# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - July 3, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · July 3, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6483 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6483?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-07-03 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 1, 2026 - **Length**: 11,730 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services and Public Safety Committee met on July 3, 2025, at 3:00 P.M., with J. Reynolds presiding. The meeting covered two agenda items: a presentation on Recruitment, Retirement, and Retention for Public Safety, and a review of the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), both of which were informational in nature. One vote was taken during the meeting, and no public comments were heard. The session was focused on receiving information on these two topics rather than taking formal action on either item. ## Attendance **Present (8):** J. Reynolds, W. Baxter, C. Ellinger, T. Morton, S. Lynch, D. Gray, A. Beasley, H. Boone **Absent (2):** D. Wu, J. Hale **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The Committee held one formal vote during the July 3, 2025 meeting. - **Approval of the June 3, 2025 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 03:46]: The Committee voted to approve the summary from its previous meeting on June 3, 2025. The motion passed by voice vote. No roll call was recorded, so individual member votes are not available. ## Recruitment, Retirement, and Retention for Public Safety [timestamp: 03:46] Chiefs Colvin, Weathers, and Wells each delivered presentations to the Committee on recruitment, retirement, and retention efforts within their respective public safety divisions. The session was informational in nature, with each chief highlighting improvements and strategies underway in their areas. The presentations covered updates specific to each division's workforce challenges and the approaches being taken to address them, including efforts to bring on new personnel, manage retirements, and keep existing staff. No further detail on specific figures, programs, or concerns raised during the discussion is available in the provided materials. The item concluded as an informational presentation with no vote or formal action taken by the Committee. ## Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) [timestamp: 1:00:40] Jeanette Hart and Christy Nentwick presented to the committee on the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), with a focus on the use of PhotoVoice as a methodology for capturing community insights to inform public health strategies. The presentation was informational in nature. No vote or formal action was taken as a result of this agenda item. *Note: Detailed discussion points, specific findings, concerns raised, and additional context from this presentation are not available in the provided source data.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the June 3, 2025 Committee Summary --- ## Full transcript ♪ In the city ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hot town, summer in the city ♪ ♪ Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty ♪ ♪ Been down, isn't it a pity? Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city ♪ ♪ All around, people looking half-dead, walking on the sidewalk, harder than I imagined ♪ ♪ But now it's a different world, go out and find a girl ♪ ♪ Come on, come on, if that's all right, despite the heat, it'll be all right ♪ ♪ And babe, don't you know it's a pity the days can't be like the nights in the summer in the city, summer in the city ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Welcome, welcome to this last committee meeting of this session. I will now call to order the July 3rd, 2025, meeting of Social Services and Public Safety Committee. Thank you, everyone, for being here. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the June 3rd, 2025, committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Is there a motion to approve? All those in favor, say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. All right. Our first presentation today is an annual update on recruitment, retirement, and retention from the Division of Public Safety. We have Chief Colvin, Weathers, and Wells here to give us an update and a brief presentation for each of their divisions. So I want to thank them for being here. I also want to thank Commissioner Armstrong for his work on this. And I will ask the first presenter, which I think is Chief Colvin, to come up and do his part of the presentation. We've asked each of the chiefs to do their part of the presentation. So thank you. Good afternoon, Vice Mayor Wu, council members. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I think we have some encouraging numbers for this presentation. So if we can go to the first slide. All right. That's me. I'm sorry. Okay. So under paid considerations, everyone has probably already reviewed this. The first thing of note is that these numbers do not include things like stipends for uniforms, special duty pay, things of that nature. For my division, these are encouraging numbers. Parity has always been a thing with us in corrections. We've always chased parity with the other public safety divisions. And this is about as close as I've seen it in my career. So that's entirely positive, I think. So under other pay considerations in my division, we pay new employees a $3,000 sign on bonus. You can get $1,000 for bringing a member to the division. In 2024, out of 119, we paid 28 $1,000 bonuses to members of the division that brought candidates to us. In 2025, for the first six months, there's been 65, and we've only paid out one. You can see fire and police. Those are their state incentive funds for their standards and their training. And the police get another $3,000 lump sum on that. Speaking about my division, we have had a remarkable success in recruiting. When I was given responsibility for the division, we had made it down to 124 vacancies. We now sit at 18. There have been times that we have lined up a kill shot on zero vacancies, only to be denied, but we'll continue to seek that goal. How did we get there? So social media and traditional media efforts, TV spots, job fairs, bus ads. The bus ads, I think, had some impact. They were a morale builder. I heard often from the officers that they saw our placard on the back of a city bus, and retention is recruiting. TV spots, not as our data shows, didn't have as big an impact as one might think. Primarily, our candidates came to us through two areas, our data reveals. They came to us through social media or from a staff member recommending someone and bringing them to the division for us. Third is the city or the corrections website through the city, and that's encouraging. That number is increasing. So, again, that opens up a third avenue for recruiting. We have used social media, I think, definitely, and used an application called Red Tag and Interview Now, and when our pay raise was announced last year, it broke all city records for hits on that site. Since April of 2023, there has been 8,302,528 impressions in a unique reach where somebody opens it up and looks at it, 771,000. And as far as landing page views, that's 27,705, and with applications completed, 5,280. So those are remarkable numbers in my view. We have good relationships with the faith-based community, and they are of great service to us. Emmanuel Baptist, Bracktown Baptist, and Christ the King are three to be mentioned. We have made an extraordinary effort to get out into the community where the people of Lexington can see these men and women of the division in a positive event such as the polar bear plunge, the big brown truck pull, the VA 5K. The division is one of the founding sponsors of the VA 5K run. Midsummer's night run, we help there. Our color guard is everywhere. We read to students at Mill Creek Elementary School, and we even had a choir that went through and caroled at Christmastime last year at one of the assisted living facilities. In regard to personal training and development, I think that that's the key point that I want to make this afternoon is that I have used professional development as a foundational driver of retention, professionalism, morale, and it has shown great results. We are number one in the nation for the number of nationally certified jail officers through the American Jail Association. As you all know, we have one of our bureau commanders sit on that commission now. We send our commanders to the AJA National Jail Leadership Command Academy. So foundational driver of professional development has all the results that you would think we put all of our officers through. I think we're one of the only jails in the nation doing this, or the crisis intervention team certification. We have 94 of 278 officers that are CIT trained. You can see year by year. This slide represents the total number of applicants per year and then averaged over the number of academies. You see how they've steadily increased since 2022. And that is my cue to invite Chief Weathers to the podium. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. I made the mistake of printing this in small print, but I did bring my glasses. So you've got to realize how unique public safety is here. And we realized early on with fire and corrections that we're not competitors. The people that are applying for us in fire and corrections are not. They don't want the same type. They don't want each other. They don't mix back and forth. We do have some exceptions, but those are like one or two. And because we realized that early on, it's made the recruiting process much better for us. Some of the techniques that we've all learned, especially like they talk about interview now, we all use that. We share that with each other. We share that with each other. When we see people that we think are more suited maybe for corrections or more suited for fire or E911, we recommend those people to them. That's unique. The relationship we have is great. And I think in looking at everybody's stats, I think that is what has propelled us forward. The negatives have to do more with what's happening in society. But because we work together, we're overcoming that. Some of us more than others, evidently, but I didn't, you know, policing is different. And that goes without saying. Fire is different. And I think what we saw in 2021 was a general apprehension for people that we were looking for to be part of government. And as time went on, that changed. Well, it moved slower for police. But we recognize that. And some of the things that we're doing to overcome that, and I'm not going to go down these slides. You all can read that. But some of the stuff here that we're doing, like in recruiting, you know, we recognize there was a lack of preparedness. So we actually developed classes so that people, when we recruit people, we tell them, you can come to these classes and they're on different days of the week and multiple sessions that they could go to, not only to help them prepare them physically, but to help them prepare them for the educational aspect of it. And that's important because if you haven't been in school for a while and you're not used to working out, you show up at our academy, that can be intimidating. And we want to ease all of that. So those are some of the things that we did. In expanding some of the things we did with recruiting, we looked at what's the minimum age and maximum age, and we added a little bit to it. Now we can bring people in when they're 20 years old. And if they're going to be 21 before they graduate, we bring them in. We have an Explorer program that goes all the way up from 18 or, I'm sorry, from 14 to 20. And we can actually cultivate some of those people and get them in before we lose them to some other type of profession. And on the 40-year, as long as you're not 41, by the time we see the class, we can look at people coming out of the military and bring them in, too. So that's worked for us. In the interview now, we're allowed to, we can actually track the progress of our recruits, or people that we're recruiting, and make that contact with them and keep that contact. We have mentors, and now we are perfecting our mentor selection, and we get them involved early on in the process. As soon as somebody clicks on that they like police and we get them in the application phase, a mentor might start contacting them. And we try to pair them up with who's going to be best suited, somebody that they'll be more familiar with. It's not just anybody. Is this the right one? We'll see. On retention, our people weren't leaving because they didn't like the police department. It was actually a monetary consideration. We had people that had reached their 20-year mark and were eligible to retire, and we have a different pension system, and they were going to different agencies with different pension systems and actually doubling their salaries. I can speak personally from that because that's what I did. We can't compete with that. But what we can do and what we did do is we started bringing back some of our retirees and hiring them to come out and work. And that, in effect, doubled their salaries too. Some of the people who left who didn't want to be in policing but still wanted to connect with us, we hired back as civilians. We hired back as part-time civilians to work on clearing some of the cases that we have, work on cold cases, burglaries, and all that kind of stuff. We also realized that if we want to keep people here, we have to develop that relationship. So we were intentional about developing people to be involved in peer support. We increased our safety officers from 20 to 25 so that they can handle, like, non-injury collisions, and that would free up some of our traffic officers to work on speeding, red lights, other moving violations. And then we had that real-time intelligence center, which helped us respond to things faster and more efficiently because we could get more information right as things were happening. So those are some of the things that helped us with our staffing levels. As you can see, our applicant numbers, I mean, look, we went from, what, a low of, like, in 2022, of 337. And now, this year, we're at 1,208. We were just doing one class at a time. Sometimes we would have two, but we figured out, when do people graduate? And that's how we structure our classes. Now, there's usually one in January or March. If somebody goes to summer school, there's one in August or November. And then, after that, there's December. I can go on if you want. Go right ahead. Go ahead. And now we're at a positive on our attrition. We had been losing. And like I said, it wasn't people that were here 5, 10 years. It was people that had their 20-plus years in, and they were going to double their money. Now we're bringing people in. We're 27 positive. We're 84, and we still are getting ready to seat a class in November. So that number is going to go lower. Uh-oh, this fire's turned. Go ahead, sir. Thank you all for giving me more time. Thank you. And I didn't have to use my glasses. Thank you all, and I'll bring it home very quickly. So from a recruitment standpoint, we've certainly increased our presence on both social media and career fairs, hitting high schools, universities, sports teams, firefighter challenge events, a lot of city-sponsored events. One of the more innovative things is a view that everyone is a recruiter. We know that we have a recruiting office of two members who manage the recruiting and hiring, and not every candidate will relate to those individuals, nor do they have the bandwidth to reach all of those. But we do have 600-plus members who are really very capable of that. So we have at least 30 of our members who have signed up. And, for example, if you played a sport at a certain college or a certain high school, we might tap your knowledge, and you go and sit a booth at that event. So it really gets our group of members out there to be recruiters. Great partnership with Fayette County Public Schools and what formerly were Southside and Eastside, now The Hill. As the other chiefs mentioned, the use of technology, Interview Now and ESOF. Our Brenda Cowan camps have been very successful at bringing in 16- to 19-year-old females to provide them an opportunity to experience the job in a little bit lower stress atmosphere. Certainly the Department of Public Safety as a whole, as was mentioned, coming together to recruit collectively like what you saw or may see with the Studio 46 video that I think will be coming out was a collective celebration of not only our Public Safety Department but our community as a whole. And from a retention standpoint, I think getting people in the door is one thing, but caring for them and speaking to them and making them feel a sense of belonging is