# Budget and Finance and Economic Development Committee on 2025-10-21 1:00 PM - October 21, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · October 21, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6593 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6593?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-10-21 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: February 15, 2026 - **Length**: 17,417 words - **Speakers**: Chair > ⚠️ **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 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a committee meeting on October 21, 2025, at 1:00 PM in the Council Chamber at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507. The meeting covered six agenda items spanning administrative, financial, and legislative matters. Two votes were taken during the session, resulting in the approval of the September 16, 2025, Committee Summary and a decision on the FY25 Fund Balance following council discussion. No public comments were heard during the meeting. The committee received several informational presentations, including an update on change orders, a FY26 Quarter 1 Financial Update, and a FY25 Fund Balance Presentation, as well as a review of items referred to committee. No presiding officer is identified in the available meeting record. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the October 21, 2025 meeting, both decided by voice vote. - **Procedural Motion – Agenda Reordering** [timestamp: 54:12]: Councilmember Ellinger moved to shift the microtransit pilot program fund balance discussion to a later point in the meeting, after the relevant presentation. The motion passed by voice vote. No roll call was recorded, so individual member votes are not available. - **Approval of Fund Balance Proposals** [timestamp: 1:43:06]: Councilmember Morton moved to approve all fund balance proposals that had been presented during the meeting. The motion passed by voice vote. As with the procedural motion, no roll call was conducted, and individual member votes are not available. Both motions passed without recorded opposition. No roll call votes were taken at this meeting, so a breakdown of individual ayes, nays, or abstentions is not available for either item. ## Budget and Financial Actions The committee reviewed a series of appropriations, purchases, and grants totaling approximately $2.395 million across multiple initiatives. No resolution identifiers or specific vendors were recorded in the meeting materials for these items. **Appropriations discussed include:** - **$750,000** for a Council capital project fund - **$700,000** for implementation of street safety task force recommendations - **$110,000** for intersection improvements at Loudon Avenue and Bryan Avenue - **$20,000** for the Neighborhood Voices Project - **$50,000** for the Boys and Girls Club Lexington Chapter - **$50,000** for Black and Williams Community Center programming - **$100,000** for A Caring Place pilot program - **$55,000** for wayfinding sign removal **Purchase:** - **$100,000** for Toughbooks (ruggedized laptops) for code enforcement staff **Grant:** - **$460,000** in solar grants designated for low- to moderate-income homeowners The largest single items were the Council capital project fund appropriation ($750,000) and the street safety task force funding ($700,000). Community-focused appropriations included support for the Boys and Girls Club Lexington Chapter and Black and Williams Community Center, each receiving $50,000, as well as $100,000 for the A Caring Place pilot program. No vendor or recipient organization names beyond those listed above were identified in the available meeting data, and no resolution numbers were recorded for any of the financial actions. ## Approval of September 16, 2025, Committee Summary **Agenda Item 1014-25** [timestamp: 03:30] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its September 16, 2025 meeting. No significant debate or concerns were recorded in connection with this item, and no specific speakers were noted in the record as having raised issues or offered commentary on the document's contents. The summary was **approved** by the committee. ## Change Orders [timestamp: 04:00] Agenda item 1015-25 covered change orders, which were presented to the Committee for informational purposes only. No action or vote was required on this item. The change orders were discussed as a standing informational matter, and no key speakers were identified in connection with this agenda item. No specific concerns, debates, or notable discussion points were recorded in the available data. The outcome of this agenda item was informational, meaning the Committee received the change order details for awareness without taking any formal action. ## FY26 Quarter 1 Financial Update [timestamp: 04:33] **Agenda Item 1016-25 | Presentation | Informational** Commissioner Hensley presented the FY26 Quarter 1 Financial Update to the Committee, providing an overview of the county's revenues and expenditures for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Additional speakers also contributed to the presentation. The item was informational in nature, meaning no vote or formal action was taken by the Committee. No further details regarding specific revenue figures, expenditure amounts, variances from projections, or concerns raised during the discussion are available in the provided record. ## FY25 Fund Balance Presentation [timestamp: 1:34:28] Commissioner Hensley presented the FY25 Fund Balance to the Committee, providing an overview of allocations and unassigned funds for the fiscal year. The presentation was informational in nature, with Commissioner Hensley walking members through the details of how fund balances were distributed and what remained unassigned. No further specifics regarding the individual allocation amounts, fund categories, or unassigned fund totals were provided in the available record. - **Agenda Item:** 1017-25 - **Presenter:** Commissioner Hensley - **Outcome:** Informational — no vote or action was taken The item concluded without a formal decision, serving as a briefing for Committee members on the current state of the FY25 fund balance. ## FY25 Fund Balance Council Discussion [timestamp: 1:48:06] The committee took up agenda item 1018-25, a discussion on the allocation of the FY25 fund balance. Councilmember Morton and Councilmember Lynch were the key participants in the debate over how the fund balance should be distributed. Council members presented and debated various proposals for how the FY25 fund balance should be allocated. The item was brought forward as a discussion, allowing members to weigh competing priorities and approaches before reaching a decision. The item was ultimately approved by the committee. *Note: Specific dollar amounts, individual proposals, and the details of any concerns raised during this discussion are not available in the source data provided.