# General Government and Planning Committee - August 15, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · August 15, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5884 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5884?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-08-15 - **Last revised**: August 15, 2023 - **Length**: 21,518 words - **Speakers**: Chair > ⚠️ **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 General Government & Planning Committee convened on August 15, 2023, at 1:00 PM with P. Worley presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed three agenda items during the session, all of which were informational in nature and did not require formal action. The meeting focused on policy and procedural matters, including discussions about tenant representation on municipal boards and commissions, a partial report on public input processes, and an examination of council rules and procedures. Two motions and votes were recorded during the proceedings, while no public comments were received at this meeting. ## Attendance All members were present for the meeting on August 15, 2023. No absences or late arrivals were recorded. **Present:** • P. Worley • K. Plomin • D. Wu • J. Brown • C. Ellinger • S. Lynch • H. LeGris • L. Sheehan • W. Baxter • J. Reynolds **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the August 15, 2023 meeting, both passing unanimously by voice vote. **Approval of May 9, 2023 GGP Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:10] • Motion by: C. Ellinger • Second by: W. Baxter • Outcome: Passed unanimously (10-0) • Vote type: Voice vote • All 10 committee members voted in favor: P. Worley, K. Plomin, D. Wu, J. Brown, C. Ellinger, S. Lynch, H. LeGris, L. Sheehan, W. Baxter, and J. Reynolds **Approval of Updated LFUCG Guidelines for Public Engagement** [timestamp: 02:30] • Motion by: H. LeGris • Second by: L. Sheehan • Outcome: Passed unanimously (10-0) • Vote type: Voice vote • All 10 committee members voted in favor: P. Worley, K. Plomin, D. Wu, J. Brown, C. Ellinger, S. Lynch, H. LeGris, L. Sheehan, W. Baxter, and J. Reynolds Both motions received full committee support with no opposition or abstentions recorded. The committee demonstrated consensus on both the approval of previous meeting minutes and the adoption of updated public engagement guidelines for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one significant point of contention that generated heated discussion among council members. **Seating Chart Proposal** A proposal to reorganize the council seating arrangement based on district numbers became the subject of intense debate. Council members raised serious concerns about the potential for this system to create segregation within the chamber and negatively impact the collaborative dynamics that characterize council proceedings. The discussion centered on whether arranging seats according to district numerical order would inadvertently group council members in ways that could reinforce geographic or demographic divisions rather than promote the collegial atmosphere needed for effective governance. Several participants expressed worry that such an arrangement might undermine the council's ability to work across district lines on city-wide issues. Council members engaged in a thorough examination of the implications, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a seating system that promotes fairness and equity among all representatives. The debate highlighted the delicate balance between organizational efficiency and the symbolic importance of how elected officials are positioned in relation to one another during public meetings. The discussion underscored broader concerns about ensuring that procedural decisions support rather than hinder the council's collaborative work environment. Members stressed the need for any seating arrangement to reflect the council's commitment to representing all constituents equally, regardless of their district's numerical designation. *Note: Specific timestamp information and the final outcome of this discussion were not available in the provided meeting materials.* ## Tenants on Boards and Commissions [timestamp: 00:30] Council member S. Lynch provided an update on ongoing research and discussions regarding tenant representation on housing-related boards and commissions. Lynch reported on the challenges the city faces in adding dedicated tenant seats to existing boards due to legal constraints. The discussion centered on exploring alternative approaches to ensure tenant voices are heard in housing policy decisions. Lynch outlined a proposal to establish pilot advisory boards that would include both tenants and landlords, providing a structured forum for input on housing-related matters without the legal complications of modifying existing board compositions. Tiffany Madison also participated in the discussion, contributing to the conversation about tenant representation mechanisms. Lynch emphasized that while direct tenant seats on formal boards and commissions present legal hurdles, the advisory board approach could serve as a viable alternative to gather tenant perspectives and recommendations. This pilot program would allow the city to test the effectiveness of this model before considering more permanent structural changes. The agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken. The discussion served to update the council and public on the progress of research into tenant representation options and the development of alternative approaches to address this issue. The proposed advisory board pilot represents the city's effort to balance legal requirements with the goal of incorporating tenant voices into housing policy discussions. ## Public Input Partial Report-Out [timestamp: 01:00] Council member H. LeGris and staff member Stacy Maynard presented updates on the public input process during this informational agenda item. The presentation focused on improvements to public participation procedures, including the implementation of new electronic sign-in procedures designed to streamline the process for residents wishing to address the council. These technological updates aim to make it easier for community members to participate in public meetings. LeGris and Maynard also outlined updated guidelines for public engagement, emphasizing the city's commitment to improving accessibility for all residents who wish to provide input during council meetings. The new procedures are intended to create clearer pathways for public participation while maintaining orderly meeting conduct. The changes represent part of an ongoing effort to enhance transparency and community involvement in local government processes. The electronic sign-in system is expected to reduce wait times and administrative burden while ensuring all interested speakers have the opportunity to be heard. This was an informational presentation with no action items or votes required. The updates were presented as part of the council's regular review of public engagement procedures to ensure they meet the community's needs effectively. ## Council Rules and Procedures Report-Out [timestamp: 03:00] Council member W. Baxter led a presentation on proposed changes to the council's rules and procedures during this informational agenda item. The discussion focused on updates designed to enhance procedural transparency and accountability within the council's operations. Baxter outlined several categories of proposed modifications, including: • Updates for improved clarity in existing procedures • Implementation of best practices identified through operational review • Changes recommended through recent audit findings The proposed revisions aim to address procedural gaps and strengthen the council's governance framework. Stacy Maynard also participated in the discussion, contributing to the presentation of the recommended changes. The report-out served as an informational briefing to keep council members and the public informed about ongoing efforts to refine the council's operational procedures. The changes under consideration are part of a broader initiative to improve how the council conducts its business and maintains accountability to constituents. This agenda item was presented for informational purposes only, with no formal action taken during the meeting. The discussion provided council members and attendees with an overview of the procedural improvements being considered and the rationale behind the proposed modifications. The presentation represents ongoing work to ensure the council's rules and procedures remain current, effective, and aligned with best practices in municipal governance. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approval of the May 9, 2023 GGP Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approval of updated LFUCG guidelines for public engagement --- ## Full transcript I could pray, you'd touch me everywhere A lifetime just ain't enough to love you through Now that I've found you Now that I've found you I'm sorry. We'll be right back. You could dance away to the boogie woogie music the piano man was playing. You could jump, jump, shout, shout, knock yourself out. Boogie woogie beat is what I'm talking about. You could call a switcheroo, if you fell slow down. With the boogie woogie beat of a piano man who's going to town. Ooh, yeah. Ooh, yeah. It has a kind of rhythm that would fill the hall The flanking and the plunking drove them up the wall And they would dance and drink their gin And when the buzz, buzz, buzz, they join in So everybody partied till the cows came home Cause that's what boogies pour And every night that duck would jump And keep them coming back for more Because that made you wanna jump, jump, shout Knock yourself out A boogie woogie beat is what I'm talking about If you had the heebie-jeebies you could dance away To the boogie woogie music the piano man was playing You could jump, shout, shout Knock yourself out A boogie woogie beat is what I'm talking about You could call the switcheroo and you could fell so down With the boogie woogie beat on my piano man I'm going to town Ooh, yeah Hey, man, you wanna jump, jump, shout Ooh, ruckusacki, wanna jump, jump, shout Slip the top into me mouth You wanna jump, jump, shout Floyd, Floyd, Floyd To the boogie-woogie music, the piano man was playing You could jump, shout Now I can stay on bounce Boogie-woogie beat is what I'm talking about You could pull a switcheroo and you can bounce To the boogie-woogie beat of a bit Oh, yeah. Maybe I didn't treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn't love you Quite as often as I could have Little things I should have said and done I just never took the time You were always on my mind You were always on my mind Maybe I didn't hold you All those lonely, lonely times And I guess I never told you I'm so happy that you're mine If I made you feel second best Girl, I'm so sorry I was blind You were always on my mind You were always on my mind Tell me Tell me that your sweet love hasn't died Give me Give me one more chance To keep you satisfied Satisfied Little things I should have said and done I just never took the time You were always on my mind You were always on my mind You were always on my mind Maybe I didn't treat you Quite as good as I should have Maybe I didn't love you Quite as often as I could have Maybe I didn't hold you All those lonely, lonely times And I guess I never told you I'm so happy that you're mine Maybe I didn't treat you Quite as good as I should Hey, baby I know you'll believe in me That's all I ever need Uh-huh No, no, nothing's gonna stop it Nothing will scare me Oh, no Hey, baby It's the only way out Come on, little darling Now come on, what's it all about? Standing on top of the world For a little while Standing on top Of the world Gonna give it all we got Oh, I know I want to I've got to have a little taste I just want to take my deep And I find it's real estate Yeah Hey, baby Make it nice and sweet Oh, little God Let's take a walk down easy street Standing on top of the world For a little while Standing on top of the world Just give it all, God Baby, got a feeling Oh, I wanna touch it now See the whole wide world Turn upside down Yeah, baby! Woo! Someday we'll be standing on top of the world for a little while. Standing on top of the world till we can stop. Standing on top of the world for a little while. Standing on top of the world Gonna give it all Yeah, standing on top Hey, baby Standing on top Hey, darling Standing on top Standing on top Thank you. I don't need to take you back once more. You say you need a helping hand here. But that's what you told me once before. Walk softly on this heart of my love. Don't treat it mean and so unkind Let it rest in peace and quiet love Walk so lonely on this heart of mine Walk on! guitar solo I feel your heart turn to stone But please let me down really sick Cause loneliness moves in as you move on on on Walk softly on this heart of mine, love. Don't treat it mean and so unkind. Let it rest in peace and quiet, love. Walk softly on this heart of mine. Won't go on the only start of mine. Won't go on the only start of mine. Thank you. Hey mister, what time does an ex-bus leave? I'm a part of one out of Tennessee. I won't be back for a long, long while. Give me $85 worth of highway miles. I ain't got no luggage as you can see Just a whole lot of heavy memories I was finally up for just to settle it down Till I found out you've been fooling around You can send me north, you can send me south Just don't send me past my house Don't ask me where I'm going, cause I don't care I want a ticket now, take me anywhere But here Ticket that'll take me anywhere But here Well I hear it's cold up in Saskatoon But it couldn't be colder than our bedroom The skies are blue down in Alabama But there won't be any bluer than I am You can send me north, you can send me south Just don't send me past my house Don't ask me where I'm going, cause I don't care I want a ticket that'll take me anywhere but here A ticket that'll take me anywhere but here I don't care. I want a ticket that'll take me anywhere but here. A ticket that'll take me anywhere but here. piano plays softly There is a room A sanctuary safe and strong To heal the wounds From lovers past Until a new one comes along I spoke to you In cautious tone You answered me with no pretense And still I feel I said too much My silence is my self-defense And every time I've held a rose It seems I only felt the thorns And so it goes, and so it goes And so will you soon, I suppose But if my silence made you leave Then that would be my worst mistake So I will share this room with you And you can have this heart to break And this is why my eyes are closed Is just as well for all I've seen And so it goes, and so it goes And you're the only one who knows So I would choose to be with you As if the choice were mine to make But you can make decisions too And you can have this heart to break And so it goes, and so it goes And you're the only one who knows I'm sorry. I was born a rampant man. My father was a gambler down in Georgia. And he wound up on the wrong end of a gun. And I was born in the backseat of a greyhound bus. Rolling down Highway 41. Lord, I was born a rampant man. Trying to make a living and do it the best I can When it's time for leaving I hope you'll understand That I was born a rambling man All right. I'm on my way to New Orleans this morning. But even out of Nashville, Tennessee, they always have a good time down on the battle hall. Delta women think the world of me Lord, I was born a Mamblin' man Trying to make a living and doing the best I can When it's time to believe in I hope you'll understand That I was born a Mamblin' man I was born a man in Maine Thank you. ¶¶ I guess meeting of the general government planning committee. First item on the agenda is approval of the May 9th committee summary. Chair, entertain a motion. So moved. Second. There's a motion to second. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Council members, I am going to slightly adjust our agenda because I think items two and three are probably going to take us a good amount of time. And Council Member Lynch has item number four that she'd like to give us an update on. And I want to make sure that we get to hear that update and don't run out of time. So we're going to move item four up. And Council Member Lynch, if you would like to introduce the Tenants on Boards and Commissions item. Thank you, Chair. In addition to that, thank you for the support in placing this in committee, this item in committee. I'd like to also give a thank you to Vice Mayor Wu, Council Member Sheehan, for joining me in this research and discussion journey regarding Tenants on Boards and Commissions. And I think I have a PowerPoint that will be coming up soon as well. I'd like to also additionally thank Commissioners Lanter and Speckard and their departmental teams for joining us in that research and discussion regarding placing tenants on housing-related boards and commissions. And then lastly, I'd like to definitely thank Jennifer Sutton for her research and skills, and Tori, Layton, and LaShawn. Thank you to our legislative aides for your assistance in this discussion and research journey that we started out on earlier this year. Next slide, please. So a local advocacy organization, the Kentucky Tenants, raised the concern about the issue of equity on our housing-related boards and commissions. And so I agree that I would do some research and discussion on this topic and bring it back to you all for decision and discussion if needed. The boards and commissions that we investigated are listed there on the slide. And through our research, we spoke with representatives of each of these entities. uh... not like to think all those that came to our discussions and gave us uh... information about the ins and outs of each boarding commission uh... and the makeup of the sporting commission and learning about the sporting commission we claim that uh... simply adding seats are designating seats for tenants uh... in some cases cases would involve changing state law changing uh... rc charter and changing local ordinances so is a bigger uh... by the apple then we anticipated was it going to be as easy as we thought So if you'll go to the next slide, please. So we did some more digging and researches to see what other municipalities around the country are doing to give advocacy and a voice to renters and tenants in their cities. And so you can see the cities that we researched and we looked at their different models and what they offered as well. We want to say in our discussions and research, we wanted to keep in mind the goal was to bring the tenant and renter voice to the table in an intentional way regarding the housing issues that our cities faces on a day-to-day basis. And so the model that many of those cities had adopted was having a separate tenant advisory board that will work in conjunction with city leaders to give input on decisions that were being made on the city level that would affect renters and tenants. Renters and tenants that are on these advocacy boards that work in conjunction with the city, just have that seat at the table to talk about issues, to advocate for other renters and tenants, to educate the city leaders on issues regarding renters and tenants in the city, and they really work in conjunction with the city in making those decisions. So we thought that this was a really good model, something that we're interested in trying, And in speaking with Commissioner Lanter, he had already started diving into this model. So we were in alignment on our ideas, which was very exciting. He had already initiated and started working on creating an advisory board for tenants and renters and one, a separate board for landlords, to give input to our Housing Advocacy Office about issues and concerns that they see in our city in the landlord rental market. So that has already been started. And so I'm excited to invite Tiffany Madison to come up and talk about some of their work that these two advisory boards have already started to work on through Commissioner Lancer's office. Thank you so much, Tiffany. Thank you. Somebody? Clicker. Thanks. Clicker. Clicker. Thank you, Councilmember Lynch. I'm here on behalf of Commissioner Lanter to speak a little bit about our landlord and tenant advisory boards. As you can see, they are not official boards or advisory boards or commissions as appointed by the mayor. They're more of like an advisory group, but that is in the title advisory board. The goals of our landlord and tenant advisory boards are to review and advise the Office of Housing Advocacy and Community Development on its programs and services and to provide data and feedback on issues affecting all types of tenants and housing providers in Lexington. Basically it's just to kind of have an engaged and open conversation with our tenants and with our landlords about concerns and issues that they're dealing with. We often hear from third parties or our outside agencies, but we want to hear directly from those housing providers and those tenants. Currently, we have it set up to meet quarterly. We didn't want to overwhelm our tenants who are working every day, our landlords who have multiple properties, but we thought if we met at least four times a year and had engaged conversations, that's a good start. If they felt like we needed to meet more, we would. And those meetings are staffed by our office, usually by myself, with assistance from Dean of Melbourne. The Landlord Advisory Board, or we also call it our Housing Providers Board, currently has 11 active members, 7 men, 4 women, 2 African-American, and it's a diverse group. We have small-time landlords, our medium ones, those who just have a few single-family homes as well as maybe a large unit with eight or 12 units. And then we have our larger housing providers that have hundreds of units around Lexington. And then we've also invited individuals who are part of the Greater Lexington Apartment Association. When this slide was made, we had only met one time, but we have met twice now. We met in May as well as August 9th. And we've had a variety of representatives come and speak to the group. Just this past week, we had Sergeant Wayne Terry, who is the supervisor of the police NROs, our neighborhood resource officers. He came. Some of the landlords had expressed at the May meeting that they wanted to have a better relationship with our police officers so that they could easily call an officer if they witnessed something or maybe their tenants didn't feel comfortable revealing that information, but that they could do so on their behalf. We also had someone from Planning come to speak a little bit about zoning-related issues as it pertains to our landlords. We had code enforcement come. Lee Steele, our new director of code enforcement, came and introduced himself, as well as Cash, who's leaving, came and gave some parting words before he leaves. Jonathan Wright spoke a little bit about HSP, our housing stabilization program, which most of our landlords are very familiar with, but we also talked to them about our housing stabilization services and how it's kind of changing over to mediation and those type of services that will be provided to our tenants. And then they also were introduced to our housing advocate, Caitlin Dixon. As for our tenant advisory board, that group has not met yet. We are scheduled to meet September 6th at the Black and Williams Center at 6 p.m. As of right now, it's made up of 12 members and Kentucky tenants. Their organizers were able to help us identify a diverse group of tenants, those who live in subsidized or market rate units, those who live in small or large, or sorry, that have small or large landlords. And then it's a mix of singles as well as families with children. And then you can see some of our tenants came from Kentucky tenants or, you know, our participants in Kentucky tenants, the Lexington Housing Authority. Let's see what else. To make it to accommodate those who are coming, especially since it's during the weekend and the evening, we will provide them with dinner. And we don't have child care per se, but at Black and Williams, of course, we've got the reading room. And then we've made it known that children are welcome. We're going to keep the meeting brief. It is during the school week, but we don't want that to be a barrier from anyone to not attend. And I think that's it. I don't know if council members have any questions about those two boards. And I'll just wrap them up and say, based on our discussions and with Commissioner Lanter, And we think the best course of action is to go ahead and give these new two advisory groups a year, a trial period for the year of meeting and discussing. And then have Commissioner Lanter come back in August or in the fall of next year to kind of give us reports about if these two advisory groups are something we need to make permanent. Maybe we need to do some tweaking of the model and adjustments before we make it permanent. But to get an assessment of how they've gone through this trial period this one year to see if we need to make them permanent or find another route for engagement with renters and tenants in the housing-related decisions that we make here with the city. So, based on our research, that is our recommendation moving forward. And I don't know, Chair, if I need to just leave it in committee since we've asked Commissioner Lynch to report back out in a year about how these groups have been going and progressing. Yeah, I think that'd be appropriate, Council Member Lynch. We'll leave it and go ahead and just schedule that as an annual update then in the committee. Okay, great. And I'll just lastly close with, from our discussions, it became very obvious that we need to do a larger deep dive into all of our boards and commissions, making sure that they're equitable and representative of our entire city. And so that's a larger issue that I know Vice Mayor Wu is working on with some folks as well that we're going to do some more digging. Because we need to look at all of our boards and commissions from the top to bottom. So that's a larger project that's coming down the pipeline. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any Council Members have any questions or comments for Council Member Lynch? All right. Thank you, Council Member Lynch. I'm glad we were able to get that report out and make sure we get it done today. I do think that's a great first step in engaging more of the public, particularly tenants, in our boards and commissions process. Next up, we'll go back up to item number two, public input. This is a partial report out that Council Member Legree will give. I think before you lead us in, our council administrator wanted to demonstrate some of our newer technology upgrades here with our pointer, I think. I wanted to show you all some cool stuff, and I'm really sorry that Charlie Martin is not here because I think this will really help him. But we upgraded a lot of stuff in the chamber while you all were on break. And one of the really cool things, like when we're over here going, they can't see when you point at that screen. When you point at the screen, it shows up on that screen and this screen and the TV. I know, right? And you can do this so you can have, like, highlight things. And this one's fun. This is for Charlie. you can highlight like on a map or something like that. So I just wanted to show you all that because it's kind of cool. Thank you very much. Council Member Legree, would you like to lead us in here, please? Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, I really appreciate the opportunity to lead and now provide a partial report out from our public input subcommittee. I first want to thank all of the subcommittee members who have worked hard to bring us to this point. Thank you to Vice Mayor Wu, to Council Members, Ellinger, Lynch, and Sheehan for your work on this. And I want to make sure, and I know we'll get into this a little more, but to credit our staff, who have provided really valuable input and perspective, and have used their skills to provide us with new avenues and processes for public input. A special thank you to Stacy Maynard, Jennifer Sutton, Hannah Iden, Michael Cravens, Ashley Bailey, Nick Brock, Chris Edwards, and Haley Salyers for your work on this. I know we had a lot of people join in our conversations, but you all were really, really important in this process. And along with that, I want to thank Richard Young and Kit Anderson and the staff of Civic Lex for helping us to find a starting point for this review and helping to inform the steps we've taken so far. So a lot of credit is due to the people who have been a part of this subcommittee. We've worked hard over the past several months to modernize our public input processes and to create more accessibility, clarity, and ease of use when it comes to public engagement. And we're excited about the intentional updates we're going to present to you today and the ways that they'll help us improve in the forward momentum of this work. So as part of this presentation, you'll find a red line of our public engagement guidelines, which are part of the council rules, which we'll get into a little bit more later. And later in today's meeting, we will do a more extensive and multifaceted review of the council rules separate from our public engagement guidelines, and that's an effort that was led by council member baxter and if the committee is amenable however we will plan to make an independent motion on the adoption of the public engagement portion of the rules which would then later be incorporated into the larger document so chair miss maynard thank you so much and let's begin okay thank you all thanks for having me um i guess you don't really have a choice but i'm here um so as council member lagree mentioned these are all the people that were on the subcommittee and i want to apologize to chris edwards that he was left off we did value his input at our meetings and then also before we get into this i want to make sure everybody understands that these are the public input rules and processes for council for our council meetings our work sessions other subcommittees other commissions planning commission they have their own separate set of public input so this is really just for the council people can other boards and commissions can choose to approve it if they choose to but we're not in a position to mandate how they do their things so i wanted to be sure that was clear so the purpose of this subcommittee as councilmember lucre mentioned was