# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - August 22, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · August 22, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5890 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5890?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-08-22 - **Last revised**: August 22, 2023 - **Length**: 19,369 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 Social Services and Public Safety Committee convened on August 22, 2023, at 1:00 PM with J. Reynolds presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed two informational agenda items during the session, focusing on municipal policy and social services updates. The meeting included presentations on the Lexington Noise Ordinance and an update from the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention, both serving as informational briefings for committee members. The committee conducted two votes during the proceedings, while no public comments were heard during this session. ## Attendance The meeting on August 22, 2023 had seven members present and three absent. **Present:** • J. Reynolds • W. Baxter • C. Ellinger • D. Gray • F. Brown • D. Sevigny • K. Plomin **Absent:** • J. Brown • T. Fogle • B. Monarrez No members arrived late to the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the August 22, 2023 meeting, both conducted by voice vote. **Approval of June 13, 2023 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] W. Baxter made a motion to approve the June 13, 2023 Committee Summary, which was seconded by D. Gray. The motion passed by voice vote with no opposition recorded. **Removal of Item 4 from Committee** [timestamp: 180:00] The committee voted to remove item 4 from the committee agenda. The motion passed by voice vote, though the record does not indicate who made the motion or provided the second. No opposition was recorded for this action. Both votes were conducted as voice votes rather than formal roll call votes, so individual member positions were not recorded in the official record. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one primary contested item that generated significant discussion among participants. **Lexington Noise Ordinance** A heated discussion emerged regarding the enforcement challenges of Lexington's noise ordinance. The debate centered on the practical difficulties of implementing noise regulations, with particular focus on vehicular noise violations and the potential deployment of decibel readers as enforcement tools. The discussion highlighted ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of current noise control measures and explored technical solutions for more objective enforcement. Participants engaged in detailed deliberations about the feasibility and implementation of decibel measurement devices to standardize noise violation assessments. The nature of the discussion was characterized as heated, indicating strong opinions and potentially divergent viewpoints among meeting participants regarding the best approach to noise ordinance enforcement. However, specific details about individual positions, voting outcomes, or final resolutions were not captured in the available meeting data. *Note: Specific participant names, vote tallies, and timestamp references were not available in the provided meeting materials for this contested item.* ## Lexington Noise Ordinance [timestamp: 01:00] The meeting included a discussion on Lexington's current noise ordinance, focusing on enforcement challenges and potential improvements. This informational agenda item II was led by key speakers H. LeGris and H. Eiden. The discussion examined the effectiveness of the existing noise ordinance and explored how other cities handle similar noise-related issues. Case studies from other municipalities were presented to provide context for potential improvements to Lexington's approach. Speakers addressed enforcement challenges specific to Lexington's unique circumstances. The conversation covered both the current framework of the noise ordinance and areas where modifications might be beneficial for the community. This was an informational discussion item, meaning no formal action was taken during the meeting. The presentation of case studies from other cities suggests the council is researching best practices and considering how other jurisdictions have successfully addressed noise-related concerns. The agenda item provided an opportunity for council members to review the current state of noise regulation in Lexington and consider whether changes to the ordinance or its enforcement might better serve residents' needs. ## Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Update [timestamp: 150:00] J. Herron presented the annual update on the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention during agenda item III. The presentation covered the office's activities, progress, funding status, strategic planning initiatives, and operational challenges encountered during the reporting period. The update provided a comprehensive overview of the office's work in addressing homelessness prevention and intervention efforts within the jurisdiction. Herron outlined the current strategic plans being implemented and discussed how funding has been allocated and utilized for various programs and services. The presentation addressed challenges the office has faced in its operations and service delivery. These operational difficulties were presented as part of the annual review process to inform stakeholders about both successes and areas requiring attention or improvement. This agenda item was designated as informational, meaning no formal action was required from the meeting participants. The update served to keep stakeholders informed about the office's ongoing work and current status in addressing homelessness prevention and intervention within the community. The presentation represents part of the office's regular reporting cycle, providing transparency and accountability regarding the use of resources and the effectiveness of programs designed to prevent and address homelessness in the area. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of June 13, 2023 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove item 4 from committee --- ## Full transcript Thank you. Oh, there it goes. Can you hear me? Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. I will now call to order the August 22nd, 2023 meeting of the Social Services and Public Safety Committee. Welcome, everybody. All right, our first item is the approval of the June 13th, 2023 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve? No move. Second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thanks for joining us today everyone. Our next item is about the Lexington noise ordinance. And CM Legree has been working on this and is the sponsor. And even though she's not on this committee, I would like to recognize her and turn this over to her for opening remarks. Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you for entertaining this item. As you mentioned, I'm not on this committee. And colleagues, I just want to provide a little bit of framework for where we are and where we could go with this item. We, in my office, and I know some of you have fielded these complaints as well, we've had many complaints from downtown residents and others in neighborhoods throughout the city alike about noise. And when I say noise, I'm saying vehicular noise, drag racing, and also business noise. So therefore, we decided to look into the history and function of the noise ordinance as a result of these complaints and questions that we received. And what I'm providing for you here is a starting point. This presentation, as you all have seen in your packet, will provide an overview of our current noise ordinance, followed by a comparative set of case studies from across the country. And those will provide us with an idea of the challenges and opportunities for enforcement. And we'll give you a sense of our research as it currently stands. And then finally, you'll find ideas for continuing research and potential areas of change or improvement. After you see this presentation, we are interested in your feedback and questions which will help us determine what direction we may want to pursue with this issue. So this is a first step in quite a bit of research has been involved with it. And I think that your engagement will be essential to determining the appetite for council regarding any changes or additional research. So we have our representatives from our Lexington Police Department. We have Commissioner Armstrong, we have Commissioner Lanter, and we have our county attorney, Angela Evans, and a number of her colleagues here to assist with answering questions. And thank you all each for your expertise and for being here today. And thank you to Hannah Iden, who is my legislative aide, not only for making this presentation, but for all the preparation and work that she and others did to get us here. Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you, Hannah. Hi, everybody. Like Councilmember Legree mentioned, I'm Hannah Aydin, the third district aide, and we'll be discussing Lexington's noise ordinance. So we will go through some of the history, the current ordinance, and enforcement, and then we'll briefly mention five case studies. Then we'll talk through the challenges we have in Lexington and mention a few possible next steps. So noise ordinance enforcement has been an ongoing issue for many years within LFUCG. In January of 2008, council discussed this issue from the perspective of industrial noise in areas proximate to neighborhoods. Council member Myers moved to create a task force to focus on all noise related issues and that passed unanimously. That task force held 33 meetings from March of 2008 to May of 2011. And they had four main categorical variables that they focused on while they were drafting this noise ordinance. One, what contributes to our quality of life can sometimes also work against it. Two, in urban environments, it is sometimes impossible to separate noise makers from noise receivers. Three, not all noise issues will resolve to everyone's satisfaction. Four, noise makers and noise recipients must have a recourse where issues and complaints can be heard and vetted. The proposed framework from the task force suggested that there would be a noise officer as well as a noise board that would both serve to perform noise related investigations. They also recommended that the fine be anywhere between $100 and $1,000. In the end, the 2011 Public Safety Committee failed to approve that proposed draft ordinance. Our current ordinance states that a noise disturbance means any sound which one endangers or injures the safety or health of humans or animals, two annoys or disturbs a reasonable person of normal sensitivities, or three, endangers or injures personal or real property. It goes on to specifically prohibit operating tools or equipment, including lawn mowers, between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. any day and between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Loudspeakers, public address systems, powered model vehicles, or miscellaneous noises between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Music by radio, television, musical instrument or similar devices. Repairing, testing or operating a motor vehicle, motorcycle, motorbike or motorboat and barking dogs anytime or any animal that creates a noise disturbance. The Lexington Police Department currently handles enforcement with the exception of barking dogs which is handled by the Fayette County Attorney's office. So police officers will receive a call or they witness noise while in the field and then they investigate. Then the officer has the discretion on whether to give a citation or not. If a citation is given, a court date is set and given to the offender at the same time as the citation. And on the first offense, the fine will be anywhere between $50 and $500. And if a second offense happens in that same 12-month period, the fine is $100 to $500. And for a third offense in that 12 month period it's 250 to $500. The offender can choose to pay the fine or they will go to trial. We requested the noise disturbance calls from May 1st of 2022 to May 31st of 2023. There were 5,705 total calls in this time frame and 49 of those were field initiated calls, which means that an LPD officer witnessed a noise disturbance while in the field. You can see the list of possible outcomes up on the right-hand side of the slide, and complaints were investigated 3,710 times, and 1,295 times the noise was gone on arrival. There were 33 instances where a citation was given, and 31 of the 33 were issued for a violation of the noise ordinance. So the call data was broken up into sectors and beats, which is LPD's method of splitting up the city. Sector 1 is in yellow and had 1,915 total calls. Sector 1 beat 3A. I'm going to zoom in for you all. There we go. 3A right there between Leastown Road and Versailles Road had 407 calls. Sorry, there we go. Sector 2, which is in blue, had 1,741 calls. And Sector 2 Beat 1B, which is downtown near UK's campus located here, had 476 calls, which is the most of all of the beats in the entire city. Sector 3 in pink had 2,046 calls, which is the highest number of calls among the sectors. And Sector 3 Beat 3A had 392 calls, which is located between Tates Creek and Alumni Drive outside of New Circle. So, to zoom in, excuse me, wrong way. So, to zoom in even more, of the 5,705 total noise disturbance calls, the two streets with the most calls were Angliana Ave and Center Parkway with 126 and 96 calls respectively. Of note, 775 addresses had repeat offenses and Twin Spires had 94 calls to one address. So next we'll take a big picture look into five case studies so that we can see what other cities in the US are doing. We'll give an overview of their ordinance, how it's enforced, and mention any unique methods and tools they may use. If the council's interested, this is something that we could explore more in the future to see how effective these tools are in each city. Our first case is Elkhart, Indiana. They implemented an anti-boom zero