Thank you. Thank you. Hello, testing. Yeah, I've done this Mike's okay Good afternoon, everybody. Sorry, we're having some issues with our mics, but we're getting it worked out. I hope everyone is doing okay on this Tuesday afternoon. I will now call to order the March 5th, 2024 meeting of the Social Services and Public Safety Committee. Thank you all for being here. The first item that we have is the approval of our agenda from the January 23, 2024 committee. Second. Okay, there was a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion or any changes needed? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? that motion passes. Next we have our community paramedicine program annual updates and I am so excited to have the paramedicine program here today. We have Chief Wells and Captain Seth Lockhart who are part of the Division of Fire and Emergency Services and we have some members of our paramedicine team and And they are going to give our annual update that I had in committee for the paramedicine program. So welcome. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much. We want to thank everybody for the opportunity to come and give this update. Real quickly, I want to introduce the team here. Of course, you have Captain Seth Lockard, who you'll be hearing from. But behind us, we have Detective Ben Taylor. We have Ms. Casey Doyle, who is our partner from Voices of Hope. and we have of course Maria Sloan who is our wonderful social worker the rest of the team is out continuing their education but I'm going to pass this over to Captain Lockard and then we'll be available for questions good afternoon thank you all for having us we do appreciate the opportunity to come talk about the great work I get to talk about the great work that the team is doing so without further ado this is a common slide this is actually what we used the last time so I'm not going to spend too much time it kind of gives a brief history of how we got started in 2017 and some of the key points that we've kind of ventured through and some of those funding sources since 2017. But since that time we've actually this is kind of the additional information in 2021 for FY22 we were awarded the first year of our Kentucky Opal Response Effort Grant and that actually pays for one of our firefighter paramedics assigned to the the team. It's $150,000 a year and since this time we've actually been able to get it in FY23, FY24. Today's blue sheet you'll see in the work session the start of FY25 we've been awarded it already for the next fiscal year as well. A little bit different for this coming year but you'll see that on the blue sheet for the next work session. And then the fall of 2023 we were also awarded a $1.3 million grant through the Bureau of Justice assistance the COSUP grant which is a comprehensive opioid stimulant substance use program and and that's a 1.3 million dollar grant for three years it's going to be an expansion of staff we're currently actually interviewing for two more social workers and our peer support specialists would be our first direct hire of a peer support specialist you did Casey is from Voices of Hope it's a great partnership there as well to provide a peer support so we look forward to hiring our own and being able to provide that service it's one of the things that we've identified as a gap when working with our individuals in the community so some outside funding sources to highlight how we've been paying for this not only are we supported right now through the general fund but we've also gotten a number of grants the we started off with the assistance of firefighters grant which started the whole program in 2017 that was $272,000 grant. 2019, we were able to get the money to support the program from the hospitals, UK, St. Joe, and Baptist Health. And then in FY22, we started getting the core contract. And then finally, the three BJA grants we've gotten, we got the 2018 Co-App grant. That was $500,000 for two years. In 2020, during the middle of COVID, we were actually able to get a Co-SAP grant, same program just a different name the difference between co-app and co-sap was they added the word stimulants to it co-app was only opioid primarily focusing on opioids and then when we started the program we started realizing that stimulants were still prevalent to the community and the feds were quick to point picked up on that as well so they expanded the program and then 23 when the program was redone they just added the word substance use so now we are serving anybody whether it's an opiate involved some seemingly involved if there's somebody suffering from alcoholism we're willing to work with and help anybody that we can so it's the great thing about it and we also worked with the med aware for the last couple years med aware was working with a private insurance company working in the medicaid space and and we saw some really cool stuff out of that the things that we saw was a really good statistics was a a 30 percent increase and primary care visits, which is what kind of the purpose of what we want to work on is get people engaged with their primary care or their specialists as opposed to going to an emergency room. We saw a 40% reduction in EMS utilization. There was a 32% reduction in ER utilization, so it was a really good program. It was getting people, you know, the clients, the individuals, the patients engaged with the right healthcare systems. This insurance company saw a five to one return on investment, so it was definitely a worthwhile venture. It ended, unfortunately, December 31st. As it was being paid for by the national insurance head, you know, the umbrella, they were expecting the states to pick up the pieces and hopefully in the coming year or two we'll start having conversations with the state to be able to start doing this a little bit more and billing for that service again like we were doing with the MetAware program. to talk about a little bit how we do our referrals. Again, we actually have, I know some of you all are new since the last time we were here, we have an internal intranet, that form, we have a form that our crews can fill out. They fill us out with the information. It actually dumps into our email, which is phenomenal. But our crews also email us both from the police side and the fire side. It allows us to really get good information. I don't believe we recognized when when we started the program, the benefit of that. I think when we started looking at the program, looking at our high utilizers, really basing it all on data, but then opening up the door to the referrals, the benefit to our personnel, they don't have to carry the burden of a weird situation that they couldn't find a solution to with them, so they can pass it along to us, and we get to go out and engage the individual and try to find out what the solution is, provide the resources. So it takes a lot of that burden off of the personnel, the frontline personnel that are making these calls. Our detective also goes through, scours all the crisis intervention reports. And we also work with our community members, social service agencies. In fact, we are quite involved with the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. Jeff Herron actually hosts a meeting in our office every other Tuesday in this space. So we're very involved with that. And we work with all three hospital systems in Lexington very intimately, very closely, as we try to navigate the best solution or best resources to the individual. But we haven't stopped away from the data analysis. We actually still look at our ESO. ESO is our patient care reporting software. All the ambulance runs are done in ESO. So we're looking at that on a daily basis, making sure it's a great storytelling device. So if we're looking at somebody's history, we can see, has there been an increase? We use it to flag us if there's an increase in an individual. So it's a really good tool that we have to be able to function with. One of the reasons I like this so much is this work. It's locally defined. We are, there are 10 pilot programs. We're operating under a pilot program within the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services. There are 10 programs functioning in the state of Kentucky right now. And every single one of them is different. everybody has looked at their own community needs and based their programs on what they need in their community what they feel that they can make the biggest impact so that makes our program very unique we are we're not a one-size-fits-all we we are very individual centered focused on the individual that we're serving what does it look like for them what services do they need it's not a this is a what we have to offer It's what do you need and let's figure out how we can navigate it. We're very flexible. I say that because we're not, we just figure out what's needed in the community and kind of shape our conversation and how we respond to that and responsive to our community needs. Some data from 2023, we followed up with 735 