to just review and update our public input process to try to make it a little bit easier for the members of our public who want to to come in to speak, but also make it a little bit easier for our chairs. When the mayor is chairing a meeting, the new process makes it much easier for her to be able to read the names and mark off where people are in the process. So as a part of that, we reviewed and modernized our public input process. You all should be familiar with that. We started it right after spring recess in April when you came back. We had a few little kinks to work out, but it's been working very well, I think. We updated the guidelines for public comment and the expectations just to improve the flow of that document and break it down so it was a little bit easier to digest and easier for people to understand where things were in that process. We researched and selected an engagement platform for implementation in the budget, which is the budget we are in now. So we have some new things coming as a part of that. And then going forward, we will create a marketing and education plan so can share with the members of the public you can share it in your newsletters we'll have a public input page that's really awesome and then we'll be providing updates to this committee as we go along in that process so here are the dates that we met we have a meeting coming up in a couple of days to discuss how the presentation went any kind of feedback that you all may have for it and then we've also invited our committee chairs to that meeting because we will be discussing public comment and standing committees how we want to do that if we want to do that is it written is Is it in person? All of those types of things. We wanted to get feedback from our committee chairs. And then all of the information and materials may be viewed at that website for the subcommittee. So in our review of the changes, we addressed any typos. We took out all the gendered language in the document. We updated the formatting, again, of the input guidelines and expectations. We clarified some of the procedures. We have a new electronic sign-in process that we'll talk about. there's been some updates to yielding of time and then we have some public comment restrictions and we'll get into that a little bit more with security updates accepted technology loss of privilege etc so the electronic sign-in process again we started that in april we have two ipads that are available outside of the council chamber we do have a staff member that is there with them to assist people signing in an unintended consequence of that has been that i think it's been very well received by people coming in it's a little bit intimidating to get up here and speak in front of you all and so i think having someone there to help them and talk to them about the process has really put a lot of people at ease so that's been something we didn't really anticipate but has been really a nice perk about having those out there we have them available 30 minutes before the meeting starts and this is for work sessions council meetings and zone changes and then we will take them down 30 minutes after the start of the meeting if we still have people in line to sign in to speak then clearly we would allow them to continue to sign in to speak but that just keeps us we we had a run where we didn't take them down and it it caused a little bit of confusion in the meeting so this clears it up and one of the things that we will talk about further in the group is do I want to allow people to sign in if you're in your office and you know you want to come speak do you want to be able to go online and sign in before the meeting so that that makes that 30 minute window a little bit easier to swallow or if we could have a QR code out there after the iPads are gone that someone could scan and still sign in those are things that we will discuss starting in our August 17th meeting again we have staff members out there who are helping people sign in making sure they understand what to do is their item on the agenda for work sessions or not because that's one of the questions and there's a an example of the form on the next slide but the required information is the required information for our comment name council district is your item on the agenda or not on the agenda are you yielding time if yes who are you yielding time and do you have handouts for council that's something new that we added and that was part of the security measures to keep people from approaching the dais in the middle of the meeting we have a box out on the table at the public comment we have a public sign-in area out there now and so we have a box there for people to put documents for council if they bring enough copies for all the council members we'll pass those out if not we scan them after the meeting and send them to you all and and we explain that to them when they do it and then the really cool thing i think for the chairs of the committee is that as they sign in it populates a list so we have a third ipad that is at the dais for whoever's sharing the meeting and that list populates if you're if you are yielding time it also says yes and it tells who you're yielding time to so it's easy for them to see who's here to yield time to an individual so that's been very handy and then it also allows us to keep a full list of all of the speakers and what topics they wanted to speak about in the council office and we are sharing that in our monthly staff meetings by district with your aides so that they can let you know what issues people were here to speak about in your district if they choose to leave their contact information we don't require that but there is a place for their address or email or phone number if they choose to leave that then you guys can reach out to them if you think you need to and this is a really hard to see example of the form but it oh yeah i can zoom in i was just showing you guys this so look how cool that is so um so the date of the meeting auto populates to today is your item on the agenda yes or no will pop up are you yielding time if you select yes it pops up a box for you to enter the name of the person that you are yielding time to and then are you providing handouts to council yes or no and if you say yes it pops up an instructions to tell you to place them in the little black box on the table. Now I got to go back to my other pointer just in case. So now we're getting into this form. I think most of you are familiar with this. I worked with the law department many years ago to create this public comment guidelines. We have used them periodically, not consistently to be fair, But we split that into a two-section form public comment process, and that's if you wish to speak, here's what you do and here's what we expect. And then a public participation piece, and that's just where we're asking a little bit about decorum and language and those kinds of things. So the public comment process just outlines the process for signing in to speak. It addresses the handouts for council. It addresses approaching the dais. We have added language to clarify that only the mayor, mayor, staff, council members, legislative aides, or council staff, and, of course, security, may approach the dais and be beyond the podium during a meeting. And this would also apply to our caucus room in the back when there are no public meetings taking place back there. Other security changes, we are no longer going to accept USB devices, just for the obvious potential for viruses, things like that. That is something that the new CIO has been invited to our August 17th meeting to talk about a little bit further and clear that up a little bit. Whether we are going to do that as a city or not, I think we would need her feedback. But for the council, we are not going to do that anymore. Just because also in addition to a virus, we don't always know what's on those drives. And we want to be sure that we can vet the information before we're putting it up on TV. The time limit is where one of our bigger changes has taken place in this document. There was no change to the three-minute time limit for individuals. However, yielding time was reduced from the current practice of 15 minutes to nine minutes. So that would just mean that two individuals may yield their time to any speaker for a total of nine minutes. and we still have on there that those individuals would need to be present when called upon in order to yield their time. They do need to sign in to speak. Of course, they would select the, yes, I'm yielding my time, who they're yielding time to, and then again, they'd have to be here when they were called. The public participation piece, we're hoping that will clear up a little bit of confusion people have when they come in here. It just provides information on rules of order and decorum. Clarifies for you all and for the people coming again, it's a little intimidating. Sometimes people come in, they expect to make their comment and get some feedback from you. And so we've just added some language that it's really not a time to engage in a dialogue or problem solving. It's a time for you all to listen to their comments. And then of course, as we always have, if there's something that you need to speak with someone, you certainly can speak to them after the meeting or let them know. But it just gets that written down so that people understand what they're here to do. We have left in there that it's not for political endorsements or campaign purposes. And then we just remind speakers to remain courteous, refrain from derogatory or unbecoming abusive language, and then disruptions such as clapping or cheering or booing. And then we added a line that any person not adhering may be cautioned by the presiding officer and given the opportunity to conclude. And if they fail to comply as caution, they may not be allowed to continue. And we've added that it is the meeting chair's responsibility to enforce these rules. So our next steps, and this is what we will start going forward, our new technology, Engagement HQ, I'm very excited about that. We have our agreement signed. We have a group of people who are going to start working to kind of build that up into what we wanted to look like. I have recently gotten an email from our Granicus contact that's going to work on that with us, so I'm really excited to kind of get that going. And I'll be on the group. Council Member Legree and Sheehan from this subcommittee will be on the group. CIO Liz Rogers and then whoever she thinks needs to be involved from an IT perspective. Nick Brock, we couldn't do any of this without Nick. So Nick will be a part of the group and then the council clerk will be involved. And I've also notified the planning commissioner just in case anyone from planning wants to be involved in this. We have unlimited users. And so my hope and our hope as a subcommittee was that other divisions may be able to use this as we get it established. Particularly planning for zoning matters so people can comment. we also have gov delivery which is another piece of our greenicus agreement that we're adding on and that will allow people to sign up for very specific items to be notified if you want to be notified that short-term rentals are coming up on an agenda or you're maybe you live in the fifth district but you want to know what's going on in the 12th district you can sign up for those newsletters we can work with other organizations we can work with the state to so that if someone signs up for something at a state level it could pop up and say you may also be interested in what the city of lexington is doing and you can follow that here so it'll give us some opportunities to expand our outreach we can also use it to do our newsletters i know all of you have a different district newsletter the council has a newsletter so we can maybe make some of those look a little more consistent come up with a brand for those and run those out of here as well so that's really another cool thing we have a new pio that is literally just today approved and been graded and ready to go it will be on the august 29th work session for approval and then after that we'll be able to get it advertised in in the budget you all may remember that we anticipated billing that in october so we're still on our path to do that so then we will work on education and outright outreach materials we have a public input website that i have some screenshots in here it's not quite live yet so i can't show it to you but that's going to be really cool and then we'll also consider other options as i mentioned earlier about comment and committee written comment virtual comment early sign in qr code access and then additional security measures related to receiving written comment or attachments again there's a concern of viruses with attachments and written comments we would definitely need to see what would be in those before we would want to share them and then this is a not a great picture of what the website will look like because it will be prettied up this is in a draft form but that will give you an idea of what people can see on there we have a thing are you coming downtown here's where here's how you get here here's where you park here's where you look at council meetings here's where you want want to look at NDF process, we'll look at that here, public comment here. So a lot of different options from that main public input hub. And with that, I'm under my time limit and I'll entertain any questions. Don't bless me. Thank you, Stacey. Council Member Legree, is there anything else that you would like to add or point out before we have general discussion and questions? Chair, the only thing that I would encourage our colleagues to do is to make sure that they've taken the opportunity to cast eyes on the red line, which is in their packet right after the presentation. And if they have any questions about that, then it may make sense for them to ask those. And then that's what we will be making a motion on regarding approval. Thank you, council member. And we'll get to questions for Stacey or Council Member Legree, but I want to point out how we want to go procedurally is this red line that Council Member Legree is, it's part of our packet that's being presented. This will, if we approve this, this will then be Section 3.106 of the Council Rules. And so when Council Member Baxter gets to her discussion of the other changes to Council Member Rules, we will have already addressed that issue here with this item. So because this was specific to public input and we had two separate subcommittees, we're going to address them separately, but this is actually Section 3.106 of the council rules. So with that, any council member have any question on that or any clarification needed? Okay, with that, Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. And I just wanted to take a moment to thank Council Member Legris for chairing this subcommittee. i think it's it was really important work and you guys really you did a lot of really great things and and i know stacy you worked really hard on it too so um thank you so much i have just a few really quick questions um the form that people use to check in outside can that be translated into other languages yes and nick is here so that i don't speak out of line but i believe that