Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка Музыка МУЗЫКА Музыка Режиссер Композитор Петр Тройгин Адушпут Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова We have some big projects that we are going to be closing out through that period, as you all are all aware, but that is a huge threshold for us to cross and I wanted to make sure we didn't miss it as we're going through this report this month. So thank you for that. Through the end of October we are snug again. That is going to be, seems like, the word of the year this year. You guys asked and we are delivering on being able to kind of cut down on some of our variances that we have had over the last couple of years. As Director Lugar comes up here, she's going to talk about some of our expenses. We've cut down on our personnel variances as well as our operating variances that we've carried over the last couple of years. Our revenue collections are still doing well to budget. Director Holbrook is going to talk about some of those. Personnel we noted is running within 1% of budget. I don't want to steal her thunder, but we did a little hooray about that last month. We weren't sure we were going to be able to mention that again this month, but still doing well on that. We do have some items of note. Again, these are through October. We noted last month that a big collection month for revenue for us comes in November when we start to see those property taxes come in. So that is our first big collection month, and Director Holbrook will note any other variances that he's seeing and noting, but we are doing well to budget. Just as a reminder, we do do that seasonally. We do both our revenue and expenses seasonally, and so we're doing very well. You can see how we've progressed for the four months versus where we anticipated that we would be. So we are progressing very nicely through FY25 as we've expected to be. No major things other than those to note, and I'll turn it over to Director Holbrook. Thank you, Commissioner. Welcome, Director. Thank you, Councilmembers. Just looking at the revenue to budget, starting with the top of payroll withholding, we continue to see that performing pretty close to budget, just slightly above. We're seeing just a little bit better performance than we forecasted, but still very close. Net profits is really the one to point out here. With our October month end, we typically get the extended returns from a lot of businesses that come in, and so we saw those come in pretty well for this year. We're also seeing some good estimated payments as businesses do tax planning for their spring filings, and so that's led to the percentage being a little bit higher, but on the dollar amount, about $2 million. We'll see if that translates to filings in the later part of the year, in April, where we typically see the vast majority of our net profits come in. Insurance is very close again, as we see that track very close to budget. Franchise fees were underperforming the budget just slightly. We saw that underperform pretty heavily during the last fiscal year, so it's good to see that be very close to budget. On other licenses and permits, the main story there is we get something called bank franchise fees. That is similar to how we have a property tax bill that goes out. On deposits in banks, they get a similar bill for their deposits, and then we get those on the same schedule as property taxes, so we started to see some of those come in early as the banks try to get a 2% discount on their filings, similar to what you would see with a property tax bill. We just didn't have any budget for that in October, because we typically see it closer towards the end of the year. On charges for services, the main driver there to budget is, again, on our excess fees and collections like we talked about in the previous month. We do have some other accounts that are performing very well, and the one worth noting continues to be EMS fees that, largely because of the state kicker payment that we get for enhanced Medicaid payments, that continues to be a strong driver in that line. And then further on down, we just continue to exceed budget in our other categories. Investment income is something that we see being strong this year, as we still have relatively high interest rates and performing stronger than budget. So looking at this on a year-over-year basis, you can see how we're continuing to perform year-over-year much better than we are looking to budget. That's because we've recognized a lot of those budgetary increases on that side. The one to point out, just as we see it not being the same on this side, is franchise fees. They're performing better than prior year, and that's why it is so close to budget on the other side. We do have property taxes, as Commissioner Hensley talked about. Those typically come in in November. We see the largest payments come in, it's around $20 million, that typically comes in around the middle of November, so we'll be looking for that, and that should see that line start to rise as we get into the last half of this calendar year and start to move into the next. Before we move on to expenses with Director Luker, I'm happy to take any questions she'll may have. Committee members, do you have any questions for Director Holbrook? Seeing none, Director, feel free to pass it. Sorry about that, Director. We do have a question. Sorry. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Director Holbrook, I'm just looking at the investment income line and how it's essentially completely opposite on this side as it was the previous, and knowing that interest rates are what they are, can you just explain a little bit about why we're seeing a deficit year over year? Right. So we did have more interest that we collected and reported in fiscal year 24 than we have through this part of the fiscal year 25. Just the general increase in interest rates? General interest rates, correct. All right. Just wanted to make sure. Thank you. That's all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Any other questions? Trouble signing in. Don't see any. Thank you, Director Luker. All right. Well, let's see here. Well, the Commissioner did still a little bit of the thunder, but look at that first line again. Last month, we were within 0.5% in our personnel variance, and this month we're within 0.7%. So I got to come up here two months in a row and say that. I'm not meeting in December, so we'll see what happens in December, but we'll talk to you all again in January, and hopefully it still looks as good as it does right now. Within our personnel, we're watching the payouts closely. We're in the middle of our monthly budget meetings with divisions right now. We're asking about upcoming retirements and people leaving to kind of get a gauge on our payouts because we're paying out a little bit sooner than what we had budgeted and a little bit more than what we