# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - July 2, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · July 2, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6154 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6154?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-07-02 - **Last revised**: July 2, 2024 - **Length**: 17,795 words - **Speakers**: Chair > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services and Public Safety Committee convened on July 2, 2024, at 1:00 PM with J. Reynolds presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed three agenda items during the session, including one approval item and two informational presentations. The committee took two votes during the meeting and heard no public comments from attendees. The meeting covered both public safety staffing challenges and housing assistance programs, with the committee approving the summary from their previous May 14, 2024 meeting and receiving informational briefings on recruitment and retention issues for public safety personnel as well as eviction diversion and right to counsel programs. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on July 2, 2024: **Present:** • J. Reynolds • W. Baxter • J. Brown • C. Ellinger • T. Fogle • B. Monarrez • D. Gray • F. Brown • D. Sevigny • K. Plomin • Vice Mayor Wu • Council Member Sheehan **Absent:** None **Late Arrivals:** None All twelve attendees were present for the meeting, with no absences or late arrivals recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the July 2, 2024 meeting, both passing unanimously. **Approval of May 14, 2024 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] Gray motioned to approve the May 14, 2024 Committee Summary, with Plomin providing the second. The motion passed unanimously with a vote of 10-0. All ten committee members voted in favor: J. Reynolds, W. Baxter, J. Brown, C. Ellinger, T. Fogle, B. Monarrez, D. Gray, F. Brown, D. Sevigny, and K. Plomin. **Ordinance 0533-24: Crime Victim Paid Leave Policy for LFUCG** [timestamp: 02:45] Plomin motioned to approve Ordinance 0533-24 establishing a Crime Victim Paid Leave Policy for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, with Gray seconding the motion. The ordinance passed unanimously 10-0, with the same ten committee members voting in favor: J. Reynolds, W. Baxter, J. Brown, C. Ellinger, T. Fogle, B. Monarrez, D. Gray, F. Brown, D. Sevigny, and K. Plomin. The ordinance includes specific conditions that leave granted under this section is not available for work-related incidents or work-related injuries. This policy will provide paid leave for LFUCG employees who are victims of crimes, expanding the government's employee benefits and support systems. Both votes demonstrated full committee support with no opposition or abstentions recorded. ## Approval of May 14, 2024 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:30] The committee reviewed and discussed the summary of their May 14, 2024 meeting as agenda item I. Key participants in the discussion included J. Reynolds, D. Gray, and K. Plomin. The committee members examined the written summary of the previous meeting to ensure accuracy and completeness of the recorded proceedings. Following their review and discussion of the document, the committee voted to approve the May 14, 2024 committee summary. The approval allows the summary to serve as the official record of the May 14, 2024 meeting proceedings. No specific concerns or amendments to the summary were noted during the discussion process. **Outcome:** Approved ## Recruitment, Retirement, and Retention for Public Safety [timestamp: 01:00] Commissioner Ken Armstrong delivered a presentation on recruitment, retirement, and retention efforts across the county's public safety divisions, including police, fire, and corrections departments. The presentation addressed ongoing staffing challenges facing public safety operations and outlined both difficulties and achievements in maintaining adequate personnel levels. Armstrong highlighted the various strategies being employed to attract new recruits while retaining experienced personnel across all three divisions. D. Sevigny also participated in the discussion, contributing to the overview of current staffing initiatives and their effectiveness. The presentation covered the interconnected issues of: • Recruitment efforts to bring new personnel into public safety roles • Retirement patterns and their impact on departmental staffing • Retention strategies to keep experienced officers, firefighters, and corrections staff This agenda item was informational in nature, providing commissioners and the public with an update on the current state of public safety staffing efforts. No formal action was taken during this presentation, as it served to inform attendees about ongoing personnel management initiatives within the county's public safety departments. The discussion emphasized the critical importance of maintaining adequate staffing levels across police, fire, and corrections to ensure continued public safety services for county residents. ## Eviction Diversion and Right to Counsel [timestamp: 02:00] Jonathan Wright delivered a presentation on housing stability services, with a particular focus on eviction diversion programs and right to counsel initiatives. The presentation outlined the jurisdiction's efforts to help residents avoid eviction through early intervention and legal support services. Wright highlighted the importance of partnerships with community organizations in delivering these services. These collaborative efforts aim to provide residents facing potential eviction with access to legal aid and mediation services before cases reach the court system. The eviction diversion approach seeks to address housing instability proactively rather than reactively. The right to counsel component of the program ensures that tenants have access to legal representation when facing eviction proceedings. This initiative recognizes that many residents lack the resources to secure adequate legal counsel on their own, potentially leading to unfavorable outcomes that could have been prevented with proper representation. Commissioner Lanter participated in the discussion, though the specific nature of their contributions was not detailed in the available information. The presentation was informational in nature, providing an overview of current housing stability efforts rather than seeking approval for new initiatives or policy changes. The focus on community partnerships suggests a collaborative approach to addressing housing insecurity, leveraging existing resources and expertise from local organizations to maximize the program's effectiveness. These housing stability services represent a comprehensive approach to preventing homelessness and maintaining community stability by addressing eviction issues before they result in displacement. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approval of May 14, 2024 Committee Summary - **Ordinance 0533-24** — passed (10-0): Crime Victim Paid Leave Policy for LFUCG --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. I will now call to order the July 2nd, 2024 meeting of the Social Services and Public Safety Committee. Thank you for being here, everyone. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the May 14th, 2024 Committee Summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Motion to approve. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion passes. Next, we will move on to recruitment, retirement, and retention for public safety. And that will be our first presentation, and it will be presented by our commissioner of public safety, Ken Armstrong. And this item was sponsored by Council Member Savigny, and so I will turn it over to him for any opening remarks. Yeah, thank you chair, and thank you in advance for the presentation. We did go through it before we did it, and I think there's a lot of good things, and there's probably some things that we'll still need to work on, but all is good, and I appreciate your presentation. Thanks. Commissioner Armstrong, that's you. Well thank you very much. Oh, excuse me. First I'd like to thank the committee, and especially Council Member Civigni for letting us to discuss this very important topic today. I'd also like to thank the mayor and the council for its support on a daily basis and specifically in next year's upcoming budget. Thank you very much for your support in those efforts. As you know, this presentation is actually a reoccurring one and I have been asked to provide updates on how police fire and corrections address the recruitment, retention, and retirement numbers that are associated with their individual divisions. This really shouldn't be a surprise to the council today because we do report to you every week with the CAO's newsletter, giving you updates on where we are vacancy wise, hiring wise, and events that occur. But I think this is a good review for everyone and especially the public to see this. We do have some good news. We have some okay news and we have some great news to pass along. Council Member Savigny and I have talked about this a couple times. If you remember on May the 29th, I sent an email to all the council members asking if there's anything specific you wanted addressed in this presentation today. I did receive some feedback and I'll make sure that's covered today as well. For those of you who don't know, we actually traveled to Frankfurt on June 18th to talk to a committee on the interim local government. are pretty much the same topics that we're going to be talking about today, because Frankfort has an interest in that, because they're seeing what we're seeing. This is an issue all over the state, especially as it applies to law enforcement-related entities, specifically police and corrections, but they also wanted feedback on our fire department as well. I remind you that the numbers and stats that I give you today may not necessarily, or in this presentation may not necessarily be exact as of this moment because I do have to turn this in a little bit of a head schedule and to meet with Council Member Savigny. This is not to mislead anyone or give false information. I'll update those as we go through. There are a couple things I'll specifically mention that will need to be changed in the presentation because, well, one, there's actually a grammatical error, but the other thing is that those numbers do change on occasion, almost every week to be honest with you in our divisions with that being said I plan to do the entire presentation if it's okay with the council and the committee and then take questions at the end I do have chief Colvin chief Weathers and chief Wells all here to answer any questions that I can't and I want to brag about them and their staffs right now on the great job they're doing not only on these three topics but operationally in the city as a whole very very proud of them the job they do and the people that we work for on a daily basis thank you councilmember Brown all right go with slide one this is the one that we I put up front just because this slide actually applies to all three different divisions again this is a snapshot this has been updated adding 2024. Those of you who were at the last presentation last year, that is the only new information included in there. Now, I said pretty early on in my comments that there'll be some updates. I just found out yesterday that down on the second line, from the second line at the bottom, police and fire receive an additional $4,300 annually. That's actually been increased to $4,429, dollars and that's just a recent change at the state so I am NOT going to go line by lying during this obviously because I know all the council members can read there's no reason to do that whenever we talk about all CBA employees steps received an increase anywhere between 21 and 31 percent since 2019 the next sentence is important that does not address natural step progression for each employee. So there are some people that would get 35, 36, 37%. The lowest would be 21. Okay. Next slide. And we'll start with fire. As you know, we've been very blessed that while fire has not always had full staffing, which as you all know, is an impossibility for the most part. They have not faced the same issues that some of our other divisions in government have specifically police and corrections with that being said there are concerns some concerns there about the number of qualified applicants and we'll talk about that a little bit more here in just a minute um so we have the pay considerations the 44 29 corrections we have programs specifically designed to talk about new employees that receive a three thousand dollar hiring bonus that is scheduled out over time they receive that in increments as they complete different parts of of their hiring process and actually become full-fledged correctional officers. Also in the CBA, an agreement with the union, we have various overtime-based incentives. Luckily, because our staffing is up in corrections, a lot of those incentives do not have to happen right now. They