# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - January 28, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · January 28, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6324 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6324?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-01-28 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 27, 2026 - **Length**: 12,343 words - **Speakers**: J. Hale, T. Morton, S. Lynch, D. Gray, D. Wu > ⚠️ **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 Social Services and Public Safety Committee met on January 28, 2025, at 1:08 PM, with J. Reynolds presiding. The meeting covered 4 agenda items, including the approval of a previous committee summary and three informational presentations. A total of 4 votes were taken during the meeting, and no public comments were heard. The committee received informational updates on the Lexington Community Paramedicine Program, Family Services, and Partners for Youth. ## Attendance The following 10 members were present at the Committee meeting held on 2025-01-28: - J. Reynolds - W. Baxter - D. Wu - C. Ellinger - T. Morton - S. Lynch - D. Gray - J. Hale - A. Beasley - H. Boone No members were recorded as absent or late. Full attendance was achieved for this meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took four votes during the January 28, 2025 meeting, all of which passed by voice vote. - **Approval of the September 17, 2024 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:04]: The committee approved the summary of its September 17, 2024 meeting by voice vote. No roll call was recorded. - **Removal of "Expand the Adult Mental Health Court with an Aftercare Program"** [timestamp: 1:18]: On a motion by J. Reynolds, the committee voted to remove this item from committee. The motion passed by voice vote. No roll call was recorded. - **Removal of "Review of the Golf Cart Policies"** [timestamp: 1:19]: On a motion by J. Reynolds, the committee voted to remove this item from committee. The motion passed by voice vote. No roll call was recorded. - **Removal of "Emergency Financial Assistance Program Annual Update"** [timestamp: 1:21]: On a motion by J. Reynolds, the committee voted to remove this item from committee. The motion passed by voice vote. No roll call was recorded. All four motions were decided by voice vote, and no individual member votes were recorded. No seconds were noted in the record for any of the motions. ## Approval of the November 12, 2024 Committee Summary [timestamp: 04:12] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its November 12, 2024 meeting. No significant discussion or debate was recorded on this agenda item, and no specific concerns were raised by committee members. The summary was approved. ## Lexington Community Paramedicine Program [timestamp: 04:43] Chief Jason Wells and Lieutenant Alex Yon presented an update on the Lexington Community Paramedicine Program, describing the program's role in addressing gaps in healthcare access within the community. The presentation was informational in nature. No vote or formal action was taken as a result of this agenda item. *Note: Detailed discussion points, specific statistics, concerns raised, and additional context from this presentation are not available in the provided source material.* ## Family Services Update [timestamp: 26:22] Sheila Horton-Holt presented an update on the Family Services programs to the Committee. The presentation covered four programs under the Family Services umbrella: - **Early Child Care Program** - **Family Service Coordination Program** - **HANDS Program** - **Parent Education Program** The item was informational in nature. No further details regarding specific program statistics, concerns raised, or debate among committee members are available in the provided materials. ## Partners for Youth Update [timestamp: 48:55] Shanreka Shackelford presented an informational update to the Committee on the Partners for Youth programs. The presentation covered the organization's Summer Youth Job Training Program as well as various community engagement initiatives. The update was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken by the Committee. *Note: Additional details from the presentation — including specific program statistics, funding figures, participant numbers, or further discussion points — are not available in the provided source materials.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the September 17th, 2024 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove the item 'Expand the Adult Mental Health Court with an Aftercare Program' from committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove the item 'Review of the Golf Cart Policies' from committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove the item 'Emergency Financial Assistance Program annual update' from committee --- ## Full transcript Thank you. Good afternoon. How is everybody today? Thank you for coming. I will now call the January 28th meeting of 2025 of the Social Services and Public Safety Committee to order at 108 p.m. Before we go along with our agenda, I want to thank my colleagues for supporting me in this position again this year, and Councilmember Baxter as well. We look forward to serving you all and working with social services and public safety. And so once again, I'm going to always say, if you ever have items in committee that you want to work on, please come to us and we're happy to work on them with you and make sure that they have a time to be presented in committee. We are a little bit shorter on time than usual, and I'm just going to say a few things over public comment and our comment. One is we've decided not to have public comment once again in this committee in order to give time for Councilmembers to work. It is not that we are against public comment, just rather we feel like this time would be best spent working on the items. If somebody has a comment about any item in committee, they can e-mail us or call us and always give us feedback. Also, the administration has made it very clear that they would like our meetings to end by 3 o'clock for the work session and to be fair to the staff. So I will be trying to do that every time. That might mean that if we start running out of time that we have to, you know, move something off the agenda that was on the agenda at the end. It might mean that Councilmembers can chime in once instead of twice, but I just want to realize that if we start using up all the time there towards the end, it is up to my discretion to change the rules of comment. I know that we are a Council that loves to talk, and I really want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions and say their comments. I just want us to be aware of the time. So 3 o'clock is our cutoff. So as we're making statements and asking questions, just be aware. Have any of your colleagues already made those statements or have your colleagues already asked those questions and try to not repeat things but bring up points that haven't been brought up? And just be aware of the time. And that's all. I appreciate all of you. Now we will get started. So the first thing is the approval of our agenda of the September 17th, 2024 Committee Summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve? Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. Next up, our first presentation is the annual update on the Community Paramedicine Program. We have with us today Chief Jason Wells and Lieutenant Alex Yon with the Division of Fire and Emergency Services and other members of the paramedicine team that are here today to join us. So I am really thankful to have you all here and to have Lieutenant Yon with us as well as he's new to his role and we are big fans of the paramedicine program so look forward to the presentation today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair. And to the council and particularly to the new council members, welcome. And for those of you who have not yet had an opportunity to come do a ride-along with me, we'll be spending quite a bit of time with Community Paramedicine. We'll go and introduce you to that program and I think that you'll find it something really, really interesting. So in the interest of time, I'm going to be very, very brief and I'm going to let Lieutenant Yon here in a minute actually introduce the team. But I did want to say I think there was quite a bit of anxiety because the council members who have been around for a while got to know now District Chief Seth Lockard and knew him from the inception of the program and what he was able to do to build that program was absolutely phenomenal. So congratulations to him on his promotion but also congratulations to Lieutenant Alex Yon who is going to be taking over that program. If you don't know him, I would encourage you to take a little bit of time, get to know him. We'll meet him when you come ride-along but I'm very excited about the direction of the program and I'm very excited for what we're going to see grow for our community. So thank you all very much and without further ado, Lieutenant Yon. Good afternoon. As Chief Wells said, my name is Lieutenant Alexander Yon. I am the new supervisor of Community Paramedicine. Community Paramedicine is an innovative program that addresses the