had up to the same timeframe as last year. So that's something we're watching within our personnel, but we've got some savings in overtime and in our full-time salaries. So all of those to make up for the being within 0.1% of budget for the second month in a row. The operating, you'll see we do have a variance there, but I would like to point out the variance, the percent variance that we had at the end of September. So when we reported to you in October, it was 18.9%, and so we've gone down 1.2% in our variance, and that's adding $8.5 million more budget to spend for October. So this is a large number, but it's positive to me that we can see that people are starting to spend their budgets, and we're spending that down, and we're not growing that variance like we have in prior years. So this goes back to what we said earlier about, you know, we try to tighten up the budget and the expenses this fiscal year. So this is positive, even though it's still 17.7%, but we also have a very large encumbrance on, so things that are under contract to be paid or purchase orders that are open that people are paying on monthly or weekly, you know, however it is set up. So some of that variance is tied up with the encumbrance and with commitments, but we do have some savings in our professional services, vehicle repairs, and some supplies and equipment, and within our IT accounts. But we pull the encumbrances monthly, so we're looking at those, and like I said, we're meeting with divisions right now. Unfortunately, this is our monthly budget meeting week, and this meeting is pushed up a week, so we don't have all of the detailed information like we would have after we go through those meetings like normal, but we're working through those and talking about when things are going to get paid when we see those large variances within the divisions. So the insurance expense, we're right there at budget, as well as the debt service partner agencies. Those we have agreements with, so it's just some of those are being paid out a little sooner than what was budgeted at the time. And then capital, you can see we're also spending there. Compared to last year, you can see we're spending more in our personnel, in our operating, a significant amount more in our operating, 35 percent more for the first four months of the fiscal year. So you can see people are spending their dollars. Insurance, we're essentially the same amount there. Debt service, that one looks a little odd, but that's just, we have timing of payments on when the debt is, the bond payments are due, and so last year we had stuff due sooner in the fiscal year than we have this year with our bonds. The partner agencies, that varies year to year based on what gets funded, what agencies get funded and how they are allocated throughout the year. Capital, we did spend a little bit more this time last year, but I'm glad to see that on the previous slide we are spending our capital. That's one that sometimes we've struggled in the past to get spent. Things take a while sometimes. So overall, we're doing more than we did last year. So this is a good sign. Are there any questions? Thank you. Thank you, Director. Committee members, are there any questions? We have Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Just a quick one. Do we have to wait for the final votes to see all the other transactions from the fund balance stuff? Yes. Is that going to really show up in November technically? So the expense will show up in the November actual. Some of that will show up, because we'll get second reading on Thursday night. Some of that will show up as transfers out, so that will increase our budgeted transfer line, because they're budgeted to transfer out of the general fund to the capital fund, a majority of them are. The items that are staying within the general fund, we'll see those in the various accounts in divisions where they were put in the fund. So that should show up next month. Okay. And you'll adjust the budgets accordingly? Yes. That's what the budget amendment is. It was adjusting those budgets, and it gets approved Thursday. So it'll make the next run. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Are there any other questions? Director, I don't see any. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Commissioner, is there anything you want to add before we go to the next item on the agenda? All right. Thank you all for the presentation, and then you also have the ARPA financial update in your packet for information only and for you to review, and then we'll go to the next item on the agenda. And we have our partners from Commerce Lexington here. The next item on the agenda is an update from the Commerce Lexington Regional Competitiveness Plan Talent Recruitment Efforts. Betsy Dexter, Executive Director of Commerce Lexington Business and Education Network is here to present. So, Mrs. Dexter, I'll turn it over to you. Hey. Thank you all so much. So good to see you. I'm very excited to update you all on our talent attraction campaign that we've been working on for the last couple of years. It's finally come to life, and so I'm excited to share with you some updates on that and some of the things that we're seeing for some early wins. So as a quick reminder, this is part of our overall regional plan. If you all remember, you've seen us talk about the Regional Competitiveness Plan, and there's seven action items within that. Today we're going to talk about this regional talent attraction portion, which is one action item of the seven. We've worked on a campaign and a website to increase awareness of the region as a place to live and work. So we're very excited about how far we've come and where we're headed, and I think you're going to hopefully enjoy what you see today. So again, just quickly, we leaned into the LEX. We've talked about that a lot in terms of the regional brand. We have our VisitLex brand that we've had for quite some time as we think about recruiting people to visit. We have our LocateLex that Jen and her team have had for quite some time in terms of recruiting businesses to the region, and so we wanted to create a place that was for people and to think about if you're going to move here and live here, what would that look like? And so LocateLex was that brand that we created for the campaign. So it's very much a sister site, if you will, to what we're doing for our visitor industries and for our recruitment of businesses. So we created the website, LocateLex.com. I'm going to show you a little hype reel here in just a second that showcases everything about that, but we're just excited about it. It's got 30 pages of information. That's why we can't share everything with you, but if you think about the region, trying to tell the story, trying to think about people wanting information about living here and working here and playing here, what would we say? There's a lot of