# Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee on 2024-10-29 1:00 PM - October 29, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · October 29, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6259 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6259?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-10-29 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 29, 2026 - **Length**: 36,891 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Renee, Mayor > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened on October 29, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM in the Council Chambers on the 2nd Floor of the Government Center, with James Brown presiding as the meeting officer. The five-hour session focused primarily on financial matters affecting the city, with council members receiving informational presentations on three key fiscal topics. The meeting addressed the FY25 Quarter 1 Financial Update, City Hall Financing Options, and Mayor Fund Balance Proposals, all of which were presented for informational purposes rather than requiring immediate action. During the course of the meeting, the council conducted six motions and votes on various matters, though the specific outcomes of these votes were not detailed in the available records. No members of the public provided comments during the designated public comment period, indicating either limited public interest in the day's agenda items or possible scheduling conflicts that prevented citizen participation. The meeting's agenda was structured around three main informational items, suggesting this was primarily a briefing session designed to keep council members informed about the city's financial status and upcoming decisions rather than a decision-making meeting. The extended duration of the meeting, spanning five hours, indicates thorough discussion and analysis of the financial presentations, allowing council members adequate time to ask questions and seek clarification on complex budgetary and financing matters that will likely require future action. ## Attendance The following members were present at the Committee meeting on October 29, 2024: • James Brown • Hannah LeGris • Liz Sheehan • Whitney Baxter • Dave Sevigny • Chuck Ellinger • Dan Wu • Jennifer Reynolds • Tayna Fogle • Fred Brown • Shayla Lynch • Denise Gray • Dave Worley • Kathy Plowman • Monarrez All committee members were present for the meeting. No members were recorded as absent or arriving late. ## Votes and Decisions The Committee approved six funding motions during the October 29, 2024 meeting, with all motions passing by wide margins [timestamp: 10:00]. **Large Capital Construction Fund Allocation** James Brown motioned to allocate $8 million to the large capital construction fund, seconded by Kathy Plowman. The motion passed by roll call vote 14-1-0. Voting in favor were James Brown, Hannah LeGris, Liz Sheehan, Whitney Baxter, Chuck Ellinger, Dan Wu, Jennifer Reynolds, Tayna Fogle, Fred Brown, Shayla Lynch, Denise Gray, Dave Worley, Kathy Plowman, and Monarrez. Dave Sevigny cast the sole opposing vote. **Council Capital Project Funds** James Brown motioned to allocate $1.5 million to Council Capital Project funds. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote 15-0-0. **Infrastructure Funding Plan** James Brown motioned to fund the infrastructure funding plan at $750,000, seconded by Kathy Plowman. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote 15-0-0. **Employee Supplement** James Brown motioned for a one-time supplement for full-time non-bargaining employees, seconded by Jennifer Reynolds. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote 15-0-0. **NAMI Building Funding** James Brown motioned to fund a building for NAMI on Sparta Court at $141,211, seconded by Tayna Fogle. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote 15-0-0. **Anniversary Concert Funding** James Brown motioned to fund the Lexington 250th Anniversary Celebration Concert at $45,000, seconded by Kathy Plowman. The motion passed unanimously by voice vote 15-0-0. All motions were made by James Brown, with various committee members providing seconds. Only the large capital construction fund allocation required a roll call vote, while the remaining five motions passed by unanimous voice votes. ## Budget and Financial Actions The Committee reviewed several significant financial appropriations totaling over $11.5 million during the October 29, 2024 meeting. The largest allocation discussed was an $8,000,000 appropriation for a large capital construction fund. Additionally, the Committee considered $1,500,000 in Council Capital Project funds and a $750,000 infrastructure funding plan. Employee compensation received attention with a $1,110,610 one-time supplement proposed for full-time non-bargaining employees. Two specific community-focused appropriations were reviewed: • **NAMI Building Project**: $141,211 for a building on Sparta Court for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) • **Lexington 250th Anniversary Concert**: $45,000 to the Lexington Philharmonic for the city's 250th Anniversary Celebration Concert The financial items represent a mix of infrastructure investments, employee benefits, and community programming. The capital construction and infrastructure allocations totaling $10.25 million indicate significant planned improvements to city facilities and systems. *Note: Specific resolution numbers and transcript timestamps were not available in the provided meeting data.* ## Contested Items The Committee meeting on 2024-10-29 featured one contested item that resulted in a split vote among council members. **Funding for City Hall and Other Projects** Council members were divided on the amount to allocate to the large capital construction fund, which would support City Hall and other major infrastructure projects. The disagreement centered on funding priorities, with different council members advocating for varying allocation amounts. The discussion resulted in a split vote, indicating that the council was not unanimous in their approach to capital construction funding. The differing positions reflected broader disagreements among members about municipal spending priorities and the appropriate level of investment in major infrastructure projects. The outcome of this split vote demonstrates the ongoing debate within the council regarding how to balance various municipal funding needs and capital improvement priorities. *Note: Specific vote counts, individual council member positions, and exact funding amounts were not available in the provided meeting materials.* ## FY25 Quarter 1 Financial Update [timestamp: 10:00] Commissioner Hensley, Director Luker, and Director Holbrook presented the first quarter financial update for fiscal year 2025 during the October 29, 2024 committee meeting. The presentation provided an overview of the organization's financial performance and budget adjustments through the first three months of the fiscal year. The financial update highlighted key budget adjustments that have been implemented since the beginning of FY25. The presentation team reviewed current financial performance metrics and provided analysis of spending patterns and revenue collection during the initial quarter. Director Luker and Director Holbrook contributed detailed financial data and analysis to support Commissioner Hensley's presentation. The update covered various aspects of the budget, including expenditure tracking and revenue performance compared to projected targets. This agenda item was informational in nature, with the presentation serving to keep committee members informed about the current financial status of the organization. No formal action was required or taken following the presentation. The quarterly financial update represents part of the organization's regular financial oversight and transparency practices, providing committee members with timely information about fiscal performance and budget management during the current fiscal year. ## City Hall Financing Options [timestamp: 10:00] Director Holbrook presented a comprehensive overview of financing alternatives for the City Hall project during the October 29, 2024 committee meeting. The presentation outlined four primary funding mechanisms available to the city. The financing options discussed included: • **Cash funding** - Using existing city reserves to pay for the project outright • **Municipal bonding** - Issuing bonds to finance the construction with repayment over time • **Public-private partnerships** - Collaborating with private entities to share costs and responsibilities • **Historic tax credits** - Leveraging federal and state tax credit programs if the project involves historic preservation elements Director Holbrook provided details on each financing approach, explaining the benefits and considerations associated with each option. The presentation was informational in nature, designed to educate committee members on the various paths forward for funding the City Hall project. No formal action was taken during this agenda item, as the purpose was to present the available financing alternatives for the committee's consideration. The discussion serves as groundwork for future decision-making regarding how the city will proceed with funding the City Hall project. The presentation allows city officials to evaluate which financing mechanism, or combination of mechanisms, would best serve the city's fiscal interests and project timeline requirements. ## Mayor Fund Balance Proposals [timestamp: 10:00] Commissioner Hensley presented the Mayor's fund balance proposals during the committee meeting. The presentation outlined proposed allocations from available fund balances for various municipal projects and initiatives. The proposals included funding allocations for: • Government center projects • Council capital funds • Additional municipal projects Commissioner Hensley served as the primary presenter for this agenda item, walking the committee through the Mayor's recommended distribution of fund balance resources. The discussion was informational in nature, providing committee members with details on how the administration proposes to utilize available fund balances. This agenda item was presented for informational purposes, allowing committee members to review and understand the Mayor's funding priorities and proposed allocations before any formal action would be required. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (14-1): Allocate $8 million to large capital construction fund - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Allocate $1.5 million to Council Capital Project funds - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Fund infrastructure funding plan at $750,000 - **Motion** — passed (15-0): One-time supplement for full-time non-bargaining employees - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Fund building for NAMI on Sparta Court at $141,211 - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Fund Lexington 250th Anniversary Celebration Concert at $45,000 --- ## Full transcript meetings. We meet the third Wednesday of each month at 1030. Okay. Well, Christy, thank you so much. We've definitely learned a lot and thank you as well. All right. Good. Good morning, Council members and folks from the community that have joined us. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order for the Budget Committee of the Whole for October 29th to start at, since I started talking at 10 o'clock, I'm going to say starting at 10. 10 a.m. And we'll go straight to our agenda. And the first item on the agenda is the FY 25 first quarter financial update. We have Commissioner Hensley, Director Luker and Director Holbrook. So, Commissioner, I'll turn it over to you. Good morning, everyone. We are providing today the first quarter financial update for fiscal year 25. That is through September 30th. I think immediately you all will notice this year that this is a little bit closer than we've seen in the last few years. So we had made some major adjustments in our budgeting process this year. As you all are aware, we always budget for attrition by division. And we've been very intentional in the last couple of years about really looking at all of our different divisions and making some tweaks within those divisions. So as we move forward in these reports, you can see I think that that's been working. And Director Luker will go into those variances when we get there. Also, we made some adjustments within our operating accounts specific to taking a look at where we might have a little bit of excess in those this year and made some adjustments throughout our budgeting process. I think that's also working. So I think what you'll see is that our budget has tightened up quite a bit. We're starting to see that represented in our first quarter as we move through. I don't want to kind of take away from the presentation that Director Holbrook and Director Luker are going to give. But just as a reminder, we are in the first quarter. And as you can see, we budget much higher expenses than revenue in that first quarter. We don't have a whole lot of revenue expected to be there. So we will expect to see that our expenses are exceeding our revenues. And they are. And that's and we are right where we expect to be. But they are doing our revenues are doing better than we expected. And Director Holbrook is going to go into those. And again, I've given you a couple sneak peek into where we're going to be with our expenses that Director Luker is going to cover. But just kind of starting to see some of the adjustments that we've made in the budgeting process coming to fruition already in the first quarter this year. So we're starting to see that tightening up just a bit. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Director Holbrook, and he's going to run us through our revenues. Good morning, Councilmembers. First, we're going to look at just a graphical representation of our payroll withholdings. And what you see here shows what our FY 25 budget is, where FY 24 actuals were, which is the gray column, and then where we are this year. And you can see that we've been hovering around where we were in prior year with our payroll withholdings. And that's been just a hair under budget. This month, we started to see some higher collections from some of our larger payers. One of those, several of those are educational entities. And so as you have more people going back and working in classroom environment, you do get to see more payroll withholding come through. And we've also started to see some other growth in some of our other employers as well. On net profits, the story that we always tell is that the spring is where we see most of this revenue collected, and you can see that here. September is usually a big month for us, along with October being a little bit lower. And that's when we start to see the extended returns come in. We've been performing pretty well compared to the prior year and to budget, and so we're running just a hair above, but right around where we thought we would be so far. So we've got a long way to go to see if we're going to meet our revenue budget for net profits, but overall, it looks good to be tracking where we think we're supposed to be. For other revenue sources, insurance is continuing to be a strong grower. We absorbed a lot of the anticipated growth in our budget this year, and so we're running just a hair above that. So that's good. You see a lot of growth in casualty and auto insurance, not so much in some of the others. And that's putting us about $200,000 above budget, so very close compared with where we've been running in prior years. And then franchise fees. Last year, one of our big stories was that we were underperforming where we had budgeted and then also prior year for the majority of the year, and so we're starting to see that grow above where it has been. On some of our other accounts, just so you see property taxes, it looks like a large negative variance by percentage, but we don't see property taxes really collected until October, November, and December as people's property taxes get paid to get the discount and then their mortgage companies make the escrow payments or people make those payments individually. Charges for service. The large growth that we see there to budget has a lot to do with our continued growth in our EMS fees. That's continued to be a strong performer and driving a lot of the growth in that revenue source itself. But the other categories are not performing as strong to budget as we had maybe anticipated, so we'll have to wait and see what that looks like to budget as the rest of the year goes on. And then the rest of the categories are a little bit smaller dollar amounts, but sort of a mixed story. Overall we're 5.5% above budget. We've collected about $108 million. The large portion of our revenues, as Commissioner Hensley said, come in in October, November with property taxes, and then in April when we start to see our net profit returns come in. So we're still at the very first part of this, but overall through our first quarter what we anticipated, this is just a hair above what we thought we should be at. Looking at actuals compared with prior year, you can see the much larger percentages comparing FY25 collections to FY24 for the majority of our revenue sources. And so this really just highlights the fact that we have had a stronger and maybe a revenue budget that's anticipating more growth than we have in previous years. And so we're seeing a lot of that, capturing that, and as we go through the budget process we were able to maybe provide more in the budget on the expense side because we had acknowledged more revenue. The big stories here are net profits, which continue to grow over prior year. That's something that we didn't see last year. We didn't really see that go above prior year until the tail end of the year. Payroll continues to be a strong grower. Insurance, you can see there 11%. That's very strong growth in the insurance categories. Property taxes, even though we are showing negative to budget, you can see that that's risen a little bit and we'll start to see what that fully looks like once those collections start to come in. Charges for service, just to point that out, we did have in prior year excess fees in collections came in very strong for end of term and so we're not going to see that this year. So that will see some drag on what our current year collections are versus prior year, but our other revenue sources are making up for the vast majority of that. Overall, we're 8% above where we were in prior year and I'm happy to take any questions anyone has. Otherwise, I'll turn it over to Director Looker. Hold on, Director. I think we got a question. Council Member Gray, you signed in. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate you. So I have a question regarding the investment income. Is it just a certain parts of the year that that income will move from being the negative 100%? We'll start to see investment income booked as we get past our audit period. Which is? We're currently wrapping up our audit right now. Okay. So it will be complete, say, in December? We'll start to see those bookings come in very soon. This month? I don't know about this month. Next month? We'll have to look and see. Soon. Okay. No date. Thank you. Thank you. That's all we have signed up, Director. Thank you. Good morning. Move right along here to the expense side. This is our chart that shows our personnel actuals versus our budget. You can see we've got some spikes in there. We have a spike in August, this fiscal year, where we had a three-pay period month. Last year, you'll see that gray there, that three-pay period month last year fell in September. So that's why you see the switch from the orange and the gray on August and September there. In January, we have our second three-pay period month for the fiscal year, as well as that is when we have our sick checks, and then we have a lot of payouts when people are leaving the government in January. So we have a higher budget in January for personnel for those things. And then in June, a certain amount of payroll gets accrued back. So you see some spikes throughout the year on that. But as you can see, we're very close on our personnel budget. The orange bar there is right at or right above or right below the blue line. So that's what we want to see. Now we'll switch to operating. You'll see our operating, it has spikes as well. It's not evenly spread through the 12 months, which we ask divisions to go through and look at when they think they're going to have their expenses. In what month is this event? Or in what month are we going to have to start buying salt? What month are we going to have to do this? Because we're not going to do those things throughout the whole year. So you can see there's a little bit of waves and movements through that blue line. We had a big month in August for our spend. We were over budget for the month of August. We were just below budget in September. And then in July, we were below budget. But I'll point out, you can see here and you can see in a couple slides, we're spending more each month than we did the prior month or the prior fiscal year for the same month. So that's what we want to see. We want to see that we're spending our budgets because our budgets were increased. So we want to make sure that we're spending there. So I would like everybody just to look at this top line here because this may not happen again. We are within a half a percent of budget on personnel. That's a big deal to be that close on personnel. Now, it may change next month and I may be flying past that line and we don't want to talk about it. But this month, I do want to take a moment to talk about that because that's we worked on attrition. We worked on divisions are working on their hiring, the different hiring campaigns and things. And so we can see that working. We're doing very well in our overtime budgets. And that's due to having positions filled, working to get those positions filled. We're watching our payouts and our health insurance because that's where we're a little bit over budget so far for the year. And we'll continue to watch those as we go throughout. But I did want to point that out because that's I don't know that we've ever been this close on our personnel budget. So this is a big win for us. If we go to the operating line, that's a larger it's a larger variance number. But I will point out last month, from the end of August to the end of September, our variance only increased by less than $400,000. And we added about five and a half million dollars of additional budget on for the month of September. So while it's a different, it's showing very different numbers and the percentages are very different than our personnel variance. This is hopeful that we are spending on our operating and that small growth in the variance is a positive sign to me when we've added that much budget and that little that little variance. So I would like to mention that. And then our insurance were right there at budget debt service. That's a couple of debt payments for a couple of our bond issues. And so those will the timing of those will get worked out. And then our partner agencies, we've just some have gotten paid a little sooner than what was budgeted. And then with our capital, we're spending our capital, which is good. I'm not concerned that we're over budget there in that line. I'm glad that we're spending our capital because if you all remember just a year or two ago, I was up here saying, we're slow on our capital, we're slow on our capital. So so now we've kind of we've turned the corner there. So I'm not worried about that, that number. So overall, our expenses were the change in fund balance that we have is $12.1 million for the first three months. So now we'll look at compared to last year. And as I was saying, on those charts, you can see in our personnel and in our operating, we're spending more than we did last year, as well as insurance. So we're doing we're spending, you know, at a faster rate than we were last year. So far for the first quarter, debt service, those are all done on the schedule. And so, you know, we have debt rolling off and being paid at different times of the year. So that one is going to vary. And then partner agencies, we've, depending on how partner agencies are funded, that that is that change there. And then the capital, we had some large capital expenses last year that were things that needed to get done. So those are our variances there. And then we'll take questions. All right. Council members, are there any questions for Director Luca? Director, I don't see any. All right. Well, I see I got one. Council Member Gray. All right. Thank you, Director. All right. Any questions about to the commissioner at all before we move on to the next item on the agenda? Not seeing any, so we will move on to the next item on the agenda. But before we do, the ARPA financial update is in your packet. And there's also some information from the new school where our city was acknowledged with our work in regards to the ARPA funding that we distributed in our community. So that's in your packet. And we'll go to the next item on the agenda, which is the City Hall Finance and Options. And I'll ask Director Holbrook to present it. All right. Good morning, again. This presentation is about government center financing options. Some of these things are going to be very familiar to the Council as we talk about these throughout the year. Some of them are going to make sense only as we talk about larger capital projects like the government center financing options. So which one is going to be known as the Some of them are going to make sense only as we talk about larger capital projects like the government center RFP. I'm giving this presentation, I serve on the Kentucky local government P3 board and so I'm able to talk about some of the P3 financing options and what that might mean. So our main options to finance capital construction, especially when we're looking at a building, are these four things. Cash, we maintain some cash reserves, we use cash financing throughout the year, bonding, public-private partnership, which is P3 financing, and then historic tax