* ## Items Referred to Committee The committee reviewed items that had been referred to them for further discussion during the October 21, 2025 meeting (Item 1019-25). This agenda item was informational in nature. No additional details are available in the record regarding the specific items discussed, speakers who contributed, or concerns that were raised during this portion of the meeting. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Move the microtransit pilot program fund balance discussion to after the presentation - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve all fund balance proposals presented --- ## Full transcript Do do do do do do so so so so so so um all right council members we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order for the october 21st 2025 budget finance economic and development committee of the whole so we'll go straight to our agenda and the first item on our agenda is the approval of the september 16th 2025 committee summary is there a motion to approve all right there was a motion to approve and second it are there any corrections or questions hearing and seeing none all those in favor please say aye are there any that oppose that motion passes the next item on our agenda is change orders for information only that's in your packet if there's any questions about any of that information please reach out to director slayton anytime after this meeting for more clarity so with that we'll go to the next item on our agenda and it's the fy 26 quarter one financial update we have commissioner hensley director holbrook and director luca and with that i'll turn it over to commissioner hensley um good afternoon everyone this is our first quarterly update for fiscal year 2026 these are financials through september 30th um as you all will recall our adopted budget is not 1 12th um taken over the year it is actually reflective of our anticipated revenues and expenditures as they come in we have much higher revenues budgeted in the months that we expect to receive them and um the same with our expenses so you can see that we do actually project out when we expect to see more revenues and expenses you can see there's a gap um for september and as we kind of come into september we're a little bit closer than we've budgeted to be with our revenues and expenses um so we are trending with our expenses exceeding our revenues by 18 million dollars at this point um that is where we anticipate to be revenues exceeding expend expenditures i'm sorry expenditures exceeding revenues at this point in the year because our first big revenue collection comes with our property taxes that typically happen um in the fall so in more in november um and so we'll start to see collection of revenues come in uh in the next couple of weeks and months as we start to see that come in wes is going to talk to you about how the first quarter of the year um has gone with our revenues in just a minute i would like to note as we go through this first quarter we have made a couple of notes for you as far as our revenues our expenditures melissa's going to go into those a little bit more but a lot of our expenditure variance at this point is really reflective of variances in our public safety and that's not necessarily unusual some of those occur as we're closing the year and we've been talking about those in our b fed committee thus far this year those are continuing um as we're reflecting the entire first quarter but one of the other things that you'll see um for this fund and as we go into our other funds is that there's some adjustments that are being made in the general fund and the other funds that are not actually cash adjustments so the third note that you'll see in our factors um to consider is the impact of our subpoenas those are our subscription-based information technology um when you are a business as large as the government you have commitments that are very large that have that are related to our um it contracts so our microsoft contract um our data management solutions for like our axon cameras and those kind of things and so um in order to have maximum transparency we have to report those they're not necessarily cash adjustments um but they are something that we have to show through our financials and so they do reflect because they are so large in our financials so you'll see them in the general fund you'll also see them in our other funds we do bring you those budget amendments in these financial statements the budget amendment is actually lagging the reporting so you'll see that it's creating a variance in some of those accounts but i just wanted to bring those to your all's attention as we're reporting first quarter to you so with that i'm going to turn it over to west so we can talk about our revenues for the first quarter good afternoon council members um first just to look at a graphical representation of our payroll withholdings you can see here the blue line is our estimated budget for payroll withholdings across each month the gray is fy25 actuals and the orange is the fy26 actuals up until this month this past month we've been lagging payroll withholding collections for for july and august we did see a spike in september there's not necessarily one thing we can attribute that to