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What does that do to them? Basically it's an option of being postponed or not being approved. So what does that look like? We would inform them of that. In that scenario we would inform them of where we were. I guess what would happen is they would still be in a pending status. The one thing I will say is that, and this kind of alluded to the conversation of us continuing the site, them continuing to be on site once the agreement has expired, they can't get to the site at this point without an approval of an agreement. Suffice it to say that is because we just wouldn't be able to allow them to have access to the site. Okay and maybe this is just a personal, it could be personal, personal thought. What is worse, not being able to get to the site, being not approved or being a pending? I think consideration for a possible approval is better than a disapproval. I would say. If I were seeking approval, the opportunity and hope that it might ultimately be approved is better than a denial or a disapproval. Okay. I'll wait until Councilmember Hale asks a question then I'll have a motion. Councilmember Hale. Okay so the reason for my no vote is it wasn't because I don't support the military or ROTC or our students. It wasn't that. I do believe that a public park is not the place for this type of training. But in lieu of the history that we have with the University of Kentucky and with ROTC, I do think that we should give them an ample amount of time to be able to make that transition. I don't think going all the way to July of next year is, I think that's a little bit too much. But I do think at least going to the end of the school year is enough time for them to make that transition out of the public parks. And so that was the reason for my no vote. So I do want to be able to have us reconsider the vote, but with it amended to the end of the school year, not to July or December. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you Mayor. I want to make sure as we consider the reconsideration that we are very clear and aware of what we just voted on. And partly speaking in response to Council Member Hale, so I'm going to give him a minute. Council Member Hale, my comments are partly in response to what you had just said. I want to make sure we understand what we just voted on previously was the amended MOU, which was six months, not the 12 month one. So I just want to make sure if we do a reconsideration and a re-vote, that's what we're voting on. Currently the 12 month MOU is not on the table for consideration. What could be on the table for consideration if we vote for reconsider is the six month amended MOU. So I just want everybody to be clear on that. Thank you. This is to reconsider the amended motion on the docket, which is six month agreement as opposed to a year agreement. To reconsider that vote and vote again. Okay. Anyone else want to speak? Council Member Hale, did you want to speak again to the reconsidering? Yes, just to respond back. For the reconsider, if we vote this yes, will we have an opportunity to amend the amendment? That's the question. Yes. Okay. Yes sir, you would. Okay. It'll be just like a regular resolution. All right. Council Member Savigny. Thank you Mayor. Since it's been so long now, Council Member Morton, you made the motion to reconsider. What was the rationale? The rationale for reconsidering? Yes. I just had, it was a tough, it was a hard decision I had to make and I wanted to reconsider it. You're kind of our acting parliamentarian right now. I thought a motion to reconsider had to have a purpose that was either a misunderstanding, misunderstanding of the law, there's like multiple reasons for it, but not just because I wanted to talk about it again. I think the general reason someone does it is because they're thinking about changing their vote. I don't know that we've required people to give their rationale for, but I think that the reason someone on the losing side has to make the motion is because the idea would be that person might change their vote when you reconsider it. But we've never gotten into requiring them to actually state with great detail the reasoning, but the rationale behind the losing side is exactly that, that you don't let somebody on the prevailing, you know, on the, the prevailing side has to make it because if it's the other side, then the vote's going to be the same, right? From what I'm hearing, I suspect Council Member Hill might change his vote, even though, you know, I can't, I can't really speak to that, but I think he was thinking that he was going to have the opportunity to change it to be the end of the calendar year, but I think he's probably going to accept the fact that, that, you know, that it's better to give them at least until the end of this year than to cut them out altogether, because I think where he's at is he wanted to give them the opportunity to, you know, to at least have some chance of, of finding somewhere else before, before this, you know, ended. Okay, but he didn't make the motion, did he? He did not. Okay. But he could, but he could now, if, if, for instance, he withdrew it, so, yeah. Okay. Okay, we're still discussing the reconsider. Thank you. All right. Let's see. Not right now? Okay. All right. We are voting on a motion to reconsider the resolution regarding ROTC and Heisel Farm as amended. All those in favor of reconsidering, I think we ought to do a roll call vote, I mean not roll call, but an electronic vote. If you'll put your vote in. Okay, okay. I believe everybody has voted and recused, so that does pass eight to five. So now we, we have on the floor, would you, is it appropriate for her to read the amended motion again, the amended resolution, and then we'll be voting again? Oh, Council Member Morton, hang on a second. Council Member Morton. And I'm actually going to make a, I don't know what this is going to feel, but I'm going to make a motion to postpone this. Discuss. I don't feel comfortable. So, I'm going to make a motion to postpone this to the next council meeting. So moved. Second. What's the date? We need a date. August 14th. August 14th. The motion on the floor is to postpone this until the next council meeting, August 14th. All right, we have Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not going to support a postponement, because at this point, in consideration, if anybody right now is considering the impact to UK ROTC, I think the respectful thing to do at this point is to make a decision today, so that they can plan and move forward. Whether that decision is no, our relationship is ended, or that we're giving you six months, or whatever the plan is, to kick this can down the road another six weeks. Until we come back, they're going to be pushing right into the beginning of their school semester. And to have that uncertainty, I think, is disrespectful, honestly. I think we can differ on our opinions about whether or not we think they should be part of our parks and have that relationship. But I think we owe it to them, at the very least, and we owe it to our residents, as well, to make that decision tonight. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with the Vice Mayor. School starts the second week of August, typically, and I imagine that extracurriculars need to be decided upon and scheduled far prior to that. So I do think that, however this falls, it would behoove us to have a decision sooner rather than later so that UK's ROTC can plan. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion to postpone? Council Member Morton. Yeah, I put this forward because, in all honesty, and it actually goes back to Council Member Savigny's first question, the last thing, of why did you reconsider? I reconsidered because I wanted to ask the community, but I was told that that's probably not the best procedure to do. So now I'm still in a limbo, and I'm at the point where I will support a postponement, and it's in line with what Commissioner Ford said, to not kill it, but I will not be supporting this if it's not a postponement. So that's where I'm at. Does anyone else wish to speak to the motion to postpone? All right, we'll take a vote. All those in favor of postpone, we'll do a digital vote. All right, I think we have everyone registered. The motion to postpone fails, and the vote was 3 yea, 10 nay. Now, we still have on the floor a resolution with an amended six-month agreement with UKROTC, and unless there's some other motion, I think we're ready to hear the first reading. We have to do this all over again. The first reading. Item 1, a resolution authorizing and directing the Mayor on behalf of the Urban-Kennedy Government to execute a memorandum of understanding with the University of Kentucky Army ROTC for the use of Heisle Farm Park for ROTC training at no cost to the government as amended. Thank you. All right, is there a motion to suspend the rules? So moved. Second. Vice Mayor Wu, Council Member Ellinger seconds. And are there any comments? All those in favor of suspension, please say aye. Aye. Let's take a digital, electronic. Do you want to suspend the vote and give second reading? I believe that fails because we need ten people. Mayor, I don't think you need to. It only needed to be read the one time, and I didn't want to step into this, but it only needs to be read the one time. It's because you're reconsidering it. It's already been read the two legal times. You don't have to suspend the rules and give it another reading. The reason you're reading it is to remind everybody what they're voting on. We've read it three times, right? That's right. But you don't need to suspend the rules and give it another reading. So a reconsidered motion does not need a second read when it's been read? No. The reason you would read it again is so that everyone knows what they're voting on. Okay. So how do we get to a vote, then? I think someone just makes a motion to move approval. Okay. We have a motion to approve. Okay. Vice Mayor Wu moved, and Council Member Baxter seconded. Council Member Savigny, you're listed, but this is... It is kind of a procedural thing. So do we move to read it the first time? No, we don't. Do we move to read it? No, we don't do that. So it was read the first time back in... Got it. 2010. A month ago. Three weeks ago. It's altered. But it's altered. Read the first time three weeks ago is read the second time tonight. Got it. And it was altered. Yes. Okay. So... And we read it as amended the two times. During a reconsideration... It's actually the fourth time, so... But during a reconsideration, you still need to do the two readings. No. No. No. That's what the commissioner is saying. It's been read the first time, it's been read twice, and the second reading it's been read once, and it was read as the amended motion. I think that's what he's saying. Okay. Okay. I think we might need a work group for this one. Oh. Be sure to invite Robert. I hope it can never be replicated. That's what I'm hoping for. All right. Okay. When you're ready, will you take a roll call vote, please, on the amended version? Yes. Council Member Curtis. No. Council Member Ellinger. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Elliot Baxter. No. Council Member Gray. No. Council Member Hale. Yes. Council Member Legree. Yes. Council Member Morton. No. Council Member Reynolds. Yes. Council Member Savigny. No. Council Member Sheehan. Recused. Vice Mayor Wu. Yes. Council Member Beasley. No, ma'am. Council Member Boone. Yes. And Council Member Brown. Yes. Thank you. You will need to my monitor didn't show the votes, so can you please. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. We have five nay, eight yes, so it passes. All right. I think we are ready for the charter review. And so, unfortunately, I need to leave and turn the chair over to the Vice Mayor. Thank you. Everybody, happy Fourth of July. Thank you, Mayor. All right. To give this presentation is Richard Young from CivicLEX. Take it away. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. We will try. I know that we are one of the last things standing between you all and summer recess, so we will try and be as quick as possible with this. So I'm so happy to be here with you today to talk about a project that CivicLEX has been working on for well over a year and it will be coming forth in the beginning of next year, and that is a civic assembly that we are hosting on charter review. So I know everyone here, but for the folks watching at home, right before the Fourth of July, the charter is essentially Lexington's local constitution. It's the rule book that outlines how local government is set up, what it's allowed to do, and the rules that it has to follow. It's been nearly 30 years since Lexington has last taken a broad look at the charter. It is common for communities to review their charters regularly, typically every five to ten years. Lincoln, Nebraska, has a permanent standing committee that meets annually to review the charter. Cities like Dallas, Tacoma, Cedar Rapids all are required to review their charter by their charter every ten years. But as just a quick overview, the charter was adopted in 1972 with the urban county merger. In 1987, there was a major review that was led by LFUCG. In 1998, there was a review that was led externally by Commerce Lexington. And since 2021 and the redistricting process, there have been a number of concerns that have come up both from council, from the public, and from a variety of different places about the charter. In a cursory review of all articles we could possibly dig up about past charter review processes, two things that we noticed that popped out, that the council is obviously quite close to the charter, and that that council-led process sometimes posed some conflicts of interest. This is a quote from Council Member Pam Miller in 1987 from the Herald Leader. And that past reviews did not have a lot of public engagement. This is a quote from Council Member Deborah Hensley in 1987. So in 2023, CivicLex was approached about co-leading a public review of the charter by Council Member Sheehan, Baxter, Vice Mayor, in a process alongside Commerce Lexington. We held initial meetings with Commerce Lexington, interested in being in an advisory role and not co-leading. And so we decided to lead a review process only if it meant that it meaningfully involved the community and decision-making and was independent from LFUCG. So we settled on a Citizens Assembly model that I'm going to talk about briefly tonight, and we secured non-LFUCG funding to run this entire process. And then we formed an advisory group to guide the strategy and process. This is the advisory group that we have built that has been working with us throughout the course of the year to design our strategy and approach for this project. We're so grateful to these eight folks who are not necessarily meant to be representative of our community but are designed to bring their expertise into this process, and we've been incredibly lucky to work with all of them. And, of course, I have to thank Kit Anderson, our Deputy Director at CivicLex, and Emily Bramley, the project specialist working on this project. So what is a civic assembly? The best way that you can think of it is as jury duty for public policy. A lottery system builds a random representative group of people from the community. That group of people is called an assembly. They come together and learn about an issue. They take testimony, and they deliberate over a period of time. They then make a recommendation to a legislative body or to policymakers. Between 1973 and 2023, there have been over 700 assemblies worldwide to make decisions at the very micro level in communities but also to make national level decisions about constitutional amendments that happened in Ireland multiple times. It's a really great tool for engaging the public on complex issues that require a lot of thought and a lot of consideration, and when there are challenges with trust, and we know that trust in government writ large across this country are at an all-time low. Most recently, there was an assembly in Deschutes County, Oregon, on youth homelessness. This was a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago, and we have a very short video, under a minute, just to prove that we're not making this up. Collaboration will take place next week to address youth homelessness in Deschutes County. Next weekend, a group of 30 residents will meet at OSU Cascades for a civic assembly. The goal of the assembly is to hear from experts and people experiencing homelessness to create solutions and present them to local governments. It's not on the group to enact those ideas. It's on local government, and we've been very fortunate that city councils, county commission across the region have agreed in advance and committed to actually publicly deliberating on the recommendations and reporting back to the community on whether or not they will implement those recommendations. Members of the assembly have already been selected, but the public is invited to see the discussions in person next weekend. I'm glad we didn't watch that next video that was coming up. So, we're going to host Lexington's first civic assembly. It's going to be in spring 2026, and it's going to focus on this question. What changes should be made to the charter, the urban county charter, to improve representation, trust, and participation in local government? It is going to be a 30-person assembly, so we'll be randomly selecting 30 people from across Fayette County. They will gather together over 7-to-8 sessions in February and March. I'm just going to quickly run through the timeline ahead for what we're looking at, and then I'll be happy to take any questions. So, this process is going to start right now. This August, we're going to come back from our own little break and begin public engagement on the civic assembly. The specific thing that we're trying to do with this public engagement is understand what topics the general public in Lexington wants us to be focusing on in this assembly. We are going to try and narrow in on two to three topics that the assembly will be considering next year, and these topics could include matters related to council, like redistricting, term limits, term lengths, elections, compensation, number of council districts. But it could include other things, public engagement, future charter review processes, and other topics that we are going to hopefully hear from the general public on. We're thinking about this engagement somewhat like on the table, but on the table is very broad, and typically people come in with a preconceived notion. So what we're actually going to try and do a little bit more with this is, yes, still provide that same sort of education and engagement that we do with that process, but also give people a chance to sort of understand what this process is really like. So we're looking at hosting a handful of small hour, hour and a half mock assemblies to give folks an understanding of what that process could look like. Then, later in the year, we're going to send out 