gaps in our healthcare and social services. It does this by expanding the traditional role of a paramedic and a social worker and being more proactive and patient-centric. The people we take care of are the most vulnerable in the city. We take care of the unhoused, the elderly, the high utilizers, individuals with substance use and mental health disorders, and members with chronic illness. In Lexington, the Community Paramedicine program is broken up into three different teams. We got the mobile integrated health, the quick response, and the crisis response team. Those are made up of a mix of paramedics, social workers, peer support specialists, overdose outreach coordinators, a police officer, and a crisis counselor. Today I brought two of my members with me, the two originals. We got social worker Maria Sloan and firefighter paramedic Patrick Brenham. So they're going to give you some of their expertise on the history and development of the program. Once they're done, we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Hello my name is Patrick Brenham and I am a paramedic firefighter on the Community Paramedicine team. I've had an opportunity to talk to most of you, but for the new folks and for those that don't know, I wanted to be able to share a little bit of what we do and I think most of you know our hearts and how they operate. First I want to express my deep appreciation for the support that the council has shown to the fire department in the Community Paramedicine initiative. Your support has been crucial to our success and we are grateful for it. As Chief Wells often says, united we serve and this initiative is a perfect example of the spirit of that action. To give you a brief history of how we started Community Paramedicine in Lexington, officially began in 2017 under the direction of Captain Seth Lockard with Chief, I'll get used to that, and assistance to firefighters grant for I think it was $272,000. This initial funding allowed us to lay the groundwork for the program. In March of 18 we took another step forward and when we were awarded a pilot program under the Kentucky Board of EMS. Early on we began working closely with shelters for those experiencing homelessness and with the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. These collaboratives, these collaborations were eye opening as they not only introduced us to some of the resources available in our community to those housed and unhoused, but to identify gaps in the system that could be addressed through a Community Paramedicine program. While many Community Paramedicine programs are the sole resource, we are fortunate to live in a city rich in resources. Our mission became clear. We wanted to serve as the connective tissue that links individuals to the right resources. This idea of making the right connections to the right resources has become the core of what we do. In 2018 we recognized that there were overlaps between police calls and emergency medical services as well as fire. To address this we embedded a police officer into the paramedicine unit with the help of Chief Weathers. This partnership has proven invaluable in improving coordination and communication among agencies and enhancing the overall service we provide to the community. One of the key partnerships initially developed through Tracy Wells, a dispatcher, who helped us initiate important conversations that led to us becoming a practicum site with the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. This helped us to strengthen our approach and understand better the social determinants of health. My son Brayden once said that my job is to make a bigger city a smaller town, and I couldn't think of a better way to describe the heart of Community Paramedicine and this team. By fostering relationships with nearly 180 community partners, we've created a network that works together to provide better services to those in need in real time. What once seemed like an impossible task has become a reality, and we've made Lexington a safer, more efficient, and more connected community. The results speak for themselves. Through collaboration, we've created a safer community, become more fiscally responsible in the way we serve, and significantly increased our efficiency in utilizing available resources. One of the most gratifying aspects has been the ability to help and empower other communities, both within Kentucky and outside, to adopt similar models. Lexington has become a shining example of how Community Paramedicine should and can work. What truly sets our program apart is that it is very person-centered. The stories of client success, of people being able to overcome significant hurdles with our help, are what keep us motivated. I've heard clients ask, with a little bit of confusion sometimes, you came back. And to me, those words represent trust, compassion, and the lasting impact of our work. Being able to walk alongside individuals as they navigate life's challenges has been the greatest professional honor of our career. The way that we have explored many of our positions and their effectiveness has been through grants, which has to do with math and numbers. And that is not me. Please welcome Maria Sloan. Hello, all. Yes, I am one of the first social workers that was hired into the Community Paramedicine program through one of our first BJA grants in 2019. So we were able to secure that grant that allowed us to follow up on nonfatal overdoses throughout the Lexington-Fayette County area, along with a firefighter paramedic. So we were able to get out into our community and provide that service, connection with treatment, connection with whatever that individual need, back to what Patrick said, that person-centered approach. As we realized and continued through, we recognized that there was a big calling for that outreach and there was a lot of people that maybe we were missing in our outreach already through our MIH. So in 2020, we were able to secure another BJA grant, which allowed us to increase our presence in the community with overdose follow-ups. It also allowed us to essentially hire more individuals into our group, which was an additional social worker, Mackenzie Gross. And so throughout our program, our program has really relied on a lot of our grants, most of them federally funded. So we are now on our third BJA grant, which is expected to end in 2026. That grant allowed us to hire additional social workers and a peer support specialist with lived experience. We also, in 2024, received a Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services grant. Another gap that we were able to identify in our program was that we needed that mental health perspective of individuals wasn't being met, so how could we do that? So we secured another grant through the Kentucky Department of Medicaid that allowed us to hire a mental health professional to go out on these calls to meet the needs of our individuals where they're at. And that individual will be paired with a firefighter paramedic. And then in 24, would you like to finish up on that, Young, with the St. Joseph Hospital connection? Well, we'll talk about that in a second, but go ahead and kind of run short on time. Go ahead and go over your numbers here. Okay. So, as you can see in the PowerPoint, 2024, our mobile integrated health team, we had interactions with 441 individuals. And you can see the breakdown of individuals, UK population health follow-ups, our high utilizers from July through December of 24, our lift assist individuals, and just our referrals that had been submitted from our ambulances and our engine crews or just anybody in particular within the LFD. Our quick response team followed up or attempted to follow up with 1,400 people for nonfatal overdoses. We had 1,517 contacts of individuals, whether that be the individual or the family members of the loved ones experiencing substance use disorders. We had 42 treatments, 218 Narcan being distributed at the door. We're meeting them where they're at, and so we're providing these harm reductions such as fentanyl test strips and resource packets to treatment on whatever they may need. Also, we address that with family needs as well. All right. So, this is some of the new stuff, and some of it's been implemented and some of the stuff we're still working on. So, we're actually working on getting three more paramedics to join the multiple teams we have. We're in the process right now. It should probably happen in the next few weeks, I would assume. We have a collaboration with St. Joe. We have a paramedic and a social worker that's embedded with us three days out of the week. We see some of their patients, and they help us with some of our patients. We have a partnership with Voices of Hope. It's ongoing. We get a peer support specialist from Voices of Hope. She works with our quick response team to make overdose follow-ups. We started the situation table a few months ago. Patrick Brenham is actually the head of the situation table. It just brings all the community partners together, and we try to help each other. You can probably explain better than me. Yeah, we're just closing gaps. Closing gaps. And hopefully soon we can start our crisis response team, which puts our crisis counselor and our paramedic in an unmarked vehicle making response