Music Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. I'd like to go ahead and call to order. Welcome. I'd like to go ahead and call to order the Urban County Council work session of April 9th, 2024. And the first thing on the agenda is that Council Member Sheehan has a motion. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to make the motion to move our presentation up to the start of our meeting right before public comment. So moved. Second. All right. Second by Council Member Legree. And are there any questions? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Just all of our presentations? Just the intern. Oh, intern. Okay, okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, thank you very much. That passes and we'll do that right now. All right, I'd like to ask Reese Lyle to join me at the podium. She's all the way in the back. She didn't know. Surprise. Surprise. Do you want to come away? Reese is an intern in Councilmember Sheehan's office, and this is a surprise to her. Her time here is coming to an end, and she will soon graduate from Henry Clay High School and head on to college. During her time here, Reese not only has interned with Councilmember Sheehan, but she's also worked closely with our Division of Environmental Services. Reese has been committed to helping our community learn about our urban green spaces and has even presented to our green space trust. Reese, we rely on our interns around here and I thank you for your hard work and your service to our city. We wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors so don't be a stranger here. And now it is my pleasure to present a proclamation. And here's how it goes. Whereas Reese Lyle, a senior at Henry Clay High School, has been working in the office of 5th District Councilmember Liz Sheehan and the Division of Environmental Services as a senior intern since August 2023, and whereas Lexington Fayette County has an excellent school system and the city works with our schools to foster the next generation of leaders and thinkers. And whereas Reese has demonstrated leadership in environmental initiatives as co-chair of the Renewable Energy Committee for the Bluegrass Youth Sustainable Council and as secretary of Go Green Club, where she developed an initiative to digitize the Fayette County Public Schools Student Code of Conduct to reduce paper waste and to save the school district money. And whereas she developed a survey for youth in Fayette County to help identify features that the next generation would like to see in our urban green spaces. And whereas Reese has presented her findings to the Green Space Trust as the City of Lexington works to update its Greenways Master Plan, and whereas the City of Lexington thanks Reese for her service and wishes her the best as she begins her collegiate career. Now therefore, I, Linda Gorton, Mayor of Lexington, do hereby declare April 9, 2024, Reese Lyle Day in Lexington. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for all your good words. Thank you so much. Maybe we can come back and work for the affairs one day. I would love to. Would you like to say anything? I know this is a surprise. Well, I would like to thank everybody for the opportunity to work in this office. I have learned so much from everyone here and just being able to observe. And I think what you all do here is wonderful. And I've just really appreciated the chance to be here. So thank you all. Thank you. And I'll ask Councilmember Sheehan if she'd like to say a few words. Thank you. I am beyond excited to honor Reese with you all today. This young woman has impressed me so much with her hard work, inquisitive nature, and passion for leaving this planet better than she found it. She contacted my office to shadow for a day or two. Well, that turned into a months-long internship that allowed her to work with our Division of Environmental Services on the Green Space Master Plan update for our city. She constructed a survey to get youth perspectives, gaining almost 100 responses, analyzed the data, and presented her findings to a room that included the consultants the city has hired for this work. The green space commissioners and consultants all expressed their excitement for her feedback from this age group and plan to incorporate her findings into this needed update. Reese has a natural knack for policy work. She is interested in environmental policy, so I hope that we can convince her someday to put herself on the ballot. It's been a pleasure to work with you, Reese. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. Okay, shall we get a photo? Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you so much. Now we have public comment for issues on the agenda. And the way this will work is that when I call your name, you'll come to the podium and then you'll need to restate your name for the record and state your council district and then you'll have three minutes. So we have several people signed up. is Caitlin Walsh. Are you here, Caitlin? And then Caitlin will be followed by Price Bell. Where are you, Price? Okay. Welcome. Hello. Thanks for having me. Caitlin Walsh, District 5, speaking on behalf of Parks. But my name is Caitlin Walsh. I live in the 5th District. As a young professional living in Lexington, I've really seen firsthand the value of our parks. I relocated from Louisville to Lexington a decade ago. I was really used to miles and miles of luscious parks to run in, to spend time with friends and family, to relax. So I knew visiting the parks in Lexington, finding which parks I would call home, would be a really important part of my life in Lexington. So it was really fun, very essential to my identity in Lexington, especially now as a remote employee, knowing I can get out of my house, enjoy the green spaces, specifically in District 5. I love visiting Woodland Park and the Clay Spring Park, just about a five-minute walk from my house. I've seen the investments that the city has made in Woodland Park recently, largely with the ARPA funds, and I have seen firsthand the incredible difference. So rather than these transformational neighborhood investments having to come to a bret halt with funding, the proposed parks funding ballot referendum would allow the continued investment in the neighborhoods year after year. Think about it. After a long week, getting outside really helps us to relax the fresh air, the oxygen. So for many of us, that might be a jog, a walk around our parks, playing in a kickball league, pickleball, the new tennis courts at Woodland Park. So these really, these moments help to improve our mental health, our well-being, and just a sense of community in Lexington. A core memory for myself living in Lexington was training for my one and only marathon, running through Liberty Park, Pleasant Ridge Park when I lived in Hamburg. That was a huge space for me to get out into the green space, great for my physical and my mental health, as well as I always felt safe in these areas. Parks are a space where we can grow, learn, and bond together, but these benefits don't stop there. Studies all over the country show that well-maintained parks attract workers and businesses and even reduce crime rates. They are an investment in our city's overall health and prosperity, something I think we can all get behind. Right now, parks funding might have competing priorities, which is understandable. Money is a finite resource. But with a dedicated fund, we can ensure long-term, reliable resources for our park system. Imagine a Lexington where every park is thriving. Safe playgrounds for children, accessible sidewalks for seniors, vibrant green spaces for everyone in our city to enjoy. This vision is achievable if we can put the parks funding ballot referendum on the ballot for all of our neighborhoods to decide. So let's not take our green spaces for granted. Let's show our commitment to a healthy, happy Lexington and establish a dedicated park fund. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next is Price Bell followed by Brittany Rothmeier. Welcome. Welcome. Price Bell, 5th District neighbor. Thank you, Mayor Gordon. Members of Council, I too echo Caitlin's very eloquent statement around the support for the Parks referendum. In your service, you are the front lines of all of our neighbors' complaints, positive and negative. And based on the research from On the Table, I suspect that a lot of those opportunities are around our park system. And so I am here to support and hope you'll join in the support of the parks referendum so we as a community can demonstrate to you how much parks mean to us and put it on the referendum so that we can vote to invest in our community through our park system for years to come. Thank you all very much for your time. I yield it to whomever would need more. Thank you. Next is Brittany Rothmeier, followed by Michael Potipoff. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. My name is Brittany Rothmeier. At Fayette Alliance, we work in the community to support sustainable and equitable growth throughout Lexington and Fayette County. We believe that Lexington can continue to grow into a world-class city by preserving our unique and productive bluegrass farmland, advancing innovative development, and improving our infrastructure. In furtherance of our mission, we urge you all to support the parks funding ballot referendum to ensure that in November Fayette County voters can ultimately decide how to support our parks. While we know that the Council can't approve this type of dedicated fund for capital parks projects, your vote to pass this referendum will enable the issue to appear on our ballots, which is a crucial step to enabling transformational investment in parks, trails, open spaces, and recreational facilities in every corner of our city. Parks are a key component to our city's green infrastructure and serve as a tool for creating sustainable development. Investment in our urban green spaces helps mitigate the negative impacts of urban development, like air pollution, heat islands, and stormwater runoff. Parks create more vibrant and walkable neighborhoods, help reduce traffic congestion, and connect neighborhoods and communities to each other and to other areas. They're key to our overall personal health and environmental health. Extensive studies and research show that well-maintained parks enhance communities, spur economic development, help attract and retain jobs, foster community interactions, spur investment in nearby areas, supporting local businesses, neighborhoods, and encourage us to efficiently use the land that we have in responsible and innovative ways. Our community has invested millions of dollars in master plans for developing a variety of things, including parks. But it's clear the objectives of the parks master plan cannot be achieved without additional funding. While raising taxes is never the preferred way to accomplish what's important, the deeper the backlog in parks improvements and the longer we let it go, the more it will cost our community, and not just in money, but in our quality of life. Fate Alliance supports continued investment in our parks, trails, and recreational facilities because planned infrastructure strengthens communities, boosts economies, expands opportunity, and promotes equitable and sustainable development. While our community may be growing, we must prioritize investment in our existing neighborhoods, amenities, and infrastructure to ensure that it serves our community members as they should. We recommend passing the parks ballot referendum so our fellow Lexingtonians can vote on this issue in November. We appreciate