there's lots of different pieces that come into that but some of that's catching up with some things that we should have seen in july and august and then just some some natural growth in that month we'll have to continue to watch like we talked about in the first two months to see if this is something that continues if we're seeing the start of a trend or if it's just a blip that is maybe going to stabilize that amount a little bit from where it's been lagging in the past few months on net profits we we've still been seeing net profits go under budget for for the majority of the year we are starting to see our tax extension mail come in we typically do get another round of mail whenever tax extensions are due which is six months six months after the filing deadline most businesses when they've initially filed their extension will pay the majority of their tax liability so even if we do get a good run of mail that may not necessarily translate to a lot of revenue it would just be people who are filing appropriately as they're supposed to but we may we do occasionally see some spikes here you can see we projected one in september to be above what you would typically see the first few months and a slightly higher level in october so we'll see if we start to if we start to experience some of that would also remind council that we did have an extension in kentucky for the entire state of kentucky where every business's taxes were extended until november 3rd and so we're still hoping that we see some of that revenue come in that we might have expected in the spring of this year if we start to see it come in sometime in this fall which could which could also bring net profits up above where we are seeing it grow right now but really the the thing that we always advise is whenever we're looking at net profits really the spring is what we're paying attention to because that's when tax season is and that's when the majority of businesses are going to pay their taxes as you can see in that spike that we see in april as far as our other revenue sources insurance we've we've talked about that that continues to be one that we've seen grow it's slightly under budget by a little less than two hundred thousand dollars for this quarter given that it has seen growth quarter over quarter for the last several years that's not necessarily a number that i think is too concerning something we'll certainly watch but as we see insurance payments come in you see people's homes continue to appreciate cars continue to appreciate people buying health insurance things like that we should still see insurance continue to grow we haven't seen insurance really decrease in the past year over year and so i think we'll we'll see that we hope to see that straighten out and get back above budget whenever we get into our second or third quarter franchise fees is one we had i think we had a question about this last month and with with some of the warmer weather in september and some of those collections some of the warmer weather in august you see you see some of the growth there above budget where it was lagging a little bit so that's that's showing that we're continuing to grow above budget and that revenue source which hasn't really been the case for the last few years it's been stable and we've underperformed a little bit now we're starting to see that that level grow a little bit above property taxes just a budget you see that as a large negative variance on the percentage not necessarily the dollar amount we don't really collect much in the way of property taxes until october as aaron mentioned and so even though it's a few hundred thousand dollars and a large negative percentage we'll start to see that that dollar amount climb on the budget and then the actual collections and the actual percentage is going to be pretty low because property taxes are very stable and we'll be able to project those over time two other things i want to point on this slide and then we'll move on to actuals is with services there are lots of different categories that make that up and they can vary from detention center bed fees to ems fees to parks collections um detention center bed fees have are driving a lot of the growth in that category we still do collect a lot of ems fees but because of a large accrual at the beginning of the year we're under budget we're also not seeing some of our other categories grow as much but detention center bed fees is really bringing up that category as a whole so as we go on into the year we're going to look at ems fees and see if there's any um if there's any adjustments we need to make as far as how that's coming in but that's that negative variance is largely driven by ems fees not matching budget i don't think that's necessarily going to be the case over the whole year but it's something we're going to we're going to dig into and then as aaron mentioned with the speeda revenue source if you see other under finance excuse me other other financing sources um if i can use this correctly right here there's a 1.1 million dollars that is not real money that we have collected so even though we're showing a 1.8 million dollar budget variance that is not a true variance because of that 1.1 million dollars that's not cash as we think about it when we look at revenue over expenses when we get the budget amendment for the expense side that'll catch up as well so really when you think about revenues and what's in there and what's coming this is really close to about seven hundred thousand dollars over budget sorry as far as actuals it looks like in on the budget side a lot of a lot of our categories are underperforming right around budget one thing that i think is important to point out is we are still experiencing a good amount of growth across several of our categories you can see in payroll withholding that's seven percent above prior year net profits is still underperforming where we've seen in the past year in the past several years but the rest of our categories as a whole are continuing to grow and providing good growth currently through the year of 4.5 percent