to mental health, behavioral health, SI runs, trying to help. Traditionally, we were always making the runs with the closest available unit, but this gives us an opportunity to give us the most appropriate unit to that emergency. And then the last one is Suboxone. It's something that I've been wanting to work on. There's a Suboxone administration in the field. Whenever somebody has snark and administered, they're automatically in withdrawal. A lot of times they can re-overdose on the same opioid, or because they're in withdrawal symptoms they will use again. The Suboxone is a partial agonist, so they will get the euphoria effect of an opioid, but they will not get the same, like the bad effects. Everyone has the respiratory issues. Allowing us to make contact while they're still feeling good. Hopefully we'll not re-use within 24, 48 hours, and we can try to make contact with their QRT team to get them into some kind of recovery while they're feeling pretty good. That's it. Thank you so much for that presentation. I encourage my colleagues who haven't done a ride-along with paramedicine yet to do that. It's very eye-opening. Colleagues, now I will take any questions that you have for the paramedicine team. Council Member Morton. No comment on that. First, I want to emphasize my strong support for the community paramedicine program. I really feel that this innovative work, what you guys are doing, is truly impactful and it's what's needed for this community. And the next, I just have a question about the crisis response team. I'm big on co-response, so first I wanted to ask, can you just talk a little bit about the crisis response team, what they would look like and what they would do? Okay, so we're partnering, it's an LFD paramedic, and we have hired Chris, who's a LPCA, in essence a crisis counselor, and they're going to be riding together. Initially we're going to do it with a self-dispatch to any mental health, behavioral health runs when available, or crews can actually call them if they're available for extra assistance. They have the ability to transport. So once again, we're treating, we're starting treatment on scene, right, with the counselor that can actually figure out what's going on and then get them to the appropriate location instead of just an ER, right, because ERs aren't meant for this, for mental health, behavioral health runs. Right. And then, so I guess my follow-up to that would be, will this crisis response team be specifically dispatched to 911 calls that involve potential mental health crisis, in that case, so like 911 calls responding either with the police or to emergencies, what could be considered an emergency that is not violent? So this is kind of a brand new program that we're starting, so it's going to start out at a very kind of grassroots, organic level, and we don't have dispatch protocols built yet, essentially. So the team is going to monitor the radio during business hours, and when they hear a certain type of call, and for example, let's use a suicidal ideation with someone who has not yet done any harm and has no method to do that. That individual is obviously in crisis, and one of the things that we recognize is the last thing that they really need is a street full of police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and that sort of thing, and this just follows our roadmap of trying to get the right help to the right person at the right time, provides a much calmer scene and a direct avenue for them to get to the facility that they need. Great. Thank you. And I look forward to building that and hopefully expanding it very soon, because it's definitely what's needed, co-response. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, paramedicine team, for your presentation and update and for the work that you all do, and just to second what Chair Reynolds said about doing the ride-along for our new colleagues. If you haven't done it already, I did mine when I first came on as a council member, and it was, you know, it's one thing to see stats and to kind of hear presentations, and it's another thing to actually go to people's homes, and what it really felt like to me riding with the team was we were just neighbors visiting neighbors that we had concerns about. We were just checking in on folks. Hey, how are you doing? I remember your foot had an issue. How's your foot doing? Can I take a look at your medications? Like, okay, you're on blood thinners? You know, can we go find you a haircut, you know, or can we bring some trimmers? And it was just kind of this very holistic sense of care for people. So A, that in and of itself makes this program worth supporting. But I think the fiscal elements of it, the preventative elements of it, in the long run is going to save us money on not having to make as many of those emergency runs. It's going to save us on labor, and it's ultimately better health outcomes for our residents. So I would encourage everybody to learn more about this program, and any time you all can do a ride-along, not just with paramedicine, but with any fire teams in general, and I will also give a plug for Citizens Fire Academy. Really really fun. Several of us on this council have done it. It's a eight or ten week program, right? You all do it twice a year. It's Wednesday nights for like two or three hours. They feed you. It's good food. My wife and I did it. It ended up being our date night activity. It was just super fun, super interactive. We got to cut apart cars. We got to rappel down buildings. We got to dress in hazmat suits. We got to crawl through weird dark spaces, and it just gives you even just a glimpse of all the different things that are demanded of our firefighters, and gives you an appreciation of how tough their job is, and honestly how interesting their job is as well. So I just encourage you all, whenever you have the opportunity, to engage with these. So thank you all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I just have one question. Can you explain to me the difference between the mobile integrated health team and then the quick response team? Sure. The mobile integrated health would be more of the typical community paramedicine program where you have a lot more social work with the paramedic. Am I getting that right? She's the social worker. She's going to chastise me if I get it wrong. And the quick response would be the overdose follow-ups. So what we do is we run reports of our ESO system, and they hit on any kind of narcan administration, poisoning, drug use, and we make contact with those members within 24 to 48 hours and try to get them into recovery. Thank you so much, and thank you for all that you all do. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I just want to say once again how supportive I am of this program. I know several years ago we brought it to the mayor as being one of our top budget priorities, and I really appreciate how you all have dedicated your time and energy to this. I know it's not an easy job, and so we really appreciate all of you. I would like to continue to see this grow and serve more people in our community. If you could dream about how this would look in the future, what would it look like for you all? A lot more people. I mean, I have goals. I would love to see the crisis response being a 24-hour unit, multiple units, you know, helping our buggies out or ambulances. I would love to see the MIH program grow. The whole program. It's just more people. We can help more people and make a difference, right? So it takes a village, so. Yeah, and I'll second that emotion, although I think probably what you all have heard me say is that while we're always going to be people-focused, we're going to be data-informed. And so these folks love being out in the street doing the great work, and what annoys them is a chief who keeps saying, bring me the data, bring me the data. But we want to make sure that not only do we grow to fit the need, but we also grow smart and sustainable so that we're accurately meeting everybody's needs. So, yeah, it's a wonderful program, and it will continue to grow, hopefully, throughout the future. Thank you all again for coming, and thank you, Lieutenant Chief and the whole team. We appreciate you all. Thanks. Next, we have Family Services, an update from the Family Service Program under the Department of Social Services, and today with us, we have Sheila Hortenholt, Director of Family Services, to provide an update, because we haven't had one in a while. So thank you so much for coming and doing this for us. Good afternoon. My name is Sheila Hortenholt, and I'm the Director of Family Services, and just wanted to give you all a little bit of information about what we do and the services and programs that we offer. Our mission statement is to partner with and empower families with young children to achieve greater stability and resilience. A little bit about our history. We just celebrated 35 years of service to the Lexington community in October of 2024. The Family Care Center was established in 1989 to provide a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of teen mothers for education, career preparation, parenting support, health care, and child care. We partner with Fayette County Public Schools, Lexington, of course, Fayette County