as if we're dead. Ooh. We could rise together while our love would go. In my body, I will take you everywhere I go. So I say from me to you, I will make your dreams come true. Do you love me? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? Do you serve food? I have some questions for you afterward, I guess, today. Once I have time to digest the information that we were just given, so. So if it makes you feel any better, it's not concerning to me. We have encouraged people to spend their budgets, to do what they say they're going to do. And we increased our budget significantly from FY 24 to FY 25. So we have higher budgets for people to spend. So I'm not concerned with that. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Personnel is what I'm referring to. Yeah, so if we were, oh, too far. Thank you, Sally Hamilton, our COA, Chief Administrator Officer, whatever she is. So you'll see we're still $5.6 million under budget and personnel. If we were negative here, I would be concerned. But we are still well within our budget for personnel, even though we're spending more than last year. We added positions. We increased salaries. The contracts going to affect all of those things are taken into account in that higher spend. So if we were negative here, I would be concerned. But we're still positive here. So it's nothing to be concerned about at this point. If you're not concerned, okay. For me, I did a whole, had a whole moment over here. Yeah, no, no, I'm not concerned. So you would know if I was concerned. But we're still under budget for the fiscal year. So we wanted to be closer to budget and spending more. Understand. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair Brown. Thank you, Councilmember. And I will say, you know, I take the responsibility for you all just receiving the information today in the packet. I know we've asked a lot of our finance team to provide additional information, and they've been working on that. So I'm glad that we have it today. But my apologies for not getting it out to Councilmembers prior to. So thank you, Director. And we'll move to the other funds. And I'll say just moving forward, Commissioner Hensley and her team are going to provide these quarterly, these updates quarterly to this committee on these funds, in addition to the monthly general fund update. The other thing I'll point out with these funds is these are funds that are, they have a dedicated use. This is their first time presenting these funds to us in this format. So hopefully it's, you know, in a way that most Councilmembers or all Councilmembers can understand and digest it. And I think we would even be open to input and some thoughts about maybe how to present this information better. So with that, Commissioner, I'll turn it over to you. Okay, so first, can you all hear me? I want to say thank you to Councilmember Brown and Kelly and Councilmember Savigny who have helped us work through this formatting. First and foremost, we're trying to make something that is usually pretty complicated, really digestible, both to the Council, but also to the general public, because these are not easy and we don't look at them on a monthly basis, and so they are a little bit different from what we typically see. So there are some similarities when we talk about some of these other funds. They are dedicated for a general purpose, or for a purpose, which makes them a little bit different. But you will hear, as we go through some of these funds, the similarities from the general fund that we just talked about, as far as some of the operating expenses that are running under budget, the professional services, repairs and maintenance, as well as the capital. So just across all of our funds, they have similar challenges. The ordering of the large capital, like you hear about the delay in fire trucks and how long it takes us to get fire trucks and big equipment in streets and roads. We see those across all of our funds. Our sanitary sewer and our water quality trucks are those big trucks as well. You'll see that when you get into those funds as well. So we do have some similarities. That being said, there are some significant differences when we talk about these funds. Our general fund ends with a fund balance conversation in October. You all are well familiar with that conversation, where we assign any unspent funds out. We give it a home. We create other projects or we create a purpose for any unspent funds. Unlike the general fund, the funds we're going to talk about today, any unspent dollars are, these are called open funds. They just roll from year to year. And so they retain their fund balance because they are, the revenue is generated and the expenses are earned for a specific purpose and they're only to be used for that specific purpose. These funds just roll from year to year to year. And so we're going to talk about the current month financials, which actually for these are December, but we're also going to talk about the money that they're bringing in, and then based on whatever happens during the course of the year, they'll have an ending balance that'll end. They're heavy, heavy capital costs. So all of these funds that we'll talk about today are heavy in capital. And so whatever we retain from year to year is used for those capital expenditures, and that's really the long-term approach to all of the ones we're going to discuss today. So when we talk about our overall budget, and I'm sorry, I know this is a really long intro to just this one little slide, but when we talk about all of the funds that we budget, our general fund is about $500 million of the $850 million net of transfers of expenses that we talk about. Today we're going to talk about urban services, water quality, sanitary, sewer, and landfill. When you add those to your general fund, that makes up about 82% of all of the dollars that we're responsible for, all of the budgeted expense dollars. Outside of that, we also have our fiduciary funds, which is like our police and fire pension and our city employee pension fund. We also have our capital fund that we discussed at the budget retreat. And then we have some of our other restricted funds like our police confiscated and some of our other smaller funds. So this comprises a vast majority of the dollars that we see and are responsible for in our budgeted funds. So we're going to talk through some of these. Again, this is the first time we're presenting them. We've tried to make them as apples to apples as what we're used to seeing. It does have a little bit of fluctuation. And so as we go through these, we're open to any and all feedback as far as the presentation or the questions and comments you all might have about how the fund works or what it might be reserved for or different uses. Law is really helpful about telling us what we can and cannot use them for, as well as their budget is very specific. And so as we go through this, any and all feedback that you all might have is greatly appreciated. So with that, I'll flip the slide. So the first thing we're going to talk about is Urban Services Fund. It's 1115, it's coming into the year, before I get into that, it comprises the three activities that are refuse collection, street light, and street cleaning. What is unique about this fund is the majority of its revenue is earned by December 31st. So this is the ad valorem conversation that you all have around about August that sets the rates. The property taxes are collected in November and December, and so most of the revenue comes in by December 31st. So you can see when we go through the financials that are through December, most of the revenue has been collected. That being said, it has to run the remainder of the year on those revenues. So while we will still have some collections, we still have a little bit of ways to go. You can see that we are still working on our expense side of it. So we expected, at this point in time, to be in a positive position of about $24 million. We're actually at almost $28 million, so we're in a good place. Part of that is because our operating is running behind, just like we are in the general fund a little bit. That would primarily be in repairs and maintenance and our professional services, and also our capital is lagging. So those are not unexpected, particularly with those big capital expenses being in our refuse, with the ordering of the big trucks, the waste trucks, but we're doing a little bit better than we expected to be at this point. Now what is beneficial at doing this on a quarterly basis and doing this at this point in time is, right around the corner is April, which means we'll be presenting March. So you guys will get to see back to back, December versus March, at the next presentation. So we came into this year with a fund balance of $25.9 million in those three activities. The vast majority of that fund balance was in our refuse activity. We fixed street lights last year, a year before last. Up until that point, it was needing a general fund subsidy because the activity was not funding itself. And so we had to rebalance that. It is now in a positive position by $800,000. So every now and again, we have to look at where we're headed and rebalance the funds. So that is just kind of an overview of this fund, and we're going to continue. We'll look at this again next month. We'll look at the March report. But we do expect the collections to come in, and I believe we'll still be in a good position when we come to March. The next two we're going to talk about, and I'm going to talk about them a little bit in tandem, is sanitary, sewer, and water quality. They work together, the operating fund and the construction fund work together in tandem to provide funds for the daily ongoing repairs and maintenance and operation. As well as do those large projects that you all see that dig up big holes in the ground. So the primary function for the sanitary sewer is the consent decree, as well as maintaining the structures that we have in place for the treatment plants, the maintenance of pump stations, and then the rehabilitation of our sewer lines. As you all are well aware, that is a very costly endeavor. And so the working in tandem piece, this is the operating fund. This used to actually be three different funds, a trust, an operating, and a construction that went back and forth with each other. We will be bringing forth a BA to you all. So actually we're able to go to a GFOA conference and we were able to eliminate that trust and roll it into the operating fund. So that big other financing sources and that transfer line, they can now be eliminated because we can roll those in. So we used to have to function between three different funds. If you can imagine a Newton's Cradle, if you guys have ever seen one of those where the balls bounce back and forth. That's how the three of those used to work together. Now we only have two of those that have to work. But any dollars that are left over at the end of the year in the operating fund get transferred to the capital fund for their long planned activities for the consent decree and or