critical to retention. So we've placed a significant focus on mental and behavioral health with a wellness coordinator, athletic trainer, a joint human relations committee, our peer support team. We're providing retirement and financial planning seminars for our members and then our focus on encouraging our members to continue their education through that process. Our applicant numbers probably more than the other divisions have stayed fairly steady, although we did see that 2020, 2021, 2022 drop, and then it has rebounded for the most part since then. But the important difference between us and the other two divisions is that we typically hold one application process per year where they do more frequently. Our current vacancies, this was as of when the slide was put together, that vacancy number is now 14, and occasionally we will have that. We have a recruit class in right now, and not everybody is going to graduate from that recruit class, so you'll see those numbers fluctuate a little bit. I anticipate probably in the neighborhood of 20 retirements in January, so that will bump that number up, and we'll be starting a class to accommodate for that. One thing that's of note is the collective bargaining agreements. Those do affect our recruiting and retention. Our firefighter lieutenant and captain CBA is currently in process, as is the corrections officers and sergeants. Our fire majors CBA will come due this time next year. Corrections lieutenants and captains is good until June of 2028. Police officers and sergeants and police lieutenants will both come due in January or, I'm sorry, June of 2026. So with that, I believe that wraps up the formal portion, and we can open it up to questions for any of the directors, chiefs. Thank you very much to each of you. Colleagues, I'm going to ask that when you sign in, if you could please group your questions. So, for instance, if you have multiple questions for fire, that those would be directed to Chief Wells, and multiple questions for one of the other chiefs instead of bouncing back and forth between them in your questioning, if that's okay. Thank you very much. Councilmember, Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. So, actually, all of my questions are really just for the group in general. One thing that I would like to say to the Public Safety Division is that it's an honor to be in a city where we have everyone working together. It's not like that. Let me say that again. It is not like that in other cities around the nation. So, it's a special place here in Lexington where you all are all working together and helping one another. Where one falls short, you pick them up. And that's the way it should be. So, kudos to you and kudos to the commissioner as well for all that you all are doing. And I'll pound you up too from afar. I'm pounding you up. Thank you. You're welcome. And you too, Chief Colvin. You too, pound. So, from looking at, I know for particularly with the fire and with police, you have a wellness aspect to it. How have those strategies been most effective in reducing attrition? So, I'll speak quickly and then turn it over to Chief Weathers. The irony in that is that the fire department started with the sort of physical side of things and our athletic trainer, where our brothers and sisters over at LPD, started with their behavioral wellness. And both have seen such tremendous success that we're now trying to lean on each other to figure out how they got the others. But it has been a wonderful retaining tactic for us and our members. For those of you who met Jen, our athletic trainer, she was overwhelmed on like day two with people who were coming to see her. And that's a testament to how successful it is. And for us, our wellness side is just, well, we need another person to assist with that. So, we're looking for that too. Our officers appreciate having somebody to go talk to about some of the things that they deal with. On the wellness side of it, you know, I think they did the numbers here not too long ago and it was the most people attending it. We have people that will go to the behavioral side of it and then go to the wellness side of it. And they seem to love their job much more. Plus, we let families use it. And that, that really helps. Somebody recently wrote us about the behavioral aspect of one of our officers. And they were having problems at home and they thanked us because it saved their marriage. And those are the kind of things that keep people here. Yeah, because it's the whole family that's involved. Totally. For the corrections, do you all have a program similar? I know that you're doing well with your recruitment. I'm not saying that the other divisions are not. We absolutely want our people to be in the best physical shape that we can get them in. And mental. I am behind the other two divisions when it comes to a really good wellness initiative. In regard to peer support, we just stood up our peer support team. We modeled them on both police and fire. And I thank both chiefs for lending me their peer support, commanders and specialists. So we're very encouraged by being able to fill this initiative and already the impact that it's having in the environment. The corrections environment is tough. It can work on your head. So it was something that was really needed. And I'm glad that we were able to stand it up and get it in place for the officers. I always have several more questions. I only have 30 seconds to go. But before doing so, I just want to say thank you to everyone in public safety for coming out to the Youth and Government Day. What you did made such an impact on those young people. In fact, as well as them learning about planning or urban planning, many of the young people were talking about going into your fields. And that's a win. And that's part of the reason why I wanted us to have the Youth and Government Day. But I'll log back in to have my real question in. Thank you. Councilmember Beasley. Thank you, Chair. And thank all of you all for coming and doing this presentation today. I just have one question for all three of you and then a second question for Chief Weathers. How much is the uniform stipend that we give the officers and do they bargain that in their contracts? So for fire, there are two different uniform allowances. There is one that is tied to a vendor. And so they have $500 annually that they can spend through Gall's account. That is the specific vendor. And they also receive a stipend of $1,250 per year that is for the upkeep and maintenance of their uniforms. And, Chief, do they bargain that? Yes, ma'am. Is that in their contract? They do bargain that. Ours is bargained also. But we don't have the $1,200. We just have the $500, which rolls over every year. Chief, does that include our traffic safety officers? They don't bargain, so they don't have a uniform allowance. So we include that in their budget. They do not pay for their equipment. Right. They don't pay for their equipment or their uniforms. We provide that. Okay. We just concluded our negotiation with the lieutenants and captains union. It's $1,250 a year for them. Currently we're in negotiations with the officers and sergeants union. It's $500. Neither of the collective bargaining units receive a monthly upkeep stipend. Thank you. And then, Chief Weathers, I missed the cutoff for those explorers. It's 14 to what age? 20. Oh, to 20. 21. We start getting them into being police, so. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just to piggyback off of Councilman McGray, she's highlighted some of the mental health and wellness programming. And I guess my question is, what's the long-term plan to sustain mental health and wellness programming for our public safety personnel in each division? For the person we have doing that right now, we've made them a permanent part of our budget. We're looking for grants for a second person, and if that works out, we're going to be asking to make them a permanent part of our budget as well. For us, it's probably going to be a multi-year process. But where I would like to get to is to have an embedded clinician, similar to what the police department has, and then also some individuals within the community that are trained and can be referred out to. Stress, anxiety, mental health conditions are prevalent in the corrections environment, and so it is our overall command philosophy to up-train officers to the degree possible in mental health, and that's why we have 36 percent of the officer force currently certified through a DOJ program for crisis intervention team. In regard to the wellness aspect of the officers, we have still some road to travel on the peer support, but the initial data looks good, and like I've said before, Councilman, it's something that has been long overdue, but we've got it now. In regard to the physical fitness of a county jail officer, we want them to be fit. It extends to so many areas. They had stopped physical training in the basic academy. I was here, you all know, from 2013 to 2016, and the training was my responsibility as the deputy. We PT'd every day in the academy. I'm working back towards that. We take a physical inventory on like the second or third day of the academy and measure them in four or five physical tasks and then give them a card and say, you know, what do you want to work towards? And so that's where we're at with it. Again, I'll put on the record that there is some effort that needs to be, some focus needs to be put on this subject, but I'm confident that we have that and that we'll get the results that we need. And then, all right, so I guess just a quick follow-up. So do any of the public safety personnel do mental health first aid training? Like is that part of their training in general? So that, for instance, if there's a police officer or a firefighter that has that mental health first aid training, they can speak to their own colleagues, and or if there's someone out in the community that needs help with resources or navigational resources, they can kind of assess them and provide them with at least direction towards resources. Do we do mental health first aid training with any of our public safety personnel? I think mental health first aid is a specific course. Our peer support team goes through a different training, and that is typically provided through the International Association of Firefighters, and it's geared specifically toward recognizing symptoms and signs that are likely to occur in firefighters and how to manage those, so like PTSD awareness and that type of thing. So our peer support, which is about 20 members, are trained. It may not specifically be in that mental health first aid. And that goes for the same. We have a police officer support team as well, and they do receive training, but we want them to get more. So we're constantly looking for more training for them to get, and we want to add people to it so we can have a more diverse group for people to go to. We also have a community chaplaincy program, which can be used for the police or for the community. We're looking at ways to streamline that and make it more efficient and effective also. Thank you. And then lastly, and this is for you, Chief Will, so I guess when we're talking about just the stigmas and just that society perception when it comes just to the historic perception of policing, I believe it's to help reduce that stigma and strengthen trust between public safety and our residents. We must recruit from our own communities, specifically in the communities where there's a distrust or there's a lack of trust. So what specific efforts are being used to recruit more directly from the community, specifically that have that distrust? We have a committee, a diversity recruitment committee that meets quarterly, and we talk about things like that, and we try to recruit locally, although generations change, and keeping people here locally has been a challenge because everybody wants to get out and spread their wings and grow, but we still reach out to them because our hope is, and just like my own son, we hope that they come back to the community and become viable members and maybe become police. I think there's been initiatives suggested, like the 30 by 30, so by 2030 police departments are supposed to have 30 percent women or females. That was kind of offset. That started before 2020 and 2021, so it kind of took a setback, and now we're trying to reset. I think we're probably at 11 percent female, and the national average for police departments is anywhere between 13 and 15 percent. We have traditionally been hovering around a 7 to 8 percent range for females, for African American officers. It's typically 9, 10, 12 percent. We're hovering around 9 percent. We went back 20 years, and that has been constant. Even when I came on in 1980-something, I remember graduating from the academy, and my father was there, and he came up to me, and he said, son, I'm proud of you. I just wish you had chosen another profession. So that stigma is going to be difficult to overcome because it didn't just happen overnight. It took years to build up. But I'm sending a group of officers, I think here towards the end of August, to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Conference in Florida. They need to see how many police leaders there are that look like them and black female leaders that look like them. When I was coming through the police department, we had a meeting with our African American officers and stressed to them that if they didn't take the test, if they didn't move forward, that I would be the only police lieutenant. And they didn't take the test, and they didn't move forward. When I came back as chief of police, I started that conversation up again. And now we're getting them to take the test. We're getting them to move forward. Now I'm getting ready to have an African American police commander, which, you know, for six or seven years, maybe ten, hasn't been there. So we're making strides on that. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here in the presentation. I'll start with Chief Colvin. I just wanted to say once again that you're doing amazing things, and I'm so very impressed with where you have come since 2022. That was a really hard year for all of us when we were looking at corrections and what we were going to have to do and some hard decisions that we were hoping to not have to make. And to have 18 vacancies right now is just, like, I feel like a proud mom. So I'm very, very happy about that. So last year you had six classes, and this year you've had three, or you will have three. Do you feel like that is sufficient? Do you feel like you're still getting, I mean, obviously, So you've had half the applicants, but you've had half the classes. So I guess I'm just trying to see, like, is that a sustainable amount of classes to stay where we need to stay? Well, as I've stated, professional development and training is a primary driver of most of our success in the division. I have a fully staffed and well-trained instruction unit, and it is sustainable. Council Member Baxter, we are in a 24-month application process. We never close our application process. And so as we get a number of recruits for a recruit class, we've taught them two at a time before. So I think it gives us the flexibility to address our vacancies as they occur and keep them low. Okay. Also wanted to give you some accolades for engaging Studio 46 to do your marketing. I think that that is a really great move. So thank you for that. Moving on to Chief Weathers. Looking at your numbers, I'm a proud mom, too. The fact that we have had twice as many applicants this year as we did last year is nothing short of amazing. And, you know, I've had many conversations and brainstorming sessions and all the things with your recruiting staff, and I think we have some really exciting things going on, and I'm really, really pleased with what I see, and kudos to you guys for all your hard work. I'm looking at him. That's there. So, that's all I wanted to say. I just wanted to say thank you and keep up the great job. Well, thank you. You have a really great team. Commander Cooper and Lieutenant Gordon, I mean, they've done an outstanding job. Yeah. For sure. Chief Wells, I just wanted to make sure, so you only have 12 vacancies, which is also amazing, and I'm super proud of you, too. The asterisk that's next to it that says, you know, next class is to begin in fall, does this 12 include that class, or is it outside of that? No, that is the current number of vacancies, and we don't know exactly how many people will be in that next class, but we will get a better idea of how many people are going to retire in January, and then look to start a class that will accommodate those retirements plus our current vacancy numbers. Well, I have to say that the medical wellness program that you have set up and that some of us had the opportunity