Music Thank you. I'm sorry. . Welcome. It's three o'clock, so we're going to go ahead and I'll call to order the Urban County Council work session of February 13th, 2024. And we do have a quorum. I'd like to To start us out with a special reminder, I want us to pause briefly today to remember Lieutenant Brenda Cowan, a member of our Division of Fire and Emergency Services who lost her life in the line of duty on February 13th, 2004, 20 years ago. I knew Brenda. She was a wonderful role model, the first African-American woman in our fire department and the first in Kentucky. She was the first African-American woman to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant in our fire department. A lot of firsts for her. Brenda loved young people So it was appropriate that Fayette County Schools named a school after her Although the students who attend Brenda Cowan Elementary today weren't born When Brenda lost her life through her extraordinary career She continues to teach them and all of us about opportunity, service, and honor Brenda's life helps the young people understand that all things are possible. There are no barriers like race or sex that will keep them from living their dreams. Let's join together in a moment of silence to honor one of our own, Lieutenant Brenda Cowan. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I understand that Vice Mayor Wu has a motion. Thank you, Mayor. In consideration of folks' time and schedule, I move to move our presentation under continuing business, the Time Out for People Award, to the top of the agenda. So moved. Second. Council Member Ellinger seconds. Any questions? All right all those in favor please say aye. Is anyone opposed? All right that motion passes. Thank you Vice Mayor. We'll go ahead with our timeout for people award. This is always pretty fun because it's usually a surprise. So, you know that the Time Out for People Award is something awarded to one of our own employees and selected by us. So I would like to ask Director Charlie Martin and Tammy Elliott to join me at the podium. So today I'm very proud to present this year's time out for people award. Each year this award is presented to a city employee for extraordinary acts of community service outside of the office. And we had three nominees this year. I want you all to know that our employees make me very proud and I'm certain they make council members very proud also. Our employees are volunteer coaches, they're volunteer firefighters, they're mentors, cooks, their videographers, and much, much more. To her co-workers and fellow Lexington residents, our Time Out for People winner is known as a person who spends a lot of time and energy in our community, working to make others' lives better. Tammy Elliott is also an engineering technician senior at Water Quality. And Charlie tells me that you worked all night. She was on snow patrol last night. She volunteers for Lex Project Prom. The organization helps students who can't afford to attend their proms by providing free packages that include dresses, tuxedos, dinner accommodations, and beauty and grooming services. She also volunteers with 40 Shades of Brown with a Purpose, which provides access to mammograms, financial wealth care, mental health care, and pretty picnic breast cancer awareness. Thank you to Tom Hillbrand for nominating Tammy. Volunteering is a family affair in Tammy's family. Project Prom was started by Tammy's daughter, Asana McMullen, and Tammy's mother, whom you all know, Wanda Keene, Deputy Director of General Services, who's also an active volunteer. So, at this time, I'm very proud to present the Time Out for People Award to Tammy Elliott. Let's give her a round of applause. Congratulations. It makes being up all night worth it. Congratulations. Do you have a sign? No. So Tammy's going to stick right here for a minute. She doesn't really want to say anything, but this clock is a reminder of the many hours that Tammy has donated to our community. And Charlie does want to say a few words. Welcome Director Martin. I'll just add my congratulations and also you won't trust me now anytime I tell you anything anymore. I mean I was not the only ringleader in all of this. They all kind of helped me conspire with this to surprise me with this. The mayor mentioned Tom had nominated you. I didn't really realize that Tom knew you. And when I asked him about it, he said he didn't really know you very well. And I tell you, that speaks a lot, that when your volunteer work can impact people that really don't know you, it makes a difference in their life. To me, that's even more significant than anything else. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's get a photo. And so I want to invite your mama up as well and your girls. Do we want to have water quality folks up? I think we might have a few here. Do you want to make it just a big family? Yeah, Tom. Is Tom here? Where is he? There you are. Come on, let's all come get a picture. Thank you. Thank you. I'll tell her she can take the rest of the day off. I think you should. All right. The first item on our, the next item on our agenda is public comment and it appears that we have no one signed up for public comment. So we do have a docket for approval. If I could have a motion please. Second. Council Member Plowman and then Vice Mayor Wuch seconded. Are there any questions, additions, motions? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. I'll entertain a motion to approve the motions of Council Work Session of February 6, 2024. Thank you. Councilmember Gray, second by Councilmember Sevigny. Are there questions, additions, corrections? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. We have budget amendments. Could I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. Thank you. Vice Mayor moves. Councilmember Sheehan seconds. And if you have questions, please log in. Councilmember Fred Brown. thank you mayor uh commissioner of finance she's ready uh i guess uh clarification or statement uh i see a lot of cleanup is am i right as you're cleaning up for the last year we we are cleaning with the best of them right now. Okay. I'm interested in the second item on there, the 6 million, 6.7. Is that what we had talked about when we were talking about it in budget committee? So this is, you'll see that there's several of them on here that are for grant match roll. Uh-huh. When we close the year, we anticipate how many grants we have out there and how much match we're going to need. As we close grants, we may need less than what we actually anticipated needing if we don't spend all the money or if something changes. So then those grant match dollars become available for a new grant. And so this is just rolling forward. We assigned money to it in the fund balance conversation. This is just rolling that match forward into the new year to continue those grants. So when we're talking about general fund, it's actually one of the dedicated funds within the general fund the the bonding right yeah it has an assignment um for the grant match it's not a separate fund within the general fund but it those dollars are assigned to match items that we have um committed to as far as a grant second question is uh i'm looking at and that's a general fund the municipal aid program fund what's the detail on that is it's the same idea. So we plan for projects to occur in a certain timeline. If they take longer, we move that money that we dedicated for match forward to the new year, and that's all this is doing. You'll see several of those that are just like that. Was any of that municipal aid, is that paving that's going forward? This is not paving dollars. These would be for like engineering projects. Okay. Okay. And then the other question on the second page there, it has to do with the Phoenix Park, the $3 million that your grants and special programs, Journal 146014, it says Phoenix Park is being budgeted in the fiscal year 2024 bond fund. Right. Is that, that's coming before us. What's the number? So if you. What's the dollar amount on that that you're projecting for the next budget, right? Well, so. I'm sorry. That's okay. back up one more we're going to be working on the 25 we are and this is still 24 then correct okay 146014 goes with the one that's two above it 146016-17 yes we just flipped the project okay and so phoenix is all in the bond and douglas is all in arpa and so that's just the flip flop of of the money and where the funding is coming from. Good explanation. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Are there any other questions about budget amendments? All right. All those in favor of approval say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Next up, council, for your information only, you have budget adjustments. Are there any questions? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve new business, please. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds, Council Member Gray seconds. And if you have questions about new business, please log in. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I have a few. Chief Colvin, I have a question about item A. and then on deck if chief wells would like to come up to um chief colvin i'm just curious um i know this is an item where we there will be revenue that will come from this service and i'm just curious if the division receives the revenue or or what that looks like and The revenue goes into the general fund. Goes into the general fund. Okay. And our inmates must use this service to communicate with friends and family, correct? Correct. Okay. And do we foresee going back to in-person visitation at any point in time? It's a hybrid, Council Member. is the best way to answer that. The industry standard for in-may visitation in all your large metropolitan jails is video visitation. Metro Louisville has been video visitation for 20 years. When I was in New Orleans with the sheriff's office, video visitation. New Mexico, the same. What video visitation gives us, it gives us a lot of advantages as opposed to in-person visits. In-person visits, they still happen. There's a property that needs to be picked up. They go down and see their loved one in the window. Documents on things like that, clergy attorneys, they go down there. But we really think that we can best service the inmate population and also preserve our staffing level. In-service or in-person visits require a supervisor and at least three officers to manage. You can see as many as 400 people in that lobby. And we think that our new approach accomplishes the same thing in many positive ways that weren't possible under the old system. Free video visitation at the facility. All of our detainees receive a free tablet, free text messaging, free visits online. or if you are challenged by computers like me, you can come to the detention center and we have a number of visitation kiosks set up that you can video visit for free there at the detention center and the staff can help you if you need help with it. So we understand, we absolutely understand how important and vital the need to do all that we can for our detainees, keep them connected to their loved ones, to their extended family, to their friends, and to their neighborhoods. And we think that what we've been researching for the past months and have come up with smart communications, a partnership with them, again, free text messaging, which we didn't have before. We have, like I said, the tablets and tablets serve many other purposes. You know, they have all kinds of other programs. And we kept the impact on the inmates' families. We kept that in mind when we were looking for our new provider. And we've cut the cost in half for phone calls. And we've cut the cost by three times for video visitation. visitation. Okay, I think that's the issue. I've got one more question and one minute to do it. Thank you so much. I appreciate the clarification. Chief Wells, I'm just curious about item J. Could you tell us a little bit more about the Wildland Task Force? Sure. Thank you for the question. The Wildland Task Force was initiated in 2017 in response to a number of issues that we had where woods and fields were abutting up against houses, and we didn't have a great way to respond to that. So we have currently 48 members now who are trained, up to speed, and capable, and we just need to equip those people, and so that's why we had requested this grant application. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question regarding item D, as in deal, if Commissioner George or C.L. Hamilton would be able to answer this question, please. I think Director George just got promoted. Oh. I can do that, right? I know. She's just pulling up here. I didn't hear you, so sorry. My question is, I was reading the information that you all provided that there's a, since there's a transition from the two exempt employees going to non-exempt, there is an opportunity for overtime. I just wondered if that overtime, you'll have an idea what that's going to look like and if that's going to be within budget for us, personnel. Well, it involves two employees, and one of those employees has racked up 108 hours of comp time since June of this year. It's really a product of our shortage of staff when it comes to the treatment plants. And so basically those positions have become working supervisors. What's the impact to the budget? I think it's going to be a lot of function of how well staffed we are. At West Hickman, we only have six employees right now that are operators. And so that really limits you on vacations and holidays. Right now this person is averaging about 20 hours of pay period in overtime. Wow. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Chief Wells? Got a question. I think you're probably involved in H, I, and J, and I think Council Member Baxter asked you about J. I'm looking at this, and I've got the direction there. A million dollars to host a paramedic training course. Have we done this before? Is this something new? So thank you again for the question. And I probably ought to preface this real quick by saying in the fire department world, there's two main grants that we look at. AFG is mainly stuff and SAFER is mainly people. So with AFG, we looked at what was a high priority for that grant. and we delineated three things that we thought fit neatly into those categories that we needed. And yes, to answer your question, we have done that. In fact, this year, a million dollars is approximately what it costs to put 30 students, give or take, through paramedic class. And so we were awarded that this year, and we are applying for it again. How much of that is personnel? A good portion of it is there over time. I would say probably 75% is there over time and then a lot for books and programs. And have you had this grant before or is this something new? We have won the AFG a few times, but recently we've been very aggressive about going after it. And you're applying your application. You've got actually three grants that you're applying for. Will it hinder you in any manner? It doesn't, actually. you're allowed to apply for up to two million dollars worth of projects okay and we tried to make the projects that we applied for the hot their high priorities that's uh that's a pretty good match ten percent we usually it's it's higher than that so that would have to come out of the fund balance i guess as a additional monies unless that's in your budget um commissioner Hensley probably is more. We'll budget for it. We'll budget for it. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you, T. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. I want to first make a note that I need to recuse on item B due to my affiliation with University of Kentucky. And then I don't have a question about this item, but I just want to highlight item F, which is a project to install roof mounted solar on the parks maintenance building at Masterson Station. So I want to thank everyone for their work on this project. I see Mr. Bush back in the corner there, and he will be presenting the annual Energy Improvement Fund update to our Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee in March. And often that update includes projects like this. So thank you for your work, and I look forward to that update coming up. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple of questions about Item C. that's with kytc um about oliver lewis way for street fest thank you director carrie i've gone to this event for a couple of years and i just wanted to ask a little bit about your all's outreach plan i know sometimes we can have some challenges with attendance at big programs like this and so i just want to make sure that as many people know about this as possible and i know Council member Reynolds is in her district and we're both involved with the land trust. We want everybody to be engaged and into it So can you tell me about outreach and how we can help? We will certainly provide you all with information to put in your social media posts and in your newsletters As we lead up to that event and then we will be putting it out on our own social media channels and You know Doing doing the things we usually do to announce big events like this Just for maybe people who haven't gone before, would you mind sharing a little bit more about what Street Fest is and what's involved? It's a way to celebrate alternative modes of transportation. So instead of buses and cars and trucks and things like that, it's encouraging people to walk or bike or scoot. And it's just a big open celebration that promotes that type of movement on that day. And it is in conjunction with the MPO and other folks we collaborate with within the division of planning. Great. Thank you. It's a really fun event. I would say if you can come out, come out. They always have giveaways, bells, lights, t-shirts, all types of things that can help people feel more safe and have more fun when they're out and about rolling around. So thank you, Director Carey. Mayor, those are my only questions for now. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Gray. Thank you mayor and I would like to add that street I went to the street fest last year my niece and I we had a blast so but I have a question regarding letters H I and J So Chief Jason Wells-Flees. Welcome back. Hey, hey. Sir, so my question is regarding the match amounts. Are those funds just because let's just say you're going to get these grants, right? Sure. Do we have the match funds budgeted? Sure. So we will budget those in our upcoming budget. Related to the paramedic class, that's a $100,000 match, which is significant, but that class has to happen. So essentially that would be personnel funds. The physicals and the PPE would probably come out of those, what we would normally spend there. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you. And also wonderful awards ceremony. on Saturday. Thank you very much. Thank you Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you Mayor. I just want to follow up with Director Carey on the Street Fest. I try to go every year and it's always a fun event. We are having a couple challenges here because it is Mother's Day that day and it also is Mayfest at Gratz Park. So we've got a couple big events that are going to be, how do we come up with this date? And I know there's May is cycling or what do we categorize it as? I don't know the name of the month, but it does promote alternative modes of transportation. I don't know if it's strictly just biking or if it's just anything non-motor. I'm sure we are stuck on that date, but those are two big events that we're going to be going up against that I hope the mothers will want to come out and bring their families along with them. But then we also have Mayfest too, that's a big event. If we can maybe tie