over a prior year i know i said a lot and i'm happy to take any questions from council and if you have none i will pass it over to director luker all right thank you director are there any questions for director holbrook or commissioner hensley at this time i don't see any right now so all right welcome director luker good afternoon so here is our personnel budget versus our actuals from the prior fiscal year so the blue line is the budget line so as you can see the orange is our fy 26 actuals and we are basically right at the blue line for two of the three months slightly below it in july we're pretty much right at budget with our personnel for the first quarter you can also see this graph shows that we are spending more than we did the prior fiscal year for the first quarter so you can see that our personnel costs have gone up the spikes that you see there the spike in august that was a three payroll month so we were paying employees three times that month as opposed to two that will happen again in january you'll notice the january spike is a little bit larger than just a three payroll month we also have the sick checks in there and we have a lot of the payouts for retirements because a lot of those happen in december january end of the year so those are why we have those spikes july is a little bit lower because we have accruals back to the prior fiscal year june is higher because of those accruals so that's why it's you see some flatness throughout that fiscal year there but there are some spikes with our personnel budget that i did want to point out so here's our operating it's a little bit closer to more evenly spread we had a pretty high budget in july we obviously did not meet that budget with our operating expenses but you can see we spent significantly more than we did the prior fiscal year in the month of july it kind of flip-flops there a little bit in august and then we're back up to spending more again in september with our operating accounts so looking at the numbers here we are within 3.6 3.6 percent of our personnel budget for the first quarter of the fiscal year which is very good we've got some savings with some vacancies we have some divisions have spent more in overtime some divisions have spent a little less we've got a little savings in our payouts with people leaving but we'll see that as we go throughout the fiscal year we tend to spend more people leave toward the end of the calendar year or end of the fiscal year typically so we'll see that spread out a little bit on the operating as the commissioner said most of that variance is within public safety there's a lot of things that they put have to put on the purchase order at the beginning of the year and then it takes a while to receive the equipment or pay down on the purchase order and so we'll see that variances in those accounts go down as we go throughout the fiscal year but we've got savings in our software maintenance we've got fleet savings we've got operating supplies and equipment that operating variance is spread throughout several accounts across government it's not specific to one division or one one account necessarily insurance we are slightly above budget there whenever we put the budget together we had an estimate on what our insurance costs were going to be for our additional insurance it came in a little bit higher so we're aware of this and we're working to get this one corrected but we're still it's relatively small amount there debt service we are right at budget within a percent and then partner agencies that's various partner agencies there's not one partner agency that has more of that variance than the other the capital line this is what the commissioner and west have been talking about with the subpoenas so i was actually checking the packet the first budget amendments for those subpoenas are on for work session today so there are several of them for the various funds that have the subscriptions and so those are on for your work session packet today and we'll get first reading on thursday so we'll see that get cleaned up it may not get cleaned up until we see the november reports because it won't get second reading in october so it won't be on this close so we'll see we'll see that variance there one more month in the reports but then once we get the november reports it should take care of itself and should be cleaned up but you can see that one two ties very closely to the one two that was in the revenue side so that will clean that up so we have a variance of about 11.7 million dollars right now just on paper here but we know that will change with the subpoena information that we have looking at how we compared to prior year you can see we're spending more in every category than we did the prior fiscal year we're about seven percent up in personnel than where we were that first quarter about 12 up in operating insurance is 24 up and then debt service but that one is always weird with the timing of when we sell our debt and when we have our payment schedule but we are spending more than we did prior fiscal year we're just not spending quite to budget for all of our accounts yet are there any questions i have eight seconds all right council members are there any questions for director looper no ma'am i'm not seeing any give it back to the commissioner for the other funds clear all right we're going to move on to the next item which is the general overview of the other funds and we have a quarterly update for the other funds that we're going to review this year shoot i'm glad they reset my time i don't think i could have gotten through the other funds since this is a quarterly update we do have the other funds i did leave in the slides that gave final audit fund balance so little caveat is we are not completely done with our audit so there may be adjustments should our auditors come and make any suggestions to us that they have any changes within these funds but this is about where we think that they're going to be the great news is that all of these funds have gone up from their prior year fund balance some of them just a hair