to meet her, like, what a great idea. You know, if you can keep people healthy, you can keep them in the job, and that's awesome. As you are looking to potentially recruit more females, have you thought about anything in particular related to child care, just based on your old work model? Is that something that you all, and it could be for male as well, but I'm a mom, and I know how it is to be a working mom, and I don't work 24-hour shifts, so. No, you're 100% right, and that is a very thorny issue. Retention is really, really important to us, but retention is what matters when the rubber hits the road, so we lose a disproportionate number of females probably in that four to seven years on the job mark, and that's oftentimes when they're starting families and dealing with those things, so we have a, probably one of the most progressive reproductive health policies anywhere in the country, and I'm super, super proud of that. We've shared it all across the U.S. with organizations that wanted it. The child care is something that we've had discussions about and have not reached a real good solution yet. There are also discussions about providing some flexibility in the schedule to allow for that, and that's also going to be a difficult issue. I have to make sure that my words are measured because we are in the collective bargaining process, so we can't talk about anything that may be affected within that process, but it is something that's certainly on our radar and that matters a lot to us. I appreciate that. Thank you, Chief. Thank you all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, and Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair, and my last question. I have a list of five more to ask you, but I figure I just want to do, plus I know how to find you, to ask all of you, all of you. So the question is, are there any plans to pilot, quote-unquote, in-reach recruitment programs or such as, like, through Fayette County Public Schools? I know that the fire, there's already, which used to be Eastside Technical Center, which was housed in the best district of them all, the 6th District, which is now going to be at the Hill, so I know that you did have, there is a program there for young people who want to be a firefighter, but I'm curious about, for the fire department, any other programs you're doing to reach out to them? But that same thing goes to each one of your departments, divisions. Sure, so very quickly, not only Eastside, which is a phenomenal program, but Southside, which has the EMT program, has been an incredible recruiting tool for us, but we weren't really tapping into that because those EMT students were going and getting their ride times, as you all may remember, in surrounding counties, but not with us. So that has now changed, and we have been able to accommodate several students, and we will continue to do that, and I think once they see and experience the Lexington Fire Department, they won't want to go anywhere else. And so we're very, very excited about that, and I think that's our biggest impact program at this point. And Chief Weathers, I know for your division, it's a little different, since the age requirement is 20, at least 20, correct? So... No, we still partner with Fayette County Public Schools at the Hill. They have a law enforcement portion of it as well. They had one for a long time, heck, it's been, I know, more than 10 years. We've actually had some officers retire and take over that program. So we still do that, and in that law enforcement portion, they talk about corrections as being a career, too. So we still recruit for that, and that's one of the reasons why we were trying to get our age lowered so we get closer to when they, because when they graduate at 18 and they go off maybe somewhere and get another job, we're trying to offset that. So we're still looking at some other things. We've talked to some other cities that have a cadet program that starts at 18. It's just that when you're dealing with the type of things that we deal with, the type of information that we deal with, bringing somebody in younger can be challenging. So we're trying to look for ways around that. Also, and Chief Wells mentioned it, you know, our recruiting, most of the best recruiters for us are our officers and our former officers. Since Fayette County Public Schools decided to hire away some of the most senior officers, they recruit for us. So we have that going on as well. That's wonderful. Also, have you all utilized RLTCs as well? Oh, yeah. We have, I mean, even within the school system when they get out, we have a military liaison and we try to keep in touch. So, you know, we pick up people who go through those programs and when they hit 20-21, they contact us back and want to start back in. That's wonderful. Corrections? I don't, yeah. Well, we're always interested in clear messaging and eliminating role ambiguity when it comes to what a corrections officer actually does. But it's an environment that requires a high degree of control and stability. And so we do not have any plans or we don't have any cadet programs or anything like that, but we are always looking for opportunities to bring our good work out from behind the walls and inform the community, schools, whoever. We do have some success with some internships from EKU, UK, and that's about it. Well, thank you all for all that you do. And like I said earlier, when I asked my first question, Lexington is so far ahead of so many other cities because of the fact that you are willing to work with one another and you are a team and you treat one another not only as a team, but as family. And that's a blessing. I don't know why you're laughing, Chief Weathers. I'm just saying how we treat them like family at our work time. Yes. Well, family you are. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And gentlemen, thank you all for all that you do. And we've made some great strides in here, especially I remember community corrections every time I'd get the docket on a Thursday and you just see how many resignations and to come from 124 and 22 to 18. It's an amazing accomplishment. Fire we still need to try to and Chief, you said it is it's just not here. It's everywhere. So it's just a matter of trying to fill that on the authorized strength with the three. It's 1599. If you add them up. Is that all sworn? And then of that, what what do you have additionally that is part of the division that's not part of the sworn then in each one? Yes, I believe that's correct in all divisions that the authorized strength is going to be for sworn. It is for fire. Certainly. We have an additional 35 that are non sworn 35 Chief Weathers. Well, we've got our we have a safety officer class now and that'll bring us up to 25. So we have those. But we do have our police are our retirees that we bring back. And it's 10. We're we're limited to 10 on those. And they are not part of our authorized strength because we have to renew a contract with them every year. And then what about administration and administration? I think it's about 80 employees. Thank you. And with years and community corrections, are you're also all sworn or do you have what's Yes, sir. The 323 is all sworn. And then what do you have outside of that? Then along with administration, everything that well, we have the we have a city HR manager that is stationed at the jail and about 20 other civilian employees. Thank you, Chief Weathers. One of the things I think you've tried to do is is move some of the administration or others that so you can get the sworn on out on the street. And I think you've done a good job. The ones that we have that are in the intelligence, those are they all sworn? They are not. They are not all sworn. Well, when you talk about our intelligence unit, it's it's got sworn detectives, right? But a real time intelligence center, they we we staff those either with retired police officers who are not sworn and civilian employees that are not sworn. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Once again, gentlemen, for all that you do. You've done a great job. Thank you. I'll add my comments and a few questions here at the end. First of all, I want to say thank you to each of you. There has been a huge improvement in all of your divisions in terms of recruitment. I know it's not easy, and so I'm just really grateful for all the different ways you've tried to address it over the years. I'll start with corrections. If you could say how you got down to just having 18, would you say that it was a combination of the things that were on the slide working together? Or is there something that really stands out in your mind? I think that it is the, I think it's the message to the workforce that retention is recruiting. And that we had to strike a new way to rebrand. So the career field has always been portrayed in a rather lackluster or gray type of area where they're flipping keys or it's the razor wire. We rebranded where we consider ourselves, and we're on the record, and we say it often. I'll say it this afternoon, that we consider ourselves a division of uniformed social workers. And we're about doing, helping everyone that's asking for help and putting them on a higher path to re-entry. And we have a robust re-entry initiative in several areas. And that resonates with our understanding of the multi-generational workforce. Generation Z, especially, wants their life work to be important. And so we just aligned our message to what their generational aspirations were, that work. So, and in professional development, Council Member Reynolds can't say it enough, is that it lifts all boats. I think that's really key, what you said about rebranding and saying, giving a message in a way that it can be heard and that resonates with people. And I think that's key to a lot of jobs and retention. So, thank you. Thank you. We went a different way, and our results are what our results are. And there are most of the corrections agencies in the country that still struggle with staffing to a much worse degree than we see it, so. And would you say that the attrition rate, I know it's gone down a little, but at what it is right now, at 53 plus, would you say that's about normal or average? I'm sorry, I- The attrition rate, I said I know it's gone down some, but would you say that's about a normal number, 53 plus? My attrition numbers are high, because corrections is a curious career field. Not a lot of people know about it, so they have to make the decision. We give everyone who's minimally qualified a shot at it. And so if you look at our attrition numbers, the overwhelming majority of those are academy workshops or failure to complete training, like through the FTOs. Okay, thank you. And then for Chief Withers, on the wellness coordinator, could you explain for the public what that means? Does that mean counseling, an individualized counseling? Does that mean like a wellness plan, going to classes, physical activity classes, what does that mean? We have a behavioral wellness person, and that's for the mental health side of it. And then our wellness coordinator that does exactly what you said. They look at wellness programs, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with physical. Sometimes it has to do with financial preparation and things like that. They look at those type of programs and try to schedule them around the three shifts that we work so that people can attend them. So it's a very holistic approach to wellness, right? Yes, ma'am. That's great. And then you mentioned a mentoring program that you're trying, if someone applies, then you connect them with someone? Right, we've had our mentoring program since I've probably been at the police department. We usually waited until people got into the academy, and we usually just dealt with the applicant that got in. So we've learned that if we want to keep people, we have to make their families part of it too. So now our mentors, not only when we bring our new hires in, our mentors are there too to meet with the families as well, and to be accessible to the families as well too. We kind of talk to them, we use a total mindfulness approach. Is that we just don't bring people in, in the dark and say, here's the police academy, go for it. We let them know what to expect. And we also talk to them about how they can deal with things that are new to them. And that's different, and 20 to 40 is a big gap. And we learned that the 20 year old to maybe 24 year old has different expectations than the 35 to 40. So we look for the mentor that they can most relate to, and that can help them through some of the things that they're experiencing when they're different age groups, so. That's great, I think that's a wonderful program and it's probably key into helping people on their journey and begin their journey and want to continue it. So thank you to all of you once again, also to Commissioner Armstrong and all the other folks that are here today. We appreciate it. Thank you all. Thank you. Have a happy 4th. Thank you, same to you. Next, we have a presentation from the Lexington County Health Department. This is on the Community Health Improvement Plan, also known as CHIP. Part of this plan includes PhotoVoice, which is a participatory research method used to involve community members in identifying and addressing health issues. Here to provide this presentation is Jeanette Hart and Christy Netwick from the Lexington County Health Department. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. And this presentation is about what happens when we shift the power and we move from designing on our own to designing with our communities. We have three goals today, to understand how PhotoVoice captures that lived experience, learn how to use it, and then get a little insight from you in terms of exploring some real world potential examples that we can work with you on. Nationally, we are facing a need for behavioral health services. We are seeing rising rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse. And there's a national shortage of providers, long wait lists, high costs, and services that often don't reflect those cultural realities. So in our local context, our participants highlighted barriers like stigma, limited transportation options, mistrust, and disconnect. And so we knew that internally we had to do something a little different. Our traditional models often miss the mark for they overlook that real world experience. And so through PhotoVoice, the community is really able to use their voice, their vision, their local knowledge into the center of public health creation. And this is moving from consultation to really co-creation. So what actually is PhotoVoice? So PhotoVoice is a participatory research method that was created in the 90s by Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris. And it's basically participatory action research that empowers the participants to take their photos and in that way they share their experiences, their lived experiences. They share, it empowers the individuals through their images and more importantly through the narratives that are attached to those images. Turning their stories into tools for advocacy for systems and policy change. So PhotoVoice, the goals of PhotoVoice are basically for the participants the empowerment of the changes they need, the changes they want, the advocacy that they can also bring, but the advocacy that people in higher positions can bring for them. And then eventually the goal would be systems change, policy change, no matter on what level that is in their community. So here in Lexington, if you haven't already seen the numerous activities and the projects we've done, we've been very blessed to be able to partner with LexArts and the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, specifically Dr. Margaret McGladrey. And we've not only been able to, through our cohorts, been able to hold numerous PhotoVoice projects, not only across Lexington with different demographics, different genders, and different age groups, but also they've been able to take it outside and even nationally around the state of Kentucky. And then also in states like Florida and currently I believe there's one in Oregon. So here you'll see that our participants highlighted a number of strengths and also concerns. They called out challenges such as, again, transportation, stigma, housing instability, and social isolation. But some of the strengths were the public libraries, parks, community spaces, and also access to the arts. This feedback helped us not just support what was going on, but the true need of what was happening in our community. We asked our participants to also come up with words. So how does PhotoVoice impact you? And there were words like impact, challenge, sharing, and then also describe how this experience in two words. Describe your experience using PhotoVoice. And some of the words we