those in, come to one and come down your downtown. Right. And let's work to that. Do we contact the bike shops, the rent shops? Oh, yes. And make sure that they all are very aware to? Yes, and we usually contract with them to be there on site to help with any immediate repairs that can be done on bikes. And that's one of the things that we promote. So if you have a bicycle but it's not in working order, just bring it on down and they'll get in pop shape for you so that you can participate and this is a rain or shine event yes okay thank you thanks i'll do my best to get the word out thank you it's a good thing we have so many things going on here yeah that concludes uh questions so all those in favor of approving new business please say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes and that brings us to continuing business and first up is council member warley with general government planning thank you mayor this is the summary of the january 16th 2024 general government and planning committee the october 17th 2023 summary was approved without since next we had an update from from an annual update from Global Lex, Ms. Isabel Taylor, LFUCG's multicultural affairs and Title VI coordinator gave the Global Lex 2023 annual update. She gave us an overview of Global Lex history and provided updated estimates on Lexington's current limited English proficiency population. Global Lex 2023's outreach efforts include education for healthcare and other public safety priorities. action was needed or taken on that item then we went through our annual item update to clear up committee matters there were nine items removed from committee as that work had been completed or those reviews were no longer deemed necessary those were council-sponsored rezoning review civic lex public comment proposal which was incorporated into our change to our rules and they're still being considered by the public comment subcommittee. The removal of the intense ZODA, capital improvement and maintenance plan for facilities and fleets, accessory dwelling units update, the Crown Act, neighborhood access and traffic calming measures, and council rules and one stop Lexington. The meeting adjourned at 1 56 PM. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Does anyone have questions for Council Member Worley? All right, thank you very much. At this time, I'll welcome our county clerk, Susan Lamb, who has the Digital Access Project presentation. Welcome. It's always exciting when I get to return to this chamber. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share the Digital Access Project with you all. Thank you, Councilmember Baxter, for inviting us. I'm proud to introduce you to the team members that I have with me today. Of course, many of you remember Meredith Watson, who is our land records manager. Also, we have Shea Brown, who is our special projects deputy clerk in our land records department and the co-director of this project. And we also have Dr. Vanessa Holden, who is the director of UK African American and Africana Studies and the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative, as well as she is also a co-director of the Digital Access Project. Now today we also have with us two students who I want to make sure we properly recognize, Mr. James Lynn and also Tantalicia Champs. They're both UK students and they are DAPT digitization specialists. I didn't practice that. I'm not going to be presenting today because this is the crew that knows what they're talking about. I'm proud to be supportive of them. I will turn over the presentation to Mr. Brown and Dr. Holden. Thank you all. Thank you. Welcome. Great to see you all. Thank you. Mayor and Council, certainly not enough time for the wealth of information we'd like to share with you today, because many of y'all know it's dangerous to get me behind a mic, but I'll try to summarize it up in the time allowed. Again, my name is Shea Brown, and I'm here with my colleague Vanessa Holden to talk with you about a game changer. A newly introduced project that changes an existing situation to make a positive impact and difference in society. There have already been game breaking game changers throughout the course of history. Let me remind you we went from the 1876 liquid transmitter phone to the roller dial phone to the push touch button phone to car phones to mobile phones to cell phones to flip phones, and now we have iPhones, game changers. We went from horse and buggy rides to the steam power engines to the Model T Ford to gas power engines to SUV to solar cars to battery-operated cars to electric automobiles, and now we have AI-controlled vehicles. I'm talking about game changers. So thanks to the partnership between the Fayette County Clerk's Office, the University of Kentucky Commonwealth Institute of Black Studies, the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative, Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative, Lexpart, funding from the Bluegrass Community Foundation, and the Knight Donor Foundation Charitable Fund, Dr. Holt and I would like to introduce you today to another groundbreaking game changer called the Digital Access Project, short for DAB, a project at which we both are co-directors. This project is designed to digitize and make publicly available and accessible all of Fayette County's property records from the late 1700s to 1865 and Ford online for free. Notice we're digitizing all the records, but many of these records contain names of those who are enslaved persons who were classified as personal property and therefore they were either sold, purchased, transferred, conveyed, auctioned off, emancipated, listed as fugitives in county court orders, used as collateral to secure a debt, and even bestowed to another person as a gift and a probate estate. From when this project kicked off in May 2022 through December 2023, our DAP team, a digitization specialist and quality control members have digitized over 91,000 pages and 176 books that look like this, about 10 pounds, some go up to 24 pounds, and the difficulty of digitizing these books can be challenging. But yet we've done the best we can to make the best possible images available on a book I-4 scanner, deeds, wills, brunt records, court orders, Fayette surveys with Daniel Boone and a Declaration of Marriage book and their indices all have been digitized and put on the Fayette County Clerk's online portal for free. As we move forward with the digital access project, we want to remind people that we're moving into a groundbreaking project because the only way you can access these records you have