our website has the capability to translate that into just when they sign in like that form i'm getting a thumbs up yes okay and then um i'm curious if when um you guys were going through this discussion if it ever came up to have individuals who are speaking about items on the agenda if if we if part of the conversation was ever having that person state what item they were going to speak on like name council district i'm speaking on item a just so that we know how to follow along i didn't know if that ever came up in conversation yes we did talk about that and nick and i talked about that on a few different occasions as well that we can always add a box that when you check yes my items on the agenda it can pop up a box for you to put in what it is so we can certainly add that okay so the chair of of the meeting would then see that okay yes so what happens with the meeting chair all of this data is pulled into a big excel file in a google file and so what the chair gets at their seat are the things that are required like is your item on the agenda yes or no so they know how to call people um name district but we can update those fields so that if it was an item on the agenda they could see what is the item so we can certainly tweak what the council what the chair of the committee would see it's and then we have all that other information behind there that they don't really need to call them to speak does Does that make sense? It does. I think I would prefer that when a person comes up to speak, that they say, hi, I'm Whitney Baxter from the 9th District. I'm speaking on item whatever, just so that we can easily follow along. I understand that it would be in the spreadsheet that we could look at later on, but I think that would be really helpful for us. So I'm just going to throw that out there. Well, I appreciate that input, because part of our next steps involve a lot of education and some of our staff members have done a wonderful job kind of ushering people through the new sign-in process. But something we have talked about also involves like docket education, how to read a docket and engage with it in an effective way. So that's something that we can revisit when it comes to the educational component as well to make it easier for people if they are gonna need to say their item number to locate it and whatnot. Okay, that's great. I think, like I said before, I think we've taken a great step forward in helping the public input process, and I'm excited to see where we go from here. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. And I do think it is a great idea for us as next steps to explore having someone put in the item that they believe they're speaking on to the best that they can. I know I have watched the mayor here when, say, are you speaking something on the agenda or not on the agenda? And sometimes people are not sure, or there'll be something that may be reported out of committee that will become part of the agenda, but that's not on the agenda to start with, and it would help the chair to know, oh, that is actually on the agenda. Things like that I think would be helpful. And that's one of the things that the staff member outside is helping people with. So one of the things we ask them as we're helping them fill out the form is, is your item on the agenda? And if they really don't know we have the agenda there, we can help them find that and help them work through that a little bit, too. Great. Thank you. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Chair. My question had to do with was there any discussion or consideration of standardizing this across city government? um we we did discuss that and that's something that certainly we can speak to the cao about but we we felt it was not in our purview to tell other people how to run their meetings we have had people reach out to us like i've had people reach out to me that like public arts commission has reached out to me before when they've had people sign in to speak because they typically don't so they've asked how we do it and we certainly can share information with them but we We just didn't feel like it was our job to dictate to other people how to run their inputs. I guess my thought on that is that you have folks that go to the Board of Adjustments, that go to Planning Commission that also come in here for our meetings, and it might be a little confusing. If you're giving in one meeting somebody five, three minutes to add on, but another one you're not, and it would take a lot of education, I think, for folks to sort that out. So I don't know if that's something we want to look at as a government to standardize them a little bit because there's great ideas. I mean, they're really great ideas and it's very much needed. And I think it's very much needed in a lot of other situations as well. But thank you for your work. It needed to be done and it looks great. Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this work. You guys did a great job. I want to tack on to what Council Member Plowman said. I do think, because I've had it happen to me numerous times, that the deer in the headlights look like, oh, we do it this way in planning. We don't do it that way here. So I do think there's a uniformity that would be helpful. I've got two other questions. Is there a reason why in number one, 3.106, number one, we don't include committee meetings? Because I've struggled to find, I've struggled to figure out how we're going to do committee meetings and if we're never going to have public comment in committee meetings. I'm not a big fan of that, but I'd like to kind of figure that out. Yes, we did not include committees in that because we currently do not have a public comment period in committees. Since I've been here for almost 12 years, we've not had public comment added as a committee item, and that's one of the reasons we have invited our committee chairs to attend our next meeting on August 17th, so that we can start discussing how we want to handle that, what do we want that to look like. Due to time constraints, I know that's been one of the concerns in some of the cows that we've had, that we only have a limited time to get committee work done, and we have these kind of discussions, And so it would cut into that. Do we want to have a written comment? The people can submit a written comment to submit committee. And our new engagement HQ site will allow us to do that and compile those. So those are the kind of things that we will look into. But at this time, since we don't have it, we didn't put it on this form. Okay. Thank you. And then another thing on that, the electronic form outside, does it have email and contact information so that we can get those as a council member and do a direct follow-up with the comments? It does, but we do not have it as a required form because we don't require it in order to speak, and we have had some concerns in the past with people stating their names and address, and some people don't want to share that for many various reasons, so we don't require it, but it is there if people choose to enter it. Okay. All right. It would be nice if it was required. You all can totally make that motion. I know. And I think that's all I've... Oh, and I had one more. Is there... And I've talked to Council Member Legree a little bit about this this afternoon. It would be kind of cool to get Civic Lex to actually... Like, there's sometimes that I really would just like a poll. Like, I would really like some sort of... I call it like if you're a Tom Evelyn does a poll every couple of weeks. It would be kind of cool to see, to have a third party do some sort of outreach public engagement that would report back to us on a periodic basis like, oh, here's how people feel about these things. And I don't know exactly how to engage that, but I just, I don't know if you brought it up. I think that's something we could do in-house, and Stacy Diamond from our PIO office is also back here with Nick, and we have talked about we have capabilities in the city government to do those types of polls. Should we choose to do that? Am I right? Yes, another thumbs up. So, yes, we can do that from a city perspective so that, you know, we can kind of tweak that how we want it. So it is definitely an option that we did discuss and can have going forward. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks for all your hard work. Thank you, Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Legree and your team for all your work on this. Can you talk a little bit about the 30 minutes, the 30 minutes beforehand and 30 minutes into the meeting, cutting off opportunities for folks to sign in electronically? What was your thought behind that? So there were several reasons we thought of that. the original reason was the 30 minutes before was way more than we've ever had we usually would bring a shine in sheet down here as we came into the meeting so that gave people time to sign in a little bit earlier and not have such a gridlock at the front door on heavy days the 30 minutes after the meeting started we in in the past we have always gotten that sign-in sheet right after the meeting starts so if you were here five minutes after you didn't get to sign in the sheet was already gone one of the things we discussed at length was the staff time to have people standing out here with these ipads just you know for security of we can't lock the ipad down for helping people sign in there's a lot of staff time involved in that and then we need to be running meetings and all those other kinds of fun things that we do so we talked about cutting it off and we did have one meeting where we did not do that and things went south rather quickly we had some people kind of taking advantage of the system we had people in here who ran outside to sign in at the last minute and then interrupted the meeting that they signed up to give council member baxter their time or whatever and so we saw at that time the advantages of having a clear cut off. And I understand that. So what do other municipalities do? Did y'all do any research to see what maybe some surrounding counties do in regards to public comments and their sign-in times? We did a lot of research and other municipalities have a way more strict public input comment procedure than we do. We are actually quite generous based on every other entity. A lot of places you have to sign in before the meeting starts there's no sign in at the meeting you sign up beforehand they limit it to a certain number of individuals per topic so you could have three people speak for it three people speak against it they have a 30 minute limit period for comment if you speak at the meeting today you can't speak for six meetings from today so they are a lot more strict than we are but we did look at that okay i just wanted to i just kind of wanted I wanted to know the thought behind that change or that recommendation. And I would hate for folks to think that we are limiting their opportunity to speak. So, and I guess as a presiding officer over a meeting, if you see somebody come in after the time, I think you could allow them to speak. But I think we try to work to be as consistent as possible, but that was just one thing I thought about. The other thing is no longer accepting USBs for information. I know we have a project over there. Are we still going to allow folks if they bring in a map or something that they can share to project that on the screen as opposed to USB? And that's another cool update is the projector is new. It doesn't look like the ones we all had in elementary school. And Chris said that for the planning commission meeting the other day, They had someone with a cell phone that they were able to put on and display the text. So it's better than what we had before. And we have the clean version of the rules of the public comment guidelines on here that we can pull up and show you. So you can kind of see how it looks, too. But we will still have that as an option. Okay. Okay. Well, that's good. I just think we've got to do a good job of communicating these changes once we make them, just to set expectations and to let people know what's coming. So thank you. Yes, I agree. And we put money in the budget for education and outreach this year specifically for this. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Legree, for your hard work and everybody else that works on this document. I have just a couple of questions concerning definitions. Decorum is one of them. And so I said, let me look up the Webster definition of this. So it says behavior in keeping with good taste and propriety. And I said, so what is propriety? And it says, the state of quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards and behaviors or morals. And so, and then it says in quotation, he always behaved with the utmost priority. So I think my question is, who gets to judge that? And the other thing is, everyone knows I'm just not cut from the same cloth as most of the council members. So when I'm passionate, sometimes that could look like overbearing and rude. And as we come from different cultures, I'm trying to figure out with this conforming to whose standards. Can you help me with that? I will do my best. So for our purposes of this, we were using decorum as we don't want someone to stand up here and scream profanities at you all. Or call you names or racial slurs or anything slanderous. Like we were trying to keep people from behaving in that way. Should they, and they have before, then it is up to the presiding officer to intervene and caution them to kind of rephrase their comments or be asked to leave and wrap up their comments. And we do have the law department here. We had many, many, many conversations about free speech and First Amendment rights, but this was something that we felt we could at least ask people to behave appropriately. Our meetings are televised. Keep your language and your actions, you know, G-rated. And feel free to elaborate, council members, on that. I can understand the profanity. The gray line is if someone like me, who gets very passionate sitting in the seat, who gets to say, well, their voice is loud and that's the cutoff right there. We need to ask them to leave. But it appears like it's an aggressive behavior, but it's really just the way culture and just a passion that comes out. And I'm just having maybe I'm with you on the cussing and aggressive, stepping away from the podium, coming this way. I agree with you on that. But if a person is just standing there, you know, they've been evicted and the landlord and, you know, their adrenaline is pumping, but not toward us, but expressing themselves with the trauma that they're going through. How do we determine that? Yeah, and do you want to speak to that? Council Member, I'm glad that you brought this point up. I think with these public participation guidelines and the items specifically around decorum, that was something that was previously in the document and we left it there. I think you're absolutely right that there is some gray area and I hope that the presiding officer would extend grace to individuals who are expressing themselves at the podium. And I think that the rules of freedom of speech give a lot of leeway for that grace. And we don't want this to be a hostile place for people to come and feel as though they can't