6,000 letters, maybe more, could be as many as 12,000, we're still settling on that final number, to randomly selected Fayette County addresses. That includes apartments and homes, everywhere that there is a residential address in Fayette County. We expect a between 3% and 8% response rate from that letter mailing campaign, with a demographic survey that will be included that will ask for people's information, their age, their race, their political alignment, have they ever participated in a civic process before, all sorts of different things. And from those responses, we're going to build multiple groups of 30 people that are representative of the county at large across age, race, district, political party, and more. So, Fayette County is 50% of one particular group, 50% of this 30 person panel will be representative of that group. From those multiple panels, we are going to select one of those panels at random. So there are multiple steps of randomization to truly get people that would typically not be participating in these types of things, and to get people that are demographically representative of our community at large. The panel will include two representatives from each council district and six at large. We're trying to build this to more or less mirror the structure of council. Then, this group of people will come together through assembly convenings across seven to eight sessions in February and March. They will be compensated somewhere between $750 and $1,200 each. We're still finalizing that number. They will be provided child care stipends, transportation stipends, and other accessibility accommodations to make sure that they can participate. In these sessions, they will receive education on the topics that they're considering. They'll take testimony from experts and people with opposing perspectives. Hopefully some of you. And they will deliberate together on what they think the best path forward could be for addressing the topics that we're considering. The assembly will be entirely publicly viewable via live stream, and people will be able to come in in person and watch it happening. We will ask the assembly to produce an opinion and recommendations. They will more than likely vote on these recommendations. It could be consensus recommendations. It could be majority-minority recommendations. And then we will bring those back to you. We are planning to bring these back to you all in April or May. The assembly, we are hoping, will come with us to a council presentation, and they will present to you what their recommendations are. Council will retain, of course, decision-making power over what is done with those recommendations. But what we're really asking of you all is to commit to publicly and formally responding to those recommendations as they are presented. These people are going to be putting in a lot of time. Each of these seven to eight sessions are going to take seven to eight hours. They're going to be putting in, you know, almost 70 hours of time into thinking about the urban county charter, probably folks that don't even know that we have a charter. And so what we really need from you all is a commitment to responding to the things that they bring you to honor their time. What that response could look like could look like a variety of things. It could look like referring the recommendations that they bring to you all to the ballot for vote next year. It could look like formal consideration and deliberation. But what we are asking is that you respond to them publicly and formally and that that is as presented, not changed. A couple disclaimers about this process. We do not yet know what topics in the charter the assembly will consider. We'll know that after the public engagement process this fall. We will only know what the recommendations are, if any. The assembly could come together and look at the charter and be like, this all looks great, nothing should be changed. That would be certainly a thing of note for all the time and energy going into this, but that could be it. And so we aren't going to know what those recommendations are, if there are any, until after this assembly has concluded. CivicLEX, we do not advocate for policy outcomes, so we will not be advocating on behalf of the recommendations that this assembly brings forward, but we are going to be providing educational information about the process to the public and the recommendations after the assembly, including through the traditional election coverage that I know you all are familiar with. And for us, this is a real experiment in public engagement and decision making, and we're excited about that. And we think it's actually really exciting for all of Lexington. As a process, we think that hosting a civic assembly is going to create space for everyday people who do not typically show up to city hall, who don't typically participate in neighborhood associations, who don't maybe even vote in local elections, to deeply engage with a really significant public issue. We think that assemblies, from every study that we have read about them, they build trust through transparency and learning and fair representation. People that participate in civic assemblies are more likely to participate in other ways in the future and report higher rates of trust in civic process. The compensation that we're providing folks is going to remove barriers to their civic participation, and I think it honors the expertise that they provide, and it honors the expertise of people that are testifying. We understand that folks in local government, folks from other communities that have gone through some sort of charter review, have expertise and are willing to bring that into the process, and we're really excited about that. But we also know that everyday people have really valuable expertise of their own, and we're excited for them to bring it in. We think this is a really fantastic process for charter review. It brings public scrutiny that wouldn't typically be on potential charter reforms. It allows the community members who are participating in the assembly to really wrestle with the complexity of changing a document like this in a deep way that surface-level drop-in engagement wouldn't. And we think this can start to build a shared understanding of what representation should mean in Lexington. And we think this is an exciting process for the future. We think