got back were eye-opening, engaging, thought-provoking. So this was a real reflection of how their stories not just impacted them, but were building that empathy through this work. So appease us a little bit and join us in this project. What we're going to do right now is we're showing you two actual photos from participants that are from Lexington, Kentucky. And the first one on my left is, which I guess will be your left as well. That one is, it shows the travel experience and the time specifically between the point, the person who took the picture or took the screenshot, to the behavioral health resource that they go. So it would be to their therapist or to their clinician or something. The next one is all the doors, and this again was taken by a participant, to anonymous recovery systems, or anonymous, excuse me, recovery meetings. So those buildings were where the AA or NA meetings would be held. And if you, what we'd like for you to do, take a quick second. If you had to title these photos, what would you call them, knowing what they are and what they're about? Think about the emotions they evoke for you. What images they communicate about our community health, access, or systems that need a change. What message would you want the decision makers to take from these visuals? And what moments of reflection can help us better understand that lived experiences can't alone capture data that these photos can. And now that you've had a very quick chance to reflect, these photos are actual photos, like I said, with actual narratives attached to them from our participants. The image on the left was titled Transportation Barriers to Behavioral The person who submitted it shared how unreliable or complex bus routes can make it incredibly difficult for individuals to get to appointments, especially when they're managing mental health challenges, mobility issues, or limited digital access. The image on the right was powerfully titled Doors to Recovery. It reminds us that seeking help can be terrifying. These doors, often nondescript or hidden, represent more than a physical barrier. They reflect the stigma, the fear, and the uncertainty that people face when they're trying to access behavioral health care. Sometimes the most difficult part is walking through those doors to begin with. What's most powerful here is, again, these titles and these narratives were not written by us, the facilitators, but by participants and citizens of Lexington Fayette County. So again, on joining us for this journey, and you should have this in your packets as well, in the copies of our PowerPoint. There's a QR code, and that QR code will take you to our jot form, where you yourself can be a part of our project and a part of our photo voice journey. What we would like for you to do is take your phone out, and you don't have to do it right now, you can certainly do it later, but take your phone out, find a picture in your phone that holds meaning to you. And then ask yourself the questions, what does this photo represent to you? How does this image relate to your health, well-being, or access to care? And what would you want others, especially decision makers, to understand from this photo? Again, if you scan the QR code, it takes you to a jot form where you're able to actually upload as many photos as you'd like, and include your narratives with it. And if you would like to stay anonymous, you can do that as well. So co-design is more than just participation. Through this, we've created 400 plus behavioral health resource directory in partnership with the University of Kentucky. The students there maintain that directory, and we're currently looking at ways to grow that. Membership has also grown over 300% for our Lex chip. And we have held workshops to ensure that the work that we're doing is accessible for people. We're currently in conversations with Radio Lex to find out how we can get the word out to others who aren't able to join our meetings. And then we built cross-sector relationships that are still growing today. Co-design helps make public health not just more inclusive, but also more effective. Here, you see from insight to action. So if we breadcrumb it out, we can see centers, lived experiences, reveals hidden barriers, builds empathy, guides priorities, and strengthens trust. So community insight and co-creating bridges the gap between community voice and public health strategy, and it moves us from ownership, and that changes everything for us. So how do we move from insight to action? And what they say is, your words and talking the talk isn't as good as walking the walk. So as we came into this co-designing partnership with our community partners, we did so through three ways, journey mapping, empathy interviews, and prototyping. These tools help us understand experiences of the participant's perspective. It helps them identify their pain points and quickly test community driven solutions and ideas in real time. And ensures that those solutions are built with the community, with the community, and not just for them. So we did this using three, or using three, using six steps. So the first is observe and notice, and that one is essentially our photo voice and our participants going out and taking these pictures. They're observing them, they're bringing it back to the group, and then as a group we notice what they have done, we notice what their narrative is. And then we begin to frame them. What does this tell us? What does this talk about? What does this mean to us? This sounds like it's going to be in this kind of category. And then you observe and you notice again. And when you observe again, this time you do it with a little bit more focus. And then you reframe the problem through a new lens. So the good thing and the wonderful thing about photo voice is my Lexington looks different from your Lexington. And the view from my porch looks different from your porch. So explain to me and reframe it to me how it is for you. And from there, we imagine and we design the possible solutions with the community. And finally, we test and refine those ideas through small scale experimentation. And so like Jeanette was saying earlier, we've really, and this co-design process has really had a great impact on our community health improvement partnership as well as our community health improvement plan. As of last February, February 2004, we had 17 participants at our CHIP meetings. And I believe 14 of them were from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. And one year later, we, in February exactly, at the University of Kentucky, we were able to hold a celebration where we released our community health improvement plan. And we were able to hold that for over 100 participants. And we are on average showing about 75 people at each of our meetings. So from an entire year and through that entire 12 months, we've had a 329% increase. We also value what people think our efficiency and our effectiveness of our meetings are. So we like to survey them both on how effective and how productive do you believe this meeting is? And also how comfortable are you sharing your thoughts and sharing your ideas? And then throughout that year, 96% of our surveys, we were found, our meetings were found to be productive or very productive, and 90% were comfortable sharing their opinions. Not to say that we don't want 100%, because of course we would like to have 100%. Some people are new, and they just like to sit back and listen and process. But for 90% of our participants and our meeting attendees to feel comfortable sharing with their other partners in the community is a great victory for us. So another thing that we're going to ask you to do is, this is how we co-design, but on a solo level. So you're going to take these issues, you're going to take the narratives, and you'd want to ask yourself, what are some solutions that I can do? Maybe I can do in my personal life to just help one thing, move the needle one notch forward. What are some things that my organization or my place of business can do to help? What can I do to help, and what can we do to help as a city council? And what we did as a CHIP is we talked about these issues, and we talked about the solutions, we talked about the challenges, and then we came up with a co-design solution. And this is the real world example to those two photographs that directly influenced two of our objectives for our community health improvement plan. So the first