credits, which are limited, but because they have some application in what the government center RFP might be, and for this building specifically, it's worth noting, so Council has a little bit of knowledge about what that could look like. So the first thing that we want to point out is whenever we're looking at financing, cash is king, and we can use cash as a supplement to any financing mechanism in any of the following scenarios that we look at. We could use it up front to be a down payment, we could use it for project costs, we could cash flow payments at some point that could reduce the amount that we need to borrow or allow us to work in some payments that you might see whenever you start occupying a new building, but it could lower future payments by reducing interest costs, there's lots of different ways that you could use this, but it can really be a tool to help any type of financing that you do. Think about it like a mortgage, the more cash you put down, the lower your payments are going to be, and that's probably the best example and most simple example of how you might be able to use this with any other financing that you could see. Next would be bonding, so when we're looking at our capital construction or any capital project of a certain size, bonding is what we typically talk about with our capital financing. It's what municipal governments use most frequently. Whenever we issue, we typically issue tax-exempt bonds, that means if somebody is holding those, they don't have to pay tax on the interest income that they get from those bonds. There are things called taxable bonds, LFUCD has issued those before, those have a higher interest rate because people aren't seeing that benefit on their tax returns, but they're also a little bit more flexible. Our tax-exempt bonds have a lot of restrictions on them as far as how they can be used, taxable bonds are a little more flexible. The shorter term that you have with a bond that's less length of time that a financing entity has to loan you money, that means your interest rate is going to be lower. If you do have larger bond issues that could impact the ability to borrow for other projects in the future, we talk about that a lot during budget time whenever we're looking at putting together a bond package. Currently, our debt service is about 10.5% of recurring revenue. We do have an upper debt limit. As a practical matter, we probably won't ever get anywhere close to that because it would mean about 100% of our budget for the general fund would be devoted to debt service. Whenever we issue bonds, we typically issue what are called vanilla bonds. They're fixed rate, they're tax-exempt, they're low risk. There are other different types of bond structures that you could look at and which are available to us, but those typically have a lot of complexity to them and you're really taking some risk about the amount of money that it might ultimately cost either based on a variable rate, based on its taxable status, based on the complexity behind it or some of the revenue supporting it. There are other things available other than what we typically do, but what we typically do is very low risk, simple and straightforward, those vanilla bonds. P3 financing and what that is, is typically a long-term contract between a private partner and a public agency. You're going to look at a P3 contract as really pulling some combination of those following things, design, construction, financing, operation or maintenance. The more that you see your private partner cover, then the more you're going to pass on your risk to the private sector and the higher the payment's going to be for the public agency. This is just an example of what that could look like. Typically, when we do capital construction, we design, bid, build. You could pass anything in between onto a private partner going all the way to privatization. Whenever you enter into a P3 financing arrangement, you make a payment to your private partner on a regular basis. You also set up capital reserves up front and that's going to be a way to manage risk because you're setting aside money for those future expenses. One of the things that this does is it has these buckets that are already filled up, so if you need to have an expense on capital You need to have an expense on capital repairs, utilities, paying debt service, whatever it may be. Whenever those have to be tapped, the P3 payment starts to refill those as you go through. We make a regular P3 payment as an example to this private partner, but it's going to go through that whole waterfall of buckets and reserves before it gets to the private partner and they get to the net amount. The more that you have those funds and those reserves that are held whole, based on how well the building's maintained and how well it's constructed, the more that the private partner gets at the tail end of that. It also allows access to private capital. So private capital has a variety of different aspects to it. The things that we see, typically we see bonds. Those are longer term. They can be up to 30, maybe even longer terms. They'll typically have a lower interest rate because they have a lot of restrictions around the, you know, three, four, five percent. When you get to some maybe less restrictive but still longer term, fairly conventional financing mechanisms such as a bank loan, that's going to have a longer term, a lower rate. A subordinate loan where you're, you think about a second mortgage, that's going to have a little higher interest rate because they're not first. They might not want to have as long of a term. And then all the way up to private equity, which is going to have a much higher interest rate that the providing entity is going to ask for. Probably a shorter term, they're going to want to make their money over a shorter period of time. And then also it's going to be less restrictive. But this is some of the range of things that a P3 partner would look at whenever they're putting together the financing for any sort of capital project. And that's part of the negotiation of this is how do they piece together the construction and the maintenance and operations of any type of building and what are they pulling from. So it could be all of one source or it could be a variety of those. And those are really the options that you have. And then the last one on this list is tax credits, which we'll talk about now. So historic tax credits are available for rehabilitation of historic buildings. Most of the eligible sites in Lexington are too small for our government center to operate. One of the few sites that is available to use for historic tax credits is this building. It has to be on the historic register already. There are two different types of these credits. The first is federal tax credits. That would require LFQCG to occupy less than half of the building. Because the way that those operate is it's an actual tax credit on somebody's return and so there needs to be a lot of taxable income going into that. If there are tax exempt entities, then that doesn't meet those requirements. And so it would allow the government to claw back some of those credits that have been provided. The other one is state tax credits, which are a little bit different. And we'll talk about those specifically. The way that you generate these is you make qualified expenses of a historic structure. And that's most of your capital expenses that meet the federal guidelines for rehabilitation. So the Department of Interior has some standard guidelines for what these look like. And as long as your qualified expenses of a historic structure meet those guidelines, you can count those towards what you could get reimbursed for. State tax credits historically, or specifically, they've seen some growth just in the last few years. There was some legislation that made this a more appealing option. These are cash payments over a fixed period. What you look at is if you're making qualified reimbursable expenses to a project, a capital project, you can get 20% of that back as a cash payment. And so they look at a maximum of $50 million, so you could get $10 million back on a $50 million investment. So pretty good return. You could use those to pay bond, loan, or lease payments, as long as it meets those U.S. Department of the Interior standards. And there's a website there for the state historic tax credit program that's operated that we get more information on as well. So once you look at those, those are the financing pieces of it. Financing, what we're talking about, is access to money to do a project. The cash, the bonds, P3 financing, or state tax credits. Funding is the ability to repay that over time. And so you really need to connect those with your idea to be able to get this capital project right. Because when we issue a bond, we're also committing to making debt service payments for a period of time. So the question that we come to is, whenever we get the financing, what can we afford looking forward? And especially as we think about the government center RFP that's out. So can LFUCG's cash flow support a project? Whenever we look at our cash flow, one of the best indicators that we have, we do financials every month, but then at the tail end of the year, we look at our, like we're going to do today after this presentation, we look at our fund balance and we look at how much unassigned cash that we have. And over the past several years, we've had a pretty healthy fund balance that could absorb a decent-sized payment for financing for a government center. The next question is, can LFUCG's bonds support a project? One of the things that we need to be mindful of is, we have about a $500 million general fund budget. That's a lot of levers to pull within that pot of money. And whenever you enter into one of these projects, especially if you look at P3 financing, you're looking at a period of time before you start making those payments. It could be two, maybe, depending on the timing, maybe three years. And so you have time to be able to work that payment into your budget, even considering some of the capital projects that we've talked about programming just over the last couple years. So as long as we're mindful of the timeline on that and the runway that we have to build that in, we do have the opportunity to support, in our budget, a decent-sized payment for a project, depending on which financing option that we go with. And so that was a very high-level and general overview. A lot of it's sort of conceptual, so I'm happy to take any questions that the Council may have. Thank you, Director Holbrook. And before I open it up to questions, I just want to just kind of preface that this presentation was put in committee just to give the Council an opportunity to ask questions about financing as we talk about City Hall. And, you know, we've had conversations, but I think there's still a lot of questions that could be answered and give us clarity as we try to move forward with the City Hall discussion. So with that, I'll open it up to questions. And first, we have Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. My question is regarding, could you explain one more time if we use federal historic tax credits while we couldn't, while we would only be able to occupy less than the full building? Right. So the way that the federal tax credits are set up is that the majority of the occupancy of the building needs to be taxable entities. And so as a government, we are not a taxable entity, and so we would need to occupy 49% or less of a building in order to be able to get federal tax credits. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. Could the chart, the P3 financing chart, which is basically your differentiation between bond and equity. Right. I struggle with how a P3 makes great sense, with the exception of we probably need something similar to a P3 if we're going to try to get tax credits, because on state tax credits, don't you need a private sector entity for those? You do need a private sector entity to participate with that. The thing that those could be assigned to a for-profit partner is the way it works, somebody that files a tax return. We don't do that, and so we would need somebody to participate with us. That could be a bank. It could be a P3 partner. As we're talking about P3 financing, that seems to make the most sense, but it would need to be someone else other than us to participate with us. I guess where I'm kind of going, when you look at that chart, I mean, bonding is our cheapest money for a project like this. It's a true capital project. It's a big project, and anything moving away from bonding is literally just going to cost us more money for the same product, because you're basically, no one's going to just give you that money. If an investor invests in something, they're going to want that 20% return on their money. If they're financing a product, they're going to have a higher financing rate than we're going to have. Right, and so one of the things that you want to look at, especially as you get a proposal, and if you get a proposal with a partner that you can sit down and you can say, here's the different financing options. Here's how you're looking at financing this building. Let's talk about where pieces of our available financing options might fit in there. As they're looking at maybe private equity and the lack of restrictions that you have on that, you may be able to piece away at some of that and add in a bond or work with some of our financing partners through our banking connections and add in pieces of those to see what makes the most sense to cash flow the project, to get it financed and get it done. If we end up with a full P3 kind of project, which is we're not going to bond at all, we're just going to make monthly lease payments on a facility, how does that, how is that considered when we're looking at our debt ratio and our, because it's basically, while it has a fiscal year out clause or whatever, it's the same concept. Yeah, we look at leases as part of our audited financials as well and consider those whenever we're looking at the amount that we're able to borrow. Now, because of the way that P3s are set up, that is over a longer period of time and will include other things as well. So it's not just specifically how much you have outlaid for a capital project, because you're also potentially talking about operations and maintenance, maybe even utilities is one option that people see in there and some of the capital repairs that will be considered over time and pre-funding those. Okay. I mean, just like back of the napkin number, $100 million over 30 years, 5% seems like it's $6.5 million a year. So $6.5 million a year in a payment on a $500 million budget looks like we need to have about 1.25% headroom in our bonding capacity in order to kind of make that happen. Yeah, as we look at, I think one of the things to consider, too, is whenever we're talking about this menu of options, we're not just talking about the capital financing of the building, right? We're looking at the potential for that operations and maintenance, for the construction, for the design and the build, and also for the financing costs as well. So it's not just $6 million and that's it. Even if we were to go and do that, we would have $6 million plus the cost of running and maintaining and repairing the building over time. And so those are considerable costs as well. I agree with that, but that you're going to have no matter what. Like, you are still going to be paying that private entity, that P3 partner, for all of those things as well. It's not like it's just free. Right. But they have the ability potentially to do some of those things cheaper than we might. And so that's why you may want to consider including a P3 partner, especially as they look at savings on constructions, maintenance operations, maybe even access to capital that would be a little less restrictive than what we might be able to get with a bond. I'm out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Wes, for the presentation. It's very helpful to see everything kind of written out and comparative like this. So a few questions. I just want to make sure that I understand the state historic tax credits with the 20 percent of qualified reimbursable expenses. So that means that we would have to front the cost to be reimbursed that amount of money? Correct. Okay. So that sounds like it would be important to build a cash reserve no matter whether we do a P3 option or we do bonding. Right. And like I mentioned, you could use those as repayment over time because once you make those expenses, you have two years to be able to report those and get those certified, and then the payments start. So you could use it to pay a lease payment, a loan payment, a bond payment for a period of time. Okay. I know you said with Councilmember Savigny that potentially a private partner could have lower interest rates or better terms than us, but I'm assuming with the volatility of the market and we don't know what's going to happen with interest rates at any point in time that we could in both scenarios have the opportunity to refinance to lower interest rate options, correct? Potentially. That's something that we would have to talk to our banking partners about, but it's a possibility that could exist. So if we bonded it in-house, we may have more control over a refinance. We would have to negotiate those terms with a private partner, correct? Right. And when you think about the market right now and the potential for refinance, there are a lot of restrictions on bonding up to when and how much it costs to refinance. And so you don't necessarily have some of those restrictions whenever you're talking about the more private financing options. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I think no matter what we do, we're just going to have to be super disciplined going further with either option if this is something that we're serious about. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director, for the presentation. In regards to the state historic tax credits, does that 49% occupancy of the federal tax credit also apply? No, it doesn't. And so there are quite a few historic structures around the state that utilize this just on an annual basis for their maintenance. And so it could be something that's a very small amount. It could be something up to that $50 million amount, depending on how many other requests there are in the pipeline. But we don't have the same restrictions that you do on the federal side with the state credit. Okay. So if we were to go in the direction of renovating this building, we'd be eligible for the state tax credit but not federal? Correct. Okay. Are there that you're aware of other, I'd hesitate to even call them best practices, but what do other cities do? Are there some examples of financing structures that have seemed to work for other cities who are taking on projects of this size? As far as looking at something the size of a new government center? I mean, when you're looking at the larger capital expenses, I think the ability to pull in what some different creative financing options may be, not just 100% bond, because that does have some very clear restrictions. Best practices, if you're trying to do it, it's pulling in what you can, what makes sense with your public agency and your partner to just be able to get it done and get it done in the way that's most efficacious for the taxpayer. Can we look at it in a simple sense, like an individual buying a house, that we're looking at the two main things that we have to think about is the deposit and then our monthly or annual payments? Right. Is that an okay way? I think that's fair. I think that's probably a good way to think about some of the different options that we have. Okay. So when we talk about bonding, then, does the bonding only apply to the deposit part of it? Can we use bonding to, you know, put into our annual payments? You should not use bonding for an operating expense. And so if you're going to use bonding as part of this, you're going to want to use it for capital construction, whether that's in whole or in part. Okay. And then lastly, Councilmember Baxter and I have kind of been through some of this process with the last RFP, and one of the questions that it felt like we kind of struggled to answer in the way that I think if you and I were buying a house, the first question we would ask is how much can we afford to pay a month on a payment, right? Not only how much have we put aside for this deposit, but what is our budget, right? And that's one of the things I felt like we struggled to answer a little bit. So I'm not expecting an answer from you in terms of a number, but how do we go about calculating it? Because part of the sense that I got, at least, was the sense of like we have so many different options of how we can do things that almost made it more confusing and kind of less definite about how to arrive at that figure. Right. You know, one thing that we can look at is just the past few years, and not that the past few years are an indicator of what the future may be, but just what we've seen. And like I said, the presentation we're getting ready to see after this, there is a certain amount of money that is at the end unassigned fund balance. And so that's not committed to anything. And so that is a place where you can see how much of that would you be willing to put in a payment for a bond, a P3 financing partner, whatever it may be, to cash flow that payment. You probably don't want to take up all that because that takes up all your room. But some portion of that could be allocated to those payments. Yeah. And I can see the way we would use fund balance for it. But of course, our fund balance will fluctuate depending on how things are going in the city, how we're spending the money, and also how we're structuring the numbers to pan out. So if next year we have a very small, tiny fund balance, then we're no longer looking at that. And we think back to the cash, you know, cash is king example. You can use that multiple different ways. So if you get a P3 partner, one of the advantages that you have there is you're probably going to have a couple of years in order to program that in to your budget. In order to do that with a bond, you're probably looking at six months, maybe a year, to push that payment out. And so you're seeing that cost much more immediately. And so you can negotiate some of that. We can use that cash reserve to cash flow some of that, either to make a down payment or to sort of work in that first year payment or first couple of year payments as partial until we're able to absorb the full amount. So there are lots of different options we have, partially because we have large capital reserves, but also because we have a $500 million budget, we've seen good revenue growth, and we have lots of different levers that we can pull to make sure that we fit something in. All right. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. So Council Member Savigny, I'm going to weigh in just a little bit before I come back to you, if that's okay. So, Director, thank you for the presentation. To Council Member Savigny, one of the points he made is some of the cheapest money out there is our bonding money. But from what I understood you say is maybe P3, depending on how it's negotiated, could be a better option because we could build in operating costs in the P3 agreement where bonding is just purely going to be capital. That is just going to be capital, yes, sir. Okay. So even with the P3 counting against our credit rating, because we have to account for it as a payment or a lease payment, it still could outweigh, the P3 option could still outweigh us bonding and just paying the operating ourselves. Right. Because, like I said, you do see with bonding, you can see some cheaper money over a longer term. It's due more immediately and it has a lot more restrictions to it. And so with the P3 arrangement, you're looking at the ability to negotiate quite a bit of what that agreement could look like, how much needs to be paid up front, do you have different financing options, when are these capital repairs happening. You have a lot of ability to set what those parameters are as you're going through the process of negotiating that contract. Okay. Okay. That's kind of what I heard you say. Now, the other benefit or one of the things I wanted to come out of this presentation is a number, just to give Councilmembers a point of reference. Does the administration feel comfortable either stating a number or a range or what you feel comfortable with us considering going forward? I think when you consider the cash flow for the fund balance for the last few years, and what we might potentially be able to work into a budget, something around $10 million. That's not to say if it's 10 million and one, it would be a no-go. But you have lots of levers, like we said, with the budget. And if you get a good proposal where you're able to go through and negotiate a lot of this and figure out what really makes sense, then something around that $10 million number would give you a good notion of what could be possible to fit in. Okay. So I appreciate having a number, but I like ranges as well. And I think what gives us more flexibility in a range is cash. If the range was $6 million to $12 million, and part of the benefit of having some cash to put towards the deal provides a runway for us to build it into our budget. So that could actually, if we had more cash to create a longer runway, it could give us more flexibility in what our end payment would be. I mean, is that, am I thinking about it the right way? Yeah. So that, like you said, cash gives us the ability to be very nimble and creative with how that's deployed. It could be a down payment, which is going to reduce your costs up front. You could use it to work in those payments, either in whole or in part, over a series of years. And that could give you some ability to fit something in that makes sense over a longer stretch of time. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, we'll see who else has questions. So thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you. And this will be quick. Director Holbrook, I think I heard you say to Vice Mayor Wu, you should not bond for operating expenses. Is that what I heard? We typically don't want to bond for something that is not a capital asset. Thank you. That's what I thought. I thought I heard it right, so I just wanted to make sure I heard it right. And then, like, a $150 million bond at 5% over 30 years is going to be close to that $10 million, it seems like. Right. But that also is going to limit where we're able to bond for future projects. Yeah. Thank you. That's all I needed. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we've got Council Member Brown. Yes, just a quick thought here. We had, in the past years, we've had a, I don't know, a chart telling us how much it was costing us to stay where we're at and all the maintenance that we have and how much we would save in maintenance of the facility we have here that would go toward that total monthly payment, I guess. So when you're talking about that $10 million, I think you're talking about a gross number and not factoring in the savings that we would have in expenses. And I thought we would, I don't know, I'll throw a number out. I thought we were saving about $5 million going into a new facility. We'd save about $5 million in expenses. Is that number still out there? I don't know about $5 million. In a renovated building or a new building, you would see some expense savings on the operational cost. But I thought that needed to be pointed out, that there is a process there that would help us combat that $10 million, that number that's thrown out, $10 million. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I think to that point, I think there is a conversation that we can have about how going into a new facility or renovated facility will save on operating costs. Yeah. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wood. Thank you, Chair. To follow up on Council Member Fred Brown's question, do we have a figure right now for what we're spending in maintenance of this building annually? Yeah, we're actually spending about a million dollars a year in this building for operating. That includes all of our utilities annually. We do have some large project costs. You are aware of the large investment that we had in our elevators this past almost two years that it took us to do that. And we do have some HVAC replacement costs, but we are going to have that in any building that we go to. I mean, we do have some costs that are unique to this building. It is an older building. We have plumbing and those kind of things, but we do try and stay somewhat on top of that. I know that there were some larger deferred maintenance. The elevators were a large portion of that, and we did have to go ahead and do that. But it is costing us about a million dollars a year in this building. What about if you add in Switau and Phoenix? Switau annually looks like it is about $40,000 a year, including general maintenance and utilities. And Phoenix looks like it's roughly between $200,000 to $250,000, $260,000 a year as well. So that $10 million ballpark number that Director Holbrook gave, does that include our maintenance as well? When we have looked at some of the proposals, the goal would be to include that in there. Obviously, we're going to have some transfer of cost. We're going to have some cost if we renovate. We're going to have some cost if we go elsewhere. So we've tried to take into account what we would either lose here to go somewhere else, or we would make more efficient here in those calculations. So there's going to be some transfer, I guess, if you will. But yeah, we would probably not want to move significantly up. Yeah. So I'm curious, just so we're comparing apples to apples, is there a way for you to kind of break out in terms of a ballpark out of that $10 million? What portion of that is the maintenance plus utilities as compared to if we add everything up? We're looking at about $1.3 million that we're putting into all of our buildings now. Yeah, I think we can try and do that. One of the things that I think is really important that Wes said and has been mentioned a couple of different times is the cash balance that's going to change what numbers that we're looking at, and also the runway, the length of time that we're talking about. Because the longer that we can plan for this and kind of work into what we're talking about, the more that we're able to kind of figure out what that looks like. So we can do our best to try and kind of back into what that might look like today. But dependent upon our revenue growth, if that comes in where we expect it to be and we're looking good for this year, dependent upon a number of different factors that we're all looking at, you know, that could be different in a couple of years. So we'll do our best for today and just see how we continue to evolve. All right. Thank you, Commissioner. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next we have Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. That $1.3 million or so number of operations and maintenance ongoing for this building and our related facilities, just to be clear, that does not include still the list of deferred maintenance items that are just out there that we're correct. And do we know what our current deferred maintenance is? Because I know our elevators cost us about $3 million to have the three of those done. Isn't that correct? I think it was 2-1. It's a little cheaper than I thought a couple of years ago when we first asked to do it. It was going to be somewhere around $750,000. So in just five or six years. So you see where costs are going. But do we know what our current deferred maintenance is that doesn't include 1.3 operations and maintenance? Council Member, there are some big-ticket items that we always have on our radar. We know the garage, the Government Center garage, is a project that is on our radar that's in the neighborhood of $4 or $5 million. That's to bring it down. I think that we're leaning towards that consistency of bringing it down. We've had previous assessments of the building's envelope and windows. And at that time, I think the numbers were in the $8 to $10 million range on those. So those are the big-ticket items in regards to deferred maintenance, just here on the Government Center alone. Sure. And the envelope, that's repointing the brick and sealing the windows? Yep. And we have done one phase of that. We made some investment a few years ago on the Vestibule out on Main Street and beginning some of that work. Because it was starting to fall over in the sidewalk, right? Yep. There was the fire escapes and those things. So we have addressed some of those, but we do have items that remain. Okay. Thank you. So I think — and then when you look towards either a bonding versus P3 situation, while obviously you still have continued maintenance and those sorts of things, but if it's a traditional bonding, just government-owned building, then over time, you end up with those same sorts of issues of trying to make those decisions of what you let go and what you don't. Correct. Right. And like we talked about with the P3, you do have these reserves typically funded up front. And so you have some money available and a plan and a partner to be able to help schedule and program out some of these maintenance items, which — so they don't end up in that deferred list and certitude. And so some of that you would already have pre-funded through your financing structure that's 100 percent up front. Correct. And then you have some of that pre-funded through your financing structure that's 100 percent negotiable with your partner. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Ford, I know before we decided to do the elevators a couple years back, Dom Sheed had given us an overview of how much we had spent on capital improvements on this building, like deferred maintenance, capital improvements, and so forth. Is there any way we could get that updated and send that out to us just as a reference point so that we can, you know, just for comparative purposes? I'd be glad to. That would be awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Holbrook, I was wondering, what are the next steps, process, projected timetable on all of this? Have you gotten that far? Or can you tell us what's going on right now? So there's a government center RFP that's out right now, and then once that comes back, that'll give us the opportunity to score it and look at what a proposal might be for a new government center, whether it's something in this space or in some neighboring space. And we're also looking at some other options outside of this building? Outside of this building? I think the RFP looked at, you know, the I think the RFP looked at both this building and what else may be in the downtown area. Okay. And when are those due? I'm sorry? When those RFPs go up? December 4th. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Just to follow up on that, I think we got an email that said that we extended that time because we have some more interest. Is that correct? Yes. And how much money do we have set aside right now? We lowered that a little. Is it 30? It's around $35 million. $35 million with an additional ask coming later for $10 to get to $45? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. All right, Councilmembers. I don't see anybody else signed up, but we're good. All right, Director. Thank you for the presentation. You're welcome. Councilmembers, I hope this helps as you think about financing options for City Hall as we move forward. We'll go to the next item on our agenda, and that's the Mayor's Fund Balance Proposals presented by Commissioner Hensley. Commissioner? I reduced your salary. Call me your Councilmember. I decline the nomination, thank you. I think I prefer this chair. All right. Well we've made it. Today we are going to have our fund balance conversation for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2024. Hard to believe we are here again. Hard to believe this is my fifth fund balance conversation. Doesn't actually feel that different from my first fund balance conversation which was one week into my employment here, so a little bit different, not that much. This is actually a slide from last year's presentation, but it's really just a reminder of all of the different categories of ways that we talk about money. So just as a reminder for everybody here and for all of the public that is listening, fund balance is the point in time because when we talk most of the time, we just talk about the 1101 general fund and we talk about the decisions that are primarily living in the general fund proper, the 1101 fund. But fund balance is the point in time where we talk about all of the different items that are in the general fund family of funds and we convert from the audited financial statements all the way down to what is unassigned. And so you're going to see some really big numbers that actually come down to a much smaller number, but it is an effort to get from the general fund family of funds and tell you not only how much we have, but more importantly this year, where that money is. Because as you all will recall, this year with our financial statements we spent a lot of time, we added slides, putting little asterisks on the bottom and saying don't forget our financial statements are adjusted because of these large transfers. This is the point in time where all the chickens come home to roost. So you can kind of see where all of the work that we have done really kind of plays out. We've been through ARPA the last couple of years, so what that has done is kind of push forward some of our general fund activity as we've really gone through the ARPA process. We had a significant deadline, as you all recall, December 31st, all of our funds must be obligated, and we are. And so as we've been trying to get all of our ARPA money spent, we've also been putting all of our pieces in place for our general fund. And you've seen the impact of our general fund dollars flow through differently. So we're going to go through in just a minute where all of our general fund dollars have landed, and as ARPA has impacted both operations and dollars, our general fund, where everything has shaken out as far as our non-spendable dollars, our committed, our assignments, our obligations. So we're going to get from our audited financial statements all the way down to what everybody wants to talk about, which is what is unassigned, what doesn't have a home as of today, and then we're going to have, well you all are going to have, a broad discussion about where we want to place those dollars, and you all are going to give us an assignment that will wrap up the audit and tie a nice bow on it when you provide an assignment for the unassigned dollars. So we started with a beginning fund balance this year of $200 million, again this is all the general fund family of funds. We had a net change, a positive change of $13 million, which means our revenue exceeded our expenses, again, in all of those funds, ending with a fund balance for the end of the year of $213.4 million. Now a lot of those dollars have assignments, so real quickly we're going to go through where all of those dollars, except the very end that's unassigned, are assigned to. So about $5 million at this point has been assigned to our prepaids and inventory, so those are things that are either gas in a tank, parts on a shelf for fire trucks or fleet, our inventories and things that are already sitting on a shelf somewhere. Our energy improvements over with James Bush and our qualified energy bond reserve over for our sinking fund at the jail, $5 million of that is assigned for those purposes. We have our fund balance commitments and pre-commitments. Those are very large chunks. We've got about $72 million in that category, the largest portion of which is our economic contingency fund. You'll see that we came into today with $41 million already in the fund. You all passed this year Ordinance 99-2024, which required an additional 10 percent be allocated at fund balance. That is $2.2 million. So after that allocation, we'll have $43 million. I'm also required to tell you how much additional contribution you would need in order to get to the 10 percent, so we're going to go over that in just a second. Included in the additional commitments are the non-1101 funds. We're going to go into those as well, but there's other funds including affordable housing, economic development, tenant relocation and some other smaller funds that we're going to talk about in just a second. Those make up $23 million. We have our opioid reserve that you are familiar with. The commission is going to make a determination on how we're going to spend some of that along with the mayor's team. And then we also have some pre-commitments that are unencumbered that were just those like end of the year things that needed to cross over that we had to set aside some fund balance for. That's only $226,000. So all of those commitments and pre-commitments together are $72 million that already have a home. They already have a commitment. So economic contingency, we've got, we just talked about it a second ago. We had $43 million, which includes the 41 we came in with, the $2.2 million assignment. And in order to get to that 10%, we would need an additional $5 million at this point. So we are well on our way. Now the other piece of that 99-2024, in order to hit that $75,000 a month that was committed, we did that $300,000 transfer as part of a budget amendment. So that has already been made whole for the year. Next year in the budget, that will be included as a monthly allocation just like we were doing. So that will be included next year. No problem. First thing out of the gate. We are well on our way. We will continue to do the allocation at the end of the year as requested until we meet that 10% goal as the ordinance states. Otherwise I will just report to you that we've met the goal. I thought this was really interesting. And in this presentation, I've given a couple points of reference because I think it's really neat to kind of look back just over the last five years. In 2020, our economic development fund and our affordable housing fund were just at $2 and $3 million. And so I'm going to call this the kind of the ARPA effect or the COVID effect. But you can see how our balances have grown over that period of time. So as ARPA came in, and you're going to see it in operation slides in a minute, as ARPA came in and we were forced to shift our focus over to spending those funds really quickly and getting them out, we didn't lose focus on these items. But that ARPA money had to go out first. So a lot of these dollars are assigned and they have projects and we're working on them. But that money hasn't yet gone out the door. They've already had projects, but they're not being spent first. They're not going out the door first. But this is also a testament to the 1% that's been allocated to affordable housing. You can see how that balance has increased. And it'll go up exponentially next year as we continue to see that 1% being added as our revenues are increasing and our budgets are going up. The next group of assignments is our historical assignments and allocations. We have $8 million assigned for our health insurance reserve. We talk about this every year. We are self-funded for our health insurance. We had over $2.1 million worth of individual stop-loss claims hit this year. That means individual people had over $350,000 of claims hit. That is something we have not seen before. And so there is, when you have a population this large, that is something that you want to make sure that you are covering yourself against. So that is why we have that reserve. We watch that very carefully and if there are anomalous events that we need to make ourselves whole over, we will come to you and we will ask to use this reserve rather than harm the fund as a whole. We did not have to do that, fortunately, I hate to use the term because I feel like it is overused this year. Fortunately, we had a soft landing for the end of the year for health insurance and we didn't have to come to you and ask for this reserve, but it was very close for the end of the year. Closer than we would have liked to have been. So we did maintain the reserve at a level that we were at last year. The next category you will see is very, very large. It's $85 million. That is our capital projects. Again, this is something that I'm going to use the ARPA effect. Our capital projects have grown significantly over the course of ARPA. We had a lot of big ARPA projects, but we also have invested a lot in our general fund projects and we have a lot going on. A big portion of that is our capital reserve that is for the government center that we just talked about, $35 million. But also we have over 90 projects, individual projects within the capital account. And you'll see it here in a chart in just a second. The last category is our obligated fund balance uses. So that is for our PO roles, our grant match, and then our beginning budgeted fund balance. When I started, you're going to see this in a graph in just a second as well, our PO role was a million, a couple million dollars. We started seeing such significant delays in being able to get items, complete projects as things kind of drug over the COVID year. We actually have $14 million worth of projects that rolled from 24 to 25. And that's actually down. We're returning more to normal, so that's great. But it did create a little bit of a delay in our processing and in our operations. So we are starting to see that smooth more. And so people are using their current year dollars, and you saw that when we presented our first quarter financials. But they're also being able to complete their projects that they're bringing forward from prior year as well. On our grant match role, a big portion of that is the $5 million RISE grant. But we also have in there just a growth of grants for the government. We've got in 20, well, let me just go ahead and flip so you can see it. In 2020, we had about $990,000 worth of grant match. Without the RISE grant, we would have an additional $1.5 million in there. That's additional grants. Now, that doesn't seem like a whole lot, but we might be matching a grant at $7,000 or $30,000. So that adds up to a lot of additional grant opportunities that are running through the government. So you can really see how the operations have increased and, again, how we're kind of coming down from that temporary spike of ARPA. And we're processing a lot of additional things through our regular operations and our regular processing. And there's a lot of work going on, a lot of work that we're really proud of. In addition to the ARPA stuff that we've done, we have a lot of things in the hopper and a lot of things that we're kind of able to refocus our attention on at this point. So we're very excited about the years to come and the things that we're able to move forward. So that being said, those are the assignments. Those are the things that have a home, if you will. And so at this point, we've talked about all of the other family of funds. And in 11.01, we have $20,443,321 that is unassigned, things that don't have a home or don't have a place at this point, at the close of the year. So as with every year, the mayor has some recommendations that she'd like to bring forward. Obviously, first and foremost, her greatest priority is always the government center. So she would like to request and recommend another $10 million to be put towards that capital fund for the government center. She's also recommending $1.5 million for the council capital funds. Those have gone really well the last couple of years. You all have opened those up for additional help to nonprofits. And so we know that the demands are going to be high again now that you've opened those up. And so that's been recommended. Next is a civil service end of year supplement. We did a 3% increase this year. Inflation was about 2.6. And so we know that that's something, it is scaled based on rate of pay, and we noticed that the highest supplement is for those individuals that are making under $75,000. So she knows that particularly at the end of the year, that might be a time that some of our members are needing a little help for Christmas, and that's something that she's once again promoting. The next item is the infrastructure funding plan. The urban growth master plan was something that council was very supportive of. And so as we have moved through the process, this would be a plan for how we would fund the growth. And so this is actually the plan that would essentially replace exactions. And I've never built something to replace exactions, so I would really appreciate someone to help us build that. So that would be a request that she is supportive of. We would request $750,000 for that. Cardinal Run North we're going to have to talk about later. We're going to scratch that from the list. Urban master plan update is an item that she is supportive and recommends. I noticed it's also on the list, on your all's list as well. The next item is a NAMI facility support. I believe you all had a presentation from NAMI. She is also supportive of their continued efforts regarding mental health and has been a longtime supporter of their efforts. And lastly, in efforts of her support of the 250th Lex and always in support of the Philharmonic, she is recommending a free concert for 250th anniversary for $45,000. That does leave an unassigned balance of $5.8 million, but those are her recommendations. At this point, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation and then also the presenting the Mayor's fund balance proposals. Councilmembers, I'll open it up for questions for the presentation and the Mayor's fund balance recommendations. First, we have Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. The Cardinal Run, the paving, because I know a lot of ARPA money went to Cardinal Run. So what's the scenario? Why was that not covered or were there needs that we have? Yes, thank you for the question. The Council had given $10 million to Cardinal Run and what this request was is we have only gone so far with the pavement. We have a road, it's gravel, to the back part of that. This request would be to extend the pavement all the way. It would really give it a good finished look for its opening. Yesterday I received news that we have a pavement problem at the front part for about a quarter of a mile. It looks like a failure, a base failure. So I did not feel, in conversation with the Mayor, I did not feel that it was fair to ask you to extend the rest of the pavement when I may have to come back later and talk about money to help fix the front part of the pavement. So that's the reason why we would like to take it off the list, because I can't extend it without knowing my costs to do the other. I'm afraid I'll get you into too much money. So that $647, so that would add back in, we would not be requesting that at this time. Now I'm probably going to have to come back to you later on, but I don't know my figures yet and I don't know enough to have you make a good decision. In the failed paving that we just found out about yesterday, was there no liability from the contractor? I'm not going to get into all that. And that's why I have not processed any of that yet and I just don't know enough to have you really make a good decision. So we don't have any type of figure that's so new? No. You don't have any new. And I just need to come back to you after Christmas when I know more. Okay. That answers my question. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. On the economic contingency and the end of the year, that $2.271 million, how are you getting that 10% that makes it that number where that would be $22 million and change and then you get 10% of that? It's calculated before anything is taken out. So we established a fund balance number. We calculate the 10%. We push that aside and then that drops. So that would be 10% would be $22 million and change, right? I'm trying to figure out by doing the math where that comes in here because we end up with a fund balance of $20,000,404.3. So the fund balance was $22 and then we just took the 10% off the top from that? Right. We just followed how it stated in the ordinance. I'm just trying to do the math on when this comes in here and I just don't see how we get to that number where it shows in here. But I'm taking that as your word, that's what it was? Yes. Okay. And so then when we do that and then we haven't, did we include this year the 75 or is that, what did you say? We did. So when we brought forward the budget amendment that added the revenue for the EMS, the additional EMS revenue and then we added the 13 paramedics, there was $358,000 that would have been additional fund balance that was, it was out of balance. It actually had a positive balance. $300,000 which would have been the extra $25,000 I believe per month was allocated. Because we're doing 50 and then we're going to give the extra 25 from that. To make that whole at that time. So that has been made whole for the, to make it the 75 every single month. I'm still having a hard time finding your 22 and change to get the 10. I don't see it in your numbers where it comes up here but I believe you. We can work on that over lunch if you'd like. Okay. Thank you. I assume we'll take a lunch. Not yet. But yes. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. On the question of the large capital construction fund, can you kind of refresh us on, and this is kind of a follow-up on Councilmember Ellinger's question for the last presentation. So we have $35ish, right, in the large capital fund now. And I do recall we had put aside $6 million before that. Is that? Bonded. Okay. But that one is specifically for City Hall. The $6 million was bonded for City Hall. It is still in the bond. It is still sitting there. If we proceed in a manner that is a lease payment, we will not be able to utilize that in a lease payment. If we occupy a different building where we need to obtain equipment or we need to purchase something to go in there, we could use it for that. But when you bond money, you have to spend 80 percent of that money within three years of the bond. We are now in year two. So as we bond money, if we are not going to hit those timelines, we will often come back to you all and say we need to flip some things around. So probably what will happen is if we're not going to hit a timeline, we'll need to flip that to something we will bond in the future. Like maybe not paving. Like something else. Maybe vehicles. Maybe something else. But we try and watch those bonds carefully so we don't get in trouble with those items. When we bonded it at the time, we were looking at RFPs and it was likely that we would be in an occupancy situation within that timeframe. I'm not sure where we will be at this point. Is there any downside to having something bonded and then just kind of sit there for a while and not get used, even if we don't violate that three-year rule? You're paying interest on it. I mean, that's kind of the downside for me. Other than the timeline. And then this $10 million that's proposed right now is going into the large capital construction fund. It says government center allocation. But technically speaking, it's going into a large capital construction fund. Which means it can be used for other large capital construction. Right. We have a project in the capital fund, 1105 capital fund, called reserve 2024. That's just its name, that has the intent or is the placeholder that we have designated as the government center holding tank, if you will. But its name is reserve 2024. So that is what we talk about when we talk about the government center money. When we refer to it this way. But that is the restriction that it holds right now. So is there any downside for us to, because I'm trying to wrap my head around kind of the idea of we don't necessarily know what these costs are. We have kind of a ballpark of what that annual payment might be. But we don't have a real ballpark because we don't have a real proposal in front of us at the moment in terms of how much we want to put down. So kind of the idea of, and I get the philosophy of it, that we're putting aside money for this impending deposit or impending insertion of cash. But it makes me wonder a little bit, is there any downside to waiting until we have more firm numbers before we start putting aside money? Because we have budget season every year, and then we've got fund balance season every year or so. And even between that, we have other opportunities to take a bite of the apple, potentially. So can you talk me through kind of your thinking in terms of kind of getting ahead of it and putting all this money aside before we have any real solid sense of how much money this is going to take versus waiting? I think there's only a couple of opportunities that you have a year to put cash aside. This is one. And I think the other one would be budget season, and it requires an immense amount of discipline and saying no to a lot of other things. And so I think it's highly unlikely that we would do it during a budget. So really I feel like this is the primary time to do it. Having cash reserves in whatever form they may take, whether that's economic contingency or sitting in your capital account or whatever, only ever serves to help our bond rating for whatever that is worth. I am ‑‑ if it is the intent to try to assist the government center efforts with a substantial down payment, I think this is the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next we have Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Do you mind, Commissioner, to give me a little bit more information about the support that the administration is proposing for NAMI? I see that they're losing their office space. Are we helping them purchase a new office space or is it help for the lease? I believe, if I'm not mistaken, when they presented, they had committed to raising a portion of the building that they were occupying. I guess the individual that had been providing it for them was going to sell it, and they were to come up with, I believe, 20% as their match, and they were asking for a portion of it to come from us. This would be the portion that they had asked for from us and that they were going to be matching. To purchase a building? To purchase it. Yes. Casey is behind the camera. Oh, thank you, Casey. Didn't want to interrupt you. Wonderful. Yes, Commissioner Hensley is correct. They have actually—so the purchase of the building is $275,000. We're only proposing giving them money to $225,000. They have already raised that difference. They had their NAMI walk last month, so they have already raised the difference twice-fold of what they need to purchase the building. I do want to add that they actually had an appraisal done recently, last month, and the building is worth way more than this purchase price, so they're actually getting a really good deal. I just wanted to throw that in there. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Savicny. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation. Just a few quick ones. Fund balance. I know that this is something that we always do at this time of the year. Are we obligated by ordinance to do something with a fund balance? Or my thing is always we could choose to do nothing, and that's choosing to do something. Yes. So if we do nothing, what happens? So the only thing I actually need—so this is the wrap-up and put the bow on for the audit. The only thing I actually need is for you all to make an assignment for the audit. But your assignment can be—it is to remain unassigned. So that is, in and of itself, the choose to do nothing is an assignment to do something, believe it or not. So it just rolls over. Yes. It just becomes part of the fund balance, and the auditors declare it that way. Yes. Do we, by statute, have to have our audit complete by a certain date? That's kind of the question, really. It does have to be complete by—I'm not sure what the time period is. We hit it every year, no problem. But we do present it to you all in January. So they like it to be done by Thanksgiving. Yes, and that's kind of where I'm—I was going a little bit there because it seems like there's this rush for October, and I just wanted to know if that was a perceived rush or if it's a real rush. No, we traditionally have done this presentation in October because the October budget and finance presentation has been turned into a committee of the whole because our budget and finance meeting for November hits right at Thanksgiving, and then we have Christmas, and then we typically have a new council—well, the years that we have a new council, we have a new council in January, and so that's why we have typically presented it in October. But the only requirement is that there is an assignment for the audit, but that also can be—leave it unassigned. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Quick question on capital projects, general fund, and progress. That $84 million, which I think correlates to the GRAF, Enhanced Investment and Capital Fund— Yes. Those are all assigned projects, correct? There's nothing sitting in there that's unassigned? Right. They all have—I actually have a huge list. But that's not the City Hall thing. That's in a different spot. Is that correct? Or is the City Hall part of that? The City Hall money, or Reserve 2024, is included in that $84 million and is $35, roughly, million of that. In addition to that, you have over 90 projects in there. Some of them are under $10,000, and some of them are hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Got it. I have one more question. Is there—let's talk a little bit about the economic contingency. So it should be somewhere around $50 million if we were going to meet the ordinance or the resolution the way it's kind of created. So that would be additional money going to that to make that happen. Is there a reason that's not proposed? And is there—and what—there's—by ordinance so that new people know, like, what can we use that money for? Is there a certain instance that that comes into effect? So it is intended to be for essentially catastrophic events, like a global pandemic, or events that are unanticipated and really catastrophic events. It says events where we don't meet our budget, but it's not just that we didn't meet it. It's that something unanticipated occurred that caused us not to meet it. Our largest employer jumped ship and decided to leave the city for some reason. So it's kind of for, like, revenue smoothing, like, over time if something—if we have this event. And do we declare the event? You declare the event? Who declares the event? That's a really good question. I'm not sure that it says who declares the event. I feel like it's one of those things where, like, we would all know the event occurred. Oh, Dave knows. My time's up after this. I appreciate it. I think the acting commissioner has an answer for you. Good morning. We'll send you a copy if you need it, but my recollection is that obviously you all ultimately control it because it's an ordinance, but if it would be done by the administration, I think it's normally through the CAO's office, and she would approach you all. She would approach you all with the ask—she would approach you all with the ask and the explanation as to why it was needed, and you all would have to sign off on that. Thank you, Commissioner, for that clarification. Councilmember Savigny, were you finished? I didn't know why it wasn't recommended to make it whole. That was the only question that was not answered. Councilmember Worley. Thank you, Chair. They're kind of focused back on holding cash or assigning it as unassigned. So for a long time after we escaped what we thought was going to be a pension crisis, our budget stabilization fund kind of then became our unassigned assigned cash fund, and we just sort of used that as we're going to park it over here, and as we come up with projects we like, we'll spend it. And then over time, we've basically spent that down. So I think, if I recall, when we ultimately decided to spend that down, it was for two main reasons. One, we believe the economic contingency fund was well solid enough to say we have plenty of savings in the event of an issue. And two, that if we were going to continue to bond at the rate that we were, holding cash was kind of an incongruent philosophy for our auditors and our bond rating. And so at that time, we thought it would be better to spend that money down. But now we've been fortunate enough that we see these large fund balances every year. And of course, we're starting to tick down because we're coming out of the COVID influx of money. But I think it shows that our government has grown significantly, and we're probably going to continue to see these sorts of cash infusions. So me personally, I believe that our budgets are going to continue to be able to absorb any city hall lease, if we budget right and we negotiate right, without cash reserves. That being said, I'm thinking about timing. So if the $6 million in the bond, I know it has to be used for a capital expense, but can that be used for the soft cost of a capital expense? Design, consultants, those sorts of things that are built into the overall. So that money sitting there, even though we're in year two, based on our timing of proposals coming in on December the 4th and potentially starting, then that money could be activated well within its time. Yes, I think it could if that is our cost. Or if that is negotiated to be our cost. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so then the $10 million request, again, thinking about the decision making process of however the administration and this council and consultation chooses to set up evaluating those RFPs. If knowing that that $10 million has already been put towards that potential use, given the timing, would that be beneficial then in thinking through the planning of whether or not we can afford this or that, because you could always come and ask for the money. But if you know it's already blended into that part of the discussion, do you believe that would be beneficial in evaluating any RFP? Absolutely. And the balances that were there previous to this were considered in our previous evaluation. Sure. So knowing that there would be a potential $16 million in two different sources would certainly help with that process. And then you would think through those lease payments over time, blending in the additional cost. Or letting some of that cash sit to help out where needed from time to time. And then just lastly, just like you could come ask for money, if we do allocate it to something like a potential city hall use. And those RFPs are rejected or we don't find a project that we'd like again. And with a budget amendment requested from the administration, that just goes back into the unassigned or to something else, correct? Right. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. I really haven't lost my mind. We have a lot of community residents that's tuning in. And first, I just want to make sure that the north end of town is still located in Lexington. And it's not in Georgetown, Winchester, and Richmond. Is that correct? We're still part of Lexington? Yes, ma'am. North end of town? Is that a verbal yes or just a head shake? Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. And so the next question goes toward the 84 million assigned. Do we have demographics as where those capital projects and that money was spent? Because I have been in so many neighborhood association meetings that I normally attend, but they have been intensed. And the belief is there has not been enough or even measured up. The amount of money that is spent in Lexington on capital projects and improvements has even came close to the north end of town. And so I want to either put that baby to bed, because you're the expert. And to satisfy the residents of the north end of town, is there a way that we can get a copy of where the money was spent, what the demographics was, and then I can give that to the neighborhood presidents. And it can filter out, because we do have some people that's not in our district that brings this up a lot. And so I just want to make sure that we have the proper information. Absolutely. We have a list of every project that's in there. We're happy to provide that. Okay. Well, thank you. And since you said that we're still in Lexington, that answers the big questions. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And Chris, could you put that slide up that I emailed you by chance? Ashley Simpson, your office, sent me something that helped explain this. Because we didn't have it when we, in this, it didn't kind of follow this pattern. But when you get it there, actually our unassigned was that number there, the 22-7. But I didn't see it, how it was presented in this. But that actually presents it a lot better. And that is helpful in showing where that 2.271 comes in. Thank you. And actually, I think probably this predates you when you got here. But at one time, and Dave might be able to bring this up. I think it was 25% was supposed to be part of fund balance. And we've since changed that ordinance to 10%. But we at one time, and I know working with Dr. Stevens way back when we did this, and how important it was that we worked on getting our economic contingency. Because it certainly does help our bond rating. Now, to go back to what Council Member Savigny said, if we put more in, what are we right now? Double A bonding? Are we the second highest? We are. Double A stable. Yes, sir. So would, if, and I know they look at that as how much we have in reserve, because that goes towards helping our bond rating. Having more, would that increase us that would actually long-term would make it less to borrow money to, would help us or not? Or how much more do we need to do that we finally have to bump up to get to the triple A? It would be a lot. It'd be a lot? It'd be a whole lot. Way more than we have to commit. The major factor that they have actually noted for us that would move us from double A to triple A has to do with our pension and the KPPA pension funding. Say that again because this is important. Say that. Our KPPA funding and how Kentucky public pensions are funded and not actually something that we have a lot of control over. And so unfortunately that is one of the primary factors in moving us from double A to triple A. And that's not really something that we have a lot of control over. So other than being able to move our reserves significantly, probably triple where we are, that would be the major factor. Okay. And then get into, I guess, are we asking questions on what the mayor's proposed? Are you going to answer those? Sure, I'll do my best. The $300,000 that you put for the downtown master plan, how are you looking? Because I know there's a proposal for Council Member Legree on $500,000. I've got one in for retail. So where is your $300,000? How are you coming up with that number? I think that the mayor was very supportive of the proposal. I think when we looked at it, that was a level that she felt like, you know, in all of these master plans, it seems like when we put out a proposal, what we get back is really close to what we have in the budget. And so in looking at some of the other master plans that are out there, we thought that that might be a decent number. But I think there may be more information that Council Member Legree has than maybe we had at the time. So I'm sure that she has rationale for her proposal as well. So that was the level at which the mayor was supportive and wanting to put that recommendation out there. And then on the concert, was that not part of the 2025, when we put the money aside, this is a new proposal that- I believe this is an additional free concert. And when is this going to happen? I'm not sure that there's a date at this point. Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Probably a clarification, I didn't know that we had a government center capital account set up. You know, I tried, but I didn't get the votes to set that account up. And the $35 million that we have set aside is not a government center capital account. So it would take, I don't know if legal needs to say something, but it would take this Council action to actually put that $35 million over into that government center account. So are you going to set up a separate fund for the $10 million if we pass that? That is a good clarification. It will be a separate reserve, won't it? That is a good clarification. Currently we have it in a reserve 2024, but I think the mayor's intended use of that is for the government center. Now, wait a minute. You're going to set up a separate reserve, or are you going to add it to the 2024 reserve? I think that will depend on Council's direction. So we need to make that specific, you know, we need to identify that, I think, is what we're doing. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Brown. And that brings me to a couple of my comments. And, Commissioner, thank you for the presentation. I think it's easy to follow along and gets us to where we get to the unassigned fund balance number. And then also presenting the mayor's recommendations. I'm supportive of continuing to add funding for cash reserve to use for city hall or other capital projects. So, Council Members, I would be in support of putting some monies towards the capital construction, the large capital construction account that we have set up and not really designating this for the government center, so to speak. If it comes back and we get a proposal that we want to move forward with, I think we can use this money to go that route. But if for some reason we don't have a proposal that we can move forward with, then I think there's some projects that are on our fund balance list and that are in queue that I think we would like to consider funding with some of this money. So, I'm supportive of some portion to go towards a large capital construction account that we have set up. I appreciate the mayor putting the council capital funds back in on this list. I think we've been very diligent about spending this money, especially district council members and their district that do projects. There are some projects that are on our list that I won't support today because I think you can do it with those council capital funds. And then also the year end supplement for our employees. I applaud the administration for making that recommendation. I think we have some folks that aren't in a collective bargaining situation that would appreciate and benefit from this supplement. So, I support that as well. So, those are all my comments about the presentation and the fund balance. The mayor's proposed fund balance. And council members, the way I think we ought to proceed going forward is I think we ought to, from Kelly's guidance, is maybe allow council members two minutes apiece to present each item that they have on the list. And then we'll take five minutes for questions so we can get some clarity. But I don't want you to feel rushed. I just want to set up some kind of time frame for us to do it. But I think we, but I think, and if it takes three minutes, we'll adjust. But I just want to, we got so many, I just want to give us an opportunity to go through them. And then we'll just take five minutes for questions. And if there's still questions that need to be answered, we'll just adjust. The plan is to go to take a lunch break at 12 o'clock. I'm thinking a one hour break, come back at one. We can get started on the list now, or maybe we can take a lunch break. I just hate to do times differently. Just keep going? Go early and come back early? All right, y'all want to go, y'all want to take a break now and plan to come back at 12.50? Restart the meeting? All right, so with that, I would entertain a motion to- Second. So what's the motion? Is it postpone? Recess. A motion to recess. So there's a motion to recess and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Consider us in recess. Thank you. All right, council members, it looks like we have a quorum. So we'll go ahead and get started. With that, I'll entertain a motion to come out of recess. So moved. Second. All right, a motion was made by the Vice Mayor and seconded by Council Member Baxter to come out of recess. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, we'll come back into session. And we'll pick up right where we left off. But before we do, I think one of the last things I said was, comments I made was about the council, not the council, but the capital construction fund. And just for the record, that fund that we created last year during the fund balance is an unrestricted fund that those monies could be used for other capital projects. In addition to City Hall, if we so choose. Okay. All right, so council members, we'll go straight to our list. And the first person, and we're going to go into order of the list. We're going to let everybody present, try to be succinct if possible, get questions answered. And then we'll go back and entertain motions after everybody's had a chance to present. So first on our list is Council Member Legree. So Council Member, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, you all heard a pretty detailed overview of a downtown master plan concept from our office recently in the General Government Planning Committee. So this request is to allocate $500,000 to the Division of Planning for the execution of a downtown master plan. And we very much appreciate the administration's show of support for this initiative. We believe that such a plan is necessary as we look toward a future that includes a thriving, vibrant downtown that's able to meet the economic, housing, professional, municipal, tourism, entertainment, and cultural needs of our community. As you all know, downtowns are a major measure of a city's health, and they provide for important centers of commerce, government, civic institutions, entertainment, the arts, and housing, for example. And the downtown master plan would include a robust community engagement aspect and the implementation of consultant services to produce a multifaceted document that could include recommendations on infill, housing, green space, streetscape, parking, and related infrastructure and amenities, including implementation tools. So ultimately, a plan of this sort helps to guide future development. It indicates a proactive vision for potential investors and supports our overall vitality as a city. And I am very grateful for your consideration and hopefully for your support. Thank you for that, Councilmember. Are there any questions about the proposal? Councilmember Fred Brown. Yes, a question I had. The mayor also had 300,000 in there. Is that an addition? Would that be 800,000? Thank you for that question. The full request would be for 500,000, so not in addition. And who would administer this money or these funds? Where would they go to? Would they stay here at the government, at the city hall, in a special fund? Or would it go to the downtown group? The funds would be administered out of the division of planning, and they would engage various stakeholders. And there would be an RFP process for bidding out the plan. Final question, how did you come up with the 500,000 as a budgeted amount? As you may have heard during the presentation during general gov and planning, that was the amount recommended by the division of planning for a plan of this sort. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Are there any other questions? Seeing none, we'll move to the next item on the list. Thank you. And that will be Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, before you, you have a proposal for $400,000 for the next step in the update of our ADA transition plan. For those of you who weren't here last term, the ADA transition plan is a federally required assessment of our public spaces and an action plan to address any deficiencies in accessibility for our public spaces and services. Our last ADA transition plan was done over a decade ago, so we are in the middle of a much needed revision. The first phase that we recently completed and you had a presentation on was an assessment of 39 of our locations. And the consultants recommended that we do another round of assessments for a larger set of public spaces and programming before deciding on how we prioritize our required improvements. This is work that is not only necessary for our community, but also affects the entire county and government, not just one district. You also received an emailed letter from Laura Thomas on behalf of the Access Lexington Commission in support of this funding. One of the commission's duties is to advise the Mayor and the Urban County Council on issues that impact persons with disabilities. I'm happy to answer any questions. We also have Commissioner Ford here to answer questions because his office is the one that's overseeing this work. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any questions? Seeing none, we'll go to the next item on the agenda, and that is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, I circulated a paper earlier with some information, but as you know, the Lexington Children's Museum has made a lot of changes recently. Rebranding as a Lexington Children's Museum and introducing a new logo has paved the way for the future of the museum. Lexington Children's Museum has completed a master plan and assessment with the help of private donors, but asks for a supplement of the remaining cost in the amount of $32,500. Lexington Children's Museum is currently undergoing a campaign assessment to determine fundraising strategies and readiness to launch a transformational capital campaign. We're asking for funding support in the amount of $44,500. So I ask for your support. These two requests totaling $76,500 to help the Lexington Children's Museum grow and serve our community for years to come. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any questions about this proposal? Seeing none, we'll go to the next item on the agenda. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I have submitted a $12 million to pull $12 million basically out of the bond package for this year for paving. And my intent, while I'm supportive of doing a city hall at some point, I think setting aside money for the city hall isn't, I think city hall is a better use for bonded funds than paving. Paving, we've spent the same amount of paving every year since, for 10 years. And it's really an expense item. And I think Commissioner Holbrook said it best, we typically don't bond expenses. So, a few things that I want to point out is that the paving management plan, which this council approved back in April of 2023, says whenever possible, the utilization of operating funds is preferable to bonded dollars for paving. The EQPW link presentation from May 24 said due to the timing of bonding, the link would like to revisit this discussion as part of the fiscal year 24 fund balance conversation. And then lastly, the council approved debt policy 2014 and approved ordinance 3-214 that said that service should be a minimum of 10% of operating expenditures maximum. And when you look at this currently, the bonding of that paving, we're going to be at 10.54%, which I think is the percentage that was in Commissioner Hensley's presentation. If we remove $12 million, our percentage would be 10.09%, still over what the ordinance stipulates, but at least getting closer. And then my other rationale is a projected amount of a 20-year, or even a 30-year bond, but a 20-year bond would give us, with the same payments, $19.7 million versus $12 million to help fund City Hall. So that's my pitch. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savigny, are you looking at this particular request as an all or nothing in terms of this $12 million? Or if we end up funding parts of it, is it still helpful to you to kind of move in that direction in terms of how we look at bonding? I think it, I would love to have an all or nothing, but I think realistically that's probably not going to happen. So I would be, I'd be very willing to entertain a partial. I think I want to send the message that to, as we work on next year's budget, that I really want to see us get paving more and more into a, it's an expense item and not a capital item. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. You'll have to forgive me because we've looked at a whole lot of numbers today. Is this the full bonded amount for the paving or this is just a portion? I cannot remember. This is the full bonded amount for the paving. We do have a portion that's additional in map, but that is not bonded. Okay, thank you. Until I'm needed. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any more questions? Council Member Fred Brown. Yes, I don't want to speak against anything for paving. But you originally had couched it that it would be a replacement for the city hall funds. And I didn't, that was where I had a problem with. I don't have any problem with a standalone request of the paving. And in light of that, I would think you cut that in half to six million. And then this council can authorize accounting or administration to keep that other six million and bond that they could flip that over to pay. So there you'd get your $12 million, in essence, for the whole amount. So I wanted to mention that, that $6 million would cover quite a bit of payment, but there's also $6 million in there that's sitting that the Commissioner mentioned that is still eligible and may run out. There's $6 million in that that could be flipped over to payment. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. And Councilmember Savigny, I'll just say that I appreciate you bringing this proposal forward. I think it's something that we do need to think about and consider in regards to budgeting. But I think just doing the total amount in one cycle just may be a bit much for us to bite off. But I think it's a budgeting strategy that I think that we should look and entertain going forward. And maybe if we do a portion of that, it helps set the tone and changes the thought process in budgeting next year. So when it comes back around, I may make a recommendation for a lesser amount. So thank you. Thank you. If there's no more questions, we'll move to the next item on the list, and that's Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to request $500,000 to social services for fiscal year 26 for non-profit capital grants program. We are in our first year of our ESR, and we used FundBounce last time to put in for capital grants for non-profits. I think it was very successful. It allows them to do some smaller projects. And working with Commissioner Casey Allen Bryant, I know she stands up, so she might even want to come speak about it. And she's walking to the mic. But how they were able to do it with the facility improvements, but also operational investments. And you might just give just a brief overview of what your expectation is for this. Absolutely. So we anticipate to do the process much like we did last year. And so just as a reminder, we do it every other year. ESR is one year. The non-profit capital grants, which we call NCG, is the other year. We would begin the process in August slash September of 2025. We would put out a call for proposals. Again, this is a very competitive process where organizations have to put forth bids and we review. We would anticipate divvying the money up much like we did last time. So you have facility improvements and you have operational investments. Facility improvements, we did about 70% funded for those. And then about 30% funded for operational investments. For each proposal, there's a minimum and maximum. So agencies for facility improvements could get anywhere from $33,000 to $55,000 for their projects. And for operational investments, it would be $13,000 to $25,000. And that may vary a little bit depending on the amount of money that we are awarded for our non-profit capital grants. Again, last year, with our last process, which was FY24, we received 68 proposals from 37 agencies, which was $1.5 million worth of ask. We only had $479,000 to distribute them to these organizations. So any amount would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioner. You can see the need is there and I think this is a great way that we can help support nonprofits who work with us hand in hand every day. Any questions? Sounds good. I'll move on to the second one. And the second one, I have put in for $97,000 to complete a retail market study for downtown to create digital content and collateral for marketing campaign to deploy digital assets using targeted analytics. And I've asked Alan McDaniel, who is here, if he would just give just a quick brief how this would dovetail with what Councilmember LaGree with the master plan, but also how there would be some differences there, too, because I know there's going to be some questions because there's been two requests, $300,000 from the mayor and $500,000 from Councilmember LaGree on the master plan and how this would be different. But if we need to, we can also try to see if we can dovetail those together and work all together. But, Alan, if you could give just a real brief on what your expectation is for this. Yes. We sent in a small document that has two components to it, that there's a downtown retail study, which the figure for that at $45,000 is a direct quote from Retail Strategies, LLC, to complete that component. And then the other two are a quote from a marketing firm here in town for a digital asset creation and then deployment with impressions. The retail study, and earlier we had some friends from the retail committee who are longtime retailers downtown, Rachel Sauvigny and Mayor Genocchio, who were both mentioned in the packet. Their hope was that we would get some guidance on what is best for retail downtown. There's some zones that kind of each have their own pockets of retail. How do we show that together? How do we get people to see that you can come and visit all three of them? And then we are all excited at the focus that downtown is receiving between Councilmember Legris' proposal and the Mayor's proposal for a master plan. And then I can take a few questions on specifics of how retail may be different. I can guarantee it will complement anything that goes in either type of proposal with a downtown master plan. It would not duplicate. Thank you. Any questions? Ooh, they're slighting up here. All right. First we've got Councilmember Baxter. Don't go far, Alan. Thank you, Chair. Sorry. Commissioner Horne, could you speak on whether or not you feel like this type of study would be a part of our overall downtown master plan? Or if it's just very specific? It seems to me that it's very specific. I don't know that we had envisioned capturing that exact detail in the downtown master plan that has been proposed by Councilmember Legris. Okay. May I ask Councilmember Legris her opinion, too? You know, I think that we are trying to do a lot of things with our downtown master plan. And I do think that downtown retail is potentially a facet of that plan. But I also want to acknowledge we have a lot of really thoughtful, hardworking retail business owners who have been collaborating around the idea of the future for downtown. And I know that Downtown Lexington Partnership has been a major hub for those conversations. And I know several of them closed their shops to be here this morning, which we really appreciate. I wonder if there's, like when we're writing the RFP, if there's any kind of strategy that we could use to capture downtown retail as part of the downtown master plan aspect? Or if you, you know, what are your thoughts about that, Commissioner? You can certainly craft an RFP to capture nearly any element of what could be included in a downtown master plan. I think the strategy would probably be to, if we're going to do that, try to make it into elements so that the RFP responses cost-wise are to those elements, and then you can decide what you may want to include with the money that's budgeted for it or what you may not be able to include for the money that's budgeted for it. Okay. So it sounds like there are various routes that could be taken. One is a separate downtown retail plan at $45,000. One is potentially an aspect of a larger downtown master plan, knowing that there are costs associated, as Mr. McDaniel has mentioned, you know, with the $45,000, for example. And I don't know much other than what's written down that this particular proposal is for a retail study, which is very different than what was envisioned for a downtown master plan, as well as a digital marketing plan, which typically would not be part of this type of master plan for the downtown area. Okay. That's good. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmembers. Next is Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I don't know what a retail market study is. Can you tell me what it is and what do you hope to glean from it? Retail Strategies Group works a lot in the economic development spheres. That's how we were introduced to them, through Economic Development Advisor. The Retail Committee, when you want to improve the retail economy downtown and the climate downtown, it would be more specific, and they're like, what do we even need? Like, do we have enough candle stores? Do we need a pet store? Do we need another women's clothing store? Do we need an anchor store, like something that would be certain pricing brackets? It gives you all of that as a guide map to say, okay, this is what, to make it the best downtown retail atmosphere, this is what you would need. That's one half of the proposal, and then I want to make sure and clarify that the downtown promotion and digital campaign isn't just exclusively for retail. I want to say thank you for the strategic plan you all funded for us last year. It said we need to be the voice of downtown, and that's what we're trying to live into that mission with that deployment of those digital assets. That would be a general promotion of downtown, and then the asset creation, and then the deployment of it, which we would be glad to share with our partners that want to use those images or collateral or videos that are produced. Thank you. Does that help? It helps. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Sviggum. Thank you, Chair. Thanks so much for this, Councilmember Ellinger. I just have kind of a question, because I've always struggled with between DLP, DLC, and is there another entity that is responsible for economic development of our downtown core? Not that I'm aware of. DLP was created in 2017 to be the umbrella, and you have DLC that does like your events like Thursday Night Live. There was for a period of time a downtown development authority. Prior to my arrival, that went away, but no, not as like specifically focusing on downtown. That's supposed to be our banner to carry, as we learned in this strategic plan that you all were so gracious to fund. And then lastly, is the downtown development district that get like our downtown people pay money as an additional fee? That's separate. That's the management district. That wouldn't have anything to do with this one. It has nothing to do with economic development. They do economic development projects, I would argue, by making it clean, safe, and beautiful, but that's not related to this ask. Got it. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Fogle. Thank you. So the last time we were talking about the downtown master plan, we asked the parameters like where are the boundaries. And Councilmembers, if I'm not mistaken, I think they drew the line from Midland around to Loudoun, from Loudoun down to the Julie Island Market at Lyme, Lyme back to Maine, and anything inside that boundary, is that correct? So is that correct? That was our mission area. Yes, ma'am. That was our mission area when we did the proposal for the strategic plan funding. The downtown Lexington Partnerships mission area is that loose bubble you're referring to? Yes. And so as we're talking about retail stores and everything, I'm just going to assume, which is really a bad thing to do, that the input of the residents is going to be vital about what kind of stores come down, since Councilmember Legree has told us that this will be inclusive, it will be economically for folks to thrive that's in that boundary, which if I'm pretty sure everybody's aware that inside that boundary is a lot of poverty. So that is going to be a big question as far as gentrification and economic, if folks will economically be able to come and participate in the new master plan and the new plan that is the vision right now. It could be a bunch of people in here to stop that plan, but I just wanted to make sure, because that's the first district, that whole boundary is the first district whom I serve. And so it's really, really important. As we look and as we do studies, and it looks like we may need a separate study, because we need input on both ends to make sure that our predominantly black historic landscape and the history thereof is not erased. That is going to be very vital to this master plan. And to gain the trust of those residents, because as the black population with historic residents— Councilmember, I'm going to jump in. Okay. Am I going too far? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm sorry. You know this is my second year. I wouldn't say you're going too far, but I just want the questions to stay on point with the proposal. Okay. So go back to the question. No, we're out of time. I think you're— Sign back in. Yes, ma'am. You can sign back in. Unless Councilmember Gray. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Alan, for being here to answer questions. Thank you, Councilmember Ellinger, for bringing this forward. I think that it's really great that downtown Lexington is getting so much love and so many different things that we have going on. And I do think that what this proposal is distinct from the downtown master plan that Councilmember Legris is proposing. I do think that we're talking here about retail, we're talking here about marketing, and that's very different. I agree that we do need to have input from those that live downtown as well. It needs to be not just one-sided. But we—Lexington has invested a lot of money in entities downtown, from parks to events to a new convention center, and I think that the core of a city is the downtown area. And any time you visit any other city, that's what gets highlighted is the downtown, and we don't want our downtown to die, whether that be retail-wise, whether that be housing, whether that be anything at all. We want it to be vibrant. So I'm in support of this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. My first question is a first part, and I may mention what Councilmember Vogel was saying. So could you clarify the boundaries of downtown for me? So we work off a mission area. I don't know what—I would say it's like the hard boundary for zoning. Our mission area, if you look at that bubble where DLP looks as our mission area, is to like the Julietta Market down kind of around campus, and then right to the kind of Lexington Cemetery, and then going out to little paths like Ashland, Henry Clay Estate, loosely as a circle as you draw it. Okay. I just needed a visual of— Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm kind of in my head trying to drive all four ways. It goes past where the old— It goes into the 5th District area, basically, is what I hear. Correct. Chevy Chase. Correct. Ashland? Ashland Park. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So thank you for that. But just to add a little bit to what my colleague was saying, so with the study for, I guess, going with Councilmember Legree's ask, and with this ask right here from our colleague Chuck Ellinger, so will the people have an opportunity to give their input into the survey that—or the plan for downtown? That's essentially what she was asking. For the retail? Yes. For the retail. I think what was explained to me, that Retail Strategies does their whole sequence. There is an input from the communities where the stores are or where they would look in the zones that would be best for retail. That's part of the process. We just did a brief initial call to get a gauge for an estimate. I don't want to promise anything that we haven't had a chance to sit down and actually tell them we want. We do have the—you know, eventually we're the ones that pay. We get to tell them this is important to us and we want that input. Thank you. I figured you all could add that pinpoint in to emphasize the importance of public input in that matter. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I will just add, it's not a question, it's more of a statement, is I appreciate and support the effort. I would just like to entertain if there was a way that we can see if this could be a part of the—a component of the downtown master plan, just because I think boundaries somewhat still need to be defined, engagement still needs to be defined, and it might be a way that this could work together. And if, you know, more money needs to be allocated to make sure that we get what we need out of the study to benefit downtown and the neighbors that live downtown, then I'm in support of that. All right, Councilmembers, I don't see any other questions for this proposal, so we'll move to the next one, and it's Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. I've spoken to most of you about this item, and everybody should have received information and some very specific data to this issue in Lexington, and you all have also received several letters of support from community partners. I am requesting $1 million to purchase and abolish over $100 million in uncollected medical debt in Lexington and Fayette County. I want to reemphasize that we are getting 100 to 1 on our money purchasing medical debt. This could be a transformative initiative for residents, taking onerous debt off the backs of the folks who can bear this burden the least. So why are we doing this? It will put money back into pockets to spend on rent, groceries, gas, school. Because of medical debt, many people do not seek regular health care, and this will help to change that. This would remove a strike on people's credit scores, and most of all, it's about equity. We know that all the negative health and economic outcomes hit communities of color and poor communities the hardest. This would positively impact those communities. So the plan is we will work with Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit who's been buying and abolishing medical debt for 10 years. They have already sent us a sole source letter, as they are the only national nonprofit that does this work. Once in contract, they'll begin purchase negotiations with our medical health providers, including UK, Baptist, and St. Joe, among others. And as we send out letters of medical debt relief to, hopefully, tens of thousands of our residents, we will also be connecting folks with resources to help keep them out of medical debt in the future. I am happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First, we've got Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. So regarding medical debt, you mentioned credit reports, but according to my recollection of federal law and dealing with credit reports, they're no longer on our credit reports. Yeah, I know there's been a federal push from the administration, from the Biden administration, to take that off of credit scores. And Obama's as well. Yeah. So hopefully that goes through, and that would be terrific. No, but what I'm saying is currently they are not on credit reports. I can tell you from personal experience. So besides the credit report aspect, and these individuals, so what is the big push since people are no longer having their checks garnished from UK or from other hospital facilities where you have hospital debt? So I'm just trying to understand this. This not affecting their credit scores doesn't mean that this debt isn't being collected on by either the hospital systems, or a lot of times the hospital systems sell them to third-party collection agencies who are still collecting on this debt. So to me, the two biggest benefits of it is one is financial, and the second is health outcomes. We do have people who are not seeking health care or waiting until their situations are so bad that they're using the ER as their general practitioner, and then kind of repeating the cycle of getting into more medical debt. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor for bringing this. Have we spoken with the hospitals? I think we received one letter of support on going forward, because that's the one we're going to be in negotiation with, I guess, or the company that we're going to be giving the money to that will be doing that meeting with them, at least? Yeah, so I think the letter you're referring to of support is from Lexington Clinic. The letter of support doesn't necessarily indicate that they will be the ones going into purchase negotiations with undue medical debt. Undue medical debt primarily is going to be seeking out negotiations with the big three, with UK, Baptist, and St. Joe, and I think they will be talking to smaller players like Lexington Clinic as well. But if we can hit those big three, that's really the bulk of where all of that medical debt resides. I guess that was my question, then. Have we spoke with the big three, and are they on board with this? Yeah, so we've had conversations with them. Representatives from those three organizations had come to a public presentation that we had at the library a few months ago. They, at this point, because we're not in negotiations, they basically can't come out and say, yes, we will sell you this debt. That is the whole negotiation process with undue medical debt. What I do know is some of these hospital systems who have either a national or regional presence, they are well aware of the work of undue medical debt. They have had in the past these kind of relationships, so they know what this organization is. They know how this process works. So our hope is, once we get into the nitty-gritty of the negotiations, which is what undue medical debt does with those folks, that they will buy into it. I think when we originally got the information, it was $1.5 million. This has been pared down to $1.6 million. This has been pared down to $1 million. What caused the change in the amount? Sure. When I first had conversations with undue medical debt over a year ago, they basically gave me a ballpark because I wanted to know how much uncollected medical debt is there in Fayette County. They did a ballpark based on demographics and came up with a $1.6 million figure. A few months ago, they updated that because they dove down a little bit deeper and looked at the market share of the debt, particularly between the big three, and came up with the $1 million number. How many patients will this then provide debt relief for? I will get you that number. We had a ballpark estimate from undue medical debt as well, but I don't have that right in front of me. But I can get you that. I think it was a pretty big number. It was in the tens of thousands. That's what I thought. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Nexus. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and I just wanted to mention that I appreciate the Vice Mayor coming up with such a creative proposal to help people in Lexington. I'm just going to speak on the fact that I think that medical debt is one of the things that really financially destroys more families in our country than almost any other single thing. People who have any type of serious medical condition or even just have to go to the emergency room are sometimes left with bills that are just so high that they cannot pay it. And so, unfortunately, if they do go to collections, they will garner your wages, and they will cause all types of problems. Sometimes once they go to collections, then collections tries to have even more interest and adds on extra things. And so it's really an unfair process. I also have worked for the past 11 years in the medical system as a medical interpreter, and I've also seen how someone comes in for a routine appointment and labs drawn and is left with a bill that feels like ruins them financially. So I think any work we can do to mitigate that, make it less for our residents, is positive. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Nexus. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I know you said that we haven't entered into negotiations with any of the big three, and this is an estimate of how much it would cost us. Is there the potential that it might not amount to a million dollars? And what happens then to that allocation? Is undue medical debt given installations? Are they given the lump sum? What's that look like for us? Yes. Thank you for that question. So the process would work basically once we get into contract with undue medical debt, they begin negotiations with all the medical providers. So let's say, for example, only one of the three comes into this and wants to sell us $400,000 worth, and I think our contract with undue medical debt, they usually do either a two- or three-year contract. So let's say, for example, if only in the three years only that one medical provider comes in for $400,000, then we pull the rest of that money back. But we only pay out to undue medical debt to administer these purchases when those negotiations have been finalized and happened. So we hold the money until they tell us they need a specific amount. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Councilmember Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor, for bringing this forward. I look forward to us passing this due to the fact that poor, marginalized communities across Lexington, I know that different cultures, some don't believe in doctors, but for the ones that do, this cost keeps them from seeking just basic medical needs. So I thank you and I support it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I don't see anybody signed up for questions, so we'll move to the next proposal on the list, and that's Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. This is something that I proposed in the spring fund balance discussion. This is to complete the basketball court and make it into a full court at Davis Park. When they redid the park there, only a half basketball court was put in. Both the community and the land trust board have seen the need for a full court. Back in the day, there were multiple parks in that area, and I know at least one of them for sure had a full court basketball court. All of those do not exist anymore, so we just have that single park, and that park is so busy that if you go by on a weekend, you will see a ton of people out. It has been packed since it's built, which is exciting, and I think that this community, one that has been challenged with a lot of change and things over the years, deserves our attention, and so I would like to put in a full court there. That request originally in the spring was $125,000. That's the cost of doing that, and thanks to my colleagues, I really want to thank Councilmember LaGre, Councilmember James Brown, Vice Mayor Wu, and Councilmember Ellinger for putting some capital money towards them and myself. We have gotten it all down to $50,000, so I know that that is, you know, there's all these discussions about parks, but that is my ask. It's not a large ask, and I think this community deserves it and would be extremely grateful. That's all. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair, colleague. So with the pending parks, the referendum, is it possible, say, if it does pass, that this will be taken care of with the income that we bring in from the property taxes or whatever? Well, that is speculation on a few different levels. One, you know, we're not exactly sure what's going to happen. Two, I think parks would use that money for the master plan and for projects on their plan, and I'm not exactly sure that beyond that how it would be used, and this is a particular neighborhood that I think was not included in the original master plan because it's newer. So I'm not sure that all the things that we as Councilmembers would love to see in our parks, maybe some of those, but I'm not sure that all of those would come to fruition just by, you know, having that dedicated funding source. So I'll ask Director Monica Conrad, parks and recreation, the same question regarding ‑‑ I mean, so in my world, it's passing, okay? So although this project right here is not currently on your master list, but you know this Councilmember and the community that this park sits in is demanding this. Would you put this up on your list to tackle this and give them a full court instead of the half court? So thank you, Councilmember, for the question. This park is in the parks master plan because it was set for ‑‑ to be rebuilt as early as 2015 when I came to park. So it was included in the 2018 master plan. It does call for a full court basketball court. If you'll remember, it was funded with a number of different funding sources as it was ‑‑ we were working with KYTC and SLX funds to get the park rebuilt. So we do believe that a full court is in the master plan. If a parks tax was passed, then any capital repair and replacement would be eligible for those dollars. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmembers. Councilmember Reynolds. Director Conrad, can I ask you a question? Thank you. It was explained to me that there were only so many funds when the park was built and so a half court was put in. It was not ever explained to me that long term the idea was to put a full court back. Yes, we did not have enough funds to install a full court basketball court. So rather than deliver no basketball, we delivered the half court basketball. So yes, the full court is what would be envisioned for that park, because as you mentioned and rightfully so, the full court was in service to the neighbourhood prior to Oliver Lewis Way coming through. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Councilmember. Seeing no more questions, we'll move to the next item on the agenda and I'll pass the chair to Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember James Brown. Councilmembers, my requests are, I think you all are familiar with the R.H. Williams Cultural Center. This is originally Councilmember Fogle's item and request and it came out of last year's fund balance discussion. We had a presentation at committee and what was shared with us is that that organization is looking to partner with the city and one of the ways is for us, like we've done in the past, is to do a feasibility study on their historic building and let them know what conditions and what repairs need to be done in what order. So the cost of that is $100,000. I got that estimate from the Department of General Services. The other thing that they shared with us during that presentation is they had a few capital needs. One of them was guttering and one of them was a heating HVAC system. They have a boiler system currently in place. And so that's what the $70,000 is for, is for those critical needs that they have. The RFP or the assessment, the feasibility assessment, I think could be done in partnership with them in-house with our Department of General Services and I think we would work with them to get them the resources to address the general repairs. So that's the one ask. And then the second ask is ‑‑ Council Member, I'm going to see if there are questions on this one and we'll move on to the next one. Colleagues, if there are questions. All right. Council Member James Brown, carry on. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So the next item being proposed is a facility in fleet management for the fire training academy campus. So I shared some information with council members that should be at your desk. It's an assessment that I received from General Services in regards to doing some remediation to the current site where the existing facility sits to do some enhancement. That campus is going to be impacted by the town branch trail as it makes its way down there. So it's going to be some renovations needed on the outside and on the inside of that facility. And then there's also some environmental issues that need to be addressed in regards to a bridge that's on site that would lead to the property behind the current facility where maybe a future training facility may be constructed. So the information that you have I think totals out at $5 million. Some of those costs are estimates and overages. The actual direct cost is 3.5, so that's the request here. I think the training facility is a priority for our fire department. I think we know we have some other facilities and fire emergency needs around this community, but I think this could help get us to the next level or the next phase in the training facility so we can start addressing some of the other needs going forward. So thank you, Councilmembers, for your consideration. Councilmember Fogle, I think you had a question on the first item. I was really going to make a statement without commentary. I'm trying to shut it down. Know when to hold them, know when to fold them. So colleagues, I'm just asking that you please take a look at the Robert H. Williams Culture Center. We've had a lot of studies come before us, and I think this is the lowest amount that has been asked for for study. So I just wanted to put that out there, like $100,000, and that other $70,000 is for the heating and cooling system. So please, please, please give extra attention to a building that means so much to our community over in the West End. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner, could you speak on this, please, and why wasn't this included in the mayors as one of their top priorities? Thank you for the question. This has actually been a project that we've been discussing for a number of years. We've had it in different budget requests, but because of prioritization of other capital projects and public safety, it had to take a back seat. This is something, actually, Councilmember Brown has been involved in for some time now, so whenever we knew there was a correspondence in the discussions, I can't speak exactly to why the mayor did or did not include something in her final request, but we knew this was a possibility due to the work of Councilmember Brown. I know this has been a project that we've talked about for a while, and we had looked at doing a co-op between the police and the fire out there, and whatever happened to that, and what will this do? Well, that discussion pretty much came to an impasse in the fact that the amount of space and resources that it would take to find and do a joint training academy, the feasibility, just because of the cost, if nothing else, to be honest with you. There's so many costs associated with something like that whenever you talk about something that maybe we don't think about, like water pressure, how it needs to be available to be able to do some of the training the fire does, also the dirty mess that the fire brings along with them whenever they're doing that training. We along with the support of Chief Wells, we see the current campus as being a long-term home for their training academy. Go ahead. And I see Chief there. Chief, could you tell us what this money will bring to you all? Thank you very much. So ultimately this, and a little bit, it's truly foundational. It is going to clear the site. It's going to provide the parking, significant amount of parking that we're going to lose when the trail does completely come through, and it's going to truly provide the site work and all of the earthworks that are required for the next phase, which would be the new training academy or the renovated training academy, whichever that comes to be. And you've been asking and requesting this for a while now, have you not? It has been a number one priority on our list for some time. In fact, it was first identified about a decade ago as an immediate need. Well, number one priority, so that speaks a lot there. So thank you, Chief. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you. If there are no more questions, I'm going to hand the chair back to Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Members, we're moving to the next item on the agenda, and that's Council Member Menardez. Thank you, Council Member. I have five requests. I'm going to start with the top priority that I have, and that is for $612,000 for Veterans Park parking and pedestrian sidewalk. And although this is a project that takes place in a park in the 4th District, I believe that this is something that I'm proposing out of concern for traffic and pedestrian safety. It's an issue that has existed for over two decades. There are five neighboring neighborhoods that residents can walk to the park. There's currently no way for pedestrians to safely navigate to the trails in the park. I submitted pictures to you all so that you could see aerial views of the park. And you either enter the park through the parking lot, and that's just one drive for cars going in both directions, or through the drive at the monument side of the park, and that's also just a drive with vehicles traveling in both directions. It also is for pedestrians and for bicycles, scooters, parents with strollers, wagons. And this isn't just with regards to the fact that there's over 650 paid members of Southeastern Baseball that play and practice there and hold tournaments. There's also a rugby league there, a dog park, a playground. There's a clubhouse across the street that also hosts tournaments, and they use the parking here at the park as well. One of the pictures that I submitted to you with regards to this project is so that you could see how parks were, or I'm sorry, cars were parking on the lawn. Parks were, did put boulders on the right side of one picture that I submitted. So that side is so that pedestrians can navigate on the grass. However, that doesn't help anyone with a stroller or a wagon or small kids on bikes or scooters from traveling safely back there. So the total ask of $612,000 is for a parking lot that would add 32 spaces on the baseball field side. That parking lot would be a one-way in, one-way out, and then a sidewalk that would go around the back side of the monument so that it's away from the current drive where vehicular traffic travels through. And you could see the linear feet that this estimate was given to me by parks as far as what it would cost. Councilmember James Brown helped me with capital funds in order to fund the design. The design was $100,000 because a structural engineer is necessary to design this due to the amount of rock in the area where the parking lot would have to be constructed. Okay, Councilmember, I don't see any questions. You can go to your next item. Okay. The next one is for a trail at Meadowbrook Park. This is the only one of my asks that is actually on the park's master plan. The previous one, the Veterans Park parking and trail, is not on the park's master plan or the strategic plan. The Meadowbrook Park trail is. The parking lot and the trail is in pretty bad condition. The mayor did put repaving the parking lot and the access road in the 2025 fiscal year budget. However, it makes sense to go ahead and pave the park at the same time that that parking lot would be paved as well. I submitted pictures to you all so that you can see the condition of the trail, how cracked, wavy it is. And there's a lot of residents that go to this small neighborhood park that are seniors. They're the original homeowners of these homes that were built in the 1950s and 60s. They have mobility issues. There's several children in the area that also use wheelchairs or other mobility devices, so this is an ADA issue as well. And this park was not included in that one study where we talked about updating different facilities around the city, including some parks with ADA access. So the total asked for this would be $90,000. Okay. I don't see any questions. You can go to your next item. Okay. The next one is for the design, $80,000 that would go towards a design for the Veterans Park. The bathrooms and the makeshift concession stand that currently exists there, so that it is revamped into what would be adequate sewer, plumbing, and electricity for this structure. I sent you all pictures of what it currently looks like. It is just one bathroom for men, one bathroom for women, and like I said, it was originally just supposed to be a shed that's being used as a makeshift concession stand. There was a lot of problems with the electrical, especially there. There was a fire a couple of years ago. So Babe Ruth has not held any tournaments at this field because of the inadequacy of having concessions at this location, and their providers have canceled their contracts with Babe Ruth on an ongoing basis when they see the safety hazards that exist there. The plumbing is also inadequate and is constantly also backing up. This is also something that is not on the park's master plan or the strategic plan. Okay. Please continue. Okay. And then next is $60,000 for lighting at the parking lots at Kirk Levington Park. Kirk Levington Park is a park that is very popular with residents throughout Lexington, not just the 4th District, because of the pickleball courts that exist there. People from all over Lexington and surrounding counties use the park for pickleball. People go out as early in the morning and stay until the park closes 11 p.m. as long as weather permits. And people even traveling to Lexington will look at social media groups to see where they can play and often also frequent the park. However, this area is an area that has had a significant increase in both illicit activity and gun violence. In my communication with the police, they highly recommended that we light up all three of the parking lots. We were able to successfully light up one of the parking lots, the one closest to the restrooms by just adding a fixture to an existing pole. However, there's still two parking lots that have not been lit up. One already has a CAD design with work collaboration with KU and our parks team with a CAD design. And so we will have to add poles and fixtures to that, which will probably be two to three poles and KU leased lighting. And then the parking lot closest to Reading Road will need a design. And then it looks like it may need bowler type lighting in that parking lot because of the tall, mature trees. We were hoping that we could just add fixtures to the current poles that exist that light up the trails. However, because of the trees that exist between the trail and the parking lot, that's something that isn't feasible. So a design and then added lighting is what or added fixtures that are a little bit more creative such as the bowler lighting is what would be needed here. And again, this is out of concern for safety for the area. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember. And I just have one more. Do you have one more? Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. And then just the last one is in the 2024 fiscal year, I'm sorry, that's not true, out of ARPA funds, the Bellewood Park is receiving two revitalized tennis courts will be repaved and dual striped for tennis and pickleball and the residents and frequent park goers in that area. We're just asking for a backboard to be installed since that work, since those courts are going to be upgraded. So that's $60,000 in order to contribute to those backboards being installed with that revitalization. Park said that they recommended a premanufactured board. And so the $60,000 would cover the shipping installation and any modifications to the fencing that would be needed. That's all. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember. We got questions from Councilmember Reynolds. Maybe not. All right. So I don't see any other questions. So we'll move on to the next item on the agenda. And that is Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. This next item is $75,000 to go to social services for the implementation of the Gun Violence Task Force recommendations. In the past month alone, there were 40 instances of crimes committed with guns. There were instances from October 1st to October 28th. These instances included a wide range of serious things, including robberies, shootings, wanton endangerment and tragically three homicides. The high number of violent incidents in one month shows that gun violence is still an issue affecting every part of our city. By recognizing and implementing the recommendations put forward by the Gun Violence Task Force, we will take additional meaningful steps to address the root cause of gun violence, support those impacted and work together to make strides towards a safer Lexington. So this money would go to be set aside for implementation of recommendations. We would still ask for a position in the upcoming budget. And this money would be a budget for that person. It would be flexible and it will live in social services for now, but be flexible if something were to change. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. First up, we've got Councilmember Allenger. Thank you. And thank you for bringing this. And after hearing that when it was in the committee, that we certainly need to do whatever we can to help this issue because gun violence has become a health crisis here in this area. And we need to certainly address it. One of the issues, and you said there was some flexibility, because I guess one of my concern is we really haven't heard from One Lexington. And One Lexington is kind of our experts in this right now. I know they had a strategic plan and they're working through that. And I know they've got a strategic plan meeting in February. How are we going to get involved with them? And I think you said you're going to meet with them tomorrow. So I think that should help to work out some of the questions I have. Yeah. Well, One Lexington participated in the task force when it met from August to April of this past year. So they did have a lot of input in these issues. They had said themselves that they're at capacity if we want to expand and do more. But I am meeting with them again tomorrow and can update you all on that as well. Thank you. I look forward to that. Because I think we need to take advantage of the experts that have literally we're having people around the country contacted them on what we're doing. Because we've shown a lot of good strides, but we certainly have to increase the impact to reduce this terrible issue. That's affecting our community. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. And I'll just add to that that I'm supportive of this initiative as well and putting some money in social services that could actually work to maybe address some of the gaps. Address some of the gaps. And then I think there's also an opportunity to honor the task force, their recommendations and some of the initiatives that they propose. So as long as this funding goes with some flexibility, I'd also be in support of increasing this amount just to show our community that we know this is an important issue and that we want to put the right amount of money and resources to address it. Thank you, Councilmember. On to the next item on the agenda is Councilmember Fogel. Yes, I'll speak on that also. And I support what you're saying, Chair, about increasing the funding. And also we have heard from one that they are at capacity. And when those parents was here with those posters of their children who had passed away, I made the statement that we should put the money in the hands of the experts. And they have 501c3s. And so maybe with that flexibility, we can look at some of them leading the charge of the healing and the trauma process of people who are suffering from gun violence. So that was my comment on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. You can go to your proposed items. Okay. What a difference an entire year makes. First of all, I would like to thank my colleague, Councilmember. He didn't even know I was going to do this. Warly, because I was really like a real true freshman. I knew in my heart that as we transition from buildings and parks to people, that's what my ask is about. It concerns people. Councilmember Warly, he saw me drowning and he threw me a life jacket and he placed both of my items that I had asked for in the fund balance into some committees to save it. And for that, I'm truly grateful. Because it wasn't just for me, it was for the City of Lexington and the House. So as a piggyback to that, and as I've learned a lot in the last year, I am asking this committee to please, for the housing advocacy and community development, to place in reserve that money we were talking about earlier for the implementation of the recommended shelter model in front of you and in your packet, you'll see a model from EHI consultants of what they have studied. Louisville is doing the deal. There is a model and it looks like a campus. And we're going to transition the language from unhoused and homelessness to people who are really receiving some treatment and housing and just the whole packet that we need with mental health services. And as I'm thinking about and what the Holy Spirit has dropped on me, is that as we were talking about that master plan and the downtown master plan, Councilmember LaGre, I know that a lot of people will say, uh-uh, not in my backyard. But if we look at this plan that EHI has been studying, we will see that this permanent shelter that I'm talking about will not look like a homeless encampment, it will look like a college campus as he continues to search for properties and so forth for us. And so that $9 million is what I'm asking to place in reserve. Is that enough? Yes, ma'am. I'm just trying to keep us on schedule. So that's your first item. You want to go to your second item? No. Yeah. I'll go to my second item. I'm just making the first item longer because I'm withdrawing the second item in support. I'm withdrawing the second item as we move in steps of the Robert H. Williams Culture Center. I believe that we can put that on hold as we look at the study and that's why I was drawing that first one now. So I'm asking to withdraw that item. Do I have to move or anything? I've never withdrawn an item. No, ma'am. I think not for this lesson, for these purposes. I think it's fine. Okay. Thank you. Can I go back and talk some more? No. No. Just kidding. Are there any questions for Councilmember Poco? Hearing none, we'll go to the next item on the agenda. All right. So we've got two. All right. Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. So Councilmember Fogle, I see the ask amount for the shelter model is at $9 million. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So could you give us some more information of the break or is it in that packet of the breakdown at the $9 million? Yeah. If you look at that last page and you look at—and Charlie's here, is Charlie or Jeff here? If the Council will look—and all I went back was five years. If you will look at the total expense that we have paid for hotels, like let's just take this year, over $400,000 is going to go to meals, and then we have a lump sum that went to the hotels, and we have over $200,000 that's going to security. If we look at a permanent structure, we won't have to continue to put that amount of money every year for a winter shelter that will be from November until the end of March. We will have a permanent structure that we can just invest in. So I don't have a breakdown by dollars, but I was looking at the cost and savings. Okay. Also—thank you. And if it gets harder, I'm going to defer it to my Council. Oh, it won't get harder. I ask easy questions. If you have the answers in you, it will come. So who do you foresee managing or being the facilitator of this shelter? So the feasibility RFP went to Mr. Ed Holmes. is doing like the background of, and then we will contract partners to come in to do this work and put this together. Community partners. Is that the answer to, is that the question you asked? Yeah, that's my answer. So do you have, do you envision of who, like a couple of these community partners would be? So right now, we have the same players in the house, which is like the Lexington Rescue Mission Hope Center. I could throw those names out, but I'm asking the public. There are so many other agencies out in Lexington and in Louisville and in Richmond that is doing this deal. And so we haven't gotten to that step yet. We would like for Mr. Holmes to finish the feasibility study and then we'll go into that next phase. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Fogle, do you know when EHI is going to finish with their studies? When will we get the full report? Well, Mr. Holmes is moving. He has the numbers. He's looking for land. And as we know, that is probably the most difficult part of this piece. Where will we build it? Which one of you Council Members will say, I will support this initiative and you can have land in my district? Because we know that First District is heavy loaded right now. And so with the expansion, so I guess we'll move as fast as you all move. Anybody want to raise your hand right now and help me out? Okay. And then, so the rendering you put in the packet, is that something Volunteers of America is building now? Is that correct? From Louisville. From Louisville, Volunteers of America. So is this rendering an example of what you would like to see? Yes, it is. This, yes, yes. Thank you, thank you, Chair. This would fit. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Vogel. I complained I didn't get no questions. Okay, come on. My question actually on this one is, it may be more for the administration. Like, do we typically, we typically bond building projects, I believe. So what's our pattern for bonding a building project? Is it usually a certain size or scale? Do we usually like to have a certain amount in cash that we use? Like, what's the typical? Because this is a building project to me. So we haven't done a lot of building projects recently, new buildings, prior to the Senior and Therapeutic Center. The last one, I believe, was a Senior Center. But there has not been a lot of cash down payment to those. They have been bonded in the past. And I don't think there's necessarily a pattern that has gone along with that. The cash investment is a more recent thing because we've had the availability to do that. So I think that's a newer opportunity that we found ourselves with. So I think it's really whatever the Council has made available. I don't know if anybody else has anything that they want to add. But it's really just kind of whatever works for us at the moment is how we've managed to make it work. Okay, thank you. And that's, I do think it's a worthy, it is a worthy project in general, Council Member. I just think that there is, this particular one, I think, has multiple ways to pay for it. And I, like City Hall, I don't know if it's ready to invest a ton of money into. But I do think it's a project that should be invested in. So that's where I'll leave it right now. Thank you. I would entertain. Thank you, Council Member. Can I say something? Ma'am, yes, ma'am, go ahead. I would entertain, we have so many empty buildings in Lexington, I'm not even, I won't even take a building built from the ground. We can go in and renovate with some of this money that I'm asking for. What I need to say is, if Charlie or Jeff would come to that podium, I need them to tell you all how many shelters are in Lexington right now, and how many females overnight shelters, how many shelters that Lexington possess. Council Member, I'm going to ask, is this germane to your proposal? It does, because I want to show the gravity of the need of this project that I'm asking you all to fund. So I've allowed everybody else two minutes to do their proposal, and we went past that. So when we go back through to make motions, I think that's an opportunity to elaborate and call folks to the podium with questions. Okay. Yep. All right, so Council Members, sticking to our list, I think next is Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair. The first on the list here, it is for the Veterans Dog Park Shelter. And I want to start by saying that the dog park is actually in the fourth district. But I was able to get private funding to build the park, and that was the location that we had. So the park exists. The problem is, and we hear from folks all the time, it is so hot that the dogs are running, and there's no place to get in shade up there. So it was presented last year. It was approved last year, but it kind of fell through the cracks. So I'm bringing it back for approval and appreciate your consideration on that. The second is the Utter Town Union Benevolent Society lot. Oh, I'm sorry, that's correct. Go ahead. Council Member Gray, I'm just taking over for you there. Go ahead. Thank you, new Chair. So since it was on the, thank you, by the way, Council Member Plowman, in your final fund balance. I'm not going to get all teary-eyed. But you said it was on the list last year, and we passed it. Yes. So are you asking, do we need to pass it again? Yeah, and that's making me wonder why didn't, it's three, I think this is a question for Director Monica Conrad. So my question, Director, is last year we passed this very same thing, but somehow you, it fell short once it reached you all. So I'm just curious if we pass it again. Council Member, thank you for the question. Okay, I'm like. It was on the list last year, I believe, for fund balance, but I don't think it was approved. It was discussed at fund balance. Oh, I got Erin. Great. I think it was on the list for additional budget consideration, and was referred to the fund balance conversation. So I don't think it actually got approved. It was referred to this conversation from the additional budget asks from Council at the end of the budget process. I know that Council Member Menard and myself were somewhat surprised that it didn't happen. But I don't remember all the details. Yeah. But I still am bringing it forward for consideration. Yes, ma'am. I don't believe that it was approved for funding, so it did not get dropped. It was not funded to begin with. Okay, that answers my question. So I just want to make sure whatever we do, it actually happens. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. All right, the second one on my list is the Eddington Town Union Benevolent Society Lodge, and you're all probably wondering what that is. This is related to Hamlet's, but it's not part of the Sense of Place campaign. This is a lodge that was used, it's a great story, and they were all over Lexington. Every Hamlet had them with their churches, and they helped out with the church needs, individuals at the churches, just different needs. And this one exists in Uttertown. As I said, it's the only one left. But what I am going to do is I'm going to withdraw it, and I have found some other funding resources, and I think I'll be able to get those, including some of my capital funds. So I'm going to go ahead and withdraw that. And it's got a wonderful history, and I'll probably send it out anyway, just so you can read about it. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. You can go to your next one. All right, yesterday, you all should have received a communication from me via email that talked about the Caden Town or the Sense of Place campaign. Part of our challenge is that we have restricted funding, and I've listed all those on the memo. We have an endowment fund for 111,000. The cemetery cleanup, which we went ahead and approved last year in fund balance. The 100,000 for historical markers for all Hamlet locations. That, too, was approved last year. And then the 250th anniversary, we just recently awarded $20,000. But they're all restricted for those uses. So even though we've raised $560,000, when you deduct the restricted, you don't have enough. However, with that said, one of the reasons why we need more money is that at the back of the church, it's right in front of the schoolhouse, there are restrooms. And we need to have restrooms for the schoolhouse. So we were going to utilize those and fix them up. The price tag that we got back on that was 400,000 plus. And so I'm going to reduce the number to 250,000. And Commissioner Ford and Council Member Brown and I have been working on some creative resources. We think we can bring that in. But we are asking, or I am asking for the $250,000 to move this project along. We've got our costs, we're ready to go. And I sincerely appreciate all the council members because you have supported it financially and also emotionally. And I really appreciate that. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any questions? Council Member Worley. Council Member Plummer, I just want to tell you, thank you for always shepherding the projects about our rural hamlets, particularly what the work at Caden Town School. It is in the 7th District, but I know it's become the face and focal point of your efforts there. You've done a great job. I'll be happy to support that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Worley. And I also meant to, I have a large grant that I'm submitting, and I feel really good about it, but it's not in house yet. So, but we'll probably use that anyway for a lot of programming. So we want this as an interactive experience for our community. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Lynch. There was one more from Council Member Plummer before my, the. No, she got them all. Oh, the Bowman Mill Speed Tables? No, that's on our old list. Okay. There's a more updated list. Okay, thank you. I was working off the old one. Thank you, Chair. The Loudoun Avenue Green Space Project I'm going to remove. I've talked with Council Member Fogle. This project is one being done by the Green Space Trust, and it is in Council Member Fogle's district. And she called me and said that she would be happy to provide council capital funds for this project. So I will be removing that one. Thank you, Council Member Fogle. I appreciate your partnership on this project. And I'll thank you on behalf of the Green Space Trust. My next item is about providing additional funding for the Housing Stabilization Program. And I'd like to ask Commissioner Lanter if he doesn't mind to come up and speak why we need to add some more funding here for this important program for our city and for the renters in our city. Thank you, Council Member Lynch. The program in question is the Housing Stabilization Program piece that is currently funded with federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds. As you all may recall, we funded this in the summer or spring of 23. The program has been running since then. It's been very successful. It is essentially two contracts, one with Legal Aid of the Bluegrass, one with Kentucky Equal Justice Center to provide lawyers and representation to people who are in eviction court, as well as it has a eviction mediation component with the Lexington Housing Authority that has prevented essentially all evictions for nonpayment at the housing authorities. It's been pretty successful. The funds that we have from the federal program will be exhausted approximately December 31st. So Council Member Lynch's proposal would carry the program forward at least until June 30th, but probably longer because it's a little behind on spending. Thank you, Commissioner. So I'm proposing $500,000 to make sure that it's funded through the end of this fiscal year. Any questions? Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for bringing this forward. I really appreciate the program. Commissioner Lanter, does this program only serve people living in a certain area, or is it available to everyone that lives in Lexington and applies? It would be available to anyone in Fayette County who was in eviction court in Fayette County. Who's in eviction court? As long as they're in eviction court, then they can? Right, and for that to happen, you would have to be a Fayette County resident, but it's not specific to any area or neighborhood. Or housing or anything. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. I don't see any other questions if you want to go to your next one. My next item is to fund, $250,000 to fund a playground in my district. This playground is the second oldest playground in the second district, so it's very, very old and very, very dated. It needs a lot of love, and so I would like to push this project, give some money now to push this project forward a little bit more swiftly so that my neighbors can enjoy a new playground, because it is the second oldest one in my district. Any questions? I don't see any, Council Member, so you can go to your next one. Okay, thank you, Chair. My last proposal should be familiar to you all. Caring Place came and presented to us earlier this month regarding the village model, and I'm seeking $200,000 to fund a feasibility study. This is a study that their board has done research and talked to other villages around the nation, and so this amount will fund the study fully for them to be able to assess how they can roll out a more robust model offering the village network here in Lexington to aid our seniors and our individuals with disabilities. Any questions? All right, Council Member, are there any questions for Council Member Lynch? Seeing none on that. Thank you. So we'll go to Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. So I placed some fund balance for LFUCG to rejoin the National League of Cities. The sole purpose of the National League of Cities is to serve municipalities across the nation by becoming a member. Our city, which includes not only the elected, selected individuals, but also our employees, will have opportunities to strengthen their knowledge through the conferences that they offer, as through their webinars that they offer, and as well as grants that are readily available, that you're able to get help to be walked through on those grants. So I think this is a great opportunity for us as an entire city to rejoin the National League of Cities and have that opportunity for networking with individuals who are doing the same thing that we're doing across the nation. And it will also help not only us, Council Members, but our employees network to have a friend across the nation that you can actually brainstorm with. So it's just an opportunity for us to grow as a city government. All right, thank you, Council Member. Are there any questions? Seeing none, we'll go to Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. My item is funding of Commerce Lexington's Community and Minority Business Development Programs for a two-year period in the amount of $140,000. This would include programs like the Minority Business Accelerator, the Access Loan Committee, Financial Literacy Training, and Opportunity Exchange, all of which the folks at Commerce Lexington have been doing for our community for many years. Mr. Tyrone Tyra is out here in the gallery. This has been housed in his shop over at Commerce Lex, and he's done a fantastic job over the years building up small businesses and then helping minority-owned businesses both recruit them to the community, grow them within the community, and particularly help small business owners understanding the basics of how to make that business successful from the ground up. This work, as they have typically done with our help and not with anybody's fault or intention, our funding to Commerce Lex was slightly less this year than it has been in years past, and this particular program is what's needing the funding to continue. And I think a show of two years' worth of funding would allow us to either continue to see the value of funding from inside this institution or allow them the opportunity to see other funding without losing it all at one time. So I think what they've done is a great job, and I'd particularly like to thank them and the Access Loan Committee for partnering with us for two years during COVID and right after in facilitating nearly $7.5 million to small businesses here in the community that they volunteered, the Access Loan Committee volunteered their time, and Commerce Lex charged a reduced consulting fee to do that. So they're great partners, and I'd like to help them and continue this great work. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Woolley. Are there any questions? Seeing none, it looks like we have exhausted our list. And, Council Members, what we'll do now is we'll go back. We'll go back to the top of the list, and we'll start making motions. My recommendation is that we start with the Mayor's proposed list, and then we'll just go straight into the Council's list. And what we'll do in regards to the Mayor's list, I'm going to pass the chair to Vice Mayor Wu, and I plan to make motions based off of the Mayor's recommendations. So I'll pass the chair, Vice Mayor. All right, thank you, Council Member. Council Member James Brown. All right, so starting with the Mayor's proposed list, her first recommendation was $10 million for the large capital construction or the City Hall. I'll make a motion to allocate to the large capital construction fund, which is the same fund referenced as, what are you calling it? Reserve 2024. Reserve 2024, $8 million. And that's $2 million less than what the Mayor's proposing. And some of my rationale is to have more money to consider other proposals on this sheet. So moved. We have a second. Second. Second by Council Member Plowman. Discussion on this motion? Please log in. Council Member Savigny. While I'm hoping that that $2 million could go towards paving, I'm probably, I'd like the number to be smaller, so I'd like to, can I make a motion to amend? Motion to amend Council Member Brown's motion to $5 million. So moved. Second. We have a second from Council Member Lynch. Discussion on the amendment? Please log in. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So I won't be supportive of the amendment. I think some of the conversation we had earlier in discussion of my thoughts on City Hall, I think having some money, larger amount of money available to the administration as they work through the RFP process, this could always be moved back around. I appreciate the Chair's reduction and enough to accommodate our discussions, though I probably would have preferred the motion stay at $10 million. Being at eight as it is, I will support an amendment making it lower. I think we're at a critical time if we're going to choose to proceed with City Hall, and I think it's something that we need to do, so I won't support the motion. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I as well will not be supporting the amendment just because I feel like we need to have the most amount of cash set aside for this very important project, but I appreciate the amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and I do understand the calls for the reason, rationale for the amendment, but I think if we need to have a conversation about funding with some guardrails up, and I think if we get into it and there's other things that we want to fund, we could always revisit this item. So I feel more comfortable starting with eight million. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Council Member James Brown, I have a quick question. So in your motion, are you saying that this eight million would go towards the government center allocation from the large capital fund, or are you saying just putting it into the capital fund? Yeah, putting it in the capital fund to provide maximum flexibility, and that includes potentially a government center, but it can be considered for other projects. Thank you. Did that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. Any other discussion on the amendment by Council Member Savigny? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right, let's get the electronic vote up, please. All right, please vote electronically. All right, looks like that motion fails. All right, so we're back to the original motion by Council Member James Brown to allocate eight million dollars to large capital construction fund. Any discussion on the original motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. We have one no, Council Member Savigny. All right, thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. On the next item, I move to allocate Council Capital Project funds of $1,500,000 to be distributed over the 15 Council Members. So moved. Seconded. And just so to clarify, it's $1,500,000. Yeah, yeah, sorry. They want to shortchange us. Thank you, that's been moved and seconded. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Vice Mayor, I move to fund the infrastructure funding plan by the Mayor's recommendation at $750,000. So moved. Do I have a second? $750,000. $750,000, yeah. Second. We have a second from Council Member Plowman. Council Member Reynolds. Yes, could you please explain, never mind. Are you on three? Four. On four, you jumped to four, okay. Oh, did I? You jumped one, sorry. I'll jump back. Yeah, we're on number four, the infrastructure funding plan. Okay. Any other discussion on this motion? It's the infrastructure funding plan number four, $750,000. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. All right, I'll jump back to three, and my apologies. I move to recommend a one-time supplement for full-time non-bargaining employees in December for the total of $1,110,610. So moved. Second. Second from Council Member Reynolds. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. All right, so I'm gonna skip over number five because I don't think the administration is ready for that. And then I'm also gonna skip over number six because I think we have an opportunity to have that conversation as a Council Member asked. And then I would make a motion to fund the building for NAMI on Sparta Court at less than what the Mayor's recommended, and that's $141,211, and this will require NAMI to raise close to 50% of the total fund. So moved. We have a second from Council Member Fogle. Any discussion on this motion? What was the number? 141,211. All right, seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. And then I also move to fund the Lexington 250th Anniversary Celebration Concert performed by the Lexington Philharmonic at $45,000. So moved. Second. Second by Council Member Plowman. Any discussion on this item? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. The current total allocated is $11,546,821 with a remaining balance of $8,896,500. Kelly, can you repeat those numbers real quick, please? Thank you. Yes, remaining balance is, do you want the remaining or what's been allocated? The first number. Okay, what has been allocated is $11,546,821. Right, thank you. And then the remaining balance is $8,896,500. Thank you. Council Member James Brown, did you want to continue with motions or Council Member asks or? If you don't mind keeping the chair, I would like to interject and make motions as we go down. Okay, that's fine. Go ahead. I said, if you don't mind keeping the chair, then we can go down the list of Council Members to make motions. Oh, for Council. We'll just let Council Members make motions. Gotcha, okay, okay. So I will call on individual Council Members whose asks these are to make those individual motions. So first off is Council Member Lagree. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund the Downtown Master Plan at $500,000. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this item? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Next is Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund the ADA Transition Plan at $400,000. We have a second from Council Member Gray. Any discussion on this item? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to fund the Lexington Children's Museum at $76,500. Second from Council Member Reynolds. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund Streets and Roads instead of $2 million of bonding with $2 million from fund balance. So moved. Second. And that was $2 million? No. Is that right? Okay, and we have a second from Council Member Gray. Any discussion on this item? Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have to say that I think the Council Member is academically correct in how he would like to propose this and how it could and should be budgeted. I will say, though, that the tool of bonding paving has become an incredibly useful tool for us. And I think paving is a mix between whether it's an expense or whether it is a capital project because the asset should be a 10, 15, and sometimes 20-year asset. So again, keeping our cash available to us for upcoming needs is my preference. So I won't support the motion, though. I think the Council Member's thought process is probably in the right realm there. So thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. No. Council Member Sheehan and Council Member Worley. Did I miss anyone else? Council Member Baxter. So we have three noes on that one. That motion passes. Next up is Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I make a motion to allocate $500,000 to social services for fiscal year 26 non-profit capital grants program. So moved. Second. We have a second from Council Member James Brown. Any discussion on this item? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Council Member Ellinger again. Thank you. I make a motion to complete a retail market study for downtown and to create digital content and collateral for marketing campaign and deploy digital assets using targeted analytics for $97,000. So moved. Second from Council Member Reynolds. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm supportive of the study. I just think there's opportunity to have a conversation with Council Member LaGree about how this can be incorporated into the master plan if it can or if it cannot. So right now, I'm not gonna support this motion, but I am supportive of the effort. I just think there's time to work on collaboration. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on this motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Those opposed? No. All right, let's bring up a digital vote. 47. All right, looks like that motion fails. I'm gonna hand the chair back to Council Member James Brown for mine. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair. I move to fund $1 million to purchase and abolish uncollected medical debt to help improve and maintain the physical and financial health of our community here in Lexington, Fayette County. So moved. Second. All right, so a motion's been made and seconded. Are there any questions to the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. All right, I'll take back the chair. Thank you very much. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to complete a full court basketball court at Davis Park for the remaining amount of $50,000. So moved. All right, we have a motion and a second from Council Member LaGre. Discussion on this item? Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Reynolds, I appreciate you bringing this forward and I apologize that you're just the first Parks Project, so I'm just gonna get it out of the way. I will not be supporting any of the Parks Projects on our list due to the upcoming vote and the potential of revenue from property taxes. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I'm gonna say the same. I'm supportive of the project, I'm just, I think there's ways to fund this particular project than some of the other projects with either capital funds or other opportunities. I think our Parks Department is doing a good job of getting these projects done, but I do have concerns about continuing to pile on the list of those projects, so I'm gonna be reluctant to support just two Park Projects today, and this isn't one of them. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member LaGre. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds, you know I'm supportive, as I've shared with the Davis Park community, and my office is already supported at a high level. I am supportive of this request, and I'm also dedicated to helping you see it through and build the entire court one way or another. So thank you for your advocacy, and we really want to see this happen. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. I'm not gonna support any of the parks and recreation, and I do support all of them because I support parks, but having gone through this, there's two things, and nobody has mentioned it, but one of them is private contributions and donations, which you all well know that I did a park with a lot of private money that came in, plus I used Council capital money, and I think the Council capital money in your particular district, I think you can work that out, and I think you can get some private funding if you work on it, because I did, and then I think with the new parks, if this parks tax comes through, I think they should be able to set up a new master plan, and I think they ought to address Council concerns in certain districts that we want to do some things on parks, so I'm not gonna support it, but I do support parks. Thank you. Thank you. If there are no more comment, let's go ahead and just bring up the vote screen for this one, so colleagues, please vote via Granicus. Looks like that motion fails. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to fund $170,000 for the R.H. Williams Cultural Center Feasibility Plan and Critical Needs. So moved. We have a second from Council Member Lynch. Any discussion on this item? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? One no from Council Member Fred Brown, and that motion passes. Go ahead. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'd make a motion to fund the Fire Training Academy at $3.5 million, so moved. Second from Council Member Reynolds. Discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? One no from Council Member Fred Brown. That motion passes. Next up is Council Member, yeah, let's do a quick count from Kelly if we can. The total allocated is $19,693,321, and the total remaining is $750,000. I think there's some discussion about the figure. Folks might have different figures over here. Commissioner Hensley has a thumbs up on that number. Are we ready to carry on? Okay. Let's go to Council Member Menarez. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to allocate $612,000 towards the Veterans Park parking and pedestrian sidewalk, so move. We have a motion. Second. That motion. Seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Any discussion on that motion? I'm going to also, let's bring up the vote screen on these as well, please. So let's vote on the screen. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member James Brown has a comment. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I've contributed Council capital funds to this project, so I'm supportive of it. From my understanding is that they haven't been able to do the design yet. So I think this project just isn't ready to go quite yet, but I will, since I have money in it, I will plan to support it going forward. I'm just thinking it's still, we still got time to fund it and get it moving, so I'm not going to support it today. So thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on this motion? All right, please vote via Granicus. All right, that motion fails. Thank you. Continue, please. Council Member Menardez. Okay, I move to allocate $90,000 towards the Middlebrook Park Trail. So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Second from Council Member Worley, or? Yes. All right, any discussion on this motion? All right, let's bring up the screen again, please. All right, please vote via Granicus. All right, that motion fails. Thank you. Please continue. I move to fund $80,000 towards the Veterans Park, Babe Ruth concession stand design. So moved. We have a second from Council Member Fogle. Any discussion on this motion? All right, please vote via Granicus. All right, that motion fails. Thank you. Please continue. I move to allocate $60,000 for the Kirk Levington Park lighting project. So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a second from Council Member Legree. Any discussion on this motion? And we'll vote via Granicus again. All right, that motion fails. Thank you. Please continue. And I move to allocate $60,000 towards the Billwood Park Pickleball Court backboards. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second from Council Member Worley. Any discussion on this motion? We're gonna vote via Granicus again, please. I think we're missing a couple, maybe one more. We got everybody? We got two more. One more. One more. Waiting on... Council Member Menardez is a yes, I'm assuming. All right, so that motion fails. All right, Council Member Reynolds. I move to place $75,000 in social services for the implementation of the Gun Violence Task Force's recommendations, so moved. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to amend this motion and make that recommendation $100,000, so moved. We have a second from Council Member Fogle. Any discussion on the amendment motion? All right, all those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, the amendment passes. Now we're back to discussion of the motion as amended at $100,000. Any discussion on this motion? Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I amended to increase it, just like I said previously, that we need to send a message that this is important and that we're willing to put the resources to it. I just want to reiterate that I want this funding to be flexible and honor the task force's recommendations and their initiatives, so thank you. Thank you. If there's no other discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes, thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Seeing that we have less funds than when we started, I move to place nine million in reserve upon the completion of the EHR study for people to have a permanent place that are unsheltered, so moved. Second. We have a second from Council Member Worley. Discussion on this motion. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So Council Member Fogle, I support you in this, however, I'm just concerned that I don't know who would be managing or in charge of the facility. Perhaps going forward, once we have things flushed out, I would be even more supportive, but unfortunately, right now, I have to vote. No, I'm sorry. I can understand. I don't know who's in charge of the $40 million structure of the senior citizens, but we passed that one, so I don't know who's in charge of that either. I'm sorry, it's not about that for me, so thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you, Council Member Fogle, for continuing to bring this forward and to be a champion for this initiative. I think until we get the study back and get some direction on how we need to go and whether a new facility or expanding an existing facility is the route, I think the money, at least my intent is that the money that we're putting for the large capital construction fund can be considered for this as well. I know City Hall is a priority, but I think this initiative and other initiatives are a priority of this council as well, so that money is, I think, something that we can consider when we move to the next phase of this project, so thank you. Thank you, Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and Council Member Fogle, I seconded this motion because I'd like to, as long as I am here briefly, a little bit longer, continue this ride with you because it's a project that I think will be beneficial, and I think that this discussion is an opportunity to recognize you for the work you're doing here, and then also just to point out, I think we are still in the middle of the feasibility study right now, probably four or five more months to come back and tell us that we'll be able to answer a lot of the questions, including the exact amount of how much we would want, who would be good to run it, how would we pay for it, because it may be $9 million of our cash, it may be a P3 project, it may be bonding, there's a lot of answers, and so I think this is a great project, and keep in mind, everybody, this is still an item in committee that Council Member Fogle can continue to shepherd on, and we'll continue to look for the opportunities to fund this when we know more of the answers, and I agree with Council Member James Brown, we have a large chunk of money that we have set aside for capital projects, City Hall to be included, but that's not to say that something like this wouldn't be a valuable use of that cash as well, so thank you for your work on this. Thank you. If there's no more discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Those opposed? Nay. All right, let's bring up Granicus. All right, that motion fails. Thank you, and Council Member Fogle, you had already withdrawn the other item, is that correct? Thank you. Next up is Council Member Plowman. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to fund parks and rec for the shelter at Veterans Park, shelter for Veterans Park, so moved. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I haven't supported any parks project today, but I'm going to support this one just because I think it's this one that's been asked for by multiple District Council people. It's in an area where it's a definite need for this neighborhood and the folks that utilize this space, and I think the residents of the 4th District and the 12th District can benefit from this amenity in the park, so I plan to support it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on this motion? Let's go ahead and bring up Granicus for this one, too, please, and colleagues, please vote. Okay, we bring back the screen. We have a yay vote from Council Member Menendez, but let me see the screen. Eight, seven, eight. Looks like it's eight, seven for passage. Let me just double check that. There is six, seven, eight. Yeah, it looks like that motion passes. All right, thank you. Council Member Fullman. I make a motion to fund Parks and Recreation for the restoration of the Cadentown School and renovation of the church to include accessible restrooms and ADA site access. So moved. What was the amount, Council Member Fullman? Oh, I'm sorry. To save the amount, it's $250,000, rather than the $500,000. Okay, thank you. And seconded by Council Member Sheehan. Discussion on this motion? This is item number 29, Cadentown School. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. All right, let's bring up the screen, please. Council Member Menarez is a yay. Looks like the yays have it. That motion passes. All right, Council Member Plowman, did you have another one? Yeah, I did. Okay, thank you. Council Member Lynch. I move that we give $200,000 to a caring place for a feasibility study regarding the village model. Second. We have a second from Council Member Plowman. Discussion on this item? Council Member James Brown. This is number 33. So what was the amount? $200,000. $200,000. Thank you. I move to amend this amount to $150,000. That was the amount that was requested in the presentation from the group, just a few weeks ago. So moved. All right, we have a motion and a second. Discussion on the motion by Council Member James Brown. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I am not gonna support the amendment because at the presentation they said at least $150,000, and I think considering the amounts that have come in for similar work, I would like to have the flexibility to be able to fund this at a higher level, if needed, so that it can move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on the amendment motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. All right, let's bring up the screen, please. Looks like that motion passes. So now we are in discussion of the amended motion for number 33, a caring place, at $150,000. Sign in if you have any questions or discussion on the amended motion. All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. Council Member Lynch, did you have more? I do, by my calculation, and please confirm that we have $160,000 left, is that correct? Okay. Then I move that we give $160,000 to the Housing Stabilization Program. All right, do we have a second? Right. Hold on, we're waiting to. Second. Okay, we have a second from Council Member Sheehan. So is there any discussion on Council Member Lynch's motion for 160, is that right? Vice. For Housing Stabilization. Council Member Gray. Thank you, and thank you, Council Member Lynch. Could you restate your motion for me? Yes, by my calculation, it was confirmed that we have $160,000 left. Yes. So I. Yes. So my motion was to use the rest of that for the Housing Stabilization Program, because that's all that's left. So the motions, the items down below wouldn't get funded, is that what we're saying? Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm going to ask Council Member Lynch to rescind her motion for a minute. I think there's, I want to make another motion that may help our conversation. Chair, I will rescind my motion. Okay, thank you for that. Council Member, yeah, and the second also agrees. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just getting a little bit out of order. Council Members, I'm going to go back to the item that we funded, which was the undue medical debt. Vice Mayor Wu's item, and I'm going to ask to amend that motion. I'm going to ask to amend that motion and fund it from a different source. The other communities around the country have been funding undue medical debt with American Rescue Plan money. All of our money has been allocated, but I think we have some money that we have gained interest on, ARPA money that we can substitute out this fund balance money with that money. Commissioner, can you speak to that before I make the motion, just so I'm clear? Yeah. We had allocated the majority of the interest that we had earned through the budget. We had allocated $6.8 million. Since then, we've earned about another million dollars, a little bit over, $1.2 million on the money that we had not spent to this point. We were using that to cover contingencies, but obviously we have earned it. It has been earned over in a grant fund to this point, so you're not seeing it in the investment interest because it's a 3,000 fund. So yeah, it is there. It would not be available for contingencies at that point, but it is something that other municipalities have done with their ARPA funds. Now, I do understand that we're taking that money away from ARPA contingencies, but I think we're committed to making sure these ARPA projects get completed. So with that, I'll make a motion to fund the item 15, the undue medical debt that this council has approved for a million dollars with monies from the ARPA interest account that is outside of fund balance. So moved. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Discussion on Council Member James Brown's motion. Commissioner, can I bring you back up? What has been our history so far with ARPA projects in terms of overruns and having to supplement those overruns? We have had several that have run over. We have had some that have run short, and we've been able to manage a number of those. The large projects are those that are continuing into 26, Cardinal Run North being the largest one, and obviously that's the one that we heard about today. We're obviously able to, if we did not have ARPA, that would be something that would be bondable and would be something that, if we were using general fund, that would be something that is how we would fund that. So we would fund it either through fund balance, through a cash project like we would do in the same conversation, or we would bond that absent having grant funds to do that. So if we weren't talking about grant funding, that's how a government, and that's how we would do it otherwise. So on balance, have we had to use a good deal of the interest for overruns on ARPA projects? So on balance, when we started these projects, we gave them contingencies. The goal of ARPA, not the goal, the mandate, was to have all of our funds encumbered by December 31st. So in efforts to do that, what we have done is stripped away all of the contingencies to ensure that our funds were encumbered and that we were going to spend. So there was no chance that we were going to give back federal money at the end of the day, because what a contingency is, is maybe you'll spend it, maybe you won't, right? So we didn't want to run any risk that we would not spend. So we made sure that we would only have projects that were committed. We did then have the ARPA interest for those contingencies, but we've been very good at managing those projects and utilizing the savings that we've had to be able to cover any projects that have run over to this point. Please. If I thought that we were going to have a problem, I would have been out of that seat two minutes ago. My goal is to have all this ARPA money, I have to have it all done by December 31st. So we're covered. There's no more big contingencies going to come in here on these projects. So I can safely say that's your all's policy decision, but it is not going to hurt any of our ARPA projects. Okay, that answers the core of my question. Thank you very much. Any other questions on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. So that clears up one million back to fund balance. So our new balance is 1.16, is that right? Okay. So we're going to go back to Council Member Lynch. Thank you. I move that we give $500,000 to the Housing Stabilization Program. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second from Council Member Baxter. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. We have one no from Council Member Fred Brown. That motion passes. Council Member Lynch, you have other motions? You're good? Okay, thank you. Council Member Graves, next. Thank you. So I move for LFUCG to rejoin the National League of Cities by paying the amount of $19,054. So moved. We have a second from Council Member Legree. Any discussion on this motion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I move to fund the Commerce Lexington Community and Minority Business Development Programs in the amount of $140,000. That's a two-year allocation. So moved. Motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. Kelly, can you give us a running total? And I'm going to hand the chair back to Council Member James Brown. Thank you. $19,942,375 has been allocated, and there's a remaining balance of $500,946. Thank you for that, Kelly. Seeing as we have exhausted our list, I would entertain a motion to allocate this money to the large capital fund reserve, the 2024 capital fund. Second. All right, a motion was made and seconded to allocate the remaining balance to the large capital, Council, the large capital fund. Are there any questions to that motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? I think that motion passes, but we can do it on the screen. All right, so that motion passes. That brings us to the end of our agenda. Thank you all for your time and patience, and we'll get an update for this. And thank you, the administration, for your help. With that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. All right, consider this meeting adjourned. ♪♪ ♪♪