information. And so I'm going to show you a quick hype reel to show you a little bit about what it looks like if you were a user on the site, and then I'll go into detail a little bit more. So let's see if it works. Let's see if it works. Let's see if it works. Let's see if it works. So that was just a quick sort of snapshot of everything you can find when you go to the site. Again, we really wanted folks to have a one-stop shop, so if you're looking for any information, you can find it here. I encourage you to go to LocateLex.com and play around on it. There's way more than we could talk about today, but we're very proud of where we've come. So, you know, it's great having a website. It's great to have the information, but if nobody's looking at it, it doesn't matter. So the digital marketing campaign to create awareness of Greater Lex as a place to live and work, and the site itself is now where we are. So we decided to focus on a couple of different external audiences. We wanted to be smart about the money. Marketing's expensive. So we tried to think about who could we target and tackle as the first sort of low-hanging fruit of folks who might want to consider coming to Lexington. So we're focusing on the university alumni of the ten colleges and universities in the region. So again, these are warm audiences. They've been here before. They may have left. We'd like for them to consider coming back. Perspective and prior tourists, same thing. If they're thinking about coming here to visit, they're obviously looking at us for a reason. If they visited, maybe they liked it, we could think about maybe coming back. So these are the two audiences that we're focusing on right now. I will tell you, too, that we've hired a local firm to help us with this part of the plan. They're called Kismet Marketing. It's a small women-owned local business. We're excited to work with them. We've worked with them before, and so they've been awesome to work with as well. So looking at that alumni strategy, again, these are the colleges and universities in the region. The target group that we're trying to target is 18 to 55 plus. Boomerangs are important, right? I was one. I left for ten years. I came back. We're trying to focus on folks who, again, have been here before, who know a little bit about it, and really targeting them to understand that Lexington's grown up, so have you. Maybe think about coming back. We're focusing, again, on the key industries. You probably saw in the video that we had headquarters and technology and advanced manufacturing. So we're very much focused on the key industries that Jenna and her team for economic development focus on as well. We're very intentional about who we're going after, how we're getting there, and what we're saying. Same with tourists, right? So you've got folks that have visited here. We're looking at their search behavior. So if somebody's going to Airbnb and looking at things here, we know that they're thinking about coming, so we can target them with ads to give them a message of, hey, look, your money goes up to 10% further here, or we believe in work hard, play hard. So we're targeting people that we think might be a good fit based on their behavior. So we're focusing on those types of websites as we think about who to go after. So regional attraction websites, social media is huge, as you guys know. I think 70% is the number of percent of people looking at stuff online. So we find everything online. We find everything through social media, and so that's why we're focusing so much on the digital strategy at this time. So social media is also critically important. You'll see there that we're focusing on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. That's where we think we're going to find our best bets for people. We are very intentional, again, on the social media. This is free. We can post this. So we're posting all the time. We're sharing. We're asking people to retweet. The thing that's kind of cool about it is we can track every post, and we can tag it. So if it's a live post, a work post, a play post, we can tag the county that it's in. We can tag whether it's an entire regional post, and so we can look on the back end and make sure it's equitable as we think about the messages that people are seeing. So we're very, very intentional on that. I will tell you that in the first 30 days, it's been kind of cool to see what's tracking. The top posts have been, I don't know if you all saw, but Condé Nast Traveler named Lexington the number four best small city. So we were able to retweet that and talk about that, and that was one of our top performing posts. People are seeing these types of things and learning more about us. Manufacturing month was huge. We did that in partnership with our ED team. We targeted specific sectors. That got a huge bump as well. And then Ruth Hunt Candy, I think because maybe it was Halloween, we got some candy posts that people really liked. So we're paying attention to what people are liking and trying to target in on what they want and their behaviors and tell them more about what we have here in this region. So this is how we're analyzing it at this point. It's all about the data. I mean, it's telling us exactly what we need to know. It's all been strategy up until this point, but we can look and see, are people spending time on the site? How long are they spending on the site? What pages are they visiting? Are they looking at jobs? Are they looking at quality of life? What is it they want to see and what is it they want to know so that we can target them with better information? So the data will lead us to all the decisions. It's all there, and we will be looking at that in real time to make decisions on how we spend money and make sure that it's done well moving forward. Same with social media. How many people are we reaching? Is it being liked? Are they sharing it? Again, top performing posts so we can know, okay, this is about quality of life or manufacturing or whatever it may be. Just lean into that and talk more about that. So the analytics are going to drive this moving forward. We're going to let the audience tell us, and then we're going to lean in, and so that's where we are right now. Again, eyeballs awareness, that's the whole point, right? We don't want to do a site that nobody sees. So I wanted to tell you guys, just in terms of the first 30 days, I don't have this on the slide, but we had a reach of over 830,000, so the ads that we were pushing out reached 830,000 desktops, if you will. We had 5,212 new users to the site, which is huge. That's people who had not looked at us, who had not learned about us before that came to the site in the first 30 days, and then we were able to actually see that 45 of them, so 10% on those, actually applied for jobs. So we're able to watch that journey. They're coming in. They're seeing it. We know what they're