unique individuals. of those unique individuals that included 321 individuals that had sustained an overdose that number is unique and as you next slide down you see 1800 individuals experienced overdose in our community we had over 1800 substance use events in our community we were only able to make a connection to 321 that's the goal of our next grant the co-sub grant that we just got the adding on the two more social workers and the peer support person we We want to close that gap of 321 to 1800. We want to lower that 1800 number down. That's really would be the golden ticket. But we want to close that gap as best we can and try to get more people engaged in treatment. And then when we look at our referrals and our high utilizers, the kind of the medical side of things, that's 414 unique individuals that we worked with during the course of last year. Again, as I said, we had over 1800 individuals that suffered some type of overdose substance use event and we were able to leave 850 doses of Narcan out in the community. Last summer we started a program that we were leaving them out of our ambulances and so 102 boxes of Narcan were given from our ambulances at the time of an event which was really advantageous. You're there with the person that's experienced an event. Maybe there's friends, maybe there's family and we could give those friends and family the tool that maybe save a life. We, during our follow-ups, we left behind 168 boxes of Narcan with friends and family and individuals. We gave out 312 to our law enforcement partners. That includes Lexington Police, Fayette County Sheriff's Office, UK Police, Transylvania, and Fayette County Public Schools. And we actually went into the federal courthouse and taught some of the U.S. Marshals how to use Narcan in case they have an event. And then we, through community events, we're pretty active. Any chance we get, we'll go speak about what we do and how we can make a difference in our community. And we gave 268 boxes at different community events anytime we're asked to go speak somewhere. So we're able to really get Narcan out in the community as best we can. So looking forward, our future growth. In FY24, you allocated two more firefighters for the program. We should get those individuals in the coming months. And I say that just because they were budgeted for. We have to hire those individuals within the fire department. And our current recruit class should be graduating in April. So we anticipate getting two more firefighters shortly thereafter. So that will be a good thing for us and the community. As I said, we got the COASP grant. COASP is going to hire two more overdose prevention coordinators and a peer support specialist. We're actually in the middle of interviewing right now. And so we hope to have a quick decision made and job offers offered through HR very, very soon. Something else that COSEP is going to do is allow for an evaluation piece with the University of Kentucky for Center for Drug and Alcohol Research. Voices of Hope collaboration that we've just begun, bringing on peer support from them as well. They're a great partner, great community partner, and wonderful to work with them. And then we also authored a grant that was awarded to us in January. That'll be a great collaboration between our police department again. And it's gonna be funding from the Department for Medicaid Services. It's gonna create a crisis response unit within our community. I'm gonna hire behavioral health, some type of behavioral health specialist for our community that's gonna be teamed with the police officer to be able to take some of those calls off the first response units to be able to provide the most appropriate response, the right care, the right response to the right emergency. So some other things we're working, as I said, Chief Wells says that two of our members are at a conference. They're at an overdose fatality review. We're exploring the idea of bringing an OFR to our community. The idea is that you bring together different programs that somebody may have touched and try to solve, figure out where those gaps in that serving that individual to pop because of that there's a gap serving that individual there's probably gaps serving other individuals so we can see if we can close some of those gaps up and then something else that we're looking at is a something called the situation table it was actually piloted out of Canada and it brings a lit we're doing a lot of this as I said we work with OPI and we actually work with UK and Health First Bluegrass but it's a blending of everybody it's you bring a situation to the table and you figure out what those services are needed for that a crisis if you will and those those services then go out and serve that individual as a team as opposed to trying to piecemeal it together by phone we've seen this done in a couple other communities and it's been working pretty well and hopefully later this year we'll be doing get here finally some numbers sure so many of you have have come and and written along with me and we've gone to the the community paramedicine headquarters and you got to see my my wonderful art on a whiteboard where I would draw out and and these are actually just the real numbers so 2014 to 2015 it was a 12.1 percent increase and etc I won't read it to you even with with the post-COVID bump of the 6.5, which was due to a lot of delayed healthcare and that type of thing. You can see how even though our numbers are increasing, they're more moderated than they were. And that's not true in every community, and I think it speaks very highly of the amazing work that these folks do. So at this point in time, I think we'll probably open it up. Katherine Lockard and I will be happy to take any questions. Thank you so much. Before I entertain questions for my colleagues, just really quick, for those who don't know, could you explain how many, I know you explained how you want to expand, but how many numbers you have in the program right now and what they do? Okay, so currently there are three members from the fire department, that's myself and two other firefighter paramedics. We have one detective assigned from the police department and we have currently two social workers that are employed directly by the city that are Maria McKenzie. They were originally brought on from a grant but now they're sustained by the general fund. So currently there are six of us in the office. When we go out, we team up. We generally don't go out by ourselves. It's depending on the circumstance, depending on the kind of the referral, depending on the story it might be a paramedic and a social worker it might be a police officer and a social worker it might be a police officer and a paramedic you're fine you can ignore that thank you and so it just kind of depends but we generally are in two teams of two maybe three we find that any more than three we're kind of impeding on somebody's personal space so two and through you is kind of the sweet spot in responding to those individuals and working with them. Thank you. That's very helpful. And I encourage everyone to do a paramedicine ride along. If you haven't, it's a lot easier to visualize the flow of their work that way. So now I'll open it up to questions. And I always just go in the order of those who have signed up. So Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. Captain or even you, Chief. Even you. Question. I know that your facilities are located in the 6th District. I just want to say that. That's my question. No. How is that facility working for you, for the paramedicine staff? So I'll give my two cents, and then I'll let Captain Lockhart answer from the current perspective. From the 30,000-foot view, right now it's doing fine. I hope that as the program continues to grow, that we'll grow out of it because it's so successful. I would agree. There's some elbow room issues, but it's fine. We actually have a lot of space to grow into. We're going to have to move things around. I don't think we realized, you know, we closed that station and moved that station in 2017, and we still have people coming and knocking on our door thinking it's a fire station. So I think it's a great place for us. I think it's a great way to still serve the community. We've had people show up that are experiencing overdoses, and we're the best people to respond, because now we can start talking about what does the next step look like for an individual. So I like that side of it, but it works fine. Thank you, Chair, and thank you both, and thank you, team, for all that you do in the city of Lexington. Thank you also, last year, your team, the entire team right here, and UT chief came out and spoke to the 6th district about the great things that the paramedicine program does. And I'm still hearing some comments about it. The people that attended, they are applauding you for what you've done and doing. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Hey, thanks so much for the presentation. I think most of us really feel like this is one of the great proactive measures that we take together as a public safety force. Quick few questions. You have done such a great job at getting grants and getting all this money. Okay, so my one question is for you, would a grant writer help you in some form or fashion? Like is there more out there to get or do you feel like you're getting everything you can get? There may be more that we could get. However, in the fire department we have somebody I could lean on to write grants. We do it in our office a few times. City's grants department is phenomenal because we may write a grant, and they will make sure that we're dotting all of our I's and crossing all of our T's, and that's phenomenal because I don't have to worry about the, we don't have to worry about those little nuanced rules. So I think we have a pretty good program working. Do I think there's other programs out there? I think we've hit a lot of what we can get. For what we're doing, I think we're hitting a lot of what we can get. Right. So then my question is, my follow-on question is, what's the real then cost? Let's assume that we never got another grant. And so what's the actual cost, do you feel, of running the program effectively? So I'll speak first and say that I firmly believe, and although it sounds a little bit hokey, that a community decides what level of protection that they want, and then it's our job to work with what we're given, and we will do the best with whatever we have. If you believe that the program is working or could be better, then it would be largely salaries. And I don't think we can underestimate how important the partnerships. It's not just the sworn firefighters. It's also our partnerships with the police department and our social workers and those hopefully onboarding those peer support folks. That's going to be crucial, so we have to include those salaries as well. Other than that, I mean, it can all be absorbed. It's vehicles and space. Do you have an actual number answer, though? I don't either. I don't. I could come up with a question. Yeah, because I mean, I don't know if it's a separate cost center. Like if we look at it as a separate cost center and those incomes that come in like go against that cost center, I'm just curious. I lean very heavily on our partners over in finance. Okay. And I'm sure that they can get those numbers together for us pretty quickly. I'll find out. And then my last question is do, I think, do you rotate staff through, like is this kind of like a position that people want to come into or like does staff rotate in or does it take does it is it get tiring to do the work i'm just kind of curious that's so i'll answer your last question first yes it gets can be very tiring um i i am an advocate of self-care taking care of yourself taking whatever that looks like for each individual is different And so I'm really, seven years ago, I wouldn't have thought of it. Today I do. And that's the social workers that are teaching me. So I'm really important about that. We've actually been pretty lucky. We've actually had people that have wanted to come work with us. I think there's a value in having the right person as opposed to rotating people around. And so I think when we get the next two individuals coming up, I think there's a lot to say whether how many people bid for the job. I think we have a number of people have called asking about it, so I think that's a positive indicator. Sometimes it can be a challenge because firefighters know the 24-48 schedule to get them to think about doing a five-day-a-week job, a Monday through Friday job, can sometimes be a sale, but for the most part, the people that have called up asking about it, I think are really interested in their work. Great. Well, I want to thank you once again for everything that you guys do, and it's a great program, and I'm so glad that we're doing it. Thanks again. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Baxter. Thank you, Chair. It's no secret that I feel like I'm one of your biggest cheerleaders, and I absolutely love this program and all the great things that you do for the community. I really don't think that our community would look like it does today without you guys, so I appreciate your work so much. Can you talk a little bit about the peer support specialist and what that looks like for the team? Yeah, so, you know, I don't think it takes a hard lift to go knock on somebody's door to say, hey, are you OK? One of our barriers is that I'm still in uniform. I'm still a firefighter. If our police officers are with their police officer and being able to have somebody that truly can relate, we think is going to make a big difference in some of those connections. One of the things that we value is being able to follow up a number of times, and that's going to be the goal of this peer support. And so when you look at the, there's actually a certification in place in the state of Kentucky for peer support. It's certified through the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. We're going to lean on that as a requirement for the position. So that's in the state of Kentucky, that's somebody that has lived experience. There's peer support that work in mental health. There's peer support that works in substance use. But it's somebody that's, you know, that's, that's got a history, if you will. Histories make interesting stories, right? And so if, if somebody that can sit there and say, Hey, I've, I've walked through those doors I'm gonna be there with you and that can be there all every step of the way you're not gonna be alone and let me tell you what's gonna happen and I'm proof that there's life after this you know this this next exit of your life if you will to show that there's something else beyond the life that they're living we'll see what happens we we're we're we're I feel like we're behind behind in this sense and I say that because when we went to a conference at COSUP has a conference and we went to it in August. The number of programs that were there doing peer support, we've actually been leaning on them going what's this look like in your community and how do we implement it in ours. So it's great. It's great to see it coming to fruition here in Lexington. Well thank you for answering my next question because I was going to ask you about other communities and the collaboration. So that's awesome that you guys have that community that work within. I know you talked a little bit about near future goals, but when you look at this program on like a five or ten year plan, what's your big dream for this program? You stumped me. I'm retiring in two years, so I haven't, I'm joking, I'm joking. I haven't even thought that far. So when we got the first co-apparant, you know, you have a friend now that's working with you on your grants and you want to make sure that they have a job. So then we got co-sap. And so then Chief Wells and you all got her on full time under this past, this current year, right? And so that's Marie I'm talking about, right? McKenzie. And so that's what I look for. And we probably should sit down and start looking longer term and what's this look like? You know, I think in the near term, hopefully we're sort of having some more conversations with hospitals. We're having some surface conversations as to what it looked like working together more. We did it in 2019, and it was great, so we'll see what that looks like as well. So, again, overarching view. I think the growth of the program to continue to meet the needs, And Captain Lockard hit on it when he talked a little bit about the success of the program is based on its agility and the fact that we can alter the course to meet whatever the need of the community is. And I think that's going to, by and large, drive where we go. But I do think it's going to continue to grow. And we'll see more benefits as we are flexible. That's great. I think our ability to pivot is really important. So of all the things that you guys do wonderfully, one of the things I love most is how much joy, especially as on Captain's face, when you talk about the program, the amount of joy you have in your job and how that is portrayed in the community is just like a match. And I'm so thankful for you and your team. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair, for the recognition. Thank you, Captain Lockhart, your team, for the great work that you all do. I'll say this, sometimes when I have trouble explaining a new idea or a concept, when I start talking about the idea of treating symptoms versus long-term, deeper solutions, source of the problem kind of things, I always use the paramedicine program as my analogy of, like, well, you know what they do and how they do it as compared to what a traditional fire department is that's what i'm talking about so you all come up in in analogies often uh chief i have a question for you on the data um you talked about the 2021 numbers as that sort of post-covid spike of kind of delayed care um do you have any thoughts on that uh that 2023 that 4.4 percent bump is there anything you can attribute that to i don't think there's anything uh specifically to attribute it to other than the fact well i i will say i think there's two things one was you saw the very dramatic decrease when paramedicine first came on board and they were dealing with the the super utilizers who were calling so much and dealing with those really glaring unmet needs so that led to a stark decrease and the team was was quickly overwhelmed, I think, with the volume of needs. So they're saturated. And then the other thing is Lexington's a growing community, so with the population comes the increased run volume. These numbers, the 1.3 and the 4.4, are more what I would expect than that 12.1, that 7.8. Those were, again, I think symptoms of unmet needs. I would be curious, going forward on data like this, I would love to see another line that basically kind of charts what our baseline would be based on population growth. Because for me, like, I look at these numbers and I want to compare them to something. And the to something is, you know, just normally, like, what a baseline increase would be and kind of compare it. Because I know these are good numbers, but it's always good to see, like, what are we looking at? I think that's a great point. I love data collection. I love strategic planning, and we'll try to dig into that. I appreciate it. Thank you all for your work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Like many of us, we all think this is one of the best programs that we're doing in the community, so thank you all for what you're doing. I know I took ride-alongs before this happened, and I remember the frequent flyers, and we would have those in this program. and you mentioned it just a couple minutes ago about we don't have that as much as we did then because I know the one time I went out, they said that that individual, they'd been 400 times in one year. So I'm glad that we're addressing that, and we don't have those issues anymore, I guess. Is that fair to say? I won't say that we don't have those issues. I think they're still out there, and I think the team with the size that they currently are is getting to everything that they can get to. The addition of the additional social workers and the additional firefighter paramedics is going to cut deeper into that. I don't think we have as glaring a problem as we did when you were doing your ride-along. I could probably name some of those people and give you their date of birth because we responded so frequently to them. Everybody knew them by name, that's for sure. And with that being said, how do we go about showing our success stories from that, that we're at one position with that individual, and now they're a very productive person of the community. Do we try to show that or have examples of that? I think both. I think for those of us who are data-informed and like to make our decisions based off numbers and charts, I think we have to continue to show these and show the overall impact. But a lot of times when you scan out so far, you miss the human side and the human impact. And so I think we also have to, in conjunction, tell the human stories so that we know not only are you affecting overall numbers and budget lines, but you're affecting human lives and quality of life. I mean, a lot of us would like to get where we don't have a job because we have such a good job that we're not needed, but that will never happen. And with that being said, when we talk about your budgets, because a lot of it was at one point all grant funded, and then we've slowly worked that we have. What's our breakdown on grant funding that's in the general fund on the personnel cost? So, me, Patrick, the two more that are coming. Okay. I always love getting grants, but this is such an important that I want to make sure that we never have to always rely on grants, that we make this as a priority for this community. So adding the two additional firefighters that we'll be getting shortly that we're budgeted for this year, so we'll have five firefighters. Four of them are general fund, one who's going to be grant funded. The social work, our two current social workers are general fund, the three new employees are going to be grant funded, and the detective from the police department is general fund. So right about half and half, give or take. And I'm okay with that because I think we were able to show with grant funding supporting it the need. Sure. And it proved itself, and then the general fund can pick up the tab for that. And we'll see with these new folks how much of an impact they make. I hope that the data shows we need them and more, and then the general fund can pick them up, and we'll continue to go after these grants to support the expansion of the program. I think one thing we did add was some bands, and how are those doing? They are a nice tool. They are phenomenal. We actually drove, Maria and I drove an individual to treatment down in Elizabethtown. And very comfortable ride to be able to have a conversation. It was a very nice, like it's a really nice tool to have. And to be able to blend into a neighborhood, nobody sees you. You can park in a parking lot of somebody that is on the street that you want to talk to or work with. To be able to sit in an environment that's free from rain, if you will, or in the middle of winter warm. It's a great tool to have. and i think that's our job to make sure you all have the tool so if there's anything you need please let us know thank you thank you chair thank you council member frogo thank you chair thank you for all you do thank you for your presentation um the street voice council lifts up folks who are success stories from your call i hope that the council um and thank you councilmember I know that you're located in the 6th and thank God you're close to the 1st where a lot of calls are made. But I hope at some point we look at expanding your services, your building all around Lexington because I know it takes time to get to a call that may be in the south end of town. Because you're located on New Circle Road and that traffic is horrendous at some stage. So I'd just like to read something from a constituent just sent in. No better program than the paramedicines, so they're watching. That does effective street outreach. They are a model for other service organizations. And I'll tweak this some that are trying to do the work. But you all are a model for the outreach. And then it says, yay for them, and voices of hope, who are there meeting people's needs. And I love it, because you are meeting community needs. You are making a difference in people's lives. People that probably would have passed away, and you're there. And so for that, I am truly grateful as well as the rest of the council members. So I hope just like Councilman Chuck Ellinger stated, whatever that you all need, this is a high priority because it is making a difference. And now I can use that word thrive through the paramedicine. I'll just use it for this content. Through the prayer medicine people are thriving and so we can also feature them in our newsletters. As soon as we get someone or some data is coming in that some of the folks in our districts, we can also just highlight them in newsletters and let the people know that the prayer medicine and all the work that you're doing in the social services. So thank you for your service. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, my colleagues mostly covered all of my comments, but I'll just add a few things. I do want to echo, I think you hear from us that we want this program to be around long term, so we want to make sure it's funded. And I commend you all for how you've used the grants to help grow the program. On the core grant, that looks like that's one that you will have applied for four times. It is. It is. One year, it's more like a contract or service that we're providing to the state, which is quick response. So every year we're upping that contract, if you will. But that's a pretty sure thing? Because it's uncommon for a grant to always give the same thing. So it is money that the state gets from the federal government. And as long as the state gets it, I don't believe we won't get it. I think when you look at our conversations with the state and when they look at the data that we provide them, I think they were very pleased. In fact, there was a changing of personnel. And when our first time we gave her data, she called and said, is this right? And we're like, yeah, like, what's wrong? What do we do? And she's like, no, I just had no idea. And so I think the state will be always, as long as they're getting the federal money, then they're going to keep, I think, supporting the program. That's great. And I'm sure in the link we'll see these numbers, but just to make sure that the council, if you all could send out what is grant-funded specifically and what isn't, that would be great. So just we have that on the top of our minds. And I just want to say that I feel that you all have really pushed the needle of what public safety should look like to be more holistic. And you're able to do the things that police can't do when there's an emergency run or EMS can only respond to that emergency. But you're responding to the cause of the emergency. And you're trying to connect people with the services that they need in the community. And you're taking more time to do that. And I know members from your team say sometimes that takes all day with one person, and sometimes you're able to get to multiple people in a day, just whatever those in need, whatever their needs are, that's what you're doing. You're responding to them. And so I'm very grateful once again, and every year I'm a champion of this program and hope that it continues to grow. So thank you so much. Thank you. And now our last presentation today is an update from Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition, including an update on the It's Time campaign. And we have Stephanie Bateson here with us from the Department of Social Services to provide us with an update. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. In case some of you aren't aware about what the coalition is, it's a group of multidisciplinary people that are working to prevent domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking in Lexington. The coalition is established through city ordinance as is its membership. So we have representatives from government organizations, council members, family services, lots of different places across the government. Law enforcement, court, social service agencies, the schools. So we have a broad representative of people on our coalition. Recently, we expanded the at large members from three to ten to help us diversify the voices around the table and to provide another opportunity for survivors themselves to participate. Is this? Okay. So for decades now, intimate partner violence has been recognized by our federal government as a national epidemic. And some of these statistics show why. One in three women and one in ten men experience rape, physical violence, and or stalking with impact by an intimate partner in their lifetimes. More than three women are murdered by an intimate partner every single day in the United States. Kentucky ranks among the top four states with the highest rates of rape, stalking, intimate partner violence with impact, and course of control against women. And that's not just one stat, we rank in the top four for rape. We're actually number one for stalking. We rank in the top four for intimate partner violence and then course of control. In 2023, we tracked the protective order positions that were filed in Fayette County. And there were actually 2,450 of them. That's about seven petitions a day. 72% of those were actually related to domestic and sexual violence. The others were more neighbors being stalked by other neighbors, that sort of thing. So here is, you can see where Kentucky ranks among the national averages. In the blue are women, the red are men. There was not data for state specific for rape and stalking. But you can see that this problem affects people of all genders. But it is a gendered issue as you can see by the higher percentage of women that experience this problem. We are so passionate about ending domestic and sexual violence. And a large part of that is because it's not just about ending domestic and sexual violence. If we can prevent this issue, we can affect so many other issues that are going on in our community. So for example, 40 to 70% of men that abuse their partner also abuse their children. So it's sort of the same value set that that abuse is coming from. Intimate partner violence remains the number one cause for mass shootings across the country, so we can have an impact on gun violence. It is a top cause of homelessness, substance misuse. A lot of survivors are forced to use substances by the abusive partner, or they use substances to cope with the abuse. If we can reduce trauma in the home, then we can better our mental health and our educational outcomes. And that's not just for adult survivors, that's also for children. And children that witness domestic violence have the same mental and emotional reaction as children that actually experience it. Physical health, people that suffer domestic violence experience chronic pain, more susceptible to heart disease. There's a lot of emergency room visits that happen because of domestic violence. Poor educational outcomes. Students, if the parent who is the non-offending parent is the one to get them off to school and isn't able to do that some days because of the abuse, then that's where truancy comes in. If kids are at school, they are often worried about the parent that's at home, so it just allows them to focus on their schoolwork while they're at school. It would have a big impact on poverty. About 60% of survivors have reported losing a job due to domestic violence, and 98% of survivors experience economic abuse. So it would help mothers and children, really, but help the family as a whole. And then, of course, the economic strain, the strain that it places on our court systems, on our police. They receive more domestic violence calls than any other call. And animal abuse and domestic violence are highly overlap as well. So to tell you about some of the programs we are doing to help prevent domestic violence, we have the Green Dot program, which is an internationally recognized program that is evidence based. And it's a prevention program that trains bystanders to actively intervene or stop violence before it occurs. And it was actually built out of the University of Kentucky. So it's also very local, but very well known. Last year, our part-time bystander trainer conducted 23 trainings. And she added six new Green Dot spots. So those are agencies, organizations that have had a certain percentage of their administration trained in Green Dot. And so they can respond should people walk through their doors that are experiencing domestic violence. You cannot separate domestic violence and housing stability. So we have a program that helps stabilize housing for survivors. If the abuser is also the breadwinner and is put in jail, it puts people in a precarious situation. So we can provide up to $800 towards security deposit or rent. And last year through a federal grant and through LFUCG grant match funds, we were able to assist 247 adult and child survivors stabilize their housing. I think some of the most important work we do is our fatality review. That's one of the best practices from across the country. And that is where we do a deep dive into a domestic violence fatality that has occurred to look and see where we can see how our systems are interacting, see where we might have intervened sooner. Just look at all the things that we can do to prevent fatalities in the future. One of the recommendations that came out of the fatality review, and it's come out of several of them, but most recently one of our 2022 fatality reviews was children are just falling through the cracks in these fatalities. There's just no one to follow up after domestic violence to check on them to make sure they're getting the resources they need. So the council actually was instrumental in funding a position to do that. You funded it for this current fiscal year and it took a little bit of time, but I'm so happy to say that the person for this position, her first day was yesterday. So we're so excited to get her up and going on this issue. We also do trainings for the larger community and for service agencies. Right after COVID, we did a two day training on LGBTQ issues and how they intersect with domestic violence. And that was a training for service providers so that they can help make sure that their services are more LGBTQ affirming. We do advocacy, we update our network about what's going on. the General Assembly, any bills that affect survivors we're interested in. We identify systems issues and then work on those. Most recently, we had advocates from other agencies that were very concerned that child support was not being granted to survivors and therefore, again, making them vulnerable to further abuse. So we met with the family court judges who were super supportive, worked out some ways to get child support ordered faster for those survivors. So those are just some of the things that we do. We do outreach and awareness. April is the National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, and that's when we do our wake up program. It's when we partner with local coffee shops to spread a message of support for survivors, but also resources for survivors. And then October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and it's when we do our purple pumpkins and have Purple Thursday. We create any resources that are needed. We have a survivor handbook that walks people through their options in the court process. We have it translated into five other languages other than English. Support