♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We're not done with the questions. I saw my clock, it hit 15, so I thought I was done. And 15, and now everybody gets to ask questions. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me since I'm not on this committee. Sheriff Witt, I want to say thank you for coming and presenting to us. On your website, it looks like you have an emergency cell phone program. Could you just, for the public, talk a little bit about that? Sure. That program began when O.J. Simpson murdered his wife. And one of our judges, who's now retired, said, I think her name was Karen Brown, was O.J.'s wife's sister, started a cell phone program out in California about used cell phones that would only dial 911. And it was Judge Megan Thornton, another female leader. She said, why don't you start that here? And so we do collect used cell phones. They only dial 911. They were really, really popular when we first began that program a couple of decades ago. They're still called upon, no pun intended. People still want them for that reason because they might not have a cell phone or just for whatever to get 911. So, yes, we do take donations for that, if that's where you're going. And it looks like the phone has to have the charger with it, right, for you to accept the donation? You need the charger. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And do you just want to give a little bit of contact information for the public on where they can find information for your office? Sure. You can go to FayetteSheriff.com. That's our website. You can follow us on Facebook. Ricardo Franklin and Scooter do a great job in keeping our Facebook site up to date. If you have an idea, our best ideas come from our community. If you have a great idea that we would be a great fit for, I hope that you will reach out and start a conversation with us about that. We have two slogans at the Office of Sheriff. One of them is doing good for a living, and the other one, which is actually mine, is find a way to yes. When somebody calls and says can you, don't immediately say no, I can't. Let's find a way to yes to close that gap. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me since I do not serve on this committee. And thank you, Sheriff Witt, for being here. Sorry it took us so long to get you over here. But I just wanted to express my gratitude for your office and all of the work that you all have done on this issue. I do have a very quick question for you that I think should be a pretty easy answer, which is that we talk a lot about domestic violence, sexual assault, etc. And the services you provide within the context of predominantly cisgender women. But I think we all know that these heinous acts don't have any gender preference. They don't have any racial preference, no socioeconomic preference. So just for the sake of clarity, these services are available to all people regardless of their gender, gender identity, race, etc. And I was wondering if you could speak to that just briefly. So we fully support everyone who comes into the Office of Sheriff. One thing I want to add is I'm talking about you walking through the door in the courthouse. You may not be able to walk through the door in the courthouse. You may be in the hospital because of an assault. You may be in your home too afraid to come out. And so our circuit court clerk and I partnered together. We have cross-deputized all of the folks who work in domestic violence, all the sworn officers, all of the second shifts, so that if you can't come to us, we're coming to you. And we're going to complete that petition in the field for you, submit it for you, come back and give you your copy, and then tell you your services. But we support everyone who comes through those doors without any bias. We're going to support you and whatever your need is at that moment and throughout the entire process. And I think we have a good track record of that. Yes, you do. And I want to thank you for raising awareness of that. I come here as a transgender woman. My community, trans women are more than, studies from the National Institute of Health show that of our population, more than 50% of us are likely to experience sexual violence at some point in our lives. That number is even higher for trans women of color. And so I just want everybody in my community, both in South Lexington and within the LGBTQ community, to know that our sheriff's office is aware of all of these things and they are still going to take care of you. You are not at risk of seeking help because of your identity. That's exactly right. Thank you, Sheriff. And thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Beasley. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Sheriff. How are you? How are you? I'm good. I just have two questions. So my first one is, who monitors the ring cameras? So if I have a ring camera at my house and someone is there, do I have to call or somebody downtown is already looking at those cameras? You have to call unless you are set up with a program in the ARTEC. Is that right, Chief Maynard? Are the residential ring doorbells have the ability? Ring doorbells still need to call. Okay. But maybe that's something we can work on. Okay. Well, let me know if you need help with that. My second question is, can I file an EPO for someone else? You can file on behalf of a child. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. I don't see any other comments or questions. I just wanted to say thank you for all that you do in the community. You have been a true partner with the city and with many other organizations, and it's really admirable all the services that you offer in addition to all the other responsibilities that your office has. So thank you for your time and for coming, and we hope to have you back. And I've really appreciated the work that I've seen you do over the years that I've been on council. Thank you for your kind words. The real thanks goes, though, to the men and women who are members of the Office of Sheriff team, who are dedicated and committed, who give their all each and every day to serving a community that they love and respect. Agreed. Thank you so much. Before we move on to the next item, I just want to give a friendly reminder for everyone to silence your phones, please, and that for decorum, our council rules state that we have to be quiet and we cannot clap and make a big ruckus for things. So I just wanted to remind everybody. And next, we are going to move on to the recovery residences sober living homes. And this is a presentation that will be a review of the sober living ordinance. And we have Mr. Cravens with us from the law department presenting, and I am going to turn this over to Council Member Morton as he sponsored this item, in case you would like to provide any instructions or background information. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, yeah, good afternoon, and thank everyone for being here. First, I wanted to start off by thanking the administration for starting this initial draft recovery residence ordinance. So today before us, we have the draft recovery residence ordinance presentation from the administration. Prior to the presentation, I'd like to give some insight into how I got involved with this item. Before it's officially taken office, I was contacted by the residents of the Oakwood Neighborhood Association about concerns related to recovery residences operating in their community, highlighting the need for the city to establish regulations, but also knowing that the Oakwood community wanted to be a part of the solution. In doing so, I want to give a special shout out and a special thank you to the residents of Oakwood. Some I see in the crowd, and some that are probably watching VLX TV, for their passion, for bringing the issue to light early on, and for their attention to this matter. Likewise, since taking office, I've heard from residents, recovery advocates, and service providers, and I understand the need for a balanced approach that protects the rights and dignity of those in recovery, while also addressing community standards and safety. So, again, I want to thank the administration for their initial work on this ordinance. And as we review and discuss this proposal, my goal is to help shape an ordinance that works for everyone, one that ensures accountability, provides support where it is needed most, and reflects the values of safety, fairness, and compassion that our city stands for. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Cravens for the presentation. Thank you, Councilman Morton, and I want to thank you for your interest and your involvement in this matter, because I know this is keenly on your radar, so we look forward to working with you on this. Before I launch into this, when the mayor first asked me to take a stab at an ordinance, it quickly became clear to me that undertaking to regulate in this area is going to involve balancing a lot of competing but important interests. First of all, one interest that we have to think about is the interest of individuals in substance abuse recovery. That's a vulnerable population, and they should be protected from those who would seek to exploit that vulnerability. And they shouldn't be stigmatized by any local law that we adopt. Another important interest, obviously, is the interest of recovery residence operators. Most of these operators are acting in good faith. They're seeking to advance the good of substance abuse recovery, and they should be allowed to continue to do so without undue burden. A third interest that we need to be mindful of as we think about this issue is the interest in regulating bad actors. I don't think bad actors are that widespread, but there are those in this field, in this cottage industry, who would seek to take advantage of any absence of regulation, who would seek to exploit a vulnerable population, and who need to be kept in check by the standards that accompany certification. And finally, the fourth interest that I think we also need to be mindful of is the interest of neighborhood residents. These are people who hear rumor and speculation and who are understandably worried about their neighborhoods. And we want to make sure we provide those people an assurance that standards of operators are being implemented and followed through. So all those interests and balancing all those interests is a tall order. And I don't have the hubris to think that the ordinance that I've put in the packet cannot be improved. But I think it represents a good start to this conversation, and I look forward to working further with this council. So, that all being my kind of introductory commentary, I'll move on and talk about why we're here. As part of the 2023 and 2024 regular sessions, the Kentucky General Assembly enacted new state laws relating to recovery residents, which are commonly known as sober living homes. KRS 222502 prohibits the operation of recovery residences unless the operator has been certified by a certifying organization and provided proof of that certification to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. KRS 222504 grants local governments, like LFUCG, the authority and the legal standing to impose civil fines and to initiate legal actions against recovery residences that operate in violation of KRS 222502. However, state law is not the end of the question because we also have to be mindful, as a local government undertaking to regulate in this area, to adhere to applicable federal laws, which protect certain categories of persons from discrimination. And there are two specific federal laws that would limit our ability to regulate this type of housing use that I want to just briefly put on your radar, the Fair Housing Act and the American Disabilities Act. The Fair Housing Act, as amended, prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of disability. It makes it unlawful to use land use policies to treat groups of persons with disabilities less favorably than groups of non-disabled persons. And importantly, the Fair Housing Act defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities and goes on to define physical or mental impairment to include alcoholism and drug addiction other than addiction caused by current active illegal use of controlled substances. So that's one guidepost to be mindful of. The other federal law guidepost to be mindful of is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires that public programs, services, and activities are accessible to persons with disabilities, requires reasonable accommodations to be made to programs, services, and policies to provide equal housing opportunity, prohibits discrimination by local government against qualified individuals with disabilities, and, importantly, defines qualified individual with a disability in a manner that does not exclude, and it goes so far as to expressly say it does not exclude, individuals who have successfully completed supervised drug rehabilitation, individuals who are participating in supervised drug rehabilitation, or individuals who have otherwise been or are being rehabilitated and are not engaging in illegal use of a controlled substance. So, bottom line takeaways. Individuals in substance abuse recovery generally qualify as disabled persons who are protected by both the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. And so, what I've summarized on this slide is, federal law generally prohibits LFUCG from prohibiting or significantly regulating recovery residences in a manner that would discriminate in housing on the basis of disability, deny equal housing opportunity on the basis of disability, or treat groups of persons with disabilities less favorably than groups of non-disabled persons. So, mindful of the balancing of interests that I opened up with, and mindful of the state and federal guideposts, I've prepared a proposed ordinance at the direction of the mayor that basically does the following. And this is a high level summary, but we can get into the weeds as much as you all would like. It adopts the state law requirement for recovery residence, including requiring operators to provide proof of certification to us, LFUCG. It requires operators, and again we're talking about operators here, not tenants, the operators of these residence, to obtain a recovery residence license, renewable annually, and to provide information and documentation in support of their application for purposes of examining compliance. A license can, like all of our licenses, a license can be refused or revoked based on failure to provide proof of certification, failure to provide supporting documentation, or failure to otherwise comply with applicable law. The proposed ordinance also formalizes what we're already doing when we're contacted by a recovery residence operator, which is to obtain a zoning compliance permit that basically certifies that the use of the property for a sober living home is appropriate in that zone. And as part of that zoning compliance permit process, the ordinance would require operators to provide notice to abutting property owners as part of their application for the zoning compliance permit. Now that notice requirement I should mention is kind of a formalization of a practice that's already in a lot of the certification programs called the good neighbor practices or good neighbor policies, where residents and tenants in sober living homes already should be reaching out to their neighbors to introduce themselves to their neighbors. So this kind of is just a formalization of that kind of introducing yourself to your abutting owners. This also creates, at the invitation of the state law, it creates an enforcement scheme that authorizes civil citations and civil penalties against operators who violate the ordinance, including the recording of liens. And like all of our civil enforcement processes, it establishes an appeals process that is protective of due process for the recovery residence operators. And because I think it's unreasonable to expect operators to be in compliance on day one, this ordinance would allow a six-month grace period following passage to allow operators adequate time to come into compliance with the ordinance and its requirements. What the ordinance doesn't do, and I felt it important to include this slide because I think this might be a thought that some of you all would have, it doesn't regulate recovery residences differently from the perspective of land use. This is a residential use of property, like any other residential use of property, and this ordinance treats it the same as other residential uses, which is to say it doesn't set special rules from a land use perspective about, for example, density, which is in the second bullet. The recovery residences that are the subject of this ordinance, they're not health care facilities. They're not rehab centers. They're dwellings rented by groups of individuals otherwise protected by the Fair Housing Act and the ADA. And as I said, it doesn't regulate density because the FHA and the ADA prohibit treating groups of protected individuals less favorably than groups of non-protected individuals. And the example that I've given when I've talked to people about this is campus housing. Campus housing may have four unrelated students living together in the same house. Well, we're not going to regulate or we haven't regulated density for campus housing and how far apart campus houses can be located, so we wouldn't treat four unrelated individuals who are in a sober living home differently from that perspective. Again, we're trying to be even-handed and treat groups of protected individuals equal to groups of non-protected individuals. So, with all that said, I know I kind of went through that quickly and gave a kind of high-octane overview, but that's kind of the general gist of the ordinance is it's kind of an attempt to, again, service the competing interests of not being too burdensome to recovery residence operators, addressing some of the concerns we've heard from neighborhoods, making sure that we're not calling out or targeting our regulations to unduly discriminate against individuals in recovery from substance abuse disorders, and it, more importantly, gives us remedies and recourse to go and pursue bad actors in this space who may be exploiting the lack of regulation to take advantage of a vulnerable population. So, with all that being said, I'm happy to answer your questions about the ordinance. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. McRavens. I'll start off just with a question regarding occupancy. So, per section 1395, which is on page four of the ordinance, it says LFUC exercises concurrent local authority to regulate recovery residences according to a guide of recovery, and according to a guide of recovery residences published by the planning division, it states that the maximum number of residents per unit is eight. Is that true? Is that the case? This ordinance does not displace the generally applicable occupancy limits that exist in the zoning ordinance. So, yes, that is true. We would follow the occupancy limits that would be applicable from the zoning ordinance, which would be eight individuals. Okay. Thank you. Then, moving on, so to the next topic. What specific circumstances would trigger immediate closure? And this is specifically in the ordinance on page, let's see, just talking about immediate closure by the government. Let's see. This under enforcement page, well, letter H. Immediate action by the government. Excuse me. Are you talking, let me see. Page ten, letter H. And then the question would be, what specific circumstances would trigger immediate action? What does that look like, and who shuts down the facility? Well, it's hard to give you. Generally, the answer I would give is we're going to want to work, we're going to want to act with more urgency if there's a threat of harm to public health, safety, or welfare. If there's some situation that a recovery residence operator is so badly out of compliance that there's a risk to public safety or public health by that being out of compliance. And I don't know that I can give you a clear example because this is such a we don't know what we don't know until we know it kind of situation. So I don't know that I can give you a good hypothetical, but that generally, in other contexts, when we're looking to act immediately to enforce any ordinance that may deal with the occupancy of a dwelling unit, we're going to be looking for some sort of threatened and immediate harm to public health, public safety, or the general welfare. Okay, cool. So then, somewhat, and it could be just for the record, so for a follow-up to that, what precise mechanisms would determine those serious enough violations to warrant immediate action? Still kind of the same, similar answer? Well, what I would hope is that if there was a situation that came on the radar of whether it be our social services department or our housing advocacy department where there's something bad going on, that their first phone call would be at the law department so that we can walk them through what steps, whether we believe legally we're at a point where we can justify taking immediate action to resolve the situation. And so, again, it's hard for me to give you a hypothetical about what that might look like, but it would be something that the law department would work closely with any division or department of government that this falls on their radar to address the situation. And so the law department would be overseeing that closure, overseeing that whole thing? Well, generally what's going to happen is someone who wants to enforce and take immediate action would reach out to the law department and say, here's what's going on, what can we do? And we would then ask questions about what's going on, what's the factual situation, who owns the property, how many tenants are there, what's the violation that's involved, and then we would advise our client accordingly. So then lastly, just on that same topic, I guess then my question would be, who would be that someone? When you say someone would reach out, who would be the someone? Well, these enforcement issues often are complaint driven. So I'm assuming somebody would know, either one of the tenants there or somebody in the neighborhood, or somebody would reach out to either housing advocacy or social services and say, hey, I think this is going on. And so with any enforcement process, the complaint comes in and then the people that need to be involved in reviewing that, which would usually include the law department, would determine the best course forward in terms of resolving that. Okay. So then how exactly will violations from different departments and community concerns be tracked, organized, counted? What would this all go to? Well, that's a good question. What I would say is usually we route people, and I may be speaking out of turn here because I'm the lawyer and not the administrative guy, but I think we usually route people to 311 to make their complaints and then 311 routes those to where they need to go in terms of which divisions or departments of government are involved in addressing that complaint. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Cravens, for the presentation. I just have a few questions. Did you reach out to or work with our state partners, the Kentucky Alliance of Recovery Residences, when you were working on a draft for this ordinance at all? They're kind of the experts. I did not because I was focused more on the drafting side of things. I do believe our Department of Social Services had been in contact with them about what we're working on, but in terms of did I send them a draft or get feedback from them, no. My next question is in regards to Section 13-96 sub-letter I, and that sub-section talks about how the public can make complaints about a particular resident. The process is not really fleshed out in that paragraph. Like when a neighbor makes a complaint, what happens then? So do you foresee? Well, I would like to either have it clarified what happens when a complaint is made or is that going to be handled in the standard operating of procedures that will come after? Well, what I can say is the intent as I was drafting this, and we included language in this ordinance to this effect, would be that there will be standard operating procedures like policy guides in terms of how this is administered. And one good example of the type of policy guidance I think we would need to figure out is this ordinance, for example, authorizes a max civil penalty of $1,000 per violation per day, but that's a max. That doesn't mean that every violation is going to be hit with a $1,000 penalty. It's going to vary depending on what's the nature of the violation, what's the character of the harm to the public, and so that's where when other divisions and departments have like these civil enforcement schemes, they have like a matrix that they follow that determines what's the appropriate penalty. That's the kind of thing that I think we will need to flesh out in order to kind of administer this from a kind of administrative level, but it's a good question. And then if it's going to be in the standard operating procedures, would that document be public so that people could read that? Yes. Okay. Yes. Regarding section 13-97A, if an operator's certification status changes are supposed to notify the government, notify us, I would like for it to be more fleshed out about how they notify us when that certification status changes. It's very, very clear when that changes that they let us know. And even give them a time frame, like within a week, seven days. I think that we need to know that expeditiously so that we as a government can react and work to better that situation. And then regarding section 13-97B, I have some reservations regarding that language, regarding putting the location on our city's website, because my fair housing hat says I don't want to put any person that is in recovery in harm's way for harassment or any other thing. So what are you thinking about the directory of these residences on the website? I know that I've looked at the state's directory, and so I'm wondering what would ours look like regarding location specifically? That's a good question. I think it's a very fair question. It's one that I've been thinking about. I chose the word location in the draft ordinance quite deliberately because I didn't want to put address in. To me it's a question that I welcome your all's input in terms of where we draw the line in terms of how much information we share. Because location could be something as general as the council district in which they're located, or some geographic marker or description of whether it's north side or south side or something like that. Or we just could leave the location out. But I would also clarify that what this section does is say they have to consent to the posting of this information. It's up to us how much we post. And so if you all want us to remove the reference to location, I'm happy to do that. And I kind of have the same thoughts that you do in terms of the Fair Housing Act. One of the things I said when I first opened up is we don't need to stigmatize people or demonize people. And so if we don't want to play into that, I'm happy to take the word location out. But that's why I use the word location rather than address. Because I'm also balancing the concern that I've heard from residents in that they don't know what's going on. And so how much information can we give them that will give them an assurance that they know what's going on, while at the same time being mindful of the privacy interest and the concern that might come from people living in these residences that you're exposing me to something that I shouldn't be exposed to. So that's a fair point. And so I welcome your all's feedback or input on that. Awesome. I'm happy to work with you on that. Thank you, Chair. I have further questions, but I'll log back in later. Thank you. Vice Chair Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Cravens, for taking a first stab at this. It's a good first start. So I want to make sure that I understand the definition of a recovery residence. I see it in the ordinance, but can you clarify whether or not any services are provided in a home like this, or is it simply just a drug and alcohol-free residence for people to live? That definition of recovery residence is taken directly from the state law, because I don't want us to define recovery residence in a way that's out of alignment with how the state deems what the state qualifies as recovery residence. So I think we would take our cues from the state law, and my understanding of the state law is you generally, I mean, it's not that on-site services can never be provided, but I think the state law prohibits permanent on-site services. Somebody could come in and teach a class or administer medication or whatever, but it's not like a medical facility where there's a permanent eight to five office in the residence that's going to administer medication or provide services of a medical character. And I appreciate that. The reason that I ask is because constituents in my district have a concern that it's a business that's being run in a residential area, and so that's why I was trying to figure out how we are looking at the actual programming aspect of these homes. I would not characterize this as a business or a commercial use. I would characterize it that recovery residences under the state law and under the definition that we're borrowing from the state law is really about dwelling units where individuals in recovery who may be unrelated are living together. Okay. Thank