it sets a precedent for resident-led input on really big decisions in a new way. We think it creates new expectations for public involvement and tests a new strategy that could be used for engagement for future topics beyond the charter. Communities use this on complicated land-use decisions. They use this on electoral reform. They use this on issues like youth homelessness. It is a really great process to tackle complex issues, and we're excited to try it out. And with that, thank you, and I'm here to answer some questions, as is Kit from CivicLEX. All right. Thank you, Mr. Young, for that. Council members, sign in if you have questions or discussion. Council Member Morton. Thank you. So to start off, one of my promises was to bring creative solutions to complicated issues, and I think this is a very interesting and innovative model that you proposed for us today. And I like the idea of the Civic Assembly and randomly selected representative group of people to help guide the hard decision for our city. But I do, I guess, have a couple questions just tied in to, I guess, the logistics of doing so and just the research of getting to here. So I guess to start off with, what other assemblies did you look at, and were those topics similar? Did they deal with legal documents such as this charter? Yes. Thank you, Council Member Morton, for the question. To answer your question, yes, there are a variety of local and larger-scale assemblies that deal with those legislative issues. The most famous example is actually Ireland and their National Constitutional Convention, where they had 100 members from across the entire country review their entire country's constitution. One really interesting application of assemblies for topics like that is typically those legislative reviews require a referendum to be passed, and the assembly almost serves as a mini version of the referendum at large. So it's really common to see a legislative measure pass an assembly, say, by 65% approval, and then when it goes to that population at large, it often will fall along similar margins with the micro version. So what is the philosophy being addressed by only taking three issues versus a comprehensive charter review? I know there's multiple things in the charter, more than three that we may feel need to be addressed, and do you anticipate a need for another charter review to address three or four more issues in a couple years down the line? How do you see that? There are a variety of reasons why we're only considering two to three topics. One is that we're asking a lot of people to take seven or eight days, full days, work days, out of their life. Most of our meetings will be on the weekends, but that's a lot to give up seven to eight weekends. And we want to make sure that we give whatever topics we're considering a really thorough amount of time to cover them. And I think going beyond two to three topics would really limit the ability to be thorough and deliberative in the process. Also, if council is interested in advancing some of these recommendations onto the ballot, there are only a certain number of slots that are available. So there are really multiple reasons that we decided on two or three topics. But I would say, first and foremost, we want to make sure that they get enough time for people to really understand what would actually happen if any changes that they wanted were put in place. And then will we look at, I guess, so for the other issues that are not able to be highlighted in that group, is that something we're going to keep looking at in the future to keep doing? What does that process look like? Or are we just going to do it with these three and just cut it? Yeah, I think that would certainly. Our process is pretty bound with these at the end of this year, the end of next year. But I think that any, both from the public engagement and from the assembly itself, there will certainly be additional information and resources coming that you will be able to take a look at and understand if you want to pursue a similar structure for future examinations of the charter or a different structure. Again, for us, this is a really exciting opportunity for CivicLEX to try something really new and innovative that has never happened in Kentucky before. And part of that may be, ooh, this is actually maybe not so great a process. And I think we'll learn that at the tail end of this. But we're really optimistic, but we certainly don't want to get ahead of ourselves. And then lastly, the charter review. The charter is a broad document, and we're recruiting folks that may be civically engaged, folks that may not be civically engaged. So who will educate assembly members regarding that context, the context of the charter? And will there be someone on the assembly that will have familiarity with government and its processes that can kind of steer the ship? Yes, so the, thank you, the design of the educational materials is a huge part of the overall facilitation of the assembly. It would involve written materials. It would involve video presentations. It would involve guest speakers and experts on the charter. It would involve smaller learning groups breaking off to tackle topics that they don't understand. Part of the design of the facilitation is about understanding how your group learns and being able to provide resources to that end. But all of those resources would be used to make sure that the assembly members get to the point where they actually understand what's in front of them. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Richard, and thank you, Kit, for this presentation. I think this is a really exciting initiative, and it's aligned with some of what we've been doing here with our public input subcommittee and some of our more outward-facing work and what you all do, obviously, in educating people about local government and getting them more involved in ways that they feel curious about. And for everyone coming down to give public comment or to email their council member might not be their point of entry, so it's my hope that as people get involved with the educational process and the facilitation that you all are going to provide, it will not only affect the learning that happens in the space of the civic assembly but create a ripple effect into the community and into the various neighborhoods and districts where these folks are living. So I'm really appreciative of the civic education, the trust building, and the collaboration involved. Thank you all for being willing to do this experiment and to see what the outcomes are here in Lexington. I think just something I'm curious about, when we're thinking about all the labor and the compensation involved, would you all be able to share a little bit about just the funding source and how you all are supported in this work? Sure. So we have spent the past year raising resources to make this possible. So we have national grant makers, for the most part, that are in the civic engagement and civic education space, have been supportive of this, including the Rockefeller Foundation and a couple others. That is basically what we've spent the past year doing, because we knew going into this process that if we were going to do this, we wanted to really do it and not cut corners. Part of that is the cost of compensating. We were going to be providing each of the 30 participants with a very meaningful amount of money, and that's a very essential part of this, to both get their buy-in but also to honor their time. All in all, this project is going to cost between $150,000 and $200,000. Well, thank you for all the work that you all have already done in order to set this up for success. I absolutely agree that if you're going to do something like this, it's a really big initiative and you want it to be done right. And compensating people, providing child care, transportation, all the facilitation work and the materials involved, making sure that that's done well is certainly important. So I appreciate that you all brought this to us. I look forward to updates, and if there's anything we can do to help spread accurate information beyond this session, please let us know. Thank you. You will certainly be hearing from us, yes. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you all for presenting before us and for your patience with us as we undergo some difficult conversations around items that have come across our desks. So I just wanted to ask, because one of the things that you said in your presentation was a commitment from us to listen to the outcome. Is there a sort of formal recognition process that you're seeking, or just sort of verbal commitments from each of us? Yeah, I think verbal commitments. I think once we get over the next couple months, I think we may come back with maybe a more structured version of what that looks like. But I think at the moment, yeah, just sort of a commitment in good faith that council will engage with the results that come out of this in a way that honors the time and energy of the participants. Absolutely. You have that from me right now, and I couldn't be more excited that we're doing this. Thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you all for the presentation and for being flexible on presenting today. It's already clear to me that you have put a lot of time and energy and thoughtfulness into the research, and I want to thank you for that, but I also want to thank the advisory group that you've assembled, because I know that time and energy has also come from them as well. I'm really excited about this as the potential this has for our community, not only in what you're doing here but what this might lead to in the future, similar to where we had multiple iterations of On the Table and some of the work that we have really been doing here on council to increase our public engagement and the methods of public engagement that we have. We do represent our districts, right? This is a way for that representation to be reflected in the community feedback we receive, right? This piece where you're taking that random sample is so very important in all of this. So I think while we talk about and try to really pull from all of the different areas across the county, we don't always see that reflected in who we reach sometimes. And we've been really working hard on that with your help, but I think this is a way to really show the people who are here truly represent the community that we serve. So I appreciate that and the time and resources that are going to go into really forming that group. I want to echo to what you're saying about the independence of this body from the decision-making and this process and then somewhat the independence of what comes out of the group, right? So, colleagues, it's very important that we have this group that is making decisions about us, educated decisions. They're going to have a lot of time to learn about the issues, and we might be invited as presenters to provide perspective. But I think what comes out of this group, it's very important for us to accept it as being representative of what the community thinks. And to then take it for face value, take the decision-making and the time and energy that has been put into that to move it forward in whatever way is appropriate at the time. But I also think you should give us guidance, direct guidance, because I think we should also be independent from the process itself. So I really appreciate you presenting an option to watch online for the public, but that I think should also go for us, because I think when you are making decisions about a governing body, maybe the governing body shouldn't be in the room unless invited. So I think you should formally disinvite us or not invite us to that party, because I think that's part of the independence. So I would like to ask that of my colleagues, even if you don't ask us that directly, for us to be very hands-off on this. And I think we are excited about things that go in our community and events, and so we show up to things because we're like, oh, this is so great. I think we should not do that this time. But I also want to continue the discussion about the regularity of a review of our charter. And if your advisory group, based on your research, has thoughts about that, I think I would like to hear more about that, because while we might not put that into the charter itself or that might not come out of that group, I think we could also do an ordinance from this body about how often the charter review should happen and potential formats for that. So thank you all for everything, and I am excited to see where this goes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you both for all of your hard work. You know, when we started this conversation