to physically come into county clerk's office, dig through the indexes, lift up these heavy books and make copies. But now it's game changer because we're now offering these records online digitally to where you can utilize these records in home, in your PJs, in your bedroom, in your kitchen table, wherever you may be across the global world. Dr. Holden. I'll bring it back into this chamber for this next part. If we could move forward in the slides to give you a sense of really the breadth of what we've been able to accomplish. As Shay just said, we're now at over 91,000 pages of historical records. We're not just a game changer, it's unique. If you could move forward again. We are using a book eye scanner, and you can see a couple of our digitization specialists down in the clerk's office at work. We are a project of endless possibilities with records that can be used in a number of ways. Yes, central Kentucky history is encapsulated in these documents. We're one of Kentucky's original three counties, so we also hold records for other counties that broke off from us at a certain point. You can do things like chain of title search, you can research enslaved people's lives, genealogy, learning about the geography and the preservation of historical buildings, legal concepts education, colonial style handwriting training. All of these things are possible because we're doing everything. And so while we, of course, came together because we cared very much about the history of slavery and enslavement in this county, it's all there. all in every page of these documents. If you could move forward two slides, we have a quick example of what these records look like. Shea went ahead and pulled an example of a document. So that's why we count by pages, because some of these documents take up a piece of a page, some take up an entire page, some run on to multiple pages. And this is just a sample document. The transcription is right next to it. It talks, the document is about establishing ownership of individuals whose names I'll read aloud now. Caesar, William, Hauer, and Samson. These documents provide historians like myself, students, descendants of individuals who were enslaved here in Fayette County with information that isn't found in other kinds of government records. In censuses, in farm and plantation ledgers, often enslaved people are simply a dash or a number. But in these documents, we get names. We get locations, like we can tell from this document that these men were brought from South Carolina into Kentucky. We get enslavers full names so that they can be tracked down more fully in the records. Often when it comes to enslaved people, we get the beginning of a story, maybe the end of a story. But these documents provide us with a whole lot that's in the middle. Next slide, please. We're a groundbreaking project, but we've got our challenges. We've put together a really excellent team of true partnership. As you heard in that list of partners that Shea listed off, we've got everybody from Lex Park to the University of Kentucky who are invested in this project and supporting us. But the sheer magnitude of pages, the heft of these books, working with digital technology, was a significant challenge to begin with. Making sure that we get quality scans, that those scans are in order, that we can provide an accurate online index, are the sort of dust eater, historian, archivist tasks that take serious commitment from our team. The time period of our records mean that we encompass a number of counties in the records that we're looking at. Sometimes we find sensitive information, information that can be difficult to read and face. Digitization challenges don't just end with taking a quick snapshot. We've got to make sure that we can get into the gutter of these books, make sure that we preserve everything on a single page. Right now, we've formed really significant partnerships. We've built a really wonderful team that includes both community members, UK students at various levels, faculty at UK, folks in the clerk's office, and significant investment from local partners like Lex Park, like the Bluegrass Community Foundation. Our next steps are to grow, to move forward in time past 1865 into the era of emancipation and beyond. The clerk's office has been diligently digitizing our records, moving backwards in time, as makes the most sense for their mandate and the way that these records are most commonly used by local professionals. We are able to help them speed up the process of moving forward in time, and we hope to meet up with them sometime in the early 20th century. And somehow, thanks to the workings of the clerk's office and the geniuses that work on these records, they are going to match up. We're going to match up in the middle. Our next steps are to build out a digitization portal that is accessible beyond the clerk's office, That allows folks who don't have literacy moving into these documents to learn how to use them, learn what they can discover, and have ready help. We also want to do transcriptions. I'm sure that transcription that we just gave you was helpful in understanding what that document said. That will move us leaps and bounds forwards in accessibility for all. It will be readable by screen readers, searchable by different search tools, and much more clear and easy to understand. We're also working with county clerks, both in counties that have split off from Fayette over our history and others in Kentucky to see how Fayette can lead the way in them doing their own digitization efforts. In Fayette County. That's right. And we're going to continue our fundraising efforts, both through the Bluegrass Community Foundation, through larger granting agencies on the academic side. And we're hoping today here with you all to inspire you to continue to support us and what we're doing. Next slide, please. We've been recognized in our community, the piece that we're most proud of. Other accolades are great, but knowing that you're impacting lives right here in Kentucky is important. Our team of digitization specialists are not just undergraduate students or graduate students. We also have a group of community members, most of whom are retirees, and the secret here is they can read cursive. And so between our group of up and coming scholars and our group of local folks who are spending their time working with our project, we're able to get quite a bit of work done in these difficult to read documents. Next slide, please. In closing, I want to say that yes, we are a game changer for researchers, for genealogists, but also for our