Government. In the beginning, it was University of Kentucky and Blue Grass Regional Comprehensive Care. Since then, our community partner list has grown tremendously. We receive a lot of community support at the Family Care Center. The Family Care Center uses a strength-based approach to assist parents in their efforts to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. This is accomplished through an array of services provided onsite, in the home, and in the community. The Family Care Center serves an average of 189 clients weekly, and our services are delivered through four core programs. Our Early Child Care Program provides early child care and education for children 6 weeks to 5 years. Our Family Service Coordination Program delivers intensive case management to families desiring greater independence and stability. Our Health Access Nurturing Development Services Hands Program provides evidence-based home visitation to new and expected parents. And our Parent Education Program provides high school education and parent support services to young parents. I will start with the Early Child Care Program. Each program manager is here today from each of their programs to tell you about their program. I'll start with Ms. Irma Bennett. Good afternoon. The Early Child Care Program serves to provide a healthy and safe development appropriate and inclusive environment for children 6 weeks to 5 years. The Early Child Care Program has a 5-star quality rating under the Kentucky All-Stars and we're keeping the 5 stars. That's a program that every 5 years we have to continue to keep the 5 stars. And also we are COA accredited. To support our philosophy, the Early Child Care Program partners with Fayette County Public Preschool by offering an on-site preschool program with two groups. We also work with Community Action Council with their Early Head Start Program that offer extended services for infants and toddlers age group. We also work with Blue Grass Behavioral Services for Children for a unique and intensive therapeutic program for children 2 to 5. Our outcomes are that 75% of the children age 5 that are kindergarten ready are indicated by the Breganza. The Breganza is a tool that we use to know that they have in the cognitive area, social emotional area and other areas that they are ready to go to kindergarten. 75% of our children achieve ultimate development and that's throughout the center. It's from 6 weeks to 5 year old on the ASQ. That's another tool that we use to measure all the areas that they are growing as they are expected to be growing. Sixteen children age 1 through 2 year olds receive services through Early Head Start with the partner that we use with Community Action. Thirty of our children receive services through Fayette County Public Preschool. Of those 30 children that we have, 10 have a partnership meaning they also are in our early childhood child care part and go to the preschool program. And 20 are from the community. They come on buses and live on buses. 12% of children receive services right now through Blue Grass Behavioral Services for more intense therapy or war one on one on trying to support the children on how to manage their emotions and things like that pretty much. Next I would like to introduce Elena Howard. She is the program manager for our Family Service Coordination Program. Good afternoon. I'm Elena Howard, the manager of the Family Service Coordination Program. Our program provides professional case management services for families with young children in the home ages 0 to 5. We also accept prenatal referrals. We use a strength-based approach to assist parents in their efforts to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. Each family receives a comprehensive needs assessment and develops goals for their family. Families can expect to meet with a case manager once or twice per week, sometimes more depending on the need of the family. The program serves all members of the household. We provide transportation to essential appointments and the average length of participation is six to nine months. Our program also houses the Volunteer Coordination Program. This program serves as the single point of entry for volunteers, groups and student interns. The volunteer coordinator receives and distributes donations, participates in special events and provides community outreach. We also offer a distribution program of essential supplies such as diapers, wipes, formula, and other baby items if we have them to families in the community. Our program outcomes, of the 19 families who exited from our program, two of the families achieved 50% or greater on at least two of their self-sufficiency goals. Eight of those 19 exited achieved 75% or greater on at least two of their self-sufficiency goals. We provided 320 referrals to our participants. We made 106 deliveries of essential supplies, clothing and food to our FSU participants. Service inquiries noted here, those are where we get calls into the center just from folks in the community that are looking for resources. We do that. That comes to us in a couple different ways. It may be just a phone call, through our general email account, possibly referrals that we received, but maybe this wasn't a best fit for our program, but we still want to provide a service to that family for making contact with them. So we count those as service inquiries. We served 319 unduplicated non-FSC families, so they did not enroll in any of our programs, but we did provide a service contact. We had 403 contacts, 37 families had multiple contacts with us. You can see the number of referrals that we did provide to those families, 492. And then we made 12 deliveries of essential supplies, including clothing and food to those families. So if we do have someone call in or who needs something, and they do not have any means of getting to us, and if we're able to, we will deliver it to those families. Thank you so much. Next, I would like to introduce Amanda Patrick. She is the program manager for our HANDS program. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this opportunity to come and speak. I am a master's level certified social worker and the manager of the HANDS program. I've been with my position three years now, and prior to that, I had the very distinct honor of working for Aging and Disability Services Director Kristi Stambaugh at the new Senior Center. My career has come full circle and brought me back to pregnant and parenting mothers of Fayette County. HANDS is a unique program in that we are administered at the local level, but we are a state agency. There is a HANDS site in one of all 120 counties in Kentucky. We are one of only three that are administered outside of a health department. Fayette County is large enough to have two sites, and we are lucky to be one of them. We serve families as early as mom finds out she's pregnant up until 24 months. We can stay in the home for an additional year for the younger mothers that might need more assistance in the community. We teach a very specific curriculum administered by the state called Growing Great Kids. We have developmental manuals to follow the child's age as they go through the program. Every year, we have an annual site review. Every year, we do above average and get excellent remarks and do a lot of hard work to earn that distinction. I have seven full-time staff that work for me and one part-time. We go into the homes once a week. We spend at least 30 to 45 minutes with each family. We provide activities based on the developmental age of the child. We do ages and stages questionnaires every two months to ensure that the child is developmentally on track. For those that fall outside of the range of what would be considered developmentally on track, we make referrals to Kentucky Early Intervention Services and get them started with therapies like speech therapy, occupational and physical therapy to help support that growth. It also makes the children eligible for Early Head Start once they graduate our program. The outcomes that we do every year, every family is screened for depression and domestic violence. That is one of the goals of HANDS to reduce those instances in our Kentucky homes. A hundred percent of our children are screened through the Early Intervention System, which again is the ages and stages questionnaires. We do a child-proofing checklist twice within the enrollment of the HANDS program. Once prenatally and once postnatally at seven to nine months to make sure that the families have what they need to keep their children safe. We use the Edinburgh Depression Scale to screen for perinatal and postnatal depressions. We also do a domestic violence screen three times within enrollment. We also work closely with the Kentucky Early Intervention System, the KEYS program, and again screen every two months to ensure that we are on track developmentally with each of our families. In fiscal year 2024, we did over 2,500 home visits and we served approximately 145 families. Next I would like to introduce to you Ms. Robin Wilkerson. She is the program manager for our Parent Education Program. Good afternoon. I'm the manager for the Parent Education Program. The Family Care Center Parent Education Program partners with Fayette County Schools to help pregnant and parenting youth reach