the replacement of those projects that they've got in the pipeline. Pun intended. Water quality fund is very similar to the sanitary sewer fund that we were discussing. We have the operating and the construction as well. Again, we are in a better position than we expected to be. We budgeted to have a revenue exceeding our expenses by $2.4 million at this point. We're actually at $4.7 million. So we're doing a little bit better than we expected. As of December, again we'll turn around and see this again in March, I expect that to continue. Our operating is a little bit, having a little bit of a variance, but we're actually doing better than we expected in our revenue as well. So that one is doing well to date. And then the last one is landfill fund. Landfill also has a little bit different of a caveat. Also capital heavy. But it does have a different requirement as far as, and this is where I'm going to get out of my lane, just a hair. Landfill does have a requirement. Since we had an active landfill, we do have requirements that we retain part of our cash balance for a period of time that if we have environmental considerations, we have to be able to address them. So we have to retain enough funds to be able to cover the landfill or address any issues with runoff or any concerns that we may have for a period of time. And that is the extent of the environmental piece that I know. Nancy's team is here to help me out in case you have any operational questions about that. But that does, the balance that we had, and I'm sorry I have neglected to tell you what the fund balances were. We can go back to those for all these funds. We did come in with a $39 million fund balance to the landfill fund at June 30th. A good portion of that is set aside for that post-closure requirement. But we do have some capital expenditures that are budgeted this year. That being said, we did expect to be in a negative position at this point of about $2 million. We're in a positive position of about $1.2 million. And so we're actually doing very well to date for the month of December, month end of December in the landfill fund as well. Let me go back real quick. That was a lot. The fund balance for water quality was $29.5 million coming in at June 30th. Because I missed that one. And sanitary sewer was $24.6 million. Sorry about that. Got a little ahead of myself. And with that, I will take any questions. Or I'm happy to address them outside of this meeting because I know that was a lot. And if you want to sit down and talk about them, I'm happy to do so. Thank you, Commissioner. I know it's been a labor of love getting this information together for us. It has. And we'll appreciate it. I think we got there, though. I hope so. Committee members, any questions? First, we have Council Member Savigny. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't thank you enough. And actually, you did a great job. And it's really good, because unless we go to the audit, we really don't know the cash fund balances of these particular accounts. And it is important for us to know those for decision making. Understood. So I appreciate it. I just have a few quick questions. Everything is, I love everything you did, so thank you. I'll do my best to answer the next ones on the fly. I was going to ask you the fund balance, so you answered it first, so that's helpful. So on Sanitary Sewer Operating Fund, the services revenue number, that's basically the LexServe bill, correct? They are. The revenues are generated from the LexServe bill, and they increase by CPI annually. So they were set, and they increased by CPI. Does this body approve it, or does this body have the ability to change anything there or not, just so I'm aware of it? It is ordinance driven, so I think it would have to be a waiver of an ordinance if I'm not mistaken. I'll defer to law for the official on that. I will say, with the consent decree requirements, we have, I've been made aware that we have what we believe is a $100 million obligation between now and 2030. Right. To address. And that's coming out of this, or is that coming out of water quality fees? I'm sorry. Yeah. Does it come out of this? Okay. All right. And Dave's behind me. Yes. And I've got basically the same questions on water quality and the landfill, because I think landfill is a flat rate on a particular bill. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So what's happened historically is occasionally water quality will come to you all and ask for a rate increase. And there'll be a deliberate discussion about that. I think it's happened maybe three or four times. Okay. But as part of that discussion, there is also a discussion about maybe making it occur less frequently. And so that's where you all came up with the idea of doing the CPI. So until you all decide to change it, what happens every year is it just goes up by the CPI. Okay. But you all could change that if you wanted to. Okay. Thank you. And are these funds ever used for the, so I'm going to enter another area, but are they ever used for the urban service boundary expansion area to fund infrastructure? No, because we talk about funding infrastructure via, and where do those fees show up, the current method that we use? So I may be getting a little out of my lane, and I might need to go research that and get back. Okay. All right. But to the question, I think somebody's here that can answer that, because I would like to say that the answer is no, that this money doesn't go for infrastructure outside of the urban service boundary. But can somebody validate that? Nancy? To date, and to our collective awareness, we do not use it outside the urban service boundary. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you again. You did a great job. I'm so excited about getting it actually in back to back months, so that'll be fun. Might be a little smoother next month. Thank you so much. That's all I have, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair Brown. I appreciate you. Commissioner Erin Hensley, in this Women's History Month, you just made me just so proud. But back to the point. I just want to say thank you for providing the information that we've asked for in a way that we can not easily digest this. It's going to take a while, and I will be setting up a meeting just to talk a little bit more about this. But I just wanted to publicly say thank you for providing this information to us. Yes, ma'am. That is all. Thank you, Council Member. And I think we're going to circle back to the question. So I think the expansion area now is inside the urban service area. So I think that money, I don't know about the build out for the infrastructure. I think we're still having those discussions internally. But I think going forward, these funds would be used. Because now I think those properties will get taxed as urban service districts when that happens. The infrastructure funding plan, as you all recall, is one of the things. We had the former exactions program that we're working away from. We're trying to not continue to do things the way that we've done things. So we had an RFP out for the infrastructure funding plan, which the whole intent is to provide us a new model. I know that when we expand, the homes in the new expansion area will be contributing, obviously, because they are going to have those services. That is, they're going to have these services. And so their contributions will be included in the fund. How that will play into our projections of revenue, I would think, would be like any other property. But I don't know that we have fully fleshed out how that will look. We have just signed on with our consultant that will build that out for us. And I think we're still really exploring how that's going to look for the government. Because I think the one thing that we've established is we don't want it to look how it has looked in the past. So. Thank you, Commissioner. It looks like you made Council Member Savigne happy with your presentation, so I think that's a job well done. He's been instrumental in getting us here as well, so I can't say it was all done on our own, so. All right, I don't see any other question for you, so thank you. Thank you. All right, so committee members, we'll move to the next item on the agenda, and that's the park sustainable funding. This was a two part presentation from our parks department, and next we have Director Conrad here. Thanks for joining us today, and I'll turn the floor over to you. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. Thank you everyone for having us here today. Another one of these dedicated park fund, now 4031. So I'm sure that in the future, Commissioner Hensley and team will be reporting on this one as well. So today we're going to provide an overview of the park fund policy, walking us through the purpose, principles, the capital expenditures, the governance and program oversight. We're seeking your input and feedback regarding the policy framework. As many of you know, we maintain numerous policies and procedures within parks. Many of those can be found on our website. They pertain anything from social media, to land encroachment, to participant protection policies. We have developed our approach based on what the statute allows. Input, obviously, from our administration, law, and finance. Benchmarking, discussions with other cities, and best practices. So the purpose of the parks fund policy, a dedicated source of funding for the improvement and development of Lexington's parks, green spaces, associated infrastructure. You all know that it's levied through the percentage of local tax. It reflects our commitment to create parks and recreational spaces that are accessible, well designed, and responsive to our diverse needs of our community. The policy is built on three core principles, accessibility, engagement, and accountability. Ensuring that all residents benefit from park and recreation investments in a fair and open manner. We derive the principles and associated goals from the parks master plan, as well as the 2024 strategic plan. The parks fund policy guides park staff in four key areas for accessibility. Our goal is to ensure that access in all areas of our city. Geographically, capital investment prioritized using the parks master plan, social needs index, the service analysis, all of those items that we discussed last month. And other data driven tools such as assessments and surveys, evaluations. And certainly those are going to help us identify the greatest needs. Inclusive design, projects will be designed with the goal of being accessible to people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. All new and upgraded parks will meet or exceed Americans with Disabilities Act standards, providing access for individuals for all. Multi-generational spaces, capital spending will prioritize the creation of spaces that cater to diverse age groups and family needs. Including youth play areas or senior friendly spaces, areas for active recreation and relaxation for all generations. And cultural sensitivity, projects respect and celebrate the historical