happen on occasion, but not to the scale of a year or two years ago. So we're very happy about that. Police, the same 4429, and there is currently a $3,000 lump sum payment for new employees. much like the correctional officers receipt, or the new correctional officers. Now we'll break down into each division, and this will give you an overview of FIRE, recruitment activities, and other initiatives. Because we were also asked to talk about what other things are we doing to help with staffing and recruitment and retention and things like that. So there's kind of a hodgepodge here with some of this, but it has different effects in different ways. So just bear with me here. Increased social media presence. Obviously, we've learned over the last few years that that is paramount to anything that we do in government. All three divisions have increased their social media presence, probably corrections more than any other, because they practically had zero at one time. So that is outstanding. It's been very beneficial. I forget one of the divisions actually indicated that 70% of their applicants indicated that their first interaction with possibly considering a position was via social media. Used to be job fairs, used to be the newspaper, used to be commercials, billboards, things like that is dramatically changed. Now, does that mean we forego all those other things? Don't go to job fairs? No, we still go. but we're getting a lot bigger bang for our buck going to social media right number two the enhanced software again all three divisions are using new software to help communicate with the applicants and get the word out there and if you'd like to we can ask one of the chiefs to talk about there specifically at the end of the presentation focus on mental and physical health thanks to the council and the mayor we've been able to invest in this significantly over the last few years. It's very important. Actually, this is one of those things that our new employees say is very important to them, being both physically and mentally fit. And we've been able to do that through counseling, through different programs and different divisions to address that. Something as, and I put in air quotes, simple, significantly updating the gym at the detention center that now gets used, actually gets used now as compared to, it used to not be used because the equipment was outdated, dimly lit room, you know, things like that. So expand paramedicine. I'm not gonna talk about that too much because we talk about paramedicine quite a bit. Other initiatives, the first one, the safe haven baby box. And that's what it's called. We will be coming in front of council soon, right? Chief Wells may be doing a short presentation on what that is, but essentially what that is, that gives a parent that has a newly born child that can't care for it for some reason or another to actually turn that over to law enforcement officials and paramedics or you know our fire department in a safe manner and does not hold them criminally liable for abandoning your child smoke detector program probably one of the biggest unappreciated programs that we have i know we talk about it here in the chambers but it makes a huge difference on saving people's lives we may not be able to stop fires from happening but the fire department does a great job of educating on people how to do to stop them but also with the smoke detector program it greatly helps individuals especially those that may not have the resources of buy smoke detectors to have those in their homes and possibly save lives and at least on one occasion i know personally that it did in this last year Hands-on CPR, it's teaching as many people as we can what CPR is, what it's like, how to do it in the event that you're at the mall, you're at the swimming pool, you're wherever, but you can at least start those compressions and possibly save someone's life until EC is actually able to arrive. Staffing levels for the fire department. as you can see in 2023 the fire department's authorized strength was increased by 21 that's thanks to the safer grant also the vacancy numbers for all these slides are going to be based on june 1st of each year so we have some continuity so we're all looking at the same thing again that goes back to what our vacancies are today may not match what is on this slide but that's because we had to have a hard stop date on that and we chose June the first in our attrition numbers are based on January the first of every year that's right right after everyone pretty much is retires so that gives us an idea one of the things that you'll see that sometimes gets lost in this too and I think fire is the same way but I know police and corrections is this way that whenever you look at that attrition number and I'll just pick like number 20 20 42 that does not necessarily mean 42 people that have been on the department for an extended period of time left y'all count recruits in that too right yes so in other words a certain number of them and I actually have that for the police department if you want me to cover it later are actually people to get hired that may only stay a day. It may only stay two days. Six months they'll leave. So it's not always people with 20 or plus. Now that takes into account people that retire with 20 or plus years of service, disabilities, leave for some other reason, you know, family reason, other job, whatever it happens to be. They're terminated or the recruits and they just don't work out. So when you see those numbers, just remember that's kind of a whole bunch of different things rather than, oh, 42 people with 20 years of experience left. That would be inaccurate. Applicant numbers. So when you look at this, the fire department is different than corrections and police because in most cases, they have been blessed to have enough applicants in one application process to fill two classes. You see that in 21 and 23. That gives you an idea. If you look at 2020, which gets talked about quite a bit because of the civil unrest and everything, even the fire department had some blowback on that. We see a lot of people between the ages of 21 and 29 just not interested in doing public service type work. Right? It's just true. We're not seeing that number that we used to. So after 2020 with the social unrest, we saw a dip. You're gonna see much bigger dips in policing corrections, but you even see it in fire a little bit over those next few years. But if you look at 2024, thanks to some of the things I talked about earlier, they're definitely rebounding for those numbers, and that's great numbers for us. They just recently started a class of 25. 25. Just recently started a class of 25. I said earlier that zero vacancies are extremely rare. I think y'all had it for one day. One day we had zero vacancies in the fire department. So the next day someone else, one of the recruits dropped out or someone retired. So down at the bottom, remember the percentage changes there. We are rebounding in the application process. We still wanna see better numbers than that, but that's nothing to be disappointed with. Pretty happy with that. Commissioner? Yes, ma'am. There's only one less than one and a half minutes left, and I know you have quite a bit to cover still. So we have a light agenda today, so is it okay if I give you up to ten more minutes? Yeah, and I will fly through it now. All right, thank you. I had to set the groundwork on some of the numbers. So talking about police recruitment and activities, competitive salaries, especially competition among other agencies, physical preparedness, desire for profession, lower call to serve, which I've already talked about, about that 21 to 28, 29 year old. New workforce value, different jobs. They think about personal time, mental health, things like that, and we're addressing our recruitment and our retention activities around that as well. Overall, they are seeing an increase in the number of applicants, qualified applicants. One of the things that they were noticing is there's a thing called the, what's the standard? Pop standard, pop standard, that they have to pass the new recruits the first week that they come. And that is a physical fitness test. And even though they had told them, make sure you're able to do this, make sure you can do that, people are showing up not able to do it. So they actually have a course now to kind of keep applicants fit, even up to the academy class, if they're willing to take part in it. Precision policing, whenever they mention that, they're talking in line with RTIC and a lot of things that play into that, as you all know, that change in philosophy. They are realizing some success in these areas. Some other things to address personnel shortages are police retiree program. Now, whenever I talk in just a minute about the number of active positions we have in the police department, these 11 officers that they currently have don't go into those numbers. So they don't take the place of a vacancy. Okay? So if we have 90 vacancies, we have 11 retired officers, that doesn't take it down to 79. So just to make sure everyone understands that. Also, with the help of the state, they were able to lower the age of applicants to 20 as long as they're 21 by the time they graduate the academy. Clerks, what that is, is many times those are retired officers that may have some type of injury or don't have an interest in going back and working the street. And what they'll do is what's referred to as teleserve, which is take reports over the phone. And I've been advised that at least a thousand or so reports are taken over the phone by these clerks every month. And if you think about the amount of money that saves, the time, and how that frees up our officers to respond to more priority level calls, that's a big deal, to be honest with you. That's been done in the police department for years, but we've truly expanded, or they've truly expanded that to do it full time. You know, that's a go-to. Because there's plenty of times people would, not only could, but would rather just have a report filed over the phone. especially if it's just for insurance purposes. Community partners, One Lexington, I think you all know those folks, so I won't be bringing the interaction with them, but they have a very positive interaction. Staffing levels, vacancy rates are based on the first June, attrition numbers are based on, I've already talked about that, we have a new class set to start in August. As of today you have 37 individuals that we hope will go to that class. Now with that being said I use the number 37 today. Inevitably that doesn't mean all 37 are even going to show up the first day. We have people that ghost us. They have people that only last a day or two because of the physical fitness requirements. We have some that get into the Academy for a little bit and realize that maybe this is not what they thought it was going to be so they drop out. you know a good 60 to 70 percent would you say chief is a good good number to think that people would add it at about 60 or 70 will actually make it to the street yeah 60 or 70 kind of depends maybe more toward the 70 than 60 on the attrition numbers for example and I brought this up early and I underlined it whenever you look at 2019 11 of those 39 were actually people that were still the recruit class and 20 of them were 20 years or more experience so that just gives you an idea like on the 77 it was 23 recruits which is a lot and 25 that retired with 20 or plus years all right application numbers talked about this earlier if you look at 2020 you see that big number That was in the early part of 2020, right before social unrest, COVID hit its peak, you know, those kind of things. So they had a huge turnout for one process, 659. And then you saw it go down after that. The asterisks that I've placed on there are actually backwards. That's what I was going to say. One of the clerical errors. the one asterisk should actually be two and the two should be one whenever it talks to the reference points at the bottom each class required a separate application process that's why you see the number under it is the average for per so in 2020 we saw a big number of 659 the very next year we saw essentially a 50% drop in applicants and then 1% gain minus so we are rebounding this year still probably like to see twice as many applicants but as the chief said this upcoming class has 37 qualified applicants that's great news 37 is a number that can actually make a significant difference in our city Corrections again I thought that was gonna count down for me I'm sorry I'll go through this one quickly as well but I don't want to just kind of glaze over remember earlier whenever I said we have good okay and great this is the great part I want to end on a high note if that's at all possible Chief Colvin and his command staff doing a great job of working on these two three areas working on a spree decor working on a lot of things out there at the detention center and I can't say enough positive things about them. They, in some cases, started with nothing. They're actually really building on