you. I have some questions for Director Holbrook now. Director, we just keep handing things to you. Thank you. Okay, so my questions are a little bit more about the specifics of this. So it requires operators to obtain a zoning compliance permit. Can you go through the process of that? So we don't administer the zoning compliance process, but that would be something that they would receive through the division of planning. And they would go through and file an application. There would be certain requirements that would be laid out in the ordinance and our zoning ordinance, and then that would be as part of their application to us for a regulated license. Okay, so once they have all of that information, they would then come to you to apply for their license. Sounds similar to some other processes we have. Okay, so I know we talked a little bit about the enforcement and whether or not this is complaint driven or how we handle enforcement essentially. So does that all fall on you? Is that like a code enforcement thing where- So I think some of the things in here for us to enforce are very clear. If there's any issue with certification, documentation, payment, renewal, things like that, those are very easy for us to enforce. A lot of the things that may happen in a residential use are really outside of the purview of what our division does as far as enforcement. And so we would be dependent on other divisions to provide us that information if there were some issue and some citation issue. Then we would need to provide further citation under this ordinance. Okay. I think I'm just comparing everything to our short-term rental policy. how you guys are tracking the licenses and complaints and all that kind of stuff. And curious if we envision something similar for this specific ordinance. There are some key differences and some very specific pieces of the short term rental ordinance, which this doesn't have, which we do side on without any input really from other divisions. But we do get that feedback from other divisions as well, such as billing inspection, code, and police in order to be able to provide short term rental citations. We would just need a lot more of that from other divisions because a lot of what we would see and need to side on during a licensed entity's year. It's just not something that our division enforces on a regular basis. Okay, and then I guess general questions, and I don't know if we have thought this far in advance, but what methods we are using to educate current operators or the public in general about this ordinance change? Have you all had those preliminary conversations yet? That's not any conversation I've had. Okay. The recovery resident space is new for us, but since it's not something that we have any regulation over, and so we would rely a lot on social services and other divisions and departments that have had those sorts of interactions to be able to provide this information about the new regulation. Okay, thank you. I'm out of time. I'll come back. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Liu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Cravens, for your work on this. Council Member Baxter touched on this earlier about the zoning compliance permit, and that that runs through our planning staff. Can you tell me what that is exactly, because later on in your presentation, it talks about that these recovery residences are not regulated differently from a land use perspective. So what is a zoning compliance permit exactly? It is essentially, and again, I'm not the planning person, so I'll take the liberty of telling you, I'll give you what I got, which is what I know, which is a zoning compliance permit generally simply certifies that the use of the property is appropriate for the zone. And since this is a residential use of property, it would be that this is an appropriate use in the zone where the property is located. Okay, so if I had, if I was just building a regular house in a residential zone, would I need to get a zoning compliance permit? That, I would have to get back to you on, because I'm not in the weeds on how planning industry goes. That's sort of my curiosity, because I want to make sure that if we're saying we're not regulating recovery residences differently from a land use perspective. So my question would be like, how is a recovery residence different from a regular residence? Like, would they be, you know, would they have the same permitting? I would have to follow up with you, and I would have to check with planning on that. I don't want to misspeak, but generally the concept, what I can say from discussing with planning is, we're already kind of informally doing this when we learn of a recovery residence operator that's operating a recovery residence. We're suggesting to them that they go ahead and get the zoning compliance permit, and many of them have and do. So it's kind of already going on. This just formalizes it as a requirement that accompanies their certification requirement. Okay, looking at the legal guideposts in regards to the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the last sentences in both of those talk about, let me pull this up. Talk about the idea of defining disability and people with disabilities other than addictions caused by current illegal use of controlled substances. That's under the FHA. And then under the ADA, the last sentence also says, and are not engaging in illegal use of a controlled substance. So when we're talking about people in active recovery, how does this work? Because I'm thinking about, if you discover or see somebody who is currently using controlled substances, does that mean that that disqualifies them from protections from the FHA and the ADA? That they are now, by definition, not a person with a disability as defined by both of these? The ADA and the FHA do not protect the illegal use of controlled substances. So you are not a qualified, if you're claiming disability, but your disability involves the current illegal use of controlled substances, you're not a qualified individual with disability under either of those acts. Now, we don't regulate an ordinance like this on that granular level. So we kind of assume that the people who are being regulated are not using because they're in recovery, and that's what these residents are there for. It's for recovery from substance abuse addiction, not active use of controlled substances that are illegal. Okay, and if a lot of this ends up being complaint driven, if I am a neighbor and I know that there's a sober living home next door to me, and I see somebody sitting on the porch using a controlled substance, and that's what I call in. Is that person then under our ordinance and under FHA and ADA no longer protected as a person with a disability and therefore not protected on the basis of their housing rights anymore? Well, they are not protected by the FHA or the ADA. But what I would say is the ordinance that is in your packet, I took pains not to regulate the tenants of these houses. Because we don't want to treat the tenants differently than we treat other tenants in other residential dwellings. While it may be that they're not persons with disabilities under the ADA or the FHA, I don't know what bearing that would have on whether or not the residents and the operator of the residence who is subject to these requirements would still have to comply with these requirements. Okay, thank you for that. I might have a follow up. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Beasley. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. I have a couple questions about the people who live there. The residents of the recovery homes, do we have any protections for them? We're talking about people who are bad actors clearly, right? So the people who are already doing these correctly, we're not really talking about those. We're making this ordinance for the ones who are bad actors, right? So what protections do we have for the folks that live there? What I would say is what we're trying to do through this ordinance is make sure the bad actors who are operating these places are not in a position to exploit the people who live there, such as by renting them a home, but it's out of code compliance and there are structural violations. And to me, that basically because people in these homes, we don't want them to feel like, well, I'm desperate, so I don't have a choice, so I'm kind of married into this relationship with this bad actor. We want to drive the bad actors out. And if we can drive the bad actors out, I think that will help protect the people who would otherwise be subject to the bad actions of those bad actors. But aren't they kind of actually married to them already? I mean, it's not like we have a whole lot of places here that they can go to and live, right, for recovery. So also, what specific actions constitute a violation that would trigger a two strike revocation? That's a good question. And that's one that in all candor, I will say, I borrowed from the short term rental ordinance in discussing it internally. I'm not sure to what degree that two strikes rule has the same applicability to this type of use. So, I can't give you a good example of a two strikes hypothetical where that would be triggered. So it would not break my heart if you told me to remove that. So, sorry, I'm reading my notes that I have. So, what happens if you shut one of these houses down, right? Because that's ultimately what we could do, is shut one of these houses down, right? What happens to the people who live there? That is also a very good question, Council Member Beasley, and it's one that I've thought about. To me, it would be equivalent, legally speaking, as what happens when we foreclose on a house where tenants are living. If we foreclose on the house and the house is sold, the tenants are evicted. So it would be the same type of situation where if we were to shut down