and cultural diversity of Lexington. Ensuring that spaces reflect and meet the needs of the community groups. When I think about Mary Todd Playground and Joyland Park and Amusement Park, when we talk about that historical significance. When we talk about Douglas Splash and the historical and cultural significance that we considered when we did those projects. Engagement, of course, the cornerstone, important that we involve everyone in the community in the decision making process. As always, we rely heavily on you, our council members, to help us identify the stakeholders, the neighborhood associations, the key folks that need to be around the table. Community input, we will engage with residents through public meetings and surveys. Residents will also have the opportunity to submit project ideas via the Parks Fund website. The chair of the Parks Advisory Board has appointed a strategic planning subcommittee of Parks Board and community members to review proposed capital projects and ensure projects aligned with our established policies and procedures. Partnerships with local organizations, schools, civic groups, of course, remain very important to how we develop and how we design projects. And then the Parks Master Plan, which we talked a lot about last month, just helps us in prioritizing and selecting projects throughout the city. We developed a community engagement matrix to guide us as we look at these projects moving forward. The matrix will allow us to define that process for incoming community projects. Certainly we'll kind of move left to right through the engagement matrix, whether that is informing you of a change or our neighbors of a change. We're replacing a roof or we're repaving a parking lot. That may just be email notifications, social media, to all the way to the far right, new development. Perhaps having a partner on board to design a project and having engagement and collaboration at the table when we're actually looking at the design of a project. So full circle, after engagement, we intend to report out on these. And you'll see kind of on our website mock-ups of where we think that that would go. Regarding accountability, as Commissioner Hensley was speaking about the current expenses and how the funds are handled, we anticipate that this park fund would be handled in the same manner. We'll provide an annual capital spending plan through the budget process, outlining the scope, where the project is occurring, the anticipated budget. The approval we expect to go through the budget process, and of course, require council approval on all those projects. Public updates, progress on our capital projects will be shared with the public through online reports, parks advisory board meetings, community meetings, the matrix that we just discussed. This will inform the public about the status and outcomes of the park fund projects. Annual report produced each year to talk about what we funded, where we funded it, what that engagement looked like. And then auditing and oversight, we've already spoken with internal audit about ensuring that this is on their plan once the funds are in place. So the park fund website, as it currently exists, it looks like this. It provides basic information, descriptor, ballot language, contact information. In the future, we expect it to look a little different, be much more interactive, and have a lot more opportunity for folks to engage. We're still working with IT, with GIS. We met recently with Jillian about Engage Lex and how we can potentially utilize that platform to get information out. So we'll be working to continue to develop the website. In the future, we anticipate an interactive map, so you can see where on the city parks projects are occurring. A project tracker, the opportunity to submit a project, and then of course, frequently asked questions. Here's what a project mock-up might look like. For example, this one is Douglas Basketball Court Capital Improvements. It provides a funding source, the budget, the start date, the completion date, before and after pictures. Depending on where the project is in the timeline, it could include upcoming community engagement date, and the date that's occurring and where it's occurring. So it can give us a lot of information, depending on where the project is in the status. Eligible investments intentionally left this pretty simple. We're following the ballot language. We will look to law, we will look to the KRS in the ballot language as we look toward investments. Focusing again, as we mentioned last month, capital construction, repair and replacement. Ineligible investments or expenses include things like personnel and those associated expenses, programming, operating, and land acquisition. As we mentioned before, parks will continue to utilize the Park Acquisition Fund. Project prioritization and selection, we talked a lot about this last month. So for sake of time, I'm going to try to move through this fairly quickly. We talked about life safety, code compliance, stewardship and preserving assets. Utilizing the master plan in those emerging opportunities where we know things unexpected happen or a pickleball emerges during COVID, or we have a pool failure. One thing we are adding here on this project prioritization and selection is this capital repairs unassigned and contingency. So thinking about if we have unassigned capital repairs that occur, we discover a sinkhole, unexpected capital failures of a building issue, or cost overruns. We run on into poor soil conditions when we're building a playground and what we thought was going to be 400,000 is now 450,000. So we think it's important to set aside funds initially for those capital repairs unassigned and contingency. While we think that that is 10% in year one, I think that will change as we move forward. And I think part of that is just timing of project delivery. Some of that is kind of working through this the first couple of years, so. Governance and program oversight, as we've laid out the framework, certainly mayor, council, administration have the approval authority. All projects would abide by applicable federal, state, local laws and regulations. We will ensure that the expenditures align with the mission, vision, goals, and objectives of the division. Engagement and feedback will be utilized throughout the life cycle of capital projects. And the policy and its implementation will be reviewed annually. This slide just gives you a little bit of the capital construction process. You're familiar with this proven strategy of us delivering these ARPA projects. It follows the same guide work. It follows LFUCG procurement and lots of opportunities along the way for engagement. So the year one proposed park fund of projects are listed here. At this point, we're really just in developing the scope of the phases of the project. We're proposing 14 projects at 7.1 million with 800,000 in contingency. We have been intentional about ensuring these projects are spread throughout the city. You'll see that here on this map, very similar to the maps we used in ARPA to talk about how we are funding across the entire city. And with that, I have time for questions. Thank you, Director, for the presentation. And before I go to committee members with questions, I just want to thank and recognize Council Member Baxter for her work on this presentation and on this effort. And I also see David and Victoria with us today in their effort with getting this across the finish line. So with that, I'll turn it over to committee members for questions, and we'll start with Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair Brown, and thank you Director Conrad for your presentation. Question in, if we go to the slide that has the year one projects, or at least all of the, you got it. I know you're on it. Good job, Lex TV. Fabulous. We're on it today. Question, how were these projects chosen? Because I did notice that we have, I mean, I believe in equality and equity. I see that we have two of our council districts that have two projects, whereas, say, the rest of us only have one project that is listed. So I'm curious how these projects were chosen. Yes, absolutely. So we went back to that Parks and Recreation project. Yes, absolutely. So we went back to that Parks Master Plan. We looked at those life safety issues, code compliance, those same lists that we've been talking through. So when we look at it, but we also wanted to make sure that we're delivering something in every area of the city. So that's very important. We know, for instance, in District 1, the court replacement and playground are very important to complete. We have a longstanding issue at the Castlewood Court Complex, and we have a significant safety issue at Martin Luther King or the Winburn Playground. So we know that those rose to the top very quickly. On the others, there's obviously a number of things that read into that. The ADA compliance on the restrooms at Whitney Young, we had funded that design a couple of years ago. We anticipate having that construction documents and be ready to go to get that funded. We certainly still have others in queue that need to get accomplished. But when we looked at this, we tried to look at it from a very holistic standpoint of delivering projects throughout the city, but also following through with that, what's still deferred in the master plan, what's risen with life safety or code compliance. And then, of course, at the end of the day, we have a number that we have to meet, or an anticipated number. Although this is not my district, but a lot of the students that attend Crawford Middle School live in Woodhill. And I know for a fact that park in Woodhill is severely in need of some care from the city. So I was hoping to see that park listed there, but I see that it's not. So just in consideration for that neighborhood park there, it does need some attention. Yes, thank you so much. We actually met with Councilmember Hale last week regarding Woodhill and certainly have a number of projects that Michelle and Michael, through looking through those deferred needs, have already started penciling in year two and year three. So as we continue to build that out, I think that makes a very good point. Wonderful. That's wonderful that you met with him about it, and I just thought I would mention it. Excellent. Thank you so much. And thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Savini. Thank you, Chair. And I just have a quick question. This might be for you, Director Conrad. Thank you for the presentation. But do we approve these in one of our links, Councilmember Brown? What was the question, sir? That's right. Do these, does the parks fund now get approved by one of our links? Because it's going to come up every year. It's going to be an $8 million expense, and I would think that somewhere it gets approved. It probably gets just approved in the mayor's proposed budget, and this might be what it is. But I'm just curious. Yeah, I do think this is what parks plans on presenting to the links as the use of this money, and I think the links has an opportunity to weigh into it. That is, yes. From the parks perspective, we've entered these into LEXBUD as our capital projects. I see CAO helping me out. Yeah, since it's a different fund, it's just ‑‑ Yeah, this is sort of unusual, but this is park suggestion that goes into the budget, so you're going to see them all in the budget. That's right. But it's your decision whether these particular parks stay in that budget or not. That's right. Every year you will see them come into the budget because you need to, you know, it's your deal to see them and approve them. Yeah, yeah. So you will get them every single year. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that whoever is covering parks and their link, it's in their link. That's it, since it's a different fund. Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director. I am looking at the parks capital improvements, like the project mock‑up slide, and I really love this for a public information standpoint. It's a couple back maybe. Hold on. Keep going. This one? No. Keep going. Oh, the website. Yeah. That was it. So my concern is how often will this be updated and who will have the responsibility for making sure this is updated? Is this a part of, like, your project management plans? Like, could you talk a little bit about that? Yes. We are still working through all of that. So we have a great team of folks, but we know that there will be a lot of communication that will need to occur, and there is a lot of detailed information, but I think we're starting to build that out. As you know, we already gather a lot of this information, whether that is in the CIP update that you receive each month. So some of it may just be a different way of actually making sure that the public is seeing that information. So we don't have that all figured out yet, but we are still working through that, and we realize that having dedicated folks that will be responsible for these kinds of updates will be very important. It might be also helpful on these pages where you're providing these project updates to put, like, an updated on, like, a version kind of little date on there so then the public can see, okay, well this was updated in March or this was updated this month, to give that information so they know how current the information is. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Next we have Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, for the presentation. My question is specifically about the project in my district, the Whitney Young ADA bathroom renovation. Is the $300,000, is that to fully complete the project, or is there more money that we will need to allot for that? We anticipate that $300,000 will make the restrooms compliant. Okay. Yes. Wonderful. Yay, I'm excited that made the list. And then after the list, I guess, is approved, will you all roll out these projects, similar to what you laid out in your presentation with the neighborhood engagement and things like that, to make everything public? Yes. So our intent would be as, you know, once the budget is approved, and then these technically would have been approved, we would then begin pushing this information out publicly. Now, remember, we won't have access to funds until early 2026. So, for instance, if it's a project that requires a design consultant on board as part of the project, and I'm thinking about Tate's Creek and the aquatic center, then that probably would not start until after those funds are in place. If it's a playground that Parks is designing and working on, that engagement can begin much sooner, so that we're ready to actually, you know, go out to bid when the funds are in place. So I think it could happen in a number of ways. Awesome. I'm excited about that and love to help, as always, as you roll out things for my district. And I'm really looking forward to the updates to the website, and I think making that engaging and interactive will be great for the community to really keep abreast of. of what's the changes that are going on. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Council Member LaGre. Thanks Chair. Thank you, Director Conrad. This is connected to engagement as well. I know I've been talking to one of my neighborhoods around Lou Johnson Park about some of their ideas for the park and their feedback, and I'm curious if Engage Lexington, our website could be a good platform to help us push information out, accurate information, and to get constituent engagement about what they'd like to see with various parks projects. Yes, absolutely. When we met with Jillian, I think last week, kind of our first exposure to that, she was great about showing us the back end of how all of that data is, you know, configured, and I think at this point we see that as another opportunity for engagement. We don't have that full roadmap worked out yet, but yes, I think it will be a great way for us to reach additional folks who are already giving you feedback about other things that are happening in the city. Well, especially since these projects, as you mentioned, span all of the districts, you know, I know that all of us want to make sure that we push it out in all of the various ways that we can, so whatever we can do to be helpful and to get more people involved. I know I'm glad to assist, so thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Next we have Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me, since I do not serve on this committee. And thank you, Director Conrad, for that presentation. I'm very appreciative of all the work that you all have done to actually make this a tangible policy that we have going forward, and the clarification you've given us today. I want to echo my colleagues' sentiments about engagement, and I'm looking forward to continuing that collaboration to make sure that folks in each of our respective districts have their voice heard and we can make sure that these funds are distributed equitably. I have a quick question specifically about the project that is in year one for the fourth district, which is the Veterans Park Trail Project. This is something that has come up at several community and neighborhood meetings that I've been at. There's a lot of interest in it, and I was just wondering if you could clarify where we're at in that process with that project and where we're going from there. Yes, absolutely. So we are currently under contract for the design. We're under contract with TSW here in Lexington. And so that really just kicked off. So our next step will be, again, that community engagement, talking to the neighborhood, exactly. This project in funding in year one, we see as getting folks off of that road, St. Elias Lane, I think it is, off of a south point there, getting them off of the road and onto a safe walking path. In addition, parking is another component of that. So I anticipate that Michelle and her team with TSW, and as you think about that matrix, this is mid to farther to the right, in that we need stakeholders and neighbors engaged early. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, and I also want to just take a moment to acknowledge for the rest of my colleagues on council that this is, I think, a great project in terms of exemplifying how our parks capital projects can intersect with other areas of policy priority. For me, in this instance, being pedestrian safety, and I know that that's a concern that several of my colleagues share. So, as we start looking at future parks capital projects, I would encourage you all to keep those considerations in mind that our parks aren't just about recreation and community spaces, but they can also have a tangible public safety improvement as well. So, thank you so much, and thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Morton. Thank you. So first, I guess on the accessibility slide, it mentions other data driven tools. What are the other data driven tools that identify neighborhoods with the greatest needs that you can think of? Which, I'm sorry, Council Member, the next one or this one? Accessibility. Sorry, here we go. Yeah, and then under geographic, it mentions the last statement, other data driven tools that identify neighborhoods with the greatest needs. What do you see as those tools? Yes, so we use social service determinants in a lot of our programming. So, when we're looking at programming numbers, whatever the program, how many people we served, what our goals were, what our challenges were, we do those for every program that we offer. So, we definitely look at those as data driven opportunities. When Michelle is doing surveys, evaluations, we're constantly looking at, you may see those QR codes, pickleball, we did a lot of pickleballing, surveying. So, there's different ways that we can use tools to reach what we think those investments might be. Come on up. Michelle's the expert on the planning piece. I was just going to add that some of those data driven tools might be benchmarking with other communities that are similar to ours. Or they might be looking at information that's gathered by entities like National Recreation and Parks Association when they assert best practices. They might do a comparison of how we're delivering service versus what they have determined as best practice. So, that's kind of what we meant by that. Or the ten minute walk, those types of things. Okay, so then moving on to engagement, somewhat in the conversation towards the park master plan. Public's meetings can be a challenge for our seniors due to many different reasons, specifically lack of technology when it comes to some of our surveys and things we do, and for youth to be engaged. How can we make sure that these voices are heard and made a priority? I'm big on direct communication, so do you see that as visiting the schools, getting their input at schools? Possibly canvassing or paper surveys and things like that. Have we thought about that? Yes, we've used some of those tools in the past. Michelle's definitely gone into the school system, worked with kids in the schools. Our community centers are a great opportunity for us to reach kids and talk to kids directly. It's still a challenge, as you know, right, to reach folks and to really be intentional about the many different ways to do that. So I know when we did Northeastern Park, we did door to door surveys for that project. So we're always looking for feedback and input on other ways that we can engage. So please, yes, we are open to any and all. Okay, so and I know we talked about this a little bit at the last presentation. So the master plan is scheduled to be renewed in 2028, right? Correct. And like I said, there seems to be a need for community engagement prior to the renewal date as emerging opportunities have been a trend in the outside of the master plan. So are you opposed to pushing that forward and doing that before 2028? So our accreditation requires us to deliver it by 2028. We will be doing engagement on each of these projects. So I don't know, it takes some time to get a full master plan from creation to delivery. So I don't know if we started, I don't know how much sooner we'd start. We'd still probably be in 2028 when we deliver it. I'll be honest, yeah. Cool, sounds good. And then, let's see how much time, let's see if I can get through. So project and prioritization and selection, and these criteria is, where's the consideration for parks and areas that have been least invested or neglected over the years? How is that kind of considered within those criteria? Yeah, and so one, they generally rise to the top because they're the ones that through the assessment or the evaluation, or when we looked at our year one projects, we were all sitting around the table going, Castlewood has got to get completed. It's been under-invested in for too long. Other things have happened in the first district, but this project has got to get completed. Same thing with the Windburn MLK Playground. So I think we continue to rely on the master plan and all of these components, but it's interesting, right? The first district has the most parks. It has many of those parks because only one or two projects were being completed. We've got neglected Oakwood, right? We have neglected several parks in the first district. So we'll continue to make those the priority. And I think it just depends on what that balance is, if it's a million dollar project or if it's a $200,000 project where we can get more accomplished in a year. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Council Member, and thank you again, Monica and Commissioner Ford and your team and Council Member Baxter, everybody that worked on this. I'll just say a couple of things, and I think my colleagues have hit the notes. I think it's engagement, I think it's accountability, and then figuring out a way that we can get started on updating that master plan sooner, I think is what we're going to have to do, the engagement piece is going to drive that. The other thing I think we have to do as council members and just as the city in general is to help set expectations. A lot of people think this money is going to solve all the problems that we have or the issues that we have in parks, and it's not going to do that. It's going to help tremendously, but I think we've got to help set expectations going forward. So I hope folks have watched and understand that we have a plan and are going to execute it. So thank you for your work. Thank you. All right, council members, I'm going to ask the vice mayor for a motion, and this is no disrespect to Council Member Reynolds, I touched base with her earlier. And I think we all, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with her. We're just going to try to switch these agenda items, just because we have visitors here today, to try to make sure that we get an opportunity for them to present to us. So, Vice Mayor? Thank you, Chair. I move that we flip-flop our next two presentations to do United for Alice first, and then Facilities and Fleet Maintenance Planning, so moved. Second. All right, a motion was made to switch places with these two items, and seconded. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. And with that, we'll move to the next item on our agenda, and today we have Timothy Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer for the United Way of the Bluegrass. And he has a colleague, a peer from New Jersey, and I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Johnson, to introduce. Thank you, my chap. Good afternoon, council members. Thank you for your time today. We're here today to introduce you to all to a movement that's helping to change communities, understand, and address financial hardship. It's called the ALICE Movement. And ALICE is an acronym that stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. ALICE represents a growing number of households who are working, but struggling to afford the most basic of needs, like housing, child care, transportation, and health care. To lead this discussion, I'm honored to introduce today my peer and good friend, Kieran Garioso, who's the President and CEO of United Way of Northern New Jersey, as well as the CEO of United for ALICE. The national research initiative that's really behind the ALICE movement and the ALICE report. Kieran has been at the forefront of this work, helping cities and states across the country use ALICE data to inform budgeting, policy, and strategic investments. Her presentation today is going to touch on what the ALICE report is and how it helps you provide a clearer picture on the financial hardships beyond the traditional way that we have measured poverty. Also, how other communities have used ALICE data to drive economic mobility and strengthen their workforce. Our hope is that we're able to explore a partnership with the city that brings the ALICE movement to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, specifically to Lexington, equipping decision makers like you all with the data needed to build stronger and more financially stable communities. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to my friend, Kieran. Thank you, Timothy. Good afternoon, council members. Thank you so much for having me. You're probably wondering why Timothy, this incredible leader, community activist, CEO of United Way of the Bluegrass, brought a Jersey girl out here to Kentucky to spend some time with you this afternoon. So thank you, and I hope that over the next few minutes, you'll see why he asked me to come. So thank you. I really do appreciate each and every one of you for the commitment that you make to your community and taking the role as public officials to really advocate. I have really enjoyed just listening to the presentations and the commentary this afternoon. And I think I'll be able to talk about how the United for ALICE movement, all of our tools, data, analytics, will really help inform many of the conversations, decisions, issues that you've been tackling just in this meeting alone. So thank you for having me. Let's see if this, okay. Okay, so we're going to see if we can get these slides to work and sync up with my remarks. And I apologize, as you can tell, I'm working some allergies cold here, so I apologize for sounding a little bit like a frog. But as you know and as you've just heard, United Way of Northern New Jersey is a local on the ground non-profit very much similar to the United Way of the Bluegrass. Timothy and I are fortunate enough to lead United Ways that are part of a network of about 1,000 United Ways across the country. And we are that non-profit organization that really supports community in a variety of ways. And back in 2009, my United Way was really looking to understand what was happening in our county. In particular, at that time, we were the United Way of Morris County, which is one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Yet we were seeing tremendous demand for services. Seniors spending more than half their income on their housing. Child care being the number one cost item in a family's budget. And really, when you look at the poverty level and the poverty numbers, it really wasn't telling the true story because we were sitting at 10, 11% of poverty, yet seeing tremendous demand for services. We were fortunate at the time to have a board member who was an economist and a professor at Rutgers put together a committee of researchers and practitioners to really build the ALICE methodology. And it was born in 2009 and serves as an alternative to the federal poverty level. And it really started out with kind of one primary piece of data. We provide an alternative to the federal poverty level in the form of what we call the ALICE survival budget. And again, ALICE stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. And it's really those folks that we rely on in our communities. Folks working in child care centers, nursing homes, kind of front line in our hospitals. Retail, restaurant, kind of the entire service economy. Those are the folks that we call ALICE. And when we couple the ALICE percentage and the poverty percentage in our country, we're talking about 41% of households across the United States. 54 million households are either ALICE or in poverty. And that's a humongous number when you start thinking about what the impact is on our communities and really our economy overall. Again, ALICE is Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. We talked a little bit about kind of the profile. I think the pandemic showed us how much we rely on our essential workers. ALICE families typically have little to no savings. So they're really kind of one crisis away from being in poverty. Often work more than two jobs, kind of 2.4 jobs is the average. And typically are spending way more on their take home pay just to cover basics. And often find themselves making very impossible choices, pay for a prescription or pay your rent. Buy groceries or pay for car insurance, very, very difficult choices. As Timothy mentioned, we are the United Way that leads this national movement. We now have proudly 35 states that have really joined this movement, Kentucky being the most recent. Kentucky's very special because the Humana Foundation based in Louisville actually reached out to us in New Jersey to say, we want to work with you. We want to provide funding to help bring the ALICE movement to Kentucky. Which is pretty incredible when you have a funder that wants to bring that to a state. And I think it's because of leaders like you, leaders like Timothy, others around this entire city and across your state that are really doing critical work and services. We track data for the entire country. We have data for all 3,000 counties. And it's not just data, we have a number of tools and analytics, which I'll talk about shortly. But just you'll see the map, and we always point out Hawaii. We do have the state of Hawaii as part of the movement. And as you can imagine, being an island, being isolated, cost of living is tremendous. We see in the state of Hawaii, there are 48% of families are either ALICE or in poverty, as opposed to like in New Jersey, it's 36%. So quite a variance. I mentioned some of the kind of products that are part of the ALICE movement and the website and all the tools that we offer. I'm going to talk about, we have a video about the second one, the economic viability dashboard. So hopefully we'll get to that in a few minutes. But the first piece is something we put out every May, so we're close to issuing it. But it's an update report, it's called ALICE and the Cross-Currents. And it really looks at kind of the state of ALICE and what are the issues and trends that we're seeing for ALICE families. We do a deep dive on children, veterans, and people with disabilities as part of that report as well. Jumping down to the third bullet, something called the ALICE Essentials Index. I heard you talking about benchmarking against the CPI for, I believe, the water. Right, the water quality. Yes, I was looking at you, but I meant to look at you. My apologies, Commissioner. So we know the CPI is one very strong measure of kind of rate of growth and cost of living. But it doesn't really track how the impact is on an ALICE family. It's