making our jail the very best it can be. I would already put it up against any other correctional facility in the state, to be honest with you, both the facility itself and the people that work there and the leadership that they're provided. But whenever we talk about recruitment activities and other initiatives, they do the same thing that police and fire did. They talk to people and find out, okay, you came in, you applied. How'd you hear about us? Well, each division has to look at that differently. So whenever they allocate their money for recruitment, it may be different than the police department, right? For instance, advertisement on street city buses. I know recently we had one about the police department released with chief weathers on one of the buses. I don't know what that was, but, um, They've worked with local TV stations, they increased their presence at job fairs, they've went around to Fort Knox and Fort Campbell, which the other divisions do too, but they haven't always done it that way, so we're seeing some rewards there. Co-sponsored some events, public events to get their name and their faces out there, hired a PIO, which they've never had one before, their social media presence is significantly increased because they didn't even have a Facebook page a few years ago. So it's really making a difference there with the recruits. Also, they're using some of the same databases to mass communicate with applicants that are interested in the job, just like the police department and fire department are. Number nine, oh, sorry. Interview Now, and that's one of the programs that allows them to screen the qualified applicants faster. Red Tag is a digital software that links division-generated messages, so you get that information out, too. They've really leaned on, all the divisions have leaned on this, but the best recruiters are always going to be your own employees. If they enjoy their job, they like the environment, they will go out and bring people to us. And that's why, as you noticed earlier, I mentioned some incentives for people to actually do recruitment. The Second Chance Academy is just something that they've been working on for some time with the chief of staff in some social services about providing individuals with some training, some education, and some resources to reduce recidivism. If we can't get our numbers up fast enough, ideally, the less crime, which as you all know, crime is actually down in the city right now, thank God. The less people that are arrested because less crime is occurring, then the benefit there is we don't have to have as many correctional officers. So it's working out pretty well right now. And I give a lot of that credit to Chief Colvin and his command staff on kind of taking the bull by the horns whenever they came in about a year and a half ago. Commissioner, we still have plenty of time. So you tell me how long you think. Just keep going until you finish the presentation. I'm almost done. That's fine. Staffing levels, again, I apologize. it takes me a little bit longer because this is a big topic and you all asked me to cover it so so staffing levels at the corrections as you all know you see that big number down there whenever chief colvin came 124 and we're down to 32 now actually are we today we're 30 34 technically today we're at 34 when we did this we were at 32 that's unbelievable That's a swing of 90. Again, the attrition number, you look down there at 110. That includes people that didn't show up, all these different things. So when you look at that number down there with an authorized strength of 323, and I didn't do this before I got here, I think the attrition number will add up to over 323. So someone would look at it and go, they don't have a single person that used to be there. there you know one position can actually count for three four and five of the art attrition numbers it can so but that's how it's collected and that's how it's reviewed reviewed but you saw a significant change in attrition in 2023 too you know look at the two 2021 and 2022 attrition 110 vacancies 124 a trip in 2023 attrition 29 vacancies 32 or 35 whatever that should tell you a story as well application process seeing a significant increase there around right after 2020 you saw the decrease there of course our community Corrections group can spit out a lot more classes than police and fire camp but the numbers look good there that last one 82 per class I mean that's good that's really good that's really good as you can see the significant change from 21 to 22 that was a 51% increase in another 22 and another 20 that's that's something to be proud of last slide yes I'm asked to always include this as well this is just informational to indicate our collective bargaining agreements when they expire and which ones are currently in the negotiation process negotiations normally take from six to ten weeks so I am sorry that took so long but it is a pretty big topic I wanted to make sure I covered as much I could if you have any questions I'll be glad to try and answer those or can ask one of the chiefs or their staff to step to the podium and help you in any way they can thank you very much Commissioner councilmember gray Thank You chair and Thank You Commissioner for your presentation and thank you to our public safety who's here in the house nice to see each of you and I'm thankful for all that you do for our city commissioner I i noticed um do you have any information regarding um our traffic safety i know they're not part of the um cba i didn't get your i have not seen that email that was the question oh um traffic you mean the safety officer yes sir yes they currently have how many safety officers And I think we have some on the mic. Yeah. So I'll repeat that in case anyone. So we're currently authorized 20, have 18 that are currently on duty, and there are four additional that are in the upcoming budget. Okay. And of those, I know last year, I know we added positions to the traffic, or the, what do we call them? Public safety? Safety officers. Safety officers. Yeah. However, those positions weren't filled. Is that correct? Or they were filled, and then they left? They were filled. Okay. I'm just curious. Safety officers, you know, we have some that have been here, gosh, I don't know, 30 years. But we also have some that will stay for a few years and things like that. I was just making sure. And also, I know this is not also CVA either, but do you have an update regarding to E911, or will they be giving a presentation in the future? Sure. I'll gladly talk about E911. We actually took E911 out for two reasons. One, they are not collective bargaining. Correct. Whatsoever. And two, believe it or not, the presentation wouldn't have even been longer. So, Director Patent is here. Currently, you have 11 vacancies, if I'm not mistaken. Where is she? Three. Eleven vacancies. Eleven vacancies, two dispatchers, nine call takers. And her authorized strength is 76? 79. 79, I'm sorry. She knows her numbers. That's hard to remember. No, it's okay. She should know her numbers. She should. They all should. But is there any way, I know that they're not covered under necessarily this presentation, but I want to make sure that we're giving the same support to E911, or is that my saying? E911, yes. It feels like I'm saying it wrong. And I want to make sure we're giving the right resources to also our safety officers as well. And also the animal control is also under you, correct? They're a contracted service, yes ma'am. Oh, they're a contracted service. I just want to make sure we're giving support equally to all of these divisions who sorely do need it. So, yeah, I just want to. Yes. And what I would say there is whenever we talk about, you remember earlier, I stressed physical and mental health, right? Yes. I know because I've talked to both Chief Weathers and Director Patton that Director Patton had taken it upon herself to get some counseling out there, to get some extra individuals to come out and talk to the dispatchers from time to time. the resources I know Chief Wells actually had someone come in and talk about that and invited people to go back and take that back so they're not being forgotten and forgotten in this at all no and whenever you talk about that there are also civilian employees that do not just administrative work but you know collect evidence that they're on homicide scenes they are eligible for that type of assistance as well. Wonderful. And also, I want to commend also, I know for sure, the fire department has implemented their mental health programming that I believe the first part was earlier this year, and I believe there's another segment too. I am very enthusiastic that we're paying attention to the mental health aspect of our employees, especially those who put their lives on the line every single day so thank you that's actually the the program that chief wells invited other individuals to come and be a part of and decide if that was something they wanted to start and i know director patten did yes well thank you sir and thank you all everyone for all that you do for our city we could not be a safe place without the great things that you're doing in our community that are positive thank you thank you council member poehmann thank you chair and And also ditto, congratulations everybody on these numbers. And Commissioner, Commissioner, I just promoted you. Council Member Sevigny, I'm glad you put this in committee. It's very refreshing since I've been here for eight years to see all these numbers. And corrections obviously is just, like you said, exemplary. My question- Very difficult job. Yeah, great job. On the incorrections though, I was interested, will you talk about Fort Campbell and Fort Knox advising them of our interest in separating veterans. Do you mean in the actual, could you elaborate on that a little bit? I don't know what that really means. So as I understand, and obviously, you know, all the different divisions take a part in this some way or another. What they're doing is making individuals that are about ready to leave service with the military branch aware that there are jobs out here for them. Specifically, for instance, if they go to Fort Knox, they have an MP unit there. police well you would think that they may you know if they've spent four eight years in the military or more and they have an interest in that but maybe they would be interested in coming here and being a part of our family that's a great idea so that's just direct contact with okay so that they have that liaison there that's good and also i've been reading and hearing about other cities where they're non-police folks that are hired to take care of more of a Monday, not Monday, you mentioned the clerks. Is that what we're talking about there? Or are those clerks actually police officers that have either, no? No, they're not police officers. They're non-sworn positions. Okay, great. This is called a civilianization of positions when it's appropriate. You know, there are very important jobs that have to be done that do not require an individual to be a sworn officer. So what we try and do, whether it's in police fire or corrections, to be honest with you, They don't have to be a firefighter to do some of those jobs. When that opportunity presents itself, then we look at the possibility of hiring a non-sworn or non-firefighter, whatever term you want to use, to fill those jobs. And that then frees up that position to go back and work on the line or have other responsibilities. Yeah, I kind of remember hearing about that before. How many folks, like for instance, in police do we have doing that work? Well, how many clerks do you have? 18? 