all the work that each of you all do for our community and appreciate your consideration. Thank you very much. Next is Michael Potapoff, followed by Dave Osborne. Welcome. Thank you. Michael Potapoff, District No. 3, Mayor and members of the Council. A day after the eclipse, an event that brought a huge number of people together in admiration of an amazing beauty of nature, I speak in support of the Parks referendum. From kids enjoying the playgrounds to adults playing sports or strolling about, to the elderly and the infirm sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, parks give us room to think, to get away, to exercise, and to recharge. Parks are a public good, and our quality of life is significantly improved through high-quality parks and facilities accessible to all. As president of the Board of Trees Lexington and a citizen member of the Lexington's Tree Board, perhaps not surprisingly, my number one association with parks is trees. The 330-300 rule of thumb requires that every person should see at least three trees from their window, live in an area with at least 30% tree canopy coverage and be no more than 300 yards away from a green space, like a park, where they can access. With Lexington's tree canopy coverage at 25% and over 100 parks and facilities, we're certainly on a good trajectory, but not quite there yet. Trees Lexington has planted well over 100 trees and parks in just the last couple of years, and we've held a number of tree maintenance events with volunteers. Tree canopy is essential to the experience of our parks. Trees clean the air, provide shade, mitigate and absorb stormwater runoff, and provide numerous other environmental benefits. Academic studies suggest trees are strongly associated with improved health outcomes, academic achievement, reduction in crime, and higher economic activity levels. Trees in parks need care, specifically protection from mowers, mulching, and occasional pruning. Currently, parks maintenance staff are overwhelmed and underfunded, so trees take a backseat to other priorities. The Lexington supports the parks referendum because we believe the additional funds will allow parks to improve the experience for all Lexingtonians, in part by growing the tree canopy and taking better care of existing trees. The next eclipse, visible across most of the US, will be in 2045. Let's not wait that long for another event to bring people together. Let's invest in parks now to bring people closer to each other and nature every day. this ought to be one of the easier votes because all you have to do is just say put it on the ballot and then us the citizens will take care of the rest. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Dave Osborne followed by Steve Kay. Welcome. Good afternoon. Dave Osborne, District 7, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. I'm a retired Army Colonel, the immediate past president of the Ellerslie HOA and currently sit on the board. You may know me by my involvement with the Richmond Road arcot projects or the phelps project i also was a district i'm a poll officer for our election system and sit as the district 7 representative to the parks advisory board in georgia kansas pennsylvania virginia germany belgium i've taught or coached basketball baseball softball special olympic swimming outside of my community involvement i've been to 49 states and 27 in countries. Those credentials are important because my exposure to the importance of parks and green space locally, nationally, and internationally. The most vibrant cities I've ever been to have parks and green space at the center of their soul. Think Lexington, Grand Rapids, Austin, Raleigh, London, Paris, Munich. These cities are special and you know it when you're there. Positive energy attract new residents, employers, employees, and tourists. They promote a healthy lifestyle and encourage human interaction on multiple levels. In Ellerslie, I live directly across the street from Jacobson Park and Lakeside Golf Course. I am truly blessed. I get to take my grand-granddaughter fishing and the granddaughter dog running. There are kids and adults getting exposed to water on pedal boats, school classes exploring the butterfly gardens, hundreds of young adults in kickball tournaments, and small groups of folks playing disc golf. On a weekly basis I see members of our LFUCG community enjoying open air, fresh air, open space, and physical activity. Jacobson and Lakeside are two large pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that represents our entire park system and And it's a thousand piece puzzle. The rest of the puzzle is our neighborhood parks, pools, playgrounds, and trails. The complex smaller pieces that pull this all together. This is not just about me. And if you know me, some of you know me personally, I like to talk. And I will talk to anybody if they make eye contact with me. I've talked to neighbors. I've talked to people in the parks. I've talked to folks at Kroger. I've talked to folks at Kroger Field. I talked to people at Costco, at Farmer Market, and Rupp. across all demographic groups. I hear the same thing. They support our parks. We need a dedicated funding stream to ensure the pieces of this puzzle fit together to create a world-class park system that serve everyone in Fayette County and the envy of cities across the country. Better parks are a win-win for everybody. I see you got 10 seconds. Kids, seniors, employers, employees, tourists. This investment will pay dividends not just now, but decades down the road. This is not a 2024 decision. It's a 34, 44, 54 decision. And I asked you, what do you want your parks to look like when you retire? Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Steve Kaye, followed by Griffin Van Meter. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. My phone hasn't gone off in a year and a half. Of course it does now. I'm really pleased to be here and it's a special treat for me to be in a room where I know so many people that I'm so happy to see. I'm here basically to add my support for the work that's been done already to get this referendum on Parks on the ballot and to encourage you to continue to support it. I know it came out of the Budget and Finance Committee with a unanimous recommendation. I'm hoping it will come out of council the same way. And on a more personal note, I want to say a little bit about how parks have worked in my life. So for the first seven, eight years, nine years of my life, I lived one house away from Woodland Park. I played tennis there very regularly during those years. My sons learned to swim in the woodland pool and were on the woodland swim team. Since I've moved from that location, my contact with the parks has been mostly through my grandchildren. Duncan Park, which is our local park on the north side, I didn't say I was in, I'm sorry, District 1, I forgot that. Anyway, taking the grandkids to Duncan Park, to Charles Young Park, always a treat. So it's an amenity that I think makes sense for almost everybody in the community, and I encourage you to continue to be supportive, not only in this vote, but I'm presuming it will get on the ballot and that as many of you as possible will support it in the community. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Nice to see you. Griffin Van Meter, followed by Reva Russell English. Welcome. Hi. I'm Griffin Van Meter. I live in the 3rd District, and I actually live in the house that Steve Kay just referenced. And my children, like his children before, are learning tennis and swimming in the joys of park. So I'm happy to continue that tradition. I'd like to thank you, too, for this opportunity to speak on behalf of Parks. And also heartfelt congratulations and happy birthday to Dan Wu for his 50th birthday. Way to go. Five decades of excellence. I love parks. And I love, love, love hearing about the value of investing in parks and public space. The statistics are astounding, as a lot of my colleagues have mentioned. Investing in parks is such an effective way to improve our individual and collective quality of life. Great public space promotes equity, health, connectedness, climate resilience, and economic growth. However, the immense value of parks is even more impactful than these positive outcomes. The extended value is that parks and the parks programs create the memories, the emotions, and the moments that shape our lives. And I love that. I've been reflecting on a few of my favorite park memories that fill my heart with a complete joy parade. And I think, and I wanted to share some, I love going to the Carver Center every October and learning the Thriller Dance. Linda. You know. Every demographic's there from my six-year-old to a 70-year-old sharing space and learning together. I love witnessing the therapeutic wellness campers jumping into the pool with big, big energies and their radiant laughter and smiles is such a beautiful moment to witness, for my children to witness. I love the pride in the parents' eyes as they see their children bound across a starlit stage for ballet under the stars. I love thinking about the time I watched our late friend and state representative, Lamin Swann, push his way up the Richmond Road Hill and the Bluegrass 10,000, showing what is possible of the mind and body. And I love all of these and for my last 20 seconds, which is the time it takes me to get to the park, I would like us all to reflect on the memories that we have created in our parks. So thank you for your reflection and thank you for voting yes for parks. Thank you very much. Next is Reva Russell English. Welcome. Hi, my name is Reva Russell English. I live in the first district. I have a hodgepodge of things. I apologize for being a little scattered. I just found out about the thing I wanted to speak about last night thanks to a Civic Lux newsletter. I'm here actually to talk about the FLOC program, the license plate readers. I'm asking that the council today pump the brakes on that. I want to remind us just historically of when this came online. It was during a lame duck session before most of you were sworn in. I know of one audit that we've had the LPD did themselves. I would like to know is there anybody else who has done any auditing of the audit? How do we know really what's going on with the system? In addition to those concerns that I have, also concerned about surveillance and privacy, But I'm sure we've all noticed that there are a number of fascist laws sweeping across the country. We have a number of those who have been introduced here in Kentucky. They're all sort of bankrolled by the same right-wing billionaires who are pushing for restrictive laws around trans rights, trans healthcare, parental rights, around reproductive rights, even librarians' rights. I want to ask, in a system where we are a city that takes pride in being an LGBTQ plus haven, where we take pride in our reproductive rights stance, do we want to be a place where it's easy to find out-of-state or in-state people who might be running from Texas, from Florida? Just a thing to consider. Other things that I'm concerned about with the Flock Safety Program is how it gets used by LPD. I know of two police officers who have misused police equipment and other things and received disciplinary action that was only brought forward because they didn't accept what the police chief had provided for discipline, which is why you knew about it and why I knew about it. That was officers Brent Bereznack and Jervis Middleton, who used police computers to spy on a former romantic partner, and Brent Bereznack used a GPS tracker to spy on his girlfriend. We don't know how the system is being used unless we have some transparency that isn't just LPD looking into how it's being used. Oh, the money. According to my calculations, it's going to cost us over $1.6 million across the next five years to keep this program in place. I ask that you do some research. I can provide it for you. There is no data showing that the FLOC safety program, the license plate readers, does anything to reduce crime. I've had a number of people speak today about the referendum for parks, which I'm for. Please vote yes. Please put it on the ballot for us. There is good data actually that having tree canopy so that things are cooler does reduce crime. Isn't that crazy? We have no such data that FLOC safety program, the license plate readers, does anything of the same. Please vote yes on the referendum for parks. Please pump the brakes, get more data, and let's get a real audit that doesn't just come from inside of LPD for the license plate reader system. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our first portion. I'm sorry, one more thing. I have to leave because my kid is here, so I apologize for bouncing, but I'm going to watch on TV. So thank you. Okay, thank you. That concludes our first portion of public comment. And so next on our docket is docket approval. Could I have a motion to approve? Thank you. Council Member Gray. Vice Mayor Wu seconds. And if you have items, please log in. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. Colleagues, I sent an email around yesterday and I've had an opportunity to speak to most of you about this. But I moved to place on the docket for the April 11th council meeting. A resolution initiating a zoning ordinance text amendment referral to the Urban County Planning Commission concerning a partially new and an otherwise amended outdoor lighting ordinance, the language of which has been provided to the clerk and to all of you all in your seats as well as the email yesterday. So moved. Thank you. Councilmember Baxter seconded. Are there any questions? Council? Councilmember James Brown? Thank you, Mayor. And Councilmember Worley, can you tell us how you expect for this to play out in the process and what we would expect going forward? Thank you, Councilmember. So any amendment to our zoning ordinance requires referral or recommendation from the Planning Commission. There are several ways to initiate that. An individual property owner or resident could initiate that. The Planning Commission could originate those text amendments themselves. or we have the mechanism for the council to initiate that zoning ordinance text amendment referral to the planning commission, in which case the planning commission will have 60 days to host whatever sort of discussion or public hearing or whatever sort of diligence that they choose. They'll evaluate the language that we've sent, and then they'll send a recommendation to us that could be similar language, could be changed, could be different completely to their purview. Then once it comes back to us, we have the opportunity to either accept their recommendation, reject their recommendation, or place it into committee and make any changes that we see fit. So this particular piece of legislation, late last year or a year before, we changed our parking regulations to allow for less parking to create more density and opportunity for our development. In that, we also reduced the height of parking lot lighting. And now we've had several stakeholders in the commercial parking lot world that have said that they need higher lighting for safety. And that oftentimes higher lighting can be less lighting. And so they've asked for this change. We know of one stakeholder who's already had to go to the Board of Adjustment to ask for a variance. So we're just trying to get regulations back in a way that's helpful to the stakeholders. but also take the opportunity to regulate in such a way that would be more beneficial to surrounding property owners. And so we're going to ask the Planning Commission to handle the specifics of that and the technicalities of that, but we are initiating that here to send to them. Okay. I appreciate that explanation, and I'm going to support this motion. I know I've heard conversations or talks about commercial developers needing flexibility and the regulation to make sure that safety is a priority on their development. But my concern, and I think a lot of it has been addressed in some of the text that I've had a chance to look at, is to make sure that residential areas are negatively impacted. And I think you've worked with the planning department on this. Can Director Duncan or somebody kind of speak to planning the role in providing this language or you can speak to it? Absolutely, if Director Duncan wants to work towards the podium. But I took this item to the planning staff and asked the planning staff to draft this language in language that the long term planners felt would be appropriate to present to the planning commission for their review. So the planning staff has been involved with my request and this work since it started. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Mayor. Director Duncan, if you've got anything more you want to add, feel free. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I just wanted to say that the draft before you all represents industry best practice and industry standards. So the numbers in there are consistent with what other communities across the country are using. And so we believe that this is an ordinance on par with other communities and would meet the needs, the commercial needs and the residential needs. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Director Duncan. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Mayor. I moved a place on the docket. Oh. She got, did you call me? Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't want to speak on this. Okay. Oh, okay. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak on this motion? All right. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Now, Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for April 11, 2024, Council meeting, A resolution authorizing the mayor to execute the memorandum of agreement with the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Koreshji Group regarding the proposed renovation of a vacant church located at 530 North Martin Luther King for affordable housing. So moved. Second. I think I heard, yeah, Council Member Plumman seconded. All right, questions? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Is there anything else for the docket? All right, all those in favor of approving the docket as amended, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that passes. Thank you very much. Next is the March 19th work session summary. Could I have a motion? Well, the motion to approve was right here with Council Member Sheehan, and then there were a few seconds. That was all you. Oh, okay. Well, okay, Council Member Gray seconded. Okay. Are there questions, comments, changes? All right. And all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion to approve budget amendments, please. Vice Mayor Wu, thank you. Councilmember Fogle seconds. Now please log in if you have questions. Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. From journal entry 146809, Division of Waste Management. And which page is that on? Pardon? Page. I don't know. Oh, four. It has four on here. It saves everybody from looking at every page. Thank you. $125,000, that'll spark out. Question there on, I guess, what's going on. And who's, where's? Richard, I think, who's, or Commissioner Speckert. And I see where there's actually. I think Commissioner Speckert's going to. There's actually two adjustments there. One is the 125,000, and I wonder if that's a duplicate. Because I'm looking at the same language. Well, it's not a duplicate, I'm sorry, because one of them is urban fund and one of them is landfill fund. So when you look at those, are we actually doing 250,000? Yes, we are. Okay. They're just coming from two different funds. I actually would defer to... Just curious, make sure it wasn't a duplication or anything. Richard Dukas from Environmental Quality and Public Works. Yes, one is for hauling fees and one would be for tippage fees for the actual disposal. Is that additional because of our storms or anything, or is that just part of the budget system? Commissioner Specker. No, it's not. This is related to our keeping things status quo, but being prepared in the event that we need to be, to ensure that we continue to provide the services. Those actually come out of the fund balance, so that wasn't in the budget, original budget then, was it? That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. And the other item I have is waste management. It's journal entry on page four for the $244,850. Just a little information on that. Welcome back. To provide funds for material recovery facility, concrete replacement, site improvements, et cetera. What's going on there in that? This is for, it was originally approved in FY23, that money, and there wasn't staff available to actually execute those projects, but now the commissioner's office has got enough staff that we're actually executing those, so the money went to fund balance, and we're just asking for the money back to actually finish those projects. It's just some, around the Murph, you've got a lot of heavy equipment moving around in that general area, so some of the concrete has been degraded. It's coming out of urban funds, so was it moved to general funds? It went to fund balance and it's just coming back for fund balance. Coming back, so just a normal. Just so we can spend it. Urban funds, fund balance. I'm sorry. Not general funds. Not general funds, urban funds. Okay, great. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. You're welcome. All right, Councilmember Sevigny. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, and I actually had the same exact questions as Council Member Brown, so I appreciate you asking them. All I want to point out is that when we're overspent, like when we're technically over budgeting in these items, so we're creating a new budget item that's going to spend money out of the fund balance of the urban fund and the landfill fund for these things. which is fine, I just think it's really important that we understand that as a council. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. And it does kind of go to the basics of what a budget is. It's a framework and it's flexible down the road if we need it. So good point. Anyone else have a question about budget amendments? All right. All those in favor of approval, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Council members, for your information only, pages 7 to 11 are the budget adjustments. And then I'll entertain a motion. Did you have a, no, you came in there. Okay, next is new business. I'll entertain a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Thank you. Council member Ellinger, second. Council member Reynolds. Now, council member Ellinger's first up. Thank you, mayor. Let's start with B and the flock cameras. All right. That's Commander Greathouse, I believe. I probably should have started with my others first because this might take my whole five minutes, but that's okay. One of the questions we had earlier is about some data, and could you tell us how things are going? We've been using this now for a while. and why we need to continue with it. Sure. So what I'll do is I'll start overall what we've seen since we implemented our first cameras, the first 25 free that we had. So overall, we've seen a return on investment of a little over $3.7 million of property given back to the citizens. We have found about 269 stolen vehicles, 27 stolen plates. We've served over 40 warrants. Let's see, subpoena served a gun seized 68. Total number of charges is right at 1,100. And of those 1,100, there's 451 of those folks that have been break those charges up. So those are multiple. We've seen decreases in our time to recovery from our vehicles. We've actually increased our number of stolen vehicles we have recovered. We've seen the time of recovery. So the days it takes to recover those in 2020 was about 10.3 days. Then in 21, when we started talking about Flock with 10.4, we're down to 5.4 days returning those back. And we're getting 74.8% of those cars back compared to a 69.84. I'm sorry, 67.6 when we started. So we are seeing the numbers go in the direction we're looking at. Violent crime, we can look at our homicides. We had 44 in 2022. Last year, we had 24. This year, we've had three total shootings. Also, we started in 2022. In 2022, we had 119. Last year, we had 84. So far, this year, we have 13. So we're seeing all of our numbers start to turn in that direction. I can tell you from just the emails that I receive of the Flock Success, that system is being used, I would say, on an hourly basis by our investigators and by our police officers to investigate not only violent crime, but all crimes that we see here in our community. Not only crimes, but also to find folks that have lost their way home that maybe not have the mental capacity to find their way back. Alzheimer's we found over 14 I think of those if I'm not mistaken. 11 persons that were entered in the NCIC were entered as missing so those actually went into the national crime database. We've also had other agencies reach out to us that have not put those folks in that just said we see they look like they're in your area can you try to find them and we found several of those also. Well thank you and I think the data does prove that it has been successful is when we looked at this coming on would you say this has been more or less successful than what we had hoped for i think it's been more successful we originally geared this towards our violent crime which we saw that has made a significant impact but what we've also seen is it goes anywhere from our hit and runs to a traffic box that got hit as one of those that saved the city about forty thousand dollars because we were out that we had no idea who hit this traffic control box it was going to have to be replaced and i don't know what that cost is i'm just estimating i know it's it's a significant amount of money but we were to find that vehicle and then find that person they paid the restitution that's just one instance that i can think of think of off the top of my head well those are the questions i have um i'm sure there'll be others i have some other questions on on other ones so i'm sure they'll be you'll be brought back here and wait okay i'd say close thank you uh number uh s please um and also why and director martin oh we talked about this and this is uh Council Member Sevigny and my district too because it's in the 10th district and we've been working on this could you tell us where we stand and item s and y are related you know y is the actual grant itself but s is the contract that we're recommending the award to shield that was competitively advertised what shield will be doing is putting together the plans the specs pulling together the permits all the things that are necessary in order to hire the contractor that's going to come in and actually remediate the site. So it's contaminated with dry cleaning solvent basically from the dry cleaning that was there before. So you know we needed an environmental company to help us put the package together that's going to remove the soil and make it safe again. So what's our I think you told me in about a month the building's going to be gone and then I know neighbors are are interested in what can happen in the future what's the timeline on this? It's still a ways to go but yeah the building should be down somewhere between zero and 30 days. KU was there this morning to disconnect the electric. Sea gas is going to be a little bit farther behind as far as being able to disconnect the the gas but once all the utilities are disconnected our demolition contractor will come in and flatten that building out so then it'll just be a vacant lot and we'll have removed the risk of of that building being there because it was sometimes being occupied by folks that really shouldn't be there. While SHIELD puts together the plans and specs, we're hoping we'll be back in front of you by the end of this year with a recommended award for a contractor to come in and do the remediation starting in 2025. All of this has to be done by 2026 because it's ARPA money. The deadline is December 31st of 2026. Related to that is the sewer project. The sewer project will be going through that lot once it is remediated. The sewer project in question is the one that's on Harrodsburg Road right now next to the human being at Blue Ash. They're working their way towards the Southland Drive area. The Southland Drive area is the last phase of that project. We have to get eight easements. We have three of the eight. So we're five easements short from being ready to do that. But I think it'll all come together. Probably by the end of 2026, we'll be walking away from that, leaving that vacant lot for that discussion about how to make a future use of it. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Item Q, I'd like to get some information, a little bit more information on that. I guess it's great that we can reduce by change order over $200,000 from Palmer Engineering. So that came through. What's the situation there? Are they not doing the bridge or are they still doing it or what? So originally when we looked at, this was ARPA funding, so originally we looked at the scope. we took the conservative approach which was assumed that we're going to do a fairly large bridge across the creek there near Bowman's Mill. Once our designers got into preliminary design, we realized there's a lot of not just design but permitting issues with that method. And what we're instead going to do is go on to an on-road facility onto Old Bridge Lane directly adjacent to Bowman Mill, which will, again, from just a cost-saving standpoint, you're saving $225,000 here, but probably a couple million dollars on the bridge. But more importantly, it's something that we can get permitted, because permitting a bridge of that structure in a floodplain area would have been a challenge. So instead, we would decide to move forward with the at-grade facility on the existing roadway. Second part of my question is, is ARPA, the 224 that was set aside there, Where are we going to put that at now, Jennifer? I sent it already. No, we're going to be bringing forward next week for your consideration to use that funding for human service salaries in the fiscal year 25 budget. You all have previously allocated $6 million to pay for human service salaries out of ARPA. At this time, the ARPA team is not confident at all in adding new tangible physical infrastructure projects. We're too close to the obligation deadline. So with funding, we'll select human service personnel to start July 1st, and we'll be able to charge all of that back to ARPA, and it completely expensed that before the end of the year. And you'll see that next week on the 16th. Is there a continuing cost on that, or is that permanent employees that were just funding? Yeah, so they were prior to ARPA. These folks were funded with general fund, and we have done various allocations the last few years. This fall will be the last time they're charged on ARPA, and the rest of the year will be expense back to the general plan. So can we expect an amendment to the fund balance on this $200,000? You will see it as part of the mayor's proposed budget next Tuesday. Okay. Okay. So it's in there. Okay. Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to ask about item V, which is the solar share program. I see a couple environmental services people here. I'm not sure who is going to talk about that. Is this Jennifer or James? They're going to tag team it. While they're deciding, I also need to recuse on item M because of my affiliation with the University of Kentucky. All right, thank you. So for item V, I was just wondering if you could just give us a brief snippet of the benefits of us participating in the program like this. Take a stab. So a culmination, we're doing our long-term planning for identifying facilities where we wanted to install solar. At the same time, we're looking at our year-end type budgets. Funding was available, and we have facilities that are in our sweet spot from an energy profile. They're using energy. They're using it consistently. They're on a rate that's amenable to solar offsets, but yet the roof or the building itself cannot accept solar panels. Think heavily shaded areas, one of which is a fire station that's very popular with holiday lights, and we didn't want to put in glass up there. It actually had some complicated roof lines anyhow. So these are facilities in a different category where we'd like, we're doing remote solar by participating in the KU solar share program. This is where you lease a portion of the large solar farm maintained by the utility company. It is not necessarily economical if you do the month-by-month process that they offer, but a secondary, an alternate, is that you can prepay for 25 years. That becomes very economically favorable, and that's what we're recommending to council. So to purchase a share for approximately $800, it's a 250-watt capacity. The modeling that I've done, and here again, we're kind of playing a game, but the size of the share is such that it's a small amount relative to the electricity used by the facility so that it's always an offset. And that's important because the offset rate is what you would purchase electricity for at about 12 cents a kilowatt hour. If your shares are larger than what you're using, that's electricity that KU compensates for you at what they call a small qualifying facility rate. It's about three cents. So it's a fraction of an offset. So these are small shares sized such that they should largely 95 plus percent be an offset. The out-of-pocket expense to the urban county government by using a solar share would be the same as if you would purchase that electricity around year 10. And from years 10 to 25, it benefits the city and all the way we're producing less power at the fossil fuel plants. So there's better emissions and cost savings to taxpayers in the long run. Thank you. And I always appreciate your work at looking at those long-term costs and savings because you're right. Like the immediate savings aren't always there. But if you look at it over time, that's where you see this. So I appreciate all the work that you do in this area. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. And James, can you remind me and maybe others, when did we first start buying these shares? The first solar share participation was associated to fire station number two, and I believe it was in 2021. About three years ago. And I have Bill verified that our offset calculations are correct on that one. Each one's unique, of course, But in other words, the program was working the way we assumed it would, so I'm fairly confident in our modeling. Okay, thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger, for pointing out those two. I don't have to talk about those two, so I appreciate that. Habitat for Humanity, recycling. Item aye. Aye. Director Thurman and Commissioner Allwright. I worked on this with you and I just wanted you to share a little bit about it because I think it's a pretty cool program and it's a way to keep paint out of our waste stream. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for the opportunity. For those of you that already know, the Restore accepts latex paint year-round. They also accept it during the household hazardous waste program at our events. They have started to encounter some costs associated with that program and we're getting ready to have to make a hard decision. And so what we kind of worked with was through the Household Hazardous Waste Program, we had an opportunity to find an avenue where we could set up a sole source with them to provide a local opportunity year-round and allow them to offset some of the expenses that they have with that program. They are a sole source because they're the only one in the region. Our Household Hazardous Waste provider is from out of state. So this provides local access year-round. It allows their program to continue for us to help keep that paint out of the landfill, as you mentioned. Thank you. Thank you so much. My next one is on item B, the flock readers. Thank you, Commander Greathouse. And thank you for the time you spent with me prior to the meeting, just kind of going over the details of the contract and everything. So just a few questions I wanted to ask, because this is a multi-year agreement. So it's technically a five-year agreement, and I know that we basically only approve money on an annual basis. And I know I asked this last year. Does the agreement have like a non-funding clause if that happens in future years? It does. So this one's a little bit different than the first one we had where we just say we didn't like it and we want to get out of it. There are two ways to get out of this one, either breach of contract, which I don't see that happening by either party, And then also a non-fund clause, and then there's no penalty to us on that no fund clause. No fund clause, sorry. Yeah, and I wanted to make sure of that because, you know, we've talked. There is always technology changes, and over five years, I feel like technology can change, as well as company structures change. People are private, they go public, and people are owned by investors and not owned by investors. So I think it's important and I think you also realize that technology will change over time. Yes, sir. Yeah, and then the other thing, what does a typical community of our size have for the number of flock readers and where are we in comparison? And did we get, if we expand, since we have an urban service boundary expansion coming up, what does that look like and do we have a per unit cost? So right now we have 100 cameras. And through my research when we started this, I talked to several different agencies throughout the U.S. that are roughly our community size between basically 350,000 to 500,000 residents. And all of those had between 100 to 150 cameras. So right now we're at the low end of where we probably need to be. Is there room for expansion? I believe so. with the urban service boundary growing, there is potential for that, yes. As far as the cost goes, the good thing about the five-year contract is with them, we have a set agreement, so the cameras will cost $3,000 apiece now for the life of this contract. So we have that. That's a benefit of having a long-term. We have that locked in, so if something does change, we don't get a $5,000 camera now that is what it's going to cost us. So if there is something that happens with the company who owns Flock, are we still locked in or does that kind of kick it out just so I know? I don't know if that's specifically mentioned in the actual agreement. I don't know. Okay. All right. And then my last question really is on the financial side. In this type of agreement, how does that affect, how is it looked at from a bonding perspective since it's kind of the same year as a five-year lease almost? And it could go in that new FASB, whatever. Savita, very good. It is a possibility that it would be included in the Savita. Right now they're looking at subscriptions more like Microsoft, a Microsoft subscription because they're so significant in price. This one is not, while expensive, not quite there to that level. But that is something that we could mention to our auditors as to if they wanted to include that. that right now this is included in the base operating budget for the police department great thank you that's all i have mayor thank you vice mayor wu thank you mayor i have a question about item r chief wells really just using this as a good excuse for the chief to tell us a little bit more about this program and how uh how our residents can access uh this program welcome Chief. Sure, absolutely. Thank you very much. So as you all are very familiar with, because I talk ad nauseum about it, we do offer a smoke alarm installation program. I think it's one of the simplest yet most pure ways that we do outreach to the community. And you've heard me talk many times about our non-traditional service delivery and ways that we can impact the community before the 911 call. Partnerships that we've had throughout the community that have allowed us to install these smoke alarms are crucially important. We know that we've had 14 lives saved because of house fires in which we have installed these smoke alarms. And unfortunately, you know, through our careers, we've seen instances where fatalities happened, and we believe that smoke alarms would have made a difference. So this is a really important opportunity for us to get out there and to really make a difference in a very tangible way. So this FP&S, Fire Prevention and Safety Grant, will allow us to buy thousands of smoke alarms that we will get out there and be installing. And I know that we'll be out in Masterson Station very soon doing a smoke alarm blitz with alarms that we've got through this grant. I appreciate that, Chief. And I appreciate just generally the philosophy of being really proactive and preventative. I think it's A, obviously saving lives, saving property, but also in the long run, it's a more fiscally responsible stance. It is. A very inexpensive piece of equipment. That's right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. And so my question is regarding letter W. As I actually had a call from residents from Barnard Drive today. Director Martin again. Yes. He's coming on. Welcome back. Hello, sir. Thank you. Could you give me some information about this? Just more info? We've been working on trying to get these easements for a while and you're aware of that. So this change is basically the finalization of the negotiation. So we basically increased our offer enough to be able to get the people to say yes, so we can do this project now. So this is my understanding is the final easement that we need in order to be able to get this project done. Awesome. So that's wonderful news for the district and for those who live on that street, in that neighborhood, exactly. I'm curious if this, due to the delay in getting these easements, there has been a little bit more damage due to the water coming through. Do we have a plan for how to, this is something I'm going to talk to you about outside. We probably need to talk about that because typically we don't reimburse folks for damage due to flooding and things like that. I mean, basically what we're in the business of is mitigating the problem. Okay. That sounds fine to me. We'll talk. Okay. Thank you, sir. And thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. B as in boy. And as you come to the podium, I have had numerous calls because folks are concerned about privacy. and there's 100 cameras that you stated. How many are in the 1st District? We don't break those down by district. I just know there's 100 that are throughout the whole city. There's 100 throughout the city? Do you break them down in sectors? No, I don't believe so. So I know there's a map, and we kind of counted it. I believe 1st District has like three times as much as anybody else in the other district. But my question to you, and I heard about recovering cars again. How many cars was recovered since the last report that you gave us? Grand total, it looks like we've recovered. Not the total, how many since the first time you gave us a report? I don't remember what day that report was. I'm just going to give you what the overall, and that's 269. Okay, so the only reason why I was asked, and I was trying to figure out how many more cars since the first report when the freshman came on, you gave us a total. And then I was trying to see how much improvement was made since the first report. And is there any reason why we can't have an external audit? I really would like to see that before we go forward with a five-year plan. So all of our audits go through a vetting process. Not only does the intelligence unit do that quarterly audit, which is posted on our transparency page for everyone to read, but it also goes not only through me as a commander, but also our assistant chief, and it goes to the chief. And then there's also an independent audit that I am unaware of that is done by our public integrity unit, and that one is done completely autonomous from me. And do we have that summary of what the external? There is no external. The one that public integrity has, it lives in public integrity. So we need an external, because everything, what you're telling me is everything's in-house, is that correct? According to policy, everything is done. And I think that's what my constituents are asking, because that's an internal report. and the decrease of the homicides, was that decrease due to the flock camera? I don't believe independently, no. By them, by themselves, no. I think that probably is a combination of one Lexington wraparound services we're providing. It's not only one singular thing that brought that number down. It's a community coming together to help solve that crime is what that is. So no, did FLOC solve that all by itself? No. But it was a contributor, yes. Okay. And my questions really are from phone calls that I've gotten. And then I know in certain parts of my community, we definitely could need the FLOC cameras. But we have other folks who are seeing this in over surveillance. And I'm listening to you and I'm trying to figure out exactly how much of an improvement and decrease in crime really are the flat cameras producing other than recovering cars and whatever that large amount of recovery that you gave us. So I'm just trying to internalize that so I can give a report back to my community that I serve. Sure. So I think that concludes my, is there any way to get the numbers of how many flood cameras are, or just go back and count? So I know when we did our original deployment plan, we had those broke down according to the demographics that were come off the 2020 census. That is on our transparency page for anyone to look at, so you can look and see where that is. I don't know if we did it by district, but if we did, I'd be more than happy to make sure that you and the rest of the council actually gets that data. Okay. Well, thank you, sir. Well, and I think, Commander Greathouse, before you leave, I know that some, I believe some council members were not here for our initial discussions about the FLOC system. And I will ask, is it still the case that they are placed where there are the most calls from citizens for crime? Is that still the case? So that was part of our original deployment plan was for violent crime. and it was only reported violent crime, so we didn't look at everything. As you know, that has, we believe, has had an impact on what we see as our violent crime. There are other crimes that we see out there that are also an issue. We had over 400 guns that were stolen out of vehicles alone last year, which is driving part of our violent crime. We understand that there are pockets within our community where we don't have coverage, where a lot of those thefts are taking place, and we believe that if there was a time where we needed to remove cameras or expand, that's the coverage area that we need to be. So would it look at the specifics of violent crime? Again, no, not necessarily by itself like we did in the beginning. I think we take a holistic approach and see because we found that this flock system is impacting every single crime within our community, not just violent crime. So the guns that were recovered was in the stolen vehicles? That is not. Because these are license plate readers, right? It's not like you're not supposed to be surveillating people. So if you read the license plates, are you reporting right now that those guns were found in the cars? So yes, those guns that were recoverable because of traffic stops that were made from alerts that came on the LPR system. They are not necessarily coming from specifically stolen cars. They could have been from other criminal cars involved in other crimes. Okay, thank you, sir. Okay, thank you. Council Member Lynch? Thank you, Mayor. I need to recuse from item aye. Aye. And thank you, Councilmember Savigny, for working on this issue. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you. Commander, I just have another question about FLOC. Sorry. I know you're working hard. So with FLOC, I know some of us have people in our districts that are more concerned than others. And I really, you know, at first I wasn't sure what I thought. And then I've seen the benefit of what they've been able to do. The crimes that are solved, you just said you could track, like, if it was a vehicle and it was a gun from a vehicle, you could track because that it was flock-related that tipped you off. But are you able to really trace which crimes are helped being solved by the technology? I know you mentioned, you know, we know we have a reduced gun violence and some other things. But is there a way to actually track what crimes for sure had FLOC involved? Well, I can tell you for sure every crime that we see in our community is being affected by the FLOC cameras. not only the flock cameras, but the FUSIS, our real-time intelligence center, all of those, we're touching every single crime that's in our community. We don't have a check box on a report where it says flock, flock, flock. I can tell you that investigators may spend 30 seconds in the flock system looking for a specific vehicle that may or may not have been associated with a crime. That's a success story, can be a success story. That's leading to the further investigation. It can also rule folks out. That is an alibi backer that if somebody says I was not in that area or I was over here in this area and this is my vehicle, we can also check to see that it also exonerates folks too. So is there a way to track specifically what FLOC is like? This specifically was FLOC related? No. I can tell you though unequivocally that this is helping our officers on a daily basis. Like I said, an hourly basis. Just before I left the real-time intelligence center to come over here, there were folks looking in the flock system looking for somebody that had warrants. So they are using it on a constant basis. So for me to drill it down and say how many crimes over the year that we've looked at are associated with that, it's going to be extremely hard to do because you're going to have to read every single report and then find out if that actually is the case. That makes sense. So it's part of the overall way of solving a crime and surveillance and what's going on. Sure. Like I said, if it's 30 seconds, that 30 seconds either shifted that investigation one way or the other that may not make it into report. It may not be one of those because it's become so commonplace to look for certain vehicles or be able to check that system to see if a vehicle was in an area at a certain time. That investigator or that officer may not specifically notate that in their notes because it was a quick check, the car wasn't there, I moved on to something else. Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you for the explanation. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I ran out earlier. I just wanted to bring the council's attention to and the public to number you and thank the council because we, the Green Space Commission, asked that we get some fund balance money for the Coldstream Park Regional Master Plan. We haven't done since 99, and we did an RFP. We can have Gresham Smith that's going to be doing this by December 31st of 2024. So it's needed to be done. And I just want to thank the council and the mayor for using the money because we need to get this done and it's in the process. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Mayor. And this has to do with letter G and letter H. Is Director Conrad here? Here she comes. And this really is for public knowledge and for my colleagues' awareness. Can you just give a little bit more detail on that? Yes, thank you, Council Member Plumman. So G and H are in regard to a Land Water Conservation Fund grant that we received. It was a matching grant of $25,000. The Friends of Raven Run also put up funding for the grant, which will fund an excavator at Raven Run to work on trails and also do wetland restoration. So this actually puts the deed restriction on those additional parcels at Raven Run that were not under Land Water Conservation Fund restrictions. So it's a good thing for the nature sanctuary. Yeah, I just wanted everybody to know since it was on there. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And this is for item B. I know it's been some conversation today about the flock system. And I'm in support of renewing the agreement, so I'm going to approve item B. But in regards to the conversation about how the system's being audited and assessed internally, Is there a way, and Chief, I can ask you, and I don't think it's about necessarily how the cameras are, at least for me, not how they're infringing on privacy and personal rights, but just having a group or somebody together that is outside of the department, maybe reviewing the audit, and maybe asking some questions that your department can explain how the cameras are being used and utilized to address. Because I think one of the misperceptions is that this is a prevention tool. And I was always told or understood it as an investigative tool. Right. Nobody's ever claimed that it was a prevention tool. It's always been utilized as an investigative tool. And that's what we put it forth as. Our policy, we actually had it vetted by the Human Rights Commission, the ACLU, and other entities that are concerned about people's privacy. We're concerned about that, too. So our policy was made specifically so that that wouldn't occur. And since we've had it in use, we haven't had one complaint about it violating anybody's policy. Sorry, violating anybody's privacy. You can go online and look at our webpage. We put a lot of information out about FLOC and how it's used and its results. if you want me to, I can put, if it's not on there already, I can put our audits on there. But those are subject to open records. We don't have anything to hide, and people can look at those. And if they have questions, they can contact you all and ask, and we'll answer them. So I think anything that we can do to help be more transparent, I think putting them on the transparency page would be beneficial. If you wanted to convene that group of stakeholders to help have input on the policy and just maybe go through the audit with them to explain it, I think that would be beneficial as well. We already did that with them. That's part of the audit. The audit was part of the policy. So we went through that. And we brought them in and even showed them our real-time information center and showed them all of that. You know, I think we've been above board with all of that. And I think, really, yeah. And I appreciate all that. I think just maybe communicating that to the public and then continuing to be above board, I think it's going to be better. Yeah, and here's what I'm going to say. You know, there's a lot of cities that use this, and they get the same results. No infringements upon privacy. I think the sad part of it is that people want to use it as a boogeyman, and it's just not. What it is is technology that's needed today. Crime is different today. I don't have the police to put on every corner, but if I can electronically solve that problem, that's what I'm going to do. My goal is if I can't prevent people from getting hurt, catching the people who did it. And I think that in and of itself can help reduce crime. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term, I think holding people accountable for the bad deeds that they do always helps reduce crime. Yes, sir. And I'll just say about the boogeyman. I still get up every now and then and open my closet door to make sure nobody's in there. And so do I. But I'm one of those people too, I never want to put cameras on my house, but I'm glad I did. Because two weeks ago, I caught somebody sneaking around my house trying to get in my car. Yeah. So, like I said, I'm going to support item B. I think as long as we're shorthanded with bodies in the department and on the street, I think technology is how we try to bridge that gap. And technology does not replace that. I'm a firm believer that police should be interactive with the public and should be held accountable and should answer everything. Technology is always, in my mind, just going to be another tool that we use to help keep people safe and help solve crimes. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Any other comments about new business or questions? All those in favor of approval, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? And we did get the two recusals. All right. Thank you. Now, that leads us to continuing business, and first is our Council Capital Projects. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Baxter seconds. Are there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that passes. Next is, I'll turn this over to Council Member Reynolds for the March 5th Committee Report. Thank you, Mayor. This is for the Social Services and Public Safety Committee on March 5th, 2024. This is the report out summary. The meeting was called to order at 1.01 p.m. The first item on our agenda was approval of the January 23rd, 2024 committee summary. There were no additions or corrections, and the summary was approved without dissent. Next, we had a community paramedicine program update presented by Captain Seth Lockhart with the community paramedicine program. He spoke about a variety of grants the paramedicine program received and the work they had done as a result. He reviewed how referrals are processed from internet, email, and community members, and the benefit of the referrals and data analysis that have been for the team. He mentioned that paramedicine work is locally defined and with 10 programs functioning in Kentucky. Each one is different. Each program is based on individual community needs, and that is what makes the program unique. No action was taken on this item. Our last presentation was from Stephanie Thiexton with the Department of Social Services. She provided an update on the Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition, which is established through ordinance. For decades, domestic violence has been recognized as a national epidemic. She explained that domestic and sexual violence are intersecting issues. If we can reduce trauma at home, we can reduce mental health issues. She reviewed some programs associated with domestic violence, such as Green Dot, which is an evidence-based prevention program that trains active bystanders to stop violence before it occurs. She spoke about outreach and awareness and said October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Moving forward, she said areas of focus are men, immigrants, faith communities, children, workplaces, and continue promoting existing content. No action was taken on this item. The meeting was adjourned at 2.25 p.m. and that concludes my report out. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Are there any questions for Council Member Reynolds? All right, thank you. Next up is Council Member James Brown and the Budget Finance and Economic Development. Thank you, Mayor. This is a partial report out, summary of motions from the March 19th Budget Finance Economic Development Committee. The meeting began at 1.01 p.m., Parks Funding Ballot Referendum. was the first item. The committee heard a presentation on the parks funding ballot referendum from parks advisory chair Victoria Meyer and chair of the parks advisory board sustainable funding subcommittee David Lowe. The parks master plan identified $123 million in capital needed to achieve the master plan updates or approximately $8.5 million in annual capital needs. A successful 2024 ballot referendum establishes a dedicated funding source for parks and delivers $8 million annually for parks capital projects, utilizes a fiscally responsible funding mechanism, and enables pursuit of state and federal matching grants. The average homeowner would pay $52.88 per year in additional taxes or 2.25 cents per $100 on all real property. On behalf of the committee, I move to advance to the full council a resolution to place on the ballot a referendum on the question of establishing a parks fund as herein presented. I so move. Second. Well, we had about 10 seconds. Council Member Baxter. All right. Are there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Oh, I'm sorry. Anyone opposed? All right. Council Member Baxter? Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to take a moment to say a few words. Since I wasn't able to attend the BFED meeting with the presentation, first I wanted to thank Council Member Worley for stepping in on my behalf and for my colleagues for their unanimous approval in moving this item forward. But I wanted to take a moment to especially thank David Lowe and Victoria Meyer for all of their tireless work on this initiative. The numbers of hours of research and community outreach is appreciated and noteworthy. I also want to thank you for taking the time to meet with each council member and answer all of our questions in advance. I knew at our initial meeting that I was so impressed with all of the collaboration of the Parks Advisory Board and their community that I wanted to sponsor this ballot initiative and put it into committee. I wanted to give our residents the opportunity to exercise their vote and voice their support or not on this potential tax. I would just like to take a moment to encourage the community to visit parksfundinglex.com for more information or email info at parksfundinglex.com with specific questions. Thank you, Mayor. Very good. Thank you. All right, now it's time for council reports. Anybody have one? Councilmember Menares. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to take the time to thank our police, fire, E-911, emergency management, parks, waste management, and all of our city employees who came together with the major weather event that we had last Tuesday, April 2nd. And then I also want to wish a happy birthday to the Vice Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Shan? Thank you, Mayor. I just want to quickly note that the Lansdowne Merrick Neighborhood Association meeting is tonight at 630 at the Tates Creek Church. And then this weekend on Sunday at 10 AM, the Eidolour neighborhood is having a stream clean up along the Eidolour Park there. And next week on Tuesday, the Fairway Neighborhood Association is having their meeting at the Pivot Brewing Company on Delaware at 7 o'clock. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. Well, we spoke about gun violence today. And this weekend, the Antonio Franklin Jr. Violence Intervention Project Peace Walk will be taking place. It's an event that I attend every year. So that will be in Duncan Park at 1.30 p.m. And there will be lots of events and then also a one mile walk. So I would like to encourage everyone to attend that. I know Council Member Fogle will be there with a special presentation. And so that's one way to show your support. and then at 6 p.m. at the Campbell House in my district will be the Bluegrass Youth Ballet 20th Year Gala, an organization I've been a part of a lot over the years. And so if you're interested in supporting them and celebrating their work in our community, you can go to bluegrassyouthballet.org to get more information on that. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Mayor. And as you all are aware, we have continuing outreach meetings with our different hamlets. And so we're going to have our next one on April the 23rd. It's at the New Vine Baptist Church. And this is the Fort Springs Hamlet. And what's really cool about this, it's 150 years that that settlement has been there. And that was back in 1874. So they're very poised to celebrate. They've got T-shirts, and they've got all kinds of events. But I know some of you have joined the outreach, and it's so much fun to go to and listen. So I want to be like, get that date out on the calendar, the 23rd. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Mayor. I just would like to highlight a few events that happened during our spring recess. One of them was some tree planting. A special thank you to Dr. Michael Lauer and all of his biology classes at STEAM Academy. they planted 30 trees on the school property and I'm excited because our tree canopy in district two was 12 percent so it was extremely low so those students and Dr. Lauer and trees Lexington in partnership planted 30 trees right behind the school and I'm very excited about what that's going to bring to the second district when those students that seemed found out about our low tree canopy score in district two they were like what can we do council member Lynch I was like plant some trees, please. And so that's exactly what they did in partnership with Trees Lexington. So thank you to Dr. Lauer's class, his biology classes in Trees Lexington for doing that tree planting, and I hope more are to come. Also, during our spring recess, we had Adopt-a-Park Day, and last Thursday was Government Day, and I did that in partnership with Council Member Fogle and our Partners for Youth Department, and it was just a really great day. So I just want to extend some thank yous to our police department, our fire department, waste management, environmental quality, the Georgetown Street Area Neighborhood Association, both Councilman Fogle and my aide, Kristen and LaShawn, who did a lot of coordinating and planning, and special thank you to Partners for Youth, Shanrika and Shante Bruce. It was a great day for the kids. Even though it was about 40-something degrees, they did not stop them from eating all the popsicles that they could. So thank you all for supporting us on Government Day. I think the kids had a really, really good time. that day. Also that happened during the break this past Saturday, we had a Madison Station Creek cleanup. So it was totally organized by my neighbors and I was excited to come alongside them to help clean up the creek last Saturday. A special thank you to Waste Management for bringing out the trash cans and the recycling bins that helped us because we did a lot of cleaning last Saturday and our creek looks very beautiful. So thank you to my neighbors who organized the event. We did some really great work. We came together to clean our our neighborhood. And then lastly, April the 7th, just a couple of days ago, was Delta Sigma Theta Day in Lexington. A few years ago, our sorority was recognized with a mayoral proclamation to celebrate all the awesome work that we do as a community service organization in this community. So I just want to give acknowledgement to all of our sorority and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. And there are several that work for this city government that do great work in our community. Our community service is one of our strong threads besides scholarship and sisterhood. So I'm very glad that we can be acknowledged with a mayoral proclamation. I just want to highlight that again this year. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Luguri. Thank you, Mayor. Along the lines of trees, I just want to remind everybody that this Saturday, April 13th, is Lexington's 25th annual Reforest the Bluegrass event at Coldstream Park. It's going to be really fun. You get to see all different types of people, all different ages, families, groups, individuals out there planting trees and be a part of wonderful collective action. This has been going on since 1999, and this initiative has seen over 215,000 trees planted by more than 18,000 volunteers, which is a really, really impressive turnout for our community. The mission of Reforest the Bluegrass is to expand the city's urban tree canopy. And it plays a vital role in safeguarding local waterways as well. So I would say, colleagues, even if you can just come out for an hour, it's really fulfilling work. It's fun. You get to learn a lot from the people around you and meet people who care about trees and about our community. It's happening from 9 AM until 1 PM, and there'll be music, food, and fun for everyone. So if you want to share it out, it's lexingtonky.gov forward slash reforest. And I also, like Council Member Menarez, I want to say a huge thank you for all the employees and all of our hardworking utility company employees as well who are out there cleaning up some really massive damage after our weather event last week. There is a lot of tree canopy that was damaged, a lot of homes that were damaged as well in the third district. And we're just really grateful for people who got out there under strenuous conditions and helped clean up our community and keep everyone safe. So thank you all. And finally, I want to remind anybody who is tuning in right now that the Southern Heights Neighborhood Block Party has been moved from this week until next week. So it's going to be on the 18th, on Thursday the 18th at 6 p.m. We'll be working here, but Southern Heights will be partying. They're going to be doing a lot of fun activities together, having a food truck, getting together. So if you're in that neighborhood, get out there and meet your neighbors. You're going to really enjoy it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to tell everybody that this Saturday is opening day for the Toyota Bluegrass Miracle League. And if you're not familiar with it, it's an adaptive baseball league that provides players, regardless of their ability, the opportunity to play baseball in a safe, fun environment. The league serves over 200 players from in and around central Kentucky, and all the games are played at Chiloto Park. Games will be, they're played weekly at 10, 11, 12, and 1, and run through May 18th. And if you're just looking for something fun to do, it's a joy to watch them play. so and then also just wanted to take a moment of personal privilege if i may and thank everybody for putting your arms around me with the unexpected passing of my father a few weeks ago and i wanted to take a special moment to thank our e911 the call taker that i called she was i can't remember her name right this minute but she was um so wonderful and the fire personnel and the police and the coroner that all came were the most professional and loving people and i just know with certainty now that our community is in great hands with all of the individuals that i had the kind of unfortunate opportunity to work with but i just wanted to to thank them and then And thank all of my LFUCG family for all of your support during this really, really hard time. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. And Council Member Baxter, you are continuously in our prayers. Yeah. So on to my council comment. So the very before we were able to fully go on council recess or spring recess, I had the pleasure along with two other individuals that are very familiar to many of you, Chief Weathers and Chief Jason Wells over there. We took part in Read Across America, which took place, of course, where? In the 6th District at Frederick Douglass High School. So it was a pleasure to be part of this as a council member instead of an educator and read to our youth. And it was nice to have my niece, who was able to participate as well. It was just a great event. And I'm just thankful for all the educators that took part in that event, once again, giving their time to our next generation of leaders and to our communities. a community. So thank you Chiefs, both of our Chiefs for showing up and being there for our young people in our community. That's my niece, my beautiful Kennedy. She was a dog. So also I want everyone in the 6th District to be aware that we are having our next district-wide meeting is scheduled for April 22nd. You can go ahead and mark your calendars for October 21st as well for our fall meeting. So this upcoming meeting we will have individuals from our from the ballot referendum team who will be there along with our members from the mayor's office. Mayor Heather Lyon will be present to talk about arts in our district as well as another group that I cannot recall. Next, I want everyone to be aware that on April 18th, we will have a joint, get this, Councilmember Ellinger, a joint City Council and Fayette County School Board joint retreat. It is a joint retreat, which means it is not mandatory, but I would love for everyone, if possible, to be there because it's important for us all to have all hands on deck and work together. The purpose, like it says, is to increase collaboration, which we already do collaborate with the county public schools, but I believe it can be more intentional and more transparent since we are serving the same population. Is that everything? Oh, and I don't know if you noticed this. I am wearing my red, and I don't know if my lipstick is still on, red lips, because, as usual, I'm supporting the great University of Louisville. You're right. This week, the squad that I created, the University of Louisville All-Girl Cheer Squad, as well as the co-ed squads, yay, they are all going to nationals to compete. And I just want to wish all of the young people who are carrying on the legacy that, I mean, I've got to say that I helped create. Wishing you all well. I know that you all are Louisville. You are Louisville ladies, Louis ladies, and you're going to do the great things that you will do. And we're cheering you on. I am cheering you on. And you can see that I'm there in the midst of my favorite cheerleaders in the nation. That is all. Yeah, that is me. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Vogel. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. As we have talked about safety gun violence a lot today in our committee meeting, and as well as just visiting some of the budget items, safety is very important. And last night, Green Acres held a meeting, OneLex. I don't see them in the room anymore, but Larry Johnson attended for OneLex, and Green Acres raised their concerns, and Parks and Recreation, and Commissioner, and Director Conrad is going to be working hard to get more lighting. And Kyle Chief Weathers, and he answered the phone, and he said, sure, he'll come to the next meeting. So thank you for that, because Green Acres is really asking for more coverage of police presence. And then the police said, you know, it's getting warm, so we can also offer up the police that ride on the bicycles, which Green Acres is really going to appreciate that. So it was a great meeting in Green Acres last night at their neighborhood association. Little do we know that we are going to lose several historian pastors are going to be retiring this year to our sadness. But we understand that pastoral work is really hard and showing up in hospitals and funerals and preaching. And so some of those pastors is Bishop Carter from Bethsaida and Pastor Joseph Owens from Shallow and Reverend Willis Polk. They will be retiring this year. And so it's going to be a big loss out of the pulpit to our community. But we will honor them. And just know that our community, we're on search for other pastors, and we hope that pastors will emerge from Lexington. But normally they come from other cities because Lexington is such a great city. Also, Vice Mayor Wu, happy birthday. Wishes to you. And I didn't catch, Council Member, I didn't catch what school that was. All those trees was planted. I want to make sure. Steam Academy. Okay, thank you. So congratulations, Steam Academy. Also on the 15th, there will be a diversity, equity, inclusion meeting at the Lyric where our very own Kristen Adair, who is the executive director, will be on that panel. And we will have a lot of engagement from George Washington Carver as well as Councilmember Gray's high school. She has gathered all the high schools from the north end, which is Dunbar and Douglas. And so they will be, yeah, I'm sorry, Brian Station. And so they will be in attendance. So there's a lot going on. And rumor has it that we're going to have a battle of the badges where the police is going to play in a ball game against the fire department. And so I'm going to wager bet. I don't usually gamble. Hardly ever go to Red Mount. So just stay tuned for that one. We can't wait to see that after the Legends play. So I just wanted to make that announcement. Are you letting us know publicly who your favorite is? No, I better keep that under wraps. But I also would like to say in my closing statement that thank you to the police department for the work that you do. And I hope that when I make my comments, it's not taken personal. It's just that my community really, really, and thank you for seeing that page that they can go to to be transparent. It's just that our office gets flooded with the calls and maybe that's why they're not calling the police department. So, but thank you for the work that you do in Lexington. Thank you for the arrest of some of the murders. I've been following it. So there has been some good work done catching criminals in the first district in those shootings. And so I thank you very much for that. Thank you. Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to, I don't know, not a reminder so much, but we lost a community leader while we were on break, Cecil Dunn. And I had the pleasure of knowing Cecil and working with him through, he was Lexington Center Corporation Chair at one time and on the board. And very instrumental in the development of the Lexington Center. And he's best known for the past few years as being director of the Hope Center. So a very community-minded person that we need to be proud of, that he leaves a legacy for the community. So I just wanted to recognize that. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right. This takes us to the mayor's report. Could I have a motion to approve? Council Member Savigny. And I heard a second. Council Member Fogle. Are there questions? It was rather big this time. All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that passes. And then we also have the price contract bids, if I could have a motion to approve. That's Council Member Sevigny and second Council Member Gray. Any questions on that? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. This brings us to public comment for issues not on the agenda. We have one person signed up and that is Jonathan Richardson. If you'll come to the podium and restate your name and your council district, you'll have three minutes. Welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. I just want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. I want to thank the mayor and happy birthday, Vice Mayor and Council Member Baxter, I'm sorry about your father. Today's a very special day to me as well. I lost my nephew to a drug overdose. It'll be, it's actually three years today. He overdosed from fentanyl and it's a big problem, not only in Kentucky, but in all parts of the country. And I know that the police and the government were working to combat that and to lower the effects of that. But when I lost my nephew, it inspired me to start a nonprofit organization. And the name of my nonprofit organization is Unity in the Community. And I want to thank Councilmember Ms. Plowman. She actually helped me with the Neighborhood Development Fund and we were able to buy shoes, clothing, and food to the unhoused population. So we typically do that on a weekly basis here in Lexington, Kentucky. And I know that we have a population of unhoused people of around 2,500. And I just appreciate our first responders. I appreciate the mayor and all of you here today. and I just want to again just thank you because it's an honor and it's a privilege to be an American citizen and to live here and to be able to exercise your First Amendment right and the freedom of speech so I just want to thank you all and I also want to hopefully inspire the youth and future generations to come after me because we need more people here at meetings like this. These are open to the public and I just want to try to be an example to other people that together in unity there's so much that we can accomplish. JFK once said that together in unity there's very little that we cannot accomplish and we've learned this since elementary. United we stand, divided we fall. And so it's just great to be able to take the initiatives and try and I know that we can accomplish so much and greatness lives in all of us. So again, thank you all and I really appreciate it. And also I remember on Christmas Day when I met Council Member Ms. Fogle, I went to the Hope Village and I was going to pass out some Papa John's and she was there with thousands of sandwiches from the Catholic Action Center. So all that day we went around Lexington and we passed out sandwiches to the unhoused community. And so I think that I've shown that I can do a lot with very limited resources. And it's just an honor and it's a privilege to be here with you all. And regardless of your religion, we all know that tomorrow's not promised to anyone. So I'm just thankful for today and I'm thankful for everyone here. Thank you all. Thank you so very much. All right. Before we adjourn, let's wish Vice Mayor Wu another happy birthday. It's not quite over. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? All right. All those in favor, say aye. We are adjourned. Thank you. Should we just stretch it out?