and others have gone up a little bit more so we'll talk through these just quickly again as we talked last last year last fiscal year and over the quarters that we've presented these some of the trends that you've heard through the general fund continue through the other funds as we talk about personnel we've really been intentional about talking through the attrition on all of these different funds and and really working through and trying to make sure that we're as close as we can to projecting as we work through all of these you'll see that we've done a pretty good job they're all pretty close to budget as far as personnel that being said this is the first time each one of these has been budgeted in this way so we've typically done it over the course of a fiscal year and we're trying to trend these like we do the general fund so this is the first time we've tried to figure out the seasonality of each of these funds so we may not hit the nail on the head and we're going to keep working on that so keep in mind the spread might be a little bit off but we're going to keep working with our divisions to try and hit that a little bit closer our operating is lagging a little bit just like it is in the general fund in most of these funds part of that is the fact that our operating is lagging like it is in the general fund and part of that may be how we've budgeted it so we're going to try and continue to work through some of the nuances of these funds and our process with budgeting for them so we'll start with those were my overall caveats so we'll start with the urban services fund the fund balance in prior year was 25.9 million dollars the fund balance currently is 30.2 that does incorporate a little bit of capital that is remaining for our refuse fund it went up about eight hundred thousand dollars so again one of those that just went up slightly that means we pretty much hit hit the nail on the head as far as their budgeted revenues and expenses so basically they've held flat for the year the street light fund is one that went up about 1.1 million dollars over the course of last year that'll be very important because we have a rate case coming for KU we know that they're in negotiations and so obviously our street lights are of most importance when we're negotiating what we're going to have to pay for that we have a very large expense and can our electric is the vast majority of that expense so we're very interested in what that's going to cost us and that will impact that operation that lives within this fund tremendously the last piece of this is our street cleaning that one actually had a little bit of reduction it's very capital heavy and very personnel heavy so when we have increases to personnel and we have increases to capital that impacts this this piece of that operation we are doing a optimization study within our street cleaning and so that's something that we'll be looking at during the course of this year and into next year as to what what their capital needs are what their personnel needs are are we you know spending appropriately or is everything service wise getting what we need to be doing and so those will be the things that we're looking at as we're addressing that component of this fund but overall if we're looking at the first quarter their actual revenue collected via property tax really we will see that come in in the november time frame when we when we collect the property taxes as well that comes in via the sheriff's collections and so we really don't see their revenue pick up until the october november december timeline that being said their expenses are not the same so we have to go ahead and pay their expenses their revenue will come in in the fall and then that is really their primary source of revenue they have to make it through the remainder of their year on those expenses so they really do have a little bit different revenue and expense cycle they are running under budget and expense to where we expected them to be at this point their personnel's right on their operatings lagging a little bit but overall their other insurance and capital are doing okay their their capital may be lagging a little bit more based on the timeline of their purchases but overall the fund is doing all right sanitary sewer again we left in the details of the fund just for informational purposes there we go this is the one we we talked to you all about last year if you all recall every time we talked about it it used to be three funds that we consolidated down to two and this one had the trust fund that was being rolled into their operating so their prior year fund balance was 24.6 million dollars and their current year fund balance is 73.8 not because we had a whole lot more but because we actually collapsed two funds into one so they really had a smaller um increase in fund balance because of that but again all of the activity and i'll come back to you with what that is i didn't write down what the trust fund held before it got here so i apologize for that but their fund balance increased primarily for the purpose of those capital projects that this fund is created to perform they're running a little bit behind for their services as far as their collections go personnel you can see that they're right on we're going to talk about operating in just one second but you can see that their insurance debt service and their capital capital are almost all true to budget their operating account looks odd because it's not actually a contra account it looks odd because another one of those non-cash items is occurring during the course of the pandemic we did not do cutoffs during lex in lex serve in the lex serve accounts we worked with kentucky utilities really to try and keep water on their everything just kind of held and stopped our accounting process and i'm going to try and distill this down as much as possible our accounting process does not stop we do record collection of bad debt because we're only able to legally recover debt for a certain period of time our lex serve system continued on and our accounting our accounting system