call on us. We'll come. We want to be the team that hands you that bottle of water on your 10K run. We want to be that team that you have to pass on the five-man bike challenge because I got some really good bikers at the division. Big brown truck pull. We want you to be there when we win it. in a number of ways. We just want to get out and we want the citizens to see the good people of community corrections and we want them to see their citizens. And so we'll be making efforts to make that happen. And then we continue to work with Wrigley Media, Lexington 18. We've started a relationship with WKYT. Looks like we're in the early stages of producing a commercial there, spectrum cable, cumulus radio. We're on the back of every bus in Lexington. We're inside the buses of Lexington and we're recruiting hard after the council approved that $7,500 pay raise. Game changer. Set a record. 165,000 hits to the Facebook page at the division. We weren't doing four or ten applications a week. We got 119 applications on the back of that. We were able to build another academy, and it's the largest one in the last two or three years. There are 16 recruits sitting out in the training room this afternoon. There are nine other recruits that are down in the jail on their FTO project. We've been able, since I've been chief in November, we've been able to add 33 members to the division. So we're proud of that. We're building on that, though. We won't stop. It's just the beginning. So, sorry. When we talk about recruitment, I mentioned it earlier, it's retention. Retention is everything. I found when I was looking into some of these statistics, there was in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, that the attrition rate for the division was 6.1. They put 49 members of, they trained and put 49 officers into service in the jail, and only three of them are still employed again today. This is our dashboard. This is what we're looking at. If you look to the graph to the right and you were to total up the nine years from 2014 to 2022, that total of 748 officers have come and left the Division of Corrections. So I'll be very interested as we continue to drill down into what were the factors, what were the drivers to that, and then address them with the current administration and see what we can do. We're going to start all employee recognition. So when we're talking about retention, you've got to talk about the culture of a jail. It's an austere environment. It's a serious environment, but it doesn't have to be unpleasant. I think that depends on the leadership and the attitude of the members of the division. So when we're talking about employee recognition programs, there are several of them. There's an advancement to corporal. There's employee supervisor of the month. Those programs need to be restarted and have been and will continue. There are service awards, letters of appreciation, commendation that you can award your members. Timely awarding of the life-saving, the merit award, the honor award, medals. We want to explore apps like Award Co. And see if that might be a better fit for the young people that we have working with us these days. And then have a leadership, a core of leadership that says thank you and says it often. And means it when they say it. A simple thank you for staff efforts at roll calls. in the corridors of the jail and in the units, just to say I see what you're doing and we appreciate you. The new vision statement for the Division of Community Corrections is this. The Division of Community Corrections will be recognized as a model of direct supervision in the field of corrections. Our core principles, our integrity, service to the people, fiscal responsibility and leadership by example, Our efforts in the criminal justice system to effectively transition offenders and decrease recidivism in the community will be recognized, and our leadership and staff members will be seen as enhancing the quality of life for the citizens of Lexington. When we talk about reduction of population, there are some things that we can do right away that are already being done and we can do better. We need to pay closer attention and focus on the transfer of detainees back to other institutions that have no Fayette County charges. It sounds like a small thing, but that's a bigger number than what I thought once I got into it. We intend to seek relief from the chief judges to release minor offenders that come to our attention and are deserving of it. There's a meeting next week with the judges that I've been invited to attend, and I hope to share some of my ideas with them. We want to utilize home incarceration to the greatest degree possible. And lastly, stay focused on requesting the Kentucky Department of Corrections to remove status offenders, parole violators, and take them back into state custody where they belong. Resource allocation. The report asked us to look at 10 or 12-hour days. I've never seen a 10-hour schedule really work well in a county jail. You've got to have a lot of staffing for that. I've seen it started, and then you deplete your numbers, and it just doesn't work out. However, I have seen a 12-hour workday work wonderfully. I saw it in northern Kentucky and New Orleans and New Mexico. But that's something that would have to be negotiated with the collective bargaining group later this year. Internships, we have one with EKU. It's working wonderfully. We're in contact with the professor. We're going to expand this internship and then hopefully get other institutions interested in it. Swarm positions, reclassified as civilian. We have looked at, the staff and I have looked at it. We've identified some that we're interested in, but of course that will be another item for negotiation with the union later on this year. Elimination of high-ranking positions. We did eliminate one bureau commander's position at the division. Relationship with the unions. I just simply stated I have a good relationship, I feel. I like to think that they feel the same way, that I have a good relationship with both of the collective bargaining units. I grew up in a collective bargaining unit in Metro Corrections in Louisville. I was with the division from 2013 to 2016 and had a good relationship and negotiated a contract with Chief Ballard and with that union. And there's never been an issue with the commander's union in ASME. The report stated that the current inmate classification instrument at the division was antiquated. I don't know that I agree with that part of the report. The SORN instrument, the objective jail classification instrument that we use at the division was designed for the division, for that building by former Director Ray Sabatini, a nationally recognized subject matter expert on corrections. What I think needs to happen with the instrument is that we need