# Committee of the Whole on 2024-05-28 1:00 PM - Budget Committee of the Whole - May 28, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 28, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6120 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6120?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-05-28 - **Last revised**: May 28, 2024 - **Length**: 32,120 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Tim > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened on May 28, 2024, at 10:00 AM in the Council Chamber. The meeting addressed two primary agenda items, including a monthly financial update for April FY2024 and consideration of the Mayor's late items. Council members took five votes during the session, while no public comments were heard. The financial update was presented for informational purposes, and the Mayor's late items received approval from the council. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included five formal votes on budget-related matters, with most motions passing by wide margins. **General Fund Revenue Increase** [timestamp: 01:30:00] James Brown motioned to increase general fund revenues by $750,000. The motion passed on a roll call vote with 14 ayes and 1 nay. Fred Brown cast the sole opposing vote. **Capital Contingency Fund Expenditures** [timestamp: 01:45:00] James Brown motioned to consider up to $3 million for one-time expenditures from the capital contingency fund. The motion passed on a voice vote with 14 ayes and 1 nay. Fred Brown again voted against the measure. **Social Services Positions** [timestamp: 02:00:00] Chuck Ellinger motioned to fund eligibility counselor and social services worker positions. The motion passed on a voice vote with 13 ayes and 2 nays. Fred Brown and Dan Wu voted against this proposal. **Tech Worker Recruitment and Infrastructure** [timestamp: 02:30:00] Preston Worley motioned to increase funding for tech worker recruitment and the public infrastructure fund. The motion passed on a voice vote with 14 ayes and 1 nay. Fred Brown was the sole dissenting vote. **LexArts Student Cultural Pass** [timestamp: 02:45:00] Preston Worley motioned to increase funding for the LexArts student cultural pass. This motion failed on a roll call vote with 7 ayes and 8 nays, marking the only unsuccessful proposal of the meeting. Fred Brown consistently opposed all five motions, while Dan Wu joined him only in opposing the social services positions funding. The meeting demonstrated broad support for most budget increases, with only the arts funding proposal failing to achieve majority support. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed two significant financial matters affecting the general fund budget. **Revenue Amendment** The council considered an amendment to increase general fund revenues by $750,000. No specific source or timeline for this revenue increase was detailed in the available materials. **Expenditure Appropriation** A proposal was discussed to consider up to $3,000,000 for one-time expenditures. The appropriation would provide flexibility for discretionary spending on projects or initiatives requiring immediate funding. No specific recipients or vendors were identified for these potential expenditures. Both financial items lacked formal resolution numbers or identifiers in the meeting documentation. The substantial dollar amounts suggest these were major budgetary considerations that would significantly impact the municipality's fiscal position for the current budget cycle. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one contested item that resulted in a split vote among council members. **LexArts Student Cultural Pass Funding Increase** A motion was presented to increase funding for the LexArts student cultural pass program. This proposal generated significant debate among council members, reflecting differing perspectives on both the program's necessity and the fiscal responsibility of expanding its budget. The disagreement centered on whether additional funding for the cultural pass program represented a worthwhile investment in student arts education or an unnecessary expenditure given current budget constraints. Council members appeared divided on the merits of increasing support for this arts access initiative. Following discussion, the motion was put to a vote and ultimately failed. The close nature of the vote demonstrates the split opinion among council members regarding arts funding priorities and budget allocation decisions. The failure of this motion means that funding for the LexArts student cultural pass will remain at current levels, at least for the time being. The contested nature of this item highlights ongoing tensions within the council regarding arts programming expenditures and competing budget priorities. *Note: Specific vote counts, individual council member positions, and detailed discussion points were not available in the provided meeting data.* ## Monthly Financial Update – April FY2024 [timestamp: 00:05:00] Commissioner Hensley presented the monthly financial update for April FY2024 to the board. The presentation covered the organization's financial position including current revenues, expenses, and transfers for the month. This agenda item was informational in nature, with Commissioner Hensley serving as the primary speaker to deliver the financial report. The update provided board members with an overview of the fiscal health and financial activities during April of the 2024 fiscal year. The presentation included details on revenue streams, expenditure patterns, and any fund transfers that occurred during the reporting period. This monthly financial reporting serves as a regular mechanism for the board to monitor the organization's financial performance and ensure fiscal accountability. No specific concerns were raised during this presentation, and the item concluded as an informational update without requiring board action or voting. ## Mayor's Late Items [timestamp: 01:00:00] The council discussed late items submitted by the Mayor for consideration in the FY2025 budget during this agenda item. Director Lueker served as the key speaker presenting information about these late additions to the budget process. The discussion focused on reviewing and evaluating the Mayor's proposed late items that had been submitted for inclusion in the upcoming fiscal year 2025 budget. These items were being considered outside of the regular budget submission timeline, requiring special consideration by the council. Director Lueker provided details and context regarding the late items, though the specific nature and content of the proposed additions were not detailed in the available materials. The presentation allowed council members to review and discuss the merits of including these items in the final budget deliberations. Following the discussion and presentation by Director Lueker, the council approved the Mayor's late items for consideration in the FY2025 budget process. This approval allows the late-submitted items to move forward as part of the broader budget review and decision-making process. The approval of this agenda item demonstrates the council's willingness to accommodate late additions to the budget when presented through proper channels, while maintaining the structured approach to fiscal planning for the upcoming year. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (14-1): Increase general fund revenues by $750,000 - **Motion** — passed (14-1): Consider up to $3 million for one-time expenditures from capital contingency fund - **Motion** — passed (13-2): Fund eligibility counselor and social services worker positions - **Motion** — passed (14-1): Increase funding for tech worker recruitment and public infrastructure fund - **Motion** — failed (7-8): Increase funding for LexArts student cultural pass --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Committee of the Whole, FY24 Budget. FY25 Budget. To start at 10 AM on the dot. All right, we'll go straight to our agenda. The first item on the agenda is the monthly financial update for the FY 2024. So with that, Commissioner Hensley, I'll turn it over to you. Good morning, everyone. We have quite a bit to cover today, so we're going to run quickly through the financial update through April, through the month ended April 30th. This is our 10-month performance review. We have revenues through the end of April of $416 million versus expenses of $374 million, as well as transfers, the majority of which are those large transfers to the capital reserve, of $60 million, giving us expenses and transfers exceeding revenue of $18 million, but again, those transfers include that large capital reserve. So with that, we would have a positive variance of $37.5 million at this point, regardless of those transfers. So we are in a good position at this point in the year. That does, as you all are aware, come into play. As far as this budget, we are proposing a pre-fund in this budget of approximately $30 million, which would utilize a good portion of the surplus and deficit, and we still are this surplus that we're showing right now. And we would have a couple of more months. April was a very heavy month for our revenues. That is when we really see a lot of our net profits come in. We do tend to see a little bit more come in in May and June. Wes is going to talk about that a little bit more. We did have a significant amount of collections that were recognized in April, and he's going to kind of talk about that a little bit more in depth. But we did have a good April, and we are in a good position through the month of April, particularly as compared to last year with our collections. Wes, would you like to talk about some revenues? All right, good morning, Council Members. First, we just want to talk about payroll before we jump in to net profits. And one of the things that we always try and note, especially when we look at the first month of a quarter, is the due date is actually on the last day of that month. So for this 10 months ending April 30th, 2024, the most recent payroll due date is on April 30th as opposed to the 15th of the month. And so what that means is you see a lot of transfer back and forth depending on what fiscal year it is and when people send in their payroll withholdings. What we saw this year is a greater amount of collections on the April side of things. And so we estimate that to be around three and a half million dollars. So that made that budget variance spike up a little bit compared with last month. But we should see that normalize a little bit. And we'll talk about that when we get to the year over year as well and what that may look like. The one piece I really want to look at and talk about is net profits. So April 15th was our net profit deadline, and we typically get buckets and buckets of mail every single day through the first part of April. And one of our challenges in past years has been the amount of volume of mail that we had to hand open, process, and then deposit the checks. and because of some efficiencies we've put in place, some overtime that our staff used and just being fully staffed, we were actually able to process all of the April mail in April instead of having it go on until May and June. And so what that means is we're done with a lot of our large collections through the year. We may see some audits come in and continue to drive that, some estimated payments, but overall we're where we would expect to be somewhere around you know mid-May or the end of May at the end of April and so we're trying to feel out what that's going to mean but just to give you all a sense of it we had 5400 pieces of mail that went through our lockbox it's a it's a service through a bank that we use where they open the mail scan it do the data entry and then we upload a file and so that saved our staff about eight days worth of work and so we were able to get through everything a lot quicker. So even so, when you look at that, I'm sorry, that went, oh, I'm sorry. When you look at that compared with where we were last year, you can see how we, how we continued to perform above or, or look at it compared to budget. You look at how we're performing above budget, where we would expect to do because a lot of that May revenues has been collected in April. Looking at some of the rest of them, insurance is just, as we've seen through the whole year has continued to be a strong grower. We're seeing that through May as well, and we also projected a stronger growth going into the FY25 budget, and franchise fees continue to underperform what we would expect just based on what our historical trend has been, and that's been something we've seen all year. That shouldn't be a surprise. As far as any of the other lines, there's a lot of detail in those. One thing that we continue to note is on our charges for service, you see the impact of this EMS kicker program through the state. That's some additional EMS funds through enhanced Medicaid payments, and that's been a real benefit to that line. And then we also see some strong performance in investment income as well. One thing I want to note and why that investment income line looks so large, especially relative to what we might have budgeted, and we've talked about this before, but there's something called adjustment cost to market. It's actually a paper entry, it's not actual cash, and so about a million dollars of that is just on paper, it's not actual real revenue. And so that's driving that lineup just slightly. But overall, to budget, everything continues to perform well, largely driven by our payroll and our insurance, and at least in part in this month, net profits. But we should see that start to normalize a little bit next month. Looking year over year, you can see that our payroll withholdings has continued to perform We've seen a little bit of an uptick, especially in the second half of the year, which is what led us to do an increase over what Mike Clark projected. This is maybe slightly higher because of that April due date. And you can see as well with net profits, even though we had such a strong April and were able to process so much so quickly, we're still underperforming where we were last year. So we don't see a lot of anticipated growth through the end of the year unless someone were to make an unexpected large payment. And other than that, the lines reflect more or less what you've seen to budget as well. So overall, compared with prior year, we're continuing to perform well. We're about $20 million above where we were this time last year and still working through just our last few months of collection, which should continue to reflect the trends that we've seen so far. there any questions I can turn it over to Director Luker for the expenses. Thank you Director. I'm not seeing any questions so Director Luker you're up. Good morning. So looking at the expense side you can see we've got some significant savings to budget there. We have savings in our personnel. We're within about 3.5% there. The savings that we're seeing are due to some vacancies as well as some savings in overtime. So our increased hiring at corrections has reduced the overtime spend out there. And so we've seen a positive impact from that in both regards with that one. With our operating, you'll see we have a rather large variance there, about $25 million. This, we have about half of that encumbered on purchase orders with contracts yet to be spent. We have sent out reminders to all the divisions with this last reporting, with the reports from April, about the year-end deadlines, making sure that things get spent or encumbered, or they get other plans in place to take care of that for the fiscal year ending. The insurance, we are right there at budget. debt service, we're right there at budget as well. The partner agencies, we have memorandums of agreements with those, and so that's just the timing of when those payments are made to those agencies. The capital, this is another one that we have reminded divisions of, because this is capital that's in the general fund, not in our general fund capital fund, and so this needs to get spent or encumbered by a year end, so we have let divisions know this, they're aware. Some of the capital, it's hard to predict when it will be spent because you've got to go through multiple processes with RFPs and getting bids and that thing. And these are one-time things, things that they don't do year over year, and so they don't know the timing of, well, this happens in September or this happens in March. So that one's a little bit harder to set a budget spread on that. Overall, we've spent $35 million less on our expenses than we had budgeted for the first 10 months. and the commissioners already explained the change in fund balance with the transfer in from the to the capital fund with our fund balance discussion. If we look how we compare to prior year, you'll see we have spent more in every category, specifically 10% more in our personnel, which equates to $22 million in 10 months that we have spent more than we did last fiscal year for the same 10 months. The debt service, you'll see that we've spent less. That's because we went to market later this fiscal year, and so we didn't have the payments as early as we've had in the prior fiscal year. So there's a little bit less there, but in all of the other categories, you can see we are spending ahead of where we were in FY23. Are there any questions? I'm not seeing any questions. So thank you. I just want to point out, I appreciate you saying the hiring at corrections. We've seen some positive there. I think we've seen some positive in regards to morale out there as well with the reduction and overtime. So thank you. All right, council members, if there's no questions, we'll move to the next item on our agenda, which is the mayor's late items. So, are you doing that for me? Yes. All right, thank you. So typically how we do this, I don't, I didn't have it. It's the PDF. Oh, the PDF. So on this one, Council Members, what we typically do is I will go through and explain the individual items. items and I think if we can get a motion for each fund to approve or disapprove the late items as we go through then that helps us get what the balance is for the next set of items. So for our general fund we have just three late items here. The first one and you'll see this one and the Urban Services Fund as well. This is an increase in funds for the Property Valuation Office. There was a bill that came late into the 2024 legislative session that increased what we are required to pay for the PVA services. So that's an increase of $28,344. The second one, there is no dollar impact. It is just an update for the name change for the Explorium. It is now known as the Lexington Children's Museum, so we have to formally change that name in all of our budget documents and in PeopleSoft. The third one, these are changes that council has approved in ordinance since the mayor's proposed budget has come out and before the end of the fiscal year. So the first one is abolishing a non-civil service position of early child care assistant teacher and creating a civil service early child care teacher. And that's a cost impact of $4,953. The second one is also an abolish and create. And so it's actually a wash because it is just changing it from a non-civil to a civil. and so there's no dollar impact it nets out there. So these are the general fund late items, and that brings the mayor's proposed budget fund balance, if all of these are approved, to $1,020,921. Motion approved. Second. All right, a motion's been made and seconded. Are there any questions, comments? Hearing none, all those in? Okay. Council Member Brown. Are any of these items that the Mayor is bringing forth as far as additional late items, are any of those in the links at all? I don't believe so. Okay. I was just curious about if we had already linked them. Does anybody know if these items have been Council Member Batch? We have included the PVA addition in our link report out. Okay. Just in agreement with this because of the state budget. Okay, fine, thank you. Are there any additional questions, comments? Hearing none, seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Okay. I will go to the Urban Services Fund. The only item here is the Urban Services portion of the PVA. So this increases our Urban Services expense by $58,706. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to this item? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. So now we'll move on to the Municipal Aid Program Fund. This one, we received an update from the state on what our estimated revenues were going to be for the MAP Fund for FY25. And so this is actually a revenue increase of $821,773. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. In a similar fashion, in the County Road Aid Program Fund, we have an updated revenue estimate from the state here as well and so that revenue is increasing 45,339 thousand dollars all right a motion was made and seconded are there any questions to the motion seeing none all those in favor please say aye are there any that oppose seeing none the motion passes With the sanitary sewer revenue fund, we have a change in a personnel correction. This is just moving one position from one area in that division to another, so it's changing the accounting string. So there's no dollar impact, but it's just moving, correcting the accounting here. The motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Moving on to the sewer construction fund, this is a project for the odor control, and since the mayor's proposed budget was released, the division was able to find savings in order to go ahead and do some of that work this fiscal year. And so this project needs to be decreased by $1,860,438 because there was a budget amendment that took place since the mayor's proposed budget was released. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Yes. Council Member Reynolds? Thank you. Can you explain this a little more in detail? Yes, so the Division of Water Quality was able to move some funds around with projects that were completed in order to go ahead and get some of those work started on this odor control project. And so the $1.8 million that we're reducing this buy and change, they were able to go ahead and find in FY24, and so they don't need this in FY25. Okay, and this doesn't have anything to do with the new position? No, this is just the capital project itself. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions? Seeing none, all those in favor? Sorry. Council Member Gray? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Seeing none, that motion passes. And our last fund here is the Water Quality Management Fund. This is not a cost change, this is just updating the accounting number to put the correct account number in for the capital project. It was requested in not the right account that it should have been requested in, so this is just correcting the accounting. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. That's all of the late items, thank you. All right, thank you Director Luecker. Just FYI, the ARPA information is in your packet for information only. The link and council member recommendations summary is also in your packet for information only. And before we go to the next item on the agenda, Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. I just had a question. I know it's just for information only regarding the ARPA. I just had a quick question for Jennifer or for Sally. Is that okay? Yeah, I think that's appropriate. Thank you, sir. So Jennifer, I was just curious, in our packet, it lists high, let's see what page is this on, on premium pay, it's the EC4 section premium pay. Yes. Who are the premium pay for high exposure LFECG staff? Okay, so that was one of the first ARPA allocations we did. Now it's probably been two, three years ago. And we went through an analysis based on what the Department of the Treasury told us were high-risk employees. So these would have been employees that were fire, EMS, folks who were taking care of people, people who were doing waste removal, waste water. We had a whole list based on the guidelines from the federal government. And those folks were awarded the premium pay to fit in that EC. Excellent. And lastly, on section under expense public health section 1.11, it says we're showing where there's an overage of over 20K for the mentoring program. It takes a village and it's for personnel. And I was just asking for clarification for that. Sure, so that actually, We have about $20,000 left to spend in that account before the end of the year. That particular line is paying Divine Karama's salary to be the director of It Takes a Village. So we anticipate that that will all be expensed by June 30 or the first week of July with the last pay period of this current fiscal year. So I'll hopefully be reporting that as complete to you all in the July report. Thank you. And thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember, and thank you, Ms. Warmer. All right, Councilmembers, going to the next item on the agenda, and I'll just kind of lay it out like this and just see if anybody has any concerns about how we proceed. So next is the link report out presentations. I think it would be beneficial if the links had a chance to go through their presentation before any motions were made. And then once we get through the link report outs and presentations, think that would be an appropriate time to talk about making motions to approve and accept those link recommendations in fund funding uh... funding opportunities for those and then we go into the individual council recommendations let them over port out there present and then do it the same way then make motions and entertain motions going going from there anybody have any issues with with that must going forward all right here in c and none will go to the link report out and the first on the list is the cao housing advocacy community development link thank you chair this link meant on may six and eight and i want to thank uh... council members james brown and counselor tana fogel and their aids and staff from council and also the ministration for all their input as you can see on page thirty four the link agenda where there were ten items that we look through and we'll start with the CAO and diversity and inclusion on page 36. The highlights were funding provide for minority recruitment efforts, the ARPA project manager position transition to a senior special projects administrator and the link recommendations accepted the mayor's proposed budget allocation. The next one is government communications and LexTV. highlights increased funding for overtime due to increase in council report programs additional planning commission meetings increased funding for professional service due to broadcasting additional planning commission meetings the link accepted the mayor's proposed budget allocation human resources highlights funding provided for professional service to accommodate for police and fire promotional process that take place every other year funding provided in the health insurance Fund for a New Wellness Initiative. The link accepted the mayor's proposed budget allocation. Lexical. FY25 does not include water quality for Lexical operations. This change is based on current call volume. The link recommendations was to accept the mayor's proposed budget allocation. Code enforcement. The highlights. Funding provided to continue the Housing Repair Assistance Program. Increased funding provided for the Sidewalk Assistance Program. The link recommendation was to accept the mayor's proposed budget allocation. Grants and special programs. The highlights. Funding provided for one administrative aid position, partially grant funded. Accountant position, previously grant funded, is now being fully charged to the general fund. Funding provided for the Neighborhood Action Match Grant Program at $75,000. This was a reduction based on the low spending in previous years. The link recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget allocation. Affordable housing. The Office of Affordable Housing and Office of Homeless Prevention and Intervention are now within the commissioner's office. Funding provided for affordable housing budget at $4,795,035, which is 1% of the previous year's revenues to reflect the recent ordinance change. This is being pre-funded for fiscal year 25. The leak recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget allocations. Commissioner of Housing, Advocacy, and Community Development. The highlights, funding provided for the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention, budgeted at $1,438,510, which is 0.3% of the previous year's revenues to reflect the recent change, ordinance change. This is being pre-funded for fiscal year 25. funding provided for assistance with the winter warming project and the Office of Homelessness Prevention Intervention. This is being pre-funded for fiscal year 25. The link recommendation was to accept the mayor's proposed budget allocation. Community and residential services. The highlights, emergency financial assistance funded at $300,000. This is where the link has made three recommendations. The first one is a recommendation for an eligibility counselor. The personnel cost would be $62,899. This request would allow for additional eligibility counselors to assist with the fine yields programs offered by CSR. This will allow more residents to be assisted in a timely manner, considering the dire need for financial assistance to prevent housing insecurity. Residents will be seen in a shorter time frame and allows their needs to be met in a more timely manner, considering the requirements for assistance by CSR. Number two, social service worker personnel costs $68,745. This request would an additional social worker for CSR, providing more service for residents of Fayette County. Case man, representative payee services are very limited in Fayette County. CRS often receives referrals from the healthcare system, self referrals, referrals from family and referrals from other divisions, department within LFCCG. it will have more access to service for all Fay County residents. And then the last one, which we are going to ask for a fund balance request in the fall, which would be for emergency financial assistance program. Fiscal year 24 merges financial assistance received $100,000, increased to $300,000. EFA funds are utilized for mortgage rent and or utility assistance. budget funds for fiscal year 2024 have been used. CRS was given an additional $300,000 ARPA funds for EFA, which are currently being used to fund this program with approximately $100,000 remaining for fiscal year 24. We thought this needed to be reassessed in fund balance. Those are the link recommendations and myself and my committee members are willing to answer any questions you have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Ellinger. Are there any questions for Council Member Ellinger or the link in general? First up is Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Just one question for Council Member Ellinger regarding the Emergency Financial Assistance Program. Did you all have a ballpark idea about what the funding would look like that you'd ask for in the fund balance time? Or are you just going to kind of wait and see? We're just going to wait and see. There was $300,000 put into it and looking at what was needed this year, we're going to need more, but we didn't have a number at this point. We were able to use the ARPA money this past year, but we won't have that ability going forward. Okay. Thank you. And that's why we wanted to look at it, fund balance. The $300,000 will get us through up to the fund balance, but I think it's something we need to address going forward. I agree. I see the commissioners here, if the commissioner would like to answer that, I'd be willing to listen to his opinion on it. I see none. Yes, he's good with that. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you, Council Member Lynch. Are there any other questions for this link? Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. So, Chair of the Link, Chuck Ellinger. So, does this calls for personnel, does that also include benefits or that's – what does that include? That will include benefits. I don't think this number here, this is just salary, or is this both? This is both? Okay, it is both. All right, good. Wow. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ellinger, can you, you were reading very quickly, so can you give us a little bit more detail, and maybe Commissioner needs to come up and give us a little more detail on these two positions, and just what benefit they will serve. Commissioner, can we get some clarity about these positions and what services they will provide in the divisions that they're in? Thank you. And I would rather have not your opinion if they're needed or not, just what their services are going to provide. The eligibility counselor position is essentially an intake position. It does the application qualifications for all the various programs. They're the ones who sit down with the person and go over their finances and take the application and process. The social services coordinator position is on the case management side of the operation, so it's a much more hands-on. they do things like take people to doctor's appointments and it's a very intensive level of case management that that position provides. Okay. How are these tasks being handled currently? All of those tasks are currently handled with the existing staff. So the eligibility counselors, we have several now without increasing the amount of assistance or the number of programs there's no additional workload being created and so this position you know in our position is not necessary at this time but um that currently we can handle the existing workload with the existing positions with the existing workload and then the social services coordinator that would basically be new service it would be an expansion okay because the existing social services coordinators have they all have a fixed caseload and they okay and and did i hear you correctly say that the case the social services worker would um provide case management to a point where they would assist people with getting to appointments did i hear that's just an example of something they do so do we provide transportation like do we have do they have a vehicle we have vehicles in community Resident Services. It's shared? Okay. All right. I think that's all the questions I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. And could you say how the load has increased though since we no longer have the the money that we had through ARPA? So the the there weren't any ARPA positions in Community Resident Services. There was um that they have added positions over the years or programs over the years. So things like Solarize Lex, um you all recall we made some additional changes to some of their programming about a year or two ago. You know, all of those have certainly increased foot traffic a little bit in the division. They take a lot of calls every Monday and have to schedule out appointments. They can handle this programming with the existing staff. Really what all this does is potentially reduce wait times. And if, and when we had this discussion, if we, if we could not fund both of them, what was the hierarchy of the two positions? I believe with the director it was the eligibility counselor position. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner? These two positions here, were they requested in your original budget? They were requested by the Director of Community and Resident Services. Pardon? Yes, they were requested by the Director of Community and Resident Services. So they were, but they were turned down? Yes, that's correct. Were you given any explanation? It's like I said, we're able to serve and operate the current programming with the existing staff. Obviously, we are sympathetic to workload, we're sympathetic to wait times for people, but when you're talking about adding an ongoing expense and you have a difficult budget with ARPA funds running out, sometimes you have to just continue to work through. my position, we're able to do there in community resident services with the existing staff. Don't you understand these are reoccurring expenses? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to add a little bit of context and content to this. According to Ms. Danielle Saunders, who's the director, Other programs have been added on to the duties that her division carries out, which is like the solar panels, tree programs. There's other programs that has been added to her workload. Also on Monday, they take intake calls from the community. The phones are turned on at 8 o'clock. By 830, they're already overloaded with over 50 calls of seniors needing this service. So when she asked us for the two positions, she's already understaffed with the workload that her division carries. And so what I wanted to bring to you all's attention is that over in the north end of town and the services that are provided with the social work and the eligibility counselor, Those are much needed positions with the workload and then if the urban county government and the division has added other services and other programs for Miss Danielle to oversee with the staff that she has. There is no way possible that we can get quality work given to community people in that community that's much needed for our seniors and the services that is needed. So I wanted to make sure that you all get a clear vision of what is happening with the workload that she has and the few staff members that she has that is performing the work right now. So if they turn the phones off at 830 every Monday because they already have an abundance of call and people who are helping, they're vetting out people who have already received services so that other people can receive these services. I am definitely supporting the two positions that is being asked for, so that we can invest in people that really need these services. That's my comment, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Fogel. Next is Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Lanter, you mentioned wait times, because you talk a little bit more about that, like what are the wait times like? Are they for specific programs? So as Council Member Fogle mentioned, the way it works is folks call in on Monday, and then the staff spend that time on Monday returning those calls and scheduling appointments. So it really just is a matter of how long do you wait out for an appointment. We can generally still get you in that week, but it's limited, and it may be late in the week or week out, and it affects the backlog for the following week. So, you know, that's correct that they do receive a significant number of calls every Monday. Many of those are duplicate calls or folks that maybe are just double checking their appointment, but all of them have to be returned. So it's a lot of phone calls back and forth. So the wait times are about a week? Yeah. Okay, thank you. And it doesn't necessarily impact whether you'll get assistance, just when you'll get assistance. Whether you'll get assistance is driven by the other number, which is the larger one. Okay, thanks. Thank you, council member. Next is that council member Plowman. Thank you chair and commissioner Lanter again. I remember chairing this link last year and listening to Ms. Daniels and just the workload that they had when we ended up in position last year, correct? Correct. Okay, so I know this is going to fund balance discussion, this emergency financial assistance fund. Will that work be encompassed in these folks' workload? Yeah, the eligibility counselor position processes applications for the Emergency Financial Assistance Fund. The $300,000 is a number we're happy with. It was an increase over what we used to get annually, which was $200,000. $23,24, the number ended up being $600,000. So you could presumably, with the existing staff, do as much as $600,000 and have the same level of service that we had this year. Right now you're budgeted at $300 with a conversation anticipated for fund balance as well. So that'll be able to cover it because of what it was and hopefully it's going to come back and then we'll have people in place. Potentially. Potentially. I know it's going to fund balance discussion. Okay, thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. This question may be, I'm not for sure who it is for, but I'm just curious, just thank you. What typically is the starting salary for this position? Or we can say both positions, I guess. I don't know that off the top of my head. I'm looking at Melissa to see if she knows. I think the number you saw listed there in the mid to high 60s includes fringe, but it is not a 12-month number, I don't believe. It's a 75% because we budget for some attrition there. And I'm just curious then, how much typically do we pay for benefits from LFUCG? Because I was told it includes all of it. 30. That number varies depending on what type of position it is based on the pension contributions. We typically use around, I believe it comes somewhere around 30% for our civil service jobs. It's a little higher for police and fire and corrections jobs because- But for this particular position. This will be around the 30% range. We'll have pension, which is around 20%. We'll have FICA, Medicare, unemployment, and then the benefit pool. Yeah, so that's, yeah, I know the 30%. So that means taking away from 68. I'm not the math person. So the eligibility, the full cost of the eligibility counselor, the salary cost that's in there is $44,774. The rest of that is benefits. And that may be for a partial year. I'm not sure. I need to look at how they requested the position. okay because um what i'm what my i'm asking these questions because we live in a city where it's very expensive to live here and so i'm thinking about the quality of the um the likelihood of we of if we do add this position we vote in favor how likely are we to get someone to fill it if it's extremely low and so although it is a much needed position are we actually asking for the right amount to get a quality quality when i say quality it means someone that will stick around and actually do their due diligence because they're not working multiple jobs just so they can have their benefits does that make sense that makes sense and this was budgeted for a requested for a full year and so the way new positions work is that would be 20 into the range so this is whatever the range is for that grade this is 20 and it's not the lowest level of that Okay, well thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Fogle. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, council member Gray. I was getting ready, I forgot to say that. According to Kelly, she said on our links, both positions can be staffed. I think it was somewhere in the range of 102 to 112, give or take a few dollars, 112,000 for both positions. And so that's what we're asking for because both positions are needed. I don't really want to do that bait and switch which one would we take, but if we were given one, Danielle did give us her preference. And but according to Kelly, who's an expert at this kind of stuff, she said about 112,000 to fill both position, council members. Thank you, council. 131? Thank you, council member. Is that what you got? Okay. Next up is council member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Lanter, I have one question for you. As the gymnasium at the Black and Williams Center is going to be opening later this fall, prayers up, fingers crossed. I know I had talked earlier with a couple of folks about hiring a personnel position to be able to manage the rentals side of the gymnasium of that building. Did you talk about that, consider that, you and Director Sanders, and what did you all decide? I know that is a personal position that we'll definitely need to have. We have had some preliminary conversations about that with Commissioner Ford, and I believe our intent at this point is to do that piece of it through parks. Okay. So that's not a conversation we had in the context of community and resident services. Okay. Okay. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I'm a little confused on the total cost, personnel costs for both of them. Did somebody mention that that wasn't 100%? I'm curious there. So these two numbers should be higher? I confirm that these two positions were requested for the full year, and so the amount that is in there for each position is the base salary plus benefits for a year. It's 100% then for fiscal year? Correct, for 25. Okay, thank you. Thank you, council member. I don't see any other questions and I just will add as I was a member of this link is that what we were presented during the link discussion is that some of what has been shared is there's a heavy load on the eligibility counselors now. And that additional support to that position in community and resident services will be beneficial. I think what the commissioner said is it's not whether or not folks will get assistance, it's when they'll get assistance. But I think when you're calling and looking for assistance, I think the sooner you can get it, the better you can sleep at night and continue going to work or doing whatever it is that you do to provide for your family. So I'm supportive of that position. And the same with the social worker, the social services worker. These are wrap around services that are being provided to folks that need them. And if we can help increase the capacity of the folks providing these services, I think we should. So I'm in support of these positions going forward. So thank you. All right, going to the next link to present. I think that is the environmental quality and public works link. Council member LaGree. Thank you, Chair. Just a few things before we get started. I want to say thank you to Council Member Sheehan and to Council Member Civigni for their hard work and diligence and their strong attention to detail with our link work. Colleagues, we worked hard to come up with a collective set of recommendations that would serve the divisions that you're going to see here and the needs of the city in a responsible way. And I also want to say thank you to Commissioner Albright and her staff and the directors of all of our environmental quality and public work divisions and their staff as we met with every department and had a lot of questions. And then finally, thank you to our legislative aides and to our core staff for their support and assistance. We'll go ahead and move into the link agenda and colleagues. As you're going to see here, you're going to see the highlights for each one of these departments and then you'll see a table broken out that includes fiscal year 24 adopted, fiscal year 25 mayor's proposed budget, and then a third column that includes our recommendations. So you'll see that breakdown in table form, and we hope that'll be helpful to you. We'll go ahead and move forward into the first division, which is streets and roads. Colleagues, I'm not going to read out the highlights to you, but I am going to talk you through the link recommendations. So you'll see several highlights here. And we have a few recommendations. Number one, we have recommended the addition of a position of administrative officer. So you will see that this is related to pavement management work and paving work. As you all know, there are a lot of demands around paving and And per approval by internal audit, we think that this would be a necessary position to make sure that everything moves as efficiently and effectively as possible when it comes to that work. As part of our conversation with this division, we talked about drainage ditching for LFUCG maintain county roads and equipment for that ditching work. So we are interested in referring that item to committee for further exploration. And then we also talked a little bit about funding for paving via bond. And this is something that we could revisit during fund balance. So other than that, financial recommendation with the administrative officer position, we approve the mayor's proposed budget. You'll see a breakdown of this information via chart right there. All right, water quality. So we do accept the mayor's proposed budget here. And part of our discussion with water quality was around recruitment efforts and employee incentives for the treatment plant operations. Colleagues, these are 24-7 positions that can be difficult to fill and we're interested in further exploring ways to strengthen our recruitment and retention for individuals in this area. This is a skilled workforce position and we really want to make sure we maintain our workforce and support the people who are doing these roles. And you'll see the breakdown pretty straightforward. Waste management is our next area. You can see some highlights there. First, we accept the mayor's proposed budget and as part of our discussion with directors and staff in waste management, we talked about the idea of establishing a franchise agreement for private waste haulers. as we currently lack the authority to set a standard of service and practice. This is just a point of interest in our discussion with Director Thurman and we believe that it may be of interest to you all in the year ahead. And you'll see in our breakdown, again, pretty straightforward, plus zero. Engineering. We have several recommendations here. Number one and number two, you can see it could be managed via the general fund or bond. These vehicles would be for project managers, which would alleviate the need for them to utilize their personal vehicles when visiting project sites. We believe that for the quality of their workplace environment, environment, it would be very helpful for individuals in these roles to be able to use company vehicles and not have to kind of negotiate the process of sharing the way they currently do. So those are number one and number two. Number three, as part of our discussion, we talked about something that will be of interest to many of you. given your priority areas for complete streets and connectivity and pedestrian safety as shared in the beginning part of our budget conversations as a whole. So we know that in 2017, there was an initiative focused on sidewalk connectivity and several connections were made at that time. We know that costs may have gone up between 2017 and in the current moment and we believe that having updated costs for even just the next ten connections which we believe may be quite costly will be important for us to know. As we fill the complete streets position and we seek to henceforth fill the other sidewalk gaps that exist in our communities. You can see a breakdown here with engineering and You see an asterisk there with the funding source because again, we believe that these vehicles could be secured via bond or the general fund. Traffic engineering. We have a recommendation here for a position. Many of you have had sustained contact and have worked with the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program. 50% of this position would be allocated to the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program or as we know it, NTMP. And you can see the remaining 50% of the position would be focused on signage, marking, stripings, and assisting the department with their duties, which as we know are many. Again, further funding of the NTMP program operations helps to bolster safety in neighborhoods and is in alignment with, again, our priority item of complete streets, which nine of you listed as your top area at the onset of this season. And you can see the breakdown here with traffic engineering. All right. Environmental services, thank you. A couple of items here. Number one, we recommend $150,000 of the general fund to be allocated toward the 2015 planting manual, which would coincide with the phase two of tree protection, article 26, Zoda. Colleagues, this is a document that is used both internally and externally to guide best practices in planting for the entire city. And is important to the update of the tree protection ZODA and also in guiding the residents of Lexington and those who collaborate with the city. Second, we recommend funding consultant services for professional grant writing. The funding source for this may be flexible. So we've listed it as general fund here, but we're aware that the source could change depending on the nature of the grant. And as many of you all know, there's a lot of federal funding out there right now. Not only with the EPA and the USDA and the Department of Energy grants, but also with the, for example, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. We know that this is a really competitive time for these areas of funding and We want our city to continue to benefit and to be competitive as we're writing grants. And we know that this allocation can make a huge difference as we're competing with other municipalities across the nation. Third, quad cab truck with hitch and toolbox. You can see this is not out of the general fund, this is out of the urban services fund. And this would be for the public information engagement team, and I know you've seen them out and about doing education. They would rely on this truck for their weekly events and utilize it to transport their materials and trailers. Much of their work is connected to urban services. Thank you. Building inspection. And again, all of these, I apologize. In addition to our recommendations that I've listed, we accept the mayor's proposed budget. As we do here, we accept the mayor's proposed budget and we recommend an addition of $11,000 for software consulting. And this software will help with the zoning enforcement practices and their fines and liens. We think that this will be helpful to the work of this office and the connected collections. Okay, next slide. The EQPW Commissioner's Office, you can see here the highlight, we accept the mayor's proposed budget. And we, in conversation, discuss the continued work on way finding signs. And this may have to come back up at the fund balance conversation, But we just wanted to discuss it here as well for your benefit. You see the Complete Streets Manager position and as a reminder, the Vision Zero Coordinator position, which is of interest and connected perhaps to Complete Streets, that will be funded by a federal grant and is slated for the FY26 budget year. And that position will be in the Division of Planning, not in EQPW. So, commissioner's office breakdown is pretty straightforward. And then finally, environmental commission, they requested $7,500, which would have been a $2,500 increase from the previous year. And that request was for educational initiatives. We decided to accept the mayor's proposed budget of $5,000 from the general fund. And we recommend to fill any of those gaps that the environmental commission explores a partnership with the public information and engagement team within LFUCG's environmental services. And we believe that that could be helpful to their desire to put out more information and do more educational initiatives. So colleagues, then you will see finally a breakdown of everything, the mayor's proposed budget plus the link recommendations. And again, you'll see that 497 marked with an asterisk as we know that perhaps some of what we've mentioned could be bonded. And then again, with that grant writing position, that could come from various funding sources depending on the grant itself. That's it, aside from questions. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Lagree. Are there any questions for this link? All right, first up is Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Lagree, for this information. I want to start with engineering and the vehicles. Do these vehicles live outside of fleet management? Commissioner? Albright is here. Thank you. And then my second question is why were these not originally included with all of the other vehicles that were funded? Thank you, Councilmember. What I'll speak for in regards to fleet management, there's $3 million for fleet replacement, and that's what our team, Wanda King, and her team manages. Those vehicles who've met their end of life, and that's just about 59 vehicles, a great majority of them will be in Commissioner Albright's shop. new vehicle requests come through the budgetary process as presented now thank you and i guess my next question is um maybe why these weren't originally funded or why why when these were requested the decision was made that we could manage with our existing resources longer if needed okay if needed okay thank you um you might not want to go too far just in case i have another question now i'm looking at traffic engineering and i'm curious if we have any vacancies currently and then how these tasks are being handled now i do not know if we have existing vacancies within traffic engineering i don't remember that i'm hoping if anybody else remembers they'll pop up um now we've lost somebody who maybe was dealing with ntp ntmps there they are oh thank you let's see traffic engineering we do have a traffic signal tech a couple of vacancies that is a totally different set of assignments that i would hesitate to lose in an emergency situation so okay so there's no vacancies as far as this traffic engineer is i don't believe so the the vacancies that are here serve an existing separate assignment that i would not want to juggle with Okay, and so I'm assuming that these tasks are just being kind of divvied up between the existing staff. They are. Yeah, we have staff. As you know, we had a backlog that built up during COVID, and we're still kind of working through the back end of that. I do believe we have options beyond an existing position, an additional position that we could explore through consultant contracting or something like that if we needed to. Okay. And then next question is on the building inspection software consulting. I believe we have found funds for that resource. I'm just curious if this is software we currently use. It's an additional task, I guess, that this software will provide? Correct. I'm hoping Liz is walking forward. She's coming. I see her coming. Yes, this is placing some additional workload on a software product that we already own, and our capabilities to support and build on that have scaled up in-house, fortunately. Okay. So we're going to be able to do this. All right, I think that's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Legree, for this report out. My question is under Streets and Roads, the Administrative Officer, Commissioner Albright, to understand better what this position would do in addition to what you all are already doing, Is this someone that would be out on the streets inspecting jobs, working with ATS, as well as utility companies with paving? As it was written, I do not believe that was the intent, and I would like the opportunity to kind of clarify that, if you don't mind. Sure. As it was proposed back in December, at the time we were going through a transition in my office with the retirement of our administrative officer senior and refilling that position. We have refilled that position in January, and we have tasked that person with a lot of the duties that were assigned out of the audit. So some of this may have gotten lost in the translation of the budget process and the hiring process. So our administrative officer senior is currently doing a lot of the duties that were assigned out of the audit. So no, it would not add an additional project manager as written, which is really probably a bigger area of concern to keep ATS crews oversight. Yeah, that's why I asked. Okay, so this position was more written to be in office? Office work, yeah. Okay, all right, thank you. Sure. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, council member. Next is Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I have two general questions about these link recommendations, Council Member Legree. Of these, how many were original sort of division asks that were unfunded in the mayor's proposed budget? All of them. Okay. And then do you know offhand either individually or kind of a general number of how many of these items can potentially be bonded? The items that we believe can be bonded are listed as such, the two vehicles. I didn't even see that column, so okay. I retract the question. Thank you, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, this link, As administrative officer of 96,998, I assume that that's complete position with benefits. I'm going to ask. And did you all? Yes. Was that requested? Did you request that in your budget? It was requested by the division in the early stages of the budget process. The audit was very new, and we were working through the results of the audit during the first phase of the budget process, and that's how it kind of wove its way in to the budget. Did you talk to the administration about that at all as far as that position? Yeah, I mean, it came up in December with our budget process at that time. Okay, okay. And then the other position, traffic engineer, the $88,137, I assume that that's full cost for a year? starting in September, so not a full year. That's not a full year? The new position. So the next year would be much more than that. So both of those, and the reason I raise the question is both of these are reoccurring expenses, and I'm not in favor of reoccurring expenses, although I'm not sure that the positions aren't needed, But obviously the administration looked at that through the budget and felt like that the funding of those would be something that could be either put off or could be consolidated with other duties. So I'm opposed to any of the recurring expenses on those two items. The other item is the vehicles that you talked about, I think. If you were asking those vehicles to be under a bonding, I'd have to be opposed to them. But I think general funds probably got enough money, and if those vehicles are warranted, then I would like to see the bond fund dropped off of that as far as requests for where the money would come from. Thank you. Council member LaGree, did you want to add to that? Yes, I did want to say something about the Streets and Roads Administrative Officer position. We had our budget link meetings with the divisions in April and May, and that is when that position came back up in discussion. So it was our understanding that there continued to be a need for support and assistance with the paving program at that time, based on our discussions with the divisions with whom we met. So perhaps some things have changed in the interim, but that was part of our discussion with Streets and Roads around paving and the associated demands at that time as well. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next is Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Legree. It looks like you hit a lot in your link. So, my first question is under Streets and Roads. And since my office works a lot with the county roads and probably commissioners, if you would explain this, the drainage ditching for the county roads. So that comes under, that doesn't come under fiscal at all, correct? That's a service that we give to the fiscal court for the county roads? Correct. Okay. And we have been trying to figure out a plan to reestablish the ditch lines that have just been allowed to fill in with sediment over the last couple of decades. So we've been trying to develop a plan the last two or three years of how we would make the opportunity possible to do that, whether with county road aid funds or streets and roads funds. Currently, it's coming out of county? Say it again? Currently that service is coming out of the county fiscal funding or? Currently we have set aside some initial funds out of the county road aid program last year. It's just been a struggle to figure out how to get that program off the ground. Okay, and that's going to be further discussed? Yes. And the other question I had, the vehicles for the project managers. We have two project managers, is that correct? We showed two vehicles at approximately 32,000 each? Technically we have five project managers plus a managing supervisor. Yeah. And I believe two or three of them share a pool vehicle. So it's not critical, it's not ideal the way we have it set up now. Okay, that would be two more that could be used, but they're still going to be shared in a sense. Potentially could still be shared, yeah. Okay. And the last one has to do with the, it looks some type of vehicle, the quad cab truck. Yes, ma'am. How are we, what do we do right now taking care of that? We borrow a vehicle right now that is capable of towing it. Internally? Internally, yes, ma'am. Okay, that's all my questions, Commissioner, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. Council member Legree, great job. You and your link, Thurl, putting together your packet. My question is regarding the grant writing consultant services. I do know that we do have a division in LFUCG called Grants. Are they unable to write any grant at all? Or? I'm not going to speak for them. I know what we tasked them to do. So I'm going to let Mr. Lanter speak to their capability and capacity. Council Member Gray, grants and special programs, they administer and handle compliance on the grants after we've received them. But it's actually the individual divisions of government that write the applications for grants. The grant staff assist and work on the submission process and the assembling of all the documents. But in terms of actual grant writing, that's done in the divisions. So our grants division doesn't actually write grants. Is that correct? They don't write grants for the divisions. They do write some housing and HUD grants that fall within their area. But no, as a general practice, it's actually the divisions that write the grants. So it shouldn't be called grants then, correct? They still do a whole lot of grants management. Okay, Grants Management Division. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, my question is regarding the Division of Water Quality. I saw, and maybe Council Member will agree, I don't know if you want to chime in, because it was a link recommendation for FY26 to reclude some things in that year's budget for incentives for treatment plant operations and those employees. I've spoken with Charlie Martin prior and he has shared how difficult it is to fill those positions at our treatment plans and then keeping them filled. So why wait for those incentives for fiscal year 26 and to the FY25? I think it's just a matter of capacity. We've been working hard. We had two groups that needed a lot of attention and we've been focusing hard on the sewer line maintenance group this year. we have a plan in place that we're trying to start working through the final details on before we roll it out for the sewer line maintenance group. So after we finish that one, we're going to turn our attention to treatment plant operators. So it's just a matter of needing a little more time. And do you have a ballpark idea about what you would propose in FEDFLA 26 for those kind of incentives? We are looking at things like shift differentials and bonus. We're not entirely sure what all we're going to be able to do with the treatment plant operators. We already have an apprentice program in place. Are there things we can do to enhance that program? Okay, thank you, Commissioner. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. All right, thank you, Councilmember. Are there any additional questions for this link, their presentation? Seeing none, thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Councilmember Lagree. We'll move to the next link report out, and that's finance, economic development, and planning. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. Thank Vice Mayor Wu and Council Member Plowman for serving with me on the link. Thank our aides for all their hard work, particularly my aide, Renee, who I had originally told I would not volunteer to be the chair of the link. And then changed my mind and put her through the extra work. So in this link we reviewed various different offices in finance with the Commissioner's Office, the Department of Accounting, Budgeting, Procurement and Revenue, the Office of Economic Development from Planning and Preservation, the Commissioner's Office as well as the Department of Planning, Historic Preservation, and the Purchase of Development Rights. We also did an overview of some of our partner agencies, the Bluegrass Area Development District, the Explorium of Lexington, which as of this morning, I guess, is now the Lexington Children's Museum, LexArts, Lexington Center Corporation, and Visit Lex. We also reviewed our economic development partner agencies, Commerce Lex and the Urban League, Though I will say they did not request to discuss things with the link, even though the budget line item for their work is slightly less this year. Since they haven't seen the RFP yet and don't know what exactly they're going to be asked to do for us, they didn't have anything to add to the link. So I just want to say that both of them offered to participate if asked, but said that there really wasn't time in their process yet to do that. So we'll move forward, just quick highlights. Some of these are super exciting departments in accounting and revenue. And they typically don't ask for a whole lot, so I'll be quick. For the Commissioner of Finance, the Link's recommendations accept the mayor's proposed budget. accounting, except the mayor's proposed budget, budgeting, and procurement, except the mayor's proposed budget, revenue, except the mayor's proposed budget. As we move into the Office of Economic Development, these are our largest recommendations. We would accept the mayor's proposed budget, but then have two proposals. One is to increase funding for tech worker recruitment efforts, and council members servigne and james brown have been working on development of a recruitment program for tech workers and so they may help me if we have questions and then to increase funding for the lexington public infrastructure fund by two million dollars the mayor's proposed budget has one million if you'll recall last year we uh the mayor's proposed budget and our ultimately ratified budget was three million uh the development community that was developed trying to develop downtown and infill and redevelopment areas didn't find use for the program as it was and we ended up shifting some of that money to economic development efforts with the soccer team and keeneland now again council members civigny and james brown have worked with chief development officer adkins and they think that they are going to be able to put together a program that the development community actually will take advantage of with our infill and redevelopment projects and you may have seen i believe this morning there was a letter from lexan for everyone in support of more infill redevelopment and then a week or so ago there was a letter from the fay alliance criticizing uh the budget for not having more economic and development so both of those groups are supportive of those efforts the next uh division we reviewed planning we are recommending to accept the mayor's proposed budget but i do want to throw a couple highlights in there the division of planning is going to see is it five new positions four four new positions which we were all very supportive of particularly because they're dealing with growth management strategy and the expansion area master plan as well as dissolving the exactions program and and replacing some sort of infrastructure management that way and then also through development plan processing and approvals so this would be i think needed additions for the the planning department and we recommend accepting the mayor's proposed budget historic preservation accept the mayor's proposed budget purchase of development rights accept the mayor's proposed budget and i'll point out that that is again a two million dollar bond for the purchase of development rights along with some general fund money of about 250,000 dollars. The Bluegrass Area Development District accept the mayor's proposed budget. The Explorium or Lexington Children's Museum accept the mayor's proposed budget. LexArts will accept the mayor's proposed budget which is their typical 325,000 dollars that they use of course to help fund other arts organizations in the community particularly Philharmonic and then the link is recommending to increase LexArch funding by $50,000 for student cultural art passes tell you a little bit about that and I'll first but to be candid with the with the full committee of the whole the link was split on this councilmember Plowman and I were very much in support of this particular funding vice mayor Wu has some reservations and I think he is going to later on take those reservations and and and move some items in committee and do some things but this particular item the lex arts actually requested 100 000 we decided that 50 000 was enough to help them with a pilot program wherein students would have passes that would serve both as bus fare and free admission to arts and cultural establishments within the community This is modeled after something that Louisville did similarly. And so this is an opportunity while school is out for just youth to have something fruitful and educational to do. And we talk about funding in sports and parks programming and things. This would just be another avenue that would blend in arts and culture. That's a $50,000 request, which was half of what was requested, but we thought enough for a pilot project for LexArts. With that, I would take any questions. Thank you, Council Member Worley. First up for questions is Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Worley and Council Member Plowman for the link that we all did on this link, and thanks to our aides and support staff as well. I just wanted to speak on the LexArts cultural pass item. I was the dissenting member of the link on this recommendation. I'm not opposed to the cultural pass in concept. I think it's very important for our school kids to have access to the arts. I've always been a supporter of the arts. What I'm opposed to right now is any additional budget ask by LexArts at this time. We've also been told actually that they're able to implement this program without our funding. So at this point, I would say that they can always come back to us after they've successfully piloted it on their own for additional funding or if they want to expand this program later on. But I think it's their responsibility to kind of prove the concept to us. The larger issue around my reservations is based on Lexart's fiscal health and sound financial practices. We are currently reviewing their FY22 audit and in fact, it points to a lot of problematic financial practices. And we're also way behind on audits. We're still waiting on an FY23 audit. So under these circumstances, very much opposed to giving them extra funding. We're not talking about cutting their primary funding. We are recommending accepting the mayor's proposed budget on that base 325 as we've done before. But I think it's very important for us as fiscal stewards of the taxpayers' money to make sure that if we are giving partner agencies money, that they are managing this money and distributing this money appropriately. The administration right now is working with LexArts to make sure that those distribution of funds to recipients happens in a timely manner. And then at work session later today, I'll be putting an item into BFED committee to review their overall finances, fiscal practices, and equity implementation. So, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Worley, did you all, this is probably just a question of what you did. Did you all look at, and I think the only thing in there that's bonded is the PDR program, I believe. Did you all even discuss the fact that you could take that out of fund balance this year with our healthy fund balance rather than bond it? Was that a discussion item at all? And I just want to throw that out because I think that would be an area that we could probably fund. I think it is an area that we probably could fund with fund balance cash. No, we did not have that discussion. As my colleague knows my feeling on bonding, I was perfectly comfortable bonding the PDR program. But I think that would be a well-taken discussion item. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Worley, for your report out. Just a quick question about the LexArts program. I know you said, this really is just more to logistics, I know you said something about while school is out, this would be an opportunity for kids. My question is how are they planning on getting the passes to kids when they're not in school? So, and Council Member Plumman may be able to speak to this, she's more familiar with it. But they've already started the work of doing this. So this would be the city helping to, really just being a participant, it's kind of as a gesture that we like the program and would like to see it be successful. I believe in Louisville, Louisville, the city was a primary sponsor of the program. Here, the city of Lexington would just be one of the partners to help. So they already have this in plan and in the works. And the money that we would be sending in would be more by way of reimbursing the different arts and cultural establishments that allow for the free admission. And Councilmember Plumman, please. Yes, we really like this program. In light of funding for arts in the school system, I thought especially is that I thought this would be a good light on our city for stepping in and make sure our kids had exposure to the arts. And you mentioned that Council Member Nen, excuse me guys, Worley, they are going to get these passes and it's for them and their families to access VR programs that are taking place all summer. It includes buses if they need to get transportation. And what I really liked about it, all of the art organizations programs that are accessed this summer will be reimbursed. So that's revenue coming into art programs that do need that. And also I think more of our underprivileged or marginalized students out in the community will have access to things that they wouldn't have normally had to pay for. So I just think for the greater good of our community, and I think it looks good for our city to take a step in. And it was $100,000, and we are suggesting half of that, just to see how it all turns out. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Worley, for your report out. My question is on the public infrastructure fund, the increase for the public infrastructure fund. And is that considered something that would be one-time money or ongoing? We would be one-time as this budget is established. And I think last year's budget was the first time we've ever had any form of public infrastructure fund in the mayor's proposed budget. And there is still the mayor's proposing a million this year. I personally think that it would be a great thing for us to consider every year. But this would be asked to this year a one-time establishment of those funds, depending on how they ended up being used and how long it would take to either loan or grant those monies out. And then if it is one-time funds for this year, why wouldn't it come out of somewhere besides the general fund, like one-time money instead of the general fund? Well, I mean, when you think about the general fund, that encompasses some of our savings monies and things like that that we have parked in other places. So it would just basically be increasing the general fund, what we're calling the general fund for the year. I think we have plenty of money stashed away. Okay, all right. Did you have something? Council Member Savigny, did you want to add to that? I just wanted to make a quick correction. There, it was originally funded by $3 million two fiscal years ago. And there's a million dollars that was remaining that hasn't been used. So this would be $2 million to bring it back up to a $3 million level. I just wanted to make that correction. Yeah, that's correct. Thanks for that clarification, I misspoke on that. Okay, thank you, that gives me something to think about, thank you. Kevin Atkins, do you have any additional information to add? Councilmember Civigni's correction was correct. And as Councilmember Brown and Councilmember Civigni know, since they're on the Economic Development Investment Board, there's actually not a million dollars left. There's about 10,000, roughly 10,500 left. The board at its last meeting approved two projects, one for 500,000 and one for 490,000. One is a senior assisted living facility and the other is a development off of Liberty Road. So there's about 10,000 left. Thank you for that clarification. Council Member Legeree. Thank you, Chair. And Council Member Worley, I'm not sure if you'd be the one to answer this, and this might be for somebody else. But would you be able to reiterate a little bit, and I know you touched on this in your narrative. uh... any kind of changes to the infrastructure funder recommendations to make it easier to use for in phil is that something that we're still bringing out of committee or uh... yet thank you for the last answer that question i know it's as a committee item i think we're going to uh... reviewing june at the june b fit committee meeting and it's just uh... recommends and changes to the committee to make some changes to make that but more accessible for infill projects and probably better distinguished between grant funds and and no interest repayable loans to that council members of the meeting thank you and i had now you covered it well and i think we're uh... it's forgivable loans and not forget the weight it's going to be worded in the end and then the program in june you'll see it all we just wanted to make sure that it was funded prior to us actually looking at it again. So thank you. Okay, absolutely. That's very helpful and I'm appreciative and supportive. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Gray. Thank you, chair. Council member Worley. My question is regarding the LexArts pilot program. So in regards to this pilot program, is Fayette County Public Schools at all involved with their funding? Have they gone to Fayette County Public Schools? I don't know. Council Member Plowman may be able to speak to that some. I think obviously there's various different funding sources that they have for the program. And I think Vice Mayor Wu is correct that they've stated that they don't have to have our money to do it. but I think it's a in a 500 million dollar budget a 50,000 dollar gesture this is a pretty nominal to us and pretty significant to them and to make a statement that we want to offer you know arts and cultural opportunities for children I would hope that the Fayette County Public Schools would feel the same but I can't obviously I can't speak for them I have seen I have seen marketing materials on this and Fayette County Public Schools is on there with their I mean, so I think they are, even if it's in kind, but they are part of what they're putting out there. Thank you. So I just want to add, just as when microtransit was part of the discussion, we said that they needed to have their own teeth, you know, have some teeth in the game, and they found the funds in their budget. So I'm along the same things, and especially since they don't need us, That says more than enough for me about my lack of support for that measure. Thank you so much. All right, thank you, council member. Is there any other questions? Council member Folk. Thank you for your acknowledgement and thank you for the report. Is this program supposed to start this summer or is this for 2025? And if so, I just want to lift up that I am in Douglas, Bryan Station, LTMS, and George Washington Harbor. And I hear about the bus transportations. So all of this is already set and ready to go where children will be able to catch the bus. The information has been given out to the families. You know, I'm just having some kind of issues because I've been begging for park directors for our communities. And I'm trying to see how these children are going to catch the bus to get to the arts program. And will the arts program be reflective of community? I don't have all the details, but as far as I know, it is ready to go. So they have worked that out with Lexitran and the schools and all the arts groups. There has been outreach. But I couldn't tell you exactly what those logistics are. And that's probably too specific. And I can get it for you. I'm sorry. I can get it for you. I've seen the marketing materials. Yeah, and if I remember our discussions, the $100,000 would have carried over into next summer as well. and they said that the 50 000 would allow them just to get help with their reimbursements for what they're doing already this summer or intend to do this summer okay thank you all right council member baxter thank you chair i have one more question um in your conversations with lexarts did it did it sound like the money was more towards the bus reimbursement than the programming it I mean it's kind of my understanding a lot of arts programming is free anyway so I just I'm trying to figure out where this money's going. My understanding it was reimbursement to the agencies that were allowing for the free admission or reimbursing them for whatever even if they already offer free admission if whatever cost of the additional folks coming in for the summer. And it is the whole family and there is admission for For instance, at the Children's Museum, as you know. And I believe, I'm not sure everybody charges admission, but quite a few of them do. Phanonymal, but still, if you've got a lot of people accessing this program, it adds up. Like I said, it's really good for the arts programs to have that additional revenue. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to speak to a couple points that have come up. The timing of this program was one of my concerns when we had this conversation with LexArts during our link. I asked them when they were going to start implementing this program. Our link was in April and they said May. And I said, May of 2025? And they said, no, May as in next month. And so that was very concerning to me if we were an integral part of their funding that they've already gotten all the balls rolling and their partner either contracts or agreements in place. And so I was concerned, well, if we didn't fund you all, how would you be able to reimburse all these partners that you have in this program? And that's when they said that they don't need us, and then, which to me begs the question of then why are we funding this? And the other point about it only being $50,000 in a $500 million budget, I agree. It's a very tiny little part of our budget, but again, we are fiscal stewards of the taxpayers' money, and to me it's not about $50,000. I would not support $10,000. I would not support $25. Thank you, Chair. Are there any additional questions for this link? Not seeing any. Chair, if I could, just a couple of the questions I ask about the program that I've now been given some information on. Students can use a library pass or student ID to get on to Lex Tran and then get into the LexArts. LexArts has their cultural pass program already on their website. And then part of the funds will be used to help them market these agencies and sites that are allowing the free access. so it's all of their funding is for both the the access itself and for to market it to the children and families that might use it thank you thank you for the additional information if there's no other questions or comments to that link we'll move to the next link report out which is the general government and general services councilmember Baxter thank you chair first I'd like to thank I want to thank Council Members Fred Brown and Denise Gray for their work on preparing our link report out. I want to thank all of our aides, council staff and administration as well for answering all of our questions. And then final thanks to all the departments and divisions that met with us to help clarify and give us any more information. And thank you for your hard work in helping prepare this budget. So as you can see on our link agenda, we were responsible for the council clerk, the council office, all of general services. facilities and fleet parks and rec it internal audit law in the mayor's office we also worked with the constitutional offices that you can see listed there and then our partner agencies were the library the lyric and the carnegie center next slide as far as the council clerk's office is concerned we recommended accepting the mayor's proposed budget there as well as in our council office in general services we recommend accepting the mayor's proposed budget in facilities and fleet management we do accept the mayor's proposed budget but after our links meetings and speaking with deputy director wanda keene we know that that there is a need for fleet management software. And the current program that we are using is no longer supported and is not providing what it needs to for, wanted to be able to do her work efficiently. So we all sat down and had a conversation and we would recommend that fleet management release a software RFP in July. And then we would have the conversation around purchasing the new software and fund balance. We don't know what that software would cost yet, so it is not fiscally responsible to allocate any money at this time. So Commissioner Ford is in agreement that this is the appropriate process to move forward, so that's our link recommendation. In Parks and Recreation, we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget. In Information Technology, we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget. In computer services and enterprise solutions, we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget. Internal audit, accepting the mayor's proposed budget. As well in law and the mayor's office. And for our constitutional offices, the circuit judges, the commonwealth's attorney, the coroner, the county attorney, the county judge executive, we are accepting all of those proposed budgets. And then for our county clerk, we are recommending a pre-fund of an additional $27,000 to complete the digital access project. Their initial request in the budget was $54,000, and between their request and today, they have already received a half grant for that money, so they are just asking us to match. And in addition to catching up on all the city scanning, they will also be able to provide our council clerk documentation to be scanned into the database as well, which is huge for preservation of our council records. Moving forward, the property value administrator, as you heard in the mayor's late additions, the state revenue bill was passed to include some additional funding. And so those are reflected here, and we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget in addition to those late additions. As far as our partner agencies are concerned, we are accepting the mayor's proposed budget for all three of those partner agencies. And that wraps up what I've got, and we'll entertain any questions. Council Member, for the presentation, are there any questions? Are there any questions for that link? Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. My first question will come under the General Services Division heading. Okay. And it is in regards to this would seem to be a new office, the Capital Project Management Office. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? Would this be a new office? What is this? Commissioner, do you want to speak more on that, please? Thank you, Councilmember. Council member, it is primarily just a realignment of team members that we have now. We have a team of three architects that support our capital projects, work, design and construction across government. They are currently under facilities and fleet management under our director, John Sheed. They're just going to transfer and be a direct report under the commissioner's office. Okay. Awesome. And while you're here, I have a couple of parks and recreation questions. So Commissioner Lantry said that general services would be, when we need new personnel at the Black and Williams Center to staff the rentals of that gymnasium, that it would fall under your division heading. And so have you all had discussions about planning for that personnel item? We have had initial discussions. Commissioner Lantry is correct. myself and Monica and Danielle over at CRS. We've had initial discussions in regards to anticipating the gymnasium coming online this fall. We're very excited about what that $1.7 million facility investment will mean, but we have not finalized how that may work in regards to the personnel structures. But we have begun and we will continue to try our best to internally come up with a solution that will get that facility activated this fall, but still yet to be determined. Okay. So is there anything preliminarily we should think about as far as FY25 for that potential position? I think, Council Member, we're doing that. The answer is yes. We don't have a definitive of answer just yet. Again, Josh Ives is our project manager under the Capital Project Management team. He is working with us and our ARPA team to make sure we get that facility completed. The roofing was an issue where we think we've crossed that bridge and get everything wrapped up. But it is a priority to say, it is a priority for us to anticipate activating that. And we'll be following up with the council and administration just as soon as we can. Awesome. Let me know how I can help. Yes, ma'am. And then my last question is based on the results of the recent internal audit for Parks and Recreation and some of the things you're going to have to do to address some of the things that were highlighted in the internal audit report for Parks and Recreation, are there any additional budgetary asks that you have come up as a result of that report that you will need to implement for FY25 that we should consider now? I have a commissioner and I have Monica here that's going to jump in. I know that some of the things that were in that report are parks related as far as operations, but a lot of those items are having to do with our PCI compliance and that has a lot to do with our credit card operations. I know that you all are aware that we have been working really hard to try and consolidate and move towards having merchant services vendors that are consolidated. And that is a really big push that we've been working towards. Monica and her team are working to find a, right now we use RecTrack as a software, and it really doesn't support what we are, the software solutions with J.P. Morgan that we're using. And so we're trying on both sides to find a solution that works both for parks and for finance. And so that is a major push for us. And that will check a whole lot of boxes both on their side and ours. So that is a big item on both of our lists in the next year. As far as costs for us, we're not sure what that's going to look like. And it may not be a 25 so much as a 26. But that will check a lot of boxes on that internal audit finding. you'll notice that a lot of them were kind of over and over again on that PCI compliance side. So that is just something from the finance side that is something that we're taking very seriously and looking at very closely. Okay. And, Council Member, very briefly to follow up, Commissioner Hensley, we are meeting actively. We started meeting last week, and not only our parks team, Aaron's team in finance, Liz up in IT, hands, all hands on deck approach to work through this summer to bring that information to bear. That's great. I appreciate that. Just in reading that report, I just didn't know if we needed to anticipate anything for FY25 to continue to support you all in the things that you do. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. And I would pat myself on the back because I'm part of this group. Great job to the link in putting everything together. and not a lot of ass and thankful to the clerk's office for doing their own due diligence and finding once they didn't have the funding they were writing grants in order to get funding and thankfully they were able to get half and and we're proud of you for doing that clerk's office because the project that they're working on is much needed historical historical information that we do need um but um maybe this is for the committee item or to follow up later but i know our link did discuss regarding one lexington um as the ask or the recommendation from us was to when they make their annual reports and to also give financial annual financial update so that we can see where funds are going but i noticed it wasn't part of our link recommendations So I just wanted to make sure I set it here on the mic. That is all, thank you. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Fogle. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the report. I guess my question would be to either one of you all, and I'll just, I'm just going to make this statement in the future, and In the future, and I will ask the question concerning funding, will you please consider funding for the parks, for park directors in the parks? Who will that go to as far as the funding for parks and recreation directors? To bring our, our children are dying, our community is begging for the park structure to come back to what used to be on the whiteboard, where there were park directors in the park all summer long headed into. Come on, Commissioner. Council Member, thank you. I first want to begin by saying that we're very appreciative of the support that the administration and this council has given to our Parks and Rec Division. And this is above and beyond ARPA. ARPA is having a transformational impact on us. But even offline programmatically, Councilmember, we're doing a lot of great things. There's still yet more to be done, but we are reimagining our community centers. Monica is nearby to explain a little bit more. We are trying our very best to remain engaged with our various neighborhood association partners. There's good work going on in regards to inside the building and outside the building in regards to anti-violence, in particular protecting our young folks. But we, we stand ready. We do see that there's a new, I will say this, Councilmember, is we're always trying to get activity in our parks and our playgrounds, but the interest, and I'll be very brief because I know this is a long day for you guys, the programming that has long been historical that our generation is accustomed to is not quite yet the same programming that today's families and youth are interested in. We still want to get folks out into our playgrounds and our open spaces and we're still trying to activate our community centers, but whatever we can do, in addition to our mission at Parks and Rec that will help keep families safe, we stand ready to do so. And our entire team across Parks and Rec with Monica's leadership would be as responsive to this council as we possibly can be in that end. I'm just having a moment to breathe. That's all. Thank you, Commissioner. And I know you all have been working very, very hard. It's just that I believe that the opportunity for the parks to be open, it hasn't been open for so long. And so our families now, they can't even imagine what we came through. And you know what we came through. We had phenomenal park directors, everybody was in the park. There wasn't a swing empty. Maybe our new Douglas pool will help generate and bring folks back to that area, but I'm just looking across first district in the north end of town. So I know that you all are working extremely hard. This is no criticism on what your office is doing. I'm just trying to reimagine and help the constituents because all the family members are saying, and when they view this they'll get a better understanding because of your explanation of just getting folks and having folks in those parks, having the children feel safe by people being in the parks. has structure other than the neighborhood associations? Again, Councilmember, we stand ready, but again, I would be remiss. We have an exceptional parks and recreation team who is not perfect, but we are making a lot of great progress. In the first district specifically, over the last four years, we've invested $50 million across our park system. 25% of that has been in the first district to support bringing things back up to equitable amenities and services. So we are trying to do that. Our parks are open. They are safe. Our community centers are open. They are safe. And we welcome to help us promote that our families can come and see us anytime and we'll be ready to serve and always open for ideas how we can do better. Okay, and I just want to point out we have two community centers and the money that was invested was in the structure part. I'm talking about in human services part where someone is in that park with programming. So thank you for that and I appreciate everything that has been put into the first district as far as, the key word that you said was bringing the structures back up to code. So hopefully we won't get into that field of being in a position where we have to bring it back up to code but we'll be maintaining. So I look forward to everything that's going to happen with Parks and Recreation. Thank you all for your hard work for the year that I've been here. Thank you, Council Member. Not seeing any other questions for this link, so thank you, Council Member Baxter, for your presentation. Council members, we have one more link report out. I think we ought to go ahead and let that link report out and then come back with questions after we break for lunch. Is everybody fine with that? Yes. All right, so the next up is Council Member Reynolds in the social services and public safety link report out. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, colleagues. This is, I guess, we saved the biggest and the best for last. So before we get started, I have a few comments to make real quick. I want to give a huge thanks to Kelly Farley for all her hard work helping with our budget link, as well as Commissioner Hensley and her team and the CAO's office. In addition, I want to thank Commissioner Armstrong and Commissioner Alan Bryant and everyone that worked with our link from social services and public safety. This process is truly a team effort. I especially want to thank my legislative aide, Sarah Morelis, for her hard work putting things together for our link, and my colleagues, Councilmember Brenda Menares and her legislative aide, Olivia Lachine Grigsby, and Councilmember Shayla Lynch and her legislative aide, LaShawn Barber, for all their valuable insights and contributions and their hard work. we had the largest of budgets to consider with the largest asks and the largest needs in our link. So please keep that in mind with our asks during our report out. We didn't agree all the time on our recommendations, but we all spent a lot of energy and work on this link doing our best to come up with this report out. So as you can see, we had social services and public safety and a few partner agencies. I'm not going to read all of the highlights as we go into social services and the commissioner's office, but it's in the packet for your information. We, one, I don't know, it's not going to the next slide. There we go. And you can go to the next one after that, please. And then the link recommendations, number one, we had unanimous support for youth program coordinator. This is for Partners for Youth. This is a position that is currently contracted, and this would be moving it to be a full-time position with LFUCG. The total cost is $62,899. This is currently what we are paying is $37,500 for that contractor. So that's only a difference. $25,399. Partners for Youth has had issues over the past few years keeping people because they don't have benefits, etc. And so that was our recommendation. The rest of the recommendation for the Social Service Commissioner's Office is to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Then we go on to Aging and Disability Services. You can see the highlights there. Our link recommendation number one is support for recreation manager at 82,297. This would provide relief for the current recreation staff of two, therefore creating more opportunities for seniors to enjoy the recreational services. And then we said to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Now we go on to family services. Then you can see that our recommendation was to accept the mayor's proposed budget. Then youth services. Here we also voted to accept the mayor's proposed budget. As we get into social services fund overview, we see that we have partner agencies. And we voted to accept the mayor's proposed budget, but wanted to note that the Hope Center was dependent on the ESR fund allocation. Then we go to public safety fund overview. And you see the public safety commissioner's office, and we voted to accept the mayor's proposed budget. In community corrections, we also voted to accept the mayor's proposed budget. In E911, we first of all support the E911 manager. That would be split partially out of the general fund and the E911 fund. And you can see that there, the 17,427 to general fund, 69,706 to the E911 fund. And this position would provide administrative support to aid in the day to day operations at E911. And then the rest we accept the mayor's proposed budget. In emergency management, the only thing that there is that and it it might not be i think there was an error in the packet so it might not be in the packet but if you if you see up there is to purchase an installation of one outdoor warning siren at town branch that is for 38 155 and that would be from the capital contingency fund one time money and the rest was to accept the mayor's proposed budget as we get to fire and emergency services one there was unanimous support for the civilian accreditation manager at 79 757 out of the general fund funding this position is favorable because of the return on investment and this position would pay for itself so this would help free up a firefighter and it would also help with grants and things like that that it would in the end pay for itself then under police there was support for a real-time intelligence center supervisor also support for real-time intelligence center analysts and these positions would be civilian positions and allow two sworn officers who are currently staffing these positions to go back on regular duty there was unanimous support for two speed trailers for a total of 22 000 the link members recommend that funding for this item come from the capital contingency fund and the rest was to accept the mayor's proposed budget. I think that is the end. Thank you, Council Member. Good timing. But just as you pointed out, just for Council Members, because I don't see it in my packet either, that is an additional request for that. Was it the right? It was supposed to be included in the original packet, It was somehow not included. It's for the siren. Okay. It's in this packet. It's in the breakdown. Okay. All right, so it seems like we have a little bit of time left for questions. So let's go ahead and do questions on this link before we break. So first it looks like Council Member Savigny has signed up. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I just have a few. On the E911 manager, the funding that's coming out of E911 fund, I thought that that fund were having difficulty actually covering. So is that technically the money's probably not there for that and we'd have to move it from another fund? That's correct. That position should be 100% general fund funded. Okay. Yes, sir. All right, thank you. My second question is probably about the real-time intelligence folks. And I think it's a great approach to basically not use sworn officers for this. But I thought when we kind of went and we were talking about that real-time intelligence center, I had asked that specific question, and they said that officers actually do better talking with officers when they're in that real-time mode. And I don't know if we're looking at retired officers that would no longer be in the, like in the standard sworn. I don't know what you're thinking there. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for the question. You're headed in the right direction there. There are some ex-police officers that would be interested in this position, you know, that we're currently using the clerk system and bringing back some retired officers to work the street. some of these officers would be interested that may have been out of the division for a number of years. With that being said, that does not pigeonhole those positions just the ex-officers. Thank you. Thank you for the answers. And my last one was, I'm the rec manager for the senior center. Is the senior center, we're actually building a new facility, And do we have the new facility staffed or is it not planned to be ready until the next fiscal year? I'm just kind of curious how that works. I know this is for the current facility. I just didn't know if you had staff positions for the new facility as well in here. We do not currently have staffing for that. Just to put it blankly, no. Okay. Is the new facility supposed to be done before the end of this coming fiscal year? We're anticipating at least a partial fund of operations when the new facility comes online, at least a partial in FY26. We expect when that's fully on board we'll have an additional $2 million, dollars which includes five additional staff for the therapeutic and senior operations once that's on board some of that will include some shifting of staff in different places but additional five staffing and then of course the operations maintenance janitorial utilities that kind of thing that will go along with that building once it's fully on board okay thank you appreciate Appreciate it. Thank you and thank this link for a great report out. Appreciate it. Thank you, council member. Next is council member Baxter. Thank you, chair. I just have, would like some clarification a little bit on the civilian accreditation manager and fire. Can you give us a little bit more detail about how it's currently working and then what this would look like going forward? Yes, as you know, they just recently got their accreditation, but they have three different kind so there's a lot of administrative work associated with maintaining all three of those accreditations at this time and i apologize there's a captain that is performing these duties for the fire department the plan here the fire department requested this position as a civilian so that captain could return to the street and it would in in a roundabout way save overtime costs associated with backfill on the captain. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Does that answer your question? It does, yeah. It's just kind of hard to see, envision the savings there. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other questions? Doesn't look like any. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. Johnson, you're linked for the report out. Council member Worley, I'm going to look to you for a motion. Would it be a motion to recess and then come back at 1 PM? I think that'd be correct. Move to recess till 1 PM. All right, a motion's been made to recess and seconded. Are there any questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that motion passes. We are in recess until 1 PM. Thank you. All right, council members, I would entertain a motion to come back in session. So moved. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Hearing none, the motion passes and we are back in session for our committee of the whole for the FY25 budget. So council members, we have heard the link report out presentations and Like I said at the beginning, I think after we went through the report outs, now I think is the appropriate time to start making motions. But before we do, just off of some help and some advisement from the administration, they have identified some potential funding sources for some of the items that were reported out in budget links. So I've shared that information with the link chairs. So when they go through and make their recommendations, they may reference some of the potential funding source. And I think the administration's here to give some clarity on that. And then I think we all noticed that there was some additional positions being recommended in this year's budget. So we need to identify a funding source for those new positions and then there was also some one time cost. So with that, I'm going to pass the chair to Vice Mayor Wu and I'm going to make a couple of motions. Thank you, council member James Brown. All right, thank you, Vice Mayor. So with that, just as some context, the additional positions that are being recommended are going to be reoccurring costs going forward. There are ten positions recommended by the links to the total sum of, I think it's 900,000 and some change annually to the budget. But for this fiscal year that we're talking about, the cost for all those positions will be somewhere around $743,000. So with that, I move to amend the mayor's proposed budget for FY 2025 to increase the general fund revenues by the amount of $492,211,434 to $492,961,434. That's an increase of $750,000. So moved. Second. All right. There's a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. When we look at the new positions, what would you say? The total number was about a million, and we're putting this at 50 because this is for next year, but people aren't going to be hired right away to fill these positions. So when we do that, what kind of time frame do we have that we set that? Are we filling it at 75% then? So a couple things would be helpful. when you increase the revenue it'd be helpful if you identified where you would like to increase it and then if you approve additional positions it would be helpful if you identified how long you would like them funded for so as you all make your motions if you approve a position if you'd like it funded for the full year or nine months or six months or however long you would like it funded for that would be great when you make your motion if you could state that so and that's kind of what i'm asking because i don't think they're going to be come come on board january or july 1st i'm not sharing anymore did that ask you a question i guess i just want to have i think we have to have a follow-up with that and i'm just trying to figure out where we got that that difference in the money on that and because we do need to figure out how long it's going to take to fill those positions yeah i i think typically um you know if the the position is funded for a full year that would give us the green light to go ahead and start the jpq process studying the position if there's already something that is like it we can go ahead and start recruiting for that position and start the process if it is not funded for maybe until january we We wouldn't start that process until October or November. So it would just depend kind of on the direction that you all are providing as to how soon we would proceed with that. Some of those, like for example, the eligibility counselor that is in social services, we already have that position. So we already have a JPQ, we already have that information in place. So that one would maybe proceed a little bit faster than something that we don't already have like a fire accreditation manager or something that is new that would need to be studied. If that makes sense. Thank you. Councilmember Gray. Vice Mayor, point of order, this has led, for the council member to be able to restate his motion given this discussion so that we fully understand. Were the numbers that were used in coming up, those were four year long positions, correct? Yeah, year long positions in this coming budget year. So as the motion was made, that would be then a year for the position to be year long? Yes. Correct. So that's all encompassing. I think that helps me understand. Thank you. The numbers that were on the budget links recommendations were as the divisions requested them. So sometimes the divisions requested them at 12 months. Sometimes they requested them at 10 months. If the link brought it forward as the divisions requested it, they may not all be 12 months. So the dollar amounts may vary depending upon what they are. If you all brought them forward just as they were, you may have positions that are 10 months or 9 months or whatnot. So then the clarifying question then to the council member that moved. You're just asking for the way that the links brought them forward. Yes. And then we would all understand what that means. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gray. I just needed the mover to repeat their motion. Okay, the motion was to, I move to amend the mayor's proposed budget for FY 2025 to increase the general fund revenues by the amount of 750,000. from $492,211,434 to $493,211,434, with said funding increase to come from additional employee withholdings in the amount of $750,000. Is it possible for Lex TV for us to get that motion written out, so we could see it. That would just help me. Do we have that as a graphic? Oh, you don't have it. We don't have it. We can work on getting everyone a copy of the motion. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. You know, this is, we don't do this very often, Council Member Brown. I don't know that I recall. ever doing it where we adjust the revenue if we've got some items in link and if we've got some expense items that we want to do then we determine where we can get the money and we take it from that but for you to make an adjustment to the existing revenues which i think were or by the administration was checked out and reviewed and really come up with the number that they did, I can't accept a change in the revenues. Now, I don't know that I have a problem with some of the, if you find it from the expense side, but trying to back into this budget with a revenue amendment i think is in poor budgeting and you know you and i talked about it and i just don't agree with you and i don't agree with this budgeting concept of of doing that so i'm going to be opposed to any type of adjustment against the revenues thank you can i can i respond council member james ron council member so so So I appreciate the sentiment and your thought and your experience, but I think part of the justification is in recent years, the actual revenues have exceeded our projections. And this is just an estimate. So I'm comfortable with being more aggressive in regards to this year's estimate to reach this number that I'm proposing. We meet monthly to review the finances. If we see that there's going to be an issue with not meeting our budget, I think we, as a council, can make moves to adjust. I think when this conversation came up about adding these positions, we had originally, and I'd say originally, as Kelly and myself had talked about freezing long time vacant positions. The challenge with doing that is I don't want to do anything to perceive that this council is doing anything to hurt divisions from delivering services. So, but that is something that we can consider later on if it looks like we're going to miss our budget projections. We can freeze long term vacant positions to make sure that we meet that need. And then also reduce some expenses and make some budget amendments going forward. So I think we do have the flexibility to meet this adjustment. I guess I can reply to them. This is just not good budgeting. You just don't budget based on what's going to happen in the future and say, oh, well, if our revenues don't come in, we'll make an adjustment then or we'll freeze some positions or we'll do this, that, or the other. And I don't think you're giving the administration the credit of putting this budget together and accepting at least the revenue side because I think we made a motion that we accepted the revenues, I believe, was in an ordinance form. Is that not correct? when they brought that forward. We accepted the revenue projection, I think, from an ordinance standpoint, I believe. Yeah, we did, so this is an amendment. Right, exactly, exactly. But you're couching that amendment, and you're explaining your amendment to me, I guess, but I've got a lot of experience and a lot of long-term budgeting type of thing, and it just doesn't set well with me and the philosophy of how we budget in the city. Thank you. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair. And my question is for Council Member Brown again. Is the 750, that's the general fund recurring, And is there an intent to do the other ones at some point? Like if there's other, because there's other positions and other funds. So, and maybe the administration can help justify that. Some positions were recommended to be funded across several other funds. Right. But I think from further investigation, they found that all those positions were general fund, 1101 funded positions. Okay. So I think the intent is to fund those positions. All the positions. The reoccurring cost out of the general fund. Okay, all right, thank you. I just have a general comment that while I agree with Council Member Fred Brown at times, I would just say my experience has been in the last two or three years, we've under budgeted and we've over achieved. overachieved we've over we've had a greater revenue number than budget and with this number being 0.3 percent um i don't i don't actually think it's a big ask and i think it's kind of a i think it's it ends up being a small a small number that actually creates um some some good potential so i'm supportive of of doing it and it's strictly because we have we have overachieved for several years and i feel like we've got a fairly conservative budget revenue number thank you thank you councilmember warley thank you vice mayor uh i'll be supportive of this uh of this motion i think councilmember savigny has put it well that this is a a fairly nominal increase and i think we have done significantly better than we have projected over the past several years i think we saw we've done we've seen you know over 10 percent increases um in our revenue year over year when we have budgeted as little as three percent increase and I think the administration has done a really good job managing and getting us in a place that we can see those revenue achieve those revenues and I think they've done a good job this year by being a little more optimistic with I think it was a six percent increase but I think this small adjustment will allow us to do what we want to do with these positions that if you'll go back and I don't have a list of all of them but the two that stuck out in my mind were folks that were going to help those of our constituents that need assistance from this government, navigate the government, and then traffic management engineers for the neighborhood traffic management programs, issues that I think we hear about all of the time and are very valuable. And so I think if this is the mechanism to do it, while a little later in the game than we normally would, to Council Member Brown's point, I think we still are at the beginning of our budgeting process. this would be probably less well received halfway through the year to try to make a revenue adjustment. But I think we're going to see a healthy fund balance again this year, and I think that we can absorb this into the budget, and it'll be beneficial for us. Thank you. Thank you. Any more discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right. I have one opposed. That motion passes. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you all for supporting that. And I will say as my role as the budget chair, I think it's to work to address the link recommendations and priority on the forefront. I think if council members, a group of council members have reviewed a portion of the budget and have come to the decision that we need to consider something or add additional funding to the budget that that we take it serious seriously and that we work to find places to fund these initiatives I'm sorry to interrupt councilmember did you have a specific revenue line that you had in mind additional employee withholdings thank you All right, so I'll pick back up where I was leaving off, is to identify places to find these additional funding opportunities. The next motion is going to be in regards to our capital infrastructure, capital contingency fund. Even though we know we have some projects on the horizon and that we're working to move forward with City Hall, Until we do, I think there's an opportunity to fund some one-time cost. But just to be clear and to be specific, is that I'd like to make a motion to not consider more than $3 million, which is less than 10% of that fund. So to consider that for one-time funding from the LEAK recommendation. So I move to consider up to $3 million to fund one-time expenditures from council budget links recommendations from the capital contingency capital infrastructure fund. So move. All right. We have a motion and a second. If there's any discussion, please log in. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just to clarify, you said individual council member request or all? Clarify that, please. Right now, the intent is to consider link recommendations up to $3 million out of that fund. Okay. Do we have a quick and dirty number on what we're at? It's kind of hard to pull it out versus, it's okay, I'm just trying to pull it out minus the positions. Because the positions are separate from that. The positions are separate and then there are some other requests that have other funding options. Okay. So I think it's going to be hard to dictate what that specific amount is. But I would say just from glancing at it that it's less than $3 million. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So when I look at this, if we're not considering positions, it wouldn't be that much. Yeah, so all the positions, since they're reoccurring calls, I think it's appropriate for those to come out of general fund. So that's the reason for increasing the revenue. Anything that would be considered for this amount of money would just be one time cost. Okay, I didn't think there was a big price tag for one time costs. And you just said 3 million, so I'm just checking. Just to get a round number. Okay. And then some of it, I would, I guess we could have started with a lower number, but if some items that for some reason aren't supported for getting funded out of different sources, say bonding, say folks didn't want to bond a recommended project, then it may increase this cost as far as one time. But I don't think anything in totality is close to $3 million. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sevigny. Thank you, Chair. Council member Brown, I'm just trying to clarify a few things and so I might ask Commissioner Hensley for some help too. Maybe is the appropriate way to do something like that a transfer, would it be to authorize a transfer from our capital contingency fund to the general fund of $3 million? Because that's basically what you're trying to accomplish, I think. I think that's ultimately what it would look like. But for our sake of our conversation here, I just wanted to make a motion for us to consider- Consider it. That funding source. Got it. All right. And then Commissioner Hensley, can I ask you a question? Yeah. While you all are considering your deliberations, Let us figure out technically what that would look like if you wanted to do something like that and we'll get back to that. And I have a second question. Yes, sir. I know that we have about $5.1 million in fire trucks basically or fire capital equipment that's not currently bonded. Correct. So is there a reason that all of our other vehicles are bonded and that particular set of vehicles isn't? Because I'm also looking at is there a way to free up general fund by bonding that? And then in our fund balance discussion in October, we might be able to pull some items out of the bond package with other surplus funds. So currently the $5 million for the fire apparatuses are in pre-fund, which means they're in 24 money. Pre-fund. So in order to put them into the bond, we would need additional money in 25 that we do not have. So we would either have to increase revenue in 25 or we would have to drop below our beginning fund balance, which we set aside for changes in PVA or library. those things that happen before we have fund balance, or we would have to cut something from the budget. So to move that into bond next year would only free up money in 24. So you would have... For additional pre-fund. For additional pre-fund. So additional pre-fund could take place. Correct. But you would have to have a project that would be eligible to move to another fund or get a purchase order on and encumber before the end of the year. So you would have roughly a month to be able to get that done, to be able to make that work. If it doesn't go to pre-funding, it just rolls to fund balance. It does. Then it becomes just a conversation again in October. It does. But we do have to have the additional bonding capacity for the debt service to add it to the bond for next year. So that does require operating dollars in the 25 budget. Do we have the bonding capacity for that? No, it's about $600,000 that we would need. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you. Commissioner Hensley, you said you're going to look into kind of what the implementation of that might look like. Will that conversation impact the substance of Council Member Brown's motion? No, I don't think so. As you all are having your deliberations, if that is something, right now it's sitting over in a separate fund, and we would need to figure out if that is something you wanted to do, how that would need to be represented in the budget. If that would need to come forward as a budget amendment like a pre-fund or like a regular BA or what that would need to look like. Okay, so regardless of what you find out, this motion can move forward without having to get into that. Right, we just need to figure out how that would look. Gotcha, thank you. Any other discussion on this motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right, we have one dissent, that motion passes. Thank you. Chair, back to you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And thank you, council members, for entertaining that. And I think Kelly's going to keep tabs on it for us. So we'll go back to the first link that reported out, and that's the CAO Housing Advocacy and Community Development for motions from the chair. Thank you, Chair. I move to recommend on behalf of the link, the eligibility counselor. So moved. All right. Second. Let me do both of them. Okay, I'll do. And also the social services worker. So moved. Second. All right, a motion's been made, and just to clarify, the motion is to fund the link recommendations for those two positions out of the general fund. Yep, and so that was the clarification and the motion was seconded. Are there any questions on the motion? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. All right. show of hands for the no's all right you got it all right that motion passes thank you chair was there any other motions for that link no sir the other one that we talked about will will address in fund balance okay thank you thank you all right so we'll move to the next link which is the environmental Equality and Public Works, council member will agree. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to seek a little clarification before I go down the line with my motions. It appears as though I would have eight motions to make. Because we're potentially dealing with a range of funding sources for this link report out, how would you like me to do it? Council member Ellinger, it seems like just did two individual motions. Is that how you would like me to do this? So I think in law, Mr. Barbary, if I state this wrong and it's something that we can't do, please help me clarify. But I think it would be good to maybe reiterate the positions and the initiatives that you want funded and identify the funding source and then make a motion for the council to adopt the LINCS recommendation. Okay, so does that work? Okay, so first I'll go into a bit of a recap and I'll clarify the funding sources now that we've had these preliminary motions about revenue and capital contingency. Does that sound all right? First, we have two vehicles with engineering. So as a reminder, one vehicle at 32,000, a second vehicle at 32,000, that totals up to 64,000. Those vehicles would be funded via bonding. We then have, with environmental services, a quad cab truck with a hitch at $53,920. And that would be funded via the Urban Services Fund. We then have software consulting, which was at $11,000 and we believe that that could be funded in the current fiscal year. Okay, excellent. We then have two positions, one of which was with traffic engineering. $88,137 and that would be associated with the neighborhood traffic management program. That would be funded per our conversation we just had via the general fund. We have another position which is an administrative officer position. Previously we had said there would be multiple fund sources, but based on feedback from the administration, That $96,998 would be also funded via the general fund. And based on the discussion at the podium, we would give the CAO and the commissioner the freedom to realign that position as necessary in relation to the demands of the paving program. And the associated efficiencies based on the size of that program at current. And then we have a grant writing position at $150,000 and a planting manual update at $150,000, which we would recommend would come out of the capital contingency fund. And the grant writing position would not be a reoccurring amount. That would be a consultant, and those would be consultant's fees that then potentially could shift in terms of funding source based on the type of grant. Chair, does that clarify? Okay. So moved. So do I need to then put that in a form of a motion? Yeah. So moved. There you go, perfect. Second. All right, a motion was made to approve the link recommendations with the identified funding sources and it was seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Council member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I just want to make sure that the only thing that was coming out of the council contingency fund was the grant writing consultant services at $150,000. No, council member. The plant- The plant manual update, I'm sorry. The plant manual update at $150,000 would also be out of that. Both of them. Correct. Sorry, thank you. All right, are there any additional questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. I see a show of hands of the no. I think I'm just confused because I feel like we should have broken it up and voted on them individually because some I agree with and some I don't. That's the split the question. Yeah, and parliamentarian. then that then since the chairs wanted to proceed this way then if you want to discuss something outside of the that one motion you could either make an amendment to the overall motion directly to that item or if you want to have a separate vote then you should have a motion to separate the question and pull that item out parliamentarian would it be is that the only way if if somebody was opposed to one of the items could they just mention the item they were supposed to is that a a way to do it or is that not and i mean i'm sure that's that's the way we normally do our ordinances and resolutions at a meeting as long as the clerk can can keep up with that i think that that would be all right so so does that help council member if it's something specific you can just say what you're voting no to or yes to sure i'll just go down the list um i vote no on the streets and I vote no to the traffic engineer. I vote no to the grant writing consultant services and no on the plant manual update. So it might have been shorter just to say what you voted yesterday. Kelly, did y'all get that? Okay. I'm sorry, was there any of your non-budgetary items that you needed to make motions on? Did you need to send any of those to committee or recommended or? Sir, I can work with the chair of environmental quality and public works and for the one item that we may need to recommend if that works uh... for you chair was there so so there was more there was an item that you wanted to uh... recommend be considered at the fund balance i think you are i think you are make that that i think you are to make that form of a motion so it'd be considered at the fund balance conversation it ever did you have a number with it or was it just uh... initiative and i think it's the i'm in the right place i think it's the way finding signs are oh the way you find exactly on the right am i on the right link or not yeah that's on ours yeah okay yeah so so yeah let me let me just back up i think i i think we're fine on link recommendations being stated in the in the written form that they that you want them to be considered at fund balance So I don't think it necessarily needs a motion if everybody's fine with that on link recommendations. Okay, thank you chair. Thank you very much. Sorry about the confusion. All right, the next item on the agenda is the finance economic development planning link motions. Thank you chair on behalf of the link Move to increase funding in the office of economic development for tech worker recruitment efforts the amount of $150,000 to come from the capital contingency fund And in the same office to increase funding for infill and redevelopment public infrastructure fund in the amount of $2 million from the capital contingency fund. And to increase funding to LexArts for student cultural pass pilot program in the amount of $50,000 from the general fund as adjusted. And my understanding is there's what we've done with general fund and your conversation with the administration, there's room in the general fund for that. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions or conversations to the motion? Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I move to separate out the LexArts recommendation for a separate discussion and vote. Second. All right, a motion was made to separate out the LexArts item out of this committee and seconded. Are there any questions to that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Link chair, should we, so what's the, I mean, parliamentarian. What's the most appropriate thing to vote on the other two items as presented and then do LexArts or do LexArts? I think first. I think that'd be up to the chair. Okay. It's been separated sufficiently, but the underlying motion is for all of it. So now that the LexArts has been removed, the underlying motion is just the infrastructure fund and the tech workers. So it would be up to the chair if we want to dispense with that first and then get into the discussion on the other. Okay. So, yeah, so let's vote on the underlying motion first. It has the other two items. Are there any questions to that? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to say I will support the increased funding for public infrastructure fund. However, I would like more information specifically on how that money is being used and have a little bit more transparency there as we had quite a bit of pushback on it this past year. Thank you. That's fair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. um council member really just so i am clear there was already a million for the public infrastructure fund in the mayor's proposed budget so this is two million in addition to that to make it a total of three so it is two million in addition but i have miss i misstated that previously there was a million left over from previous budgets okay so that's what we're talking about before and then because we were only we weren't able to use that the way we wanted and so yeah this is additional two million dollar funding that that's the million which i understand has now some of it's already been already spent yeah was from a previous budget okay so this would still be two million it would barely be the total then plus the ten thousand or whatever that was left over yes ma'am okay thank you thank you next is uh council member baxter thank you chair and uh while i am supportive of both of these projects i cannot support it coming from the council capital fund that's all thank you council thank you councilmember councilmember Savigny thank you chair and I just wanted to just respond that we are doing a presentation on this and we will be recommending a modification to the program that from a lot of different feedback we've gotten from all of you and from other people I think you're gonna like what you see when it comes out so I appreciate the support thank you councilmember next is that council member Worley thank you chair and while I'm getting a sense that there's some general support here just to speak to it and again the links thoughts on it and then my own one of our goals and objectives when it comes to our land use policies is to a emphasis on infill and redevelopment and that's been something and that's consistently been a difficult thing for developers because to develop inside of the urban services boundary where there's not new infrastructure, it's very expensive dealing with old sewer, old water line, road systems. And the mayor and the administration, to their credit, in a previous budget, attempted to do just this and help the development community to develop in the infill and redevelopment areas. and credit to Councilmember Sevigny and Brown for helping to try to revive that effort in a way that we're hearing that our development community will. So I think this is following up in a previous attempt and commitment of the administration and doing what our first goal and objective related to land use planning long before we talked about expansion was an emphasis on infill and redevelopment. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. If there's no other question, then we'll take a vote on the underlying motion, and that's the fund, these two, the Public Infrastructure Fund and the Tech Worker Recruitment from the Capital Fund. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? All right. That motion passes. And now we'll go back to the separated question, and that's the fund, the additional $50,000 for LexArts from the general fund. Are there any questions or comments to the motion? Hearing none, next up is Council Member Liguri. Apologies, I'll just need to recuse on this due to my relationship with Lexington Philharmonic. Thank you. All right, so, all right, are there any questions? Hearing none, seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. No. Let's go to the sheet. Let's go to the. Aye. There's going to be a blind ballot that we're going to pass around. as that all of us had that motion fails right here right so that motion fails is there any other Business, that link. Hearing none, the next item on our agenda is the general government and general services motions. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund the county clerk digital access project in $27,000 as pre-fund of FY24. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded. Are there any questions to this motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Chair, is that it? Okay. All right, so moving right along, the next item on the agenda is the social services and public safety link motions. Thank you. go through these and um based on new information i might update where the proposed funding source is i move to approve the e911 manager at 87 133 dollars from the general fund also the outdoor warning siren at 38 155 from our existing bond I move to approve the civilian accreditation manager. This would be a reduction of overtime hours from fire at 79,757. I move to approve the radar trailers at 22,000 and add to our bond package. I move to approve a real-time intelligence center analyst at $65,751 from the general fund, a real-time intelligence center supervisor at $86,121 from the general fund, a youth program coordinator at an added cost of $25,399 from the general fund, and a recreational manager at $82,297 from the general fund. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded to fund the social services and public safety link recommendations. Are there any questions? First up is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I have a quick question, kind of just dealing with what I asked before to Commissioner Hensley. I'm all for bonding these things, but I think what I was told is we couldn't move the fire trucks into the bonding. So the fire trucks for a $5 million move is about $600,000. The two engineering vehicles at $32,000 a piece and the radar trailers would add an additional $10,603 in bonding capacity. We have about $20,000 of unassigned fund balance. So your unassigned fund balance could cover adding those to the $3 million of general fleet. But we don't quite have enough room for the $5 million of fire apparatuses. Okay. Okay, thank you. Yes sir. Appreciate it, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Any additional questions? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Hold on, I think we may have some clarity. Can I? Well, we just want to clarify, I think you might have done this on the fire one, but don't think you did it on the youth program coordinator with both of those positions there would be a corresponding movement of money that needs to take place that was already budgeted I think you mentioned it in the fire one but on the fire one it's basically they need to reallocate the overtime as part of it and then on the youth services one there was thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars that also needs to be reallocated as part of what you all are doing in your motion. As long as that's what you think you voted on, I think you're fine. I just wanted to clarify that for your record. So do I need to add that specific? I think as long as you all realize that that's what you're doing by voting, that you encompass moving those items of money as well, I think you're fine. Okay, thank you. I agree with Mr. Barber. I think the motion as stated was trying to summarize all the detail that was in our packet, and it is included in the packet. Yeah, I agree. All right, so let's do it again. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. All right, is that recorded? We got the no's. All right, that motion passes. All right, council members, I think that brings us to the end of our link report out and motions. And I will ask council members, Kelly, you want to give us an update on, or is it too soon? Is it too soon? I think council members would like to know how much money has been spent from that capital infrastructure. Okay, so out of capital, 2.45 million has been spent, or at least obligated at this point. Okay, what about the positions? Are we under the? Well, I was just looking at that and with the addition or including the firefighter position, it's 793,000 but without that it is less. So I need to kind of factor that in. Okay, I think that's going to put us. I think we're fine. Yeah. So you think we're less than the $750,000 that we increased it? Okay. All right, so we'll move forward to the next item on the agenda, and that's the FY25 individual council member recommendations. And we'll start with, council member LaGrie. Thank you, Chair. I'm wondering if our staff could help us by putting the individual memorandums up on the screen for these recommendations, if that would be an option. They're in the packet. They're page 138 in the packet. That's where they begin. All right, thank you very much. I'll go ahead and begin. Colleagues, in your packet, this is on page 138 and it's also reflected up here. First, I want to apologize for the typographical error on Commissioner Horn's name. There is no E. You all will see that I am making a pitch for $500,000 toward a downtown master plan. You all may have heard about a downtown master plan from 2008, and in fact I have a paper copy here of that at my desk. But this was done by the Downtown Development Authority and it was not formally adopted by council. Therefore, because of the time that has passed and all of the changes that have occurred in downtown and the fact that this downtown master plan was done by an external agency, I recommend that we look toward developing a new downtown master plan. As you can see here, there are many different aspects to a plan of this sort. It's connection to the economy, to housing, to professional opportunities, to municipal needs like city hall, to tourism, entertainment, and the cultural needs of our community are all clear. And I do believe that a plan of this sort could be a guide toward future development. We've talked a lot about infill and currently our downtown is approximately 37% surface parking. We know that there are tools available to help fill in some of those gaps to assist us with bike and pedestrian safety with the vitality of downtown retail and other businesses. And we also know that the footprint of downtown has expanded. And I believe now encompasses three different council districts. So a downtown master plan of this sort could fill a lot of needs and help position as well for the future of Lexington. And it also helps us be proactive in terms of safety and connectivity and shows our residents and people throughout Fayette County areas of priority for our city and for our government and for people who are living, working, and playing downtown. So I do want to share with you that I would love to hear your thoughts about funding this project either now or with fund balance. I want you to know that I'm open and flexible to the feedback of the council for this initiative. But I do view this as an initiative that touches multiple council districts and affects anyone who's coming downtown for any reason. In order to entertain discussion, do I need to make a motion or? Council member, and the way I think we ought to proceed is I think we ought to proceed with every council member making a presentation, a time presentation at five minutes, if you don't mind, I think you stayed under, and then let everybody present and then go back and make motions. My concern is if we just let everybody go through and make motions as we go along, the folks down towards the end kind of don't get a case to at least make their case. So I just like to do that. If everybody's fine with it, that's how I'd like to proceed. And then ask questions when the motions come. So this time it's just to present, to allow us to move through it pretty quick. Okay, Chair, that's helpful. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you, Council Member LeGrie. Next is Council Member Monarez. Thank you, Chair. I have four requests and they're not laid out on our packet in the order of my personal priority. I personally like to prioritize things that affect public safety and for me that that's anything that has to do with traffic, pedestrian, or just public safety in general. I know that these are all listed under parks. However, this isn't asking for a new pickleball court or a new playground. The one that I am prioritizing the most is the one for Meadowbrook Park. This park was just recently revitalized last year and you have the parks master plan behind the text. And everything has been done as far as a new playground, a new pickleball court, a half basketball court, a new covered area. In fiscal year 2025, we are repaving the parking lot. The only thing that isn't being done is the paved path. And so I would really like to have that done because there are several children that live in the area that are disabled and use wheelchairs. This is also where my district has the most senior population, individuals with disabilities. And I have pictures of that trail in that handout as well, where you can see how dilapidated it is. So the new parks master plan has a loop going in a different area where it would no longer be in the flood plain zone. In addition, this park is where there's a lot of illicit activity going on. And one of the things that the police recommended was for the trail and the parking lot to be lit. So the lights at the parking lot would be updated. Currently the trail is not lit at all, so that would be another 60,000. So it's 150,000 total for this specific request. I know that I could wait until fund balance, but I think that this should be a priority due to safety concerns, both for the lack of ADA compliance at this park. And again, for the crime that takes place at this park due to the fact that it is not well lit. And then in order of priority next would be the $60,000 for the Kirk Levington Park Lighting Project. There has been a significant uptick in crime in that park. The pictures that I've included in that packet is so that you could see how close all the residences are to both parking lots that would be lit with the $60,000. There are three residences from three different shots fired activity in the area that have bullet holes in them. And again, the police recommend that we add lighting. Currently, there's no lighting to these parking lots at this time. And next would be the sidewalk at Veterans Park with the help of Councilmember James Brown. We've paid for design for a parking lot and sidewalk for this park, so that's what you see there at first. The design is currently taking place, and that's because it needed a structural engineer to look at the parking lot. I'm not asking for that at this time. There is no sidewalk that connects South Point Drive to the paved trails in the back. So what you see in the third page of that is just the asphalt trail that is two-way vehicle traffic that uses that paved trail in addition to bicycles, scooters, pedestrian traffic. So families in any of the five adjacent neighborhoods that walk to that park that have kids in strollers or in wagons also use that trail. In addition to that, at Veterans Park, there are 650 paid members to the Southeastern Baseball that use that park. So I consider that a high risk as far as traffic is concerned, and it is in desperate need of that sidewalk, and that is $144,000. And then number four would be the concession stand for Babe Ruth. I didn't take a picture of it, and I'm sorry. but currently they work out of a little shed in the back of the park where they sell concessions it's not meant to be a concession stand so right now it's just a makeshift concession stand and this is just for the design of that it's $80,000 to design that I'm okay with leaving that for fund balance in the fall but the other three asks though are things that I consider some major safety issues and I would really like your consideration for all three of those. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Zivigni. Thank you, Chair. I sent out an email yesterday to the Council supporting this Lexington Veterans Center, this proof of concept. And I want to thank Commissioner Ford for working with me because when I've been dealing with these folks in the Veterans Commission for about 17 months, and all they have talked about is how great our senior center is and how they would love to have something like that for veterans. And I basically said, well, if we had multimillions of dollars to build a center like we would, but let's look at alternatives. And so what I propose to you all is an alternative to try to use some underutilized space that LFUCG has, that Commissioner Ford has identified, and set up something that we can attempt to try what they want to do. Just so you know what this is, the Veterans Commission has worked on this idea, and this facility would combine several organizations and create a one-stop, multi-purpose collaborative center for veteran-related issues here in Central Kentucky. It would house organizations like the National Association of Black Veterans, Veterans Resources United of Central and Southeastern Kentucky, the VA, a group from the VA, the Kentucky Veterans Hall of Fame, the Ladies Veterans Connect, and really anyone who wants to provide services to veterans with some sort of physical location that veterans would note that they can drop into. It serves and impacts one of our most vulnerable populations. about 19,000 vets in Lexington and 43,000 vets in the counties that directly surround Lexington and the intent is that eventually this facility if it goes off on its own would be a self-sustaining facility with rents paid from these different various service organizations and that's that's basically I'm looking for about $25,000 I included in my proposal the the approved Veterans Commission pro forma which kind of called out a facility and rent and all that kind of jazz and we're just trying to fit up a small area in some underutilized space that would that would allow us to start this program and and figure out if we can actually do something of meaningful impact. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I have two. The first one is allocating $75,000 for the Gun Violence Task Force recommendations. there's a work group working on defining those more than they already were and there will be some financial asks regard to that and i would like to airmark 75 000 for this coming year for those recommendations and the second one is 125 000 for a full basketball court at davis park The reason why I feel like this is important is that there used to be a basketball court right across the street at Carver Center. And now there is not one. When this park was designed, it was a big priority for the neighbors to have a full basketball court. But we had budget constraints. And so only a half court was put in. Then I've been contacted by multiple people asking for a full court. There's not one in the vicinity at all, and it serves an underserved area both there in Davis Park and Spiegel Hill is also nearby. And there's quite a few different neighborhoods that could access that full basketball court, and that is on the community land trust in old Davis Bottoms neighborhood. So that is my request there. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is council member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council members, my individual budget request is to increase the amount that, the monthly amount that we're putting in the economic contingency fund. Our goal is 10% of the general fund budget. We're close to that, but I think as we keep seeing our general fund grow, we get further and further away from the 10%. So I think we have to do something proactively to get us closer to that goal. So my recommendation is to increase that monthly allocation to the economic contingency fund from 50,000 to 75,000. I think this would be a good step in the right direction in regards to making sure that we're continuing to save and putting this city government in good, healthy financial conditions going forward. So that is my request. so thank you council members for being brief we'll go back to the top of the list and start to make our way down unless somebody wants to give us an update about something melissa are you are you are you gonna are you about to tell us something are you doing something else i'm sorry we were consulting all right okay so and i will say this before we get started council members i did talk to uh... most if not all council members and asked that if council members would consider deferring their individual quest the fund balance i think that would be at the time i thought it would be a good opportunity for us to uh... get out of this budget with minimal impact but by all means please uh... move forward make the request of this council to see alright so with that first up is council member agree unless you don't want to go first you can default to someone else i'm sure somebody would step up and take it counselors of the new sign and do you want to go first uh... I don't mind going first, but I just have a question for Council Member Legree on this particular one. Where would this money sit? Would we be in control of it or would it be sent to the downtown development operation to actually, and then would they include the area of where City Hall would be because City hall is going to be a big part of what downtown is um yes so the downtown development authority is no longer um functional as such i mean this would be in the division of planning so our division of planning would work with um within their staff and also with any kind of external consultants in order to uh execute a downtown master plan and And given that we are in the heart of the downtown here in City Hall, it would be inclusive of City Hall and the surrounding areas. I do think that protocol would state that I need to make a motion, which I feel very nervous about. And people are free to amend my motion. I move to consider the funding of the downtown master plan during fund balance discussion. Second. Thank you. So moved. I have a second, an early second. Second. All right. A motion was made to consider this request at our October fund balance discussion and It was seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. Thank you, Council Member LeGray. All right, next is Council Member Monarez. Thank you, Chair. I still wish to move forward with my request. I don't believe it adds to the workload of our parks. Paving the trail could happen concurrently with what is already planned for the parking there. The lighting is done by KU, it just needs funding at this point. And like I said, anything that helps public safety in one district, I believe helps public safety overall in our city. So moved. Second. There was a motion and a second. Is there any questions or conversation to the motion? Is everybody signed up? Questions to this motion? Councilmember Sevigny. Thank you, Chair. My general question about these, the council-led, it's more of a, it's a general question about council-led activities that we're trying to add to the or specific council members. All of us would love to have certain things done in our parks, I think, in each one of our parks. And I'm kind of, it is not that I don't think that things should be done in our parks. And I'm just wondering if, um i'm just wondering if this is something that i can be super supportive of because i also um i just i just feel like it's easier to support things that have a broader a broader brush on the population and a little bit tougher to support things that are specific in a specific park where i think our parks master plan should be the thing that drives what we're doing and and i know we have a parks referendum coming up so i do struggle with it and it's not that i don't think it's these are great projects i'm just personally struggling with it a bit thank you thank you council member next is councilmember sheehan thank you chair i have um two questions One for maybe Commissioner Ford or Director Conrad, but while they're coming up, Councilmember Menarez, a lot of us have been funding our parks projects from our district capital funds that we have received. Are you putting any of your capital funds to any of these projects? I'm not to this specifically for the design, for example, at Veterans Park. I put $85,000 in that from my capital funds, and Councilmember James Brown put $15,000 of his. that design was $100,000 total, and the rest of mine have gone towards traffic called where I barely made a dent. So even thinking of fiscal year 2025 capital funds, I already have projects lined up with traffic engineering for even anything coming up in the future. So I wouldn't have anything to put forward for even lighting at one of these parks. Okay, thank you. And I appreciate the thinking about security and safety within the park system and also the accessibility, because you know we've been working on the ADA transition plan, which encompasses some of these efforts. Director Conrad, I just wanted to ask you, if this is funded now, do you have the capacity to complete these projects or to even to start working on these projects before we would have our fund balance conversation in October? I know you have a lot of projects going on for parks, so I just have that question. Thank you, Council Member, for the question. we do have a lot of over 62 projects right now and we're very fortunate in parks to have that many projects through ARPA through council reallocation many different avenues so thank you for that and they're all great projects our our list right now would probably have these being constructed or completed in spring to summer of 26. So we're a ways out. Lighting alone with KU takes a lot of time to get designed. So that just kind of gives you a brief timeline of when they could happen. Could some happen sooner? Perhaps, but it will take some time just with the capacity. Okay, thank you very much. Yep. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Congressman Menares, what is your proposed funding source for these projects? It's listed here as general fund, but it could be capital contingency fund. I'm open to whatever source. Okay, I was wondering that because these are, to me, non-recurring costs. Sure. The capital contingency fund would probably be a good candidate for the funding source. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, thank you for the question. And I think clarity, I think we need to, on your motion, I think we need to define the funding source. So I think the option for funding these one time cost is the capital contingency fund. So I don't know if it was stated in the motion, but I think that is the intent. Any other questions to this motion? Yep. All right, so no other question? Kelly, what was the motion? Do you have the motion recorded? I just want to. And was the funding source identified in the motion? Yes it was or not? Was it all four projects or just four? Or were you? I mean, we can go one by one. Or I said that I would leave the, yeah, just all four. All four? Sure. Okay. Okay. All right, so that spurred more questions. So Council Member Baxter. I do not have a question, I have an amendment. Okay. Please, since you, if you don't mind waiting on your amendment to take a question. So Council Member Sheehan. Just to clarify the funding source, so is this the 3 million that we have now set aside? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I move to amend the, well, let's see. I move to amend the funding source to be considered at fund balance this fall. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made to amend for this funding to be considered at the fund balance discussion and second it. All those in favor of this amendment. Oh, is there any discussion to the amendment? Seeing none, all those in favor of this amendment, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. That motion passes. I'm going to count it two no's. Is that no? Well, a show of hands of the folks that voted no. You don't mind. All right. And so that motion passes and we will consider those items at the fund balance discussion. Paul Monter? Yeah, the original motion. The effect is the sign of the item of the original motion. Okay. All right, thank you. It's really the same motion. Okay. So the amended motion, so now the amended motion is to consider this funding at the fund balance discussion. Are there any questions to the new amended motion? Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I wanted some clarity because it sounded like Council Member Baxter's motion was to change the funding source to fund balance, not to have this conversation at fund balance, right? Vice Mayor, I think you heard it right, but I think she meant to move all the entire discussion about the items to fund balance. And I think the chair stated it that way before he called the vote. So I think we're solid. Just making sure. Thank you. Is there any question to the amended motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Next on the list is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I move to allocate $25,000 one-time non-recurring to the Department of General Services to furnish and equip a shared space within LFUCG buildings to host a proof-of-concept Central Kentucky Veterans Center pre-funded. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded to pre-fund this council request. Are there any questions to the motion? Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. Just a few questions. Who would run this space, first of all? The Veterans Commission, they would basically have subtenants of the different service organizations would be in the space. Part of the original proposal was to actually fund a position to support the space but that the proposal did not get funded so then it would end up being a it would be at this point it would be a volunteer it would be a volunteer organization that would that would support that space itself. So the money is going directly to the community partners? The money is going to actually outfit its products, its TVs, couches, chairs, recreational equipment, tables, chairs, that kind of stuff. And the VA doesn't have that type of service? The VA is a separate type of organization that provides different medical services and that's that's not what this is specifically about because this is more rec this is more about um space for the for people to come together okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you council member next is council member lynch council members vigny um can you clarify again what your proposed funding source for this is um i since the amount is small and i know from the from the presentation that we just had on our income and expense i find that 25 000 to pre-fund is is insignificant and it would be it would it would be easier than probably amending the other budgets by just to just pre-fund it okay thank you thank you chair yeah thank you council member next is a council member will agree sorry about that uh that's okay um chair um council members i know that you had mentioned perhaps that commissioner Ford had located space. Would you be able to clarify or share any more details about the location of that space at this juncture? Commissioner Ford identified a few spaces that could possibly work and so I'll let him speak to those. But we have not, we haven't gone through an exhaustive list. It was just kind of a quick list. Thank you. That's exactly right. Thank you, Council Member Savigny and Council Member LeGree and Council Members. We have not identified a space when council members of the first came with the proformas it was at a much larger scale and that was at a footprint that we do not have within our inventory of buildings community centers service centers etc but we there may be opportunities for a smaller scale footprint to serve as council members of the news mentioning a proof of concept to kind of allow this idea to go we have not determined that just yet if it is the will of the council we we stand ready to work with with Council Member Savigny and the Commission accordingly. All right, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair, and Council Member Savigny. I just wanted to see if you all looked at the Fisher House and it's been newly constructed over in Veterans on Leastown. The reason I say that, it is kind of a gathering place for families and I didn't know if any space in there could be used for this sign-up. Yeah, and that's specifically for families coming from out of town, I think, to use VA services. This would be more, this is more about community, you know, and this community. The other thing that there are other organizations that provide community like the VFW or the American Legion, But we have a real problem providing a sober community for veterans. And so this would actually, what we're trying to do is make sure that we have a place that is also a sober community. So, and I'm not saying that that isn't, but I think the purpose of the Fisher House is a little different. But it doesn't mean that it would not be an avenue that we could explore. Thank you. It's a gorgeous facility and a big facility too. So maybe even on a temporary, you could try it out and see. Yeah, that would be great. If it's out there on Lee's Town, you have to go out and take a look. Thank you. Okay, thank you, council member. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, council member. All right, I'm just looking at the motion on the floor. Okay, I'm fine. Yeah. All right, I think we got another question. Council member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Did you say you're going to pre-fund this out of this year's fund balance? Is that where you're coming from? Yep. Thank you. All right, that opens that up a little. All right, thank you. All right, next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Civigni, I think this is a really great project, but I'm a little hesitant because I feel like it's not quite fleshed out. I feel like if we had a specific location nailed down and a few more details, do you think that you would be more prepared with that information come fund balance time? I could be more prepared at fund balance than this. But I would also say there's no, this group, there's no, like there's no reason to prepare for anything unless we know we have the funding. And these guys are trying, they were, the people that on the Veterans Commission are passionate about this thing. And they're like, some space came up in Lexington. They're like, we got to go look at this. And I was like, guys and gals, like, we do not have the funding secured for this. I think by actually securing some funding, it all of a sudden opens up the possibility, and the funding will reside in Commissioner Ford's budget. And, you know, we're not going to waste the funding. If they don't find something that works within our facilities or within the other idea that we've had is even church facilities, that are willing to have a tenant that's a gratis tenant. So there's a variety of things that we could go down, but if we don't have any funding to do it, we don't have the ability to actually do the search. But I appreciate the question. Okay. Thank you. That's all I've got. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member, Commissioner? Council member could I ask if you would be willing to consider a partnership with the Veterans Commission pre-funding while having the money is one piece the ability of Using the money in 24 and how that has to work is another piece of that And that would give us a couple of different options potentially. We're trying to figure out technically how that would work and if you would consider being able to have that be an option that maybe would give us a little bit of extra flexibility. So are you recommending an amendment to the motion? You gave us the option to open it up for general services, but also to pursue an agreement with the Veterans Commission might be helpful as well. All right. Thank you. So just so we're good on the motion, so you want to be able to work that out without a budgetary impact right now? You just want to have that conversation with the commission. It'll still have a budgetary impact right now because it's still a pre-fund. It's still 24 money. She needs to secure the money. She needs to actually have. She needs to put it in the commission. Right. Okay. Okay. So that doesn't materially change the motion. Yeah. Okay. Correct. All right. All right. Seeing no other questions, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. All right, so next we move to Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I am going to make two separate motions, one for each of my items. The first one, I'm going to move to allocate the $75,000 for the implementation of the Gun Balance Task Force recommendations to the fund balance list this fall after the work group is finished with their recommendations. But I ask that it be on the top of the priority list when we discuss it this fall. All right, a motion was made and seconded to move that item to the fund balance discussion. Is there any discussion on this item? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. I have been told that the basketball court could start as early as a year from now in 2025. So I am going to move to allocate $125,000 to Parks and Recreation to fund a full court basketball court at Davis Park. So that motion was made and seconded. I'm going to ask for a funding source. I'm sorry, the contingency fund. All right. Capital fund. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Capital fund. Capital. The capital contingency fund. all right a motion was made and seconded to fund that out of capital contingency fund is there any conversation or discussion on the item councilmember gray thank you chair so councilmember Reynolds I'm curious I know we asked the same of councilmember Minaris sorry have you used any your capital funds of the 150 that we were given yes so this um will actually probably cost closer to 150 and so i would use at least 25 000 if not more towards this project as well so you have already out so you already i'm i'm allocating it for this process yes for this project Okay. All right. Next up, we have Council Member Sevigny. Council Member Reynolds, I do appreciate you bringing this up. I think it's another great project. It is slightly district-specific, and I'm looking forward to Council Member Baxter, who's up next after me to have this to be considered at another time, but I do think it's a worthwhile project and I do really appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I just have to keep the momentum going here. So I would make an amendment to move this conversation to fund balance. So moved. All right. The motion was made to amend this request to be considered at the fund balance discussion and second it. Is there any discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? No. All right, so that motion passes and we'll bring that up at the fund balance discussion. Okay, yeah, yeah. All right, so now we're going to vote on the amended motion. So are there any questions on the amended motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the amended motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. All right, up next is council member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And even though I've asked other council members to make their request considerations at the fund balance. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make a motion to revisit this after the committee, the BFED committee presentation on this, on the ordinance amendment. And I think it's also on the agenda for June. So I'll make a motion to reconsider this request at that time, so move. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes, Chair's back to you. All right, thank you Vice Mayor. So it looks like we've come to the end of our agenda. I will just ask the finance department or the administration if you need any additional information from us. Is everything crystal clear? All right, so since you're good and donating clarity from us, I just first of all want to thank the administration for all their hard work on the budget and helping us and council links and council members to get clarity and information that we need to make these decisions. Also want to thank the link chairs for the work that they did and working with council members to go through the links and working with the divisions to get the information. So, and then I'd also just like to thank you all for kind of understanding and being amenable to how today went. I know it's not always clear, but I think as long as we're working with good intent, we're going to have good outcomes. Okay, yeah, can I get to that, y'all? Yeah, all right, no. So yeah, no, I just want to thank everybody for their hard work and everything, Especially Kelly and the council staff and their team for helping us. With that, I will entertain a motion to cancel Thursday Committee of the Whole meeting. So a motion was made to cancel that Thursday meeting and seconded. Is there any conversation around that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? All right, that motion passes. And with that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Second. All right. A motion was made to adjourn and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Your first kiss was the sweetest Second kiss had a twist Third and your fourth kiss I don't wanna miss I can see it in your walk Tell it when you talk See it in everything you do Even in your thoughts You got the right stuff Baby Love the way you turn me on You got the right stuff Baby You're the reason why I sing this song All that I needed was you In my life You're so right All that I wanted was you You made all Every one of my dreams Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh. You made all You made all You made all Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh The reason why I sing this song Don't rock the jukebox I wanna hear some jump Cause my heart ain't ready For the rolling stone I don't feel like rocking Since my baby's gone So don't rock the tooth box Play me a country song Before you drop that quarter Keep one thing in mind You got a heart broke hillbilly Standing here in line I've been down and lonely Ever since she left Before you punch that number That I make one request Don't rock the jukebox I wanna hear some jump Cause my heart ain't ready For the road's storm I don't feel like rocking Since my baby's gone So don't rock the jukebox Let me hear country songs I ain't got nothing against rock and roll But when your heart's been broken You need a song that's slow There ain't nothing like a steel guitar A crown of memories Before you spend your money, baby Play a song for me And don't rock the juice bar I wanna hear George Jones Cause my heart ain't ready For the Rolling Stones I don't feel like rocking Since my baby's gone Cause you don't rock the jukebox Play me a country song You don't rock the jukebox Play me a country song I'm sorry.