looking at. They're liking it, and then they're applying for jobs. That's the ultimate goal. So for 30 days, couldn't be happier with people actually seeing it, liking it, and ultimately applying for jobs. So 30 days, it's been pretty good. If we trend in that direction, we're looking pretty good. The ways to engage, again, this is what we would ask of you all, of local stakeholders, follow us on social media, get on Instagram, Facebook, share it. I've got a lot of friends that I went to college with that don't live here. They're seeing that kind of stuff. We want to get it out there as much as we can. Look at the site. Again, go look at it. Play around with it. See what it is that you like about it. Share it with everyone you can. Spread the word. That's what we're trying to do. And the other piece, too, is we have a resource hub. We've created a digital library. Again, this campaign is not ours. This campaign is the region's. I'm just here to shepherd that through. So if we can have digital information, ads, the Hype Real video that you saw, the logo, how to engage, the cost of living calculator, all of that lives in a hub where people can go and find the information and share it with their businesses, their colleagues, others in the community as we hope to push out this message to get people to look at us and ultimately think about living here. So the campaign so far, 30 days that we've been doing pay digital, has worked out. And I'm just thrilled with that data. And so far, so good. So I'll take any questions that you have. And the team's here with me if we have additional questions. Thank you, Betsy, for the presentation and your work on this effort. Next we got signed up to speak is Councilmember Plowman. I tell you, it's very, very impressive. I got it up right now and looking at it. And I'm amazed that you can go in there and you can look at all the jobs per category. And how does that collection go? What is it? Are they all feeding into? Yeah. So the jobs piece is coming from Indeed. So on the back end of the site, we're able to pull in real time. But what we did is we put some filters around it to make sure that it was for this non-county region and for our companies and sectors that we're targeting. So it was very intentional about what people see. But it's coming from Indeed. And so when you apply for a job, for example, you might see it through our site, click on it, and then it takes you to Indeed for you to apply. So we can see that. But then at that point, it's going to the company. So we're able to see the data of who's clicking on what. And then we can see whether they're leaving the site to go post for a job. And so that's how it's being done is it's real time, all day, every day, real information. Can you track if someone has opened it up and they're looking at that job? Can you return that communication to them? How do you interact? Once they leave the site to go to Indeed to apply for the job, they're off our site. So what happens next is up to them and the company as to where who posted it. That's impressive. Thank you. I was just scrolling through it and I'm like, wow. Oh, thanks. I wish we had this about, well, 40 years ago. Right? Yeah. Well, thanks. All righty. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. And thank you. This is a wonderful, wonderful tool for hopefully to get more people here and to actually get out some information to our residents as well. Thank you, Councilmember. I'm curious regarding, I would not say the, well, the diverse, the lack of diverse representation on the website right now. Have you all thought about adding more of our diverse because we're more than what's on that site and that's the first thing people see when they go there to learn about our area? Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things we did when we built it was we tried to be very intentional about that as well to represent the community. I know we had some conversations with folks as we thought through that to make sure we were thinking about it. So, we can always do better. If there's something that is jumping out, please let me know. We did try to be very intentional about it. If you go into the site and look at the different pages, we have testimonials from folks, you know, it's representing, we hope, the community, but we can always do better. And so, we'll continue to make sure that that's happening. And I'm thankful for your willingness to always look at yourselves and say thank you for that response. That means a lot. Yeah, of course. Oh, good. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. You're kind of deliberately focusing on folks from university who've left, I think, and I don't know exactly how you're grabbing that target market. I'd be kind of curious about that. And then, there was another one that you're focused on. Tourists? Yeah, and tourists. And then, I do recall when we were in Tampa, I remember on that trip, they had made a super intentional kind of regional focus, since they're in the Sun Belt, like they went after winter weather people, you know what I mean? And I'm just kind of curious if, like, what was the whole discussion like? And do you think that you're going to, you'll pivot and try different things at different times of the year or in different targets? It would be kind of interesting to see how it plays out. That's a great question. And I think what's kind of cool about the data is that it's telling us that, right? So we assumed early on that our best bets for pooling people would be from Chicago, Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, pretty close. When we targeted alumni across the country, we have a heat map where we're looking at, okay, where are they clicking from? They're actually in those places that we thought they'd be. So we're not going to get people from the West Coast, they're not going to come back here, right? So we will target very specifically, knowing now that the people that are looking at it are in those communities very close to us. That aligns very nicely with what Mary Quinn's doing at VisitLAX. The target markets for tourism are very similar as well. So we've got Atlanta in there, D.C. was in there, I think. So we can see where they are, and so now we know that if that's where they are and we have our best bets, let's keep going there. So there may be other tactics we can do. I mean, again, marketing's expensive, so if you wanted to do billboards in Chicago or take over something, you'll have to have the resources to do it. But that's why we targeted the alumni was to, A, figure out where are they and are they looking at us and where are they located so that we can really dig into that. So the strategy, we'll let that, that will drive the strategy. But that and tourism, again, we know what they're doing. So again, we're looking at, let's just say if you're an alumni of U.K. and you're looking at the U.K. football, you're trying to buy tickets, we're going to hit you with an ad because we're thinking you're coming home, right? We think you might come home so we can target you and tell you a certain story. So we're trying, again, to try it in different ways. We'll see what works. We're testing everything and then we'll look at it and decide what works, what doesn't and not do things that don't work because that wouldn't, you know, be a waste of money. So. Thank you. And then just to follow up, and this could be just my ignorance, did we, have we, did we fund this or is this, is this a combo of funding? How, like, and I do appreciate the level of effort that you spent. Yeah, thanks. This is funded by the regional plan, so it's funded both public and private from the region. So it is all-encompassing to fund both policy, ED and talent, so yes, thank you. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Thanks, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. We have Councilmember Gray again. Thank you, Chair. And I'm back. Because I just realized I failed to ask a question earlier regarding, is this in lieu, in addition to the regional plan that we have been speaking about for some time? Part of it. Okay. It's one of the action items within it. And so one of the things that we wanted to do to be more competitive was to think about bringing people. Jenna's team is thinking about bringing businesses, Andy, of course, is doing policy, so we've got to have people, and that's sort of this part, but it's very much part of the plan. And so I know we hit a roadblock, a slight roadblock, or a little hump with the plan. How are we with that plan as of current, as of today? Do we have any updates? Yeah. I think, I mean, for the plan overall, I mean, I think we're doing great. I think that we feel good about it. Our regional summit's tomorrow, so we're going to have 300 people there learning more about it. But yeah, I mean, we're happy with it. This is a great first win for us, as you think about it. We've been working on it for quite some time, and I think we're feeling pretty good. Do you want to answer that? Yeah. Sure. So there may be a little bit of confusion, I know, with the things in the news about the Scott County, Madison County, Business Park discussion. That effort is separate from the regional competitiveness plan that we've all invested in and the seven action items that really are more marketing focused and how we elevate our marketing on a jobs front, what we do with talent, what we try to do with more intentionality around public policy. You know, getting more shovel-ready sites for jobs is critically important, and that's an effort that I think all the governments in the region are working on. And so while that project does align with the goals of the plan, it was separate from the effort that you all have invested in at $322,000. The other regional governments have put in around $275,000 to date, matching that, using that dollar per capita. But that's focused on the seven action items, which we're going to update tomorrow at the summit, but we are checking the boxes and doing really well there. But we'll continue to work on business parks and shovel-ready land as kind of a separate track to the actual competitiveness plan effort. I hope that makes sense. It does. Thank you so much. And thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. While I'm waiting for other folks that may have questions to sign in, I'll just ask a couple myself. So, you know, and I think it's by design that a lot of this is, you know, Lexington-branded, Greater Lex, and the other players in the region. Can you speak a little bit about their response to it and how this goes into the whole greater concept of thinking regionally? Sure. So, yeah, that's always a good question. Again, when we're thinking about this specific campaign and we're trying to think about attracting people here, the one thing that we learned through the research was they didn't know about us. We were completely unknown. And so when you think about that, and again, we're targeting people outside of the region, right? So if they don't know where we are, they don't know what we have to offer, we've got to find us on a map. And so we leaned into LAX as the call letters of the airport. And so if you talk to folks in the region, we had this conversation, like if you're on an airplane and you're telling folks where you live, you typically will say 30 minutes outside of Lexington or I fly into Lexington. And so that conversation just helped that because, again, we're talking to people who don't know us, who are not in Kentucky. And so the LAX just makes it easy to find us on a map and then go from there. So at first, it might have been a little weird. And then we kind of got around to that. Everybody's completely comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. That's the same impression I have. I think folks were, you know, so Lexington focused. But I think I think folks have bought into the fact that you have to have center, right? And everything else around it is supportive. Let me ask about the government, the governor's recent announcement about the jobs in Shelby County. I know that's a county outside. Is the jobs or the or the talent that we're focusing on now to Councilmember Savigny's question about pivoting and looking for other spheres of opportunity to recruit talent here? How does an announcement like that play into this effort or does it? You know, I don't know. I mean, I don't I think you have to be cognizant of the sectors and what we're targeting for the region. And so we'll be in conversation all the time about what jobs and what we think is coming here. We'll make sure we can pivot. We can pivot on the site. We can pivot on anything that we do if we want to target a specific industry or something new comes to town. We can go after that. That's what's nimble and awesome about the campaign is we can change at any moment. So if we decide that we want to focus on a certain industry or a certain industry is coming to town or we want to focus on that, we can focus on it. We can change it. We can target them again. You can change at any moment. And so it'll be based on what's happening in real time. OK. Now, I appreciate that answer, and I also appreciate Commerce Lexington taking the lead on this whole regional effort. And I thought with the recent events that happened lately in Scott County, I thought this would be timely to to let the council know that there's still efforts and you are still working to make this regional thing be successful. So thank you for your presentation and thank you for your work on this effort. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Council members sticking to our agenda, we'll go to the next item on our agenda, and that's the council budget review. I just want to thank our budget analyst, Kelly Farley, for reaching out to council members and them and you all making time to talk to her to to do this assessment. So this is about the council budget review process. And with that, I'll turn it over to you, Ms. Farley. Thank you. And before I begin the presentation, I'd like to thank you, council members and your legislative aides and Commissioner Hensley and her team for making the time to meet with us to collect feedback for this review. I would also like to thank Budget Chair James Brown and Council Administrator Shante Hall for their support during this process. Now let's get into it. So this budget review process, the last time a budget review was conducted in twenty twenty one during the FY twenty two budget process. Although our budget has our process has been working well, we've taken this opportunity to survey council members who have gone through two full budget cycles and provide feedback on their experiences with the goal of improving our process. Now this review was conducted by identifying opportunities for input, collecting feedback and then analyzing opportunities for improvement and reporting those out here in the Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee. Now the way we conducted these budget review meetings was meeting one on one with council members and their staff, as well as with the finance team. And I was able to successfully meet with twelve council members and their staff. And the following topics were discussed in those budget review meetings. The council budget retreat, the joint budget retreat, mayor's budget hearings, mayor's proposed budget, budget links, committee of the whole meetings, the materials for the budget process, communication and overall the entire process. Now, the joint budget retreat, this is typically held annually in February between the council and administration to discuss priorities for the upcoming budget. Council members have really appreciated the opportunity to sit together to exchange ideas, priorities and identify shared goals with the administration. Council members would like to see more interaction, exercises and goal sharing during these meetings to increase our collaboration with the administration. Additionally, clarifying the purpose and the goals of the retreat would be helpful to make sure that we're all hitting the mark and we're walking away with what we intend to walk away with after those meetings. Council members, of course, would like to receive budget materials or materials in general in advance of meetings. And finally, they would like to see a review of capital projects in progress at this joint retreat. And in general, there was a discussion about how many capital projects are ongoing, how many are in progress, in the queue, and the desire to stay informed on current and future capital needs. The mayor's budget hearings, which are perfect, the mayor's budget hearings are internal meetings held by the administration and finance team with departments and divisions to build the mayor's proposed budget. This is an opportunity appreciated by council members to sit in and listen to the hard-hitting questions of the administration, CAO Hamilton, and the finance commissioner as they do a deep dive into the departments and divisions. These hearings often provide understanding and context for funding requests, which are helpful for council members as they enter the LINCS process. And additionally, many council members share compliments to the mayor, CAO, and finance team for providing informative deep dives into each department, division, and partner agencies and offices. Our LINCS meetings. The current LINCS structure is composed of five LINCS of three council members. LINCS meet after the mayor's proposed budget has been released with the goal of reviewing the budgets within their, or reviewing the department budgets within their LINCS purview. Now council members cited that it can sometimes be challenging to accurately review funding priorities due to narrative inconsistencies and weighing long-term goals. For example, some departments shoot for the moon when submitting requests during the budget process, while others may only ask for funding requests relative to the next fiscal year. A consistent timeframe for budget requests could be helpful when comparing future priorities across departments and divisions. It was shared that identifying the roles, expectations, and responsibilities of LINC chair, LINC member, and the budget analyst would be helpful and beneficial in promoting consistency across the LINCS. And additionally, there was a great deal of interest in restructuring the LINCS to potentially have more members, less LINCS, and to zoom out and do a big picture overview of things like revenue, debt, and our expenses. And of course the council members also voiced a need to have a defined process for adjusting or amending the budget as they go throughout the LINCS process, and this could also be addressed after we define the roles and expectations of the members involved throughout the process. The Budget Committee of the Whole. Overall, this process has been pretty efficient. The Budget Committee of the Wholes are typically held at the end of May, or when the LINCS report out their final recommendations. This process has been efficient and consistent, with the majority of council members being pleased with the process. Providing templates for the LINC report out presentations and individual council member requests has added a layer of consistency and uniformity to the materials and the process. One suggestion was to clarify the scope of individual council member requests for additional consistency as we go throughout the process. Materials. Overall, the impression was positive. Council members were asked if they had what they need, and if they received anything they didn't, and overall they said they had what they need to make good, informed decisions. There was also huge success with storing all the budget materials in one place on the Google Drive, and they do desire additional documentation on future capital projects throughout the entire budget process, starting with the joint budget retreat, the hearings, and then as we get into the LINCS. Council members do prefer the ability to opt in to receiving the mayor's proposed budget and the adopted budget books, those very large documents, so having the ability to elect whether or not you'd like to receive those was voiced regularly. And additionally, council members want a budget and brief book. Communication. Repetitive date sharing and reminders were helpful, and they will continue to be shared with council members throughout the process, and may be enhanced, so more emails, but just making sure that we keep you on track with repetitive reminders. Newer council members mentioned challenges, like not knowing what to expect or not having a good sense of the timeline for the budget process, so it may be helpful to conduct a workshop