their educational and parenting goals. So we are a high school for pregnant teens and teen moms. In addition to their regular educational classes that they receive, some of the classes that we provide on a weekly basis are prenatal and parenting classes for every student. We do classes on healthy relationships and things like independent living skills. We have a couple cooking classes and budgeting classes and a variety of different things. Every student that comes to our high school is eligible for transportation. We provide, through Fayette County Schools, transportation for the student and their child to come to school every day. They are all eligible for on-site child care and so the idea is they can get on the school bus in the morning with their baby. They have designated car seats on the bus and so they can get on, they can come to school, they come in the building and they drop their child off at daycare and they come up to high school for the day. This makes it a lot easier for these girls to be able to stay in high school and not drop out because this is a group who is very at risk for dropping out of high school. All of our students also receive case management services. We have two social workers in our program. Each student is assigned to one of them and they provide intensive case management services to help them with referrals and get the resources that they need. They also assist them in getting child care assistance to pay for their daycare while they're in school. Some of our outcomes, if I hit the right thing, from last year, so 95% of the students we had last year achieved their educational goal. Those goals are typically either that they graduated or they passed their classes and are advancing to the next school year. 97% successfully achieved their parenting goals. We had 93% of students that came through our program were retained in the high school education. By that I mean only 7% dropped out, which is a pretty good number. Last year we had 15 students graduate at the end of the year. This year we are on track for 14 currently that are on track to graduate in May. One of the other outcomes we have, we do a protective factor survey when they enter into our program and also exit. Our goal is for them to increase their scores on that protective factor survey to show that they've got some more support and resiliency and they're nurturing an attachment with their child. Those are things that will help to prevent them being at risk for child abuse and neglect. As I told you earlier, we do have a lot of support from the community. Some of those are listed on the screen. And our time is up. So are there any questions? Thank you so much for the presentation. I can attest that all of your programs are extremely high quality and you all do amazing work. Vice Chair Baxter. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Director and team for the presentation and for all your hard work. You guys are really busy over there. So I want to let you finish. Looks like you have a few things in the pipeline for what's coming in the future. So I want to make sure everybody sees those great resources there. And then I have a few questions since we're coming up on budget season. I want to talk a little bit about our partnership with Fayette County Public Schools and how those programs are funded. Do we get funding from Fayette County or is it our sole responsibility? Talk a little about that. Right now it's our sole responsibility. They provide the teachers. We provide the social services piece. So the teachers are paid through Fayette County Public Schools. And then the transportation as well? Transportation is paid for by LFUCG. We have a contract with them in which we pay for the transportation. You say with or without? We have a contract. Okay. With Fayette County Public Schools. Okay. And is our parent education program the only opportunity for parents like in Fayette County or are there some schools that offer that? They have the option to stay at their home school but we are the designated alternative school for the parent, I'm sorry, for the pregnant mothers and their babies. Okay. And is it only available to mothers or is it available to fathers as well? It is available to fathers as well. We've just never had any enroll. Okay. And then I had a specific question about the HANDS program. Yes, ma'am. I know that she said it was a state agency but does that mean it only receives state funding or do we contribute to that as well? No. Actually we are self-sufficient. We bill three different payment sources, the Medicaid system. There is a tobacco settlement with the state of Kentucky that we can bill through that and we can also bill the MIECHV federal grant program and that is the Maternal Infant Children Home Visiting Program. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then my last question is just when we talk about the volunteer program, how do you all get your volunteers? What is the best way that you have found to recruit volunteers and how can we help? Well we definitely try to get the word out in terms of going and just visiting places. The volunteer coordinator will go out and do community outreach but they're welcome to just call the center and speak to our volunteer coordinator. We do try to just find what's the best fit for the volunteers. So if people want to come in and read to the children that's in early child care, if they want to do something up in parent education, we do have some volunteers that will come in and do just group work, work in our courtyard just to beautify it. So we really just try to have a variety of opportunities for volunteers if they're interested in coming to the center. Okay. Most of us have newsletters so if there's ever an opportunity for us to help you gather volunteers for anything specific, feel free to let us know. That would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Again, thank you all for your hard work. I know you're really doing important work in our community and I know that everybody here really appreciates all the hard work that you put in. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. I'll double down on Council Member Baxter's statement. I want to give my gratitude and thanks to the Family Care Center for the great work you're doing. I want to commend the Family Care Center for its incredible work in supporting the most vulnerable members of our community. Your mission aligns closely with the needs of our underserved population and directly addresses social determinants of health leading to better health outcomes. So I guess my first question would go into, you know, often the most vulnerable communities lack access to critical services and face barriers like transportation, like access to information. So how are we ensuring that these underserved communities are being prioritized within the Family Care Center? Whenever we do have those families, we do assessments in each of the programs and if they do have a lack of transportation, if they need to go to an appointment, we'll make sure that we have cars, government cars that we can take them to their appointments. For an example, we've had a family that needed to get their birth certificates. So Ms. Elena's program drove the family to Frankfort to make sure that they had what they needed. If we have families that need food, we'll take them to God's Pantry. Whatever their needs are, we try to meet them right where they are and get them what they need to be successful. That's amazing. That's amazing. And we do have tailored outreach to some of our underserved communities, making sure that they know about all the services and resources we offer. Yes, sir. We will go, we will partner with other agencies when they have resource fairs so that we can let everyone know what our services are and we also, one of our future plans is to start holding those resource fairs on site so that the community can come in and see what services we offer and see what they may need. Okay. So going toward, let's see, the Family Service Coordination Program, I really appreciate the strength-based approach you employ, which focuses on positive rather than deficits, well, negative things. Can you elaborate on the self-sufficiency goals and objectives set through the Family Service Coordination Program and what benchmarks or milestones you use to track success? Sure. Those goals are developed by the family. So we are there to facilitate those conversations, but these are the goals that are most important to the family. And typically that is going to surround housing, you know, safe and affordable housing, employment, child development, child care, medical. We do try to just make sure that all of those areas that a family may need are being addressed. But again, they develop those and they prioritize those needs. Great. And then, that's it for question-wise. So just in your future section, you mentioned hosting community resource fairs, and I would love to be a resource to help partner or collaborate with you to have some in the first district. The rest of the future items that you have, I hope that the council looks to support you on those items. And thank you for your work. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I can just attest personally from the child care facility how my son benefited from your child care for some time during his preschool years, and it's just a fantastic program. And also seeing the difference that the educational program has made on so many young women. I've been fortunate enough to be at several of the graduations and participate and have former ballet students that have graduated, and it really makes a huge difference on their lives. So thank you once again for all you do. If we can be of assistance as council members or as a committee, please let us know. Thank you. And now we have an update from Partners for Youth. Under our Department of Social Services, and we have Shanrika Shackelford. She is the Executive Director, and she is here with us to provide the presentation. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you, committee, council members, and everyone in their respective places. My name is Shanrika Shackelford, and like she said, I am the Executive Director of Partners for Youth. With me today is my Community Engagement Coordinator, Shante Bruce. About Partners for Youth, our mission is to promote positive youth development and to prevent juvenile delinquency through collaboration and capacity building. We fulfill this mission through providing financial support, scholarships for college-bound youth, grants for organizations that focus on youth. We also offer programming that focuses on youth development, and we do community collaborations with other organizations. The PFY staff consists of myself, the Community Engagement Coordinator, Shante Bruce, our Youth Program Coordinator, Oscar Madrono-Gonzalez, he just started with us in December, our Administrative Clerk, Ms. Charlene Walker, and we will hire a seasonal clerk who comes and is hired around the spring and stays with us through August. Our staff also sometimes consists of college interns who come in seasonally for about 8 to 12 weeks to complete their field studies. My Administrative Clerk and I, we focus on the Grassroots Grants Allocation Program, which has funded over 530 programs since 1995. We also focus on the PFY Toyota Scholarship Program, which has awarded high school youth and college freshmen about $280,000 since 1998. Our Community Engagement Coordinator focuses on the Summer Youth Job Training Program, which she will talk about in detail in a few minutes. She also focuses on the I Do Initiative. Our I Do Initiative consists of the Community Partners Tables, in which we have tables in the Gainesway community, Cardinal Valley, and West End. Combined with that is our Festival of Neighbors that takes place in the Gainesway community currently, but we are looking to expand that. The Community Engagement Coordinator also focuses on our resident interns, and as I stated, we do have our college and our high school interns who come in seasonally. Our Youth Program Coordinator focuses on our Neighborhood Youth Council, which has served approximately 75 students since 2017. Our Neighborhood Youth Council emerges students and gives them the opportunity to connect with the community and also the city government. Digital Scholars is a new pilot program funded by AT&T. We are utilizing not only our Neighborhood Youth Council, but we are also connecting and recruiting from a couple schools to bring in those high school—it's focused on high school seniors—all high school students, I'm sorry. MetroCats is our other digital program, but it focuses on middle school, and right now we're connected with LTMS, and we've served approximately 100 students since 2019. Our Adopt-a-Park program falls under the IDEAL initiative, but the Youth Program Coordinator focuses on that program. Every spring break and every summer, we go out to different corners of the community. Right now we're in the Cardinal Valley and Douglas Park community, and we have served about 1,620 community youth since the establishment of Adopt-a-Park, and approximately 875 volunteers from different organizations have supported us through this initiative. Also under the IDEAL initiative is our IDEAL booklet, in which the Youth Program Coordinator focuses on. It's been in publication since 2012, and we do send that out in the spring and the summer, and we focus on truly distributing that to Fayette County Public Schools so that they can give that to parents for the spring and the summer breaks. Spotlight on Youth is an annual talent show. It has had shows since 2008. We did not have a show last year, but we do plan to have a show this year. Here's how our community partners assist us. The Summer Youth Job Training Program and our worksites, these are 2024 numbers. We had 109 organizations with 175 locations join us and become a worksite for our Summer Youth Job Training Program, and below that are the industry categories from which our students had to choose. They also help us with skill sessions, Chase Bank, LexTran, LFUCG Workforce, LFUCG Risk Management, and Urban League. They all join us and offer courses through our skill sessions, and Shantae is going to go over that in detail. Our community partners, with our IDOO initiative, which includes Adopt-A-Park, our community partner tables, and our IDOO booklet, which I mentioned. They offer activities and table our youth events, and for the IDOO book, they also partner with us by submitting their events and activities that we publish in the book. Our community partners consist of local businesses, local institutions, community police, community centers, non-profits, and Fayette County Public Schools teachers and administrators. In return, we also volunteer and or offer funding to local events, one such event that we do annually is Cops and Bobbers. For future goals, this is our 30th year, and we plan to do a citywide celebration. We're going to expand our Festival of Neighbors and try to really have about four to five events in each corner of the city. Also with our future goals, we want to expand with some of your job training programs, our high school senior co-op. Right now we have one student, and we also want to increase worksite opportunities in the medical, financial, and government industries. With our scholarship program, we want to increase the amount of recipient awards, and with our IDOO initiative, of course we're going to do ongoing community partner recruitment, but Partners for Youth also wants to show more presence at our partners' events in which the hiring of Oscar is going to allow us to do that because we want to expand into more neighborhoods. With funding, we'll continually actively apply for grant opportunities and continue to increase our outreach to local organizations to financially support what we give to our youth in the community. I'm going to turn it over to Shontay now. Hello, I'm Shontay Bruce, I'm the Community Engagement Coordinator at Partners for Youth. The Summer Youth Job Training Program, this program is for rising sophomores to rising seniors in high school. It's a program where we employ them and support them prior to employment and pay them for part-time work up to 20 hours, $15 an hour. The purpose of this program is just to instill those interpersonal skills in the network for a stride to get them prepared for adulthood. The focus of SYJTP is to build those skills and to have workplace mentorship. Those skills that we look to emphasize are punctuality, accountability, teamwork, professionalism and active listening. The expansion of SYJTP is a high school co-op program. We currently employ one high schooler now in our office and the focus of that is to give them more government experience so we send him to different places within city government so he can get his feet wet and get knowledgeable of what all goes on. Recruitment for SYJTP starts in October for worksites and youth workers. We recruit by doing school visits at all the high schools as well as alternative schools. Social media, our Facebook and Instagram we always advertise there as well as press releases. Email notifications and mail notifications to our previous participants as well as our community partners with our newsletters and emails. We do business visits as well as phone calls and emails to recruit new businesses and all calls to LFUCG as well as word of mouth. The educational components of SYJTP are our skill sessions. We host a financial literacy course that is taught by Chase Bank. We do workforce etiquette, resume building, interviewing skills and career pathways which are typically taught by Urban League, Jubilee Jobs and LFUCG Workforce. We host a youth worker orientation which is conducted by LFUCG Risk Management as well as a parent orientation just to answer those parent questions and provide them with the information in the way that we proceed up front. Our career fair is something that we host typically around March and that is for our youth workers, it's their first interaction with the businesses that we work with and partner with. So they are expected to dress professionally, have a resume and be ready to interview on the spot with those work sites. Our students are encouraged to share with us their top career interests when they fill out their applications and then we have our work sites educate our students on what they do in their industry. We enrolled 400 students in the career fair last year, of those 400, 360 showed up. Our new higher paperwork clinic