continued on in our lex serve system did not and so that created a disparity between those two so we are now going back and removing those accounts from our lex serve system which creates a paper difference and so when we record that paper difference it creates what you're seeing financially speaking on the operating account we actually do have operating expenses in this account but our write-offs from our lex serve system are so much larger than the operating expenses we actually have in this account that they're actually showing negative so there's so many more write-offs from that very long period of time that they're showing a negative balance now this fund is so large that if we were showing this to you over a period of a year you wouldn't see it but because this is just a quarter it actually shows the balance of all of those funds so what we will bring back is a full amount of what those bad debt differences are so you all can see what that looks like it has been a very long time coming there are a lot a large number of accounts that have been accumulated over a long period of time and again it is just a difference of one system versus another but what it does to the financial statements again non-cash is show a variance that looks like we have a contra expense account so I wanted to make sure that we brought this to you and it's good that it's really visible because it's these kind of things that can give you a false sense of security or a false sense of doom that if you're not really tracking can make you feel like a fund is not operating in a way that it should I'm going to pause right there because that was a lot are there any questions about that I'll let y'all stew on it you can send me an email if there are no ma'am I think everybody understood that no question okay so go ahead it was a lot we had to go through it several times together actually sat down and you know we have a really great team on all different sides that looked at it a number of different ways so kudos to our Lex serve team our accounting team our audit team all the different folks that kind of put our heads together and said now how do we get here so many thanks to all of you all our next fund is our sanitary sewer did I flip did I not flip sorry I didn't flip water quality fund is our next fund last year our fund balance in there was 29.5 million dollars we're up to 38 million dollars again this is a fund with very large projects we are running behind just a tad on our revenue but our expenses are holding our expenses in personnel again very close we're getting much better at projecting those personnel expenses operating expenses running behind just a little bit and insurance and capital are right on not too much to report on that one and lastly our landfill fund also not a huge amount of activity in this one it's a smaller fund as far as the other funds go it's holding relatively stable it had a prior year fund balance of 39.4 million dollars and current year fund balance of 44.8 million dollars that fund as you all will recall is really intended for that post-closure requirement that we have that capping of the landfill that we are required to do and held for the EPA requirements for that fund that's it for the other funds if there's any questions I'm happy to take them and if I don't know I think maybe Nancy may be here or not we can get back to you if there's any programmatic specific questions that you have on those okay commissioner we do have a question council member Savigny thank you chair and I want to I want to thank you because that was not a that was not an easy presentation like you did a very very good job and I do appreciate it that that one negative just it sounds like basically we we were basically taking we were we were making entries for bad debt maybe that got reversed over a period of about five years or something like that right so we've been recognizing the bad debt expense over the course of actually the last six years on our accounting books so we've been recording it and our inquest system just needed to catch up yeah okay it makes sense but thank you again and thank you for putting the fund balances on there and things just because I think it does help us sure just put everything in perspective about the scale of certain certain funds as well absolutely and those fund balances are those necessarily cash fund balances or those fund balances of of all the assets that are in that they are fund balances I believe for all of it all of the all the assets that are in it okay thank you that's all I have thank you chair thank you council member and if you didn't ask a question I was going to call on you to ask a question because I consider this part of the presentation you're part of the presentation but I do think it is valuable that we get to see this information I think you you know you do a good job of presenting that very difficult subject matter but I think the more we see it and get familiar with it the more informed we will be in making decisions going forward so so thank you for that so the next item on our agenda and I think we still have the pleasure of hearing from council member Hensley and that is the commissioner I didn't promote you yeah you cannot make any motions so commissioner Hensley so I'll turn it over to you to do the FY 25 fund balance presentation pretty sure my motions would get voted down you got promoted just got a little click happy there all right so here we are at fund balance for June 30 2025 I just keep taking y'all further and further back so when we started talking about this I said well this will be the first one for six of them and they said that's not right and I said no it is this is the first fund balance for six of our council members and feels like everybody's been here forever but it's hard to hard to feel like this is the first one so welcome new council members to the fund balance conversation and welcome back all you old hats that have done this before it's it's kind of challenging to have this conversation because we throw around the term fund balance somewhat interchangeably but as we stand