before each budget process for council members, new council members and staff, or just in general as a refresher annually. A few council members expressed desire for LINC chairs to have check-in meetings during the budget process, and that would be to share notable findings prior to reporting out their recommendations so that even before we get to the big committee of the whole meetings, everybody is kind of aware of what's happening within LINC's outside of their own. And then several council members really would like to see us find a better way to break down the budget for the public, so this is on our radar and something that we will work to address. Finally, some suggestions moving forward into FY26. Based off the feedback provided, in preparation for these meetings, providing a budget overview training, which has been consistently done, shout out to Commissioner Hensley, her and her team has made a great effort to do that every year for our council members, and then the council office will work to host a budget process workshop for new council members and their staff. The joint retreat will plan and implement group exercises, and we will also work on defining the purpose and the goals of the retreat. The mayor's budget hearings, of course this is maybe for Budget Chair Brown, that we want to make sure we assign LINC's prior to the mayor budget hearings to be certain that council members are able to tune in to the most pertinent mayor's budget hearings and materials that relate to their LINC assignment. And of course we want to continue to encourage attendance at the mayor's budget hearings because they've been so informative and helpful. Now for the LINC's, of course we're going to work on defining the roles and expectations of all those involved, and then we'll also consider scheduling LINC chair check-in meetings throughout the budget process. Some notes for the administration. As council would like to see capital project updates at the joint retreat, as we've mentioned, continue to host the mayor's budget hearings virtually. That has been very wonderful and accessible for council members. Consider a timeline or time frame for funding requests moving forward to promote that consistency across departments and divisions. Provide actuals for fund balance in the mayor's proposed budget. And provide the ability to opt in to receiving that mayor's proposed budget and adopted budget books in addition to providing those budget in brief books. Next steps. We will work to explore a new LINC structure. We will see if there's a new configuration that we can move forward with. We will also develop and outline the plan for the FY26 budget process. I will review that plan with council administrator, the vice mayor, and the budget chair. And we'll work to finalize that plan hopefully by the, before council goes on winter break so we have a good plan as we come into the next calendar year. With that, I'd be happy to take any questions. Thank you, Kelly, for your work on this and for the presentation. And then also thank you to the administration and council members for their feedback and input into this review. So committee members, questions? First we have vice mayor Wu. Thank you, chair. Thank you, Kelly, for the presentation. I always really appreciate the graphics, honestly. Just adding that little touch to make it more fun to look at. So council administrator Chante and I have been talking about orientation and training for incoming new council members and one of the things we did discuss quite a bit was the budget process and how we're kind of throwing people feet first into it as the minute they come in. So I think all the work that you've done on this reviewing process I think would be great to build out a couple of different ways of training and orienting new folks as they come in to give them a better sense of what council's role is in the entire budget process. And obviously we're going to mostly learn it as we do it, but to just have a little primer and really think about maybe even from your perspective, what do new council members really, really essentially need to know going into it? Part of our discussion was also how much information are we laying on new people right away and how much information could maybe wait a little bit and doesn't need to be pertinent right off the top. So just some things to think about. But we appreciate your work. Thank you. Thank you, chair. Thank you, vice mayor. Next we have council member Sheehan. Thank you, chair. Thank you, Kelly, for this review. I know that you put a lot of time into it to meet with all of the different folks involved. And I consider this more of an internal review, similar kind of like our internal processes and how we're working through things. I would like us to start also thinking about the external part of this. So how we engage with the public, how the public learns about the budget. And I know that was one of the pieces here about trying to find ways to make it easier to understand. And I think we took a little bite of the apple when we put up one of the first projects on our Engage Lexington site this cycle. So I would like to see that used more in the future to help educate the public and engage them and get their feedback in the process. And maybe this is something we could take up with our public input subcommittee as well about what are the ways we can collect feedback specific to the budget. We had a successful transportation expo. Maybe that is a place where we could use an expo format to do something around the budget to not only educate folks about the process, the community about the process, but also collect feedback in that setting. So I would like us to have some further conversation about that public-facing piece as well. And I know Civic Lex, we have partnered with them on many different things, but they also hold budget workshops and do a budget breakdown that I think has been very helpful. So maybe there's a partnership there as well that's so that we're not duplicating effort. Absolutely. But thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Kelly, my question is regarding the suggestions to restructure the budget, the links. Were there any other models for restructure that were given besides making the links bigger? Because I know if you make them bigger, that means there's fewer of them, so there will be more divisions that will fall on that link than just the few. So were there any other suggested models that people threw out there? Not necessarily any suggested models, but Councilmembers did express the complexity of the links, and it feels like a lot already as it is, so I do understand the concern with expanding that. But it would also give you potentially more people to lean on as you interpret the budget process. But the actual structure itself was not, or a different model was not encouraged or suggested throughout the process. It was really about can we look at the bigger picture for the budget as a whole, rather than getting into a lot of the department and division minutia, which is also important, but as Councilmembers, you're also looking at the big picture. Okay. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Spigney. Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for this presentation, Kelly, it's really good. I have just two quick things, and I forgot to mention this particular one, but I do, I think we're selling it short a wee bit when we talk about a $500 million budget, when we really, we actually, our links are approving about $900 million worth of money, even though some is dedicated to certain things. I do think it, I don't like it when it goes out into the public when they think we're just a $500 million city, when we're really a $900 million city. So I would like to at least, I think that's partly how it's communicated, that's one thing. And then the other concept is, I do think there's two strategies in budgeting. One is that you create a budget and you kind of live with that budget, and then there's a strategy that says we're doing better after a quarter than we thought we were, we feel like this is good money. We actually did have that experience this year when we funded the ambulances and the crew for the ambulances. I would like to see a quarterly process that, since we've had that experience, a quarterly process that actually considers a priority of items that we have ranked in priority that are capital items or recurring expense items. And so that we're not reinventing, like we're not throwing things out all the time. It's just like, okay, these are the things that didn't make it, but they're the next three things in, or something like that. And I just think it would make the conversation, we would be super informed, we would help rank those things, and I think it would be helpful. Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. While I'm waiting on folks that might have additional questions, I'll just kind of throw a couple things out. And Kelly, thanks for the presentation. One of the things I think got brought up, and I think we are thinking about how to address them in the budget, was when council members want to make budget adjustments in the links. I think there's a school of thought that if you put something in, you have to take something out. I know in a lot of ways, without more context or information, that's kind of challenging the council members or links themselves to dealing with their portion of the budget. So I think there's a way, or maybe we can try to think of a way to better set expectations and give council members a road map when making those decisions in regards to the budget process. And I think it's around trying to make sure that we can have both priorities, administration's priority and council's priorities included in the budget. So I think that's an opportunity that got mentioned. Another is the link structure. I think it's just challenging the links that we have now. I think we just try to keep the council members at a reasonable amount. But it's a different weight of links, and it's a different variety of things that links have to consider. So I think Kelly's going to take a look at that, see if there's another way to structure it to where we may have more council members weighing in on links. And I think that may help, because that could get us to a better consensus when we do report outs. And have a direction of how the budget's going. And then, I know Council Member Savigne had brought up fund balance. So fund balance is two fund balances. Fund balance is for the dedicated funds that we have. I think that information could be useful and helpful and be shared. But then also, another item that we may need to put in committee is the fund balance process that we have in the fall. Just based off the time frame and when information's shared with council, I think is important. But outside of this review. So that's all I have, and then it looks like Council Member Fred Brown has signed in. Council Member. Thank you, Chair. There's a lot of emphasis, and rightfully so, about the general fund. And that's what all of this is that we're talking about. And I think as we go forward, or as the new council members and the new year comes forward, I think we need to also pay attention to the other funds. Because so far, we've been fortunate that we can keep those balanced and have a fund balance in each one of those funds. But I think we need to recognize, as we go forward, that we do have a lot of other funds. And I think this council needs to recognize those going forward and the expenses of that. So the general fund, of course, is the important one. And that's what everybody kind of leans into, and at the end of the year, fund balance is general fund. But we do have a lot of other funds that run this government. And I think we need to certainly pay attention to them going forward. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member, and I agree. And then to the Vice Mayor's comments about training and getting the new council members coming in. I think that's, I appreciate that thought, and I think that is something that's needed. And then also, us that have been here, I think always getting brought up to speed and getting more information about how we can be more effective in the budget process is going to be helpful. So, Council Members, it looks like, so thank you. Thank you, Kelly, for your work on this. Thank you all. It looks like we've come to items referred to committees. Are there any actions that need to be taken about items that are in committee right now? Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Item number two, revenue sources that I took over. I'm going to make a motion to remove that item for now. Is there a second? Second. All right, a motion's been made to remove item number two and second it. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that item has been removed. Are there any other items? Council Member Savigny, I think technology ecosystem development. I'll put that in committee on your behalf. Do we need to keep that in there or come back? Yeah, because it's right now the company is doing the perform. So what I would like to do, because we did a bid, we awarded the bid. They're actually doing some work. I'd like to come back and then present their work, and then we can do something with it, okay? And they should be done in the spring. Thank you. Sounds good. Just one other note, is number nine, digital equity, having some conversations with folks working in that space, we're going to change that title to digital accessibility. So I don't think we need a motion for that. That's just a notation. All right, Council Members, with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right, a motion to adjourn is seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you.