tolerance noise program in 2008. Their noise ordinance has set specific maximum decibel levels and enforcement is done by a noise control police officer who uses a sound level meter to measure noise. They use a tiered fine system where they start at $250 and with every subsequent fine in a two year period that fine goes up. The revenues made from the citations go on to fund the anti-noise program. Our next case is Knoxville, Tennessee. The Knoxville city ordinance specifies a maximum decibel level for vehicles and has muffler requirements. In February of 2022, the city began a pilot program which uses a noise cameras placed in different areas of downtown. If triggered, the camera records the time and date of a noise violation, the vehicle type, and a photo of the vehicle's license plate. This alone is not enough to issue a citation, but it is used to issue warnings and in attempts to lower vehicular noise. Knoxville police handles all enforcement and has access to the data from the pilot program. The penalty for a violation is $114.50. Our third case is Charlotte, which is Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Their noise ordinance states that a noise violation occurs when sound exceeds specified limits with consideration of location, time, and circumstance, and is disruptive to the enjoyment and use of residential property. They also prohibit the operation of motor vehicles within the city limits that have noise control equipment like mufflers removed that engage in jackrabbit starts, spinning tires or other operations that create disturbing noises and that are off the boundaries of a public street for racing or other operations which create unreasonably loud and disturbing noises. Enforcement of the noise ordinance is shared by the police department and code enforcement. Police officers will monitor noise levels with a sound level meter and decide if there's a violation. A $100 fine can be issued after the first violation and it goes up to $500 and $1,000. property owner frequently violates the ordinance, the police may label them as a chronic noise producer which is then referred to code enforcement. The offender may be required to develop and adhere to a noise mitigation plan and eventually could be subject up to a thousand dollars in fines, court action, and suspension of outdoor amplified or acoustic music for up to 18 months. Our fourth case is Boulder, Colorado. They use zoning districts to set up maximum decibel levels permitted and have daytime and nighttime requirements. They also have maximum decibel levels for vehicles based on their size and weight. The Boulder Police Department is responsible for enforcement and uses sound level meters to measure noise. However, if one is not available, it's up to the officer's discretion on if the noise violates the ordinance. The penalty for violation is $30 and that increases by $30 for every repeat offense in a one-year period, with their maximum being $300. So our fifth and last case is Portland, Oregon. Portland has a noise program with a noise ordinance that includes a maximum decibel level for each type of zone and specific requirements for vehicles. The noise program has an appointed noise control officer and noise review board that monitors and regulates sound, and that officer has authority to issue citations and uses a decibel meter. So the penalty for a violation is up to $1,000 and there's a possible monthly enforcement fee if the violation has not been fixed. Vehicle enforcement is treated differently and is handled by the Portland Police Department but has the same penalty for violations. Their city has a unique program where they loan out decibel meters to residents to help determine if a violation might exist. So what are some of the challenges we have here in Lexington? We currently don't have a funding mechanism for noise related issues. Our current citation process depends on the Lexington Police Department and we don't have a noise committee or noise officer. The citation process is a criminal process, not a civil one, and the citation fee is very low. Moving noise violations are very difficult to enforce and we don't use decibel levels or decibel readers at the moment. Neighborhoods and businesses are now more intertwined with an increase in density and mixed use space and with that comes ABC businesses which are an added challenge as they bring safety noise and crowd control issues. Some potential next steps could include the creation of an internal working group, revisiting the noise board and noise officer proposal from 2011, exploring the use of decibel readers, performing a review of the current fine structure or exploring joint enforcement between code enforcement and LPD. With decibel readers, for example, there would be an additional cost and the viability and function would depend on LPD's ability to effectively use them in a consistent way. This would require agreement about the decibel levels in question and moving vehicular noise would remain a challenge due to the nature of the noise. The cost of decibel readers is $400 to $500 each and would require training of each officer. Also, the devices require calibration after every use. Making such a change would require alteration to the ordinance and use of new technology. Whereas reevaluation of the fee structure would require a change to our current practice, but would not demand the use of new technology. After doing quite a bit of comparative research, we're interested in the feedback, questions, and ideas of this committee, given that these are just a few of the many possible next steps. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have, and like Council Member LeGree mentioned, we have Assistant Chief Maynard here, at County Attorney Angela Evans and Commissioners Armstrong and Lanter here as well. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. I look forward to this discussion. Colleagues, if you have any questions, please sign in. Council Member Pullman. Thank you, Chair. I was just curious in looking at the history back to, I guess it was May 2011, and the outcome failed. Did you have access to the minutes to see what some of the reasons were? I don't have that in front of me, and I don't recall that, but I'm happy to pull those minutes back up after this and send that to you. Yeah. Oh, perfect. I was on the noise committee, and so was Mayor Gordon, by the way. But basically, there's a natural tension between commercial industrial uses and neighborhoods and it really fell apart in my opinion largely on that you had a situation this all came about i think it was meadow thorpe or a neighborhood over there like that there was an industrial use over there that was pre-existing i think when the neighborhood was built it was largely uh it was probably um storage barns for tobacco but they increased the intensity of the use which caused more noise and i think the council could not get comfortable with with basically creating a penalization structure in those situations and and that's kind of where i think it kind of fell off the rails okay i think i know where you're talking about it it's still there right it is yeah is it still operating i don't know if the um if the commercial industrial use is operating in the same manner as it was before because it's kind of kind of right in the the middle things out there yeah okay that was the so that was the reason okay thank you thank you chair thank you very much um vice mayor wu uh thank you chair you're if you want to recognize folks on the committee first i usually just go in order okay thank you for recognizing me no i'm not on the uh this committee i'm not sure miss iden if you can answer these questions or if these are lpd questions on this list of the current enforcement from this past year of all the calls made in i don't see anything that's is cars investigated is that cars being too loud going down the street or is that like where are because uh the comparison to all these other cities that talk about they have various things directly related to the noise of moving vehicles yes great question and good afternoon it can be both so it could be a vehicle that's stationary in a parking lot or it can be a vehicle that's on the roadway going down the roadway you'll see a lot of gone on arrival most of those are related to vehicles themselves we get a call you have to realize that loud music it is a strong quality of life issue but on our priority list it's not as high as a emergency call that we would go to so several times once we have an opportunity to have an officer dispatched to that call it's further down the stack list so that vehicle may already be gone or if it's an apartment complex they may have resolved the issue themselves by going over knocking on the door and saying hey you're disturbing me and then they turn the music down so when we get in that area the music may not be there to be heard okay and then about the citations given it looks like compared to complaints investigated it's a little bit under one percent where you're issuing citations is that fairly typical i mean i see all the different reasons or different ways that these get resolved but i'd have to go back and look at prior uh years to see what that consistency looks like i would say the majority of our stops or investigative stuff is about educating folks hey this is a quality of life you are disturbing your neighbors if the neighbor has not come over and asked them to turn it down they may not be aware of it we do have repeat offenders and dispatch allows us and lets us know hey this is the second third call we've had at this location that's typically the the clue we probably need to take a little bit more enforcement but most of that we're going to be able to handle with having that conversation and then one last question i know we anybody who drives on lexington streets know that we have a red light running epidemic it feels like but from what i've learned the state does not allow us to use traffic cameras to issue moving citations like running lights is that correct that's correct current legislation does not allow that okay so i'm thinking about the the idea of noisy cars right it's very hard to catch them in the act so to speak you get to the place where it was reported and they're long gone um would there would having cameras with decibel readers be a way to catch moving vehicles that are too loud and would that fall into the state prohibition about us using them to issue citations my personal opinion i believe it would fall outside or krs would not allow that because you're using electronic means and officers not witnessing that law department can give us a better opinion on that but i think that would also fall into something that krs would have to be changed gotcha okay thank you so much thank you chair thank you council member fred brown thank you chair i've been on the council a long time and this noise problem has been in existence probably forever, I guess. And I've noticed it more starting in the 90s. And in fact, we did have some committee structure that we looked into that. One of the noises that we really had complaints on was barking dogs. And that was pretty consistent, I think, all over Fayette County. And I think at that time, we were using the police department. And if I'm not, are we still using the police department? We're not now. as far as barking dogs that got put over to the commonwealth attorney is that is that where it's at chief that is correct county attorney has a great web page and it lays out exactly what the requirements are for i tried not to but yes that lays out the requirements and part of the issue was was when we would get called to a barking dog was that barking dog now barking because we approached the residents and now they're barking as alerting as they should be and it was also So again, that priority list. So that quality of life issue has now been passed over to the county attorney's office. And individuals can record the barking dog, take notes, do a log, provide that to the county attorney, and then they can then move forward with a criminal process. Okay, who goes out and investigates that barking dog? That would be that individual providing their own video recordings, their own log of the issues that they have, and then they would work for the county attorney's office. So there's nobody going out officially on that? That has to come from the property owner? Yes, sir. next door or down the street absolutely so does that not make that a little bit more difficult to control barking dogs i would pass that on to the county attorney's office who's prosecuting though sir can you can you give me a quick synopsis on are we beginning to get control or are we still out of control okay well well i think let me try and answer the the first one first question first and mention how obvious is to be on this side on the instead of the other side but um you know so the barking dogs and i and i will say as a council member i had um that very situation and i did have to share with constituents that they had to record you know 24 7 to prove because it basically comes under a nuisance in the quality of life um offense. So yeah, it is, unfortunately, it has to be incumbent upon that individual, because we don't have investigative authority. And being in this role for about 11 months, it's my understanding that it used to be animal control that did that, because they do have the police citation authority to do that. But again, they're a small body as well. So yes, it did become more putting that burden onus proof on the citizen to collect. Because we don't have investigative authority to go out there or do anything. So yes, we have to rely on the evidence that that individual collects. Has it gone down? I don't know, I just know there's an avenue for it. Okay, thank you, Angela. I know it has changed quite a bit because I think one of the reasons before when we had the police department was doing it was that we didn't have enough officers to enforce it. Chief, can we attack not necessarily the barking dogs but all the other complaints? I mean, I live on a busy street. I get a lot of complaints, and I get a lot of noise coming down from stereos, motorcycles, whatever, and it just bounces off the house, and you can feel the wavelengths. But those are very hard to catch because that's a moving object, I guess. What can we do to maybe enhance our policing? and let me add one thing to that would the safety officers could they get involved in this particular area? It's a two part question. Yeah sure, well there's several things so one let's think about dispatch calls and what our priority list is so we have our dispatch calls that we go down through but also you're looking at how much time do officers have for proactive enforcement and what are we asking them to do with the number of stops on, red light running speeding complaints that every one of your offices sends to us right in the speed trailers that we put out. That's kind of some sort of education component. If officers are available and they're out doing proactive patrols, they can make those traffic stops in half. But it's also, again, what are they being asked to do and at what level. So it depends on what is going on that day of how much time they may have available. For the safety officers, I believe it's outside of what their current sworn authority allows them to do. I don't think the noise ordinance falls within what they can provide. Is that state law or is that our local law on the safety officers? I believe the noise ordinance is a local noise ordinance. My time's up, so. Thank you. I'll find out. Come back. And confirm with you on the safety officer. That would be helpful. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I've got questions as well, so I appreciate you standing up there and a great presentation. I guess what I'm trying to figure out, because I get calls too, so I know Commander Brotherton back there and I dealt with we had a loud HVAC unit like it was screechingly annoying and and like I had this these neighbors that were behind it and it was a commercial building and these neighbors behind it finally complained enough and and a lot of it was just it was creating a customer creating a relationship between two people to say hey like this is a problem right you got to fix it It seems like everything when I look at it up there, most things are kind of babysitting a little bit on noise ordinances. It doesn't, like, do we actually need something with teeth? Because, like, does it require us to have too many people to do enforcement of something that is a passing, generally a passing problem you know what I mean I do and and I completely understand that thought process because again it is a quality of life the folks that you talked about that were living behind that day yeah that was the day in day yeah that's what they want to have some teeth to some enforcement yeah absolutely I've got two examples polished toasted barrel if you remember where that was that on Main Street across from Rupp Arena they had a bar in the bottom area and the folks that had moved in above them several years ago were getting noise complaints all day long. Charlie Brown's when it was over off National Avenue. The same thing. The neighborhood that was behind them, that house that was directly behind, you couldn't hear the bass but once you got inside it wore them out every single night. And so it's again having that conversation with both parties and if we can come to a solution of a try the business for the bar, let's put some noise dampening items up. What efforts are they going to. For Paula's Toast of Barrel, they were there before the person moved in above. So you could kind of think, well, should you be aware that you just moved up above a bar? Us is the educational component and then the enforcement side of it. On both of those situations, we cited every time. A number of entities got involved in that. And over time, it ended up happening to go to the judges, to the county attorney's office, and the attorneys would say, all right, let's lump all this together and then have the attorneys try to work that out and the simple thing is one person wants this and one person wants the other who's going to win in that situation right we're the enforcement tool that's what we bring to the table but we also bring let's have that communication try to be neighborly about it and i think the incident you talked about with the hvac that business had no idea that they were causing that big of an issue so i think that's where we really try to focus on um you know you could find people a thousand fifteen hundred two thousand at the end of the night if the business of the bar that's playing loud music their cover charge is going to pay for that hundred dollar fine they're not too concerned about that right and so it's it's kind of there's a balance there thank you then i have one for our because i get more um i get some actually a fair number of complaints about our garbage trucks are actually city trucks because now we've just moved it like and i've realized the heat issue but and i can tell you from someone who lives in a condo that has about 14 garbage cans outside of his house right outside my house like i hear him at five in the morning and four in the morning um and i didn't know if anyone like if if we have to follow our own laws if that's considered something that's important or or what um and i don't know if i don't know if anyone from public works is here that does but anyway it's an issue i can tell you thank you that's it thank you council member shan thank you chair for recognizing me even though i am not on this committee um so for my district we get i get a lot of concern from neighbors about car traffic on richmond road and altered mufflers and the sounds that are coming um late at night particularly so it's like three and four a.m. it's disturbing people sleep so it is part of this quality of life piece and I recognize that it does not raise the level of the emergency calls that we need to prioritize so I have a question maybe for chief Maynard but he's in the back So my question is, some of the residents have brought some state law to me recently around altered mufflers and nonfunctioning or altered mufflers, and that seems to be the main originator of noise in this traffic on Richmond Road, and particularly motorcycles. so is this something that i understand that can challenges with a car comes in and by the time you get there somebody gets their the cars uh... but is this something that you can pull someone over just for that or is it like other things like maybe spastic bell large something where you have to actually pull some whatever something else but if that is also an issue then you do a citation that way or how does that work we can observe the seatbelt and pull over for that is a traffic violation the muffler issue types that we do to target patrols based on those complaints uh... on occasion just like seatbelt uh... wearing red light running there are some grants for those but then we also do traffic enforcement that we have done downtown several nights at the end based on the complaints that we receive yeah and i do want to thank you for working with the residents and and now and several folks from the police department have met with residents and that richmond road area uh... and i have seen officer sitting in that area uh... over the summer so i appreciate your increased attention there uh... and i do not serve on the committee so it i can't vote on next steps uh... but if there is an appetite from the committee to have a subcommittee or look at some of these further actions i would be interested in participating in that for my district And then I have one quick question for our county attorney. So sometimes our office gets calls about other types of animals. So do you just work with barking dogs? Because sometimes we get an occasional rooster or something like that. Well, we do dogs, roosters, and you know what? I've forgotten, but roosters are allowed. I've forgotten they're they're allowed in the city okay so I think I have to we do dogs that's you know I I'd have to investigate that one more and do a little more research about that one but yeah I had those two but just in from being on council at some point I feel like they're they're allowed unfortunately but again you could try and do nuisance but again that requires it still comes back on the citizen to provide information and evidence that it's a nuisance and that's always going to be the problem i would say if i could um about your point on using you know like when we talk about enhanced i guess enforcement i would on my end um you know be concerned about making sure for you all to ask the right questions and make sure that that enforcement is um is equitable not saying that it wouldn't be but that that's a concern i have when we start talking about you know um car noise and loud music even though it is a quality of life issue my red flags go up when we start talking about specific demographics of that usually um it's easier to find and who usually gets pulled over for those types of violations um so i would if that is a conversation that continues to truly incorporate that into your conversations to see what the desperate impact might be thank you that's unsolicited information um thank you for that note and i would also want to just quickly thank council member lagree and hannah for the presentation today and all the research that you put in and time you put into this and thank you chair thank you councilmember Fogel thank you for your acknowledgement and welcome County Attorney Evans my first few weeks was chicken cows and they wanted me to go and count the chickens in someone's backyard so is there a limit on the chickens that you can have in the backyard I'm gonna start with that one because I'm gonna grow deep on the next questions is there is there amount of chickens they supposed to have and then am i supposed to get them out of the backyard are y'all going to get them out of the backyard so there is an rco that covers having uh chickens and pigeons and birds and stuff type stuff in your in your backyard it is not something that is really used very often so i'd have to look it up but we're problem solvers we get called on quite a bit of things and so again but there is allowed for some sort of livestock with the the chickens and stuff in backyards okay well i would just I just suggest that you go look it up because they keep going about the chickens. We'll respond, talk to them. In the backyard. So let's get serious now. And that was serious also. I know my questions is going toward the class race targeted folks that love to play music. And I'm speaking of first district and I love green space, but we know that we're running out of green space. We also are running out of places for people of color to gather and culturally we play music, we have good time, whatever. So that's going to be an issue for me. The other issue is that we're already overworking the, if you have to make an arrest, that's something else the judge will have to see and something else your office will have to see. And then we roll over because it's like a domino effect. I can't really wrap my head around noise and that we're talking about noise when we don't talk about the people who are unhoused that are out in the city. So to spend money on another project without spending money on housing and getting people up out of the, what is it, 102 today, the index, they're out there, I just came. That's why I'm late. They pulled me over on the way here and I, of course, I stopped because I represent them. And so my question is, how do we distinguish the calls? Is it after you get there, Commander, that you kind of can sift through? Like, Whitney moved next to me, but I don't want her in my community. But her and her family has a barbecue in the backyard. And I'm going to keep calling you because I really don't want Whitney there anyway. So how do we do that noise ordinance? What will happen? We have that we've got spike calls that come in all the time. And that's the focus of having our beat officers work the same beat continuously. They get to know who's having those neighborhood tiffs. And so if somebody called, hey, this vehicle's been parked here, been blocking my driveway for five weeks. That officer, in theory, drove by there, knows that those two folks are having complaints, and can go talk to them. That's part of having that communication officer presence. The other part is that officer discretion, right? And so it's figuring out what's going on, how can we battle through this, how can we try to get, there's a reason only 33 citations were given. I mean, that's the bottom line. We try to work through that, educate, try to help control again. Problem solving is what we do. We get called for a lot of different things. And please, I apologize for seeing Whitney instead of CM Baxter, because no, I apologize. I done got all into the barbecue, and you didn't invite me, so no. But so the class race targeting that community continues to distrust the government in this presentation. I'm just, it's one of those days and we're talking about a noise ordinance. And I'm wrapped up in the people I just passed out there at the 90 degree weather. So I love Council LaGree, so I'm going to get with her and learn more about this. But can you please just keep in mind that this could be a very dangerous, slippery slope with the noise ordinance? And how do we determine, is the noise ordinance for the counter clocks when they send off, do we stop those fireworks? And Thursday Night Live and anything else? Because I'm going to tell you something. Over in Woodland this weekend, they was rocking and they was loud. What was East End Day? They were loud, so what happens? There's a noise variance that folks can apply for with fireworks, with other events. I mean, we've got construction that goes on at night on some of the roadways, because it's much safer to have the construction going on. Technically, that violates the city orders, but they can get a variance to work when they need to. And so that goes through the Commissioner of Public Safety's office. So there are opportunities for folks to apply for that. My time is up. Okay. time is up but i need to i just okay i'll tell everybody to apply for variance thank thank you council member council member um i'm going to