18, is that part time or full time? Part time. Part time 18. Part time 18. Yes ma'am. I think that's very smart and congratulations on doing that too. Well good report, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you much ma'am. Council member Ellinger. Thank you Chair and thank you Commissioner and thank you everybody that keeps us safe in this community. We know how important this job is to everyone. If you don't feel safe in your home or safe in the street, then we're not doing our job. when we look at our budget i think we put fifty six percent of our budget goes towards public safety we know how important it is and uh... i'd like to see our numbers going up uh... specially in fire chief doing a great job there uh... community corrections i like to see our numbers going up not quite there yet my one issue still has been in and i think it's it's not just a local issue it's a national issue that we're dealing with uh... police and trying to get our numbers up there and when we look at our authorized strength one of the big things is we how many people do we have that are out on the street on on patrol do you have those numbers by chance that that when we look at who's actually out in patrol well i can uh chief maynard could probably tell me how many people are currently assigned to the bureau of patrol approximately 300. and you have that actually how that would be broken down after the last well they're i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry Well, just on numbers in the last 10 years or so and how we're doing on patrol. That would take some research. Do you mean the number of people that are assigned to the Bureau of Patrol? Yes, sir. Yes, there'll have to be some manipulation because there are different times where the Bureau of Patrol also included what would be considered different bureaus at this time. But, yeah, 10 years is going to be a little bit, take some time, but we can do that. Well, the last five years, just to see how we're doing on that. Because is that that was five shouldn't be difficult. Ten we're getting into sure. Let's do five then. I just like to see how we're doing because when I think of patrol, I think of who's people on the streets on who's out there because I hear a lot of different numbers and I'd like to be able to look at that. And when we talk about attrition, one of the big issues I guess is how many people, and this would be the doomsday scenario, but if somebody could, leave within a month or somebody could buy time and and how how are we doing on that and and is that an issue that we have to be concerned about with officers that long longevity could buy and chief stood up there I'll try real quick on this and I'll turn it over to the chief if I'm understanding your question correctly the Bureau Patrol is the primary oh I turned it off sorry the primary responsibility for the police department because you have to respond to calls and provide service to the individual so it always receives priority whenever it comes to staffing if i'm not sure are you asking is there a number that if another 50 left or something what would happen right exactly right right and because do we have um issues where if we have a morale issue and we lost a large group at a quickly then how many could actually buy time and could be gone Well, I'd have to check that. To buy time, well, anyone that's vested can buy it, if I'm not mistaken, but it would only matter if an individual had more than 16 years on if they wanted to retire. So that number, I'm not sure. Do you all have that number? Chief, I'm not sure what that number would be. Hello. Hello, Chief. Right now, nobody can buy time, just military. I think we have a little over 50, maybe 56 officers that have 20-plus years. But there's a lot that goes into that. Just when you hit 20, you only draw a certain percentage out of your retirement. Typically, in order to max out, you're looking around that 27-year range. So people don't normally leave at 20 years. Now, we do have some that leave at 20 years now because we do have a different retirement system than the state. And some of them go to other jobs. and quite frankly, they can double their money when they leave. And I know about that because I speak about that from experience because I retired once and went to work as a chief someplace else and basically doubled my money. There's nothing anybody can do to control that. You know, I don't think as a city we'd be able to double people's salaries just to keep them from leaving. And then that wouldn't work either because after they got that amount invested in, they'd still leave and make even more money. What we do is some of the things you saw the commissioner point out for retention, especially the health and wellness part. and then hiring back retirees because they can draw their pension and come back as well. Well, my time is up, and I will come back. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. I've got some more questions. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation and for all of our public safety partners for your day-in and day-out hard work and supporting our community. So my first question has to do with your committee presentation in Frankfurt and the small increase in the stipend that our employees get from the state. When you went for that presentation, was there any indication that the state was considering adding additional dollars to that incentive money? No, that presentation, as best I understand, had nothing to do. It just coincided. It was just a coincidence. And I didn't know, we knew there was possibly going to be an increase, didn't know what it was, and I only learned what it was, I think it was on the docket last week, or no, it's going to be today, I'm sorry. It's the allocation of funds from the state to pay the officers and the firefighters. That's whenever Commissioner Hensley told me that it had actually been increased. That's the first I'd seen of it. Okay, so there wasn't any indication. There's no correlation between those two. Well, but there wasn't any indication that they were looking at alternative incentive. Okay, that's good to know. So you mentioned that happy employees help recruitment. So can you tell me if we currently have anything in place for our current employees helping recruit or retain new recruits? Well, there is a program that we have, especially at the detention center, where it is a financial benefit for people to do that. In other words, they can receive up to $1,000 spread out over the time that this individual, if you don't, can I use this example? So I work there. Congratulations. Council Member Lynch is now a member of the corrections community. And as she progresses through the process, and she does well, which I'm sure you would, once you get through the process, I actually receive compensation for having her come. Great benefit. Wonderful. It encourages people to give out a business card, to spend some more time talking with everyone. But to be honest with you, I can almost guarantee there are instances in all three divisions where family members recruit other members or friends or uncles or cousins or whatever it is. And they don't claim that money just because they're happy to, you know. Well, I kind of see it as for our current employee to have a little bit of teeth in the game on helping add to our retention numbers and essentially become a mentor to that person. I think that's really important. Who would know better what kind of person we want than someone that actually does the job? Sure. So I might be interested in exploring that further. Okay, so kudos to corrections. like you guys are knocking it out of the park and i'm so so thrilled with what you guys are doing and as i i look at their all the initiatives i know you mentioned commissioner that a lot of the other divisions are doing the same types of recruitment but they weren't necessarily listed in the packet because it's new for corrections but it seems to me that there's a direct correlation between the amount of recruitment activities and the increased or the decrease in vacancy numbers. So my first question is, are they doing recruitment in-house or do they have some external agency that's assisting with recruitment? That's a yes and a yes, right? And if so, why aren't we doing that in other divisions? We are doing it in other divisions too, right? They're just having more success. Now, I will say this, the pool of applicants are different for each division too. The police department has age restrictions. They have to pass that test the first day. The fire department is very similar. Corrections has quality candidates they can take that are a little bit older too, which helps with the recruitment aspect of it. But they're doing those things. I think when we talk about pay increases, which is the first slide, because inevitably that's what I always get asked about, are we paying enough people, blah, blah, blah. We were underpaying our correctional officers, both regionally and locally. And whenever we raise that and the council agrees to raise that to a much more acceptable wage, I think that opened the door for them too. You know, no one can guarantee a pay increase. We'll increase the number of applicants we're going to have or qualified applicants or anything like that. But I think it played a part in corrections. Would you agree with that, Chief? Okay. And I'll just leave. I've got 24 seconds, Commissioner. I'm sorry. So I'm just going to leave it with this last thought. And it may be something that you do already and I'm just not aware. But I think it would be really important in each of our divisions to create focus groups with all ranks to hear firsthand from, you know, all perspectives, firsthand experiences, all that kind of stuff. To kind of see, like, what our employees need and what they would want. And they might have really great recruitment ideas as well. Thank you for your input. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I think it's very appropriate that this week that we have public safety here because of how public safety is really a large part of our freedom in this community and across the world and across the nation. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you, Chair. It's good. We need this information for us to better make decisions on public safety. One of my main questions is what policy do we have now about hiring back retired, eligible, experienced personnel? You know the state allowed us to do that I think a couple of years ago. And I haven't seen too much activity or too much information on getting back these experienced personnel that have left, have retired, but actually could come back and serve us. The 11 we have in the police department rehired 11 retired officers to come back. 11, right? Yeah. 11, which is a good number. Okay. That's a good number. Now, with that being said, we hire retired firefighters and correctional officers for other jobs even within those divisions. But when you're talking about truly sworn positions, then we've hired 11 up to that point. And it just recently changed about being able to hire back people that have been gone for a certain amount of time, right? Is that what, Chief, can you speak to that real quick? I'm not sure if this is your question. Well, basically, I just wanted to see how active we were on getting these experienced personnel back in our personnel. So we've been able to hire 11 back. Good, good. Okay. Because you don't hear a whole lot about that out in the public or even around the council. But we are addressing that and moving, and that helps us with our numbers. Right. Okay. Thank you. Okay, that's all I need. Thank you. Councilmember Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Just to piggyback off of Council Brown's question of the 11 retirees that was re-hard. Did any of them leave with complaints in their jackets? And if people leave with their complaints in their jackets, what happens if they are hard back in? Do they pick those complaints back up? Do you mean were any of them facing formal complaints? Is that what you mean? I don't believe so, were they? No, no. No, no. If they were facing a formal complaint and left because of that formal complaint, then they would not be rehired. Right. Did you see a smile? So with recruitment and training, we went through the simulation of the Goodwill, which I believe that my colleagues would say was probably one of the best trainings that we went through. Is that offered for any of the divisions? Can you say what it was again, ma'am? So the council went through an assimilation training that Goodwill provides. And I'm going to lead right on into House Bill 5, so that's why I'm leading with this question. So for recruitment and training, is any of the goodwill assimilation part of the training, or could it be in the future? And has anybody here taken that? I know Chief Wells. I know Chief Wells, but for instance, the police department has CIT training and some other things. Okay. Council Member, I think I know what you're speaking of. We were involved in that in Leadership Lexington, and that's the re-entry program, is that correct? Yes, that's correct. I can't speak 100% to corrections, but I would assume that it's the same as police and fire that were prohibited from hiring anybody that has a felony on their record. But misdemeanor charges are looked at on a case-by-case basis, I think. No, we took a left turn. So basically what I was asking is, because that training was really a good eye opener for us, and it talks about what the average person that is unhoused goes through and the hoops they have to jump through. And it opened our eyes to how difficult it is for some of our citizens to navigate. I was asking in the near future, is that something that you all would consider, like having some of the officers take this training? Well, any type of training is at least something worth looking at. I think everybody's trying to help you. Well, I know, but let me finish and then I'll let them talk. But as you probably know, the state requires a certain amount of training every year on different topics, whether it's domestic violence, CPR, you know, whatever it is. So any new training has to be kind of vetted into that system and approved by DOCJT. So it's not an immediate thing, but it's something that, you know, I've never known us in any of the divisions that just say, no, we don't want to do any training whatsoever. We're not interested in it at all. Let's at least look at it and see if we're already doing it. And some