here today we are going to be talking about fund balance for the general fund family of funds and so before we do that we're going to talk real quickly if y'all will indulge me about what a fund balance is so the government is made up of lots of different funds as we just discussed and there's said segments of activity of which all of the items of work that is done is recorded separately and so each of those funds can and does often have a fund balance to again today we're just going to be talking about the 1101 general fund 1101 and general fund family of funds and the reason I keep saying family of funds is because really today is the crosswalk of where the budget and the audit and all of our general conversations kind of come together so this is the culmination of the entire work of the year coming together with our audited financial statements and then making final assignments for anything and everything that is left over because my job at the end of the day today is to put together a list of everything that you all have made final assignments for hand it over to my auditors wrap the bow on it and say here it is it's done and so what we're going to be asking for is final assignments the end of the day you can say all right leave it unassigned and that in and of itself is an assignment so long as you all have made the decision and that goes to our funding agencies that goes to our bond councils that goes to anybody and everybody that is looking at our financial statements so that is primary pages in our financial documents that they're looking for because it is the general fund family of funds it is actually a very very large number now what we're going to talk about today at the very end of the conversation is a small number but we're going to figure out from the very large number down to the very small number where all those pieces go not just for you sitting here but for the general public because that is probably the second most asked question that I get other than what about my property taxes so we're going to walk through in just a second where all of the pieces of the fund balance effectively live because it's not just the unassigned piece that is kind of the most fun piece to talk about so when we talk about all of the different family of funds where do all of the pieces live where are all of their homes we're going to talk about the general fund construction fund the family care center fund miscellaneous special revenue fund all of these things that we don't typically talk about every day but they all do have assignments they are all laid out in our audit and again this is the crosswalk or the pathway or however you want to think about it of how we get from the audit to what is unassigned today so we started at the beginning of the year in 2024 with our restated fund balance of 191.5 million dollars in 25 our net change was a decrease of two million dollars now we actually planned to decrease more than that but we did better than we expected so we only decreased two million dollars so we ended fy25 at 189.4 million dollars there we go now it gets segmented into all of these little compartments that we give special names special names like committed restricted assigned pre-committed obligated non-spendable all of these things are found in our audit and they all just mean things that have a home things that you all have already put somewhere we call them funds we call them accounts we call them things that have resolutions and ordinances things that already have a place the first place that we have them assigned to is our prepaids in our inventory that's 3.4 million dollars these are things that are actually sitting on a shelf somewhere these are things that we've bought it is an asset it lives somewhere and it is obviously not spendable because we've already got it the second piece of that is our energy improvement fund and our qualified energy bond the second piece of that is our energy improvement fund and our qualified energy bond reserve those are highly restricted they have a very specific purpose they say it in their name the energy improvement fund you know exactly what that is by what it's called and so they have a highly restricted purpose so we pull those out because they have their right assigned name so right there we've got six million dollars that come out in that restrictive category so we're for already from 189.4 down to 183 we know where those pieces are going our next most restrictive section is our economic contingency fund it's 46.2 million dollars at the end of june 30th last year we passed an ordinance that said 10 of available fund balance will be assigned to the economic contingency fund so another 699.5 699 000 will be assigned to the economic contingency fund during this process so those two pieces are restricted and they come out at this point they're in our committed segment and then also we have our non-1101 so we've been talking about our 1101 family of funds this is the rest of the family so our 1102 our 1103 our 1141 our 2521 so we go ahead and pull them out now they have their own fund balances and so we can't talk about using them for other purposes so we're going to go ahead and remove them all together that's another 48 million dollars that's already been restricted for another purpose so before we move on from economic contingency one of the things that you all asked me to do when you passed ordinance 99 2024 was to report to you how much additional funds you would need to meet your 10 goal you are within two and a half million dollars of reaching that 10 goal this year this past year we have put 75 000 per month into that economic contingency fund plus the 699 000 from this presentation and that gets you within two and a half million dollars of the 10 goal other than the blip that we put in when we thought we would need to use this fund to balance and then didn't during covid that's the closest we've been so coming outside of our commitments we have a couple more classifications that we want to report for our family of funds before we get to our uncommitted we have our health insurance