which is also known as our verification clinic is held for four days. Three of those days are weekdays, after hours and evenings and then there is a half day on Saturday so that way a family can pick one time to come and they have several options to do so. This year we'll be hosting it at the new workforce development center and our students learned how to and are responsible for filling out their I-9s, W-4s, K-4s and direct deposit forms. We work with LFUCG payroll to get all that paperwork processed. Our placements, we place our youth with work sites that they are interested in based on how they fill out their applications. From that we work out with the work site what their availability is. Some work sites that are popular don't have a lot of availability so we have to go to our next choice. Our youth workers are sent their placement packets prior to work starting in June and that is for them to introduce themselves to their work site and work out their schedules ahead of time. We have 300 students that we typically place. After that 300 has been met with placements, we place the remainder on the waiting list. And once all the placements are finalized, we do not make changes unless there are safety concerns for the students. Our procedures are once the youth workers are placed, us, risk management as well as other social services staff go out and conduct site visits just to ensure that our agreements are being followed and everyone is being safe and the students are learning and being productive. Payroll, the work site supervisor submits payroll timesheets to us weekly. We make sure that they get entered into PeopleSoft so our students are paid. As far as youth conduct goes, we have a form that supervisors can track the successful and unsuccessful behaviors of our youth while they are working and we also have an accolades form that they can highlight those students. These are our 2024 SYJTP stats. We keep this, not only do we have to submit it for reporting, but this allows us also to see the diversity of our students and the zip code breakdown allows us to see the neighborhoods and the schools from which our students are mostly coming. For those who have a lesser enrollment, it lets us know what we need to do to get the word out and get the recruitment out in those neighborhoods. Questions? Thank you so much for your presentation. I'll circle back at the end and I will let Vice Chair Baxter go. Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for this presentation and for hosting probably one of the most favorite programs that we have in the city, so thank you for that. I do have a question about just industries that are represented in your program. So I know in the placements slide you mentioned that you base placements on interest level, but when you go back, I'm scrolling in the presentation, when you go back to the skill sessions and you talk about career pathways, how are those careers determined? So the career pathways are just your standard career pathways, so they are taught about that up front prior to filling out their applications and paperwork so they understand what they could be interested in, and then on that application they document what it is that they are, and that's how it goes. Okay. Then the only reason that I ask is because I'm a huge proponent of trades work, and I want to make sure that that industry is highlighted and not forgotten about because it's so very important to everything that functions. I think that a lot of times it's kind of put on the back burner as not a glorious job or something that we should strive to participate in, but like I said, it is the basis for how everything works, and so I just want to make sure that we are encouraging our young people to explore a career in the trades. So thank you all so much for investing in our young people, and with that, that's it. Thanks, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Hale. Thanks, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. I've got just a couple of questions. The first question, I know you said the recruitment starts in October. Is there a deadline when? We continue to recruit, so I am still in schools. I have a few this week, and we just continue to recruit, and then we keep matching until we hit 300, and then we place on the waiting list. So until we hit those magical numbers, we typically have about 500 in our skill session, so we just keep going. Okay, and that was the next question I have, like the vetting process on selecting these students. Is it more so first come, first serve, or is it like an interview process or something? So we start, so the recruitment in October is for our skill session, so skill session is mandatory priority placement for us. So those students that complete all of their skill sessions, and then the biggest portion of that is also doing their new hire paperwork. And so once you get both of those going, you reach those 300 students. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. We've had three pretty impactful and great presentations today, so it warms my heart. Either way, I want to express my full support for the work that you're doing to create opportunities for the Lexington's youth. Your efforts clearly make a big difference, an impactful difference in our community. I kind of want to go towards, and I just want to think big. A year-round model for job training programs could be incredibly impactful and useful for our community, and I understand that there are many challenges that could be the reason why we don't have it, whether it be funding and others. Can you speak towards those challenges and then also highlight how this could be impactful, how you think it could be impactful to the city and make your organization be more effective? And I'll let Shante get into detail because she does the active recruiting, but that is one of the biggest things that we see when it comes to recruiting and training the students, keeping them engaged. That is why we start off with such a high number of students, because we know natural attrition is going to occur. And so keeping those kids engaged, trying to keep up with the way that children learn these days and what interests them these days, those are some of the things that we face. Shante? So yes, all of that, plus when you factor in extracurriculars of our youth, a large portion of our youth are in other programming and other things, which even sometimes causes some alternatives for our skill sessions. We have skill sessions this evening. A lot of them can't attend, so we have to supply makeup sessions. So it's also working around their schedules. Let's see. So in the presentation, it mentioned 300 students received placement in programs while the other are on wait lists. How many were on wait lists this past year, and what steps are being taken to increase the capacity within that? We had 10 students on our waiting list, and the way that our waiting list works is if a work site doesn't work out for a student or something happens, they go on vacation extended, we do then fill those spots with those. So nothing as a council we need to do to make sure that those folks on the wait list can automatically get into the program? Is it funding? What could that be? So that all the kids can take part in this, if it's a number like 10 to 20. I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? So regarding the wait list folks and the folks that may not be able to take part in the program, what do we need to do as a council to make sure that all kids can take part in this program? When it comes to the waiting list, it really depends on the availability of the work sites. So I do send out an all-call to the council to say, hey, here's what we're doing, if you can help promote and get this out to local organizations. And also we do an all-call to government as well. We know that it's a time when most are on vacation, so not everybody has the capacity, but we really do want city government more involved. We do have a good number, I'm not going to say that there isn't a placement, but we would like to see an increase in that. And then just one last question. I was pleased to see the diversity in the program statistics as a last slide, but notice a lower participation in one of our lowest zip codes, 40508, one of our poorest zip codes. Are there any specific barriers preventing participation in this area? I have not researched that in detail. So a lot of times a lot of students and parents, like she said, it's extracurricular. And then also as well, some have a focus, not a focus, but a certain vision of the program, and so they may not feel that they need that. And the only reason why I brought that up is I know that specifically in those poor, some of our lower socioeconomic status neighborhoods, that any extra income in that house could help out, whether it be from the youth or anyone that's in the house. So just making sure that we can try to somewhat, try to increase that number in the 40508 area just to help out, I would say. But thank you for all the work you're doing, and I look forward to supporting you in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you both for the presentation. I have questions about the scholarship program. Historically, has that been funded through the Toyota Partnership, or is that, have they always funded the scholarship, or does it come from a myriad of resources? We have always funded the scholarship since the inception. We are looking for other sources to expand that and expand awards, but Toyota has always been involved. Have you all ever done any fundraising for the scholarship program? Yes, we have participated in the Good Giving Challenge on an annual basis, and this year we explored some other financial means through other investments to increase our funding. We're also getting ready to look towards some community organizations and local businesses that are out there to increase that. That is at the top of my list, so thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, having been to you all's scholarship program a few times now, you all serve some phenomenal students. And I would love to grow that number to be able to give bigger scholarships to those students. They're making the grades, they're doing the work in the community, they're participating. And I like that we can give them something, but I would love that we could increase that number and give them more money for those scholarships. So, I want to work on that with you all. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Hill. Thank you, Chair. Just real quick, we were thinking about employers and how you all recruit employers. So, what are your efforts on getting more employers involved in this program, and how are you reaching out to those? So, we do business visits. So, if we see a business in the community, we will go up to that door with a flyer and say hey. We also make phone calls and emails to them as well, business magazines, yellow pages. We're actively searching for new partners all the time. You're right. And I'm definitely in support for these type of programs. I love programs like this. What can we do to help even recruit employers? Continue to get the word out to employers that we are always looking to add on new work sites, share with people that you know that have businesses, and just encourage folks to join and help out the youth in our community. Okay, we'll set up a meeting and we'll talk about it. And to finish answering your question, to let those businesses know that we're focused on all youth. It's not just a certain youth, because a lot of businesses think that we're just focused on troubled youth. No, it's all youth. All right, thank you. Thanks, Chair. Thank you. So, back when I had a dance outreach program in Valley Park for six years, I worked very closely during that time with Partners for Youth, and I saw how important it was to the youth in the community. And I helped start the first adopt-a-park. And so I was wondering, with Valley Park now under construction, is there going to be an adopt-a-park there over spring break and summer break? We are actively working on it, because we did have to halt adopt-a-park last year. But this year, we've actually had a meeting with the Neighborhood Association to explore opportunities. Because yes, we're going to be there. The building is not going to be finished, so we're trying to explore other areas of the park, and if there are other opportunities surrounding that neighborhood. But wherever we choose, we just want to make sure the walkability and transportation is there for the children and their parents. Yes, and I think that that's an ideal location. I know a lot of kids live around there and don't have anything to do over those breaks. So I do appreciate that effort to try to have it there, even though there won't be a building necessarily available. Weather permitting, I know, especially during spring break. And then also the spotlight on youth, my kids participated in it several years. And I remember the first year, I was like, what is this? How is this helpful? And then I saw how the kids were just so happy to be able to perform and be on stage for their peers and their family. And so, yeah, I would love to see that come back for sure. And then, I know over the years, we've had some challenges with staffing. Because the type of staff is split, that some is partners for youth and some is city. And it's been hard to kind of have consistency. So can you explain your staffing right now and what your goals are to kind of maintain staffing? Absolutely, we were able to get a couple of our positions reclassified. So Shante's position did receive a position study and reclassification. And we retitled it Community Engagement Coordinator. That allowed for a salary base and bringing in that person with that experience who can pick up that role and keep it going. Also, with the Youth Program Coordinator, we were able to go under a position study and get that rolled over to an LFUCG position so that that salary base and experience can be there. And so I'm very happy to have those two roles now because I do believe that when you gain those people with that experience, they are more than likely to stay because they have the experience and they're receiving their pay. The only partners for youth staff that I have now that is not under LFUCG is the clerical positions. And how many of those are there? There's two. Two, okay. That's great. I think that's a good change. I'm glad for that and want to support that all the way. Well, thank you so much for your presentation and for coming out. And we're happy to keep these in committee for next year for an update anytime you all want to come and give an update. Thank you very much. Okay, now if you would turn to the back of your packet, we're going to review the items that are currently on our committee referral list. Staff reached out to you, so this should be fairly quick. I'm just going to make a few motions and ask a few questions. We won't need to make a motion to change a sponsor. And if someone wants to add something to committee, just remember to do that at work session during the council announcements. Or you can always tell me and I can place it into committee at work session. All right, so we're going to start at the top. If you have an item you'd like to remove, please sign in to make a motion to remove it. The first item is to expand the adult mental health court with an after care program. And I am going to make a motion to remove that. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that item is removed. Council Member Baxter, do you want to keep crime reduction technology in committee? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, we will keep that in. Next, the assessment and enforcement of the noise ordinance. Council Member LaGree has asked for a new sponsor. Is there anyone that would like to take that on? I'll do it. Okay, Council Member Gray is now sponsoring the assessment and enforcement of the noise ordinance. And the next one is Council Member Shands. It's about the golf cart policies. And she said that she is going to examine this through our complete streets policy work, including policy around other motorized vehicles such as four wheelers and bikes. Therefore, she'd like me to make a motion to remove the review of the golf cart policies from committee. So move. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And that carries. Let's see. And now we are on eviction, diversion, and right to counsel. I think Vice Mayor Wu is currently working on that, is that correct? Yes. So we'll keep that in committee. Then the comprehensive review of code enforcement, that will be presented at the February 25th committee meeting. Is that right, Council Member Gray? Okay, thank you. And then coordinated victim response plan, I think that stays in committee as of right now. And then I am going to make a motion to remove the improvement of the fire department recruitment. So, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. The village model stays in committee. We got an update on the youth council that stays in Hope Center expansion project. Do I understand that, Council Member Lynch, you would like to take this item over? Yes, not so much in the capacity of getting an update about the expansion, but I think the Hope Center should be able to provide us an annual update, and I'll be okay sponsoring that. Okay, and we don't need to do anything extra, correct? We can just change the title for an annual update from the Hope Center. Thank you, Council Member Lynch. Let's see, the review and creation of encampment coordinator. Item 12 is going to be in the February 25th committee. Let's see, we know we got an update on the county sheriff's office. We'll work to get a date on that. And then the other ones are all annual updates. Does anyone have any other thing to remove or comments on any of the annual updates? All right, Council Member Lynch, did you have something else? The Emergency Financial Assistance Program, since that program is no longer, that program has ended, that's an annual update that can be removed. Okay, so I move to remove the Emergency Financial Assistance Program annual update. Second. Great, thank you. We don't have to vote on removing, do we? Do we have to vote on the removal? Yes, okay, I'm sorry. All those in favor of removing this item? Any opposed? Thank you, I'm sorry about that. Anything else, Council Member Lynch? Okay, thank you. If anyone doesn't have anything else, then we are adjourned. We have gone through our whole agenda. Yay, thank you. Thank you.