one is the doors to recovery pictures. They are being noted through our access to care, and our goal for access to care priority area is to improve access to health care and social services by increasing resource awareness and fostering local policy advocacy. And our objective for this, and objective two, is mental health advocacy and engagement. So we will have, at the end of this, there will be a QR code that you'll be able to access our community health improvement plan at. And then see more of these goals, objectives, and activities in length. And then our other one is, again, access to care, but this time it's transportation access to care. And we're actually working toward a partnership with United Way 211 to talk about some transportation vouchers. And getting people where they need to go easier than what they're used to. So like I said, whoops. That was a time, if you can just wrap up as quickly as you can. Yes. We're good. Thank you. Sure, so our approach is rooted in the belief that lived experience is a powerful driver of change, and that wasn't a one-off project. We also have a toolkit that we would love to talk to you a little bit more about. It's here, there's also a QR code, so please feel free to follow that. And then we are going to be holding our next CHIP meeting August 21st from 12 to 2 at the Marksbury Library. We'd love to see you all there. And then just in reference to the police, fire, and corrections before us. One of the things that it made me think about is from a public safety perspective, we'd love to be able to work with council or fire police corrections and talk about how can we get the youth more involved in maybe taking pictures of places they feel safe or unsafe. Or to raise awareness about fire prevention. From a correction standpoint, we could also do something that formally incarcerated individuals, what is that re-entry for them back into society? So just some ideas that I had just sitting there that I wanted to just put out there. But thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate it. Thank you for the invitation, and we're always happy to come back and talk to you all. Thank you so much. This was really helpful. Colleagues, do you have any comments or questions? If so, please log in. Council Member Morton. Thank you. Well, first, thank you for this presentation and the work that you're doing in relation to CHIP. I think that this is a very important topic and initiative, specifically tied to, I guess, the impact. I always think when it's real life experience, it's not only are we hearing, you're going to hear it or see it, like we're through text. But you get to see it, and that gives it a different context. So I guess, I more so want to zone in on the system change goal. So I guess, what steps, next steps, or what is the process to address the challenges that are identified through the CHIP process? So we have learned through our discussions that we cannot make laws. We cannot change laws physically. We cannot change policy, but we can advocate for them. So we always say we want to meet our community where they're at and not expect them to come to us. So that's part of this photo voice initiative where we learn what are the real issues that you're actually seeing in your neighborhood and from your front porch. And one of the ways that we are doing this is we're advocating and we're partnering with Civic Lex. And we are encouraging, and will be encouraging, not only our Lex CHIP members, but in turn, those members who talk to their people, who talk to their neighborhoods, to become more involved in civics within Lex, and to become more involved, like coming to council meetings, coming to certain commission meetings, and whatnot. And just knowing that knowledge is power, and empowering them, and making them feel comfortable to stand up and advocate for themselves. One of the direct solutions, too, that I think, going back to your question, is that as public health, we're really big connectors. So we have people who come in through our front door who need services, but then we're also involved in the community enough to know what resources are existing and out there. And so we're able to sometimes do warm handoffs. We build relationships with our community, community trusts us, we can build those relationships. And then also see those relationships among organizations who maybe are doing the same thing, don't know they're doing the same thing, but could collaborate in a bigger way. So then I guess, so is there any plan to come to the council or to different bodies with formal recommendations or formal solutions to challenges? In that case, so that we know that you're getting access to the data, you're building data based on the challenges that are out there when it comes to health outcomes. So to put solutions forward, is there any plans to come to, in the future, to come to the council and say, hey, we've noticed that there's maybe three top things that are sticking out and you need to address it. And these are possible solutions for it. I love that question. We've been doing community health assessments and community health improvement plans for years. The issue has also been that we've not had a solid plan of how to, because different cities, states do theirs differently, right? So we like to think of ourselves as innovators in this process because we're really creating it from the ground up. We would love to have an opportunity to do that. That's actually on our dream vision board. And so to be able to come to you guys with here's the data and here's some potential solutions and then here's some partners that are willing to kind of put that skin in the game. We would love to be able to do that. At this time, we don't have anything formally to do that. But, I mean, yes, I would love to build that channel of communication. I think we should definitely look into that, especially, like I said, I mean, when we're talking about health outcomes, we know that health outcomes lead to many different other challenges. Specifically, even in water than just health, it leads to city challenges. So if you have the solutions, if you have the data, coming to this council and providing your expertise on what can help move that down, I think would be very important. So I appreciate the work you're all doing. I look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Well, you have a council member on the Board of Health, and I think that that's a fabulous idea. I think this is extremely creative and innovative, and is a good way to get feedback and come up with issues, but I agree. It would be wonderful if we had a plan to try to implement the solutions. Whether that be coming to council, whether that be presenting to other groups or doing all of it. I think if through the community doing this whole project, we've identified major themes, then we should find a way to address those themes. Yeah, and as you know, public health, the job is also to move that health needle. And that health needle hasn't moved in decades. And so to be able to work collaboratively with our city would be amazing, because I look at this like a strategic plan for the city. So I would welcome that. Thank you so much. Yes, we'll keep talking about that. And thank you so much for presenting. I don't know that everybody was aware of this program, and so I really appreciate you all coming out and in person. So thank you, and we'll continue the conversation. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Colleagues, does anyone have anything that they want to comment on, on the list of items in committee? Okay, at the request of Councilmember Morton, I sent out an email about this. I am calling a special meeting on Tuesday, August 26th from 6 to 8 PM for public input on the sober living ordinance. And that meeting will be limited to two hours. So if people want to come and give public comment, they will need to get here first come, first serve. If they're not able to give public comment during those two hours, then they can contact us in another way. I think that Councilmember Morton spoke to most of you about this, and I think we will have a quorum. If there's any objection to that, please let me know. Otherwise, we will schedule that meeting. So I wanted to do it in advance, and I wanted everyone to be able to reach out to their constituents and invite them to come to that meeting. So, thank you very much. I think that's it. We are adjourned. Thank you. See you shortly.