community to learn more about itself more broadly. Yes, I'm interested as a scholar in the history of slavery in Central Kentucky, but these records include all sorts of things, not just the story of enslavement, but the story of black freedom, of business owners, of emancipation, of the ways that our community was built up all those years ago. And I hope that as all of you think about this presentation and look at the documents that we're working with, you're also inspired by the way that we've been able to bring together truly a diverse range of folks from all sorts of parts of our community to make all of this history more available. Where we at now, we passed the mark of 1865, but we're now digitizing the areas of early black hamlets. We're in the Jim Crow period. We're starting to deal with the records that these books cannot come apart, that old cursive colonial style county clerk script handwriting, where we're dealing with racial covenant restrictions. As we continue to move forward, we encourage your support. We encourage you to continue to know the significance of this. Through digitizing these records, we're now able to discover and narrate truths and stories about names of ancestors. We are memorizing and commemorating these names. If you need anything, you're more than welcome to contact me at the county clerk's office. Reach me at my email at the county clerk's office, and we thank you for allowing us to have this time. And once again, spread the word. DAP is game changer. It's groundbreaking. Way to go, Fayette County. Yes. Thank you all so very much. This is wonderful. Questions? Comments? You know, we can tell we have a preacher amongst us. Where? Who's keeping it going. The professor and the preacher. Are there any questions for either Shea or Vanessa? Yes. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I would like to say thank you for being so diligent about this important work. Generations to come will be thankful for the work that you do now. So thank you, and thank you for spearheading this. But I just want to also say, can you tell that Reverend Brown lives in the 6th District? I can't. So yes, that's all. We didn't know that. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for that presentation. My grandmother died at 102. Her name was changed by her slave owners. And so I'm pretty sure that somewhere in those books you are running up against that original names. We have such an abundance of historians that could come along with you all to share stories about enslavement. The house that I grew up in for 48 years, slaves went through that over on Short Street off of Georgetown. And my mother was able to purchase it for $3,000 working for, She was an enslaved homemaker. So I hope that you use that. And I know people laughed about a manuscript. Too bad that Fayette County Schools does not teach that now. That is so sad. We teach it in our home, thanks to Dr. Everett. He is in District 6 at Bryan Station, teaching students how to write in manuscript. So that's the sad part of this, but I am so happy that you are tracing. And we're coming up on 250 year celebration, and this is going to be really important as we celebrate and remember and stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. So thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. As a member of the 250 Lex Commission, we've talked a lot about celebrating Lexington, but there's also been a lot of talk about commemorating, remembering, and acknowledging a lot of the not-so-pretty, not-so-great, shameful pieces of our history. And I think this work is so, so important that you all are doing to kind of bring light to some very dark and hidden spots of our history. So very much appreciate your work and thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Doctor, and thank you, Reverend, for your work on this. You know, I think the information that y'all are providing and making accessible to people will help a lot of people when they research their genie. I remember a couple of years ago my dad was the head of the state African American Genealogy Society. And I remember him telling me that a lot of folks could only go back so far. And then they had to go to barns and get the books where they kept the records for livestock to find the information about their family. So I think that's still going to be the case, but I think this is another resource that's going to make it better and palatable for people to research their ancestry. And then I'd just also like to thank County Clerk Lamb for continuing this work. I know it started with your predecessor, but you supporting this effort along with the university to make sure that it continues is something special. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Plumman? Thank you, Mayor. And this is such a cool project. I think you know that we were doing, my office along with others, the sense of place, because we've worked together. The 27th of this month, we were trying to convene all the hamlets at one location, representatives. And we'll be talking to you more about some stories, Helen, because that's so important to this history of the hamlets. You mentioned something about the hamlets. Could you repeat what you said? In order to determine a hamlet, you've got to determine the location of ownership. And after 1865, we see a lot of communities developing when African Americans were starting purchasing property, and they would file those records in the deed records. So to look for them, you go in our indexes, you find those ownerships, and you start to see communities being developed. So a lot of times when people study hamlets, they start at the county clerk's office to look for ownership. Well, Ms. Giles sits on our steering committee. Of course, she's got the deeds of a lot of these hamlets. Ms. Jowes is a county clerk of her own. Yeah, she's been great, but we're so excited about our project, but also what you all are doing, that's great. I'm going to call you, we'll figure out some more things we can do together, but I just wanted to congratulate you and thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Worley. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for this great work that you're doing. I appreciate it in several different ways. One, I have a history degree from University of Kentucky, so just anything that gives us more information and gives us more stories to tell and to learn from are so impressive. But then most probably don't know, while they know I'm an attorney, my first legal job was as a title examiner in the Fayette County Clerk's Office. And while I've not gone that far back in the books, the turn of the 20th century I have. And I've hoisted many of those books up on the chest high tables and gone through the dusty pages. And one thing that I always found interesting, while you would, as you were learning a property record for the sheer reason of knowing that it had clear title, you would learn a story of that piece of property and of that family and the families. And then particularly, and I think as you all well know and as you see in your project, When you found communities that didn't either, didn't bank the same as others, didn't trust the banks, didn't trust the government the same as others. There were a lot of inter family and neighbor transactions that maybe weren't recorded. And then it became a study of okay, then can I find a will or a marriage record or something that they would tell me, well, how did that individual end up with that piece of property? you come to find out that there was a relationship to the last time you saw a deed, maybe 40, 50 years before. So I think what you're doing is a great service for many purposes. One, from a very practical title search part, but all of those gaps had stories in them about those families. And so being able to try to tell those stories, I think, is incredibly impressive. So thank you for your work, and the Fayette County Clerk is already one of the most accessible document clerk's offices in the Commonwealth, and this is going to make it even better. So thank you very much. Great. Thank you. Thank you all so very much for your dedication and to the whole team to this project. It is groundbreaking, and we always want Fayette County to be at the top, right? We do. Well, we're at the forefront now, so keep it going. Keep it going. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. I will just add that we are actually going to be doing, we are going to get a purchase, another book eye scanner, and we, instead of asking for two sets, two tranches of money in this next budget, we are actually going to purchase that with our money. So just so you know, we are a part of the team when we come forward with this and to move forward to keep making really great strides. So I appreciate each and every one of you all. Thank you. Thank you. Next up are council reports. Any council reports? Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a few things I would like to lift up today. First being a Valentine's Day party going on in my district and Council Member Fogel's district. So I want to invite all of our neighbors in the first district and the second district to come out to the Valentine's Day party hosted by the Georgetown Street Area Neighborhood Association. Please keep in mind that you must be 50 years old and up. They will be checking IDs, so nobody under 50 is slipping in because they will check your ID. But this is a free party open to the community and the neighbors, so please do come out and have a good time. I volunteered at the party last year, and it was a great crowd, and I was going to be a great crowd again this year. So please come out to that event. All right. Thank you. Next, our local Cooperative Extension Service is having an event today at Daddy and Me Valentine's Day event. And I talked with one of the representatives there, and they have opportunities for fathers to not only have fun interactions with their daughters, but to teach fathers how to do their daughter's hair, how to dress their daughters appropriately. It's just a really cool event for fathers and daughters to interact today. So it's this evening at 6.30 p.m. at the Cooperative Extension Office. So please go out with all fathers and daughters. Go out, or father figures and daughters. Please go out and attend this really cool community event. My next thing I want to lift up, I had the opportunity to attend a Soldier's Play. It was a production by Message Theater. And it was a wonderful black history event that occurred in our community this past weekend. The actors were extremely outstanding. And I would like to acknowledge our own Jay Alexander, who was cast in the play and played a very pivotal character in the play. He was excellent, truly excellent. All the cast, the crew, the team of the Lyric did a phenomenal job in putting on this production. And the Message Theater is a true gem in our community, and we should continue to support this theater that's putting on phenomenal productions for our benefit. And then I think lastly, I have one more. this past weekend, it was a little bit busy, I had the opportunity to be the fitness instructor for a local community-wide fitness event sponsored by the Lexington Urban League Young Professionals. It was a heart-healthy event. We did a lot of cardio. We did a lot of strength. We did a lot of core and had a really good time doing it. It was attended by individuals of all ages, adults and children alike, and we had a really, really good time, so I appreciate the partnership with the and Urban League Young Professionals. And to that note, my heart healthy tip for today, for my personal training side, is to always introduce resistance training into your workouts. Building lean muscle mass is very, very good for your body. It lends to having a healthier body. And so never be ashamed to introduce some resistance, and that could be a resistance band as is being demonstrated here. It could be a weight. It could be a kettlebell. It could be even the TRX suspension ropes. So please, as you continue to exercise, hopefully, during this heart-healthy month, that you will introduce some resistance in your physical fitness. And as always, please consult your physician or doctor before you try any new health or fitness routine. And I just want to give one last big thank you to Chief Wells and the public safety community and family for coming out. I think it was a phenomenal event this morning in acknowledging Lieutenant Brenda Cowan, who was a huge force for change in our community. And I appreciate you all's intentionality in that recognition. And so to our whole public safety family, thank you for that. And thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. This weekend, some colleagues and I got to attend the fire department banquet, speaking of fire department, where we premiered a video that I'm going to title, Don't Quit Your Day Job. So, Chief Wells and I have a great idea. What if we switch jobs for a day? I mean, what could possibly go wrong? All right, I'm going to call this meeting to start. All right, clerk, I need a third reading of the New Year's resolution, please. I move to amend the Constitution. I second that in motion. Your Honor, I object. Sorry. Go ahead and carry that. I second that in motion. Your Honor, I object. Oh, a point of contact. All right, everybody. Hey, clerk. Clerk, I need a third reading of the New Year's resolution. I second that emotion. Oh, poor Dickie. What do we do? Somebody call 911. Poor Dickie. Sounds like someone's choking in there. Let's bust this baby down. Let's see. Let's see. Yeah, right there. Yeah, that's it. All right. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sub, sub. Remember, we try before we pry. Yes. All right. There you go. Everybody relax. The professionals are here. Where's the emergency? On it! Got this. Subs these days. Oh, good. Quick, someone turn on staying alive! No, no, no, poker face. Don't go into the light. Stay with me! Thank you. I think that's a lifesaver award. Well, I guess our work here is done. I gotta go pick my kids up from school. Can I drive the engine? Um, meeting adjudicated. Adjourned. Whatever. Good job today, but I think maybe it would be best if we stick to what we do best. Yeah. So thank you to our terrific fire department for being game, to Councilmember Baxter and to Haley and the LexTV team for shooting that in three hours. So that was a great time and I think just a great way to sort of connect and highlight the fact that we should all do what we're good at. Right, Chief Wells? Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Vice, excuse me, Councilmember Plumman. Well, that's a tough act to follow. You guys are so talented, Councilmember Baxter and Vice Mayor. That's great. And I'm really excited that I get to go to this Valentine's party that's coming up. Yeah. And I probably won't have to show my ID. So this is a little mild on what I was going to mention, but there's a workforce training program for aviation career prep. And this is at helping high school students and young adults to establish a career in the aviation industry. Which I would think would be a really cool thing to do. This training's going to happen next Tuesday, February the 20th, at the Aviation Museum out at the airport. And it's from 830 to 130. It is free, but you do need to RSVP. But when I heard that, I'm like, no, I wish my sons were in his 30s because I'd like to send them to that. So thank you, Mayor. That's it. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Vice Mayor Wu, for your very creative videos. I wish I could come up with such creative content. So I really appreciate them. And I had some technical difficulties. I was going to show some photos from the fire banquet this past weekend. But if you all are on social media, you've probably seen all of them by now. But I just wanted to thank the fire department. We have an amazing fire department, one of the top in the country. And there were some very moving stories shared. And congrats to all of the people who retired and who got promoted. It was a really wonderful time that I look forward to every year supporting and celebrating our fire department. Then I also wanted to mention on Monday the 19th, which is President's Day, there is going to be a President's Day family event at the Mary Todd Lincoln House. And that is www.mtlhouse.org. It will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The cost is free for kids through 17 years old and $15 for adults. And it's going to have all types of activities and games. So feel free to check that out. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Mayor. Hey, First District, got some good news and some bad news. Let's do the bad news first. We have been informed that it's going to take 40 more weeks until we can get some safety measures up at our schools. So traffic engineering is working as hard as they can. Please look both ways. Be careful before you cross Limestone and out in Winburn going to Winburn Middle School and the other schools. Commissioner Albright is working really fast trying to get those traffic measures up. The good news is, hey, we got that money for that swimming pool up in that Douglas Park. You will see some movement and I know everybody is holding their breath, waiting to see the ground break or whatever it is. But we have the contractors and they will be on their way to Douglas Park. That is the good news. Now, today, I don't have the photos yet, but it was amazing. LTMS located right down on 4th and Limestone and Bryan Station High School. And folks who do not have the right to vote. We all centered at the Capitol today. 300 folks came out from Lexington and Louisville. The majority from Lexington we represented down at the state capitol. The governor did come out, and it was also the Kappa's Day. So we were able to take photos with the senators, and people spoke to our young people and encouraged them to stay in school and just to go forward and prosper, I guess is what I can say. I am so excited about the first district and the things that are happening. Please be patient with me. I know I tell you we're going to move it and we're going to shake it and things are going to happen, but I have found that in government it is hurry up and wait. But it's coming. Just hold tight. And the last announcement that I would like to make is that, yes, we're still in black history. and we have a historian that he doesn't like to be recognized. So his name is Richard Green. And for those people who are in this room that knows that name, he has been so instrumental in our community. He was my principal. Yes, I went to Lexington, Jr. And so just want to give a shout out to him to let him know that we love him. The mayor just recognized and remembers you at LTMS. So council members, I just wanted to lift him up and just keep him in your prayers as we all continue to age and just get beautiful. Don't forget on Thursday nights, blues and jazz at the Lyric, the historic Lyric downtown. So that's my announcements for the first district, thank you. Thank you. All right, that brings us to the mayor's report. Could I have... Thank you, Vice Mayor. Second. Second. Council Member Sheehan. Are there any questions? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that passes. We also have our price contract bids. Could I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you. Council Member Gray, Council Member Pullman seconds. Are there any questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. There is no one to speak for issues not on the agenda, and that brings us to a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Council Member Fogle, Council Member Gray, all those in favor say aye. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.