recognize council member uh baxter first since she hasn't spoken yet thank you thank you chair and thank you council member ligery and hannah for your research and presentation it's been very informative um i do have a couple of questions hannah i'll start with you or council member ligery whoever wants to answer it as i'm looking through the case studies that were provided it seems like maybe all but one of them had a focus on vehicles were any of the case studies that you all looked at or considered kind of more all-inclusive or what were vehicles kind of like the most common thing that you came across well i would say most of the cities had were their ordinance encompassed all noise but then would have a specific target for vehicles separately tailored to weight of a vehicle or within city limits specifically the Charlotte Mecklenburg County has one that's within the city limits vehicles are not allowed to do X Y and Z okay yeah that's helpful thank you so much and then chief I have a couple questions for you too please mentioned you were getting some clarification from the law so I was curious if it was on the KRS statute in regards to witnessing a violation or if it was something else because I'm curious that that was my question as well as whether or not if we could install the decibel readers and issue citations without witnessing still working on that one I got the file information running at large yes and then I've got the safety officer since it is we can talk about that but I'll continue getting answers okay thank you and then my other question is you some other states don't go don't go too far don't go too far chief my last question is um you know some other states do vehicle inspections a lot of it's for emissions and things like that and i think kentucky used to do that as well um and it would be a state law that we would have to work on but is that something that you think could be beneficial to us as far as like altered vehicles are concerned muffler i believe vehicles are inspected when they come in from out of state to be registered okay so that is occurring as far as what that inspection goes into outside the van and confirming that is not a stolen vehicle that i don't know okay is that an option it could be there's a lot of vehicles in fayette county so how often you want to try to inspect those would really open up a lot of time that we would have to look at sure okay i don't know that the lexon police department would want to be volunteering i wouldn't expect you all to be a part of that but i'm just curious i think that that would be a good way for us to think about noise alternatively and like i said it might be a state initiative but maybe catching altered vehicles before they hit the road would stop my 3 a.m drag racing on man o' war in the ninth district right commander brotherton we love those okay and that's all i have for now thank you thank you chair thank you i'm going to recognize council member great because she hasn't spoken yet thank you um chair um since um commissioner albright came all the way down from the 11th floor to answer dave's or excuse me council member savigny's question i figured that we should ask about the noise issues regarding our our garbage trucks. Garbage trucks. Thank you ma'am and thank you Council Member Spigny for the opportunity to come down and answer the question for Council Member Gray. And thanks to Commissioner Armstrong for having the answer right at his fingertips that specifically in the noise ordinances called out collection trash can start at 5 30 a.m so that is specifically and when we announce early collection like that we're doing that kind of out of respect for we'll be there before we're already allowed to be there thank you and thank you thank you council member fred brown uh thank you for recognizing me again i just had a couple of things or thoughts that came up This problem's not going to go away, and I think we need to keep it in committee. I think it's very important to the citizens of Fayette County. As I've noticed, I think probably right now we've probably got a lack of education. And I'd like to see where we could have some checklists of what we can do and what's available and our legislative aides could put those out in our newsletters. And so we can get that information out. I think maybe the city government, I don't know what particular area would be involved, but we need some type of education process, maybe some things on cable TV or on our channel to address that. I think we've just started to touch it again. This has been a long, long item that we've had ever since I've been on the council. So referring back to the Commonwealth attorney, the barking dogs, I think this committee probably needs information on maybe a year, on what you've got as far as the number of complaints, how it's been addressed, that type of thing. I'm sure you've got that in the computer somewhere. Actually, no, we don't. So don't assume that. But no, I will say my office is, which is something new, we are trying to collect data on various different offenses that occur. Not everything, because that would require full-time analysts. But I will talk to the person who takes those initial complaints to see what data we can get. That would be a new way of looking at that information or collecting that information. So I don't want to overpromise, but I can see what we can find out. Yeah, I think we need additional information because I think a lot of citizens out there, and I wasn't sure that we transferred it over to your department myself, but we've got a lot of people out there that still want to call the police on barking dogs. So we need to educate not only the public, but we need to have information as to how big a problem that is and where it's at. So that's where I'm. Well, it's only a big of a problem as we get complaints. Yeah. Meaning people who actually come in and file a complaint. So there can be plenty of people who tolerate a neighbor with a barking dog, but they'll never come in and file a complaint. So that information probably won't get you the full picture. But trying to find out who actually comes in and do that, I will, again, that will be new information in a new way. our office is operating but i will see what i can find out for you okay fine fine well i think it's on us to maybe educate the public out there that what avenue they have and you're probably going to get more complaints as a as a result if we tell the public how to address this particular problem because i don't think the general public knows that much on it so anyway um i'd like i I think this thing ought to stay in committee. You know, I don't think we're solving this problem. And I really think it's a problem in more ways than one. And we just need to maybe come up with some ideas on how we can better address it. So that's where I'm at. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to make some of my own comments. First of all, I want to thank Council Member Legree and Ms. Seiden for putting this presentation together and doing this work, I think it's really important. When I first came on council, actually the first complaints that I received were noise ordinance related. And so I sat down with the law department and looked over the ordinance and we talked about decibel readers. And I had a woman come to me in a low income neighborhood who was crying because she said she couldn't sleep because of the roosters next door. and then she was told by the animal control that it was a nuisance complaint because roosters are allowed but if they become too loud my understanding is they become a nuisance and so then they had to go through the same process that you all are describing for for dog barks and for this elderly couple that was very overwhelming for them and they didn't know how to kind of work their way through the system so I don't think it's an easy process if you do have that type of complaint. And then over the past four and a half years the amount of complaints I've had even in my own neighborhood. I had people calling me every week for weeks about motorcycles that were going up and down the street with their extra noise on them. Police went over there, they couldn't do anything. It was just a very frustrating situation. I've had people complain about parties, about businesses, even as early as yesterday, that are disrupting the neighborhood. So I did want to mention that, Council Member Fogel, I do think this is an issue that is affecting all neighborhoods and that I have people from even low-income neighborhoods that complain to me that they don't have a way to deal with unwanted noise, like from from animals to motorcycles to a number of other things so I do also think that it's important that we move something forward around this I realize that the police department doesn't have the personnel to be able to respond maybe the way that we would like them to for instance if somebody is having a really loud get-together and they make a call there's a million other things that are more urgent than that than the noise of that party. And so maybe by the time police get there, either something has changed or they don't get there in a short amount of time. So if we look at our citations, part of that is probably due to the fact that we just don't have the personnel to be able to respond. Because if you look at the calls, that is an extremely high volume of calls. And some things are, you know, just a loud barbecue. And some things are not. I mean, these motorcycles in my neighborhood were speeding at 6 a.m. and waking everybody up. You know, I just saw a drag race downtown the other day. So I would like to see something move forward. And what I would like us to consider is maybe what it would mean to get the decimal readers, not the cameras but the the readers that when someone responds they can have a way of measuring the noise so i would like to keep it in committee and see if there's something we can do more around that i don't know what you're what you would like to do um chair it looks as though council member ellinger has signed in and then i'll be glad to weigh in um okay sorry about that yes council Thank you, Chair. And this is an issue, I think it affects all of us, but also I think the public, I'd like to hear from them too because I know there's some people here that would like to comment. This is where I think we start looking at our council rules and stuff and giving the opportunity to the public. I think this would be a great opportunity to hear what they have to say because a lot of them are the ones that are getting impacted on it. So at some point I'd like to see, and I think we all kind of know some of the issues, but It always would be helpful to find out things that are going on that we might not know that people just, as you said, don't know really the avenue how to address it. And would like to let us be aware of what is being done to see if we can address this problem because I know it can be. As somebody said, they live on a busy street. I live on the busy street. I'm on Nicholsville Road, so I hear a lot of this. But I also live on Nicholsville Road, so I know that's going to be part of it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Ligre. Thank you, Chair. And to respond to some of the comments that have been made. I mean, we had some pretty far ranging conversation today around the noise ordinance. A couple of the things that I'm hearing based on what you all have shared today is that there is a desire to perhaps look a little deeper into some of the potential next steps that we have outlined here. One thing that Ms. mentioned during her presentation had to do with an internal working group or a subcommittee. I'm not on this committee. If it is the desire of this committee to pursue a subcommittee, because it sounds like this is an issue that affects a number of people, then that might be a path forward. With the decibel level readers, that could be something that we could explore financially and otherwise within a working group. Similarly, our fine structure review, that could be something that could easily be delved into a little bit deeper. We have a number of case studies that we still have in our office that we didn't even share today, that also talk about other fee and fine structures. The other thing that has come up in conversation is an item that is connected to, but also on the periphery of this noise conversation. And I think that has to do with drag racing, which is a speeding and noise combination issue. We have seen some recent legislation passed in Louisville really focused around drag racing. And that is something that could be researched by a subcommittee or the internal working group as a subcategory of the noise discussion potentially. And then council member Brown, you mentioned an educational campaign so that people know what our current ordinance does, how they could report something like barking dogs. I think that that's something that's manageable. So I guess it depends on how you all want to handle this. I would prefer to have some coalitional power with some of this research. We did a lot of research independently and with the help of past council members and staff members who are really knowledgeable about this work. So I think it would be useful to have other people working on this and determining a path forward together. Regarding Councilmember Ellinger, what you have shared about hearing from the public, I hear from the public very regularly about this issue in the downtown area and in all of the surrounding areas of my district. I hear about it regarding vehicular noise and business noise most often. And there has been a lot of frustration shared by constituents about how it's affecting their quality of life. And when it comes to drag racing, how it makes them feel unsafe with the speeding vehicles. So I do think that people will be weighing in after this presentation. And they will be writing to us and they can come and speak in our work session as well. But I know that I get a high volume of calls and a high level of engagement. But I know that that might not be shared across the board. So those are my thoughts, Chair. Thank you very much. Yes, your district and my district, we receive a lot of calls about these items. So I think maybe moving forward, you and I can talk about setting up a subcommittee. And then I can make that motion later. Okay, does that sound good? Yes, of course. And because I'm not on this committee, the subcommittee, I assume, would have to be members of this committee. I think so, but I think you could participate. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you again for that item. Moving on, we are going to do an update. It's the annual update from the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention and Councilmember Shan is a sponsor of this item and I will turn it over to her for any opening remarks. This is a required annual update for our Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Herron and just start the presentation by saying I appreciate all the work that your office does i know you work with our council members quite a lot but then also with our service providers in the community and residents in the community as well so thank you for that and thank you for the introduction and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to present to you so i wanted to start since we have several new council members with just some general information about the ohpi its history and what it does so this office was established in 2014 as a recommendation of the mayor's greater good report and then in 2015 it took on the responsibilities of serving as both the continuum of care lead and the homeless management information system or hmis lead in terms of resources the ohpi presently has two staff myself and marissa webb our continuum of care coordinator we were also funded for a dedicated hmis administrator position in the fiscal year 24 budget. Additionally, this office would oversee a set-aside fund established by ordinance called the Innovative and Sustainable Solutions Fund. This annual amount of $750,000 is used to pilot new programs and models aimed at ending homelessness and also to meet system needs for which no other funding is currently available. This level of funding has not increased since the fund was established. Given the responsibilities of the office, it operates as a coordination and planning office. It is not equipped to provide direct client services, though it does serve on a daily basis as a resource and information hub for both individuals and community partners. This is going to be a very text heavy slide, but it's meant to give you a sense of everything that the Office of Homelessness deals with. So the OHPI's work is frequently going to be framed as coordination, facilitation, education, and advocacy. This office fulfills all HUD requirements of a continuum of care. This would include staffing the continuum of care board, recruiting members, facilitating meetings, developing committees and work groups, but also things like the development of our annual COC program application, which brings over $2.1 million into Fayette County annually for housing and supportive service programs. The office also handles daily operations of the HMIS database and the coordinated entry system, which is the mechanism by which households are assessed, prioritize, and referred to housing programs. The office develops system-level responses for things such as extreme weather and public health emergencies, sets and monitors performance targets and service standards, as well as conducts system and program evaluation, develops funding applications, allocates funds, monitors compliance, and provides technical support, analyzes and publicizes data, including four annual data submissions to HUD, educates the public and local leaders via the continuum of care website, social media, and mailing list, speaks at public events and engages the media, researches best practices and identifies system gaps, communicates with other systems to create comprehensive interdisciplinary approaches, and most importantly, advocates for the needs of those experiencing homelessness. Since the OHPI was established, LFUCG has invested over $47.2 million in the homelessness response system. For clarity, these figures only include funding overseeing, administered, monitored, or implemented by the OHPI. Aside from CARES Act funding, it does not include funding administered by grants and special programs. It would also not include funding associated with community and resident services or the federally funded housing stabilization program. Funding amounts here are presented by both funding source and by purpose. Ideally, a community would invest in four permanent housing beds for every emergency shelter bed that it funds or a one to four ratio. At present, our investments have been closer to a one to two ratio. Next, I would like to discuss our progress towards ending homelessness. The 2023 Lex count identified 815 persons that were experiencing literal homelessness. That would be residing in emergency shelter, transitional housing, or in sheltered locations. This represents a 100-person increase or a 14% increase over 2022. Keep in mind, this is homelessness on only one evening during the year. Overall homelessness has remained relatively steady in our Lex count over recent years. Additionally, I'd like to point out that 2021 and 2022, those years have data which is limited for comparisons. No official unsheltered count was conducted in 2021, and HUD's COVID guidelines in 2022 forced process changes, which likely resulted in an undercount. In 2019, the Lex count, let's see if I can. There we go. In 2019, the LexCount was conducted during a polar vortex and is often used for us as a comparison point as a fairly accurate representation of our local needs. Compared to 2019, the 2023 results would constitute just under a 4% increase. With the limited resources and the challenges of recent years, this speaks to the hard work of the system and its partners, but there is definitely more work to be done. Next, an update on LFUCG's standard operating procedures for addressing homeless encampments. This would be those that are on publicly controlled property or property which LFUCG controls by things like an MOU. Since submitting this presentation, I was informed of one additional cleanup that hit the fiscal year 23 budget, so I'll make those notes verbally. Some of the numbers may differ from what you see on the slide. Factoring in that camp, LFUCG was responsible for cleanup of 26 camps in fiscal year 23. These 26 camps were tied to 17 unique locations, so several of these locations had more than one camp cleaned during the year, such as designated emphasis areas. These locations have a high probability of encampments returning, and are checked routinely for things like trash and debris. Costs for cleanup completed through environmental services and code enforcement in fiscal year 23 totaled just over $40,000. The average cost per cleanup was approximately $1,553 per site. While LFUCG ensures that services such as street outreach are made available to residents of encampments, success can be varied. Nearly half of camps removed during the year involved no contacts made and no evidence of an active encampment. These cleanups involve removal of debris left behind when camps whose residents have already moved on. Additionally, persons residing in encampments are often distrustful of government and systems. Many times, individuals relocate as soon as camps are identified and before street outreach teams can make contact. When teams do connect with individuals, a little over half of camps engage in services. Services received can include anything from relocation to emergency shelter, referral to housing and or housing move-in, and completion of things like a housing assessment and plan. So what work is the OHPI and its partners engaging in? The OHPI released its current five-year strategic plan in January of 2021. This plan included 55 recommendations and actions in five key areas. This included strategies for community outreach and engagement, preventing homelessness, policy and advocacy, increased funding sources, and expansion of permanent supportive housing. At present, 19 of 55 recommendations are completed or ongoing, approximately 35%. Keep in mind this plan was initially developed at the start of 2020. The finalized plan was released during the peak of the pandemic, constraining system capacity for new initiatives. Several of these goals and action steps, for example, included the formation of new work groups or committees that simply put, we didn't necessarily always have the capacity to move forward while trying to maintain essential services during the pandemic. Additionally, there's been turnover with both staff positions within the office. Moving forward, the OHPI will continue to work diligently towards completion of recommended strategies, but did want to be transparent about these challenges. So we'll start off with some of the progress made. In community outreach and engagement, the OHPI continued its centralized public education campaign. We utilized time with our marketing consultant team to revamp our community resource cards, develop a plethora of additional educational literature materials, and just launched a module on our website to help the public better understand homelessness, local trends and strategies, and opportunities for engagement. Last year, we reported that our public data dashboard had been completed. However, we identified a need to further revisit this action item. The original data dashboard required extensive staff time to update and keep current. The OHPI has since replaced the original data dashboard with three new dashboards that reduce staff time to update from entire days to just minutes. The new dashboards are more user-friendly and come with easy-to-understand insights built in so that even individual members of the public can get some insights into what this data actually means. Additionally, we receive funding in the budget for the creation of an HMIS system administrator position which should be posted any day. The onboarding curriculum for our frontline staff is currently in development. Sessions have been held with provider partners to identify specific needs and goals. And additionally, a content audit has been performed and the development of original materials is expected to begin next month. This means that at present all objectives for community outreach and engagement are either complete or ongoing. While the OHPI will continue assertively pursuing progress on remaining items, it should be noted that the OHPI presently lacks resources needed to quickly facilitate all of the recommendations. For example, without $1.5 million to launch an eviction diversion and mediation program, The OHPI is going to pause and study the outcomes of the addiction mediation and diversion program launched via housing advocacy and community development. Keep in mind that the number one strategy to end homelessness is quite simple, housing. Additional investments must prioritize the development of housing units and the wraparound services to accompany them. At this time I'd be prepared to take any questions that you might have. you very much i appreciate it thank you director and now um i will take uh questions from council members council member gray thank you chair and thank you jeff um uh do you have any numbers of where uh these homeless encampments are are located which sides of town or which districts yeah um so they're they're going to vary they're going to be in multiple different areas across town this would include some of the emphasis areas that are listed on our website for example the bridge at man of war near the lows at nicholsville road is a as a site where we've had four cleanups over the past year additionally there would be a location like versailles road there's a ravine over by the central bank that's been cleaned approximately five times in the past year so of these like i mentioned there's 17 unique locations and this would be the locations where it is on publicly controlled property not necessarily those that would be on private property and so i know it's on your website great but i i'm just curious if we could be provided with data or information to the council members of so that we can see what's going on in our districts I know that in my district the sixth district it has been a prevalent issue I'm sure it's a prevalent issue and other parts of Lexington but since we're close to the interstate also since we're close to the Catholic Action Center and also for various other reasons my district but specifically Eastland Parkway neighborhood this neighborhood has been dealing with the brunt of this what tips or what can our neighborhoods do in order to I guess to help themselves in this matter yeah one thing would be to make sure that my office is aware of individuals that might be in need of assistance. We have obviously very little ability to help a person move towards a more sustainable permanent situation if we aren't in contact with them. This is a population that can move around frequently that may not actively seek out assistance for themselves. So one thing is that we definitely need that assistance. Additionally, there are a lot of opportunities for individuals to become involved with the continuum of care. Individuals can become members just like an organization. And so I would just encourage people to think about what kinds of talents or skills that they might have to offer. If somebody owns property or operates in real estate, would they like us to help us recruit landlords to participate in our programs? One of the most challenging things that we face day in and day out is that even when we have things like vouchers or subsidies that are available, we struggle to find landlords willing to accept things like third-party payment, making it even more challenging to then house persons. So there's a variety of different ways, but I think participation and communication are key. And so also what is the resolution for individuals who this is their choice to reside in these? homeless encampments, do not want to go to the shelters, do not want your help. What is the remedy for that? So first, I'm sure in some instances that is going to be the case. It is. I want to be clear