express themselves in a way that makes sense for them. And so that is why ultimately these are guidelines for engagement. And then we leave that up to the presiding officer to make that judgment call. Okay, and so if we deem that maybe they're jumping the gun, what happens? I mean, I'll leave it there, and maybe we can discuss some more. And that conformality, I'm tongue-tied, but I was just, like, trying to figure out conforming to whose norms. But I heard what you said, Stacy, and we'll just, like, play it by ear, I think, is what we'll have to do. But thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member. And either Stacey or Council Member Degree could correct me or add, but just to that point, the language itself about how one's expected to conduct themselves was already our rule. The only addition is the wayfinding heading of decorum. And so that's to help people. I think part of what they've done is try to make it easier for people to read this. but the speaker shall exercise decorum during debate and so on was already part of our rules. But I think the point is well taken, and I think that a presiding officer should never expect someone to conform in thought or experience, but we do all certainly have certain professional ways in which we should conduct ourselves in public meetings, even if passionate or upset. And I think that's kind of what everybody's trying to find a middle ground there. That's correct. And it's also in our council rules for council members' decorum, too, and it was just copied from there. Some of us have been in meetings that those rules of decorum were broken fairly egregiously. And so you usually see it. It's pretty obvious when you see it. All right. Thank you, council member. Council member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I just want to make one quick comment and say thank you to Council Member Legree and to Stacey for leading up this effort. And let everyone know that wasn't on the subcommittee that we, Council Member Legree was very intentional about inviting Civic Lex to the table to join us in the discussion because they did a very extensive public study on how the community feels about public engagement with us. And so we had them at the table with us. They shared their study with us, and they gave us input and ideas about how we need to tweak some of our guidelines so that the public feels like they can freely engage with us and that we're more accessible. So I want to point that out, that CivicLEX was at the table, and they gave us some really, really good feedback and input. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. I'd like Council Member Legree, if you wouldn't mind to briefly speak and just highlight again those next steps that you've got some ongoing process about data gathering and education of the public and continually reviewing these rules. And then at that point, then I'd look to you if you'd like to make any motion. Absolutely, Chair. So as Ms. Maynard mentioned, some of our next conversations involve technology, some of the platforms that we've already purchased and how to best implement those, the potential use of our website in the most effective way, the engagement of our CIO to make sure that if we do have a way for people to bring electronic documents into chambers or to submit them to us via other forms, that they have a secure way to do so. And then to Councilmember James Brown's point about making sure that everyone is able to engage as they wish to. I want to explore some other ways that we could use technology to help us with that process. Knowing that there is always going to be the human element and if people have come to speak, we are still dependent on the discretion of the chair at some points in our process. And then from there and as we've brought up in this discussion, we know that a really important part of what we're doing involves education and outreach. making sure that people have many different ways that they can learn about how our processes may have changed. And then to feel confident when they come to speak to us and we have staff and resources allocated accordingly. And then finally, as was mentioned earlier, we want to go a little bit deeper into our possibilities when it comes to engagement with committee items from the public, how to best let people know about those items and spaces for them to give input, whether it's verbal or written or otherwise. So those are some of the things that we have coming up. Do you have any other questions about that, Chair, before the motion? No, ma'am, just wanted you to have an opportunity to let the public know that this was a continuing process and there was more and better to come, I think. Absolutely. And the Chair would entertain a motion if the Council Member has one. Of course. I'd like to make a motion to approve the updated LFUCG Council Guidelines for Public Engagement, Section 3.106 of our Council Rules. So moved. Move a motion. Council Member Fogle seconded that motion. Is there any discussion on the motion? Sir, Councilmember Fogle is now a member of this committee, so we may have to... I like to keep things moving fast. I heard a second and I went with it. Appreciate that. Councilmember Reynolds is going to take that second, or Sheehan, I think, has already gotten credit for it, so it was seconded. Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. So for the language as it is presented to us in the red line version, and I'm actually looking at the full council rules section 3.106. I have two small amendments that we have discussed that I would like to make. So the first is in number two, the sign in process. It says that residents wishing to speak during public comment must sign themselves in prior to the start of the meeting at which they want to speak. But we're leaving the sign in sheet up or sign in process outside for 30 minutes after the start of a council work session or regular council meeting. So I would like to make the amendment to change the must sign themselves in to should sign themselves in. So moved. Second. All right, there's a motion and a second to make the amendment. Council Member Reynolds would like to speak to the amendment. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. So you're saying that they don't have to, but it's recommended that they do? Yeah, so the – can I answer that question? Yeah, okay. So I'm saying should instead of must because we're allowing them to sign in after the meeting has started. So we want to encourage them to sign in beforehand because that is our process and that's what we would like. It's most efficient for us, but we are allowing for it to happen after. So I think the word must should be altered. But then they would only be allowed to afterwards for 30 minutes, and that is a hard stop. Is that correct? At this point. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And I think that that actually, if you continue on that section, it does, in fact, set the time parameters. There's a motion to amend must to should in section two. In that first sentence, it's been seconded. Any further discussion on that amendment? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. any further discussion on the motion to adopt the revised council rules for public input vice chair plumbman would you please take the uh take the chair i'd like to have a discussion item and make a motion yes chair go ahead please thank you uh so my only issue similar to just a clarifying similar to Council Member Sheehan's. So when we talk about there are two iPads outside the council, currently we are using two iPads, but we're talking about a council rule change that to be changed then requires this body to meet and make that change. So in the event we decide to use a Microsoft tablet or we come up with something different, I think just saying iPad might be limiting, saying two is limiting. Sometimes we may only have one available. Sometimes we may need three. So I'll make a motion to amend in section two, the second sentence where it says there are two iPads. Instead of two iPads, the phrase digital sign-in sheets. So it would read there are digital sign-in sheets outside of the council chamber. Does that work for everybody? Does it make sense? I'm not tied to the language. Second. I'll be back to the change here. Then a motion, a second. Any in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And that passes. Councilman Reynolds, you're still signed in. Do you have anything? That's all right. All right. Seeing no others signed in for discussion, the motion as amended is on the floor. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That passes. So the revised LFUCG Council Guidelines for Public Engagement will now be placed as Section 3.106 of our Council Rules. Thank you Council Member Legree and her committee and all their hard work. Our next item is the council rules and procedures report out. Council Member Baxter, would you like to lead us in, please? Yes, thank you, Chair. First, I want to take a moment and thank my fellow subcommittee members, Vice Mayor Wu, Council Member Reynolds, Lynch, and Ellinger for your dedication and hard work on these updates. I'd also like to thank our council staff, Jennifer Sutton, Stacey Maynard, who helped us keep our red line edits straight, which was a huge task. Michael Craven's in the law department and legislative aide Rob Bolson. We had input from several different city departments as well. It was a big undertaking and we've worked hard over a period of five months. And while we're aware that these proposed changes will affect this council the most, we worked diligently with future councils and the community in mind. We started this process to review and update our rules and procedures to solidify expectations and improve procedural transparency, set forth best practices, and respond to audit findings to increase accountability and efficiencies. We researched numerous cities and examined council rules and procedures for their best practices. One of the things I'm most proud of is our table of contents, which makes it very easy to find specific rules that anyone is looking for and just making the document as a whole more user friendly. And our presentation today includes all of our research and recommendations. So thank you, Stacey, for giving us our presentation. Okay. Thank you. Hi again. um so council member baxter's already touched on who was on the subcommittee and there is a lot to go through so i won't go over that again she also pretty much touched on our scope of work and the purpose so i won't read that to you um here are all of our meetings we did have nine different meetings it's a little more than we thought we were going to have when we started but we got a lot done and again all the meeting materials may be viewed on a subcommittee page that was created for this group so if you're interested in looking at those overview of changes again like in the public input we removed all the gendered language we updated the formatting and style for consistency because those of you who've been around see that there are a lot of different formats in the council rules we addressed grammatical issues typos we added some clarification to clear up things that may have been a little bit vague the whole document was reorganized to make it a little bit better flow and added sections as needed and as a part of that we updated section references there is one that was missed that I will point out to you all that has been updated since this presentation we updated our rules to match our current practice we added best practices sections we added a process for taking and vacating offices as a result of our internal audit we revised our processes to incorporate recommendations from our audit team for pro cards purchasing neighborhood development funds, council capital projects. We added the table of contents. It's the little things that make everything easier. And we did have a very thorough discussion on social media. You will not see those slides in this presentation because due to some stuff going on at the Supreme Court level, I believe Vice Mayor Wu is going to create a separate subcommittee to look at that. It is in the red line version of the rules, the changes we made. if you all want to look at those there there's nothing out of the ordinary in the in there but we feel like it needs a a little bit deeper review and then we are proposing if you guys approve this today with any changes implementing this on january 1st of 2024. um you also received from jennifer sutton a nine page document that's a summary of all the changes um so for your reading pleasure you can look through that too um so we'll just jump right into what changes we made i'm not going to go over little things like we there are some places where we changed council office the council administrator or chairmanship to chair those kinds of things they're in your red line version you all are very smart and can figure that out so we'll just go into the substantive changes In section 1.101 for the vice mayor, we added terms of service to the committee and parliamentarian appointments. That's nothing new. They've always been two years. We just wrote it out in the instructions or in the rules. And then on number four for the administrative duties, we removed appointing council members to RFP committees because as far as any of us could remember, that has never happened. There's a new section entitled council member, section 1.102. I don't need to read this for you. You all are council members. You're doing this. All of it came from the charter, and we have references to which section of the charter it is from. So the remainder of this slide and this slide has all of that written out. And again, it is nothing new or different than what you're currently doing as a council member. We just thought it would be nice to have it in the council rules. Section 1.103 was updated to add work session as something that you would notify your colleagues if you weren't going to be here and we replaced other meetings of the council with committee meetings and then we elaborated zone change hearings confirmation hearings committee of the whole etc to spill out a little bit what our meetings are for people who may not know and then we replaced notify council office or committee chair with notify all council members and staff as soon as possible and then the language is in here that you would use you all already send that this is one place where we need to update because it currently says section in your forms it says section 1.203 which is the current section for that this is the new section is 1.103 so that has been updated in this presentation and in the copy of the rules this is a new part that everyone's as excited about section 1.104 is a seating chart And so the subcommittee did a little research on what other entities do, what other legislative bodies do, and we have found that majority of them have some sort of a seating chart. So as a first stab for you all to think about and consider, we are keeping the vice mayor, the mayor, and the two at-large council members in the center of the dais. And then the subcommittee thought it was easiest just to number one through 12 around the other seats. so that is in there for your consideration this section is not new we've just expanded it a little bit and we changed