# Committee of the Whole FY24 Budget - May 30, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 30, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5837 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5837?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-05-30 - **Last revised**: May 30, 2023 - **Length**: 31,477 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Mayor > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened on May 30, 2023, at 10:00 AM in the Council Chamber. The meeting focused primarily on informational presentations and updates, with two main agenda items presented to the council members. The session included Mayor's Late Items and Link Report Out Presentations, both serving as informational briefings rather than action items requiring formal decisions. During the course of the meeting, council members conducted three votes on various matters that arose during the proceedings. No members of the public provided comments during the designated public comment period. The meeting maintained its focus on internal reporting and administrative updates, allowing council members to receive important information about ongoing city initiatives and late-breaking items from the mayor's office. ## Attendance The following council members were present at the May 30, 2023 meeting: • Council Member Sevigny • Council Member Fogle • Council Member J. Brown • Council Member Reynolds • Council Member Baxter • Council Member Lynch • Council Member Ellinger • Council Member Sheehan • Council Member Legris • Council Member Worley • Council Member Monarrez • Council Member Plomin • Vice Mayor Dan Wu **Absent:** • Council Member Fred Brown No council members arrived late to the meeting. With 13 members present and 1 absent, the council had a quorum to conduct official business. ## Votes and Decisions The council took three unanimous votes during the May 30, 2023 meeting, with all 13 members present voting in favor of each item. **Approval of Mayor's Late Items** [timestamp: 00:00] The council voted to approve the Mayor's late items through a voice vote. The motion passed unanimously with 13 ayes and 0 nays. All council members voted in favor: Council Members Sevigny, Fogle, J. Brown, Reynolds, Baxter, Lynch, Ellinger, Sheehan, Legris, Worley, Monarrez, Plomin, and Vice Mayor Dan Wu. **Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center Roof Funding** [timestamp: 00:00] Council Member Baxter made a motion to fund the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center Roof project. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote with 13 ayes and 0 nays. All 13 council members voted in support of the funding: Council Members Sevigny, Fogle, J. Brown, Reynolds, Baxter, Lynch, Ellinger, Sheehan, Legris, Worley, Monarrez, Plomin, and Vice Mayor Dan Wu. **Safety Officers Funding** [timestamp: 00:00] Council Member Reynolds motioned to fund four safety officers, with Council Member Baxter providing the second. The motion received unanimous approval through a voice vote, passing 13-0 with no abstentions. The same 13 council members who voted on the previous items all voted in favor: Council Members Sevigny, Fogle, J. Brown, Reynolds, Baxter, Lynch, Ellinger, Sheehan, Legris, Worley, Monarrez, Plomin, and Vice Mayor Dan Wu. All three votes demonstrated complete council unity, with no opposition or abstentions recorded on any of the items considered during this meeting. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed two significant financial appropriations totaling over $1.3 million for municipal projects and personnel. **Capital Infrastructure Investment** • The council considered an appropriation of $1,037,819 for the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center roof project. This substantial allocation represents a major capital investment in the city's cultural infrastructure and facility maintenance. **Public Safety Staffing** • An appropriation of $263,816 was discussed for four safety officers positions. This funding would support the expansion of the city's public safety personnel capacity. The combined appropriations of $1,301,635 reflect the municipality's commitment to both infrastructure maintenance and public safety staffing needs. However, specific resolution numbers, vendor information, and detailed implementation timelines were not available in the meeting documentation reviewed. *Note: Transcript timestamps were not available for this meeting's financial discussions.* ## Contested Items The meeting featured two significant areas of disagreement among council members. **Human Rights Commission Funding** A split vote occurred regarding additional funding for the Human Rights Commission. The primary concern centered on the Commission's failure to complete required audits, which raised questions about fiscal accountability and oversight. Council members debated whether providing additional financial support was appropriate given the outstanding audit requirements. The discussion highlighted tensions between supporting the Commission's mission and ensuring proper financial stewardship of public funds. **Valley Park Community Center Expansion** The proposed expansion of the Valley Park Community Center generated heated discussion among council members. The controversy arose from increased project costs that exceeded the original budget estimates. Council members engaged in extensive debate over whether to allocate additional funds to cover the cost overruns for the expansion project. The discussion reflected broader concerns about budget management and the city's commitment to community infrastructure projects versus fiscal responsibility. Both items demonstrated the challenges facing the council in balancing community needs with financial constraints and accountability measures. The disagreements highlighted different priorities among council members regarding funding decisions and oversight requirements. *Note: Specific vote tallies, individual council member positions, and final outcomes were not available in the provided meeting data. Timestamp information was not included in the source materials for this meeting.* ## Mayor's Late Items [timestamp: 00:00] The Mayor presented late items for consideration in the FY24 budget during this agenda item. Melissa served as the key speaker for this discussion, which focused on proposed changes to personnel and fund allocations that had been brought forward after the initial budget preparation. The presentation was informational in nature, covering various adjustments and modifications that the Mayor's office wanted to incorporate into the upcoming fiscal year budget. The discussion centered on late-breaking developments that required council consideration for the FY24 budget cycle. The specific details of the personnel changes and fund allocation adjustments were presented to provide council members with information about these proposed modifications. As a late item, these budget elements had not been included in the original budget documents and required separate consideration. This agenda item served as an informational presentation rather than requiring immediate action, allowing council members to review the proposed changes before formal consideration. The outcome was categorized as informational, indicating that the discussion was intended to brief council members on the Mayor's late budget proposals rather than to seek immediate approval or rejection of the items. The presentation provided council members with the necessary background information on these late additions to help inform their future deliberations on the FY24 budget. ## Link Report Out Presentations [timestamp: 00:00] During this agenda item, several council members delivered presentations sharing recommendations from their respective community links regarding the FY24 budget process. **Key Presenters:** • Council Member Baxter • Council Member Lynch • Council Member Legris • Council Member Reynolds Each council member presented findings and recommendations gathered from their assigned community links, providing input on various aspects of the proposed FY24 municipal budget. The presentations served as a formal mechanism for incorporating community feedback and specialized committee recommendations into the budget deliberation process. The link report presentations were informational in nature, allowing council members to share the perspectives and priorities identified through their community engagement efforts. This agenda item provided a structured opportunity for each presenter to communicate their respective link's input on budget priorities, concerns, and recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year. The presentations contributed to the broader budget review process by ensuring that community stakeholder input was formally documented and considered as part of the council's budget deliberations. Each council member's report represented the collective input from their assigned link, helping to inform the council's understanding of community priorities and concerns related to the FY24 budget proposal. This agenda item concluded without requiring formal action, as its primary purpose was to share information and recommendations gathered through the community link process with the full council for consideration during ongoing budget discussions. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (13-0): Approve the Mayor's late items - **Motion** — passed (13-0): Fund the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center Roof - **Motion** — passed (13-0): Fund four safety officers --- ## Full transcript Squeeze, release, up, release, one more. Now stick that right heel out, pull those toes back, and lean forward. Push the toes down, and lean forward a little bit more. Keep your head up, look at me, so you don't get dizzy. One up, other heel. Stick it out there. Pull those toes back, stop nice and tall. Hinge at the hips, lean forward. Get a stretch of the back of your leg. Push the toes down if you can and lean forward a little bit more, but keep that head up. Good job. One up. Your right arm's going to come across. Hold it. And turn the wrist and the fingers. Give it a nice stretch. And touch your shoulder. Now bring that arm up to your comfort level. It may be here. It may be way up here. You want to get a little stretch, but you don't ever want to force it. Hold it. Take it long down the other side. And cross. Wrist of the fingers. Tap the shoulder. Bring it up again to your comfort level. And bring it down. Good job. Now face the right, stretch that leg out. Keep forward, and clean down. Push forward, stretch that leg out. Come back, other side, same thing, stretch that leg out. Come center, getting a big breath left. Come back. Come back. Thank you all for working out with me today. I hope you had a great time. Stay healthy, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to make a little bit more of a little bit more. Thank you. Thank you. 302. 10-02. Just testing to make sure y'all are all awake. All right. So I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. For the Council, Committee of the Whole for the FY24 budget, before we go straight to the agenda, I just want to get clarity from somebody in the law department about our numbers. And for any reason that we fall to eight council members or less, Do we just pass motions with the majority of council members that are in attendance and are we fine with continuing the meeting or is there come a point where we need to do something different? I think that you need to operate with 10 like you would for your Cal meeting. No? For the Cal meeting? No. so i would prefer you operate with 10 but i mean if you're i i don't have the cow meeting rules in front of me but if it's eight to your point you can operate with just the eight okay if that's what the rules for the council okay but the problem you're going to have is if you go below the eight so and the other issue you got is you want to make sure that there's at least eight of you all voting to do what you want to do okay so from so from can you i guess i'm asking for clarity and someone to help us be definitive on it i was of the understanding that we could we could meet with eight and we can vote and pass things out of this cow with a majority of who's present but when the actual motion let me look at the rule real quick but if that's how your rule is structured you are correct okay to have a cow which is a committee of all 15 council members you need at least eight to to have quorum. If you go below eight, you'll have to pause the meeting. Okay. So even if you have seven, you can't make votes on the majority of that. You have to have at least eight to maintain quorum for the meeting. But I think you're asking if you have eight, and the rule is set up like this, if you have eight and only five of you all vote to do something, you can go ahead and move it forward. It's just going to be a procedural action, and you'll take the final action at a later point in time okay i think that's what you're asking for us yeah and i and i think i'm clear on it so we'll just be mindful of the attendance and make decisions going forward thank you thank you dave thank you stacy all right council members so we'll go ahead and get this meeting started and we'll go straight to our agenda and the first item on the agenda is the mayor's late items so melissa Welcome to the podium. All right, good morning. So as many of you all know, we have late items that we bring forward every year. And these are things that have been brought to our attention or ordinance changes that council has passed since the mayor's proposed budget has been released until now. And so I'm happy to report we don't have very many of these this year. So we will go through them here. So in the general fund, what we have is a change in personal action due to a council approved ordinance. So we just had a position change in the division of fire, which resulted in a savings of $13,570. So we increased the general fund balance by the $13,570. So now the new fund balance in general fund is 1,055,563. In the urban fund, there was an increase in the cable rate for LexCol. And so that increased the expense $175. So the new balance there is 4.8 million, 288. Then you'll see here in the map fund, this is just an accounting change. The way the funding for this project is going to work is not going to be a grant match, it's going to be professional services. And so this is just moving $100,000 from a grant match account to a professional services account. It has no change on the balance in the fund. In the sanitary sewer and operating, we've got a couple. One of them is an increase in language line expense for LexCol. You'll see this in a couple of the other funds as well, as that is a division that is allocated out based on their call volume. So there was a $5,830 increase to the expense for language line. And then this number five there is a personnel correction, and that is just updating the accounting for a position. And so you'll just see it's still the same amount. It's just moving from one depth ID and section to another depth ID and section. there is an impact to the fund but it's minor it's a 5 830 expense and so you'll see there's still 21 million 833 346 there in that fund the water quality fund this is the water quality piece of that language line for lex call and so this is a an expense increase of 2 970 you'll see the balance of a little over 4.6 million there still and then finally we have The landfill fund, the impact of language line here, and that's an added expense of $2,200. And we've still got the balance of one point, about 1.4 million here. So if we could get approval on these items, or if there are questions first, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We have one more on the next one. The landfill was. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Second. All right, there's been a motion to approve. mayor's light items and seconded are there any questions in totality or or any individual item itself i have a question council member reynolds and thank you um so for the language line does it look like it's trending in general that we're going to need to budget more money overall for the different language lines the the current trend is going up and so that's why lex call we've We've increased the LexCol budget to account for that. So next year, we'll maybe have a better idea of how much we need? Yeah, we should be okay next year, but if it continues to rise, then we'll have to reevaluate it during the year. Okay, thank you very much, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, council member. Are there any other questions? Please sign in for questions. Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, Director. The next item on the agenda is a link in council member recommendations. This is for information only in your packet. Next, we'll go to link report out presentations. And council members, before we get started, I'll just say the plan for today is for us to, I would like for us to either vote up and down whether we approve these recommendations from the links and from individual council members. With the thought that we're going to create a list and ask the administration to take a look at the best way to fund the items that we approve here as a council and bring it back to us at work session today if we get through the entire list. So I guess in regards to the best way to fund it, I think we're going to lean on the administration to help guide us through that. So with that, and council members, just a slight amendment to the agenda. We're going to go to link report out presentations, and we'll start with general government and general services for Council Member Baxter. thank you chair um first i'd like to thank my fellow council members that served on my link it was myself and council member james brown and council member denise gray It was a pleasure to work with you all on this. Are you all, you're going to forward my slide. Okay, perfect. So we had all of LFUCG offices that are listed. Also, we were responsible for constitutional offices and a few partner agencies. So I'll just start moving through. First up is information technology. and we accepted the mayor's proposed budget here. Moving on to computer services, we accepted the mayor's proposed budget here as well. Enterprise solutions, we accepted the mayor's proposed budget. I'm going to get repetitive here. Council clerk, we also accepted the mayor's proposed budget. and the council office we accepted the mayor's proposed budget there as well facilities and fleet management we did accept the mayor's proposed budget however we did additionally fund a roof for the pan miller downtown art center we are proposing that the funding source come from the bond but we would also really love to pay cash if possible so if if that becomes an opportunity for us, we would entertain that as well. Chair, do you want us to give justification now or wait until anyone asks? I think if you can give a brief justification and then when you make the motion, I think that's time for council members to ask questions. So we decided to fund this roof because, as you all may remember, we invested 2.5 million dollars in ARPA funds to renovate the some space on the first floor as well as the third floor of the Pamela Arts Building and it came to our attention during the link process that the roof is failing there so we did not feel comfortable investing that amount of ARPA dollars if we weren't protecting our investment with repairing the roof so that is our recommendation there moving on to general services we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget internal audit accepting the mayor's proposed budget there law we are accepting her proposed budget and the mayor's office we are accepting her proposed budget there in parks and recreation we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget we do have some additional recommendations however we have three community centers that need elevator replacements and you'll see there it's the dunbar community center the picadome administration building and the kearney hill golf course elevator so we have proposed that those come from general fund however we are open for other funding sources as well and then additional ada improvements at some of our parks they run the gamut on what they include but those are some items that we felt were really important to make sure that our parks and community centers were accessible to all moving on to constitutional offices the pva we accepted the mayor's proposed budget county judge executive we accepted the proposed budget the county clerk we accepted the proposed budget however there were an unanticipated u.s postal service rate increases during the process and it's really important that we account for that because the county clerk mails voter related pieces for the general election in the fall so that's a ten thousand dollar increase there the circuit judges we accepted the mayor's proposed budget as well as the commonwealth attorney and the coroner and the county attorney we accepted the mayor's proposed budget there. We had three partner agencies, the Lexington Public Library, the Lyric, and Carnegie Center, and we accepted the mayor's proposed budget on all three of those. I will entertain any questions that anyone has. So, Council Member, are there any questions in regards to the link report out presentation? If there's not, then, Council Member, I would recommend that you start making motions on on the changes to the proposed budget and and we'll open it up for questions then any questions seeing none council member okay thank you so i move to additionally fund the pan miller downtown art center roof at 1 million 37 819 dollars so moved second all right a motion A question's been made to approve this recommendation from the link in regards to the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center and second it. Are there any questions? I've got one. All right, council member, did you log in? I did. All right, I'm not seeing, well I'll see it now. Council member Savigny. Thank you, and my request is probably mostly from the administration on this. And it's because Councilmember Fred Brown isn't here and he always asks about bonding and what percentage we're at. I am kind of curious as to what percentage we would be at with the current budget. As the mayor's proposed budget stands, we're just under the 12%. We've maintained about 12% over the last several years. But with the increase in revenue, that was able to be continued with the bond package that's proposed. Thanks. And then each percent is about $5 million or whatever, right? I mean, if we basically bonded another $5 million, that would be 1% more. I think we're… If we're at $500 million. We're going to need to take a look at how we're going to fund these items, and then we can come back to you with a new calculation. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. And just for a point of clarity, the way it's presented may not be the final way it's funded. So I think today we're just trying to find out what Council's intent is, and we can debate the funding sources. and whether or not we want to support it later. So thank you. Are there any other questions to the motion? All right, hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Council Member. Thank you, Chair. I move to additionally fund the Dunbar Community Center upgrades to elevators in the amount of $150,000, so moved. Second. All right, a motion was made to fund the link recommendation and second it. Are there any questions on this item? See it, none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to fund the Piccadome Administration Building Elevator Upgrades in the amount of $100,000, so moved. Second. All right, that motion was made from the link report out and seconded. Are there any questions to that item? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. We're not stipulating. We're just going to say from the general fund for all of these. Yeah, I think for right now, And that's where we're suggesting and that's where we're recommending and the administration may come back with a different way to fund that at work session. Okay, thank you. Thank you, council member. Are there any other questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. I move to fund the Kearney Hill Golf Course Elevator Design in the amount of $10,000 that moved. Second. All right, motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Gray. Are there any questions to this item? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. I move to fund the Whitney Young Park Community Building Restroom Accessibility Improvements in the amount of $38,400. So moved. Second. All right. That motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions to this item? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. I move to approve the Green Acres Park Community Building restroom accessibility improvements in the amount of $38,400, so moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions to that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to approve the Picadome Golf and Office Accessibility improvements in the amount of $82,800. So moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions to that motion? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Could you explain to me what's going on with this one? I will refer to Director Conrad on this one. And I'm going to want to know the next one, too. Okay. We get there. Thanks. Good afternoon. Or good morning. Council members, so Picadome Golf and Office Accessibility for the $82,800. This is for when you enter the golf course at Picadome. It is not ADA compliant. So this will allow us to redesign and repave that entry into the pro shop area at Picadome. And then at Castlewood Barn and Shelter Accessibility, this is the Castlewood Barn that sits near the restroom building at Castlewood Park. and this is paving that and also dealing with some water retention areas. It will also add accessible parking to the barn and the restroom. Were both of these put in and the mayor just didn't fund them? Were these additional stuff that you all asked for after the fact? They were capital projects that are always on the list. As you can imagine, we have many of them. So these were additional ADA projects that we thought could be included. Okay, thank you, Chair, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Councilmember. Any other questions on this item? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. And, Councilmember, before you go to the next one, just to give some clarity. Three of these projects were elevator projects, and from our conversation with parks, They thought that we would be able to get a better response for RFPs if we had multiple projects as opposed to just one. And then the other thing I'll share as a member of that link, we know our parks department is doing a good job with doing a lot of these capital projects. So the only thing that we, and we didn't want to add more to that workload, but what we did ask them is if we were able to get more funding for ADA projects, what could you do? And these two projects, ADA projects, or maybe four projects are what they came back to that they can do. So that was part of our justification. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund the Castlewood Barn and Shelter Accessibility Improvements that also require stormwater detention in the amount of $250,000. So moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member. Sheehan. Sheehan. Too much. Yeah. Turn it around. You see me looking. All right, and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions to this item? Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Hey, I'm just wondering on this one if there's stormwater improvements, is that something like what portion is stormwater improvements? And would that be covered out of a different budget or different fund basically? That's a good question. Thank you, council member for the question. I don't think it could be funded out of a different fund. I kind of looked at Charlie on my way up. But it will allow, you know, normally we would want to deal with that water issue as we're paving and creating this accessible parking in the area. Thank you. That's all, Chair, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Anything else, Council Member Baxter? One more. I move to approve unanticipated postal service rate increase for the Fayette County Clerk in the amount of $10,000. So moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Are there any questions to the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Thank you, Chair. That concludes our report out. Thank you, council member. All right, going back to our list of link report outs, the next up is the CAO in housing advocacy and community development presented by Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. The Chief Administrative Officer in Housing Advocacy and Community Development Link was chaired by Council Member Kathy Plowman and included Vice Mayor Dan Wu and myself. To begin, on behalf of the link, I would like to thank my fellow council members and their legislative aides. Y'all were a great help. Our research analyst, Kelly Farley, who is simply amazing for all the work that she does. And then she kept us together and coordinated and organized during this budgetary process. I would like to thank CAO Hamilton and Commissioner Lanter and their teams for answering our questions and providing us with information in a timely manner. They have been a true pleasure to work with. And last but certainly not least, Commissioner Hensley. You and your team were simply amazing in getting us information in a very timely manner for this vegetarian process, so thank you for your diligence. All right. Let's dig in and start this slide show. So on this slide shows what divisions we were working through and working with for this link, as you can see there. And we'll start with the CAO's office. Let's see, we decided to accept the mayor's proposed budget for the CAO's office. Highlight there is going to provide continued funding for diversity training and minority recruitment efforts here. Our next division was Lex Call, and we decided to accept the mayor's proposed budget here. This budget does include increased funding for the language line, which is based upon needs and current trends. Our next office was the government communications. We decided to accept the mayor's proposed budget. This includes both the public information office as well as LexTV for clarification. This budget includes some basic upgrades to equipment. This link also had a conversation with CAO Hamilton about obeying the website. It's been about seven years since the website has been updated. after some cost analysis we determined that it would be better to fund to better fund this via the fund balance this via the fund balance but it's still something that the link wants to make note of so that you all aware of that that it's time to update our website and it is anticipate that the cost will be in the neighborhood of 300 to 350 000 so we need to continue to evaluate this because that is something that should be a priority for us to make sure that our city can go to our website with ease and it is updated as to industry standards as well next will be human resources and we decide to accept the mayor's proposed budget here just a few highlights here this continues to fund um we can continue to fund our adoption assistance program and it reduces the budget for for the YMCA membership based on current membership levels, which have been reduced from prior years. It also includes resume parsing software, which includes increased efficiencies in the hiring process. So we wanted to add that in as well. As far as the Housing, Advocacy, and Community Development Office, we accepted the mayor's proposed budget with one addition. It was expressed in this link that our housing advocate, Caitlin, carries a very heavy load. It will need support in the near future to provide continual assistance to our community. The link is recommending that we go ahead and add the position of housing navigation specialist at the amount of $72,114 to be funded out of the general fund, but to be reimbursed this year using payroll recovery through the housing stabilization program. And this position would specifically help folks find safe and affordable housing, help them specifically navigate that, and they will provide assistance for those facing imminent eviction. So that will be a request we'll make. The next one will be grants and special programs. We are accepting the mayor's proposed budget. This includes $2 million for the Affordable Housing Fund. It also provides additional support through the addition of an assistant manager in the Affordable Housing Office, which is very much needed. It also funds the HMIS administrator in the Office of Homelessness. It was pointed out in our link that the process for tracking our unhoused folks would be easier if we have this position. We are one of the many cities that do not have, we are one of the only cities that don't have this position funded. And so it's very critical for us in working with our unhoused population to be able to have this position. So that is included in this number as well. Our next department is code enforcement. We are accepting the mayor's proposed budget, and you can see that this includes the mayor's increase for sidewalk assistance and demolitions. Our next one is community and resident services. We are accepting the mayor's proposed budget. It was brought to our attention during this length that because there has been so much additional federal and state money available for emergency financial assistance, We don't really know what the right size funding level is for this program. So as those funds dry up, we're going to ask the administration and Commissioner Hensley's team to keep their eye on this funding so we can make sure that we adequately and appropriately fund this program in the future. We would also like to thank Danielle Sanders for providing us with information about all the programs she administers to our community. It's quite a few, and so her team does a phenomenal job with that. The link would like to see this process simplified both for users, our neighbors in the community, and for staff that utilize our services. It's a bit complex. So for that reason, we would like to place in the Social Services and Public Safety Committee an evaluation of many programs in order to condense and simplify the funds and the eligibility requirements there. and I think that covers everything I have. So, Council Members, are there any questions for that link report out presentation? First up is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Is this the appropriate time to ask individual commissioners about the recommendations or would you prefer to wait until we make motions? okay um i have a question for commissioner lanter my question has to do with this housing navigation specialist position and i'm curious if that's something that you had originally requested in your proposed budget items or if it was a something that came up in link conversations no it's not something that was requested it came up as we were discussing different items in the link and there was questions about the current housing advocate and what she does and and her workload and as we discussed it i guess the council members felt that in order to reduce her workload and expand the service that it would require an additional position okay and so just to make sure i understand we are using payroll recovery for the first year and then we will fund it through the general fund going forward i think that that would have to be decided that the there's only that's the grant money for one year so from beyond that it would be somewhere else i guess i guess my concern is that it that it didn't come up before link conversations and is this is the service provided anywhere in in the community is this something that we no housing navigation is a need it's um it's a significant need uh what we've found now that we have our housing advocate it's the herd primary call that she gets is people are struggling to find units not just units they can afford but units that will take them because their various history or or other barriers finding the right size unit getting getting around town just to look for units it's it's it's always been a need even prior to the housing advocate it's just that i think having the housing advocate has really drawn attention to that as a need okay thank you thank you chair thank you council member baxter next up is council member ellinger thank you chair under the highlights under human resources the reducing funding for the ymca who might handle that oh so reading this we're not using this very much is that we actually had increased our funding back back to pre-pandemic levels last year and found that we just didn't have the same utilization. So we wanted to be closer to our actual number and therefore reduce that amount in the budget. So how are we changing the benefit that we give to the employees then? We haven't changed that at all. There's still plenty there for employees to use that benefit. We were just over budgeted in that account. Okay. Do we give any, if you go so many times you get certain, I mean, because I know some plans, if you do, you get a rebate. Because I'm always trying to think of having, be proactive and a healthy lifestyle to reduce our insurance costs. Sure. We don't have a program in place right now to do that. It is something that we've looked at. A few years ago, we did have one. The program just really wasn't utilized very well. And our contract expired. We did, yes. but we'll definitely keep an eye out for some other options. I know others that they'll talk about because I'm a cyclist and I know people who, and they're talking about different rebates they get because of so many times that they work out. And once again, I think if you're being proactive, you can increase your health care costs if you have a healthier lifestyle. Absolutely, yes. We'll take a look and see what kind of programs are out there now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. Any other questions from any other Council Members? Seeing none, I do have some questions and Commissioner Lanter, and it's kind of along the same lines as Council Member Baxter. And I will also open it up to the link members to this position that I think is going to be requested here shortly. Was there any conversations about allocating funding to see if we can partner with other agencies that either provide this service or maybe they can create a position that may be able to provide this service for us? Just because I don't know if it's something that warrants us creating a position, a permanent position in city government to provide those services. So I guess my question is, if we put that money towards professional services, would that help meet the need that the Link is trying to address? Yeah, you could do it either way. There are certainly organizations that can perform that service. You would just have to probably do an RFP and see who would be interested and willing to provide it. But there are some that have experience with that service, including the Housing Authority, New Beginnings, a couple other that come to mind. Okay. So I'll ask Council Member Lynch, is that something that the link, did y'all talk about that at all, or are y'all open to that being a way that we try to address this need? We didn't talk about finding a community partner to provide this additional service. We did talk about the need for it. This is a new division, and they still need staffing up. It's important to have a housing navigator to assist. Right now we just have Caitlin that's serving the whole city, and she's doing a great job, but Caitlin needs some help. So as we continue to build up this very important city department, the housing navigator is a great next position that we should provide to that office to continue to meet the needs of our citizens. Okay, okay. The other thing I'll say, too, and I know this is a challenge throughout government, I think it would be harder to recruit and hire somebody for a job that is grant funded and may not be funded the next year or the following year. So I'm definitely supportive of the effort. I just want to make sure that we address the need the best, as effectively as possible. But I'm more interested in trying to not create more ongoing costs for government in providing a need that may be a direct service need that maybe one of our partners could help us provide. That's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to say from my perspective that I feel like this position would be extremely helpful inside government. My office receives a lot of complaints about housing or how to get housing, how to navigate housing. It's a huge need. We know we have a housing crisis in this city. So just my two cents is that I think that this would be an extremely helpful position and would greatly aid our residents during a time of crisis. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Sheehan. Commissioner Landry, can I ask you additional questions? So do you see you're talking about the need in the community? I know we have talked about this a lot in the Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Board about connecting people with housing and the struggles that people have been having. Do you see this as a temporary increase in need, or is it something that has been increasing over time that you think will continue to increase or level out? I think, as I mentioned before, the need has existed for quite some time, so I don't think you would call it a temporary increase. I think at some point there would be a saturation in terms of how much assistance you would have to offer. But it's not like a recent trend. It's been a need, particularly for certain populations for many years. If you're a vulnerable population, someone with mental illness, someone with addiction, someone with a felony, certain populations just struggle to find housing. And that's always been the case and probably will always be the case. Thank you. So then with that in mind, I'm going to say that I would support this as the link has recommended it. But we will have to always be watching our ongoing costs with personnel, which has continued to rise. So thank you. Any other questions, council members? Seeing none, I'm going to chime back in for my second time to speak on this issue. And I'll say this too. Charlie's shop, that department, that division is new. And I think they're still kind of filling out what their role is and addressing a lot of needs. My concern is making it too people or personnel heavy for the long run and then have to do things a different way. I think there's an opportunity to steal fun and try to address that need, whether that is temporarily hiring a person in and seeing that that's the best way to address it or looking to see if there's a partner agency that can do it. But I think one of the things that Charlie said is there's only so many ways you can address that need. And some of it is going to be directing folks to different services or things to help address the need. So it may be something that we could add to the website later, something that we can put on a call in service to help point people to the best place possible. So I'm supportive of addressing the need, but making it a permanent position is what concerns me the most. So with that, I don't see anybody else with any questions. So council member, I'll turn it back over to you to make motions. Thank you, Chair. I move that we fund the housing navigation specialist position at $72,114. This position would provide dedicated staff to help those seeking housing navigation services, help eviction prevention, and identify affordable housing units that person or citizen may need. So move. Second. All right, a motion's been made by Council Member Lynch and seconded by Council Member Savigny. Are there any questions to the motion? Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Not necessarily a question, just justification. I can't support this at this moment. I think we need to do some further investigation on how this need could be met in other ways. So I just wanted to let you know that I can't support it right now. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Because we are sending our list of asks to the administration to kind of come back to us with suggestions, is this something where they could potentially give us two options or proposals to address some of the concerns or kind of look at different options for this? I'm saying, hey, it's not. And so the answer to that question is yes. Okay. So I will support the motion at this point, but knowing that we might get other options to review when we have more extensive discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. I don't see anybody else signed up. I'm going to pass the chair to Council Member Ellinger. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Council Member. Ultimately, I'm supportive of it. So however way it falls, I'll be supportive. But I would just, I'm going to attempt to make, I feel like, about to sound like Steve Kay, a friendly amendment. I'm going to look to make an amendment. And it's just to amend the motion to allocate this money towards professional services. as opposed to a dedicated staff person to address the need or to bring somebody on board to coordinate housing services. So just to clarify, it would be funding the same amount to $72,000 in Charlie's shop to try to figure out how to get somebody to address this need going forward. So move. Second. We have a motion and a second. We have discussion. Councilmember Gray? On the amendment? Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair, for the moment. So, Councilmember Brown, so when you say a different agency, could you be more specific? Yeah, and I don't know for certain. I'm just throwing out ideas. Say it's somebody with the Fair Housing Council. Say, maybe that's somebody that we can contract with as the city, But an MOU with them to have somebody that Caitlin can send those calls and help provide that service as a housing navigator. And maybe there's another agency that can provide that same service, but maybe it's somebody that we can partner with. Or potentially maybe it's somebody that we can hire on an interim basis to come in and help us figure that out. And maybe the determination after that is, yeah, this does need to be a position, a firm position in city government. But I think phrasing it this way and putting the money towards professional services will give us the time and the flexibility to figure out whether that's a long term need and that's the way that we need to do it going forward. I hope that answers your question. So I think it's several ways to cook a pork chop, so to speak. Thank you, council member. I just want to be clear that in my district, we have a large number of housing issues in which we've had other agencies helping, and it has not been a great success, such as with our Bourbon Court apartments that have been condemned, and we're still having housing issues with residents who are seeking help to leave that property. So I just want to make sure that everyone understands that working with other agencies who don't have the same, I guess, check marks or accountability that we have has not gone smoothly for the residents that we're supposed to protect. But I do understand about cutting costs for personnel because it is like a majority of our general fund, if I'm correct. so um but i just want to make sure you understand thank you thank you councilmember laguri thank you chair um councilmember brown i just wanted to speak to your amendment i appreciate the intention behind the amendment i have to say that in my experience it has been so helpful to have a specialist within government to refer individuals to who are having difficulty navigating housing and that consistency of communication and the way in which my office has received feedback from Commissioner Lanter's office and his staff has allowed me to better serve my residents in need. And I really do feel as though having that consistency of service and having someone in-house to show that we're dedicated to continuing to meet those needs, which I don't unfortunately I don't think will go away makes a big difference for me functionally and I think for our community. So though I understand that some of these needs could be met with external service providers, at this moment I am inclined to support the original motion, which is to have someone in house. And I just wanted to speak to that. Councilman Sidigni. Thank you. And I'm just going to pile on that. And while I appreciate your motion and its intent, I think that there are things that constituents expect us to own as a city. One is public safety, fire. And I do think that our constituents expect us to own some problems that have occurred with housing in general. And so if I'm going to own it as a city person, I do want my own staff to manage it. And I can say that our staff is so responsible when I make a phone call to them. I don't necessarily know that it would be the same if it was a third-party agency. But I appreciate it, and I won't be supporting your amendment. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I seconded this amendment solely because while I do support the intent of the position, I think it's really important for us to utilize kind of a temporary funding source or a temporary position so that we can evaluate further what this position could do for our community. I would be more apt to support fully funding a position moving forward after we've had a year's worth of data to compare, because it is a huge investment for us to fund an ongoing position. So I just wanted to add my two cents. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you. At first, I just want to say I'm really thankful that we have a housing division now, because it was a huge gap. And as I mentioned previously, it is still a huge need to help people navigate through housing options. I just want to make it really clear that our partner agencies do not have capacity to take on another person as well. They are max, most of them. And they are nonprofits that are doing the best they can with what they have. There's not magically one of them out there that's like, oh, yes, I have capacity to build housing and help people navigate housing. They are trying, but they are very limited in what they can do. And in some cases, we have not given people enough support, especially over the past few years, even though we have tried with everything that happened with COVID. So I cannot support this amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brown, you had wanted, I think, to chime in at some point. Do you want to follow up with anything? Yeah, and I'll be brief. So if we put that funding in professional services, I think it gives Charlie and his shop the opportunity to bring somebody in-house and do it and actually try to build that job and see what that job winds up being before we completely create the position and have to carry the cost ongoing. Partner agencies, that's just a suggestion. And I think this is something that we wouldn't ask them to do in addition to what they're doing, but we would provide funding to pay them to do it. It would potentially be an agreement. So that's kind of how I was thinking about it. Could you restate the amendment process motion just to make sure everybody understands it? I guess the nuts and bolts of it is instead of creating a new position, just allocate the same amount of funding to professional services. in that budget to do just what this position would do. Thank you. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Nay. The nays have it. I will relinquish the chair back to that fails, and you can handle the motion. Thank you, council members. And I will say that the nays didn't have to be that loud. All right. So council members, we're back on the original motion made by council member Lynch. Are there any questions to the original motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. I don't think we have to do the thing, just that motion passes. All right, thank you council members. Good discussion. Council Member Lynch, do you have any other motions? Only one more, and I'm not sure if this should be a motion or a recommendation, but the link recommends that evaluation of community and resident services assistance programs be simplified and the funding structure condense to just make it more user-friendly. And we were proposing that that should go to the Social Services and Public Safety Committee for evaluation and a little bit of research and study along with Danielle Sanders as a way to simplify their funding assistance programs for the public and for staff too. So I don't know if that's, does that need to be a motion or? Yeah, let's do that in the form of a motion. You can do them both in one motion that these go to certain committees. Okay. Then I move that we place in the Social Services and Public Safety Committee the link recommendation to look at the funding assistance programs under the community and resident services, as well as the emergency financial assistance program, monitoring that funding to make sure that we are allotting enough money to that funding stream in the future. So move. Second. All right. That motion was made by Council Member Lynch and seconded by Council Member LeGree. Are there any questions to that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Thank you, Council Member Lynch, for your report out. Thank you, Chair. And those motions. Next on the agenda is Council Member Legree with Environmental Quality and Public Works. Council Member. Thank you, Chair. I want to start by saying thank you to Councilmember Fred Brown who chaired our link and to Councilmember Savigny who did a lot of diligent research as part of our link group. Thank you also to our CAO, to Commissioner Albright, to our budget team, and to Kelly Farley for all of your work. We had a lot of different bits of research that were done for some of our funding requests and we really appreciate all the timely responses that we received all along the way. So we'll go ahead and move forward with the next slide. As you all can see, environmental quality and public works is inclusive of streets and roads, water quality, waste management, engineering, traffic engineering, environmental services, building inspection, and the EQPW commissioner's office. We're going to start out with streets and roads. And we provided kind of a detailed overview of some funding from the adopted and mayor's proposed budgets and then some highlights. So you can see a couple of our highlights which have to do with paving. Unfortunately, council member Fred Brown is not here to talk about paving, but I'll try to forge ahead anyway. Paving, maintenance, crack and seal, and rejuvenation. You can see that we've funded at 14 million last year, which was a big deal because it got us closer to our goal than ever before. You can see here some additional funding for salt and salt barns. And then some discussion right here about vacuum leaf collection and related contractual expenses. And you all may recall some of our discussion about leaf shoots and the like as we transitioned our mode of service around leaf vacuuming. You can see with our link recommendation, first and foremost we choose to accept the mayor's proposed budget and then I'll have some items to refer to committee. But something that came up in our discussion had to do with fleet depreciation and replacement. And we feel as though it would be appropriate to receive an updating committee about some of those needs so that all of council can be aware of some of our next steps and associated potential budgetary impacts in that area. Next slide. Now we're going into water quality. You can see the overview and then I'll move on to the highlights. Thank you. Right here you can see that some of the highlights have to do with our the recurring sanitary sewer overflow abatement process and our capital construction program. And this is really wonderful. The Division of Water Quality has spent about $100 million less than projected as of 4-28-2023, with only 46 projects remaining to be completed. Our link recommendation here was to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Next, we're at waste management. You can see our overview and then we're going on into the highlights. 20 public service worker positions were requested. And the mayor's proposed budget includes funding for one public service supervisor and ten additional public service workers. So we did have a discussion with waste management about those needs and It felt as though this was a step in the right direction, even though all 20 were not fully funded. So that was part of our discussion. And you can see some of our highlights about material recovery affiliates for processing the recyclables. That's always a discussion, who's taking the recyclables? Do we have partners in that process? And so you can see that we do. And something that we wanted to note here is that the contract with Waste Services of the Bluegrass is scheduled to terminate July 4th, 2025. And even though that's not this year, we just wanted people to be aware of it because it may be part of our future work and discussions. Our link recommendation here was to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Engineering, there's our overview. Engineering highlights. So all projects currently in the five year Lexington area MPO transportation improvement program are in an active phase, which is fantastic. And we have had some of these discussions, colleagues, as we've been talking about the compensation study and related personnel issues in the last several years. There have still been some ongoing challenges with the ability to retain and attract experienced project managers. We know that it's a really competitive market with a lot of demand for these types of positions. So we just want you to be aware of this, that this conversation is going to continue. And though we don't have any link recommendations to put it in committee, it's something that we want to continue thinking about. So the link recommendation here is to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Traffic engineering. There's our overview. Traffic engineering highlights. You all are all aware of the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program, which we call NTMP. And you can see here that in the proposed budget, there's an increase of $100,000. So that's fantastic. We know that there are a lot of requests for neighborhood traffic management initiatives. And we want to make sure that we're able to fund those and make them actionable. Link recommendation, accept the mayor's proposed budget. All right, environmental services. You can see our overview here. And then we're going to go into some highlights before we get into our link recommendations, which are a little bit more involved with this area. So our highlights, and you all remember that we talked about our hazardous street tree cost share program. There are a lot of questions about accessibility and was there enough funding and how do we make sure that the people who need this program most can access it. So you can see here that the funding was increased. It's at 150,000 there. So that's positive because it's going to help us meet more need within the community and do more outreach. And then you can see here another highlight is that there's now funding provided to develop and teach sustainability curriculum throughout the community with the Kentucky Association for Environmental Education and to conduct outreach for the Solarize Lexington program, which has been very popular. And then to begin implementation of the updated Empower Lexington plan, which has been in the works for quite some time. So we're glad that we're going to be able to move forward on that. Let's talk about the link recommendations. So these are interesting in that it looks like we're fully funding positions in a way we are. But so you'll see right here, there are three positions, the public services supervisor, the environmental initiative specialist, and then another environmental initiative specialist. At the beginning of your packet for today's meeting on page 11, you'll see a little bit more detail about those. But because these positions are already in existence in a part time capacity, the individuals who are working these positions are actually working full time, but they're not in established full time positions. So the differential between their quote unquote part time work and a full time established position is very slim. So you can see here for the public service supervisor, that's a net change of about $6,700. To make the public initiative specialist A and B full time, that's only a net change of about $1,648. And part of our discussion had to do with the importance of showing people who are in these roles that we want to keep them, that we want to retain them, and providing them with stability and benefits as a result. They're already doing the work, we want them to be able to stay. So after some research, you can see here, we noticed the net change was pretty small, and That's why we chose to recommend funding those in addition to the high need in this department for personnel. Second, you can see our recommendation to fund the Greenway Management Plan update. And we have specialists here in government who can speak to the details of that management plan. But this update has not been funded in over 20 years. So we thought that it was a worthy cause and plan to fund. And so that you're aware, the master plan focuses on planning and management of greenways, which are both public and private in Lexington, Fayette County. And it will help define a clear path toward an overall greenway system that promotes healthy living, conserves habitats and biodiversity, and incorporates water quality protection and tourism and economic development. You can see here that we've split the funding in our request between the general fund and the water quality management fund. Chair, do you want me to entertain any questions here or would you like me to forge ahead and then make the motions? Let's see if any council members have any questions here. Okay. Council members, first up is council member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. And just know that every position that comes up, I'm going to ask these questions. I have a question about whether or not the environmental initiative specialists were originally requested and the mayor just didn't put them in her proposed budget or if they are new positions. They were requested. They were requested. Yes. Okay. That's all I need. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Jennifer, did you have anything that you wanted to add? Angela. Angela. Hey, yeah, my bad. All right, so maybe I'll just start, stick with titles. All right, council members, if there's no other questions, I'll turn it over you for motion. Just some of the motions you're going to make, I think these positions get funded out of other funds. If you want to include that in your motion. That's okay. That's good clarifying information, thank you. We're almost finished and then we'll move forward to the motions. Thank you. All right, thank you council members. Of course. All right. Building inspection, you can see our overview. And you can see that zoning enforcement duties and staff were assumed by building inspection from the division of planning in September 2022, so that's a pretty substantial change. Though we are choosing to accept the mayor's proposed budget here, something that came up in conversation within the link had to do with the need to refer short term rental enforcement to the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee, if that's an appropriate committee. I think it could go into a number of different committees, but this is the one that we settled on for an update and presentation. due to the relationship of that work to building inspection. EQPW Commissioner's Office, you can see our overview. And a highlight here is that in the mayor's proposed budget, you can see that there's increased funding for operation of the compressed natural gas facility. And our link recommendation was to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Any questions before we go on to motions? I'm not seeing any, Council Member. Okay. Council Member. Well, yeah, we do. Council Member Ellinger. Okay. The vacuum leaf collection. Anybody want to talk on that? Probably not, but. Do you have a specific question you'd like addressed? addressed yeah i would i just another stranger before you i'm brad stone here for nancy albright uh yeah could you tell us um what do we have budgeted and and how the pro program worked last year and i know uh in the fifth district there were some issues there that well i know we it was an issue there so i want to i want to help you not hurt you in this situation Well, the broad brush is that the department's now emphasizing the use of existing means of leaf collection within the context of overall yard waste management using the gray bin and also the biodegradable paper bags that we provide for free to citizens upon request. So picking it up at the curb instead of using vacuums. So that's what we did last time. That's what we're proposing to do again. I know we ran out of bags at one point. And is that going to be an issue going forward? It sort of depends on things that are out of our control, the supply chain and all that, but fingers are crossed. So we're basically going to use the same program that we did last year? That's my understanding, yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. I'm not done. I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. I've got three and a half left. Okay. On the water quality, on the division water quality, the $100 million that we're less. I see. Charlie, you want to? We're doing really well under budget. We have 46. Are we going to at some point probably catch up to what we thought we're going to spend, or do you think we're going to keep under that number? and have we been able to talk to the EPA to be able to, because I think 2026 is when our deadline is and we're asking for them to extend that. How are we coming on that? First of all, in terms of budget, we hope to stay under it. We monitor it on a pretty regular basis and all that. With inflation and all that, we have lost a little bit of ground over the last couple of years. But the goal was to come in somewhere below the original projection of $590 million. And as it is right now, we're projecting pretty good on that. As far as hearing back from EPA yet, as far as a schedule extension, we've not heard anything from them. It was submitted last August, and so we're running up on close to a year now as far as getting a response. I expect it probably by the end of summer. Thank you. And then I had a question on the requested 20 public service worker positions. Anybody want to tackle that one? Yeah, these positions are people who are, we envision people who do work on a contract basis through the labor works contract if we have folks within that pool of people who feel we feel like could warrant a permanent assignment we would offer them jobs that way so these are going to be new positions that are going forward will they be part-time full-time full-time full-time they would be uh supplanting that uh contract cost so it'd be sort of a net neutral budget neutral sort of thing. That's all. I think somebody stand up that might want to make it. No, you don't want to give any? You sure? Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And I guess the last one would be a question I have is about with waste services, Bluegrass are terminating in 2025. Right. Because we had to move from Georgetown to, or I guess kind of go where we stand right now. And what What happens if we can't go to where we're at right now, where does that leave us? Well, the renewals are over with for that contract, it's been 10 years. So we have to re-bid it. So the vendor we select, hopefully we'll have a landfill identified on the front end with their bid. And so we'll know where our waste is going through that RFP process. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. So my question is just one for clarification of me, for me. Gentlemen? Gentlemen? Please. I'll carry on. Please continue. So, is Commissioner Lanter, When we speak about housing, in which committee does it fall under? Because I'm just wondering, or the short-term, or anything dealing with housing, or in this case, short-term rentals, it falling under, or enforcement following under the EQPW, I sort of find that interesting. So I think Charlie's shop falls under social service and public safety, but there are different divisions that may help with enforcement of short-term rentals. I think that's the reason for the recommendation going to that committee. And it's because building inspection is in EQPW. But where does code enforcement fall off? It's a separate question. Where does that fall under? Charlie Lantern position. Which would be under what committee? Social services and public safety. Okay. So what's the question? That was the question. I asked if everyone was listening. I was asking for clarification for myself. Okay. That was what it was. but it seems that there's some confusion council member will agree council member gray i think per my remarks as i was giving the report out the enforcement of short-term rentals in that discussion as you're perhaps insinuating could fall into a variety of different spaces in this case because building an inspection falls within the eqpw division i think that's why we originally said perhaps we should put that short-term rental enforcement discussion in eqpw though i i do think that potentially it could fall under planning or general gov so that might be a conversation we revisit but i you're right there are lots of different ways i could play out thank you it was just confusing so thank you so much council member lagree Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Council Member Gray. Any other questions? All right, well, then I'll turn it back over to you, Council Member. Thank you, Chair. And just to clarify, as you were mentioning earlier, as I make the motions, I know we haven't been doing this thus far, but do you want me to say the fund when it split, or how would you like that to be handled? I think the best way to say it is all funds that may impact these positions. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah, okay. I'm just trying to, I'm just organizing. That sounds good. I'll go ahead and make the motions then. I move to create a civil service position to replace slash abolish a part-time position supervising the horticultural maintenance crew in the urban forestry section. This position will be named a public services supervisor and will come out of the general fund 1101. So moved. Is that appropriate? And all of the funds that may impact this position. This one, just general for this one. A motion is made by Council Member LeGray. Was it Council Member LeGray that seconded? All right. Are there any questions on this motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Council Member. Thank you. I move to create an environmental initiative specialist civil service position to replace slash abolish a part time position in the public information engagement section. And to serve as a community outreach coordinator. via the full urban services district fund 1115, the sanitary sewer fund 4002, the water quality management fund 4051, and the landfill fund 4121. So moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Councilmember Legree and seconded by Councilmember Sevigny. Are there any questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to create an environmental initiative specialist civil service position to replace slash abolish a part time position in the public information and engagement section. And to serve as an event coordinator for EQPW and NPO via the full urban services district fund 1115, the sanitary sewer fund 4002, the water quality management fund 4051, and the landfill fund 4121, so moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by council member Lagree and seconded by council member Sevigny. Are there any questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to update the Greenway Master Plan with a comprehensive plan, manual and ordinance to parallel the current comprehensive plan process. With a focus on planning and management of Greenway's both public and private in Lexington, Fayette County. so called the Greenway Master Plan update at a total amount of $250,000 via the General Fund 1101 and the Water Quality Management Fund 4051, so moved. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Legree and seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. I move to refer streets and roads fleet depreciation and replacement to the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee for a presentation. So moved. That motion was made by Council Member LaGurie and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to refer short term rental enforcement via building inspection to the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee for an update and presentation. So moved. That motion was made by Council Member Legree and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Chair, that completes my motions that I need to make on behalf of our link. And I did want to say one more thing, and that's to give a big thank you to our legislative aides who were instrumental in gathering all of this information, especially Shante and for all of their hard work behind the scenes making sure that this process went smoothly. Thank you, Councilmember Duguri. Thank you, sir. All right, is everybody good to continue forward? Just FYI, if we could get to a good stopping point at sometime between 11.45 and 11.50, we'll take a break. We'll take a 45-minute break for lunch or however long it takes for us to go to lunch and try to get back here about 12.30. And the press conference. And yeah, there's a press conference at noon. So we'll move to the next item on the agenda, and that's finance, economic development, and planning. Link report out by Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I would like to first thank the other council members on my link, Councilmember Worley and Councilmember Menares. I would also like to thank our aides, Layton, Renee, and Will for keeping us scheduled and organized and gathering all of the information that we needed. I would like to thank Kelly Farley as well for helping all of us on all of our budget work. Thank you to Commissioner Hensley and her team and everyone in the administration and our partner agencies that answered all of our questions so quickly to allow us to kind of move through this information at the fast pace that we are required to do. Council Member Bexler had to present at the very beginning. She extends her thank yous to everyone as well. she had to go out of order so it threw her off her game. So, okay. For finance, economic development, and the planning and preservation link, the link agenda is up here. We had the finance area, the office of economic development, planning and preservation, and then we had a few partner agencies. The Bluegrass Area Development District, Explorium, and LexArts will be in the presentation today. The Lexington Center Corporation and VisitLex are both funded out of the transient room tax, so we're not going to be presenting those today because they have set amounts that they receive. Here is our general fund overview for all of those different offices and the amounts that we reviewed. And then starting with Commissioner of Finance, This is our overview of the funding. Some of the highlights, increased funding provided for bank fees for the enhancement of lockbox services, creating efficiencies in collection deposits and processing. And there was a noted increase in customer desire to access information on mobile devices, particularly for our Department of Revenue. For the link recommendation, we recommend that we accept the mayor's proposed budget for this section. For accounting, you see the overview in the table there. Funding was provided for leasing and maintenance of additional... Sorry, I just moved past my thing. Okay, provided for leasing and maintenance of additional copiers due to account payable and payroll relocating their offices. And continued assistance in creating reporting and providing accounting reports related to the ARPA funds that we had. The link is recommending that we accept the mayor's proposed budget here. For budgeting, you can see in the tables the overview there. There was one capital project which was the LexBuds system migration. For budget highlights, reinstating training for staff members, continuing to provide funding for printed budget documents. We can review that later when we talk about recycling and EQPW, just kidding. Successfully spearheaded an ordinance to change the budget amendments process to allow more flexibility for departments to manage our budgets. And as a part of a collective bargaining team, this team participated in five memorandums of understanding with bargaining units in the last fiscal year. So it's a huge undertaking. The link recommends that we accept the mayor's proposed budget. For procurement, you see the overview of the funding in the table there. For the highlights, this division has continued to improve remote work processes while maintaining a high level of customer service. The funding for the minority and women business enterprise program disparity study and then some of the work for the recommendations from that study have come through this office. We are, the link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget here. For our revenue department, you can see the overview in the tables here. One capital project is the short-term rental software. We have asked VisitLex and they have agreed to provide match funding for the first year for this technology. So LFUCG and VisitLex are both providing $100,000 for us to acquire that funding and put it into use this first year. Revenue highlights. Funding provided for one new revenue compliance auditor position, savings and operating achieved by no longer using IRS software, so switching over, moved several tax filings to lock boxes, which decreased processing time. Tax compliance staff increased their average monthly collections by $10,000 per month. And LexServe has reduced the total outstanding balance from delinquent accounts by 50% and the total number of delinquent accounts by 36 percent for the link we are recommending we accept the mayor's proposed budget here moving right along office of economic development you can see the overview in the table here there is one capital project which is a grant match for the cold stream legacy business park for this office highlights there was funding for one new administrative specialist position there's an additional 25 000 in here for funding for dr michael clark who is the person that we consult with at university of kentucky to update our employment trends and workforce analysis report to provide post-covid pandemic reporting but this funding will also provide access to the web to their website labor market information including data trend charts and graphs and other information throughout the year and then continued funding for Coldstream Legacy Business Park. The link recommendation is to accept the proposed the mayor's proposed budget here. For planning, you can see a overview in the tables here. The one capital project funding is to have a facility update for the planning office. Planning highlights. Continued funding provided to maintain the Imagine Lexington Comprehensive Plan website. The adoption of the 2023 Comprehensive Plan goals and objectives is underway and a big undertaking for our planning staff. Adoption of ZODA ordinance text amendments for parking and open space requirements. and then they completed the LFUCG and MPO Complete Streets Policy and that work group is underway. Our link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget here. For the Historic Preservation Office, you can see the overview of the numbers in the table. Highlights here, increased funding for professional services to accomplish site professional training for the Board of Architectural Review and the Historic Preservation Commission on Staff. They processed and worked with and reviewed over 46 federal Section 106 projects and reviewed 179 applications for demolition of structures and fully documented 18 of which were determined to be historic per ordinance. Our link recommends accepting the mayor's proposed budget. For our purchase of development rights or the PDR program, program. Overview of funding in the table there. Highlights for this area, significant increases in funding for professional services, particularly for legal services, and the Rural Land Management Board and the PDR program have 15 farms under contract with eight more being processed. There are two numbers up here, sorry. One says nine, it says 15 in parentheses. Beth do you want to give us a clarification there? 15. Okay so 15 farms under contract and eight more being processed. Then the next link recommendation to accept the mayor's proposed budget here. Bluegrass Area Development District. Our overview of the funding is here in the table and our Our link is recommending the mayor's proposed budget. And we have started with our partner agencies. The Bluegrass Area Development District is one of our partner agencies. So is the Explorium. You can see the overview of their funding here in the table. Some highlights from them and their presentation to us. They welcomed over 20,000 guests through the museum and engaged with another 5,000 plus in the community with hands-on, STEAM and humanities-based programming. They recently completed a five-year strategic plan and they have overhauled the Explorium educational programming and events. The link recommendation here is to accept the mayor's proposed budget. And then finally with LexArts, you can see the overview of funding here in the table. Highlights for them, they launched the new Fund for the Foles initiative which allows local schools to bring in arts programming or to take field trips to art spaces and activities. Provides art equity grants funding for projects and programs specifically focused on initiatives that provide art opportunities to underserved artists and audiences. Our link recommendation is to increase the LexArts funding by a hundred thousand dollars as requested from the general fund. So I'll pause here for questions and then come back for motions. Thank you, Council Member. First on the list is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I was wondering if you could speak to the increase in LexArc's funding and what that will be going toward. Yes. They have requested funding for a grants or development person that will allow them to obtain more funding to use for the community. And then it also frees up some of their budget to have more granting opportunities for the community as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. My question is regarding the PDR. Thank you. So I see that we have 15 farms under contract with eight more being processed. So out of those 15 and plus eight, how many of those farms are for people of color? Um, let's see, we do not track that in PDR, as far as, you know, we don't keep that type of data. I could research, I could check that off the top of my head, but I could certainly check that and get back to you. Yes, because that's been a growing concern. Okay. And I'm just curious, since we're giving money and we're budgeting money for this, we want to make sure there's equity in who receives the funds that we give out. Last count that I saw was that we had zero. But I will await your list. I just want to make sure that we're equitable and making sure that we disperse the funds in a way that is conducive to our population that we do have. Okay, yes. Okay, I'll be happy to get that to you. Thank you. Thank you so much. That is it. Thank you, Council Member Gray. Next is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I just have a question on the Lexart stuff. And it could be that I'm just struggling to understand it. But it looks like their request on the general services district fund went from 625 to nothing. And I'm just curious what their real request was. And did we just meet it with other funds that aren't totally listed here? And was there a general discussion about the optics of how all that looks in your link? And just because funding to the arts is kind of important to me. And I just think it's a great economic development tool and I just don't want to screw it up. I can answer some of this and please jump in if you would like. The 625 was actually the fiscal year 23 adopted and They have been consistently, well, the last couple years funded at 325, and that has been coming from our ARPA funding. This 100 would be additional funding on top of that from the general fund. So the 325, they asked for 425, they were awarded 325 in the mayor's proposed budget, and we're allocating an additional 100. Please chime in if you have any other things to add. You're exactly right. When council set the ARPA long-term budget, we actually had ARPA funding for FY22 and FY24, but 23 got missed. And so we ended up funding 23 out of the general fund. It was $325,000. And then they received another $300,000 for a master plan for them as well. And so that's why it's $625,000. They did ask for $425,000 this year. since we already had the allocation of ARPA at 325. That's what was funded in the mayor's proposed budget with no additional general fund in addition to that. And I will just add that this is also trying to get them closer to what we were funding them at at pre-pandemic levels. In 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, they were 415 or above. So it is kind of returning that funding. Great. Thank you. And I just have one follow-up. Isn't there also a, what's the 1% concept for LexArts? Is it like 1% of bonded projects or something? And does that show up in here or is that something else? So it's not actually for LexArts. It is for community public art. And it is run out of the mayor's office. Heather's the main driver of that. And it is 1% on our bonded projects. It has been. It's currently in reviewing committee of if there are items that are bonded that should not be included in that calculation of the 1%. So we'll await to see what the committee comes up with as far as the total allocation for this year. Okay, thank you. My bad, I mixed up the two. Thank you so much. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Ellinger. I think council member Worley wanted to speak to then, if that's okay. I don't mind. Council member. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member. I think I would just add, I think Blink Chair did a great job describing some of the conversation that we had. But then I think also keeping in mind, too, that part of the master plan work that they did, that's our master plan also. That's an arts master plan. So that wasn't money just for them, but that's work that they did for us. So now their request is really just trying to get into what has been the traditional funding and to build that back up. So I think the link was all, there was a lot of discussion about that, but it was all very supportive, positive discussion. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. In the budgeting, we used to do the budget and the brief, and we talked about doing that again. Are we going to ever come back to that? Because that was always a good tool to have. I know you put in your continued funding to provide budgeted, printed budgeted documents. The upgraded software does have a different reporting mechanism that we can use. The problem with the small rectangular budget and brief was that software was no longer supported and so it did not work for us. We're hoping with the upgrade that we can come back to that. That is our goal. We'll try to get something close to that. It may not be exactly the same size, but the new reporting software. I know it was beneficial for me and then also whenever you go speak to people, they have that. I think it's a nice tool for the constituents. So, yes, thank you. The next one is on revenue and where we are with the disparity study and going forward with that. I know we put the money in. I think we have it. Now it's the implementation. Where do we stand on that? Yeah, that's actually in procurement. We've got that item in committee to be presented in August. I think it's in the budget and finance committee because we had a number of council members who were not here the first time it was presented. So we had a placeholder amount in the budget for any recommendations that may come out of that committee. Okay, thank you. Yes, sir. And then the Office of Economic Development, the grant match with CoalStream, the $500,000. Can you go over that for me, please? and then how we're doing on the business part, too. So the grant match, we've got a couple of grant requests in right now, and they both require varying amounts of match. This would meet one of those, and we're comfortable with where we are on the other after conversations with the CAO and her team that we can use the ARPA dollars to match up against potential state funding in a grant. What would we use the money for? It would go all toward the construction of the infrastructure on site. So right now, what do we put in, $9 million or so? The ARPA dollars have $9.5 million. And then at one point it was $18 million, but that's gone up now, right? Yeah, it's gone up considerably. It's just under $25 million. So we still have to come up with the difference between basically $10 million and $25 million? Yeah, but we're looking at different grant opportunities, other funding opportunities along the way. It's something we spend a lot of time working on. We're trying to do as much of it without any borrowing as possible. Thank you. And the business area development district, the 109, is that for membership or what does that pay for? Council member, that figure represents two-part, our membership dues and also our home care match for our aging program. Okay, thank you. And the last question I had was on Lexark, and that was answered, so thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council member. Are there any other questions for that link report out presentation? If not, I'll turn it back over to you, Council Member. Thank you. On behalf of our link, I will make the motion to allocate $100,000 from General Fund to LexArts to support their grants writer position and additional community arts development grants. So moved. All right. That motion was made by Council Member Sheehan and seconded by Council Member Savigny. Are there any questions? Council Member Lynch. Due to my primary employment, I'm going to recuse myself from this vote. Thank you. All right, are there any additional questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes with one recusal. Thank you, council member Shin. Yeah. Council members, we're right at 1144. I think this is a good moment for us to take a break for lunch with us returning here at 1230. And what's the, Stacy, what's the appropriate term, motion to recess or? Do they give them the time that the press can't get to do? Or one can better? So my suggestion is 1230, but the concern is the press conference. But I just want to make sure that we have enough time to get through the last link in the council report outs. We have lunch on the way too, so you guys don't have to try to leave to come back. Okay, so, yeah, so we don't have to. So do you think? All right, I'd entertain a motion to recess until 1245. So moved. Second. All right, that motion was made and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right, none opposed. And consider this meeting recessed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the middle of the room. I'm going to put a little bit of a bag of water. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go ahead and continue this May 30th Committee of the Whole meeting for the FY24 budget. And we'll pick up where we left off, and that was with Social Services and Public Safety Link Report out. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. and we may be last but we are not least so good afternoon everybody first I would like to thank councilmember Ellinger and Fogle for serving with me on this link to our aides especially to my aid who put a lot of work into our packets and to CAO Hamilton and Commissioner Hensley and also to Kelly Farley as well as many others. Thank you for all your hard work to make things happen. So first off I just want to go over the link agenda. We had in our link social services. This includes social services administration under that domestic violence prevention, partners for youth, substance abuse, and then aging and disability services, family services, youth services. Our partner agencies were the Human Rights Commission, juvenile treatment court, NAMI, the Hope Center. And then under public safety, we have the public safety administration, which includes animal control, security, ABC administrator. And then community corrections, E911, emergency management, fire and emergency services, and police. There you'll see the general fund overview and the social services administration overview. I'm just going to go through the highlights really quick for social services, for admin. We had funding provided for one new grants manager position, increased funding provided for language line, COA recreditation fee and maintenance. And then we had extended social resource grant program, ESR, funded at 1% of FY22 revenues and includes non-contracted dollars for the nonprofit capital. We had operating dollars provided for the operations of the Charlotte Ziong Center, increased funding provided for safe measures housing, safety equipment, and support for domestic violence survivors, and then the continued funding for the recovery supportive living assistance, the RSLA program, through the use of grant funding and general fund dollars. So out of this, we wanted to accept the mayor's proposed budget with the following additions. the link is recommending to fund the community implementation coordinator from general fund 1101 at the estimated cost of fifty thousand um and eight dollars so this would just fund that for an eighth month salary and benefits due to the plans higher in november so that is that was our one recommendation out of that area Then with aging and disability services, the main highlight was funding for professional services increased to add an extra fitness class to meet the demands. And we accepted the mayor's proposed budget with the following additions. The link recommends to fund the senior emergency fund from general fund at an estimated cost of $30,000. this fund is a fund that is available to our seniors for rent and utilities and any emergency needs that they might have and this proved to be a really important something that was not funded in the mayor's proposed budget but that was asked for and we were told was very important then we go on to family services the highlights or the contract with the fayette county public schools for bus transportation will remain flat for the fiscal year and we recommend to accept the mayor's proposed budgets. Youth services, some highlights are funding provided through ARPA for the summer youth job training program and then summer youth job training program year-round program is funded through the general fund and we wanted to accept the mayor's proposed budget here for partner agencies you will see that list of partner agencies that i mentioned previously and we wanted to accept the mayor's proposed budget except we had one recommendation and that was for the human rights commission there is there is a misprint here under the human rights commission so they had asked for 56 000 more than was proposed in the mayor's budget and so they were requesting that 56 000 and that would be for one part-time staff member a three percent cost of living increase for all employees because their employees have not had an increase in several years and year-end bonuses for all employees and a 15 increase in operating costs that was all included in the 56 000 the crown act was not we did not suggest any money beyond that but we do recognize that there might be an additional work due to passing the crown act so we are just recommending the 56 000 that they had originally asked for and then with nami and juvenile treatment court and hope center we accept the mayor's proposed budget in the public safety administration there was funding provided for new visitor management system and panic system and there was increased funding provided for the operations of the lexan fit animal care and control operations and we accept the mayor's proposed budget. Under community corrections, there's several highlights. Funding was provided to establish a part-time rehire program for officers, increased funding for sworn personnel, costs associated with contractual raises and incentives. There was funding provided to add an additional women's caseworker for the Hope Center Recovery Program at the jail. There was... Additional funding provided to account for the contractually mandated increases in the medical, mental health, and food services contract. And increased funding to provide and replace inmate mattresses, uniforms, linen, and linens, as well as other minor equipment throughout the facility. And we accept the mayor's proposed budget here. For E911, some of the highlights are that E911 fund subsidy of $2,855,332 is required because expenses exceed revenues. The subsidy is one of the form of transfer and is pre-funded through a general fund reallocation for FY24. Funding for the recruitment and retention incentives is being carried over in order to continue efforts to attract retain and hot and retain highly qualified and professional staff and we accept the mayor's proposed budget here emergency management you can see the numbers there and we accept the mayor's proposed budget fire and emergency services highlights there is funding for two additional firefighter positions for the paramedicine program we're really excited about that funding provided to retain the two social workers for the Paris medicine program also really excited about that and then discretionary funding of 10,000 provided for the paramedicine operating supplies to meet the needs of residents observed by the paramedicine professionals also continued funding throughout for smoke alarm program and funding provided to begin a thermal image replacement camera plan and we accepted the mayor's proposed budget there. Moving on to police, you can see different items there. There's a lot of there were a lot of requests from police. Some of the highlights were funding for one new computer information services civilian supervisor position, funding for one new open record civilian supervisor position, funding for one new bilingual victim advocate position, funding for one new intelligence specialist for our RTIC position that was previously frozen, funding for one new intelligence specialist for our RTIC position, funding to begin a new retiree rehire program, increased funding and professional services due to increased use in language line services, recruiting, investigative technology services, background services, investigative toes, increased funding and software maintenance for software subscriptions, Axon agreement, and flock safety agreement. Funding for lease at Center Parkway no longer needed in FY24. So here we wanted to accept the mayor's proposed budget with the following additions. To fund the four safety officers from the general fund at an estimated cost of $263,816. We thought this was important because it would free up police officers and it would make our roads a lot safer. The link, and this was a request of theirs. And then the link recommends to fund one of the two traffic radar trailers from the general fund at an estimated cost of $21,000 due to the concerns that we receive on almost daily basis about speeding and the need for those in the city. Then we wanted to revisit the funding for the victim advocate civilian supervisor position during the fund balance discussion this fall. So we said we think that the victim advocate civilian supervisor position is important, but we're going to put that off for a fund balance this fall. Then the only other additional link recommendations that we had, similar to I think what environmental quality did, it kept coming up a lot about things like fleet and building maintenance. And so we just wanted to refer to general government and the planning committee to do a review and implement a plan for repairs and maintenance for our fleet and facility services or to go over one if there is one that exists and then also we wanted a referral to the Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee to dedicate a funding source for fleet and facilities maintenance and improvement projects. It's hard for us every year as we go through the budget to figure out what we should fund and what we shouldn't and we think that there should be a clear plan that's communicated in money dedicated for maintenance and fleet. And that is all. Thank you for that report out, council member. Are there any questions in regards to the presentation? First we have council member Gray. Thank you, chair. I'm like, where do we begin? I guess first I would like to, I guess, go back to social services area. Is the Human Rights Commission up here? Or is there anyone that can speak to? Hello, Commissioner Lanter. So my first question is, so the HRC is stating that the Crown Act is the reason for asking for the increase. It's mentioned in here. I think Councilmember. Yeah, I had said that that was a typo. All the other items is what they were asking for that increase. and then if they got anything beyond the 56,000, that would be because they might need increased work due to the Crown Act. But the Crown Act should not have been listed in that 56,000. So that entire sentence is incorrect? I caught it. I'm sorry. I didn't catch it. I didn't type it. But the Crown Act should not have been mentioned in that 56,000. Okay, because that was what I was going to say. Okay. I'll come back. I have a lot of questions. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. My first question has to do with the Community Implementation Coordinator. Hi. My first question, as is with all new positions, is was this a position that was requested? And not funded or is this something that came up in links? This was a position that was requested and not funded. Okay, and similarly to our conversation before, is this what the job requirements would be of this person? Are the services available in the community where we could partner with somebody to carry this out? Or do you feel like it's best suited in house? Walk me through that a little bit. So this is a gap in the community. We've recognized it through our fatality review teams. We've recognized it through other just needs assessments that we've done informally with the coalition. There is no one else in town doing this. There is the agency that is addressing grief within children, but nothing to specifically address children that witness domestic and sexual violence. And we know that domestic violence is a learned behavior, so if there's no one around to help those children unlearn those behaviors intentionally, then it just continues through the generations. We're also really focused on figuring out what trauma informed providers around the community could offer some services. So this person would be, like my position, coordinating services for children that have witnessed violence. Okay, thank you. And then I'm seeing that the 57,000 and some change was eight months worth of salary. What would a full year of salary be just so we're looking down the line? Sorry, I can ask another question and come back if you need a few minutes? Okay, thank you. My next question is about the Human Rights Commission. Commissioner, I know from chairing this link last year, we had some conversations about the lack of audits we've received from the Human Rights Commission. And I just wanted to get an update on where we stood with those audits and if they've provided that information to us. They are still well behind on completing their audits. The most recent one we've received is for FY 2015. We've received, that's one that we've received since last year. So they've completed one catch-up since last year. We did receive, we requested and received reassurance from their current auditor that they are working on all their audits. And what their strategy appears to be is they say they're going to do them all at once and then have them all ready at once as opposed to trickling out. But I have no timeline for that from them. Okay. And just to catch my council members, my fellow council members that weren't here last year up to speed, We had not received audits since FY21. It was 14. It was 14. And they are required to do one every year. So it was something that we had kind of put a hard stop on, on, you know, future funding isn't necessarily dependent upon, but additional funding will be something we will question if those audits are not received. so I just want to make that perfectly clear to everybody that they are not in compliance with our requirements and so I am hesitant to give them any additional funding at this time because they have not been able to meet that requirement thus far while I know they are working on it we have won since last year so it's a little frustrating but like I said I know they're working on it it's just taking a lot longer than we thought. That's all that I have Do we have a number yet? You want me to come back? $82,559. $82,500 and some change. Okay. So that's the salary for the community implementation coordinator. It would be $82,500 and some change moving forward. So that would be in the FY25 conversation. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next up is Councilmember Savigny. Thank you, Chair. My question is mostly on the public safety officers. And I don't know if someone wants to speak to that. Thank you. And my question primarily is, I was just trying to find where this was originally. Was this originally requested? was it turned down was there more than this requested and this was their balance just kind of get me to where we are here thanks yes it was an original request four is what we had requested and that I believe was what links put back in for that and there's a total right now of 16 and we'll raise it up to 20 and they still can't they're not really working 24-7 or anything like that no just no this is mainly uh traffic during the day and then a lot of traffic events on the weekend okay all right all right and does this adjust any other item by adding these people does it does anything else get adjusted downward because you have extra staff doing this or not i don't have any extra staff right now okay that's part of the problem yeah I get it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Ellinger. Let me make sure that I'm giving the correct information here, but I think right now their authorized strength is 16, and they have, I think, they had 15, and we're trying to increase their authorized strength from 16 to 20. So that's what we would be doing. If you're saying if we haven't filled all those positions, we haven't filled them because they're not an authorized strength yet. So that's what we're trying to do is increase the authorized rate for that. Yes, sir. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Lanter. I just want to follow up a little bit of what I just learned. Thank you, Council Member Baxter. So how often, what is being put in place to help the HRC complete their audits? I think you would have to ask the HRC that. They're a separate entity, so we can't make them do something. If council funds them, we provide the funds. I think the challenge has been that they're the only entity that can do what they do. and so you can't just not fund them because you need the hrc to do what they do um we have reached out to them on a regular basis insisting that this get done uh it's it's impacting their ability to get federal funds from us which they because they get that separately from what the general fund provides uh and the federal funds require it you know it's a it's a non-compliance um they don't receive enough federal funding to be required to produce a what we call a single audit which is the big expensive audit like we have to have done what we're all we're really talking about is just having an accountant audit their financial statements um and and that's what they're missing um why that has taken so long and why they're so far behind they've they've never really provided a sound reason for that so i guess we don't have a sound reason for giving them 56 000 um thank you um Commissioner Alan Bryant. Hello. Hello, thank you. I have a question regarding, I guess, the summer youth job program. Yes, ma'am. I know that it's currently being funded by ARPA. Yes, ma'am. So what happens when ARPA is no more? Well, we will be coming to you asking out of general fund. So how much in ARPA funds is it? I see. Yes. Okay. Okay, do you have any other programs that we're using ARPA to fund? Not current, so in our next fiscal year we'll be using general funds for RSLA. So no, it'll just be the summer youth job training program. Okay, thank you. Yes ma'am. I believe that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Are there any other questions in regards to the presentation? If there's not, then I have a couple questions myself. Chief Maynard, my first question is about the safety officers. So we had this program prior and a few years back, and correct me if I'm wrong, and I think we kind of went away from it. Did we go away, were they classified the same way before? Were they non-sworn civil service before, or did those officers have a different classification? That's my recollection, is that prior they were same. So we never really, we had a couple that stayed on. We just didn't rehire for a couple years, focusing on the SWORN enforcement. Here, as of late, we have increased that program to try to help with some of our staffing issues with SWORN, and that's where we're increasing that part of the traffic program. Okay. And I guess the reason I was asking that, do you think we'll get to a point once, you know, recruiting comes back around and we start getting back to our authorized strength for SWORN, that it would decrease the need for traffic safety officers, or do you think that need is going to be consistent? I think it's a combination of both. This is also a part of a recruiting tool as well. We may have someone that's not ready to be a sworn officer. We can hire them as a non-sworn traffic safety, come in to see how the role is, see how they work, and then have them transition into a sworn position. So ultimately, I think it's a good combination of both. Let's try to build that into a sworn officer position as well. Okay, okay. But that helps me understand that, so I appreciate that. And then my next question is, I guess I share the same concerns that we had previously about the community implementation coordinator. No, I'm good, Chief. Thank you. As the community implementation coordinator, and I'm thinking about this the same way that I'm thinking about the other position. Is there a way, instead of creating this position right now on the front end, is there a way that we can put that funding towards professional services and look to hire somebody to kind of help build out what that job needs to be? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I'm sorry that I wasn't listening for the prior conversation. But my initial thought is it would be, I mean, this is a really important position, and should we be lucky enough to be granted it? we would obviously want to put the best person we can find in it. And it would be difficult to convince that person to come along if we weren't paying them benefits, is my initial thought. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, and this is my other concern, too, is that, you know, So there's not just this, just like similar to the other positions. A lot of times there's a void for a need. We want to address that void, and the city isn't always the best tool or implementation to address it, and then we're constantly trying to figure it out. So I just want to make sure we're being good stewards of taxpayer money, And we're also working to address the needs that our community has voiced and has shared that they need. So I absolutely appreciate that. We have noticed this gap in services for a very long time. I know I went back and looked at the 2015 fatality reviews and it was also a recommendation there. And then it came up again in our 2023 recommendations and there weren't reviews in those intermittent years. So it's not that they were left out of there, there just weren't reviews. So we've recognized this problem for a long time. Unfortunately, I don't see domestic and sexual violence going away anytime soon. I'm doing my best, but it's just not happening yet. And again, there's just no one out there doing it. I mean, it would be great if another organization could pick it up, but so many of them are focused on direct survivor services. And this would be more of a macro position that would train people that interact with children. So coaches and teachers and daycare workers, training them in trauma informed care. So it wouldn't be a direct service, but really coordinating community, people that are interested in this issue around what is needed for these children. And I appreciate that. And Commissioner, it looks like you got something you want to add. And I'll say this before you chime in. I think as long as we stay focused on not providing direct services and coordinating, I think that's exactly what we should be doing. But I know there's been certain positions that have started off as coordinators and then they have evolved into direct services and that's where the challenge lies. Absolutely. Commissioner? No, I was just going to say, if it's the pleasure of the council, definitely we would put out an RFP and try to get the best person or persons to provide the service to the community, for this community. All right, thank you. It looks like I'm out of time, but if nobody else is signed up, I'm going to take my second opportunity to speak. And I guess I'll just add some comments to the Human Rights Commission conversation. They provide a lot of services for us. They're an extension of city government. I know there are concerns and I share those concerns with making sure that they're in compliance with what we're asking of them. But I know that they're experiencing some of the same challenges that everybody's experiencing with manpower and shorter services and want to put them in the best position to be able to hire people and to continue to provide the services that we're asking them for. So I know that might not help the conversation, but I just kind of wanted to add that. And then I will ask a question, are they, since they're a subsidiary of us, do we have the authority to have internal audit, take a look at them and maybe help them maybe define where they can make some improvements with their processes? Not necessarily fiscal audit, but our internal audit does a lot of helping us run better as a government. We don't think so. They are a separate, complete, separate legal entity from the LPCCG. We can check with internal audit, but it's our understanding right now. We're pretty sure that wouldn't work. Okay. Okay. I just try to talk about all the options, so that's all I have. Anybody else have questions about the presentation? What about this, council member? Just because, I'm trying to keep up with what we've been doing. Maybe your question could get addressed through the motions. When she makes a motion and it opens up a question, maybe that's an opportunity to ask it. Well, go ahead, council member, Greg, what's your question? Well, thank you, chairman, for being so willing to work with me. Thank you. So I have a question for our corrections facility. I understand that part of what we're funding is the medical care. Previously, or I should just wait until you get up there. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Commissioner. I know previously they used a business called Corizon. However, there were many issues with that company. And now that we're using, I think, you. Yes, Karen. Yes, I knew there was a Y there somewhere. However, after my own research, I noticed they are simply the same company with a different name. Are we having those same issues or anything similar? Without knowing the specific issues you're referencing at this time, it would be hard for me to talk case-by-case status. But I keep in constant contact with Chief Colvin out there. And he seems to be very happy with the medical services that they're providing at this time. They have a weekly meeting on all the inmates, any issues that are brought to our attention. That is the physical health aspect of the services that are provided out there. The increases related to a contract, as you know, everything's going up in the world. With that being said, hopefully there's an opportunity to have some savings at the end of the year like we did this year. Have we sought any other companies? Whenever we normally do the bid process, yes, we do. Yes. And the last bid process, I think, was three years ago. I'm sorry, I'll have to check on that to make sure. It's okay. Do you recall how many companies were part of that bid process? If I'm not mistaken, there were three. I don't remember the name of the other two. I apologize. I can talk to you offline. Thank you for your time. That's the question. Thank you, Chair, for your patience. Thank you, Council Member. I don't see any other questions, so Council Member Reynolds, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you, Chair. I will be moving to fund these items out of the general fund, but we are also open to other funding sources. I move to fund four safety officers at an estimated cost of $263,816 out of the general fund. Second. All right. A motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and second by Council Member Baxter. Are there any questions to that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to buy one new traffic radar trailer at the cost of $21,000 from the general fund. So moved. All right, a motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Do I need to make a motion for my item that has to do with fund balance in the fall? To officially put it on the list? Yes. Okay. Then I would like to move to add the victim advocate supervisor civilian position to our fund balance discussion in the fall. Second. Our motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Gray. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I move to fund the Community Implementation Coordinator at $57,008 for this year. Second. A motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Gray. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. I move to give the Human Rights Commission $56,065. Second. All right. A motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions to that motion? Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Just because I know that our responsibility to the community is to be good fiscal stewards of taxpayer dollars, and while I sympathize with the lower employment rates that the HRC is seeing and appreciate all the work they do with us, I am not comfortable supporting an increase in funding based on the fact that we do not have more audits. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Hearing none, I'll, sorry, Councilmember Gray. Chair, would it be possible for the HRC to return at a later date if we don't give them the funds? I think there's a, so your question is, is there a chance for them to come if we do give them the funding or? I think there's an opportunity to amend the motion to ask them to come and give an update or a presentation, whether they do or do not receive the funding. If that's something you wanted to do. Yes, sir. Parliamentarian, what is appropriate in regards to an amendment? Should it be a date that's certain? I think if the council member just wants to amend the motion to place the item into a committee for an update. I think that would be sufficient. Okay, what committee would that be? Do you know? Social services? Okay, yep. So, council member, if you want to make that amendment to the motion. Yes, I would like to make that a motion, and how do I say it? I think the motion is to amend to- Can I make a motion to amend? To request the HRC to give an update at the Social Services and Public Safety Committee meeting as soon as possible. So move. Thank you. Second. Second. So are you referring this whole thing to the committee with that amendment, the money and everything? No. No. No. Because that's what that amendment would do is refer this to committee. What she's putting as a condition of this funding is a referral of the update to committee. So the funding will go forward, but a condition of that is that they have to come to the committee to give their presentation. Thank you. Is that, Council Member, is that reflective of your intent? Council Member Gray? Yes. If it is passed, even if it's not passed, I want an update. of what's going on with their process and how many more audits they have completed. Then perhaps that doesn't need to be an amendment. Maybe it could just be a referral of the Human Rights Commission to committee instead of amending if you want it either way. Okay. That's what I said. So move. So I think what her advice is is to remove your amendment and then make a separate motion asking them to come and give an update? At this time? Yeah. So you can just. I'll remove my motion, and I would like to. There's a motion on the floor, so you can only amend those. Okay, I'm stepping out. We'll jump back into that. Okay. All right, so Council Member Gray has removed her amendment, so we're still taking questions on the original motion. Council Member Ellinger. Well, mine was going to be on the amendment just because of what our administrator said. We would have to have that before we actually have our budget to do it, so I didn't think that was probably appropriate. So I think we've rectified that issue. Okay. All right. Council Member Sheehan, you good on that too? Mine was on the amendment. Okay. All right. Council Member Baxter. Well, this question is kind of towards the amendment, but that doesn't exist anymore. Can I ask a question? You can ask a question about a potential amendment to the motion that's on board. Okay. Commissioner Hensley, can we put conditions on budget items? I was actually just texting law or law. Yay. Can we put conditions? on budget items. I would, well, I'm going to let Dave speak. Depending on how you all vote, it's going to be in the budget. It'll be budgeted to give them the money. And you can make it contingent, but that may make it if you try to pull it away at a later point in time, that may make it a little more difficult for them if they're counting on that money. But depending on how you're going to move forward But today, for instance, if you move forward with what's being proposed right now, that extra money, they'll come up with a way to fund that, and that'll be in front of you all to vote on as part of the first reading of the budget. So the money will actually be there to pay them. Can I add something to you? Yes, ma'am. Those of you who've been around for a few years will remember that we had a similar situation with one of our partner agencies, and we put off the additional funding until the fund balance discussion to give them time to come to committee and explain some of the questions. So that would be an option, too, if you wanted to approve this for fund balance rather than right now. Okay. So with that being said, I would like to make an amendment to push this conversation to fund balance to allow for them to have ample time to provide us updates on how many more audits they can get finished between now and then. Second. All right. So there has been an amendment to the original motion to push this funding to the fund balance discussion in October. Are there any questions to the amendment? Council Member Savigny, to the amendment? It's really not to the amendment. It's to the audit piece of it. Okay. I have a quick comment for the amendment. So I think part of the reason for their funding request is so they can address pay increases. Putting it off until October doesn't give them the opportunity to do that. I'd be more supportive of an amendment that would put a condition on this funding for them to come and give us an update, as opposed to pushing it to the fund balance. Just my two cents. All right, so any other questions about the amendment? All right, so the first vote is going to be on the amendment to push this off until the fund balance discussion. If there's no questions, those all in favor of the amendment, please vote yes, yay. Yeah, let's do it by the screen, I guess, as it came up. All right, is that everybody? Yeah, so that motion fails. Now we're back to the original motion that's on the floor. I'll pass the chair to Council Member Ellinger. Council Member Brown. All right, I'll make a motion to make an amendment that we approve and include in the budget this funding and put a condition on it for them to come back and present to the full council before the... Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have done that on the microphone. present to the full council at some date in the future at a work session. So moved. Second. And I know that's. We have a motion and a second. And I guess I'd ask Law, do we need a date specific on there? Because I think what you said at this point, the money will, if we pass it, then it will be in the budget. So there really won't be a contingency if they don't come. Well, we do an agreement with them every year also to give them the funding so we can put whatever condition you all want in the agreement as part of giving them the funding. So that would be the mechanism to try to enforce it, would be through the agreement that they're going to have to execute to get the money. So you think this would work for that process? Yeah, sure. Okay. Council Member Savigny, do you have a question? Thank you, Chair. Mine is mostly about the audit piece of it. And when I was a vendor for the state and city, I know that if you get a certain percentage of your money from those entities, you're an auditable, you're generally an auditable entity. And I didn't know if that's the case with this commission. Like is all of their money from us generally or is it a mix? Much like some of our other agencies, not all of their funding comes from LFUCG. However, we are the vast majority of their funding. And by statute, they are organized. So they act as our designee or whatever that's called, if you will, for those kind of activities. And do we have the ability during our annual audit process to have our auditors actually audit them? We do not. They are a separate entity. Okay. So even though they get it, because it's usually a percentage, but it's not enough. Ours is general fund funded, which comes from tax dollars. so it doesn't carry the same obligation as if you were federally funded. Okay. Thank you. That's it. Thank you, Chair. Any further discussion on the amendment? All those in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. That passes. And I'll pass the Chair back over to Council Member Brown. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. So now we're back to the original motion. And with that amendment, are there any questions to the amended motion? Stacey, can you help us out? Restate the motion as amended. Sorry, I thought you were asking for help with the vote. I'm like, I don't get a vote. So the motion as amended would read, vote to approve an additional $56,065 to the Human Rights Commission with the condition that they present to the full council at an upcoming work session. All right. Thank you for that, Stacey. Are there any questions to that amended motion? Council member Sia. And just to the point that Mr. Barbary made, so we are asking for this to also be included in the agreement that they sign with us, correct? Does that have to be part of the motion, I guess, is my question. i'm not sure how quickly they can come to a work session but i would just if you want to move forward with this i'd go ahead and do that we'll make sure it's in the agreement whether or not you actually vote on that or not but i mean there's a scenario where you could have them present this before you all go on break and if you're satisfied with with that that would be in conjunction with with the timing of when we would do the agreement anyway so um or we can just hold the agreement until they do the presentation it's up to you all but i'm not sure what everyone's what their schedule is like or what our work sessions look like between here and the end of and before you go on break in july so did they assign sign the next agreement at the beginning of the next typically what happens is you do a new agreement every fiscal year and so we would be be doing one at the end of this fiscal year or the beginning of next fiscal year to give them all the funding that you all end up budgeting for them. So, I mean, what would make the most sense is if we could line up that presentation to be the same meeting that you all were actually considering their agreement, then you could take whatever appropriate action you wanted to take or not take based on the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions to the amended motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Going back to 19 and the group of motions, I move to fund the Senior Emergency Assistance Fund at $30,000. Second. All right, that motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions to that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Then I just have two motions for committees. The first, I move to refer to General Government and Planning Committee to review and implement a capital improvement and maintenance plan for facilities and fleet. So move. Second. All right, a motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and seconded by Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Then I move to refer to the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee to look at dedicated funding for the implementation of facilities and fleet capital improvement and maintenance plans. All right, a motion was made by Council Member Reynolds and reluctantly seconded by Council Ellinger. Any questions to that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes as well. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. Are you complete? Thank you. Yes. Thank you. So before we move on to the next item on the agenda, I just want to thank all the linked chairs and linked committees for all their hard work in going through these links and making these recommendations. And thank you, Kelly, and with our staff, and Stacy and everybody for all their hard work, as well as the administration for coordinating these meetings with us and getting us this information. So the next item on our agenda are the individual council member recommendations. The first on the list is Councilmember Sevigny, so I'll turn it over to you, Councilmember. Yeah, thank you, Chair. There was a little write up on this, but in case you didn't see it. Several years ago, this project started and what happened is there was a variety of things shown to a group of people in Beaumont, which are affected by a storm, a fairly large size storm water issue. And there was some indecision and I think we took the indecision as a desire to not have action. And it kind of gave us a little bit of a stalemate. And after a new council person came in, There was a flurry of activity and there seemed to be a lot more interest in it. And if Charlie is here, he can talk to it. But in essence, there is still a problem and it still needs to be addressed. And in my conversations with our stormwater folks, they believed that we could access $500,000 from Water Quality Fund to begin to remedy this issue. And Charlie, if you have anything else to add, please do. The summary on page 125 of your packet summarizes things pretty well. Councilmember Sevigny's predecessor worked pretty hard trying to get a consensus among the neighborhood, and it just wasn't happening. And so what we often do, like parks and others, we have a whole list of projects that always need to be funded. we we took that money through council actions and and moved it to those other projects that were underfunded as we were rolling up the fy 24 budget in january we didn't realize that council members vigny was having conversation with the neighborhood about trying to resurrect it or otherwise we would have included it in our ask it didn't come up until the links time council member asked us we were supportive of it we feel like we have the capacity to be able to do it But it's my understanding that budgeting is supporting of it as well. So that's it. And I don't know if there's questions. Council Member, I'd say go ahead and make the motion, and then we'll take the questions as they come. All right. I move for the design of a future stormwater project on Savannah and Guilford Lane area mitigate significant erosion problems along a concrete flume in the backyards of several homes at an estimated cost of $500,000 through the Water Quality Management Fund 4052. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made by Councilmember Sevigny and seconded by Councilmember Baxter. Are there any questions to the motion? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Congratulations, council member. Thank you. All right, next on, going down the list, next on our list is Council Member Fogle. And I think the information about her council request is in the packet. Is there anybody from the administration that could speak to it or? If not. All right, so what I think we may do, and Councilmember Sheehan, you may want to help me with that. She's talked to me somewhat about the project and I'm supporter of it. And just for the public, it's for, let me find it. It's for a dignity station in partnership with an outside agency. so council member shan i'll turn it over to you yeah i i do like the idea of this dignity station and it's for the construction and fit up of a trailer that would create a mobile and stationary shower laundry and restroom facilities to make available basic hygiene for the unsheltered in in our community. I was thinking about this similar to our mobile market that we just had the press conference about. And unfortunately, Council Member Fogel isn't here today to be able to help us answer questions. But I would like to potentially move forward with this funding. But using the model that we have for the mobile market, which is where we have an MOU, or Memorandum of Understanding, that's established with a community partner, one of the questions that I have about it is the operating costs. So with the mobile market, the operating costs and the maintenance are handled by the community partner. But with the limited information that we have at this point, I think if we move forward with the funding to be backed up by a memorandum of understanding that maybe Commissioner Lanter's office could help us with, that we could address some of the details that we don't have now. So I would make a motion to move forward with the funding and have Council Member Fogel work with Commissioner Lanter's office to work on a memorandum of understanding for the implementation of the Dignity Station. So moved. All right, a motion was made by Council Member Sheehan and seconded by Council Member Worley. Are there any questions to the motion? First up, does Council Member agree? Thank you, Chair. And perhaps this is best directed to Commissioner Lanter. But with this memorandum of understanding or with this agreement, is the situation that, what we're seeing right here is that this money would go to the Catholic Action Center. But would this be a competitive bid process? Would this help us figure out questions about placement or zoning of placement? um can you elaborate on any of that um the short answer is is i don't know i mean it's kind of uncharted territory um typically if we were going to do this sort of project you would allocate the funds and then we would issue an rfp for the project it's a little unorthodox to allocate the funds to a specific agency for a specific purpose it doesn't mean you couldn't do it that might be a law or a purchasing question. But in terms of can I, if the council wishes it, work with law to draft an agreement or an MOU that says we're giving you these money for this purpose, yeah, we can do that. Council Member Sheehan, just for my own clarification then, so that I understand, with the motion you're making, the goal would still be to allocate the funds to Catholic action versus a competitive bid? Would it be an MOU or would it be an RFP? I am open to the typical process that we use and I think that in our process we would have to RFP it, but I defer because it's not my project, but I would like to see it move forward. So I would say RFP. okay um does that mean that we need to change the language in the amendment if that if that's um i didn't put catholic actions center in my motion um so okay great sounds like i'm under picking up what you're putting down i was just checking we can you can just allocate it directly to an agency. We don't have to do an RFP. You can do it either way. But that wasn't mentioned in the motion. It was just to put it with. Okay, understood. Thank you very much. Those are all my questions for now. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Reynolds. I mean, sorry, Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. I just need some more information to understand exactly what this details. Do any of you all have any info? I think other than what's in the packet, I don't think we have any additional information. I think, and I don't want to speak for Council Member Sheehan, but I think the intent of her motion is just to keep this item alive and allocate the money, but continue to ask Councilmember Fogle to work with the Commissioner's Office on what this project actually looks like. Because I'm also curious about the residents, not only our house population, but I'm also curious about those who are honed. Is that what we say there? those who live already surrounding the area, what their thoughts would be because their thoughts do, it does matter. So I personally just need more information before I can support this because I want to have also information from the actual residents of the district as well. Okay, thank you. Council Member Sheehan, you want to respond? This is mobile, so it can actually move. But I'm just putting it forward so we can have the discussion. If we decide here that we want more information or if we want to wait for our fund balance conversation, I'm open to amendments that folks would like to make. I wish Councilmember Fogel were here to be able to speak to this herself, but unfortunately that is not the case. So I would just like us to be able to have the discussion because I think it is something we should consider. And whatever steps we decide we want to take to move that conversation forward, I'm happy to entertain those. I'm just allowing for the discussion. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. So just to clarify, so this is a mobile unit. So if it's mobile, does anyone have any idea what type of places where it would stop? I'm not against it, but however, I see that it could be problematic depending on where and how it would stop. So, you know, I think since Councilmember Vogel's not here to answer those questions, I think those could be answered at a later date, and potentially some of the concerns about the location could be worked out through the MOU and how this goes forward. I just think we're having a conversation right now about funding something, and I just would like more information before I decide if I want it to move forward. Thank you. Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to uplift looking at the letter that was submitted on behalf of this project. It looks like the costs are purely for construction costs, so there wouldn't be any ongoing costs that we would have to take under our budget, but it looks like from the letter that the Catholic Action Center is going to be the sustainer of the ongoing program in that second to last paragraph. It was in the packet. So it wouldn't be an ongoing, it looks like we're just paying for construction and it's not going to be an ongoing cost to us. I just wanted to uplift that. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to echo the sentiments of some of my colleagues here. I'm not comfortable approving funding for something that I don't have all the information on. And it's unfortunate that Council Member Fogle couldn't be here today to tell us more about it. So I think what I would like to do is amend your motion to have this conversation at fund balance. So moved. All right, a motion. A motion has been made to amend the original motion to move this conversation to the fund balance. Made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Reynolds. Are there any questions to the amendment? Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. This is to the amendment, but basically the comment that would go along with what I was going to say generally. I was happy to second this because I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. We don't have all of the facts right now, but it's a fairly modest ask. And we have, in the past, when we wanted to come up with a new program with partner agencies, when we were at the budget standpoint knowing this was our time frame to allocate monies have done it and then waited for the program to come along and then if we're unsatisfied with however that program may look then we can always use a budget amendment to move that money elsewhere. And I am concerned about moving it to fund balance even though that would give us all those answers and I appreciate that just because we know of construction materials, lag time, that sort of thing. If this is something we need to be building on and we agree with it, we should probably go ahead with it to get it moving. If it's something that we just truly have that many unknowns about, then sure, fund balance is fine. But I think that this is, in my opinion, for some of the things that we've done in the past with partner agencies, a modest ask. And I would be prepared to move it forward. But if we're unsatisfied, we could very quickly make a budget amendment and reallocate this money. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next on the amendments, Councilmember Sheehan. Similar for the timeline for me, I think to what Councilmember Worley was saying, I would like to see this moving forward when I had served on the budget link that looked at the mobile food market funding last year. And we did not actually have the MOUs in place at that time, but We did allocate the funding so then the discussions could be had because the funding was in place. So I will not support the amendment at this time, but would like to see us secure the funding. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Anybody else want to speak to the amendment? If not, I will. I agree with Council Member Worley and Sheehan. And I think this is potentially a real innovative project, and that's what we're looking for. I know there's been several conversations about how we create and build bathrooms downtown and around other parts of this community for our unhoused population. And I think this is a way, would it be in mobile, to do just that and move it and address some of those issues. So, and I think if we move it to the fall fund balance, we'll be having a different conversation about addressing the needs of that population going into winter. So I won't support the amendment, even though I appreciate it, because I think we can have a conversation and get some of those details worked out sooner than later. All right, thank you all for that. No other questions to the amendment. All those in favor to the amendment, say aye. Aye. We're going to need a screen for this one. All right. All right, it looks like that motion fails, so we're back on the original motion on the floor. Are there any other questions to the original motion? Council member Savigny. No, and thank you, Chair, but I do appreciate Council Member Fogel putting this in front of us. I do think it is a fairly innovative way to deal with a real issue that I know she's gotten emails on in her district. And even though she's not here, I want to support her in any way I can. Thanks. Thank you, council member. Any other comments? Questions to the motion? Council member Gray. I just want to make note that I it seems like a great idea I still just have so many questions I believe in supporting our unhoused population but still I'm a fiduciary of our funds and I want to make sure we spend them wisely and I just still have questions so all right thank you council member any other questions Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. All right, so you have a screen in front of you. All right, that motion passes. All right, thank you, good discussion. We'll keep going down the list and I think next up is. Myself. So I'll pass the chair to Council Member Ellinger. Council Member Brown. All right, the first item is a new facility for paramedicine, a new paramedicine facility. Council members, after thinking about it and kind of talking us through, I'm very supportive of expanding and looking for opportunities to create a facility for our paramedicine program that we have increased the staffing for. This project was a smaller component of a bigger proposal to do something with property that we bought on Third Street right across from Power Station One. I really don't think the timing is good to bring this forward to the full council to consider. So I'm not going to make a motion or a request at this time, but I just wanted to restate my commitment to that program and what all it does for our community. And we'll continue to look for opportunities to help expand it and give them the resources needed to continue to get the job done. All right, so next on my list is a request for 400,000, that's for two small area plans. And it says in the Office of Economic Development, but that's currently where planning's at. But these are two small area plans for planning. With our conversations around the comp plan now, and then knowing how intentional and focused a small area plan can be in regards to development, you know, these may not, they both may not be two small area plans. One of them may be another type of plan that is needed, but I do want to make a motion to request funding for two developmental plans for our department of planning. So move. Second. We have a motion and a second. by Council Member Sheehan. Any discussion? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Brown, are those for specific areas or is that just to give them the funding and then that be decided later? Yeah, no ma'am. They're not for any specific area at this time, but it's just to put the funding in place to have a conversation about how we can be more intentional about development going forward in whatever areas we so choose to talk about. Okay, thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Brown, for starting this conversation. I had a similar question to Council Member Reynolds about if there were specific areas that you were thinking about focusing on. And it sounds like no, or? No, and I can say that because, so I used to represent a district that had three small area plans. And when development, we talked about development in those areas, we always leaned and referenced a small area plan about what was best for that neighborhood. In recent years, we have actually focused more on corridor studies in lieu of small area plans. But when we start talking about displacement and inappropriate zoning, small area plans tend to be more inclusive of folks in the area to come up with, to create buy in and come up with a plan for development going forward. So, we didn't have any specific, when I made this motion, we didn't have any specific areas in mind. But there are certain areas throughout the city that could benefit from having a development plan for them. In the past with some of the small area plans that you mentioned in your districts and other places, was that funding that was already in place in planning or did those have to be requested separately? I am curious about the conversation you had with planning about this and if it was something that came out of their office or. Yeah, so I have had a conversation with planning about it and asked what the history was for funding. And is anybody from planning here that could maybe be able to speak to that? When I first came into office in 2015, there was funding for a Winburn small area plan. I don't know where it came from, but it was there and it was right on time. But since I think our focus has went away from small area plans into corridor study, a lot of those have been grant funded or funded with state money and federal money. So just to help us be prepared for what may come down the road is why I made the recommendation for these small area plans to be included in the budget going forward. So you're anticipating that there might be a need for a small area plan somewhere in the city in the future and want to prepare for that? Yes. I see. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All those opposed? that motion passes. I will relinquish the chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. And thank you, Council Members, for supporting that request. Next on the list is Council Member Reynolds. Thank you so much, Chair. I want to give some background on this request, which I realize is a heavy lift. Back in 2017, there was a plan with a former council member in my district made for the Valley Park Community Center to be expanded. That reason was because of its use at the time. It had a lot of programming going on there every day, and the neighborhood wanted more space for more events and after-school programs. That part of town is actually that neighborhood is 70% Hispanic. that park if you've ever been over there is used constantly i've seen weddings there i've seen church services i've seen birthdays and baby showers that is a very very busy park it has soccer it had a dance program that i used to run and now it has other dance classes all the time And so that was why it was proposed that that building there have an expansion. So that multiple things could be going on at the same time. Then that got added to the parks master plan as a need. It was not funded until ARPA. And then with the money that we gave Parks and Rec for ARPA, a million dollars was designated for the expansion of that building. Unfortunately, at first, everyone was very excited. The different people that hold classes there and the park board, the neighborhood association were really, really excited. Unfortunately, when we sat down to look at it, that million dollars did not cover an expansion anymore. Because of all of the increased fees for everything as we're seeing throughout the city, that million dollars could not build an extra space. So they hired a consultant who has looked at the space and we've been able to say, okay, we could maybe put a new roof on. We can maybe do something here and there, but we cannot expand at all. So that has left people at the park and people that use the park pretty upset, because they were really looking forward to finally getting that expansion. And us feeling frustrated that a million dollars is going into the building, but not the way that we had hoped would give us the space that we need. So that's why I've spoken with several of you about this. I see it as a need and I see it as finishing an ARPA project that we were not able to finish. And so that is why I'm asking for this 1.25 and that would be to actually expand the building. So moved. Second. All right, the motion was made by Councilmember Reynolds and seconded by Councilmember Lynch. Are there any questions or comments to the motion? First up is Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. I know that when we were having the ARPA discussions, we set aside some building contingency funds. Do we have any of that left? Yes, we do, although we are, our intention is to bring forward to you all some of that funding for the Douglas Pool construction. So while we do have some pots of money, which I've gone over with you various times through the last couple of months, we do have an intended use for those funds should the council approve to allocate them for that purpose. Okay. All right. That's all. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Sevigny. Yeah, thank you, Chair. My question really is on this, do you think that, and this is either to you, Council Member Reynolds, or to someone from Parks, if they're here, do you think we just didn't understand what was approved to begin with, or was the expectation set that something was going to happen there that didn't happen? Oh, no, the expectation was set that there would be an expansion, and then when it was looked at, it just that million dollars that was given wasn't feasible, didn't go very far. And is there this request that you have, is that something that Parks has kind of blessed and said we can do an expansion with this amount of money? Or how did you come up with the number? They said, so they did another quote, and that was the quote that they came up with. And they have blessed it if we get this money now. This is not, if I were to be able to allocate this money, you know, for fund balance, then we could not act on the expansion because they're already working with the consultant and they're already making some changes. And so if this money was given down the road, it wouldn't be able to fit in to really be an expansion. That's the time-sensitive request. So do you feel like it's not a great fund balance question because of the time-sensitivity piece of it? Correct. That's why I'm offering it now, or I would not do so. I think it's urgent now. Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions. Council member Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds for sharing some background on this project. I want to make sure that I'm understanding, or I'm reading the chart correctly. So, like you said, it sounds like there's a million dollars available through American Rescue Plan Act monies. And then I can see some of the spaces where things are over budget. Would the $1,250,000 cover the complete scope of work as originally anticipated? Or are there some additions since that point? Can you explain a little, or I see Commissioner Ford coming up. Yeah, my understanding is that it would cover just the expansion of that extra, adding on an extra building. But if Commissioner Ford has something else. Thank you Councilmember Reynolds and to your question Councilmember Loubree. Our Department of General Services is working with the Council Office and with Parks and Recreation on this project. The facility, just a little background, the facility is roughly 2300 square feet. As the Councilmember has described, it's a very active asset part of that community. To put it in context, it's almost a hybrid. So by scale, it's more of a neighborhood center that we have traditionally in the northern parts of our town that are managed by neighborhood associations as opposed to a full-blown community center, even though there is great activity out in that area. So I mention that only to put in the context of scale of the facility. And I think the council member is correct. What we realize as we begin on all of our ARPA projects and seeing cost, inflation, et cetera, A million dollars just does not go as far as it used to on capital projects. However, we brought on a consultant on the design, and we are well into our design. We are scheduled to have that design completed later this fall with hopes of going out to bid and having a starting construction towards the holidays. It's going to be a one-year build. So we work with parks, and we've tried our very best to consult, and we've been actively engaged with Council Member Reynolds' office to do as much as we possibly could with the $1 million that's allotted minus fees. And so that includes addressing some deferred maintenance that many of our facilities have and to also more importantly reconfigure some spaces. So while there's 2,300 square feet there, we've recognized that there are some underutilized spaces and we do believe that our design consultant has done well thus far and kind of reimagining the existing footprint to give us more programmatic space. What's before you now is the additional footprint, if you will, is roughly $1,250,000 would allow us to add on 750 square feet, which is more square footage that is there now, but it is still relatively a very small expansion. So it just becomes a question of the economies of scale. And if we had an additional $1 million or $1.25 million, would that be the best use of funds? Not to discount the council member in the neighborhood at all, but that is kind of our consideration and dilemma at the moment. With what we have going forward, we think we will bring a good project that is better than what the neighborhood has now. but I think that's what's before us right now. How to use that additional request that Council Member is requesting. Okay, thank you so much, Commissioner. That was very helpful context and information. If I have other questions, I'll log back in. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. um i'm still a little mind boggled that this is so expensive for 750 square feet so when we began conversations about this addition was there any conversation about a total new construction i mean i'm just i'm trying to figure out why a 750 square foot addition was the most logical way to go was there like already a footprint that we can build on or it just seems like a lot of money for not a lot of return? It is. And our project manager is Lisa Grober. Lisa has worked with several of you guys before. Lisa is out of office today. I have Chris Linton who leads our capital project team. If needed to speak to the dynamics of kind of what's going on out in the market from a construction standpoint, it's an existing facility. And sometimes from my understanding, I don't want to misspeak, is that you're often afforded a greater economy of scale if you have a clean slate as opposed to if you have existing conditions there on site. So that's kind of part of it. Well, I'm just thinking about, you know, we've built restrooms that were about the same amount of money. You know, we've built new things. So I'm just wondering if there would be a better utilization of those funds, even for that community rather than a addition. Is there anybody else that want to speak to the construction side of things and see if there's something I'm missing? Sure. I can maybe add some clarification as far as the cost. So the existing building had a lot of deferred maintenance issues. Again, the original million that we're looking at were not only replacing the roof, but we're doing some of the HVAC replacement there. The split units that were there previously has to be replaced. There's a lot of electrical work. There's also some insulation work. The current construction is essentially just a single-wife CMU construction. So a lot of that money is going in to getting that building up to par because when you have an existing facility and you add an addition to it and you're going to significantly renovate something like that, you basically have to bring that existing facility up to code. So I think that that was probably something that the original funding didn't really look at as just the extent of some of that upgrade. Because once you get in and we have design consultants in, we start discovering more and more of those issues. So I think that that was a large contributor as far as the cost that you're seeing. And then also it's just not a very large building. whenever it's not a large building or a large project, we often see construction costs a lot higher because, you know, there's not a lot of profit for contractors to make up from a smaller building. And then I think is the third factor is just as we're all aware, the construction market has really escalated since the pandemic. A lot of the prices that we're providing probable cost on is from previous projects that we have bid out and we looked at those costs per square footage and then we've been able to basically apply that to other projects and so far we're pretty accurate as far as our probable cost. There's always a chance on bid day on a competitive bid that you may see better numbers but just overall from the market this is what we're seeing. Okay so just to make sure that I understand it's not just the addition it's bringing the rest of the building up to code and potentially including some space utilization optimization so you're correct so the one million right now uh that again it just wasn't enough to bring the current building up to code and take care of some of that deferred maintenance and do the addition so this request is essentially going to allow us to do um do a addition not as large as the original addition that was a plan for work but but I think probably a good compromise considering some of the renovation work that is happening inside the facility because we've been able to make those spaces a little bit more efficient. Okay thank you did you have something? I have 30 seconds. I see your clock council member and just to put a pin in what Chris mentioned that a million dollars we are excited about the improvements it will have at Valley. I don't want the council to I misunderstand that we won't be able to make really noticeable and sizable improvements. ARPA has been a godsend to this government and particularly to our Division of Parks and Recreation to allow us to take on projects that prior to the pandemic we just have not been able to get to as soon as we had wished we had. Okay, thank you. I guess my only, I'll make it so quick. My only recommendation is going forward that we make sure that we are considering any potential code updates when we're looking at additions to buildings just so we don't encounter this type of situation going forward. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. If I'm looking at the budget stuff correctly for this particular project, just the 750 square feet addition is actually $356,000. It's the modification of the building that changes the price. And it looks like we're increasing, if we went forward with this design, we're increasing. Is all the canopy out there, Council Member Reynolds, is it all attached to the building? Because there's quite a bit of canopy, which kind of creates, it's a cheap way to kind of create space, or a less expensive way. So that's part of the first million, since we couldn't do the extra expansion of the space to create a larger canopy as well. Okay, all right. That was it. I just wanted folks to realize it looks like that it looks like exterior space would actually be fairly equal to the interior space. So it's kind of, it's going to make it a bigger presence, I guess, on that campus. So, thank you. Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Two questions and I apologize if I'm asking you to repeat some information that you have given us. But similar to some of the questions that Council Member Baxter had about positions and whether they were requested earlier, was this part of a request that went to during the mayor's budget hearing? So was this a request that came before that was not funded? No, ma'am. No, Council Member. Parks, working with our team at General Services, since this project was allocated the original million dollars via ARPA, we've been moving along the ARPA funding path, and we've gone into consulting. So we did not, the answer to this, no, we did not. Okay, so this is an additional request coming. That's correct. And then what is the capacity for completing a more upscaled project like this, considering all of the other projects in the pipeline? What does that look like for you all? Do you have the capacity to do this? What would the timeline be if it changed? Well, I'll speak the timeline first, Council Member, and I'll get to the capacity. We're working through design and bidding. We'll hope to complete those tasks, those major important tasks, and by that time we'll know exactly how much the existing project will cost going into the holiday season, end of this calendar year. That leads us into a construction schedule, which is just at a year. So that would allow the project to be completed December of 24, which is a major timeline in ARPA. We know that we have those two additional years for things, but we've embarked on this project to complete it by the initial ARPA deadline of December 24. If there are additional funds that become available to the project, it would alter our timing. It would require us to have to adjust an account either way for how resources would then be put into the project. But our original project is set to be completed and constructed December 24. Okay, thank you. Council Member Legree. Commissioner, I just, if you don't mind, thank you, Chair. Can you clarify one more time what you just said? You said that my understanding of what you were saying was that you are right up against the ARPA deadline. Is that accurate? Yes, that's correct, Council Member. project completion is estimated for December of 24. And where we are currently is we are in the middle of our design. There's several phases of design that I've learned since being up with the team of general services. But we'll complete that design going into the fall. And from there we're going to bidding and final cost estimation. And then practically all of calendar 24 is slated for construction, reconstruction. I see. So what you're saying is that if additional funds were allocated, then that would potentially change your timeline because it would change the scope of the project? Yes. It would almost surely adjust our timeline. Now, yes, it would require us to adjust. And this goes to the capacity that Council Member Sheehan mentioned earlier. We have a great team, and Parks has been there with us the whole time. I mean, we pledge to this council and the council member Reynolds, we'll get the project done. But it would be an impact. It would be a change to the scope, and it would impact our timeline. And we've been very fortunate at Parks, aside from this project but all the other projects. Our team has worked very, very hard to keep all of our projects on track. We've been fortunate, and that's not to be discounted in this environment of cost inflation and supply chain issues. So what we can control, we want to control. We would like to keep the project on schedule. Thank you for that clarification and for those additional details. I guess that's it, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. And Council Member Reynolds, I have a few questions. You mind if I go before you go? So, Commissioner, so right now you're in the middle design. You plan to have it in the fall before or after our fund balance discussion? Before? Let me look at my schedule, Council Member. I'm almost certain before. Fund balance discussion is generally late fall, October, early November. However, we are scheduled to complete our design before then, council member. So here's my concern. I'm supportive of the project and supportive of council member Reynolds' advocacy. I'm just wondering if it's the amount of money per the square footage, the indoor square footage, which is the concern. Is there any opportunity to ask the company that's designing it to see if we had an additional million six, what that could potentially get us into more, can get us into design to see if it would make sense. And if we move this conversation to the fund balance time, then would there be enough time to allocate that money if council thought that it gave us the bang for buck that we thought it would be. Because I think that's what the concern is. I think most council members are supportive of the project. I think it's just about that amount of money for that much square footage. That's my concern. But I just wonder if there's enough time to do that, to get an alternative design based off of potential money coming forward for that project. It would have an impact to the schedule. It would have an impact to the schedule. I also, yeah, I don't know if I'm giving you the, am I answering the, can you say the question again? So, have we pushed it to the fund balance discussion, would you get the, is there any way now to communicate with whoever's designing the building? because they're going to design now what the funding will dictate. But if there is potentially additional funding, what more could we get for that additional funding? And I think it's this 750 square feet, but I wonder if that's the if all say all. I think let me attempt, Council Member, and I'm looking at Chris. We're in design, and I guess it's possible, you know, that we could get with our design consultant and we can get with our client, which is parks. and we can pause or prepare to shift the scope of the project in anticipation of additional funds. I think Chris behind you might have something to add. I may clarify just a bit, and if I'm following your question as well. So obviously we have a consultant RA that's on board. there would be some increase as far as asking them to do the design work for the addition. But if we had the funding for the design work, we could still move forward with the project. They could do the addition either as an alternate or something like that, to where we wouldn't have to bid it. But we wouldn't know those costs come time of fund balance. So it is potential that if we had the actual funding for design that we can move it forward that way. So if we allocated more money for design, then we should know by fund balance what we're getting for additional money for that project. Yeah, I mean, the current design, I think, is, as Commissioner mentioned, is wrapping up in the fall. This would obviously increase that design frame a little bit farther. but I think our consultants could focus a little bit at least of getting enough scope to where they could really narrow down that cost and probably provide more information. Okay. Well, that kind of helps me understand and kind of where I'm at, but I think it boils down to what the pleasure of the council member is. So I'll turn it over to you, Council Member Rental. First, I just want to clarify a few things. First, I want to thank everyone that's been working on this project. I know it's been challenging and it's been a lot of moving parts. And I do realize that this is a lot of money for a small space. The reason why I'm asking for it is that's what my community has been asking for and has had their mind on since 2017 and what we thought we were getting with ARPA money. I was told multiple times over the past six months that we could pivot and that if we got this extra money, we could pivot and we could do an addition. So I was told that and I want to make that really clear. Also, this is not ARPA money that we're talking about right now. So we don't have the same deadline because it's not ARPA money for that section that we're talking about. So I just want to make that clear. I'm open to suggestions. There's a motion on the floor. I do think that approving this money now would be the most helpful thing for the whole project. But yeah, thank you for your consideration, colleagues. Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I just want to make sure that I understand. There is a million dollars that's still ARPA money, right? Yes. How do we finish a project? I mean, we would essentially be tied to the ARPA deadline because that money is involved in the funding. That's correct. Part of it, right? That's correct, Councilor. Like we can't do part of it and then part of it later. That's correct. We would still be committed to the U.S. Treasury deadlines, which are December of 24 and final drop of December 26. So we still must comply with ARPA. ARPA is the driving engine of this project. And as I mentioned, luckily, we're... It's not like we can do part of it with ARPA money and then do part of it with our general fund dollars. It's all one project. No, Jennifer's shaking her head no. I just didn't know if we could phase it. I'm trying to... Jennifer's going to explain this like the library. Oh, okay. You remember we did the library. And we had ARPA money in the library, and then we have other money. And we're going to talk about that deadline in relationship to that. Okay, thank you. So I think one example that I can give you all that you all have already approved is the Phoenix Park construction. So part of that, there's going to be an ARPA allocation, as you all know, to construct some portion of that. We will expense that money and report to the Treasury that it's expensed prior to the deadline. And I'm certain that the park will get done before the big deadline, but just as terms of a timeline and spending money. So in this instance, I think what we would do is we would just, it's really in the backside of people's often in financials, but we would continue to expense and charge against our ARPA lines and complete that section of this, report to the Treasury that we had exhausted their funding, and then we could move into a general fund, bond, whatever is determined by the group. So we can make it work. It's just really on myself and Chris's staff to expense the Department of the Treasury's funding first. Okay. That ARPA deadline, I just don't want to lose this, is still running in this project. We can't just keep designing and not get to that ARPA deadline. Because if we do, if we pass that ARPA deadline, this is going to be really confusing. We're going to have to come back in and switch this money. switch back to general fund, fund something with general fund and something else with ARPA in order not to lose all that. Okay. Okay, thank you, Chair. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, again. And just a quick one. This is presented as general fund, but we allow, if we were to approve this, we allow the administration to put this in the bond fund if they found it was more appropriate? Is that correct? Or does it have to be specified in the motion? So if there's an amendment, do we need to make an amendment to the motion? That's it. So can you repeat the question? I'm sorry. It's okay. My question is, because this seems like it would be a bondable project, Do we have to specify that in the motion or do we leave that up to the administration to manage that piece of it if they so choose and we then vote on it later? Yeah, I think we leave it up to the administration to help us. Thank you, that's my question. All right, thank you. One more quick question. How much money would it take to add to work on the redesign or additional design? so typically when we have a probable cost we usually allow anywhere from eight to ten percent uh for design um for a project this this small i would probably allow 10 percent for a design consultant fee so 100k yes Commissioner, did you have something to ask that? Okay. All right, council members, this is what I think and then I'm going to pass the gavel to Council Member Ellinger. I think there's a lot of questions, we're all supportive. I think the thing would be is if we can get a design that we can buy into, I think that would help us be able to make a decision going forward, presumably at the fund balance discussion. So that's my thought and hopefully Councilmember Reynolds you're supportive of this amendment. So Councilmember Ellen Gall, pass the chair to you. Councilmember Brown. All right, so I look to make an amendment to the request, moving the $1,250,000 to the fund balance to the top of the list of the fund balance discussion. And would it, Stacy, would it be cleaner to add a 154, up to 150,000 for redesign of this facility now in this budget? Would it make sense to do it with this motion or should that be a separate motion? Would it be cleaner? Probably cleaner as a separate motion. I think a separate motion, that way it kind of keeps the fund balance stuff separated. Okay. So I amend the original motion to move this dollar amount to the fund balance list discussion in October. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second by Councilmember Baxter. Discussion, Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you. Chris, can I ask you a question? So if, sorry, that Chris. Chris one or Chris two? Chris two. Okay, so if we allocate the money right now for the design, come up with a design, my question is, at fund balance time, if we want to go with the design and move forward and we put money towards it, is that enough time to do what we need to do? When is the fund balance date? October-ish. October. Okay. So, I mean, I think so. So again, the design may not be complete for the addition, but I think that enough of the scope would be realized to where we would know the amount that we would need to request. It will extend our time frame, our current $1 million scope being due in fall. you know again this would probably add another possible 30 days or or more as far as the design time time frame but yeah does that answer your question yes can jennifer can i ask you a question quickly so if we get our if we move this to fund balance we have the design and we decide to go forward, will we be able to work with ARPA the way we need to? I think so. We'll just want to make sure when I was relooking at Lisa's construction schedule proposed. And I think the key is we have to have all the ARPA money encumbered and or expensed. So we have to make sure we have that on a purchase order, which I'm assuming, Chris, when it goes out to bed, will as soon as we award it to somebody. We'll encumber the funds to make sure that we hit that 24 deadline because Sally and I are very focused on making sure everything's encumbered by the end of 24. But this money is separate, so it should be okay. Yes. So, like I said, we'll expense, we'll try to encumber and expense all of the ARPA first. And then, and it sounds like the design will definitely be encumbered, obviously. Our ARPA money is already encumbered on the design contract. And then, so I think it will be okay. We're just going to have to watch that very closely to make sure it goes out first. Okay, I just want to clear that up. Thank you very much. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes. And I will relinquish it here. I'm going to make another motion. Oh, we have a second motion. And now let's go. Motion as amended. Let's go to the motion as amended. And you want to take that? No. Okay. Now we have the original motion as amended. Do we have any discussion on that? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. Seeing none, that passes. And then, Chair, I'd like to make a motion to allocate in this upcoming year's budget up to $150,000 for redesign of the Cardinal Valley Community Center. So moved. Second. And we have a motion and a second by Councilman Reynolds. Do we have any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. That passes. And I'll relinquish the chair. Thank you. We might be almost done. So do you need to clarify? Yes, you recommended $250,000, and initially it was $150,000. It was $150,000. Okay, up to 150, sorry. All right, thank you for that. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. Council members, it looks like we have come to the end of the agenda. So what we need now is I would entertain a motion to ask the administration to present with us at work session a potential way to fund council priorities in the upcoming year budget. It may be late in work session. Late in work session, but at this work session. At 315. So moved. All right. The motion was made by Council Member Baxter and seconded by Council Member Sheehan. I do. All right. So all those in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Thanks, everybody, and I think we'll reconvene here at 3 o'clock.