sensitivity training, things like that may already cover some of that. Do you want to? Yeah. I'm going to be real quick. Actually, we are actually we partner with Goodwill. When they first opened up their place on Limestone, I was part of that and went to that and all the information we brought back and now our officers have access to it on the resources. And we actually refer people to them because they have a great service. Some people might think it's silly, but when they provide bicycles to people who don't have transportation to get to and from, that's important. And a lot of people don't know about that. So we actually partner with Goodwill and help them out in that way. Yes, it's really sensitivity and trying to, you can't really walk in someone's shoes, but you can certainly empathize. And the reason why I was saying that was because July 15th is upon us. And I know I work with them every day, practically 12 hours out of the day, and I was the one that failed. I mean, I couldn't get out of the, well, I don't want to say I couldn't get out of jail. But that certainly was the truth at the assimilation. And I used all my tokens, couldn't get a job. I mean, I had to go to probation parole, the whole nine yards, and everybody else was getting their tokens in. And I was like, why am I having such a hard time? But before we, I see my time is running out, and I'll sign back in. But I wanted to ask the diversity question, and it was more leaning into women and the retention of women and the recruitment. Are we doing okay in that? Yes. Yeah. I will say this to you. It's not ideal. Whenever you consider, depending on when you talk to, 51% of the population are female. With that being said, public safety throughout history has never really got to that stance. But over the last few years, for instance, whenever you're talking about the police department, in the last four years, which has been a difficult four years for them, especially recruiting, they've been able to increase the number of females by 1%, which is not great, but it could have been a lot worse, to be honest with you. The same with African Americans, we've been able to increase it by 1% in that time frame in the last four years. Yeah, I've seen the increase of a lot of women on the streets, so that's what that question was all about. You've got to remember 1% of 600 is a lot of, I mean, is the number of people that you can get out there. Yes, sir. Well, thank you, and thank you for your presentation. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair, and thanks again for the presentation. I just have a few follow-up questions, and I'll jump on the bandwagon. Thank you to all of our public safety people. You do great work. And I know corrections is doing awesome with retention and recruitment. But the other two are pretty decent as well, and we appreciate you. Okay. I have a few questions. This retired officer thing, you made a comment about the 11 don't count, like they weren't counting in the number. The number of vacancies. Yeah. Yeah, is there a rationale for that? Because they're classified through HR as two different positions. But they're still, once you're a sworn officer, you still are a sworn officer, aren't you, even if you're retired? Yes. Yeah, you're a sworn officer, but they're classified in two different positions. For instance, I'll use this. Hopefully in the next, and I'm just going to be honest with you, three to four years, we get back up to where we don't have to have the retired officers necessarily. Yeah. Those positions will just go away. like contract employees kind of sort of you know they get reviewed every year they don't face the same thing you know it's just a different process you know so they're on a different I don't like that term because they're doing such a great job but they're only temporarily there but they're but they're filling a need they're filling in the oh yes very much so very they're doing a fantastic fantastic job. They could put me in cuffs just like anybody else. Yes. All right. Good to know. And just to clarify, on your weekly report down there, it does say 11 police are. That's what that is. Okay. Super. So let me ask you then on the authorized strength thing. Okay. Okay. Is that like a number that we literally pull out of the air? Is that a number that is something that's a budget number that we have basically said this is what the number is. That is the number of sworn positions that the council over the years have allocated for each one of those divisions. Right. Over the years due to increases in population, in expansion of the city, adding fire stations, adding personnel, things like that. So how, so if that's, and that, if that's the way it's done, then is there like, is there a national standard for based on population, based on crime, based on whatever? Is that number based on anything or is it literally, we have a council and a mayor who have authorized this number? I've looked at numbers on this before, and a lot of times you'll find is, and we'll use police, since that's obviously where we have the most vacancies, police. An expert will say two point blah officers per 1,000 folks, right? That's not necessarily a recommendation. That's an average. Does that make any sense? In other words, it's not based on anything other than averaging. I'm not, and of course I've been out of policing for almost 10 years now, I'm not sure if there's a definitive answer to that, but I don't think there's a definitive answer to fire either. I mean sometimes, I guess not really, kinda, you know, and it's based on calls for service, it's based on area that you have to patrol, you know, the expectation of the public. I would think with, I mean with corrections, I mean when we were over there talking to them i mean the lower number of inmates they have right the the less the technically less amount of people they they move them more into certain cell blocks they don't have to they don't have to have people in each cell block right exactly so but police and fire not hopefully we never see a reduction like that and i just think that at some point because we're adding so many different like and the public safety officers probably don't go against that number okay and the contracted non-sworn people don't really go against that number but they're we've got data analysts we've got people in these different centers doing things my general thought would be at some point we probably i'd like to just dig into that one a little bit more to just understand what's what's a good standard, what's it based on, and just because a previous set of council people set these numbers doesn't mean that at this point it's still valid. So that's just an observation, and I thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you. Councilmember Minaret. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation. I appreciate you and I appreciate all of our public safety officers. I was just going to circle back to the number of vacancies that we have, specifically with the police department. And I really appreciate that every time that I attend a neighborhood association or HOA and they request the presence of an officer to answer questions, sometimes because there's an uptick in crime in that area, that you're always so accommodating to have somebody present to answer questions. And usually those questions are about response times because of those vacancies. Can you address that? I don't have the, well, first off, I guess my question is response time based on regular service calls or priority calls. Because obviously there's two different ways of looking at that, to be honest with you. I'm not sure if we have that kind of information. I know you'd asked about that and we were collecting it, but I don't think we've collected that yet. I mean, or warrants. Maynard. Hello. Yes, part of the, when we're looking at our priority calls, calls for service, on average for the low priority, all calls for services, we're looking at call to dispatch when the call comes in, and then the dispatcher takes it and then dispatches the officer. that on average for the past year has been about 12 minutes and 40 seconds. What's important for us is the police, and what we have kind of our side of it, is once the officer is dispatched to arrival, that on average is about 6 minutes and 13 seconds. So total time for non-priority, you're looking at 1853. That's average for the last year. Difference with that being a priority call, one where we would run lights and sirens or is a higher level of a call, a call to dispatch is able to get that out a lot faster. is about 1 minute and 56 seconds on average. Our dispatch to arrival is 5 minutes and 45 seconds. And so that call to arrival time then is about 7 minutes and 41 seconds. And we see that it's been very on average for the past several years. Okay. So that wasn't necessarily affected in a great way due to the increase in vacancies after 2020, let's say. I think we have seen that average. I would have to go back and look at the prior calls for service. I know what we are seeing here past couple years is that is, and it's really pretty close. When you think about those two numbers, there's about 20 seconds, 30 seconds for what our time is for the police department responding. Okay. Thank you so much. Do you have some time that I can add something real quick? Yes, of course. Yeah, and we were talking about authorized strength just a little while ago. Being also, whenever we talk about the numbers of calls for service, the more officers you have, And in theory, at least on some calls, the response times would go down because inevitably, if you have more, they should be closer to what's caused. When we talked about the jail and yes, their prisoners are down, but tomorrow we could have a huge influx of more, you know, with new house bills and everything. We could have that. So we can't, you know, we have to always prepare for the worst. That's what we got to do at the jail. We got to do it fire. We got to do it. The police department. very happy that the police department specifically has been able to figure out how to use some retired officers or civilians to fill those slots a thousand reports is a lot of reports is i want to say a thousand hours probably i mean honestly if you're talking about having that what do you think later to drive there do the report pilot they saved a thousand personnel hours by doing that. So, I'm sorry. No, you're fine, Commissioner. Thank you. I'm a huge supporter, and I believe in giving you the tools, training, compensation, and staffing that you need to stay safe while keeping us safe. Thank you for your presentation. And I'm sure the Chiefs would tell me if we're not, so I'm not worried about that. Thank you. Let's see. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. I think we're all supportive of public safety and appreciate the job that everyone is doing and has done for years. And I just want to applaud the divisions in their efforts to improve recruitment and retention. And to be honest, I've been on this council for a while and have felt the uptick, the downturns. And I feel like things are getting better and getting different. And I think folks are coming back to policing and wanting to be police officers. I feel it in the community. I feel it when I interact with our officers and I really, especially feel it during the graduation ceremonies. The families and the departments and the officers that show up to support these new recruits. I feel like the tide is turning and looking forward to us getting back to staffing levels that support that in our community. So thank you, Chair. Can I add something real quick? I know you're all pressed for time. But with that being said, the one thing we've tried to make sure we're not doing, and we are not doing, is lowering our standards to get numbers unlike some other cities. Thank you. Thank you both. Okay. We still have one other issue that might take a while and we're over an hour. so i'm just going to ask my colleagues that have already spoken to just keep their comments concise thank you i'll do my i'm sorry council member ellinger i'll do my best i'll keep it to five minutes or less um commissioner i didn't get to ask all the questions um obviously retention and recruitment are two of our biggest issues and i would like the the chiefs and the director come here because i just want to talk to them individually if i can um one of the issues is is keeping um and i think we've done a good job with fire what what is your secret that we we're almost fully staffed there and keep these brief because i i'm trying to keep it within the five minutes absolutely i i don't have a ton to add i think the bottom line is that money gets people to the door and gets them interested in the job but culture keeps them and so we're really working hard to take care of our members and develop a strong healthy culture director if you could talk about how you've been able to really do um in this last year or so with our recruitment and how we've gotten better because we were really at a catastrophic numbers there and it's been