the name so section 1.105 was formerly travel and expenses and for those of you been around a while it had two lines in it so we elaborate on it a lot we changed it to government resource utilization and this is where we incorporated some of our audit recommendations So travel and expenses, we added a reference and a link to the LFUCG travel policy. That is CAO policy 4R. We didn't spell it out in here so that if the CAO changes that policy, our link will update to that correct policy. We won't have to update our council rules every time. And the same thing with the reference to travel vouchers and the LFUCG policies. Those will also be linked to what those current vouchers and policies look like. We did add a new blurb about council office space, and it was just to instruct council members that only council business shall be conducted in council offices and conference rooms. We are trying to, for security reasons, cut down on the use of our conference rooms after hours. It causes a little bit of a headache for security when people from outside the city are coming and going. So that was just added in there to try to help with that. And then we have added a purchasing policy. This is a new section to our rules, but it is not really new to any of the staff or your legislative aides. These are just our purchasing policies. Anyone who has a pro card has had to sign off on these policies. We're just reminding people to have it all in one spot, that everything is to be tax exempt. If you accidentally purchase something that's not, it's on you to go get that reimbursed and credited. And then we thought it would be helpful to put some of the most common council budget lines in here, as well as a little bit of an example of what they're used for, just so that we can be consistent as our legislative aides and staff are charging things off to different accounts from the pro card, that everything makes sense and everybody knows where to put the Commerce Lexington trips or dinners. And so it just cleared it up a little bit for everybody to see. Along those same lines, we have also outlined prohibited purchases. Again, this is nothing new. We've just never had it listed out specifically in the rules. This also came as part of our audit recommendations, just to remind people that personal charges are prohibited. You can't buy alcohol. Your card would decline if you tried, so nobody does that. But things like gifts, flowers, all of those things that we can't do as a city are listed out in here. And then we put a link in here to the ProCard policy as well as the record retention policy. We've had a problem as offices turn over where documents were thrown away. Whether you're coming or going from office, the retention policy still applies for three years. So we put it in here to make sure that everyone knows if you leave office, leave your documents. If we don't need them, the next person can get rid of them. But a lot of times we still do need them. So we've added that in here and then just examples of what is acceptable documentation for your charges. And again, that came straight from purchasing and ProCard procedures. On this next slide, we, again, this is not new, ProCard log. Anyone who has a ProCard knows you're supposed to keep a ProCard transaction log that just says what you bought, what it was for, and attach all of your documentation. We do go over with legislative aides, kind of a best practice of how to manage all of that. I attach all my receipts to my monthly statement so I can check it off and make sure everything is charging appropriately. We haven't had any charges that I don't know about. So it just kind of lays that out a little bit. And for training and assignment of pro cards, the current city policy is that anyone who is going to get a pro card, the pro card holder, has to attend training before the card is released. The subcommittee wanted to add that council members also attend that training with their legislative aides. The pro cards will be in the name of the legislative aid. They're technically the employees and all the employees of the government are held accountable for all the LFUCG policies. So the cards are in the name of the legislative aid. You don't have to have one if your office does not want a card. We have a couple of offices who don't. They just come to me or Kelly for purchasing and we're happy to help you with that if you don't want to keep up with the card. One of the other things we talked about was having someone hold the cards and check them out. And I've spoken with Todd Slayton in purchasing and Christy, and that's kind of a violation of the pro card policy because it is in someone's name and they have the right to hold on to their own card. And then the annual audit, the Division of Internal Audit has agreed to do an annual audit of our council cards, just to make sure that we are in compliance and we don't have any kind of outliers. Our budget analyst has also offered to do that, should you all choose to give her the authority to just like randomly go through and do a little audit here and there just to make sure that everything looks good. so that's certainly something that she has offered and we think would be a good idea to do and then this just writes out that any non-consumables purchased obviously are property of lfucg and when you leave office those should be left here the section on correspondence and files is not really new we've just added that campaign logos are not permitted in official office stationery and then we just added a little text that council members are responsible for ordering and maintaining their letterhead and we have given you a link to our brand standards and examples for those of you who've come in recently or at any time since i've been here you know we always order the first round for you and i will continue to do that because you won't have all the equipment to do that yet so we'll have those ready for you still but as far as replenishing them that would be on your office legislative authority there are no big changes here was just updated to make everything the Tuesday prior to work session and that's based on our current practice. We did run that by the CAO's office because it does impact her and all of her commissioners and it's literally we just moved it back a day so it gives us a full week to get those packets together for the chairs to review and gives you all a little bit more time if there are changes that you want so we're not up on our deadlines and then the legislative process we just updated all of those visual aids because they were impossible to read so order of business we have a few changes here regular meetings in the council rules are council meetings that's our thursday night meeting so because we don't do presentations of this type at our council meetings we change that to mayoral proclamations because that's where we always have the proclamations we added that that there will be a limit of two at each meeting. Council members are welcome to request a proclamation. And I believe the vice mayor and the mayor have worked out an arrangement that if you choose to request a proclamation, then you are to send that proclamation with the language to the mayor's office three weeks before. So that her staff doesn't have to write it. You can give them what you want it to say. We'll have a sample document of what that would look like. And just know that it is at the mayor's discretion. So she's not required to do your proclamations just because you send them to her. The next section, work session, we renamed continuing business presentations to continuing business presentations and employee recognitions. So along the lines of proclamations, we're not doing those at work session. But if it is an LFUCG employee or division, then we would do those recognitions at the work sessions because it's during the work day. They would be here. We did add language that we would have two presentations per work session. That's our current practice. they're 15 minutes one of those can be an employee recognition so we could have two presentations we could have a presentation and a recognition so that's just clarifying something we already do this as council member worley said will be updated and it is in your packet based on the public input group's work rules of debate the formerly was called manners of speaking now we've called it the decorum and it goes back to the same comment that we had just to remain courteous, be nice to each other, use appropriate language. There's nothing new there, it's just in order to keep the process of the meetings, the reason we're here is to get work done and legislation going and to keep that on track. We just added a statement in there about how we're going to conduct a meeting. We replaced speaker with council members just for clarity. And then, again, it is up to the presiding officer, if anyone breaches the rules of decorum, then it is at their discretion to not really call them out, but to call them out and ask them to restate their thoughts. And then we added the time limit section is not new. It was called formerly speak but twice. That's where you have two times to speak. That's still in there. But we added that your time starts as soon as you're called upon by the presiding officer. The new section 4109 is a section for rules and responsibilities of the committee chair. You have all seen this. If you're a chair, you've all seen it if you came in on this group of council members, because it was in your orientation information. And it really just says the chairs are going to set the agenda, they're going to review the summaries, they're going to work with the core staff. And we ask that you approve the packets no later than the close of business on Thursday, so we can get them out by our Friday deadline. It also just says that the chair is the presiding officer of the meeting, has to keep the meeting flow going, restate the votes. All of these things are just parliamentary procedure that you all know. And then we've just added that in the absence of the chair, the vice chair will serve. And again, that's just our standard practice. Parliamentary authority, we did add that the parliamentarian shall attend parliamentary training. That's nothing new. The parliamentarian already does that. it's just adding it into the rules and then we get into supplements that are currently called parts i'm going to be buzzed um i thought i had it um i'm really close um so we changed part to supplement real quick stacy five more minutes oh yeah yeah kelly would you five more minutes thank you don't bless me um so we have updated these the lex tv this is current practice lex tv We ask that we adhere to these several months ago just to get their images into them three hours before the meeting starts, have them numbered so that they have them ready to go. It just makes it a little bit cleaner. And then we added news conferences as a special program because we've had some of those come up. And then we just also just remind everybody that LexTV does not loan out production equipment. That's not to say that you can't use it, just that they have a staff member there with it if you need to use that for something. And then this is the other highlight of this presentation. The Neighborhood Development Funds changes in the Council Capital Project Policy. Again, most of these changes came from the internal audit. So we added some clarification for what is a single allocation versus a pass around. We have a new timeline for NDFs, whereas now you guys have those every week. We're approving them every week. We are proposing that we go to a once a month approval. So all NDF lists would be approved at the last work session of the month, and therefore all of their requests would be due to me from your office 10 days prior to that last meeting. And then we've added for public, we've had religious organizations that have asked for money. It's on our list of people who we don't typically allocate NDFs to, but if it is for a public purpose, we can't do that. But we would need some sort of approval from the law department for those, and the law department is okay with that. And then we replaced, you can use only 50% of your budget with up to 50% of your budget in an election year. And the council members, so this new process will be a little bit more automated. So we will work with Nick to create a page for people to request an NDF. They'll drop down which district they want, and then they will have to put all of the information on here, make sure their contact information is correct their correct address the sponsoring council members name and district we would ask that they attach their secretary of state standing so that they can ensure that it's in good standing and that all the information is correct and then justification for the funds so once they attach all of that and submit then it would go to the appropriate council member in your email for you and your aid to review to see if you wanted to donate money to that ndf or at that point if you want to give you can do a single allocation or you can decide to do it as a pass around and we'll have those all in one place for everyone to sign off on um and then a little bit different than our current process after they are after the funds are approved at a work session or a council meeting after they get a second reading then we would send the agreement to the organization they have 10 days to sign that and get it back to us If they don't assign it within that 10-day period and get the agreement back to us, they would forfeit those funds and be ineligible for one year to participate in the NDF program. After we get the signed agreement back, then we would request a check and send them a fully executed agreement with the mayor's signature, everyone's signature, and the check. And the other new thing in here with the 10 business days is that we will start to ask for documentation of what they used the funds for. So they would have six months to supply us with their receipts, their quotes, their estimates, whatever it may be to clarify how they spent that money, that they did use it for the intended purposes that it was provided. they have six months that would come back to your office you would review it and then you would have 14 days to give it to myself or the budget analyst just so we could attach it to that ndf to prove that we did confirm that those funds were used for what they were intended again if they don't comply with that they would be ineligible to receive ndf funds for one year and we also added that they need to deposit their check within 30 days we've had a ridiculous problem with people holding on to checks. We get a stale dated check report frequently and we always have NDFs on. This last time we had four stale dated checks. All four of them had been received by the organizations. They just hadn't deposited them. Stale dated checks are six months. That's plenty of time to deposit it. So we've added that they deposit within 30 days or again they would be ineligible for funds. The capital project policy was updated to remove external organization allocations. We have just found since we've been doing this that it's a lot cleaner if we keep those funds in-house, send them to the division that's doing the work, and let them handle those agreements rather than cutting