many moons ago, we had a short list of concerns that we had kind of, you know, accumulated through the redistricting process and otherwise. And, you know, there's a lot of people on this council who have specific views and opinions on parts of the charter. But to kind of add on to what Council Member Sheehan said, while we should say, you know, definitely keep our hands off of it, I also want to prepare this body for any recommendations that come forward that may be completely opposite of what, you know, you may think or want to come out of it. And we have to be okay with that too, because of the amount of time and energy that the public will have put into it at that time. So while we may want really positive things to come out of it in whatever way, it could mean something completely different than what we may be expecting. So I just wanted to kind of throw that out there and make sure that we were kind of getting our head right before we hear back. But I too am very excited about this process. I think it is definitely time to take a look at things. A lot of stuff has changed since the mid-'70s, and I'm really excited not only to see what comes out of it, but I'm just excited to see the community get involved in a different way. So thank you all so much for your work and your time and your energy. Appreciate you. Thank you. I want to really echo and second a lot of the sentiments of my colleagues. Two things I really value in our work and in our government, and they're aspirational, like we try to practice them every day, but it's transparency and creativity. The transparency piece is about us having that arm's distance, because we have all read articles where lawmakers in different places have given themselves raises, have redistricted themselves or redistricted their own districts to their advantage, all these sort of different things, and we, I think, value democracy more than we value our own self-interest in these roles, or at least I hope we do. So to me, this is a great experiment in democracy, and I think it has a lot of potentially positive echoes, and I would love to see it be successful and be able to continue it in the future. Another thing that I know my office and other of my colleagues are really trying to do more of is cultivate future community champions, and what that often means is folks who, not just the folks who come into this room, but folks in our communities who can spread good information, who have good knowledge, who can understand and translate some of the esoteric things that we do and kind of take it to their constituents, their communities, and kind of engage that, and I cannot imagine out of the 30 people or out of the couple hundred people of this larger group that we will not cultivate future community champions who come out of this and say, hey, did you know this about our government, and did you know you can do this, and did you know here's something that we should change? It's very exciting. And then lastly for me, just having the bragging rights of Lexington being a leader in this sort of a civic engagement. As you have noted, there are very few places in the United States who have tried this, and honestly, even in Europe, it's not super common, it seems like. It's happened in places, so I love the idea of us having bragging rights, of being daring enough to try something new, so I really appreciate all the work. I look forward to see how this thing unfolds. I don't think any of us really know how it's going to go, and that in itself is pretty exciting. So thank you all for your work, and we appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we don't have any fire or police discipline, so it's time for announcements. Council members, please log in. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to put in an item in BFED, Budget, Finance, and Economic Development, and that is local impacts from federal policies. I know we all received an email yesterday about some of the changes that may be coming our way. We've heard from some of our nonprofit partners and the concerns that they have, as well as some of our local business leaders, so I think it would be good to get a snapshot of how some of the federal policies that we're seeing coming down the pipe may impact us locally. So I'm going to put that item in committee. So thank you, Vice Mayor. All right. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Since I have not been here, I figured I would do my announcements that were on the list. So I just wanted to say thank you to my colleague, Chuck Ellinger, for continuing on with the Senior Intern Program. Last month we had, I can't recall what class this is. Thirty-eight. Class 38. And in this group is ‑‑ I'm bringing this up because we had one individual from the 6th District who so happens to be my mama. Her. Yes. Thank you, Haley. And next picture. So I kind of voluntold her to be part of this process because one thing the 6th District is going to have is at least one person participating in this process. And I bring my mother up because I missed her birthday on the 1st. So happy 76th belated birthday to my mama. Thank you for always having my back. Thank you for always supporting me when I've been down. You've helped me get back up. And thank you for showing up to things such as the Senior Intern Program when I voluntold you that you're going to do something and you actually do it. Thank you, Mama Audrey Gray of the 6th District. And thank you to my colleague Chuck Ellinger for continuing on this program. And thank you to Christy Stembaugh for your leadership in this. And next year as you step away to take care of the new facility that is coming, I just want to just say thank you for all you have done to continue this program. You are such a benefit to our city and to LFUCG, Christy. So thank you for all that you do as well. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. So the Social Service Public Safety Committee will host a special evening meeting on Tuesday, August 26, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to gather input for the proposed recovery residence ordinance. As a council member, I want to emphasize how critical your voice is in this process. This ordinance must strike the right balance between protecting the integrity and safety of our neighborhoods while also uplifting and upholding the dignity and the rights of individuals in recovery, understanding that these homes play an essential role in helping people rebuild their lives, but also knowing that they must also operate responsibly and with accountability to the communities in which they exist. So I encourage residents, service providers, and those with lived experience to join us and share your insight. And together we can build a policy that reflects both compassion and care for our city and the people who call it home. And I just want to give a thank you to Council Member Reynolds, the chair of the committee, and the committee members for their willingness to schedule this input session and also their commitment to seeking and getting community input. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Colleagues, at the suggestion of Council at the General Government and Planning Committee on Tuesday, Council Member Savigny and I are forming a workgroup to further discuss the solar ZOTA in reference to the AgZones. Council Member Boone and Council Member Morton agreed to join the group. We will also invite representative stakeholders and subject matter experts to participate in the group. And then I have three other small announcements. Once again, I would like to invite our community to participate in the community feedback sessions for the Villages Housing Model. A Caring Place has been working with a consultant to collect feedback from community members on this type of housing model where neighbors help neighbors. They're holding sessions throughout the summer, so please go to their website to see all the locations and times. The next opportunity is in mid-July. I'm going to give you that date because I'm not pulling it. Yeah. July 14th. And that next session is at the Senior Center on Life Lane. But if you go to supportacaringplace.org slash villages, you can see all of the times and locations that are happening throughout the summer. We had CivicLEX presenting today, but I would also like to make an announcement about an event CivicLEX is having this weekend. They're having a field day for the public, so a fun-filled schedule of games and activities on Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m. at Castlewood Park. You can go to civiclex.org and look under the section for programs to find out more about this event. And then finally, there's still time to submit applications for our banner program that is honoring veterans in our community. The deadline is August 1st, and you can find out more information about that at lexingtonky.gov slash veterans affairs. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I want to thank everyone for their patience. Obviously, we're all looking forward to a break, and I promise that I will get through this as quickly as I can. But there's been some weight that I've been carrying today, and I wanted to speak to that tonight. So tomorrow's the 4th of July, which is our Independence Day, and I've got a lot of fond memories of growing up and watching the fireworks. And my mom and I specifically going to see the Lexington Philharmonic. It was all very patriotic. But this year, this holiday feels different, and it feels like the symbols of patriotism that we so often see on the 4th of July have been warped and distorted at the federal level to disguise something more insidious, which is nationalism. Because patriotism is about loving one's country. Nationalism is about weaponizing authority, using the illusion of patriotism to hurt those that one views as lesser than. And so today, as Congress passed a budget bill at President Trump's urging, so that he could sign it tomorrow on July 4th, and they erupted into chants of USA, USA, USA. I just don't want us to under—I don't want us to be mistaken that there's anything patriotic or anything to celebrate in the bill that Congress passed today. And you've heard me say before from behind this desk that while we serve as local elected officials here in Lexington, we do not exist in a silo. And what happens at the federal and state level happens to our constituents, too. And so this bill is going to hurt and likely kill Lexingtonians. It guts Medicaid, the means by which roughly 80,000 Lexingtonians are able to receive health care. It guts SNAP benefits, the means by which 12.2 percent of Lexington residents are able to live free from hunger. It places a heavy, heavy financial burden on student loan borrowers, working class people, renters, young people, and the poor. In our neighboring communities, it's projected that 35 hospitals will close as a result of this bill. It devastates our ability to combat climate change and pollution, weakening environmental regulations and ending incentives for renewable energy projects. And it does so in service of giving a $3 trillion tax break to billionaires and corporations while adding $3 trillion to the national debt. It literally steals from the poorest, most vulnerable among us to give to those who are most well off. It makes ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency in history. More than the FBI, the DEA, the Bureau of Prisons, and more combined. And so I want to be very, very clear that this bill is not a symbol of patriotism. It is a symbol of nationalism. It is a display of barbarism and cruelty that will hurt and kill the most vulnerable among us. It's antithetical to everything I was raised to believe in and to the work that this city's government and those of us around this horseshoe do to make Lexington a place where all people can live and thrive. Like several constituents I've heard from, as this bill has gone through Congress and been debated, I'm mad as hell. And I'm astounded by the cruelty on display. Because none of us, whether we sit here tonight in Lexington or whether we serve in Washington, D.C., was elected to hurt people. And while we aren't the ones responsible for this, it is our job to do everything within our power to mitigate the damage and to help our neighbors when the federal government hurts them. I know that's what I'll be doing as this hits Lexington, both as a council member and just as a good neighbor. And I hope all of us who serve in this body will do the same. Thank you. Thank you. We don't have anybody signed up for public comment. So before we adjourn, I want to wish everybody a restful and recharged recess. And also congratulations to my newest colleagues. Six months, you made it. We are adjourned. Quarter. ¶¶ ¶¶