survivors, which is talking about how the community can support survivors in their families and their friendships. We also have a program Safe Measures that's funded solely through LFUCG that provides services or safety devices so that survivors can remain in their home safely. So lock changes, security cameras, that sort of thing. And we also now do an appreciation and awards event. Our upcoming event is on Wednesday, April 24th. I will send all of you an invitation. Just the chance, really it was an effort to prevent burnout among the frontline workers because they are so often just not recognized or thanked for the work that they do. And then we were so very fortunate last year to be able to launch the It's Time effort. And it was just a great opportunity. So the whole idea behind its time was that we can't continue to rely on these systems, government courts, law enforcement, social service agencies to end domestic violence. I mean, we've been doing that and it hasn't worked. So we need everyone in the community to understand domestic violence and understand how they can, in the roles that they're already playing, help prevent domestic violence. So we were out and about in the community. we were at several events we did a lot of community engagement we had more than 300 people take a pledge on how they would help prevent domestic violence we did interviews had news articles social media we were on every news station talking about it and through the commercials that we ran on wkyt and wlex we had almost four million views of that so we were pretty happy about that Our news articles that we placed out on websites received more than 600,000 views. And we had a lot of reactions on social media. We also, we developed a website so that people can go to one place to get information about domestic violence. And we started but not have yet put a lot of effort into promoting, but the it's time fund because there are so many needs of survivors that grants don't fund. So if someone needs to move away from a home that's not safe into a home that is safe, there's no funding in our community to help that survivor get to where they need. So it's those things that we normally don't think about that the It's Time Fund would help with. And that fund would be available to all agencies in Lexington serving survivors, but we have to build it up first. We did about seven podcasts where we modeled conversations. A lot of people don't want to talk about domestic violence because they're afraid they're going to say the wrong thing. So we talked about that on these podcasts. We had faith leaders come and talk about how they can, from the pulpit or whatever, come and give messages of violence-free homes. We talked to business owners about how it was actually in the best interest of businesses to adopt domestic violence policies. They were able to save money because of retention of workers. We had men come on and talk about their understanding, experience, and role in domestic violence. And then too about the kids, how to talk to youth about domestic violence. And in terms of prevention and then how to bring up the conversation when a small loved one in your life is experiencing it. And then we did lots of videos. Green Dot, we did a video for that to demonstrate what an intervention might look like. We had some of our leaders come on and talk about what an important role leaders have in leading this cause to get others to think about how they can step up and prevent domestic violence. We had Sam Stockley, who's just a lovely person, who experienced domestic violence himself as a child. came on and really talked about that experience and wants to use sports to help children overcome that experience to learn respect. And then we did a workplace video where Weta Michael actually announced that she was implementing workplace policies in all of her restaurants to support survivors. We are hoping to get funding to continue the It's Time effort. so if we do our focus would be um... focused much more men we would have a podcast of men talking to men about it uh... immigrant communities faith communities children and continue promoting the content that we've already created and continue uh... helping workplaces understand how it is in their best interest to establish these policies and that's all i have do you have any questions Thank you so much for your presentation and the important work that you're doing and standing up for those who've been affected by violence. Colleagues, Council Member Kathy Plumman. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Stephanie. Having sat on the commission for about three or four years, I've watched your leadership in action, as well as this consortium of folks around that large table that provide these services and support for men and women. that are experiencing domestic violence. When you show the Kentucky rankings, I think, on one of your first pages, and I was interested to know how our city, Lexington, and the county compare to the statewide. So we don't know. It is so difficult to get, there's no one collecting that data. We did a statewide report last year, it was the first statewide report that came out. It was problematic in a lot of ways and we worked with Zero V to help convey that to the people that were doing that report. But even then it was by Ag District and not specific to county. So we don't know, which is part of the reason why I was tracking petitions last year. Just to see who's accessing them, how are the courts responding. Are they getting the protections that are statutorily available to them, that sort of thing. And that's the best we have right now. The police, it's so difficult for them to track because there's so many different codes under which domestic violence might fall. But they have provided some data, but I don't have anything to compare it to. So. I just wondered in terms of, and I'm sure it's hard to track, to establish that baseline and to see where it goes. Right. One of the things you notice here is that the increase in men experience domestic violence. Is that due to a lack of reporting, do you think? I mean, men not wanting to admit that their spouse or significant other. I don't know that it's an increase. I mean, that's a question I always get is about do men also experience this. Honestly, I mean, I don't think it's about shame because women feel shame coming forward as well, and we still report. I think a lot of it is intimate partner violence among LGBTQ relationships, and then just the way that gender roles are perpetuated in our community. We have a fatality review next week, and that's what we're going to focus on, is this man murdered his wife and his two daughters and said things beforehand that really he felt that he had failed as a man. So I'm really exploring that. So that's some of our prevention work. That's an interesting perspective. Yeah. And one last question. I sit on Greenhouse 17, and I know that over the years, the VOCA money has been dramatically decreasing. And I wondered how we have seen decreases. And you might even explain how VOCA money is even presented. Yeah, so VOCA money is the Victim of Crime Act. It's a formula grant through federal government. It's divided among states based on assets seized from crimes across the country. During the 2016 presidential administration, that was changed, and so the funds started to drain out of that account. And so we actually, when we started, we had two full-time Green Dot people, one focused on immigrant and refugee communities and one focused on African American communities. And as our funding has been cut, we've had to reduce that. So first we had to lay off one person and now our current person is down to part time because of cuts in VOCA funding. And we are getting ready to experience another 40% cut across the board this year. So not just us, but greenhouse 17. I mean, just about every advocate that is in Lexington that does this sort of work relies on VOCA funding. So it's. And there's no light at the end of the tunnel. They're not going to resurrect or not resonate restore. I was hopeful, but it doesn't appear to be that way. And then of course, it would take time for it to build up again. Yeah, I know it's unfortunate that that's gone across the country like that with the impact. Well, thank you again for all your good work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council member Menarhes. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Stephanie, for this presentation. I'm really proud to be the council representative on the Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. I wanted to continue that discussion on VOCA funds. I know that we're about to start diving into affecting housing because we know that that's a huge barrier for individuals who are experiencing abuse to leave their home. The inability to either stand on their own two feet or just get assistance with making it to a safe space. And $800 seems like a pretty inadequate amount. It's nothing. I mean, it's what we can provide to help the most people, but it doesn't cover rent for a lot of places. And survivors need it for sustained periods of time, but that's all that we're able to provide with our VOCA funding. And I think it's a little providential that you have your presentation today on the day that the governor has vetoed the state's attempt to kind of limit what we do with our source of income discrimination i know that the talk around the source of income discrimination ban centered a lot around section 8 vouchers however a lot of people don't know that a voucher is also what voca gives to these victims so it's a voucher that these individuals receive in order to be able to go to housing. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Sure. I was very proud of our city government for passing that. It is going to have a devastating impact on survivors because it might affect child support being counted towards that. It will affect the vouchers being counted towards that. And we only have $800. We just talked about how that's inadequate. So it's going to remove any other source of income from survivors. It's just going to make the struggle all that much more difficult based upon the landlord. Now, I'm not saying all landlords are going to not accept that, but there seem to be fewer and fewer. And what would you like to see from this council to help your efforts when it comes to this cause? I really appreciate that. So again, it's time is talking about what you can do and the roles that you already play to help prevent domestic violence. So putting messages of support in your newsletters, talking about how domestic violence does affect everyone in the community. Really getting people to understand that it's not just, it doesn't happen in a home, it's a community issue. Speaking to any agencies that you're involved with outside of here at your faith community or something like that about domestic violence or inviting me to come speak. I, you know, just helping us get that message out there that we just need the conversation to be ongoing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much again. Thank you. And Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all so much for the work you and your team do on this. I really appreciate in your moving forward section these areas of focus. And two that resonate very highly with me are addressing the immigrant refugee communities who are often left out of basically every conversation. And very often because of cultural differences, because of immigration status, because of all sorts of other factors that are left out of these conversations. And these conversations are really important, particularly in those communities. I also really am glad to see the focus on men. I have thought for years, and I'm sure others have too, that we're such a big part of this problem and not enough conversations or work or engagement has been done on that end of it. but it has been focused on victims. And I know that men can be both perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. So I really appreciate all those areas of focus and kind of narrowing in on particular areas. So I really do appreciate your work. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair, for your acknowledgment since I do not serve on this committee. Stephanie, thank you so much for your presentation. I know that you all, you and your team are a very small staff, and you all are doing really great work in the communities a lot. It's a heavy lift, so thank you for all that you're doing and the coalition is doing as well. I miss being on the coalition. Maybe I could appoint it later in the future. We do have open meetings, but yeah, in your role as the director of ampersand, it was great. I know the coalition does some great work. And I just have a few questions regarding the stats for protective orders. You said that 72% were related to domestic and sexual violence. How does that compare to prior years? Is that up or is it down? So I, again, I don't know. So I just started collecting them for a year. As I went on, the process got more difficult in terms of getting that information. So I'm not collecting them currently, and I hadn't collected them previously. It's just sort of a snapshot. Now if you go on the administrative office of the courts web page, you can look and see their numbers. I think that those are missing some counts, particularly for people that maybe filed first in a prior year and now are filing again. I don't know how those are counted. But it does, by those numbers, it does continue to increase. That's what I was thinking. And I definitely I sympathize and sympathize with the VOCA struggle when I was at Ampersand. It was my biggest stressor. Yes. Was the VOCA funding from the federal government. So I sympathize with it. Should, whenever it does, the coffers get recovered from the draining. Do you have any future goals of kind of staffing up a little bit more in your department? I would absolutely love to, but I'll be honest that VOCA is not intended for preventative work. We were approached to do Green Dot through that because of the person that was over that grant program at the time. I don't know that if we were submitting a new grant for it now that it would be effective. But, yeah, I mean, I have tons of ideas. I would love to get a peer support person in that can help organize volunteers and contact survivors and say, yes, this happened to me in court. But just like Captain was saying, coming out and saying, well, here I am on the other side of this, and you can get through it too. Awesome. And I left ampersand right when the fatality review, case reviews were starting. And thank you for sharing some of the policy change and the personnel change that has come about since you all have been reviewing those cases. Has there been any other best practices that you've implemented from doing those fatality reviews? That is the one that we can point to and say this is. Our recommendations are on the website. A lot of it is things that we recommend that other agencies implement or follow policies that they already have in place or that sort of thing. So, but this is one that we could control. Awesome. Thank you, just for answering my question, thank you for your report. I know you're doing a great work, as I said, with a very small team. So I appreciate all that you do. And I will take you up on the offer to come and speak in my district-wide meeting in April. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for recognizing me because I'm not on this committee. Thank you for the presentation today and all of your work. I know we've had several conversations about this work, and I wanted to see if you could, for my colleagues and the public, talk a little bit more about supporting survivors in the workplace. Like what kinds of challenges might someone face if they have experienced domestic violence? And then what kind of supports could be put into place? I really appreciate that. So this is one of the things that we've been working on for a long time, and it's just now sort of getting traction. Domestic violence occurs on a continuum. So there's anything from not driving a person to work that you had promised to give a ride to, to hiding keys. There's a story that the perpetrator went and just cut all the business clothes right in half in a survivor's closet, so they didn't even have anything to wear to work. I mean, it just depends. And then also, I think probably one of the biggest problems when it comes to workplace is showing up at the workplace. And people don't want to deal with that. And so survivors get dismissed because of someone else's behavior. And I think also because a lot of workplaces don't understand that the survivor has no control over that behavior. So really implementing policies that say if you disclose domestic violence, we're not going to fire you for it. We will take that into account when we do performance reviews because maybe your performance isn't up because you have been, you know, maybe your perpetrator keeps you up all night and you can't even concentrate the next morning at work so there's just all sorts of ideas a lot of the things that we are asking workplaces to do are either no cost or low cost so like just having some knowledge and compassion for people that are experiencing it during their evaluation but also making small changes talking to security about what to do when a perpetrator arrives on the work campus or screening emails or phone calls for the survivor so that the perpetrator can't continue to bother them at work I mean there's moving their workstation so that they don't know where they are escorting them to their car at night I mean there's so many things that that can be done thank you and I know one of the other ones that that we have talked about specifically is crime victim paid leave. Some other municipalities have adopted policies around this. And colleagues, this is something where in that It's Time campaign toolkit that we have for businesses, this