a nice turnaround what's the key there when there's trouble be where your people are so um we got out of our offices we got downstairs we had a very um developed a relationship with the officers they got to know us ask questions we got to know them we were around that was important retention is recruiting if you can if you can't retain i want to go through the effort um and um in regard to recruiting we're doing a number of things um but um we're take we take a close study of our data so we analyze our data and our data told us that our recruits are coming to us through two ways through also referrals which makes my point about retention and social media and so we've uh we've we've got on uh the uh interview now we're using uh speed apps to contact you know contact If they click on corrections, anything about that, you know, somebody's on the other end of the line saying, hey, you're interested in corrections? How about an interview? So we're doing that and a close study of the multi-generational workforce, a knowledge of it's a well-researched area, and we put a lot of time into understanding what Generation Z is interested in and the millennials. Thank you. And Chief, a couple things. Could you, and we're running here short on time, could you talk about, we mentioned it, but what I'd ask were the others. And then also how we're doing on diversity and our call times, because that was one thing. How we've done that in the last five years, how's that going forward? First of all, in addressing our retention, we haven't been losing officers in that five years. five year to 20 year range. It's after the 20 years where we lose officers. And there's probably not a whole lot we can do about that other than offer our retiree program for the ones before five years. We're losing those in the recruit process and that's going to happen. As far as diversity, we are intentional about that. We speak openly about that and I think our officers appreciate that and we recruit for that. But we're not just looking for physical diversity, we're looking for diversity in thought. Because we live in a different society today and we realize that we have to grow with society. And what was the last one I guess? Call service times. Not calls for service times. I'm looking at our calls for service times, on the average, especially for high priority calls. For all of those high priority calls from the time the calls receive to the time an officer gets there is about seven minutes and 30 seconds. Is there any way that we can get the last five years from that too of how we've done? Yeah, the national average on that is going to be about ten minutes. Do we keep a record of that? Oh yeah. Okay, I'd like to see that for the, see how we're going. get that but and i'm i'm down to 30 seconds so i want to ask real quick when you get from dispatch to officer officer arrival it goes down to about five and a half five minutes and 30 seconds so thank you and one last question i how are we doing on morale on all three of these and do we do surveys do we ask um officers in the field that are doing the day-to-day job how and do it such that they anonymous so they can just answer freely i'm out quite a bit and i talked i talked to my officers all the time about that every uh every quarter i i have a joint roll call and i ask them is everything all right if you don't want to talk here come and talk to me every one of my supervisors has an open door policy um i know in all the bureaus they meet with our officers and ask them is there anything that uh we need to talk about anything we need to do the bureau patrol actually It has committees with each sector and set up of officers to discuss that and talk about that. The bottom line is, and even in our in-service classes we're teaching, we talk about morale and what are the best thing is. The bottom line is morale is probably your own thing and it's up here. I'm sorry, what? Morale is probably your own thing. You've got to be in charge of yourself. The grass is only greener if you water it. And if you don't put the emphasis on yourself some, there's only so much I'm going to be able to do. So I can help you out when you can, when I can, and that's what we try to do, and that's what our people try to do. But we are constantly talking to our officers, and that's the only thing you do. When I ask my officers if they have a morale problem, they say no, and I got to take that at the face value. Sometimes you all get calls and they say officers have a morale issue, but I don't know if we're seeing that department wide. But the way I look at it, even if it's not department wide, I got to take it at face by. Thank you, Chief. The Chair's getting ready to cut me off because we're out of time. But I would like to hear if at some point with the others, and have we looked at going forward, and you don't have to answer this, about doing a survey where we could just check those things so everybody has some input? We do surveys constantly. We don't give very much participation in them. Thank you. Thank you. So colleagues, I want to be sensitive to the fact that we have community partners here for this next item and we have to end right at three today because we have two meetings. So if you could stay under a minute since you've already spoken so I don't have to cut you off. I don't want to cut off comments up but I want you to be able to speak but we need to get to our next item. So please make your comments brief. Thank you. Well, you know I'm going to have issue with that since Councilmember Ellinger got to do all of his questions. But I'll make it really quick. I really wanted to just touch base on that pyramid incentive that you had with Council Member Lynch. Yes, ma'am. How long would Council Member Lynch have to be on the force before she gets an incentive? And then does your incentive increase because she got another incentive for someone to come and take a job? No, no, it's one year. If she goes through the process, then she'll get it after one year. Okay. I get it in three different installments, is that right? 250, 251, 5,000 based on, 500, I'm sorry. What's the time frame on those? For the recruiting, is that the 3,000? No, the 1,000. Can't go up to 3,000? And then after a year, they get the other, right? That's all, okay. Yeah. Okay, and just a comment. I never see the constables in this group of corrections and I know that they do a lot of evictions, call on the law. But we'll save it for another time. She's told me one minute, so I'm going to be obedient, even though I've got another council member that wasn't. I just wanted to say, corrections, first district owe you a party. We come in with that party. Thank you for everything you do, because there's a lot of first district people that get arrested. And they have told me that it is different. Like there's services, there's people they can see while they're in there. They don't want to come back, but at least it has changed. So I just wanted to say something to you, to the Farghee, to you Commissioner. Thank you for the divisions and thank you all for serving Lexington. I just needed to say that. And obviously we'll be around to answer any questions that any council member has at any time about public safety, not just today during the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, good. Council Member Gray. Thank you. So, Commissioner, I'm curious along retention and what have you and diversity. How many employees do we have in each division that are speaking a language other than English? Since we do have a growing population of... I don't have that information with me right now. I'm not sure if they can answer that specifically. Just throw me the number. About 20 in the fire department. Second language skills. No idea. Can we get back with you on that? I want to make sure that you have that. Yes, please. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, council member. All right, council member Sivigni. Thank you. Thank you, chair. 30 seconds. Really quick. I just want to thank the, I mean, chief Weathers, chief Wells, chief. Colvin. Colvin, thank you. Director Patton, thank you. I just want to basically say that culture, the culture piece that Chief Wells talked about, I think it's apparent in all the organizations. There isn't one of your people that I have met that does not exude great culture, kind, good folks, and everybody, every person I've met in your organizations are great. So I thank you for that. The culture starts at the top. It does. And that's why I basically, and that's what I was going to say. It's your responsibility to do a great job with it. And I just wanted to lastly say authorized strength. Don't think that I'm like, I'm picking on it mostly because I want to understand it. And hell, if the data says that we should have three times as many people, like that's what the data is, I just want to know the data piece. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. And please ask for more popsicle trucks. Okay, thank you. And I'm sorry, did you want to say something? Am I done? I'm going to say something briefly. Wanted to just briefly say a few things. First of all, I want to thank everyone for being here today, everyone that worked together. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, everyone. I have seen over the years the effort that you all have put into recruitment in every division. and we're just really grateful for all the hard work that you do every day. And I will echo my colleagues in saying that everyone that I have had the opportunity to work with with public safety is very professional and takes their job very seriously. And I'm grateful for that and what we've been able to accomplish. A few different things. I wanted to touch on what Council Member Gray just said about other, you know, languages that are spoken. And, you know, we recently went on this commerce trip and were able to speak to a police department in Salt Lake City. And they had a goal of recruiting and having the same percentage of minority divisions in their police department as they do in their city. so for instance if if 17 percent of Lexington is Hispanic that they would try to have 17 percent of their police department be Hispanic and they were working towards those goals and recruitment so I just wanted to echo that and say that I hope that I know I've been working with mr. Lucas on a few things and we want to reach out to more communities and I'm I'm hoping that we can kind of go that direction in our departments to try to reflect the community that we serve and then i think council member baxter and i would like to keep this item in committee and then for the november committee meeting we would like to have an update directly with police on their their recruitment efforts and so we will sit down with with police and go over just some things that have come up on how we could maybe make our recruitment efforts even more robust in that area, since that's a place that has, I know we've all been working on, but still has some growth. So I think that's all for now on that item. Well, thank you very much for allowing us to come and talk today on this very important item. If any of the council members have any questions we're always here we can always answer those questions for you you know i know all of you have our phone numbers and our email address if you have suggestions on how to better our recruitment or retention don't wait till november share it with us now uh be glad to listen to it and i wouldn't be a bit surprised if we haven't tried some of it already so thank you very much for your time today and i want to thank everyone for coming here and supporting public safety Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you for being so thorough. We appreciate it. Okay, and next is the eviction, diversion, and rights to council. So this was Vice Mayor Dan Wu's item. And unfortunately, Vice Mayor Wu is not feeling well and not able to join us, but he is very appreciative to Commissioner Lanter, his team, Judge Gunther, for their work to make this pilot program possible. So I'm going to ask Commissioner Lanter to come forward and just do a brief introduction. And then next we'll have Mr. Wright give the presentation. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. We're really excited and happy to be here. You all may recall it has been just over a year ago that we entered into this new phase of our housing stability services. We still had funds left at the time and rental assistance. Those actually ended up being depleted at the end of November of 24. And so we were able to have a nice overlap as we implemented these programs that we're talking about today, which include our outreach, our access to counsel, and smaller, more targeted assistance programs. We've been really pleased with the outcomes of that. We have today with us in the chambers of some of our partners, representatives from the Housing Authority, Kentucky Equal Justice, Legal Aid of the Bluegrass. We don't have with us Fayette County Schools, but they have been a really critical partner, and we've been happy to work with them as well as Goodwill. So I think the one thing I would stress is, you know, Jonathan's going to give you a presentation today, show you what we've been doing. It's been just a really excellent community effort with a lot of people rowing the boat forward, and we couldn't have done it without them. So I don't want to eat into any more of his time, so I'll turn this over to Jonathan, our housing policy advisor, to give you a presentation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Welcome, Mr. Wright. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds and committee members for your time today. So we're here today to talk about housing stability services, so I thought it would be a good idea to start with the definition to make sure that we all know what we're talking about. For our purposes today, we're going to use the definition of housing stability services that was set out by the federal government for the emergency rental assistance program, which you'll recall was created by the federal government back in late 2020, early 2021, and funded our rental assistance efforts over the next couple of years. that's really the program that a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today grew out of so we're using that definition basically housing stability services in that context are everything that you might do to prevent an eviction except actually paying the rent so for the past couple of years we use most of that money to actually pay rent but we we built up our ability through community partners to do some some other wraparound services that also help prevent evictions and that's that's really what we're talking about today before we move on i would just point out the couple of items on this list that are bulleted because that's a lot of what we're going to focus on today so why are we talking about housing stability services as commissioner lanter mentioned vice mayor wu placed an item in this committee in early 2023 specifically about eviction diversion and tenants right to counsel which again are really really dovetail nicely with those two bullet bulleted items on the list that we just looked at as a result of that item and discussion about those efforts we solicited proposals during the spring and early summer of last year for community partners to provide housing stability services selected vendors and and began implementation with those partners, Kentucky Equal Justice Center and Legal Aid of the Bluegrass throughout the summer of last year. And then finally, earlier this year, Commissioner Lanter presented to you all about the overall status of financial assistance programs offered by the Department of Housing Advocacy and Community Development. And as part of those discussions, We identified an opportunity for smaller targeted programs that would work closely with vulnerable populations as those efforts would relate to housing, which we're also going to talk about today. So, how did we get here? As I mentioned, a lot of what we're talking about today grew out of the city's housing stabilization program. federally funded emergency rental assistance program that we operated for a couple of years during the height of the pandemic before that program began in early 2021 there was really very limited assistance available in Lexington for tenants to help avoid eviction sort of once you were behind on your rent there wasn't wasn't a lot out there certainly wasn't a lot out there in terms of financial assistance or targeted efforts that were directly tied to helping you prevent an eviction. Fortunately, that changed with the housing stabilization program and the federal funding that came with it. But as you all know, late last year, we exhausted the bulk of that federal funding to actually pay rent. Knowing that that was going to happen, we began much earlier last year planning for that funding to be exhausted and started working with community partners to build up our ability to offer housing stability services, which again are sort of other things that we can do besides paying the rent to help people stay in their houses and avoid eviction. And then, as I mentioned earlier this year, we identified some specific opportunities for targeted assistance for particularly vulnerable populations that have created some even newer programming to help those populations specifically. so um this is a very colorful and and somewhat confusing chart uh so let me let me try to simplify it a little bit um basically before the pandemic um there were between five and six thousand eviction cases filed those are forcible detainer cases in the language of the courts filed every year in Fayette County. In 2020, that's the purple line, you'll see that in March courts shut down and they stayed shut down throughout the summer. When they reopened later in 2020 and throughout 2021, overall activity, both because the court system itself was operating remotely and at a slower speed, and because of federal protections in place, the eviction moratorium that prevented evictions in some cases, and the availability of rental assistance really held down the number of eviction cases that were even filed during those couple of years. By 2022, the housing stabilization program had been up and running for six months or so most of those federal eviction protections that actually stopped the cases from even moving forward had expired but we were able to sort of hold levels below pre-pandemic numbers as a result of having rental assistance one really interesting thing that that this chart shows is that last year 2023 which you'll remember is the year that we implemented we started to implement changes to the housing stabilization program to really focus on tenants that had active forcible retainer cases so you couldn't apply for rental assistance last year starting in February until you actually had until your landlord actually filed an eviction case that That allowed us to target assistance much more accurately and much more effectively. It had the interesting incentive, and we expected this to some degree, but these numbers are pretty stark. It actually incentivized landlords to file eviction cases earlier and in some cases more often. Now, those didn't necessarily translate into actual evictions, right? But in terms of the number of cases that were filed, 2023 was actually sort of the highest on average of all the years shown here. The last thing that I'll point out is you'll notice that that sort of dark blue line, 2024, that ends in May, is all of that happened after we ran out of the bulk of the rental assistance, the federal funding for rental assistance, but after we had these housing stability services in place. So no rental assistance, but yes, we had housing stability services, and that blue line is below those pre-pandemic years, which is really encouraging. So to dig into some of the specific numbers, because I mentioned that that previous slide looked at cases filed. not necessarily cases that resulted in an eviction. So the second two columns on this chart show cases that resulted in a judgment for the landlord. That's where everybody goes to court and the judge says to the landlord, I'm issuing a judgment in your favor. You get to take possession of this property. Most of the time, even once that happens, the tenant goes ahead and moves out. No one has to go and physically remove the tenant's belongings from the premises. That happens later, seven to 30 days later after the judgment is issued, the court can issue an eviction warrant. And that is an actual eviction where the constable is actually having to go and sort of supervise someone removing the tenant and their belonging. belongings. You'll notice that I've highlighted 2019 because that shows pre-pandemic levels, 2022 because that shows the year that we had rental assistance through the housing stabilization program and no federal protections, so no eviction moratorium. So that's really the difference there is the availability of rental assistance. And then 2024, where we no longer have rental assistance, but we do have housing stability services. You'll see that judgments have started to tick back up. Since we created this presentation, I've gotten some updated numbers. That 49% number for judgments is actually down to 46% through June, so even a little better than the numbers that we had a month ago. And most importantly, the number of eviction warrants issued has really not only stayed low as compared to before the pandemic, but is actually lowest this year of any of the years that we look at. Some of those numbers, you might not think, you know, what's the difference between a judgment in 56% of cases and a judgment in 41% of cases from 2019 to 2022? It's bigger than you might think that's 1,100 families that were able to stay in their home as a result of the availability of rental assistance and the availability of housing stability services That's about a 35% drop in the actual number of judgments that were issued So What are these housing stability services that we're talking about? about. We awarded two contracts last summer, one to Legal Aid of the Bluegrass and one to Kentucky Equal Justice Center. They do similar work that is important, that is different and important in a couple of important ways. The first one of those ways is that Legal Aid of the Bluegrass operates a mediation program in partnership with the Lexington Housing Authority that is specifically aimed at assisting tenants of the Housing Authority who are facing eviction. The Housing Authority, their lawyer, the tenant, a lawyer that's provided to the tenant through legal aid and a third party independent mediator literally all get in the same room and try to work out the eviction case. We have found since beginning that program that in cases that involve non-payment of rent that is almost always successful. Now one important caveat is that you all have funded rental assistance to support that mediation program. So you might recall earlier this year we identified some some extra funding that was available through the housing stabilization program and sort of re-upped the funding for that mediation program and that funding that you all allocated earlier this year is specifically to pay rental assistance in those mediated cases that are tied to lexington housing authority tenants but that has been extraordinarily successful overall the other big difference is kentucky equal justice their focus on tenant outreach and education it's not to say that legal aid doesn't do that but that's really one of the primary parts of our contract with kjc uh... is they they're actually going out and knocking on people's doors and making sure that they know about their fiction case they know when their court date is they know where to go for their court date and i know how to get in contact with the lawyer if they would like legal representation uh... and i'm going to just sort of speed through the outcome data that we have. Happy to answer any questions that you may have about either legal aid of the Bluegrass or Kentucky Equal Justice Center outcomes. Just a couple of things to point out. 50% of the households served had a black head of household. For those of the households served by legal aid of the Bluegrass, That's very similar to the demographic data that we saw from the housing stabilization program and the tenants who access rental assistance through that program. Similarly, 58% of the households served had income below the federal poverty level. We use slightly different income measurements for housing stabilization program, but similar numbers of high numbers of very low-income households. I am very close to wrapping up. Okay, go right ahead. All right. One thing that I'll point out for KJC is that the number there that 90 tenants were assisted at the eviction help desk, that is a physical desk that is outside the courtroom over at courtroom five on the third floor in district court four days a week. Four days a week. there is someone physically sitting outside the courtroom to catch tenants on their way into the courtroom, answer questions, connect them with a lawyer, just everything we can possibly do to help even if it is last minute and literally the first time that they've had any contact with someone for these services. The last couple of, oh, I skipped one. So the last slide here is sort of a summary of all of the funding that has been allocated to housing stability services and those programs that are operated out of our department. I'm happy to answer questions about any of those. I'll just point out the programs that have new funding identified are the ones that you all allocated some additional funding to in January of this year as a result of the discussions that you all had with Commissioner Lanter about targeted programming for particularly vulnerable populations. we've got a representative here from Goodwill and and they've seen some really promising early results as a result of the McKinney Vento rental assistance program I just found out a few minutes ago that they just in the past week or so have been able to place two more families so those are folks that were