a bad actor recovery residence who was taking advantage of his residence or his tenants, it would ultimately require them to find another place to live. So I feel like the difference between us foreclosing on a house and then being evicted is the part where they're in recovery, right? So if I don't pay my mortgage and I get evicted from my house, it may not push me back into drugs and alcohol. But if we put these people who were paying their rent to, we'll say a bad actor, to a bad actor. And then we put them back out on the street, what's the chances that they're probably going to relapse? Or do we even have that number? And that's why I'm glad that my compatriot here has wandered up and is here to help because she can speak to social services. Good afternoon. So again, as Council Member Lynch was alluding to earlier, we have not spelled out a complete standard operating procedures. However, how we predict at this time, let me first start saying is we do not have the capacity to rehouse people. But we do understand their situation that they're in. They're in a vulnerable state and they're now essentially homeless. So we're going to do a couple of things. One is we have the recovery RSLA program, which provides rent for a person to live in a sober living home. We are prepared to set aside a portion of that every month so that if someone can show proof that they were displaced from their recovery living assistance due to this ordinance. We can provide them and help them financially in getting into another sober living home. The second part of that is providing resources. We are prepared to publicize widely and educate widely on the various resources, the places that they can go to link with persons who have the capacity, who do this work in helping people find another recovery home. Thank you, Chair. I may log back in. Thank you. Council Member Shin. And thank you, Commissioner Allen Bryant. That was Commissioner Allen Bryant. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, this might be a question for you. Could you talk a little bit about what goes into the certification process? because these entities have to go through the certification with the state approved certification entities. And then they come to us for licensure. But there's a significant amount of documentation that has to be provided for certification. So could you, is there someone here that could talk a little bit about that? I'm sorry, it has to, it's up to the commissioner. If you have someone from the city that you wanted to call, or are you okay with him coming up? I just want to make sure. It's fine with me. I was looking for Commissioner Barbary, but it's fine with me, yes. Okay, thank you, sir. Please state your name and who you're with. Sure thing. My name is Dane Priest, and I'm the Executive Director of the Kentucky Alliance of Recovery Residences. And we are the organization that's contracted by the state of Kentucky to perform the recovery residence certifications in the state. Prior to my position, which I took in January, I was with the Cabinet of Health and Family Services since 2023 with the Kentucky Recovery Housing Network, which was doing the recovery residence certifications up until January. Now we've transitioned to CAIAR, which I hope many of you have our certification process in front of you right now. But I am happy to answer any questions about the certification process. One related question that has come up is that, from Council Member Lynch, is how does someone notify us when they lose their certification? Is that something that an entity like yours could give us if you are not renewing a certification, or if you revoke a certification, can you provide that information to us? Absolutely, so we maintain constant communication with local municipalities around the state, whether it be Lexington, Louisville, or London, anywhere we go, we have an ongoing route of communication. So if someone does have their certification revoked, or recertification denied, or even certification denied, we'll be in communication about that. Okay, thank you, and I think that answers one of our questions. And then could you just talk a little bit about what the applicant has to provide to be certified, and then how long the certification process takes, because one of the things here with this six month's grace period, someone can say they're in the process of getting certified, and then be able to get licensed with us, and be able to maintain that residence. So how long does a certification take, and what are some of the steps they go through? So the certification can take anywhere, the shortest one I've ever done was two weeks. The longest one has been over a year, the reason being it's a very detailed process. As you have in front of you is a 39 page, three phase certification process. It is very, very detailed to go through this. That first phase involves verification documents, approving that you have a filing with the Secretary of State. You have adequate insurance for the properties, that you have permission from the property owners of record to operate or recover residence at that address, that you are signing and agreeing to be a part of our grievance policy. That even though you may not be a certified recovery residence yet, in the event that we receive a complaint about you, we can still investigate it, and you're subject to our grievance policy as you go through the certification process, and even as you are certified. And then you have to sign our code of ethics at the jump. We require that because our code of ethics is extremely robust. It includes a standard NAR, which is the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, which sets the national standards we use to certify that code of ethics, as well as codes of ethics from other professional standards. You are subject to that from the very beginning. Once we've received all that documentation, we'll proceed someone to phase two, which is policy and procedure review. That involves, I think it's 32 different policies with a couple sub-policies, involving administrative operations, recovery planning, operating with integrity, and being a good neighbor. Now, I believe Mr. Craven mentioned the good neighbor policy. There's some misinformation about that. It is not part of our good neighbor policy or any certification program to notify your neighbors that you're moving in. That's not a requirement. The only reason you should know that a recovery residence is on that block is because it's the best looking house on the block. because that should be the house that has their trash picked up, that has everything taken care of, that is being clean and well maintained. It should not be one that they have to go around. We do require a good neighbor policy that in the event a neighbor does have a concern and goes to a resident, that the resident is told to provide their information to a staff member or provide the neighbor with staff member's contact information so they can address it. We also have our grievance policy posted in every recovery residence that is certified. And anyone can file a grievance, whether it be a city council member, a neighbor, someone on the street. Anyone can file a grievance to us when it comes to a certified recovery residence. Okay, my time is up, so I want to give the floor back to the chair, but thank you for that. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, and Council Member Sivigny, I'm going to let the council members that serve on the committee go a second time, and then I will call on you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. So, who has the authority to determine an imminent danger situation? And that's on page ten, letter H, under immediate action by government. This is a provision that we generally include with any of our civil enforcement schemes that basically reserves our right that notwithstanding the fact that we have set up a process whereby there's a civil notice of violation, a civil citation can be issued, a civil penalty can be imposed. If the situation requires immediate action, we don't want to have to jump through all of those procedural hoops to address a situation where immediate action is called for because of a threat to public health, safety, or welfare. That would generally be a conversation that would take place. I'm just anecdotally going based on our typical practice in other contexts between whatever the enforcing division and the Department of Law. Okay. What are the specific public safety issues and community or criminal complaints that would lead to a non-renewal closure or closure as referenced on page seven of the ordinance? One example that comes to mind, and I don't like giving hypotheticals, but I'll give you what I got. One example that comes to mind is if it's a house where there have been like six police calls in the last two months, there's clearly something going on there that needs to be addressed. It would be something that rises to that level where there's some observable, some documentable, ongoing health or safety issue that requires intervention. What mechanisms exist for ongoing assessments of recovery residents and operations? So pretty much like who is going to be in charge of inspections and stuff of that nature? Well, as part of this process, they're going to have to renew their license every year. And I think as part of their renewal of their license, they're going to have to, there's a provision in here, I believe, let me see if I can find it. Where they're going to have to be in compliance with any sort of outstanding fees, taxes, any sort of like liens assessed or levied by the government. In terms of any sort of like building safety, health, sanitation, fire, electrical, plumbing, mechanical code violations. So that would be reviewed under the way this ordinance is drafted, contemporaneous with the application for the renewal of the license. Okay, okay. And then just lastly, and I'll save this one because I think Council Member Beasley hit on it. I just hope moving forward, we need to think about concrete steps to be taken to ensure residents, if these houses are closed down, are not left without housing. Especially in the existing communities where they are currently at. We should not be unhousing folks in communities and not having resources available for them or pathways forward for them to go. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Another amendment I would make and I would suggest to the ordinance is to kind of mirror the state law and its definition of recovery support services. Because that is not defined in this ordinance and I think the state law's definition is really good. So I would add to section 13-93 recovery support services and define what that is in our ordinance because I think that kind of makes a level set as far as what the rest of the ordinance is about. So I would love to have that addition made to the definition section. And then my last two questions would be for Director Holbrook. Thank you, Director. Since your division's going to be doing some of the enforcement and licensing, are there any budgetary things we need to think about in this budgetary season? I don't know offhand because I don't know what the universe of this, the number of licensees would be. I think that based on how we've done some of our other regulated licenses, we have the capacity to be able to take this on in the short term. And then we need to look at that and see what that might look like in future years. Okay. My time ran out fast. You still have more time. I'm just not sure how much because there was a error there. Okay. I think you have like, I want to say, three minutes. Okay. I just have one more question for Director Holbrook. So your division will be handling the license renewal process. So say a recovery residence has several code enforcement violations. There have been a lot of law enforcement activity at that residence. When that operator comes for their annual renewal, are any of those outstanding issues that have been tied to that residence, is that information considered when you decide whether to renew their license or not? Because if they're, we've been calling them bad actors. If there's been a lot of negativity happening, law enforcement has had to engage, there's a lot of disruption to the neighborhood because of the operator not doing their due diligence and not supporting their tenants. When they come up for renewal, will that information be taken into account when you decide to renew them or not? It will, and there's a provision in here under 1396, section F, and then under the various subsections, it goes through what will cause us to not, or will allow us not to renew a license. And specifically, it talks about that it is unsatisfied penalties, fines, or liens assessed by the government for any reason. And then that it's not in compliance with state, federal, local laws or regulations. And then it goes on to have a list of various things that could fall under that. So then, if they're, the date they come to renew, if they're compliant on that day, they've got a whole year of not doing what they're supposed to be doing. But by the day they come to renew, they've paid all the liens, they've paid all the fines, they're financially in good standing with the city, they're certified with the state. But they still have this history over the course of the year of not doing what they should regarding the tenants, regarding the property. Would that be taken into consideration renewal, or if they've paid all the dues, paid all the fines, would that be just enough for them to be renewed? There's a lot of hypotheticals under there. I think it would depend on very specifically what was under there, and if there were, really if there were any outstanding issues that would allow us not to renew. And I'll look to Michael, but I think if, as long as all of those things were satisfied, even though there may be a history, we would still issue the license based on the fact that they are compliant. They don't have any outstanding issues or fines. Okay. Thank you, Director Hoboken. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Cravens, I wanted to follow up on my previous questions. I came across the zoning compliance permit under our code of ordinances. It reads, after January 1, 2012, no building or premises shall be occupied for any use nor any use be changed unless a zoning compliance permit has been issued by the division of planning. Such permits shall not be required for agricultural use, as defined in KRS, single family or two family residences. So my question is, is a recovery residence Considered a single family home or a two family residence as regards to planning and land use? It's a dwelling, and without having the zoning ordinance in front of me, I'm a little reticent to offer a legal opinion one way or the other. I can look at that and give you an opinion at this meeting. Okay, I'm just curious about that because- But I see where you're going with it. You want to make sure we're treating people even handedly, so I get where you're coming from. Yeah, to me, if a recovery residence isn't categorically different when it comes to planning and land use, then it doesn't seem like it should require a zoning compliance permit, which seems like an extra step there. My other question, kind of going back to the ADA and the FHA, this whole, my concern about the idea of the current illegal use of controlled substances. So is it only the operators at that point? So if I, as a neighbor, called in a complaint and say, hey, I saw a person using controlled illegal substances on their front porch, and the bulk of this ordinance, the proposed ordinance, seems to be addressing the operators of the house, right? So at that point, is it only incumbent on the operator slash landlord of that house to say, okay, you're out and evict that particular tenant, or is there any component of local, of our ordinance, or our regulation, or our enforcement that comes into play there? The way I would answer that question is, this ordinance and the way that we've approached it, doesn't insert ourselves into the relationship between the recovery residence operator slash landlord and his tenants. So we regulate operators under this ordinance, not misconduct of tenants. I can't speak to, as between the landlord-tenant relationship, where that misconduct is enough under the particular arrangement to have them evicted by their landlord. But we, as a government, in this ordinance, would not be inserting ourselves in that relationship, because we're regulating the operators, not the tenants. So here's my concern then, because if we're enforcing this ordinance on operators, right? And I think about short-term rentals as a good example. The short-term rental operator is not in that house living there every day, day after day. And whatever complaints that neighbors have are about the residents, are about the tenants, right? So by extension, at what point, if I'm a neighbor and I call and complain, say there are six people living in this house, and I saw three of them on a regular basis out here doing various things using controlled substances. At what point does that sort of trigger us enforcing or penalizing the operator? At what point, how do we tie that responsibility between what the tenants are doing versus what the operator is doing, right? If we're taking that sort of arms distance and saying we're not stepping in between the tenant and the operator. Do you see where I'm getting at? Well, the way I would approach answering that question is I am assuming that if an operator has tenants who are illegally using controlled substance in a recovery residence, which is meant to be to recover from substance abuse issues, that is potentially a certification issue. And so I think the operator may, and I don't want to speak to the certification because I'm not in the weeds on that. Other than to say, it seems to me you'd have a hard time remaining certified if there was evidence that you're allowing individuals who are using illegal controlled substances to reside in these houses. So the recourse against the operator would be more as to their certification, and then as to the trickle down from their certification to our licensing scheme. Thank you. My time is up. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Allen Bryant, I have a few questions for you. So I know there's a state certification process already in place. Yes. And I assume we would be able to cross-reference that database on current homes that are operating. Correct. So that would probably be part of our SOPs where we receive some kind of whatever we consider regular. So we could have as most updated list as possible with us. Okay. Or accessible. Sure. I do assume, though, that there are some operators who maybe aren't certified currently. Yes. So do you have any idea of how we might be able to identify those homes? Would it be kind of like our short-term rental where neighbors would kind of call and ask if? I'm trying to figure out how we- I know. Fill the gap. I think that that has been, since I've been here in this position almost for four years, that has been the eternal question is how many sober living homes do we have in Lexington? We have no idea. I mean, through the RSLA program, we kind of have our running list. Now that Chi-R has started their certifications, we have some lists from them. So we are getting a better idea, but I don't think we'll ever know until this ordinance or whatever version of it is in place and people have to register. Sure. Now, one of the things, if you want to get money from the city, you have to, through the RSLA program, I mean, now you have to have certifications. So, yeah, we just don't know. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I think they're just important things for us to consider moving forward. And one of the reasons why I don't feel like we're in any form ready to move this forward is it needs to be a continuing conversation. And then, do you have any preliminary ideas on how to educate the public on- So our SUTI coordinator, Carmen Combs-Marx, did an excellent job. When all of this came about with the state legislation and knowing that it was coming about, she set up numerous informationals. There's information online. Of course, everyone who's ever been applied or been involved in the RSLA program, they received information, and so we would go about doing that the same way. And also, partnering with other community agencies who are in the same field, spreading that information that way. That's helpful, thank you. Yes, ma'am. Chair, would it be appropriate for me to ask Council Member Morton a question? Yes, that's fine. Council Member Morton, I just wanted to kind of give you the opportunity to talk about next steps. Yeah, if you don't mind, can I go ahead and, perfect timing, perfect segue. So, but first I just wanted to thank Mr. Cravens, Commissioner Bryant, and all the staff who have gave their expertise, time, and engagement for today. Critical questions have been asked around enforcement, resident protection, and long-term accountability, each which deserve direct attention and solution through thoughtful planning before an adoption of the ordinance. As we move forward, my office, alongside with Council Member Lynch, Council Member Sheehan, and Council Member Reynolds, will work to ensure these concerns are reflected in the final draft of the ordinance. In doing so, we'll be following up with key departments and stakeholders to develop a detailed implementation and oversight plan that prioritizes both community safety and dignity of residents in recovery. Likewise, we will seek community input through various options. This is just the beginning of a collaborative process. If you have any additional input, would like to be involved in the next steps, please don't hesitate to reach out. Together we can create a policy that is not only effective, but also impactful and compassionate. And I believe those would be the best next steps, so. Anything else? Thank you. I want to thank everyone that worked on this ordinance, Mr. Cravens especially. I think it's a good start and I appreciate my colleagues chiming in and I appreciate Council Member Morton for putting this in committee and everyone that's working on it. I know that there's some things that we still have questions about, but I'm sure that we will get to a positive resolution and put something in place that is fair, so thank you. And now we're going to get to our last item, and so I'm going to ask that we have Stephanie Theakston, who's our domestic and sexual violence prevention coordinator, provide an update for the Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition. And she will have 15 minutes and then we will have about ten minutes. We have a hard stop today at three for the mayor's budget address and I will go to Councilwoman Gray to introduce this item. Okay, thank you. We got to you, Stephanie. Thank you for being here. So as I mentioned earlier, this month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. And before going into this, I would like to publicly thank my colleagues, Shayla Lynch, who are also my friends as well. Shayla Lynch, Council Member Dave Savigne, and my legislative aide, Heather Parrish, as well as some community members, the entire 6th district for their support, as well as support from Commissioner Kenneth Armstrong, as well as support from the police chief from a graduate of Bryan Station High School, Lawrence Weathers, for your support. And as well to many organizations such as former Ampersand, which I believe is the Sexual Violence Resource Center now, as well as the NEST and numerous other organizations for your support. And as well as community members, Stephanie Evans and Kara Stewart, and the legal aide of the Bluegrass for your continuous support of me throughout last year for being there for me. Unfortunately, when our local media, meaning the Herald-Leader WKYT, put my personal situation on blast. And the reason why I wanted us to make sure that we gave awareness to the importance of this issue is because many people have come up to me who have been sexually assaulted, who said they would never go and do a protective order or seek help because of what I was dealt with. And for those people who told me that and for people who are sitting at home dealing with this issue on their own, there is help, please come out and be your own advocate. You are the best advocate for yourself. And we do have the sheriff's office as well as this office right here who would be presenting the awesome work that they do in our community for not only adults, but also for our youth. And so, thank you for being here, and there you go. I appreciate that, and I'm just so sorry that that happened to you. And I hope that people saw Diane Fleet, the chair of the coalition, her op-ed in the Herald-Leader talking about how dangerous that was in terms of preventing other survivors from coming forward. So thank you for your bravery on speaking about it. So I am Stephanie Theakston, I coordinate the Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition through social services. And I did just want to spend a little bit of time telling you about what we do. So the coalition's focus is on survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, and stalking in Lexington. And under the umbrella of the coalition, we have a couple of different programs that we've developed to help us target our message to certain populations. So It's Time Lexington is from our coalition. It's the citywide initiative through which we work to engage community members to recognize the roles that they can take on to help prevent domestic and sexual violence. Actually, it's not taking on anything new. It's doing what you're already doing, but thinking about it in a different way. So we're not asking anyone to do anything in addition, because we are all overwhelmed right now. But you can just think about it differently and help prevent domestic violence in the roles that you already play. We have hired Melissa Wallace as our youth prevention and response coordinator. And she is working to fill the significant gaps in our community resources in regards to children experiencing domestic violence. And that little clock is a representation of her efforts right now. Her effort is to say it's time to show up for kids and that kids are survivors too. They're not secondary survivors, they are primary survivors. And so right now through the It's Time initiative, we're working to expand our city's capacity to respond to children. And that are experiencing violence in ways that are supportive and help build resilience. And then we have also hired Alyssa Turk, who is our Green Dot Lexington specialist. She's right here. So if you ever want to have her come and provide a free training to become an active bystander, which is to help prevent violence before it occurs, she is happy to do that. Our overall goal is to make Lexington a Green Dot city. And you can help do that by becoming a Green Dot spot, which means you have 15% of your staff trained. And any organizations, agencies can reach out to her to get that free training. So our coalition, we do not provide direct services. But we bring together people who do provide those direct services and coordinate those services. And a lot of the people that Council Member Gray mentioned, as well as the sheriff, are members of our coalition. So it's representatives from criminal justice, the court system, service providers, schools, public schools, universities, healthcare, and more. We come together all to work towards the same goal, which is preventing domestic and sexual violence. Our mission is to create a culture of safety and empowered stakeholders through advocacy, education, collaboration, and service coordination for communities impacted by interpersonal violence. And our coalition is established through city ordinance. And as laid out in city ordinance, these are our goals. To make sure systems are responsive to survivor needs, to promote best practices, to monitor the effectiveness of services, to educate the community about domestic and sexual violence, and to provide information and resources on related issues. And then we also have some guiding principles through which members of our coalition observe. And those include striving to be victim-centered, community-oriented, and opposing all forms of oppression, which is really the root cause of domestic and sexual violence. So some of the efforts we do are outreach and awareness. So we have our purple pumpkins, which you all have generously supported in October. This Friday is our Wake Up Lex event, which is our effort to recognize April as Sexual Violence Awareness Month. We did a content series, if you haven't seen it, called The Good Guy Guide, hosted by Divine Karama, which is meant to reach out and engage men and helping them understand their role in preventing violence, and then Green Dot. Our advocacy efforts, we've partnered with Animal Care and Control to pass out resources because of the overlap between domestic violence and animal abuse. We have handbooks in six languages. We look for gaps and fill those gaps with resources like our safe measures and our housing stability programs. And then we really try to disseminate best practices throughout the city. So a lot of these have to do with the agencies that we work with. We provide training to help expand their capacity. So we did a training recently on housing, so that advocates become more familiar with the options, the housing system in Lexington, and how to best serve survivors. We've done training on improving agency capacities to be LGBTQ responsive and inclusive. We've had national speakers come, but the reason