that I don't think that necessarily everyone chooses to be in that situation. No, not everyone. This is not something for everyone. Sorry. But when we're talking about that subset of persons, you know, We operate three different funded street outreach teams that operate on a progressive engagement model. So we might hear no a lot, but we will continue to try. Additionally, any kind of solution to be effective has to consider policy changes. And we need to take a look at local, state, and federal laws. We need to really look at things that we can do. We're running into a lot of scenarios where there are persons who are actively making choices that are, in my opinion, against their best interest. We're working with an individual right now who's been placed in a higher level of care, such as a nursing home, at least three times. And continues to, as soon as Medicaid stops fully paying for that stay, returns to the streets. And we've had that person looked at by Adult Protective Services, and they have continued to find that that individual is competent to make his own choices, even though we know that there are choices that are actively harming him. And so those are conversations that Commissioner Lanter and myself are trying to have with community members. When it comes to those kinds of larger changes, that's definitely not an instant solution, but something that's going to take a little bit of time and the willingness for our community to re-examine and think about what we think would best serve those that are in need, but also the community more broadly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate your acknowledgement since I do not serve on this committee. Jeff, I just want to thank you and Marissa for all the work that you have done and are doing to work with our unhoused population. I know that that is tireless work, and you don't get a lot of praise and thanks, so I want to thank you for all the work that you're doing. I only have maybe a couple of questions. Just for my clarification, what is considered an encampment? Is it just one person? Is it multiple people? Does there have to be belongings? What is considered an encampment? um so typically and i don't have the exact policies in front of me from rsop to define that in that exact language but essentially it's going to be an attempt to establish a residence it could be one person it could be multiple persons but it is the existence of belongings and typically the attempt to create some kind of shelter structure it's going to be something different than what we consider rough sleeping where an individual might just be sleeping in a public location. And so what you listed under your unique locations in your report are those are city-owned property, but there are more than just those 17 unique locations, of course. Yes, so those would be the locations that we had an active role in cleaning up that were either our property or something like state or railroad property that we might have an MOU to act upon. this would not include properties that we didn't have a direct role in cleaning up such as those on private property okay and i agree with what council member grace said i would love to know district wise um if there's some encampments that i'm just i'm not aware of that my neighbors haven't made me aware of so that we can stand communication with that so is that on the website or do i just need to work with you all's office so um currently we only post on our website those areas that would be designated emphasis areas. Those are ones that have frequent activity to where we can designate them as an emphasis area so that they can be more immediately responded to and not necessarily have to follow the full timeline of our typical policy. Those would be listed on the website. For the others that were included in these cleanups, I can definitely distribute that information to the council at a later time. Okay, awesome. Thank you again, Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Go back to the screen that has the annual X count homeless population. Excuse me. Looking at that count there, I'm not sure, is it community action or Catholic action groups that's headed out on Eastland Parkway? So Catholic Action Center is located out in that area. How many of that count is included in this count? So they have approximately 102 beds. Additionally, they partnered with Lighthouse Ministries for the Safe Harbor Warming Center. I did not bring with me a full breakdown by agency. I brought all of our different totals, subpopulations. But is that population out there included in this homeless number? So if they're residing at the Catholic Action Center or the Safe Harbor Warming Center, they were included. And then if they were identified by the volunteer teams who were canvassing identified locations in that area, they would also have been captured in this count. Okay. And the time of the counts and the date each year, are those consistent? Yes. So we are mandated federally by HUD as a requirement of the continuum of care to conduct the point in time count. We have to do a sheltered count every year and we have to do an unsheltered count at least every other year. Lexington typically elects to conduct a full unsheltered count each year in addition to its sheltered count. The exceptions would be 2021. We applied for it and received a waiver. we could not meet the very highly burdensome regulations that HUD had in place for us to operate a street count that year and then in 2022 Director Ruddock had applied to push the count back and it was conducted in February instead of in January due to extremely high rates of COVID-19 in Fayette County but typically that count would take place within the last 10 days of January. The concept being that we're going to have a more easy time accounting for our population because weather conditions would encourage them to seek out shelter. And so we would have fewer persons in an unsheltered setting with more inclement weather. What about repeat in this particular count? So we would have the ability to do deduplication of data in our database for any persons that were staying in things like emergency shelter and transitional housing. For our unsheltered count, we have items included in that survey that help us to understand, such as like a physical description of an individual or a location where they were found, so that we can try to manually go through that data and clean it to identify. Do you have repeat information though on those individuals? How many individuals would be repeats in that 815 that you got in 2023? So are you talking about repeats from year to year? Basically, yeah. I mean, how many are you carrying over? Because I would understand that homelessness is not just a one year deal. Correct. So we actually, this data is typically looked at at an aggregate level where we would not be looking at the specific individuals, but more so the overall numbers and trends. Presently, my office would not have the capacity to do that level of analysis easily. It would be something that would be incredible. So you don't have names of individuals? We do know many of the individuals. And for those that are in our database, we have that information. However, we just don't typically have the time to go back to prior years and compare that data from year to year to identify if someone might be a repeat. Do you have any information as to how you can see what you're spending per person each year? So we typically do that in multiple different layers. We would do that when it comes to things like funding housing and supportive service programs, criteria for scoring and ranking of programs that would apply for continuum of care funding. Well, I'm talking about total funding that you're getting through that helps homelessness through the various federal, state, local grants. How much of that dollars can be attributed in these particular individuals? spending per person so that would be a very difficult question to answer if we're talking about multiple different funding sources and multiple different types of programs you don't think you could get that number then so presently I would not have the capacity to do that thank you my time's out thank you councilmember Baxter thank you chair and thank you Jeff for your presentation and for your hard work I know you sometimes it's thankless and I appreciate all that you do. The trends that we're seeing here, first can you help jog my memory on why we initially saw that large decrease in numbers? So between 2017 and 2018 there's going to be a change in some of the programs that were included in the count and those that were defined as homeless. There were programs prior to 2018 that were transitional housing programs that did not specifically have individuals experiencing homelessness as a criteria for entry or eligibility to that program and therefore they do not meet HUD's definition. And so they were removed in 2018 which would account for at least a portion of the decrease there. Okay and then the, excuse me, the increase that we have seen, is that similar in other communities as well like nationwide is that a general trend we are seeing a large number of communities that are posting increases of over 20 percent i've seen increases as high as 50 being publicized for larger cities across the country and numerous that would have somewhere between a 20 and 30 increase that's not to say that we need not be concerned about local trends but that it's not necessarily something that is unique to us. Okay, and then do we have any way of identifying or monitoring the root causes for individuals who are experiencing homelessness? And my question there is, you know, if we can identify the root cause, can we then look at other programming opportunities to prevent it long term? Yeah, so we would collect various different layers of data within our HMIS system that help us to understand the root causes that are associated not just with literal homelessness, but with things like risk for eviction. And those are going to be the data that form the continuum of care strategies in each of our key performance areas. Okay. And then kind of to piggyback on Council Member Lynch's questions about encampments, can you give me a little bit more detail about what a cleanup entails? Like, are the individuals present, or are we going in when nobody's there? How does that work? Yeah, so typically our process would involve for the properties that we would have an active role in the cleanup. We would do an initial posting and allow our street outreach teams to have a minimum of five business days in order to engage those individuals. Sometimes it can be difficult to establish contact, but also, again, we might get, no, I don't want to work with you on day one, but perhaps day two, three, four might be a different response. then at the end of that five day period the street outreach teams would provide me with a service plan for the individuals that are residing in that encampment and we have a little bit of flexibility in order to decide if we need to go ahead and move forward with posting a final notice and scheduling cleanup or if there are steps which might be reasonably accomplished that we might potentially extend that timeline a little bit further But we would post a final notice that gives at least 72 hours notice to individuals. And typically that's going to be a situation where most times they would not be present at the time of the removal. And that's going to include having a contractor that would come out and remove items that are left behind, waste, trash, debris. but also sometimes there is going to be some things that need to be done in order to mitigate the possibility of future camps like removal of things like overgrowth and vegetation to improve sight lines. Okay thank you and my final question is and it's just because I've experienced it in my district one of the very well-known encampments is mine so how do you think we can better partner with businesses who are experiencing encampments? Because I know I've had several conversations with police that we have encampments like in the middle of a parking lot or that aren't on city-owned property. So I'm trying to figure out how to build relationships with those businesses like Walmart to kind of just to better partner with them so that we can help clean up or prevent or whatever. Do you have any suggestions there? Yeah. One thing is that I think to some extent, some folks still just don't know of the existence of this office and its role in trying to address this issue. So continuing to do some public education and outreach. Eventually, what I would like to do is spend more time being able to do things like engage business owners and help bring them into the work that we are doing in a structured way. for example hud has recently released some community engagement tools that i think are going to be helpful to us that we can use to build upon our current strategies being 100 percent transparent that just wasn't something i was able to tackle in one year in the position definitely something as we continue to improve in terms of staffing and resources that is going to be a key area for additional development okay thank you i appreciate it thank you chair Thank you. I'm going to recognize Councilmember Sevigny because he hasn't spoken yet. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation. And I want to thank you. The work that you guys do really, it's very impactful, and I've dealt with it directly with some homeowners and neighbors in different parks. And like it was really nice to be able to talk to the neighbor and say this is kind of how we do things. and they really did, like they really appreciated it. So I want to thank you for that. A couple questions since we have this chart up. Could you explain persons and families, individuals, and children, like is, because I'm trying to also figure out is there a male-female breakdown, like male-female adult breakdown and children breakdown, and are children typically with a mom or I'm just trying to figure that out. Yeah, so persons and families is going to include any household that identifies as a family that is largely going to include families with children. And then we break out the number of children within those households separately so we can do things like make comparisons to other definitions of homelessness like that used by the public school system. And then we would count the single individuals separately in terms of a breakdown of gender. And mostly the adult gender, I'm just kind of curious. It looks like we're going to have 276 identifying as female, 536 identifying as male, one individual identifying as neither male nor female or non-binary, and two individuals that identified as transgender. Okay. Thanks. My next question, I wanted to ask you about this five-year strategic plan slide, so I don't know if you want to flip to that. I love five-year strategic plans. They're like the greatest thing in the world. Tell me where you think on these things. You've got some things written in orange, and could you just kind of tell me where you think we're hitting it? We're doing great? Yeah, so the items in orange are those that we've completed or that are an ongoing item. And then the other items are those that we still need movement in. To me, the most important that we really need to look at would be the expansion of permanent supportive housing. Presently, our primary source for that is going to be through the Continuum of Care program, which is about $2.1 million annually. and that's not going to be sufficient to quickly and permanently rehouse individuals. In terms of speed, we would be hoping ideally for a system that would be able to rehouse persons within 30 days of presentation. And depending on the level of resource that someone needs at present, that could be something like closer to 200 days if they need something like a permanent supportive housing bed, that HUD has additional layers of eligibility criteria. For example, that person has to meet the chronic homeless definition, which would be at least a year of homelessness within the past three years and also having a disability. Not every person that, in my opinion, probably would benefit from that level of support meets that criteria or meets it when we first are presented with them. So that's going to be one of the key areas that we need additional development. At present, we had, I believe, 159 persons that would meet a chronically homeless definition within the 2023 Lex count. And that is something that I'm very aggressively trying to communicate with other systems to look at resources such as grants or other funding streams that they might have to pair with us. But, you know, that would also be something that would be benefited by local, state, and federal investments beyond the continuum of care funding that we presently receive. Okay. Thank you. What about this local lawmaker engagement? Is that us? So that would definitely be part of it, yes. So, you know, things like I know we have a tenant group that has approached the council about things like a source of income discrimination ban. That's something that's been very successful in other communities, including Louisville here in Kentucky. I mentioned earlier that we really struggle to find landlords that are willing to partner with us. anecdotally i hear stories from partner agencies we have things like fair market rent values that hud will say this is the maximum for a household size that you can pay for a housing unit i've had stories of providers coming back and telling me that a landlord set the price of a unit one dollar over the fair market rent value and some landlords are not willing to participate in programs that that would provide third-party payment at all. That includes different models, those that would do rental assistance where the dollars would follow the tenant versus those that might master lease where the organization would directly hold the lease with the property owner. And both come with a lot of challenges in identifying landlords. That's one of the RFPs that we're going to be releasing with fiscal year 24 funds. It's going to be a project designed at landlord engagement and recruitment. but this body could definitely look at action steps to improve our ability to her on persons and keep them and then lastly you're out of time council member I don't look at the time very well you can sign back in if you would like to and I'll recognize councilmember Fogle because she has not spoken I am I'm definitely going to have to come back. So could you please, I'd like to start with the definition of wraparound services. Can you educate the council and folks what is included in a wraparound service? Yeah, so all of the housing programs that we would fund and operate through sources like the continuum of care program are not going to be housing alone. They include supportive services such as case management. Sometimes it can also include things like peer supports or even clinical supports. Oftentimes, the only strategies we have to connect persons with case management of that level are going to be when they are participants within those housing programs. It can be more challenging to find that level of support without participation in those programs. So if we have somebody who's still, for example, in an unsheltered environment, they can get services from things like our street outreach teams, but we would ideally be looking for a higher level of service that could wrap around them and provide them with things like life skills, help them to do things like develop a budget, increase employment opportunities, educational opportunities, apply for mainstream benefits such as SSI, SSDI, food stamps, and other programs. those are skills that takes a staff member a little bit of time to learn how to navigate and successfully make progress in an individual's plan. And again, we just don't presently have a sufficient stock of that. So sometimes we have opportunities like vouchers that we really would benefit from having that additional support to pair with. And I also want to say thank you for the work that you do in your office. It is very important. But I did hear you say that your office doesn't do the direct services. So as we educate the council, because I want them to get a good vision of homelessness and unsheltered people, and when you talk about HUD, those are people who we placed in a hotel, waiting to see if they can get in permanent housing, or people who are already in housing. I want to move from HUD, and I want to talk about the street people. Now, Council Gray denoted to how many in the districts and can you cut that down and slice it. Council member Brown also denoted to the facts about some items that we really truly need. So first district is like a dumping ground, that's the one that's always visible. We know that this is an epidemic across Lexington. So if we don't talk about HUD, because they get the case management. We're going to talk about that count and I'm just not going to go with that count. Only because I know that that is tied to HUD and how they do things. But when you walk around first district and maybe six and maybe second and there is defecation on people's properties and Councilmember Sheehan and I are working with some business owners where we see the devastation. If we move away from HUD and we really talk about the people who used to sit on 3rd and AM, what does that count look like and who does the outreach because I know Lexington Rescue Mission has one person. The Community Action only had one person to deal with the 443,000. Y'all knew I was coming to that one. And so if we don't have people in place, we have you all because you all bring us all of this great presentation. So your work is being done well. But when we get to the street and we get to the people who are in these encampments, that's what I want the council members to visualize. It's those people that we have to address because it's an epidemic. And the other thing is when you talk about the education, who reads to the people that can't read so that they'll know where the services are. If it's only one or two outreach people, they can't possibly cover all of the ground that has been presented to us. There's no way physically are capable. Because I do outreach and I know what that takes. Yeah, I would agree. So, first of all, I know you said you didn't want to work these numbers, but what I would say is that if they are on the street and they are without a fixed residence, they are sleeping or residing on the streets or in an encampment, they would be included in these numbers. What we have to consider is that, again, these are numbers on one night during the year. During this year's count, we were under an activation of our winter weather plan, So we did have a number of individuals that would have been in overflow resources like our motel program or places like Safe Harbor. So we had 38 individuals that were unsheltered on the evening of the count. But when we removed those winter weather resources, we are looking at a peak of potentially about 160 persons. That was kind of the number that we identified looking over figures and data from the polar vortex that we experienced near Christmas. And you're absolutely correct that it's difficult for our street outreach teams to manage somewhere between 40 to 160 persons and effectively move them all towards permanent housing. Lexington Rescue Mission has a team that is partially funded through resources like extended social resources. They have one staff member at present and a volunteer doctor who goes out in the field with them. Community Action Council has three staff members on their outreach team, and Hope Center was just awarded their agreement on August 1st and are in the process of hiring up to the total seven positions that they included in their agreement. I fund as many as I can out of my $750,000 annual budget. This most recent round of street outreach, I'm spending about $300,000 on. If I increase that further, I'll have no budget to pilot any new programs. So I'm trying to walk a balance of continuing a very needed essential service, but also leaving some dollars for us to pursue other strategies in addition. but street outreach is definitely an area where if we wanted to have an ability to fully meet the needs of people and to be responsive 24-7, we would probably need a significant amount more funding to be able to facilitate. And that would go to the boots on the ground, folks, because I'm all for giving you some funds and hopefully my colleagues for the people that we visibly see every day at the courthouse all around Lexington. Council Member, I'm sorry, but we're way past your time. I'm going to punch back in. Okay, and I'm going to ask everyone, some of us haven't had a chance to speak, and I would like us to wrap up in about 12 minutes so we can talk about committee items. So just keep that in mind as we go forward. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. Um, Mr. Heron, now Mr. Heron, um, I'm going to ask, um, uh, do, since we keep a list of the demographics, male, female, non-binary, um, are we accounting for those who are citizen versus non-citizens? That's typically not something that we would track within our database, and we don't always have, um, reliable data in order to identify that. For the majority of our services, it honestly doesn't make a difference for eligibility. Emergency shelter can accept anyone. Most housing programs can accept anybody. There are going to be a few limitations to that, like some voucher programs through the housing authority might require legal citizenship status and things like a Social Security card. But because it's not something that necessarily impacts eligibility, we don't always track that. essentially if they're here and they're in need. Excellent. Well, thank you. Also, by the way, thank you for all the great work you do. Whenever I need you, you show up. You show up to my district-wide meetings and you stay the entire time and you give the answers to people who've been having all these questions for so long. so thank you so much for all that you do for our community but lastly um when we submit or or what a citizen reaches out about say a homeless encampment do you follow up about if the encampment has been removed or what is that process yeah um so if it's something that is something that lfcg would be responsible for ultimately removing a public property or a property we control i would track that and would return to that periodically to monitor progress keep dates of postings that are made records of those postings so that would be information that i would have on those camps in terms of those that are on private property sometimes it it can can be a challenge for us to, we can't monitor a property 24 seven. So we'll make repeated attempts before we would reach back out to that owner and let them know, hey, we haven't been able to make contact or establish that there's activity. Can you give us any more guidance? Can you meet us and show us where we might need to be looking? Or sometimes just offer for them to reach back out if there's new activity or new indication that we need to come back around. those it's a little bit harder to to keep that level of data like i do for public property just something capacity-wise that it would be hard for me to do thank you thank you councilmember thank you very much and i'll keep it really short um two things um source of income discrimination is going to come up in our october meeting um here so get ready for that and then Second thing is, I've talked to Commissioner Lantner about, like, the winter. So obviously the winter is an issue. Do we have a winter plan as of yet? And if it's something that's going to be covered at some time in the next two months, you don't need to share it right now. Yeah. So Commissioner Lantner called a committee together to reimagine our winter weather response very early this year. We got started back in early March, and we have worked with a variety of stakeholders, including our homeless service providers, but also representatives from bodies like paramedicine, police, Council Members Sheehan, and Council Members Fogle. And we've developed what we feel like is a pretty good plan. It would be a multi-layered plan. It's going to include a first layer, which would be our congregate shelters, being able to do things like relax restrictions and identify overflow beds that they can offer. And then a season-long congregate piece, which the primary struggle will be identifying a location for. That would be a location that would be accepting of both males and females, including couples. and then we would have a small number of hotel vouchers available for elderly and disabled persons. So right now we have the plan and we are actually meeting, I believe, next week to go ahead and bring that committee back together to try to finalize where that congregate piece could be situated. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Really quick, the winter plan, I'm really excited about it. And so thank you for all of that work. You too, Mr. Lanter. Can I ask, are the sober living houses, the Chrisless, Hope, Shepherds, are they included in the homeless count? Because technically they still are homeless. So actually HUD has a very robust guidance document for the point in time count and individuals that are going to be in institutional settings were not permitted to count under that definition. There's going to be a lot of nuances to how HUD defines that. But for example, if an individual's institutional stay is over 90 days, that's considered a break in their homelessness. But additionally, we would have to have the ability to establish that they met the definition prior to entering that setting, even if they were there for less than 90 days. So under this specific count, we are not able to include them. Okay. Is there any way to, by chance, see if there's a break in or the 90-day stay, then they're discharged? Can we keep up with that? And the last thing is, can we kind of beg, I'll help you beg, because I'm really good at it, places like the Hope Center to give people another chance. Like some people are banned for a year. Can we just kind of ask them, can they wipe their slate clean, give them another chance to come in and get those beds during the winter? And then if they act out again, then start all over since this is a new year, maybe their attitude or something changed. Yeah, so actually the Hope Center has actually been very, very responsive going into the winter, which was just after I took my position. They have been routinely trying to internally review those restrictions and see if it's something that is truly serious, that it nets a long-term restriction, or if it's something that can be rolled off and allow that person another opportunity. And there's been some persons that I can say there have been some serious concerns, and they've welcomed them back to their shelter. Yeah, Troy does a good job. And a lot of times when we identify that and communicate that, it may be the choice of the individual not to return. Other shelters, I'm continuing to work on that effort to kind of show what other providers are doing and try to give them tools to make that successful. I understand the balance between a congregate environment and an individual having an opportunity for another chance. Well, I look forward to working arm-in-arm with you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to make a few comments, and then Council Member Sheehan has requested to go last. Thank you, Director Heron, for all that you do, and that your office is not large enough, I feel like. I'm sure you feel that every day, and so I appreciate that. You know, now that my district represents more of downtown, I've gotten a lot more concerns about the unhoused and just that balance between we want dignity for people, but yet there's some things going on on private property that shouldn't and people's concerns and mental health. And it's a lot. It's a lot. And there's been an uptick that we've seen. And like you mentioned, the country has seen. how if going forward um first of all are there the resources that you mentioned are there um printed materials that we can take to neighborhood associations that if somebody is concerned about an individual or an encampment that they can know what to do yeah um so we presently have educational materials that would do things like outline street outreach, things like our housing triage, our coordinated entry system that would address issues such as panhandling and encampments. We also have a document that's specifically targeted towards neighborhoods that would just be a catch-all for kind of like FAQs that would be things that they might frequently deal with. We also introduced an FAQ section to the Continuum of Care's website in addition to that public education module. Okay, thank you for that. And I think you're saying your dream is to have more housing available, correct? Yeah. Ultimately, when we are doing street outreach, if we don't have sufficient levels of housing, there's nowhere to really transition persons to. And that's where we result in things like seeing locations that become sites for frequent encampments or identify the same persons at multiple sites. because if we don't have somewhere to move them into and either by choice or restriction, they're not going into emergency shelter, we're essentially just shuffling people around. So we need the investment in the housing in order to facilitate any kind of solutions for both the individual and for the community. I think that's our biggest challenge. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me since I'm not on this committee. I want to also extend my thanks again, Jeff, to you, to Marissa. I don't think she's here today. Just watching upstairs. Thanks, Marissa. And Commissioner Lanter, who has been involved with this office and actually worked in this position when it started. You were the first one, right? Okay. So can you flip back two slides? So really, colleagues, this office is a staff of two currently. And they are covering all of this work. And while they're making great progress on the outcomes in the strategic plan, the progress on those outcomes are really only as good as the resources we can provide for them. And specifically the resources that I mean are staff and money. This year and this fiscal year, we have funded a new position and that is the HMIS administrator position. and I thank you all for support of that position. We were also in our American Rescue Plan Act conversations able to allocate more towards homelessness initiatives, and I appreciate the council's support for that. I already have an item in committee that is to review the Innovative and Sustainable Solutions Fund. That is the $750,000 that is set by ordinance, but that has not changed since 2014. And so I would like a review of that to see if that is a place where we could allocate more resources to help them meet these outcomes. And then also funding for permanent supportive housing, which we have heard is an important piece to the solutions that we are seeking here. As Jeff presented, the ideal situation is to be able to offer four permanent housing units for one shelter bed in the community. And currently we are offering one for every two shelter beds. So we are under that number and that benchmark that is set. I know, Jeff, because they serve on the HPI board, that you work with every dollar to make it the most effective possible for our community. So I appreciate that work. But, Council, I do think it is on us to continue to support this work and to be able to invest more time and energy and funding into this office to be able to really advance the opportunities and solutions that Jeff has presented to us. So thank you again, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I agree 100%. Thank you so much. Okay. Really quickly, we're going to go to items referred to committee. Today, I would like, we're going to start at one, And I would like each person to give an update on where they are with their items, so a little more detailed than usual, and how soon they think they'd be ready to have it presented in committee. So if Council Member Fogle comes back, we'll go to her. Next is Substance Abuse Intervention, and that's Council Member Sheehan. This one I think actually would be better for, to be moved to an annual update instead of an item here. And especially with the changeover in the program manager for this, I think it would be good for us to just put that in the periodic update section. And that was last heard in January of 2022, so it would be time for another update. The last presentation was in March, actually. Oh, okay. 2022. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I was looking at the wrong date. Yeah. We've had two presentations on this just to get updates on what has been going on in that office, but I do think this would be best served as an annual update. Okay. I think you have to make, does she have to make a, no? Okay. So it'll be an annual update, and we'll put it for spring of 2024. Thank you. Next is crime reduction technology, Council Member LeGree. I'm sorry. I am not reading today. Yes. councilmember Baxter thank you chair it is my intention to leave this item in committee so that as new technology items come up we will have a place to for them to be heard especially on the heels of our earlier conversation we may end up developing some technology options if we do create a subcommittee for the noise ordinance so it's okay with you I'd like to yes that sounds good to me thank you chair thank you I'm sorry now councilmember Ligri improve enforcement of traffic laws speeding stop signs etc um council member reynolds i don't have a detailed description of that i believe that was something i took over from uh council member jake gibbs and then we kept in committee is that something you would like to remove from committee or would you like to continue to work on it if there's anybody who's actually on this committee who would like to take it over then i would welcome them to do so at this time i'll entertain a motion to remove it motion to remove second all those in favor aye any opposed okay we are going to remove item number four um the next one is also council member lagree and we decided you want to keep that in committee correct yes and it sounds like chair you and i will need to get together to talk about the future direction of that initiative okay yes we will keep that in um next is item number six review of golf cart policies council member shan um this is my item i i do still believe this is an issue that we need to work on but i think this also can be a conversation that is had within the complete streets work group that is ongoing i did bring this up yesterday in our meeting along with other motorized vehicles like e-bikes that have become more prevalent we already have scooters here so i think this can be a more comprehensive conversation so i'm going to leave this in committee for now but then we could potentially report back information after the complete streets work is okay i think it would be a separate ordinance from complete streets though well it could be a policy that we have to have an action plan for complete streets that encompasses multiple policy recommendations so this could potentially be something that i enter there with that thank you um then we have eviction diversion and right to counsel tenants rights Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you. We're keeping this item in committee as a means to continue to get updates as this program is really just kicking off, and we're hoping to get some substantive updates within a month or two. So you think you would have an update for committee within one to two months on this item? I believe so. Okay. Thank you. Item 8, review of innovative and sustainable portion of the Affordable Housing Fund. um that's something you mentioned earlier council member Sheehan um and did you think that as an annual thing or no I think this actually would require some like an ordinance change for that particular um ordinance or portion of the affordable housing ordinance so I think um some work needs to be done on that ordinance before it's presented to the committee but I'm committed to that okay do you have a time frame not at this moment okay I will check back on that item nine civigny source of income discrimination we're presenting on October 10th thank you for updating everyone and ten is councilmember Lynch thank you chair when I initially presented ten and eleven during the budget link process we said that we would do a fall as assess the programs and the funding streams in the fall of the year. So I'll meet with Commissioner Lanter and Director Sanders and have an update thereafter. For this calendar year? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And Council Member Gray, you have 12 through 15 minus one of those. Can you give a detailed update on when you plan on presenting those? Well, first of all, can I make a motion to just combine them all to code enforcement? Would that be better? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. So I so move. Thank you. So since this is dealing with a lot, I'm saying within the year, within, no, the whole, let's see, this time next year, perhaps by then there will be a presentation. okay do you think it could be like a little bit sooner like no close a whole year yeah i think it deserves as much attention as it takes i don't want to rush the process i want to do it right the first time okay we can touch base on that and then you also had i'll just go ahead since you're on the calendar um yes all of mine are on the calendar 13 14 and 15. the annual updates They're all on the calendar. Okay. They're to be presented. Yes. Okay. I see that. And then we have, we already did that one. Okay. On any of the annual updates, those have all been done this calendar year. So we'll look at them for next calendar year. And if anyone has any items to refer to committee, please think of those and do those because we still have space. And the Gun Violence Task Force started meeting. One of our subcommittees met last week and one is meeting this week. And then also today, I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. I will be putting into committee on behalf of the fire department. They're going to do a presentation that's going to help them get accredited. So during our council work session, I will make a motion to do that. We're adjourned. You missed it. you