to get it validated, and I've been in contact with Dr. Patricia Hardiman, who was my classification federal monitor in the Sheriff's Office in New Orleans to get that done. As far as I make discipline goes, we are looking forward to revising that policy. We're working on it now. we'll get into city law and make it a more due process and make disciplinary. Director, do you think that you could finish up in three to five minutes? I do. Okay. Then if there's no objection, I'm going to give the director five more minutes and then we will wrap up with our comments and try to finish by three. Thank you. Thank you. We support the review board. We're establishing one at the division. I chaired the one again at the sheriff's office. I'm familiar with the concept and looking forward to establishing one here at the division. We're going to need some software that's going to help us analyze and take a look at use a data-driven decision-making model when it comes to looking at uses of force and all manners, I guess, to keep it short. In Maine Housing and Supervision, the report stated that current conditions of confinement are inadequate. it. That report was a year ago. The report cited spacing, overcrowding, hot temperatures, no recreation. Well, we have addressed what we can't address. We are 60% staff. We are 40% vacant. And that is a factor. That is a driver in how hard we have to work to achieve operations. So an interesting thing is that we are working with Yes Care on our medical provider to pilot a recreation program that kind of has yoga and things like that in it. I'm not really a yoga guy, but the inmates seem like they would be interested in it. But we need to do something in regard to a more substantial recreation program for the division, and this is a start. These are arrest demographics for 2022. I would point out that the total misdemeanor charge is 5,000. That's a significant number and tells me that with more input, with more analysis, that we might be able to identify misdemeanor charges that could go straight to electronic monitoring if the courts were open to such an idea, and that's something I hope to talk about with them at a later point. Conclusion. The detention center is an outstanding physical facility. Nothing about the structure should change. The staff are good, dedicated detention professionals are being worn down by the current circumstances. Consultants suggest the county conducts statistically valid surveys of staff and identify how to improve their situation while they work well through these tough times. We reached out to Dr. Melissa Moon from Northern Kentucky University, and she has authored with her staff, designed a statistically valid survey of staff, and they'll be here March 27th to conduct that staff, and we look forward to their findings. We will compare this survey with Dr. 2016. Matt, who was the? We have another validated staff survey that was conducted in 2016 by Eastern Kentucky University. His name, Professor, his name escapes me, and I apologize. But we have data to compare what we're about to find out. It says when staffing levels return, the detention center could be a model for jail operations. This detention center in Lexington, Kentucky is a model for jail operations. It's one of the best designed county jails in the United States of America. It is used as a best practice gel for how to aesthetically place a gel that it doesn't offend the surrounding community. And it was one of the early on. I've studied this gel from afar, from Louisville, when I was with Metro Corrections from northern Kentucky. I've studied its operation and its design. It has great utility for corrections, and it makes it a safer place when we rebuild the division by staying in a constant training mode. And if we get eight people by the end of the week, we'll start another academy. We'll run two at the same time if we have to, to rebuild the academy, to rebuild the division, to get the numbers we need, to reestablish direct supervision, which is what the facility was built to be operated by. and that would be our mission in life. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, and thank you for your officers being here today and for the presentation. It looks like we have a roadmap or plan to try to make things better at corrections. I don't want to speak for every council member, But I think we're committed to you all as well to give you the resources and feel like we have in regards to recruit and retention. And then I'd like to thank that I know Glenda's out there with you, and I think she knows a lot of the concerns that we have on this council in regards to relationship building and make sure that the needs are being met to get us to a point where the working conditions are better at the jail. So I know we're running short on time. I just wanted to thank you for the presentation, let you all know that we're here to support you, and we'll continue to monitor the situation. And I will say, you know, I'm impressed by the optimism that you brought into today's presentation. You've been out at the jail before, and this job isn't new to you. And I think you being the lead out there and having a positive perception or take on everything should filter down to the rank and file. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Council Member Pullman. Thank you, Chair. I was sitting here listening to you, and I was getting so enthused and invigorated by all of your plans. I mean, you broke it down by markets. I love the idea about the millennials and what is their hot button. And then going to the community, you just did a beautiful marketing job, I felt, in front of us today. And I really feel like we're on the right track. One thing that you mentioned, I remember reading the report, and one of the things that stayed with me was kind of the top heaviness of the, I guess, the whole organizational chart there. And you mentioned you have taken one step. Will that continue? Or what do you think that looks like timetable-wise? Well, staffing is something that we analyze, you know, a lot. I'm there four months. Council member, the elimination of the one major's position was entirely the right thing to do, but I do believe that I can be more effective as your chief with three bureau commanders at this time. Okay. Let me ask you one last question. Do we ever bring in community members from a volunteer standpoint or support? We, like for tourists? Well, not so much tourists as folks that could have more feel for what the corrections does out there. Kind of like you were going the other way to let people know, like you talked about being at runs or something like that. I just didn't know if there was any opportunity to go the other way for the facility and the community. That's interesting. I don't think that we have, we're still coming out of the pandemic, and so there hasn't been, we're reestablishing relationships, making contacts again. Everybody's just lighting it all back up again at this point, but it's interesting. I'd be interested to do something like that. Okay. If I can support you in any way. My background's marketing. I'd love to get with you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair. And thanks, Chief Covenna, you did a great job. And I just wanted to point out that we can give you all the financial resources you need, but you're doing a great job at what I saw was transformational culture. And that's what you need to kind of keep people and keep your employees happy and keep these folks in good shape. And I really appreciate in four months the level of effort you guys have made to at least not say, hey, we don't got a problem. You know what I mean? So you've done a great job there. And culture, culture, culture, it wins every time. And I appreciate your efforts on it. Thank you, sir. Yeah, that's the hard part. We're working on it. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I'll be very, very brief since we're starting work session in nine minutes. I just want to encourage any council members who haven't already to go and take a tour of the corrections center. There's a world of difference between seeing it sort of in person, seeing what the facilities look like, what the jobs look like, versus just seeing a slide deck. I think it will give everybody a really great appreciation. So we appreciate what you do. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. We're open 24-7. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director. I like the positivity and the way things are trending, so I'm glad to hear how things are going. On element four on the inmate classification and discipline, could you go over what they recommended and what you were all doing and why you don't think that's necessary? It was element four on inmate discipline. It was on the pass, the point addictive system. I think they suggested the point additive system. Oh, point additive system. Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I'm a little hard of hearing. The point additive system is a classification instrument that's used in many places. I used a decision tree classification system in New Mexico. What it is is that they point you out for your criminal history, your current charges, your institutional behavior history, and then you get assigned a certain number of points. It's just my professional opinion, but I hope it counts, is that I think that some of those, you've got to watch those instruments carefully because they can be arbitrary. I think that Mr. Sabatini put a lot of really brilliance into this SARN instrument, and it focuses on behavior, on institutional behavior more than any other factor. And I think that's what drives us to the best decision on where to place someone, what type of programs to put them in, what type of risk that they're seeing or that they present. So I endorse the SORN instrument, and I think it'll get validated. Okay, thank you. And I'm interested when you're all going to go cycling. Give me a call. I'd like to go ride with you all. So thank you. I got some bikers down there. I'm not one of them. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you. Are you familiar with the Vera Institute and the sentencing project? I'm sorry, Councilman. The Vera Institute. The Vera Institute from New Orleans, sure. I had a lot of contact with them in New Orleans. Yes, ma'am? Yeah, so we are on the national committee. I mean, we have made national news in Kentucky. One, because Jefferson County has had so many deaths, and I know there's been deaths at the Fayette County Detention Center also. And I love this new instrument because the Pew Foundation has really cornered the market about classifying folks, and we know that that has been problematic. Well, I know, and then I'll inform the rest of the council. But so I like what CM said about community partners because it does work. I developed a program called Step Into a New Beat for the Bluegrass Area Development District, and it was a reentry program. And so when community partners come out to the jail, it alleviates some of that tension that your officers may have, and it gives them a cushion because people are in teaching classes, getting folks prepared to come out into the community. So that is a great model to reenact if you don't have it. Thank you for your hard work, and thank you for everything that we're going to be involved in when we partner with you or continue to partner with you. I'm well aware of your level of activism. Councilmember Rodney Ballard told me about you when he was Commissioner of Corrections, so he said you guys were pals. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much, Director Colvin, for this presentation. I know those of us that were on council before this year have had some major concerns about the facility and staffing, and you addressed a lot of that today. And I feel much more optimistic as well about the future. I just have one really quick question. Previously, there was a survey that was done for staff. I can't remember if it was 2022 or 2021. was that an unofficial survey? Was it conducted by is that the commanders tell me that it was an unofficial survey that the FOP did on their own. Okay because I remember they sent me the report or the results and so we wouldn't be able to officially use that data so we're going to do an official one. We have one from EKU Dr. James. Come on help me bounce quickly. Don't make it up. We had an EKU professor. Dr. James Wells. We have an official report that was done on the division in 2016 by Dr. James Wells from EKU. But no, that was 2016. That was in 2016. No, yeah, I'm more interested in the past like two years. So, but you said you're going to do one this year. We're doing one the 27th of March. I look forward to the input from the staff. And I'm sure we'll have some issues that we're going to have to address. Absolutely. I think that's great. All right. Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone else for being here today. We appreciate your work so much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And the items referred to committee, I'm not going to go through that list right now because of time, but if anyone has something that they want to remove or add in this moment, we can do that. Does anyone have anything? Okay, you will be hearing from me about, if your name is next to an item, you're going to be hearing from me directly about your item to make sure that it gets scheduled for this calendar year and to hear updates of where it's that. And then I think that's it. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. All in favor? Aye. All right. Any opposed? That passes. Thank you, everyone.