homeless had kids in FCPS and over the next couple of weeks will actually move into an apartment. So with that, I will take any questions that you have. Thank you so much. I just want to say thank you to all the community partners that are here that came, and especially a big thanks to Legal Aid of the Bluegrass and Kentucky Equal Justice Center. I have seen your work, and you all are really out there in the trenches helping people. a lot of my constituents and I'm just very thankful for the difficult work that you all do and I my I had a past position that dealt with rental assistance so I've been involved in this for several years and and thankful for all the people that you know through the federal money and city money that we've been able to help some people are really struggling and I think these services are are vital so thank you councilmember gray thank you chair and And thank you, Mr. Wright and Commissioner Lanter for your presentation. And thank you to our community partners as well. I just attended the National League of Cities conference, which was great. And for all my colleagues, I recommend us be a part of the National League of Cities, something I'm working on. But one thing I did learn is how well we're doing things here in Lexington. We are actually leaps and bounds above, doing more for our residents than most cities in the United States, at least those that I came in contact during this conference. So applaud it to the city and to you for the work that we continue to do to reach those residents that really do need our support. looking at the numbers so kudos to us pat ourselves on the back but we still have a lot of work to do i'm curious regarding the 50 percent of households that had that going through the process that were black head of households to me this is extremely concerning considering the percentage of african americans in the city of lexington What are we doing to remedy this situation? Because we're, I think, what's our percentage? 14%? 17%? Something around. 14.7%. Yeah. So this is extremely concerning for me that we're such a high, large, we, meaning African Americans, are such a high percentage of this number. So that question came up when we were operating the rental assistance portion of the housing stabilization program because the numbers were very, very similar in terms of the households, the racial demographics of the households served for families that received rental assistance. It was actually a little bit higher. I think it was 52%. Wow. So there's a huge delta between the percentage of black families in the overall population of Lexington and the percentage of black families that are served by rental assistance and similar programming. To me, that says two things. Number one, these programs are doing a decent job of reaching out to communities of color. It's a good thing. Yeah. But number two, the fact that that gap exists shows we have a lot of work to do. That is not a problem that I think, you know, these programs are going to solve overnight by themselves. But the fact that these programs exist and are doing that outreach and reaching those households and trying to level the playing field as much as we can is at least a step in the right direction. I agree. But still a lot of work to do. But thank you. Yes. once again thank you for all the work that you all are doing in our community to reach these residents that really do need the support there's even more out there that don't know about the services so I'm thinking about them as well how do we reach those people who also don't know about these all these programs we have but that I guess that's something that we can work on as we go forward together but thank you and thank you chair thank you councilmember Lynch Thank you, Chair, for recognition since I do not serve on this committee. I just have a couple of questions about the partnership program that we have with finding housing for unhoused families, our partnership with Goodwill and Fayette County Public Schools. So when they're working with their family, and because I read the flyer in here with the kind of the program overview, do the families have to already have a place they want to live in mind or does Goodwill help them find the place? So Goodwill is really providing comprehensive services to these families. It's really been impressive. The way the overall process works, if there's a homeless family that has a child in FCPS, they can go to their child's school, contact their child's school, and if they're not already enrolled in the McKinney-Vento program, the school will help them enroll. and then the McKinney-Vento program will refer families that they believe might be eligible for this program to Goodwill. Goodwill has gotten referrals from the McKinney-Vento program not just for families. In fact, the majority of the families that have been referred to the program are not families that are ready at the time of referral to move into an apartment or house. almost all of the families, maybe all, are several steps away from being ready to make that transition, most commonly improving their employment, the parents' employment situation. So we designed the program to make sure, because it only offers security deposit assistance and the first month of rent. So we didn't want to just pay that out as fast as we could without looking holistically at the family situation. And then 30 days after they move in, the family can't afford the apartment that we put them in and they're facing eviction again. Goodwill is taking those referrals, working with the family to make sure that they're finding an affordable unit, that they have sufficient household income to support sustainably staying in that unit, and then through goodwill, through our housing advocates and Commissioner Lanter's office, through whatever resources we need to marshal at that point, actually going out and finding a unit when the family's ready, and then providing that financial assistance once the family is in a position that it looks like it's going to be sustainable. And there's some objective criteria in terms of income numbers and the percentage of rent to household income that sort of measure whether you're at that point or not. But families get referred to the program before they're ready. Goodwill provides coaching and assistance to get them ready. And then once they're ready, that's the point at which the financial assistance actually occurs. That's awesome. That's awesome. Is Goodwill, do you know if Goodwill's seeing any obstacles or barriers when they're trying to take that final step to help the family find the housing where property landlords are not wanting to accept money through this program? I think the big barrier at this point is really employment. We've only seen a small number of families so far, reach the point where they're really ready to make that transition into housing with the help of the financial assistance. And so far, the bigger issue, it's taken more work to help those families get ready. Once they have sufficient income, sort of meet those objective criteria to qualify for the actual financial assistance, at this point, they've been able to find a place for those families. It's really, employment's the big issue. That's good and I'm thankful for our community partners, especially Goodwill, working with the families throughout the entire process, that's awesome. I think that's all my questions, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Fogle. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Lynch. That was some of my questions. I think I'll start with that. How many people at Goodwill is working on the caseload for the McKinney-Vento 400,000 project? So we sent out an update a couple of weeks ago. So this date is a couple of weeks old. But they started operating the program. They got their first referral in late April. As of mid-June, had received 17 referrals. So that's referrals from the McKinney-Vento program to Goodwill. Fifteen of those families as of mid-June were continuing to actively work with Goodwill, so the retention rate was really high. And at that point, one of those 17 families had been successfully rehoused, so they'd actually received the financial assistance and moved into an apartment. That has turned out to be a really great success story. Goodwill is working on some follow-up material, I think, including a video that that family has agreed to participate in. And since then, like I mentioned, I just found out two more families have reached the point where they actually qualify for the financial assistance, and we expect to transition into housing over the next couple of weeks. Okay, so I was really asking a question about how many people at Goodwill, how many case managers are available to help these families with the transition. Because I know they're in hotels ready to transition into housing. I don't know what that barrier is, but how many staff members does Goodwill have? I'm going to ask Jennifer Bergman from Goodwill. To handle the load. If she's willing to come up and answer that question for you. Glad to answer it. We have four career coaches. One of those is a career coach supervisor, but she has an active caseload. But we also have a program specialist that works with our multiple programs in housing is one that we've assigned to her. She is the point person. She does the orientation with him, gets him started, gets him ready for budgeting class, and that's a prerequisite to getting transferred over to a coach to start finding the housing. So there's a number of, we're really all hands on deck. I hope that answers it. Colleagues, the reason why I'm asking that question is because the count is up over 1100 now of Fayette County school kids who are homeless. And I was just asking because I know there's going to be a big case load and want to make sure that you have enough staff members to assist with that. And as I transition over to the next question. And Council Member Fogle, if you don't mind, I'll be really brief. I just wanted to point out that those staff members that Goodwill is providing specifically for that McKinney-Vento rental assistance program, Goodwill is financing those 100%. We're not, everything that LFUCG is funding for that program, 100% of those dollars are going to pay rent. Goodwill is handling all of the administrative costs. Yeah, I was really trying to get you an increase of staff members, but you okay with me. So when I look at the numbers over here with the 1103 households served, with the mediation 78, are any of those numbers duplicated? Like, if I do mediation and I'm in that 78, is that 78 reflective of legal counsel that I'll receive too? So does that number go into the 618? Are these separate numbers? Do you understand my train of thought? I do. When we look at those numbers, does any of these numbers spill into the next number? I can confirm, I will talk to our partners and confirm this exactly, but I don't believe there's any duplication, and they're nodding at me that that's correct. So the data that they provide us with, those three numbers, mediation, legal counsel, and counseling slash navigation, that's sort of the top-level way that they sort the cases that they're providing services in. So there's not duplication there. Okay, and two more questions. Do you all have the percentage of white households and Hispanic household members? Do you have those numbers? I have that data. They are, yeah, I have that data. I would have to get those exact numbers to you. Okay, I'll get Kristen. I'd have to follow up with those exact numbers. I'll get Kristen to reach out to you because I would like to see those numbers. And Judge Gunther is doing a great job. Any other judges, did they sign on to the mediation court? And is that an overload for your office? So the actual mediations that are happening are really just the housing authority tenants, and those occur. You said housing authority tenants? Tenants. So the mediations that are occurring are all in cases that involve housing authority tenants, and the goal there is they never even make it to court. So the purpose of the mediation is to make sure that those cases never have to go to court. So what happens to the families that's not a part of housing authority? Those families- Do they go through the mediation court? That have court cases are being assisted by lawyers from both organizations to actually provide legal representation in court through the outreach and education efforts that KJC is doing and through the sort of holistic housing counseling and navigation services that both organizations are providing. The mediation program is separate and apart from cases that are moving through court. Councilmember, I'm sorry. We have to wrap up. So my five minutes is up. I'm sorry. It was up a bit ago. But we're just going to wrap up for today. But I hope you'll follow up with each other on the answers to some of those questions. So thank you very much. Thank you again to everyone that came out today and for being here and for the work that you're doing in our community. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.