is one of the policies that is recommended. And I think we could lead by example where if someone is the victim of a crime or survivor of domestic violence, they may have to leave work to go to court for appointments for their mental or physical health if they have to move. All of those things can be really stressful when you're trying to balance your work time and how you might talk to an employer about it. So having some clear policies in place can really help reduce that stress and help support the survivors. I am grateful for anyone's support for that policy. You know, survivors might have to choose between keeping their job. You know, if they say, if you don't show up one more time, then we're going to fire you. But maybe if they don't attend court that day, they're not going to get the protection they need. They're not going to get protection for their children. I mean, there's lots of different reasons that someone might need to do this within a certain time frame when it's actively affecting them. Yeah, and so, colleagues, today at work session, I'm going to put specifically crime victim paid leave into committee for us to review and discuss adopting a policy like this as we are recommending to community businesses. And we can talk about in that discussion some of these other policies as you have been talking about today. So, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thanks so much for the presentation. I've got several different questions on different things, but who are the kind of prime support organizations that we rely on? Just so that all of us in the public kind of understand these are the key agencies we work with. Yeah. And just a little bit of what each one of them focuses on. So the nest is an amazing organization that provides emergency child care for someone that might need to go to court. They provide bare necessities. They apply for a lot of victims for our housing stability funds. They have, they actually, one of the most important things they have is a lawyer on staff that will go and represent survivors free of charge for their protective order hearing. So they are vital. course greenhouse 17 which is much more than just the shelter and they provide wraparound services counseling that sort of thing for survivors there's an organization that is fairly new that we're not as familiar with but Remo Wings Foundation is sort of getting in and supporting survivors with their basic needs and that's kind of I mean god forbid I'm forgetting someone but But those are the main ones. And then it's law enforcement and the sheriff's office and the courts and all of those that we constantly need to stay on board. Thank you. Thanks for that. And I like because a lot of those could, I mean, can always, I would think that they could apply for grants too from us through certain social service grants. Yeah, and they do. Ampersand is also a vital agency, of course, for sexual violence. So they can apply through the extended resource program. Super. And you mentioned police and I think at the beginning you said something like, it's the number one call, is that what you said, it's the number one? Well, I said the number of calls the police get. The number of calls they get. Yeah, it might very well be, but I just don't have that statistic. Yeah, and my only thought is, It kind of makes me think of something like paramedicine for domestic violence. Is there a way to create a programmatic approach that might... Yeah. Actually, my idea of peer support really came after speaking with Captain Lockard about how they do go to the scene and show up and say, what questions do you have? Here's the resources. Because so many, for example, the fatality that we're going to review next week, they had zero connection to any agency in town. And so having someone that's out in the community like that would be extremely helpful. That's good. And I want to echo what Councilperson Monaro said, that this is really, I know when we were drafting this ordinance, We had several groups come talk to us about the problems with specifically with keeping getting landlords not to reject a tenant just because they didn't take this some form of payment. Right. And I want to echo that it wasn't just about Section 8. Our ordinance is about a lot of things. Absolutely. And I appreciate your guys' help with trying to give people a chance to actually get out of this situation. And I think that's... Oh, and then I want to thank Council Member Sheehan because I do think the policy idea is a good one. And I think I look forward to talking about that. And I don't even know if, I don't want to do another ordinance, but I do think ordinances are fun ways to do things, too. I would be happy to provide whatever data I can to support that. It will be transformational. And I'm, again, grateful for your action on the source of income issue. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Stephanie, for the presentation in your work in this genre. And I just want it for the record. I know there was a lot of conversation about the position last year, and I was supportive of the work. I was just concerned about funding other positions. Yes, yes. So I'm glad you finally hired someone, and their first day was yesterday? Yes. So I still can't tell you exactly what the position will look like, But we are looking at it as being sort of a mini version of the coalition itself that focus on children. Okay. Yeah, and then all the efforts around addressing domestic and sexual violence, I think being focused and intentional on something, I think it's what we need to do. And I think it's been evident that this city is committed to shining a light on this and making sure that we have the resources to address it. And the It's Time campaign, I think, also allowed a lot of opportunity for us to get involved and to help spread the word. And I know we had a meeting with the commissioner last week, or it might have been the week before, about challenges with continuing that work. And I think myself, the vice mayor, and Council Member Ellinger are going to look at ways to try to support that until we get into the budget. And then I also like to compliment Councilmember Sheehan on her initiative to work to address policies for us to be an example and a leader with supporting this work throughout our community. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. I was a big supporter of the position last year, so I'm glad that it is filled and hopefully will be useful to you all. And so I know this past year we've talked about the possibilities of doing similar campaigns to It's Time, but for other things bringing importance and awareness to them. How do you measure or how should we measure, what should we do in terms of looking at these awareness campaigns in terms of their success? Yeah, so I'm not very, like I don't have a lot of answers for the questions you're asking because prevention is so difficult to measure. So, so far we have measured it in terms of engagement, number of workplaces that adopt the policy that we're asking them to do or that we're promoting, number of community members that have participated in the campaign in some way, number of people that are aware of the campaign. I mean, we can't say that the reduction in domestic violence homicides this year had anything to do with us. I mean, we hope that we played a role, but there's just no way to measure that. So it is difficult, and I understand how it can be a tough sell when you don't have those hard numbers of the impact it's making. But I really think that if we can make it a community conversation, then we can gather more data and be more confident to say what impact it's having. Yeah, I think sometimes I think of like the car seat or seatbelt campaigns, you know, in my childhood. It wasn't a thing that everyone talked about that everyone did until they did these huge campaigns and they made it not cool to not wear your seatbelt, you know. And it's that same sort of awareness that makes it a common topic in Lexington to talk about. I thank you for your work on that, and I think it was successful, and I hope that we'll continue to do similar things about other issues as well. So thank you so much for coming, and I hope you know we're supportive of the work that you do and will continue to be. So thank you. Thank you. Lastly, I think most of you got an email from me or talked to me about your item and committee. So we're not going to go over that list at this time. If you for some reason did not respond or you don't have a date for your item, please talk to Sarah or myself. And then wanted to say that we still have a lot of space in this committee. And that has happened before. And if you have an item that you think would be fit for this committee in social services or public safety, then please feel free to refer that item and put it in the committee. We can see it this calendar year. So just wanted to bring that up. If no one has anything further, then this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.