a very large bucket of tools and services all mapped in the CPI. So we created something called the ALICE Essentials Index that looks at what's the rate of change and growth from a percentage of an ALICE family's income that they have to spend over time to purchase basics like housing and food and transportation. So it's an alternative tool that we track and measure and we update every June. And we also have something called the wage tool, right on our website, where you can go in, look at the occupation, look at where you live, look at the basic cost of living for the survival budget. And it'll help you determine, businesses, how much you need to pay for a worker not to be ALICE or in poverty. So that's something that is available as well, and this is just a sampling of some of the tools that we have available. I wanted to just call out the methodology, and linked in the deck is our methodology summary. But every summer, we do a refresh to the methodology. We have a national committee of over 300 researchers and practitioners that come together. And really help us qualify and ensure that all of the data sources we're using are the best and the most accurate, because as we know, things are constantly growing and changing. All of the sources of data that we use are primarily from the American Community Survey. They're publicly available sources of data. I think one of the things that is really incredible about the ALICE data, and I can see, just like I said, listening to you all, how it might be incredibly relevant, is you can slice and dice in a lot of different ways, and it's all available right on our website. Obviously, we can look national, state, county. You can go to the county subdivision by zip code, legislative district, both congressional and state. You can look at your census track. You can look at PUMA data. So there are lots of ways to really go into, for example, the Commonwealth of Kentucky section on the website. And you'd be able to kind of sort and slice and create very interactive, easy to understand and present heat maps when you're looking at the data. Wanted to call out some partnerships that we've seen across the country develop. We have, I'll jump around a little bit, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is a huge partner with the ALICE project and with our data. They have utilized the ALICE survival budget as the primary metric within something called their benefits cliff tool. And so, I don't know about you, but when I first heard the Federal Reserve reaching out to us, I was like, well, don't they just worry about the money and the interest rate? But they actually do a lot of community outreach, and they offer a number of tools and assistance to help families kind of plan for their finances. We do a lot with FEMA. We know that an ALICE family is disproportionately impact from any kind of disaster, be it natural or a pandemic or something. And I think we all know, it seems like every other day, there's something else happening, floods. I know Timothy had some wind damage over the weekend at his home. So I think what we've done with FEMA is, again, looking at that geomapping capabilities to look at where disaster is either happened or potential to happen. And then we can look at where that is on the map relative to where an ALICE family lives or works. And so it's a huge way to indicate, and in many cases predict, where support will be needed. Example of the Virginia Community Colleges, many, many, many, really, the many community colleges across the country, their students are ALICE for the most part, right? And so we've worked with the community colleges and the Virginia Commonwealth to help them kind of restructure their funding and scholarship opportunities for students to help them make sure that the dollars are getting to ALICE students. Whether they're Pell eligible or not. Another one to call out is the independent sector. They're a national trade association for the non-profit sector, public sector. And we did a study with them this past September that looked at the non-profit workforce and what the percentage of ALICE workers are in the non-profit workforce. And essentially, when you look at kind of the care economy and you couple that with the service economy in that non-profit workforce, 33% of the non-profit workforce are either ALICE or below. And that's about a $13 million, 13 million folks who are part of that workforce nationally. So again, big numbers. I'll keep moving. Again, in the document we have linked, in the deck we have linked, a tremendous amount of media and press exposure has come over the last year with the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Business Insider, the Washington Post, and we fully expect that that will be the case right here in Kentucky and in Lexington as well. In New Jersey, what we try to do is we incubate kind of innovative approaches to helping ALICE families and then we share them with the national movement. We have a child care initiative called United in Care. We have something called ALICE at Work that works with employers to help them implement strategies right in the workplace to help their ALICE workers. And then we have a national advisory council for ALICE that's really focused on broader policy change and community impact. I think we're ready for the video, I think. Yes, it should be right on this slide. If you hover, it should. I don't think so. No, it's on the video there. How long is the video? It's okay, we can. Well, we'll see if we can get it. Okay. I'm sorry. It's really good, I promise. I know we're almost out of time. We can send it as a follow up. Yeah, we can send it to you. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. But just in closing, I wanted to just share with you that we're really excited and pleased to have the Commonwealth of Kentucky and certainly the city of Lexington being part of this. We hope that I've given you just a little primer as to what's coming and really look forward to everything launching here in Lexington over the next year. And supporting, obviously, the United Way of the Bluegrass and the needs of the city. So thank you for having me. I look forward to sending questions. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for traveling here to share it with us. I'll turn it over to council members for questions. And first we'll start with Council Member Sheehan. Nobody wants to go first. I wasn't first a moment ago. Thank you for this presentation. I pulled up the wage calculator on my computer here as you were speaking. And I found it interesting to see that for a family of three, which seems to be like the default for the survival. Yeah, for the survival budget for Kentucky and Fayette County in Kentucky, the hourly wage for survival budget is $16 an hour. The default was set at 14, so I had to bump it up to get to the range where I was reaching a survival budget. So I think this is very informative and that is for a family of three with two working adults in the family. So I am looking forward to kind of digging into some of this information and looking at the next steps for our community, so thank you very much. You're welcome, and when the team is ready, Timothy, the team, we'd be more than happy to take you, your teams, your staff, however we'd like through what we call a data dive. And we can get on a Zoom or whatever and kind of take you through all the different tools, because there's a lot there. And it seems very user friendly. That's the goal, that's the goal. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Next we have Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this presentation and for coming all this way. The one thing that really popped out to me in your presentation was that stat about non-profit workers. I think it was something like 30 something percent of non-profit workers are Alice. And in the time that we're living in right now, where there's so much uncertainty and kind of disruption to the non-profit sector with all of their funding. I think it's more important than ever to really kind of highlight the people that are part of those organizations. So I really appreciate the work that you all do and your approach to data. And as my colleague said, looking forward to learning more about it. Thank you. And one of the things that we talk about when we think about the non-profit workforce, that 13 million nationally. It's the third largest private workforce in the country. Is these are folks who we are relying on to take care of our most vulnerable. Our babies, our seniors, our folks that need assistance. And yet they themselves are struggling and stressed and fatigued and all of the things that go along with that kind of financial hardship. So thank you for that. Thank you, Vice Mayor Wu. Next we have Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. Thank you to you both. And my question is, so what's next? What are the action steps? Are you bringing us any action items today, or will you be doing that in the future? So no action items today, really just to raise awareness and to gauge the willingness to partner on this, because this is something that is new to Kentucky. Kentucky's the only state around the seven states in this area, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, the Virginias, West End, regular Virginia, they all have ALICE. So this is something that we've been courting and trying to raise the funds to bring to Kentucky. And I think that this data will be really powerful for decision makers, for businesses, for the chamber, for non-profits and all. So wanted to make you aware of this, and to see your willingness of partnering with you all to help us make this movement not only a reality of coming here, but also making sure that we can sort of raise the awareness to bring on more partners. This initiative only works by bringing together a broad variety of folks from academia, from government, and just wanting to partner with LFUCG. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me as I don't serve on this committee. I want to say thank you all for this presentation. It was incredibly informative, and thank you for making your way down to our fine commonwealth. We are very appreciative and very glad to have you. I had a question for the Chair regarding this going forward. It's my belief that a lot of the metrics, standards, definitions that we use as set by the federal government do let a lot of these folks slip through the cracks. I grew up in a family that would have met the Alice definition. And it's incredibly important that as we are going about our work to address poverty, inequity, and what have you, that we don't let folks like this slip through the cracks. So I was wondering, since you brought this to committee, if you had any specific goals moving forward with how we could potentially work with the tools that Alice can provide. I do, and I'll just share one of them, just kind of as an example of what we can do locally. Timothy and I had discussed that what Alice could help inform us, it's a lot of times when we talk about affordable housing to families and they come here. The first thing out of their mouth is that how you all are defining affordable housing, isn't affordable for me or the rest of my neighborhood. And I think Alice as a resource could help us determine what really is affordable based on the area median income and other factors. And then that could help form policy decisions for our affordable housing fund. because they could, it's general fund money that they subsidize housing developments. And if we actually targeted specific developments in specific neighborhoods, we could potentially get those rents down to where neighbors could really afford them. So I think that's one way that we could use this resource to help us establish policies to really help families that need the help. So that's just one idea. Thank you so much, Chair Brown, and I want you to know that that is music to my ears. It's exactly what popped into my head as I was watching this presentation. And so I want to express my gratitude to you for bringing it forward. My gratitude to you all for being here to present to us. And also just to state my enthusiasm and eagerness to collaborate and work with you all on how we can get that policy, these definitions updated so that we can address those needs. So thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Curtis. Council Member Lynch, are you signed back in or is that still on from the previously? We're previous. Okay. All right, well, I don't see any other questions, and I was going to speak to the point that you flushed out of me, so I think that's a good way. But Timothy, I think you've heard that there is some interest from this council, or at least this committee, to further this conversation. So I think we'll just look to you for next steps and how to continue to push this conversation going forward. Outstanding, looking forward to it, and appreciate your continuing partnership on helping us improve and continue to support our communities. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for traveling to the bluegrass state. We'll see if we can't get you a pin or something before you go. All right, committee members, we still have an item on our agenda, and it's the facilities and maintenance, and facilities and fleet maintenance plan. Council Member Reynolds isn't here today. She wanted me to share some remarks, and she wanted to thank Commissioner Ford and John Shee for their hard work on this presentation. This issue came about from communication from a committee and two budget links asking questions about how the city replaces its fleet and keeps up with its building maintenance. Council members wanted to know what the process was for keeping track of and prioritizing maintenance of city buildings and fleet. And also, do we budget for the amount that we need? How do we deal with different maintenance issues, and how can we better plan for the future? So our buildings are being upkept, and our fleet are on schedule to be properly replaced. So those are just a few questions that have come out of budget links and other committee meetings. So with that, Commissioner, I'll turn it over to you for the presentation. Okay, thank you, Council Member, and thank you, committee, for having us. And we also want to, in absentia, thank Council Member Reynolds for sponsoring this topic. We're going to be very brief. We're going to try to summarize the slides that we provided for you. We hope that it serves as an introduction, and as I've talked with the Chair and Council Member Reynolds, if there is an opportunity for us to follow up in a subsequent presentation, we'll be glad to do so. We are here to talk about Facilities and Fleet Management, which is a division in the Department of General Services. This first slide just defines CIP, it refers to identifying, prioritizing, and funding publicly owned assets. I wanted to first make clear that we have the leadership of our division here, and many of our staff members who work in this area day in and day out. In our division, our government is fortunate that Facilities and Fleet has a long tradition of managing capital improvement planning. We have a thoughtful approach to this planning, and more importantly, we have a systematic response to meet the operational needs. The primary goals are, of course, to take care of what you have, what we have, the preservation of assets, to ensure sustainability and continuity of services for all of our operational units across government, and also planning for future needs. We have here listed some of the fundamentals, and it always begins with the need. Identifying the need as it relates to our facilities and our fleet. And then secondly, going ahead and defining the project scope and determination. And it also, of course, includes estimation of project costs, what it not only will take to activate those improvements, but also to maintain those improvements. Project timelines, as in Monica's presentation with Parks, project timelines are always important, very similar for us at Facilities and Fleet. And then project prioritization, it's a fine balance, but I think we do a pretty good job, our team, and I'll give them credit. But the strategic balance of balancing needs with the resources that we have. Facilities and Fleets is actually made up of two operational groups, and so Facilities Maintenance is responsible for the care of 44 structures and buildings all across government, where our employees report to their workstations in their office settings and deliver programs and services for Lexington residents. In total, it's just over 1.2 million square feet of floor space of real estate that we manage. And then also, Fleet is responsible for 2,000 vehicles, 800 pieces of equipment. We're very fortunate, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this, experience in our leadership. John Sheed is our division director, Wanda King is our deputy director in Fleet, and our acting deputy director in Facilities is Mike Wiley. And collectively, they bring a great deal of experience. I think John Sheed has been with us 17 years or so, and so that, a lot of insight and experience there. And then Wanda's been with us in government in her role quite as well as we have. So that serves benefit to us. It also serves benefit to the employees, the work crews, the technicians that work in these areas, who we take pride in, try to make sure that they're well trained and they're highly skilled. There's also a relatively new group, not so new, but it's the newer group, and that's our Capital Project Management Team, CPM as I like to refer to them. They're a team of three licensed and trained architects who are also here with us, who work on our capital projects. In years past, the CPM team organizationally was aligned directly under Facilities and Fleet. They still work very closely with John Sheed's team. But in the current budget, we made a request to the administration, the council approved, to realign them as a direct report to my office in the commissioner's office. Currently, they're managing, CPM is managing a portfolio of 11 projects with a project value of $43 million and some change. The footnote also indicates that Parks and Recreation, Fire and Community Corrections are responsible for their routine maintenance. That's outside of the day-to-day work of Facilities and Fleet. However, many of the capital projects that those aforementioned groups take on, our team and CPM helps support. This is a snapshot of the facilities, the building maintenance side of our capital improvement process. It identifies per fiscal year what activities are lined up as it relates to project activation, design, project set up, and then what those estimated costs would be to construct those projects and get those online. Many of these projects are related to our judicial courthouse system, the district and circuit courthouse, which we'll talk a little bit about later. The next section is fleet, and we have made, in the last several years, great improvements in regards to our fleet. I know that was an area of interest to Council Member Reynolds and perhaps others on council in previous times. But we've been able to have a sizable investment to make sure that our team at the fleet maintenance garage has the funding to properly and timely replace vehicles. And to make sure that we have the resources we need to keep the vehicles that we have on the road safely for as long as we can to the benefit of our employees. In the most recent budget, I do want to highlight, just to clarify, that bullet point that says opportunities to upgrade the current legacy software, that's in process now. In the interim of this fiscal year 25 budget, we were able to work Wanda and her team and also with our CIO Rogers to actually get that project going. And I believe that project is underway now and should bring great improvement to our fleet management team. Going back to our capital project management team, this is just a few of the highlights of recently completed projects. It's a great value to have the architecture team that we have in house providing services. It's a great cost savings to our government. And we've had great success over the last few years. The first project there is the community corrections roof replacement, 265,000 square feet, I believe from memory, is what that covered. We did a great job of getting that project online. The new police roll call station out at Venner Parks is an example. There's two things I would like to highlight in relation to our capital project management team. And it kind of parlays over to what parks presented during their parks fund. I'm very proud and I think our government should be very proud to the level of community engagement that goes into some of these projects. For example, the Dunbar Community Center, the Black and Williams Gym Project, the Valley Project, the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center Project. All of those serve distinct constituencies and populations. And as we build our projects, as we design them and we build them for construction, we keep in mind what would be important to those end users. And our architecture team, our project team does a great job in that. And that's for our external clients. But we also consider our internal clients, our partners here in government, whether that be police, whether that be fire, whether that be corrections, whether that be parks. We spend a great level of attention in making sure what we're building will suit their needs presently and for the time in the future. The district courthouse is an area under our management. Those courthouses, we still consider relatively new, all things considered, but they were built just over 20 years ago. We received funding from the AOC to help support the daily management. We have a third party firm, Meridian Property Management, that manages the day-to-day operations for those. Of course, we have a lot of citizens that go to that courthouse day in and day out as part of the judicial system. Our judges are stationed there as well as the sheriff's office. We have several projects lined up for improvements to make sure we keep those courthouses in good shape for the many years to come. The current budget has the design of the roof replacement for both district and circuit court lined up. We are kicking that process off now and we look forward to having the findings of what that design will be, particularly in the final cost. Again, this project is very similar to some of the successes we've had with previous roofs. I just mentioned the detention center roof, but we've recently completed roof replacement projects across the street at the county clerk's building, which is the government center annex. We just completed a project at police technical, and then we also have the downtown art center roof on our schedule to improve. That's just a very quick summation of what the Division of Facilities Fleet Management, in addition to Capital Projects Management Team, do as it relates to capital improvement planning. We appreciate the council support, we appreciate the administration support and the resources here recently. And I'd be glad to answer any questions and our call up partners who are here, teammates who are here that may be able to answer those questions. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Commissioner Ford, for the presentation and for you and your team and all the hard work that you do. And Council Member Reynolds for shepherding this item into committee. So I'll open it up for questions to committee members, and first we have Council Member Sheehan. First again, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, I appreciate the presentation and all of this information. Similar to with some of our other departments and divisions, we oftentimes have a website or a master plan or a strategic plan or something that is posted for the public. Is there a place that our public can find these plans online? Not at the moment, not at the moment. That would be something we would welcome, but it's just a matter of capacity and time. I think we have a very good handle of the data that we're managing the information. Our team also does a very good job of the budgetary side of things, making sure that projects stay on time and on budget. But that might be something we would consider. We would definitely want to have the support of my office in support of that. Because most of the work that facilities and fleet, our management team does is online, it's service, it's technical work, but that's a good suggestion, we'd be open to it. Yeah, and certainly this presentation itself is a public document, so folks can find that. And we do talk about projects like this throughout our budget season, so there's public documents for that. But I was just thinking, it might be good to have it posted somewhere, too. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation and all your work. Actually, my questions are this slide that's up right now. I'm assuming, if you look at the pie chart, fire only counts for a little sliver of the total number of units of vehicles, right? Whereas, you look at the bar chart at the bottom, and fire accounts for a huge amount. I assume that's because of our engines, ladders, EC units being so expensive, right? Yes, sir. Okay, and then on the bar chart at the bottom, urban services, that accounts for a lot of the spending there. What is that, what kind of vehicles are we talking about? because they don't really match up to anything in the pie chart. Have the Commissioner and the Deputy on their way. Thank you. Hello, girl, this is you. Good afternoon. Pull that mic down. Okay, because I'm short. I'm Wanda King, Deputy Director of Fleet Services. In answer to your question of urban services, their vehicles, those are mostly compactors, the CNG compactors that we purchase. And right now, they're running close to a half a million dollars per unit, which accounts for the total cost of them. Okay, so is there, are we talking about waste management vehicles? Yes, waste management garbage compactors. Okay, maybe just a suggestion then for the presentation, because I noticed you all are using kind of the same colors for those two charts and graphs. But they don't really match up, and the categories don't match up. So it took me a minute to kind of try to figure out what was what. So having those two aligned would be, kind of make things a little more clear. And then to go to the allocations chart at the top right, we have sometimes, for example, fire in 2024 is way lower than normal. Sanitary sewers in 2025 was at zero. What accounts for those kind of spikes and valleys and blips? I honestly cannot speak for fire, because we do not purchase for fire. So I don't know what accounts for them. Sanitary sewers, we purchase based on what we have to turn in. And so we try to keep our vehicles at a point where we can keep them as long as we can. Sanitary sewers, the high dollar figure is because they replaced it. They replaced larger vehicles, like the vector trucks. And when you replace one of those, we're talking about $400,000. So in those years that you're looking at, that's when we had to replace that type of equipment. The other years, they were trucks, car trucks, and that type of thing, F-150. So those type of trucks, 1500s, 2500s. But then when you put in a vector truck, that increases the cost. Okay, I don't know. Commissioner, were you wanting to add something? I do, actually. So what you're seeing in 24 is the benefit that we had of having some cash available in 23, where we were able to pre-fund some of the fire trucks. And so the year's allocation for 24 actually got booked back to 23, so we had a little bit higher allocation than we may have in the prior year. So you can see we had higher investments in 21, 22, and 23. And with the 23 pre-funding, that actually dropped what would have been 24 into that earlier year. So it looks like 24 really didn't have anything, but we actually did, because they would have been in the pre-fund. Would you advise us, in terms of kind of reading a chart like this, not to kind of put too much focus year to year, and kind of maybe look at it as multi-year blocks and kind of average amount? Right, I do think it was really insightful of Commissioner Ford to be able to give you the average investment over that period of time. And one of the things that we talk about particularly as we go to the divisions and talk to them about the investments that we're making, particularly with Assistant Director King? I'm sorry, Wanda, I just call her Wanda. With having those long lead times, we're not seeing our investment coming back to us as quickly as we'd like. So we have to remind them that we have made these large investments, and we're just awaiting delivery. So we're, at some point in time, we will start seeing all these big trucks come in. Whether it be waste, or whether it be fire, or even some of the streets and roads, or other large vehicles. They're just taking a while to get in. Right, thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next, we have Council Member Savicny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I just have a few different questions. The slide that's Facilities and Fleet Management, six year CIP. Kentucky Theater Sprinkler System, the District Court building that keep going, keep going. That one, page six, thank you. Okay, the total projected cost doesn't add up to the number of fiscal years. I don't know if it's supposed to, but some of them don't, some of them do. And I don't, what was the difference between the green and the yellow? Like on our sheet, like the first one, 50 is in green, shaded. And then fiscal year 26, 400 is in yellow. The total projected cost is 50,000, but it's actually 450,000, so I don't know if that's- We'll go back, Council Member, thank you for that clarification. We'll go back and make sure our formulas are correct, our formulas. Yeah. In regards to the color coding. Yeah, is one of them like design, maybe, and one of them- Green is design, and the yellow would be project cost. Project cost. Okay, that's what I was thinking. Okay, second question is on vehicles. Did you mention anything about electric vehicles? Did I hear you say that? No, no, I did not say it. I didn't think I heard it. No, I did not say it. I'm just, I am, as an EV driver myself, I do think we actually have a carbon neutrality goal by 2050. One of the things we do is lead by example. So, and the other thing I would tell you is that electric vehicles have a lower operating cost and lower maintenance cost, there's a million less parts. So, I would like to think of those for the run of the mill products that we're buying. I would like just for some thought to be given to that. And then the last thing was, do we have like a real estate person? Like we have some architects and we have an engineer. But do we have a strong real estate person? Because to me, there's a lot of things that we're doing that a strong real estate person could help with. And it might be that, hey, instead of this building is better to sell this building as a building and build a new building, for instance. Yes, sir. We don't, most of our real estate activities manage out of my office, out of general services office. But you raise a good point, is that in the last few years, through council support, through various subcommittees, we have placed a good focus on taking a good account of our inventory. For facilities that may not serve a direct municipal service delivery, how might we find ways to dispose or divest of those so we can then in turn invest in our own facilities? So, I think it's very safe to say is that we're not looking per se, as a council member, to bring on more real estate. If there are opportunities for us to downsize and optimize, we are always doing that. And are there things that we're actually leasing or renting? There are. There are a few, but one good example that we won't be leasing here pretty soon, I think Commissioner Albright was here, is water quality. Water quality has three leases, which I think from memory, has an annual value of almost $700,000. We purchased that property out on New Circle Road, the okay mark. And when that comes online, that's going to allow us to sunset and retire those leases, and then invest in property that we own. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member, and thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. And I think over the recent years, you've been doing a good job at land management and looking and assessing our properties and making decisions, so thank you for your work on that. Thank you, Council Member. Committee members, I apologize for such a long meeting. We had a long agenda, it's the last meeting before we start going into budget cows going forward. So I think we had some stuff that we needed to take care of. It brings us to the end of our agenda, and if there's no, well, before I exit the meeting, I'm going to take a point of privilege and recognize one of my brothers that showed up today for the committee meeting. So Adam, wave your hand, Adam. That's my brother. Thanks for joining us. So if there's no objections, consider this meeting adjourned. Thank you.