I'm here today is because April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This is the national slogan for this month. So just to let you know, because there is a little bit of confusion with all the terminology that people throw around, but sexual assault is on a continuum of sexual violence. And it includes sexual contact without the consent of another person or against someone who is unable to consent or refuse. Some facts about sexual assault, just so that you understand the scope of it. One in five women, one in 71 men, and as Council Member Curtis referred to earlier, one in two transgender people have experienced rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. People with marginalized identities experience sexual assault at higher rates. So women of color experience sexual assault at rates higher than white women. People with disabilities experience sexual assault at rates higher than people without disabilities. Men and women who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual experience higher rates of violence than their heterosexual counterparts. And if you have any marginalized intersecting identities, your risk of violence just escalates exponentially. The majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone the survivor knows. I think we all have that image of the person jumping out from the bushes, committing sexual assault, but the great majority are either from intimate partners or from acquaintances. Kentucky has a higher rate of sexual assault than the national average. And sexual assault remains the most unreported crime. 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police. Only 88%, or there are 88% of child sexual assaults are not reported to the police. And it's important to understand that there are many, many reasons survivors do not seek help immediately. So often when I present these stats like this, someone will bring up the concern of false reporting, it's always a concern. But the numbers that we received from the Lexington Police Department on data in 2022 shows that out of the 1,145 charges involving intimate partner violence or sexual assault, only 1.6% were unfounded. That's less than 2%. So instead of really focusing on concerns about false reporting, we should be concerned about false denials so that we can really address the reality of what's happening in our community and make it safer. So, I mean, sexual assault has a profound impact on survivors. As many people can attest, increased depression, increased anxiety, panic attacks, increased suicidality, substance abuse. It's really hard to understate how just the lifelong impact affects survivors. The best thing, as we've heard from several people today, including Sheriff Witt, to do when responding to someone that discloses sexual violence to you is to start by believing them. It can be as simple as saying, I believe you, I'm sorry that this happened to you, and you are not to blame. As Council Member Gray stated earlier, there's nothing the survivor did or didn't do to put themselves in that situation. It's solely the responsibility of the person that committed the sexual violence. We do have this resource, Support Survivors. It helps community members understand how they can better support survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Through both individual support and community support. Listen without judgment or interruptions. Trust the survivor's choices, even if they seem counterintuitive to you, and share resources with them. So I just want to talk a little bit about the culture of sexual violence, because it's not just about individuals. It's not about individual action or individual response. It's also about systems and community culture. I think this is really important for people who pass our local laws to understand that when we don't speak out or act against the issues at the bottom of the pyramid, so in our community, any sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, racism. Then we're really providing stability for the actions at towards the top of the pyramid to occur. The good news is, is that it is preventable, and as our council, you play a very large part in that. The best way to prevent sexual violence is to make our communities more inclusive and equitable. So again, we have to speak out against oppression when we see it, when we hear it. Other things that people can do to strengthen our community is to create supportive workplaces, which help survivors maintain economic independence. We can model respect in our relationships and interactions, or speak directly to youth about healthy relationships. As council, you can prioritize safety needs, such as affordable housing and equal pay. All of those things factor into survivor's vulnerability for being re-victimized. And we can broaden our gender norms about accountability, I'm sorry. Broaden our gender norms and broaden accountability. So that means enforcing laws that we already have, prosecuting offenders instead of pleading down cases. And teaching people not to be sexually violent, rather than focusing on teaching community members not to have violence perpetrated against them. So we can also share resources, familiarize yourself with the resources and share them. Because there's no doubt that someone you know has experienced sexual violence. And we are resource rich in Lexington, we're very fortunate for that. And then you can help us spread a message of support for survivors on Friday through our Wake Up Lex initiative. You can go to a local coffee shop, take a picture of your special wake up sleeve, post it on social media. And that, as council members, you can really help us spread the word and help building on creating the community of support for survivors. And that's it. Thank you so much, Stephanie. I really appreciate your presentation. And you all have done a fabulous job of really, I think, raising awareness in the community about domestic and sexual violence. And so thank you for all of your amazing work. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me as I do not serve on this committee. First off, thank you, Ms. Thixton, for coming before us today and providing all this information. Awareness in this issue has never really been more important. It's something that has, again, no class, no age, no sexual orientation, no race, no background. It impacts everyone, everywhere. I want to take a moment and thank anybody who has had the bravery to come forward with their own stories of sexual assault. Including Councilwoman Gray, I thank you for doing that. You should not have been subjected to what you were subjected to in the media as a result of that. And I want to state for my colleagues as well that this is something that I intend to work on, to introduce legislation relating to as it relates to behavior of elected officials. In the past, this body has had the opportunity to ask for more freedom from Frankfurt to enforce a binding code of ethics that includes sexual harassment and assault on our own members, and this body voted against doing that. We don't have to do that in the future. I'm working with legislators in Frankfurt from both parties on changing state law that would allow us to do that. I'm just flagging that for you now, taking this opportunity to make you aware that I think this is something that we can all agree. It has no place in our city, and it certainly has no place in our government. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Thiessen, for all your work. Can you tell us very briefly about the It's Time for Kids campaign and how we can participate and what we can look forward to coming up? So, right now, we are working with our consultant, Conscious Consulting, to develop some more content. One, PSA will feature the voices of children speaking out about what they need from you as adults in the community. The other will model conversations, as we've tried to do throughout the entire campaign. And we recently just recorded some vignettes from people in different roles, coaches, teachers, neighbors, grandmothers, who talk about how they can support children. You do not have to be a therapist. In fact, we are asking you not to act as a therapist. But there are really just ways that you can show support so that children feel seen, that they feel understood. Because most of our resources are oriented towards adults, and they are just tragically overlooked. Yeah, thank you for that. And then lastly, if you can send us either that flyer or that list of coffee shops for Friday. I know we have some coffee and tea drinkers, and we would love to not only support this cause, but also support some local coffee shops as well. Thank you. And you all have been very generous in supporting it in the past, and I thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savini. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for recognizing me. Thanks so much for the presentation. I do really appreciate it. I also wanted to put in a plug. I think last year or the year before, there's plate coffee shops that I go to that you also, I think, gave me a wad of the things to take with me. And so I- That would be great, because I know which one you're talking about, and we've had trouble getting in touch with them. So that would be wonderful. I'd be happy to do that. But if any of you frequent different coffee shops, consider just bringing a wad of them to them. It really does help. Thank you. Thank you for that, yes. Thank you so much, and I'm glad that we had a chance to hear your presentation, and hopefully we'll get to hear from you again soon. So- Thank you. I appreciate the time. Thank you. And colleagues, we're going to skip over the items referred to committee. If you have something that you want to update me on, please just let me know, and we can go through that next time as time allows. And if there are no objections, we are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.