checks and sending them out because, just because. And then this is a new best practice section for taking and vacating offices. This is nothing new. It It just says when you can take your office. And it also says that when you leave office, you are to remove all of your references as a council member from all of your social media accounts and no longer portray yourself as a council member. And then we have additional reference documents that will be kept in our office. A lot of it's been included in this preview here and it's been mentioned. And then we have some brand standards also for the city's branding policies that you can find with my office. And that's it. Thank you, Stacey. Council Member Baxter, would you like to add anything before we move on to questions and comments? Sure, thank you. As you can see, we made a significant amount of changes, and I appreciate everybody's willingness to hear us out. And we really did work with intentionality in trying to make this document reflect most of the practices that we already used, but making sure that it's written down so that future councils will have that information. So do you want me to go ahead or do you want to have a conversation? Before you make a motion, are there any general questions or comments that someone would like to make before we get into actually debating an item on the floor? Councilmember Lagree. Yes, Chair. I think this is a fairly straightforward question. In terms of meeting spaces and the definition of council business, I just wanted to seek clarification. For example, the tree board meets consistently in the fifth floor conference room. Is that a council initiative, for example? I think it and I can try this. I think it was the the intention of the subcommittee, that's one of our boards or commissions like city business, if you will, rather than like if you wanted to have, if you were still at UK and you wanted to have UK meeting here. Okay, yeah, like if I wanted to have friends come visit, it would be different. So that's what I wanted to, yeah, that's what I wanted to check. And then if I have questions about kind of the ins and outs of the NDF process, I ask those after the motion was made or? I would ask those now unless you intend to make some sort of amendment to the process. I think once Council Member Baxter puts this for approval on the floor, then I'd rather the discussion be on actually working the document. Okay. Well, let me ask my questions now then. And they might be a little bit detailed, but I just want to make sure I understand this clearly. So it's my understanding that, say, an organization reaches out to council, a council member's office, they say we're doing a project, it's going to cost $500. And then say the council member, they go through all the processes, they do it all by the book. And then once their legislative aide has checked back in with the organization, the organization said, well, we only spent $475 and here are our receipts. What then does the council office do regarding, say, that difference of $25? So it was our intention as a subcommittee to provide a process for council members to, for lack of a better term, approve an amendment to what their request was. So if your organization came to you and said, hey, we originally were planning to purchase two computers, but now we only need one. What do we do with the rest of the money? Then you could say, well, what do you want to use it for? and then it would be like an amendment to their request, essentially. But you would have that discretion to allow for that difference. And what about in the situation of passarounds? If an organization wants to initiate a passaround, they may end up potentially with a lot of overage above and beyond their original proposal. Would that be a similar process? That didn't come up. Yeah, I don't know what we talked about. I think what it boils down to is that the audit came to us and said, you have little efficiency or oversight in how your money is being spent. You are providing an organization taxpayer dollars and there's no accountability. So I think as long as there's a dialogue between an organization and this body, I'm okay with that. I just want there to be some type of accountability, like I said, that we are being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and that we can account for how that money is being spent in the community. Okay, that's helpful. I might have one other clarifying question just about the tracking process. From reading this, it's my understanding that kind of the front end is with the council administrator. And then the back end is with the legislative aide and the council office. And once that organization within that six month period submits all relevant receipts and financial documentation to the council member office, then all that council member office needs to do is pass those on to the council administrator and note any kind of amendments to the project during that period of time. Correct, and we thought that would be easier because if you're giving out an NDF, we're doing all the processing, we're doing the agreements, we're doing the checks. But when someone comes back and says, Council Member will agree, I only spent 300 of this 500. We want you to be the point person who sees that first so that you can make those decisions on what needs to happen, rather than us trying to make those decisions for you. So once you get it and kind of sign off on it, it would just come to us and it would live with the NDF request. Okay. And we will track that time. So if we're getting up close to six months, then one of us would be reaching out to your aid and saying, hey, we still haven't heard back from this person. We don't expect you to keep up with whether they've submitted it. Okay, and then the same would be the case with the individual council office that initiated a pass around. They would be the, the initiator would be the point person. Okay, thank you. And we could sometimes, not to interrupt you, but sometimes now if we do a pass around and Usually I'll have an idea, like if a council member says, if they don't get $600, let me know. If I got that pass around today, we have one of those, and it's $1,000, then I would also say, they got $1,000. Do you want to adjust, or what do you want to do? So we can try to help with that, too. Thank you, Chair, for the extra time, and thank you for all of your hard work, Council Member Baxter. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I'm not sure who to direct my questions to, so whoever needs to answer, just chime in. In special meeting section 3.103 on page 20 of 50, number six says reserved. Can someone clarify what that means or why that's there? That is, I'm going to do my best, but Michael Cravens is back here as well if law needs to speak up. That used to be a section that was stricken at some point from the document. And it was just left there so that at some point, and I'm going to get this totally wrong. At some point, if law needs to know that there used to be something there, they could go back and easily find what it was. Not fair. Yeah. Okay. Next page, on page 21, in section 3.104 in the work section section, there are a couple asterisks like on budget amendments and requested rezonings or dockets what does the asterisk stand for so those if we have a work session on a week with no council meeting we won't have rezonings or docket approval and we won't have budget amendments so the asterisks and we can explain that in here but so this week we would have both of those on our work session because we have a council meeting next week we don't have a Council meeting, so those two items won't be on that docket to approve on that agenda. So then there is another asterisk down that is a description of up to two presentations of the continuing business presentation section. So I think we do need to define those asterisks in a footnote or something. Yeah, we can do that. I don't know if you're going to want me to make that amendment, but put that note down. And then on page 45 in the section on the capital project expenditures, it says in an election year, any council member leaving office or facing opposition may only utilize up to 50% of their overall budget, including funds for capital expenditure projects. So I know we have maintained that rule for the NDF funds, and I do believe we should do that for the capital project. But I haven't seen that rule applied to the rest of our office budget, and that's what this language says. But it's not in the rules. So I'm wondering what the actual rule is, or do we need to set that? So the actual rule is we do hold back 50%. You would never see it in an election year. So once we create the budget, then I work with budgeting, and they hold back half of your entire budget. and that's just to leave budget for whoever comes in because apparently at one point someone spent it all and the person coming into office didn't have any money so it is for the whole budget and we can clarify that in the rules just so that it's consistent yeah i think that clarification to make sure that it is clear that it's every item in our office budget i agree with that rule but i just i think um and it is it says that specifically for ndfs but it doesn't say it specifically in for any of those other sections. And I think the NDF one gets called out a little bit because it has a more clear procedure, but we can certainly update that everywhere. Okay, so I think, I'll stop there and see what other council members bring up, but I have a couple other small changes that I think would need to come as amendments later. Thank you, Chair. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Stacey and Council Member Baxter for your work on this and all the other committee members. I especially like the table of content. I don't know who laid it out, but that's very helpful. And I may bring an amendment, well, I will bring an amendment to the Seton chart, and it's going to be something that's seniority-based. The next thing I'd like to focus on is on page 39, when we're talking about neighborhood development funds and supplement C. So the number five, the council administrator prepares a legal agreement that outlines the intended use of the funds. And then it goes on to say if the agreement is not returned within 10 business days, how are organizations or how are the entities going to receive this form? Is it electronically, by mail? So we are hoping to send it electronically. but we need to work out electronic signatures as a city and that is something that has come up a few times and we've gotten a couple of different yes we can take an electronic signature no we can't take an electronic signature so before we hold people to this in january we're going to have to get a very clear answer on electronic signatures and that's something we would work with the cao i would assume on okay yeah well the the one of the things i have concerns about is just the 10 business days i think that's pretty i think that's pretty short and firm i would i would just for purposes extend it to 30 business days and then i'll also have a concern about entities shall not be or shall be ineligible for funds for one year i would want to just strict that you know scratch stretch that out altogether. I think I know the justification for it or maybe the thought behind it, but I think some of these organizations, who knows, they may have a change in leadership, something might happen and they might not get the paperwork back, but I wouldn't want to completely rule them out for applying for funds from us. The next thing is Section 7, once the entities receive the NDF check. I think Council Member LeGree had some questions about that that I share. And then we start dipping into the area where we talk about clawbacks and that sort of thing. I think as long as they fill out the form and we know what the intended purpose of the funds are being requested and used for, I would want to just stricken out that whole section, just not to have us go down that road. I think getting the form signed and having that level of accountability, I think would suffice. It's just my opinion. Council Member Baxter, if you want to give some background or some rationale for that section. I would love to. So this was one of the key points that came from our audit. We have to see some type of proof of how the funds were spent for transparency purposes. We have to be able to say we gave X amount of dollars to so and so, and this is how they spent the money. That was one of the key points that came back in the audit. And it was something that was very important to us as a subcommittee to make sure that we carried that out. Now, time frames and all that stuff, like I'm happy to discuss that and amend that however you all see fit. This was just our initial recommendation. But I think it's really, really, really important that we hold that line with asking for some type of accountability on how taxpayer dollars were spent with a nonprofit organization. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Vice Mayor Wu, you're next up on the committee. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to clear up and kind of add to a couple of questions that were asked before. Councilmember Legree asked about the pass arounds. If we do a pass around, they end up with more money than what they initially asked for. I would love to see us, and this may not necessarily be a rule, but maybe a best practice for us doing pass arounds. We actually recently had a council member make a pass around request that had the total ask amount that the organization was asking for, plus what they would like to see from each council member. I thought that was super, super helpful because there have been times where I've asked for a pass around and I've been hesitant to write down my own amount because I don't know what it's going to end up being. So I love the idea that the organization is asking for $500 and could you all contribute $50 each and then whatever we get to, you know, my office would fill in the rest and so that way we don't run into that issue. So that might be a best practice sort of fix. In answer to Councilmember James Brown's questions about the timeframe for returning the form and the one-year ineligibility. For me and I think our group working on this NDF issue, Council Member Baxter is right, like so much of it was driven by that audit of just this desire to see some level of accountability. And I feel like what we're going from is kind of almost no rules to some set of guidelines and rules. I don't think that these rules in this framework is onerous. I think it still allows a lot of flexibility. I think it's a good amount of time. And I think we have to remember the NDF dollar amounts. We're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars here, in which case I would want to see much more sort of oversight and guidelines and rules with it. We're talking generally hundreds in the hundreds of dollars range. So I think having some level of rules, because this came out in the audit. that we had folks who never returned the agreements and we still cut folks checks, right? It goes back to accountability of how we're spending taxpayer money. So if I'm sending somebody a check, I want to know, A, they've signed the contract for it. And this is like doing business anywhere in the world, right? And B, they can tell me what they actually spent it on. And as we said, if they end up wanting to spend it or having spent it on something different or the amounts are different, They can apply to our office, contact us and say, hey, this turned out differently than what we thought. Our needs have changed, our spending has changed, will you approve this? And then we, because we're the office that originated it, we can decide yes or no, this is fine. So as long as there's that communication, I think it's fine. So I think there's still a lot of leeway in a lot of these rules. So, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Gray. Just following protocol. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for allowing me to speak since I'm not on this committee. I would like to say thank you to Council Member Baxter and Stacey and anyone else that has worked on this. It's nice to have in writing some rules to eliminate as much confusion as possible because, let me tell you, the seedings this year were chaos and it's just nice to have some things in writing so we can have decorum amongst us um but i have a question regarding um ndfs um stacy i know that um i asked a question earlier about a request that my office has received where the request outright I have a whole form that my office uses and outright stated that the funds would be used as cash awards, which I have a problem with. Is there a way that we can write expressly what our stance is on cash awards? Yes, I think that would be fair. and I could certainly work with the law department to come up with some appropriate language to insert in here. Because that's where I got the language for you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I just first wanted to touch briefly on the NDFs and echo some of Council Member Baxter's comments. You know, I didn't want our NDFs to become like a grant process, which could be very strenuous and take a lot of time on everyone's part. But after hearing the comments from the audit and I saw that we really have had hardly any oversight at all. So I do think that it is extremely important that our funds have oversight. So I think, you know, we met for many hours working on these rules and procedures, and I think that what we've come up with is kind of the best option at this time. Really excited about the possibility of having the online forms. So if somebody would like NDF funds, they can go, they can select their council member, they can say, hey, we have this project, fill out a really easy form. It comes to us. We can review it. we can share it. I'm not a fan of the idea of forcing people to finish out requests if someone's asking for $1,000 and the pass around only gave $200 that that council member's office has to finish the rest or anything like that. I don't want to lock us into those type of things or that every council member has to give a certain amount to a certain request. But I do think that reviewing Doing these requests once a month instead of all over the place will be really helpful for our council administrative offices. And I think that what we've set in place for filling out the form, them having to return the form, and then giving us some proof of how they spent the money, I really do think it's very important. So I am going to support the recommendations that we came up with here and that. And if something comes up about the seating chart, I just want to say that I didn't think it was necessary until this year. And then there were just a lot of things happening, and it felt very necessary to have a seating chart. We came up with this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 thing that, you know, I don't want to sit all the way over there no matter how many years I've been here. But I'm okay with that if it means that we're not debating about where we're sitting all the time. So I know there's others that have different ideas of how it should be, but I just, I think that this is what we came up with, and we came up with it for a reason. So thank you. Council Member Plowman. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And I was going to chime in on the seating arrangements at this time. Is that okay? Council Member? I wanted to comment on the seating arrangement. Please make a comment. We're not to place a making motions yet, but comment. Go ahead, please. I agree, Council Member Reynolds. I do think we have to have a consensus or an understanding of how that works. Because in the seven years I've been here, it's pretty much whoever gets to the seat the fastest. And so, unspoken wise. But I do have some reservations about doing it by council district. I don't think any district should be pigeonholed into having the same place for years moving forward. And selfishly, I would say 12 would always be at the end and one would be at the other end. And I think that we should, and I know Council Member Brown mentioned bringing forward an amendment that looks at seniority. And with that said, many legislative bodies, including the federal government, looks at the seniority when they're making the seat decisions and also office decisions. So when this amendment comes forward, I will make an amendment to the amendment, just to clarify a few areas of that. But I wish we would reconsider looking at a more equitable method for seating. But we do need one. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Plumman. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for all the work. First, I agree with having the oversight and I hope it spreads all through the city with the divisions, with audits. I don't like the punitive piece at the end, like a year suspension because people do come in and go out. And so an organization could be penalized with new leadership. So that's all I want to say about that. Thank you all for breaking the ice on the seating chart because I'm going to take the elephant out of the room. I'm just going to talk about me. I can't talk about any other council person here. I'm disappointed that just in brief conversations that for myself, having mobility issues, for myself, being a diabetic and health reasons about the first seating chart went through. I get emotional up here. That means that I would have to get up and cry all the way out this way and try to come back in. So I wish that would be taken under consideration. And then I want to talk about the segregation of the council if it's one through 12. If you look at one through six and then you take an account of council at large brown, then you have all the minorities on that side. And then when you come over on this side, it's all the white council. If anybody didn't take a look at the makeup. So I really took a cuss and then I would like to ask the question when I get to the end about does the seats give you power? Or is it like me, the people give me power that I serve? So even if you tell me to go to one, I'm still going to feel like there's power because the people are here. But if, so I wanted you all to visualize that. And does that mean that the council will look like what the city already looks like? With the segregation and the racial divide across the south and the north? These are the things that when I ran across some people in the district, this is what they told me and this is what I saw. I mean, if you take it, y'all go and put the B's and the W's beside every one of those seats. Even counting Vice Mayor Wu all the way that way. And so the majority will look like that. And so I'm new. I get a lot, and I don't really know much about government. I know boots on the ground, I know people. So I sit here with what y'all hear me say, my mentor. When I don't know anything, he will take time to explain something to me. If I'm in that corner and then CM Reynolds turns my mic off so I won't be over here in the hot, in the cotton. And so those are the things that I'm thinking about. How can I grow as a freshman, and even if you do seniority, it's still that look to the community about not being included. Then you have the powerful white men who don't move at all in some of this situation. So I know y'all worked hard. I just want somebody tell me what gives the power. Is there power up in these chairs like over this way? If somebody is uncomfortable, I want one council member to tell me who's uncomfortable in their seat and why. Because I just need to understand. And about where we sit, because I'm representing the people. If you want to put me over there, that's fine. I'll go back there with Chief Weathers and represent First District. It doesn't matter where I am. I just want to know, and I want you all to really think about what it will look like to the people you serve. As they look at this council and you have all the people of color on one side and all the powerful white people on the other side. That's what my community is telling me, because I told them about the seating chart. And so I know there was a purpose behind this. I just don't understand it. So, Council Member Fogle, if I may, when the subcommittee talked about the seating chart and how to assign people, we didn't take into account the people. we took into account the district numbers. And that seemed like the cleanest way to assign the seats. We didn't look at who was in the seat, so none of that was intentionally done that way. It was literally just by the numbers and the people in the center stayed in the center, because that's the at large and the mayor and the vice mayor. And at least as long as I've been here and probably since 1974, those people have been in the center. Chuck, you've been around that long. Well, I'm not really- It wasn't intentionally done. I'm not really, I mean, I know these folks should be here because they represent, right? But what you just said is the ill intent or the not intentional that is really the subject. Because on third and entry lane, people call me all day long talking about the trash that's on that hill. They never call and say, they say, what are you going to do about that trash? But I have yet to hear somebody call me and say, what are you going to do about the people sitting by the trash? Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes, ma'am. So I'm pretty sure y'all didn't take color in consideration, but think about what we represent to the people in the city of Lexington. And that's not even for you, I just, that's- Yes, ma'am. Help me get to the bathroom, because I'm going to tell you something. I'm sorry, your time is up. Okay, I know my time is up. Feel free to chime back in, you get to speak twice. No, I think I better be quiet now. House member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. And I can let this all, my comments go. I just don't know, I don't have a vote in the committee meeting. The next step for this, are we voting on it in this work session coming up? Okay, so the process is going to be? this this will go through the normal committee report out process since the the effective date isn't slated to be until january 1st then council member borley would do that as a part of his next report out and then it would go on a work session as a resolution to approve the changes to the council rules okay so what's your intention my intent is that this will be the first item on our september agenda and we'll pick it back up in committee because the intent was that there be a motion made to approve this change to council rules here. Then we would make amendments back and forth. And obviously, we're not going to have time to do that today. And so there's not a rush on this, as far as I'm concerned. We ought to get it the way that we're most happy with it. And so we have a planned agenda for September. We'll move it around and continue this work. We'll start in September. Okay, thank you. With that and seeing our time, I'll just yield it back to you to do what you would like to do with this. And I'll have my say a little bit later. Thank you, Council Member and Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair. I almost hate that we're spending a lot of time discussing our seating chart, but I do want to address your concerns, Council Member Fogle. What Stacy said is correct. What we set out to do was solve a problem that got sort of unnecessarily complicated and dicey in the beginning of our year. And traditionally, as Council Member Plowman said, people just kind of show up and do their thing. And then when it became conflicts, I, as the vice mayor, stepped into it, into a situation where there are no hard and fast rules, and I stepped into it to help get things resolved. A lot of the impetus behind our council rules was to take the subjective sort of decision-making out of the hands of whoever it might be. And in a lot of cases for the council, it's the vice mayor. So my preference in generally operating this council is to take that decision making out of either my hands or the future vice mayor or whoever it is and codify it into these rules so that we can point to it and say, well, this is how we do it because this is in our rules. In terms of the seating chart, it was just one solution that we came up with. We're happy to entertain other solutions and other approaches to it. And believe me, I looked at what the new seating chart would look like and I saw exactly what you saw. Okay? And I understand the idea of intent versus impact. Okay? So, and I hope you do believe that there was no ill intent when we literally just numbered them one through six and then seven through 12. The demographics of it fell where it fell, right? And in a year and a half from now, it's going to look different. And then two years after that, it's going to look different again, right? And if we codify it in this way, that seating chart is going to be that way, no matter what. This council district one is always there, council district two is always there. Doesn't matter who the people in there are. So this set of decision making in all of what we did in this subcommittee is not based on personalities or who is in what seat is based strictly on trying to resolve a problem and in the in the fairest way that we we saw how so again i'm just happy to resolve this problem and codify this whether it's through seniority whether it's through the seating chart you know i'm i'm open for discussion but um just know that there was no intent uh to malign anybody to place people in specific positions to look at who were in these seats and that's how we're going to arrange them. None of that. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This item, there not being a motion on the floor, there'd be no need for motion practice to place this as the next item. Kelly, if you would, just we'll work together and make sure that we get our agenda set. We'll pick this up at the September 19th General Government Planning Committee meeting. I would like to also point out for those of you here for our public input discussion, that, in fact, has already been done. So unless we do things differently, that will be reported out at the September 19th work session. So while we wouldn't have had time anyway, as you know, this chair doesn't allow public comment in the committee. The most appropriate place to comment on that for those interested will be the September 19th work session. Thank you. With that, we stand adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.