reserve some of you may remember that was a lot higher when we switched over our health insurance provider and we had those lagging claims our health insurance provider and we had those lagging claims we had those many years of one-time large claimants we bumped that up a little bit because we weren't really sure what our exposure was going to be coming out of covid it was really high we've been able to pull that down a little bit and that's really good because we have a new requirement that our e911 needed a little bit of extra help this year we weren't able to budget enough to balance their beginning fund balance that they needed and so we were able to pull down our health insurance reserve and pull up our e911 fund so we were able to do those two things simultaneously and not pull away from the fund balance we also added a fema disaster reserve we used to cross fiscal years with our fema claims we still do that but this year we were able to reserve in that same effort reserve two hundred thousand dollars and put the expenses for where we participate as a fema provider if we get called down to another county for tornado relief or flood relief so that when we put in that claim as a fema provider if they come back and deny our claim our expenses are covered we used to have to take a chance that they wouldn't be covered in a future year so we've been able to cover that liability at this point the other thing that's in here is our opioid settlement as of june 30th our opioid settlement was 7.7 million dollars we have since received another allocation but that's past the june 30 cut off so as of this allocation 7.7 has been reserved those items together are 109 i'm sorry my calculations are off scratch that um i added in my capital projects when i calculated that but we'll go ahead to capital projects that's a large item it's 93 million dollars that includes that capital reserve that's 40 million dollars that also includes all of those other large capital large capital projects that we have committed to those together with the health insurance reserve the opioid settlement reserve the fema disaster reserve and the e911 budget commitment are 109 million dollars so all of those items together and then our last commitment is our obligated fund balance uses which is 20 million dollars and are in that box below so our purchase orders that were rolled into fy 26 were 15.3 million dollars those are our commitments that crossed the fiscal year for which we needed funds our grant match roll was 3.7 million dollars those are grants that we had in process for which we needed the match that that crossed the fiscal year and then we started with the beginning but um fund balance budgeted use of a million dollars in this year's budget so all in all those are all of the different general fund family of funds committed obligated historically committed assigned all the different names that you want to call it uses of fund balance and where we have pieces and parts that have been obligated to this point that leaves 6.296 172 million dollars unassigned that largely came from um arpa interest that was budgeted to be used this year um outside of that we pretty much hit the nail on the head this year i had a budget director that said we stopped the titanic on the head of a pin which is pretty incredible um i think that's a pretty great job i i the mayor was intending to be with us today and i don't think she's made it back so i apologize she's not going to be here to make her comments um but i think we're all pretty proud of this job she challenged us two years ago to really tighten down our budget um really look at personnel really look at our attrition right size our expenses and to get our revenue projections in a better place and i think we've done almost everything she's asked us to do so with that being said i'll answer any questions you have and open it to your discussion which i think is what you're really looking forward to thank you commissioner for the presentation and your hard work i know um when i was talking to council members about the fund balance number and and folks raised eyebrows because over the last couple of years we've had pretty sizable fund balances and you know i i told them kind of reassuringly is that we've been working to get that fund balance number down and actually have more money spent and provide services in the community throughout the year as opposed to getting to the end of a calendar year and then we get tasked with trying to reassign that money so i would just say kudos to you and your team for working to get those expenses in line and right size in our budget going forward so with that council members are there any questions about the administration's fund balance presentation or anything that council member hensley has presented so far did i call her council member damn i am sorry so commissioner hensley all right so commissioner ellender that's a joke council member ellen i like my um bump in salary there all right i hate if you get called council member and they degrade you there so sorry about that commissioner on the reserve of the opioid settlement yes that was received um how we are how how does that play into that we just told that and i think when they've had the means that there's they're leaving 10 percent of that money that's going to be used to um to draw interest on that how how are we using that so the only reason that it's sitting out there is because it lives in the general fund currently and it just has a restriction and the only restriction is that it came with a restriction that it you'd be used for opioid so we're just holding it because it came with a restriction um and we're just waiting for them to how we're going to spend it right when it comes when whatever direction comes um it will be used for the purpose that is decided we just it has a restriction so that's why it's there okay i just want to thank you thank you council member any other questions well commissioner i'll i'll ask a question too and it's in regards to the opioid reserve fund too so so the so any timeline about about that do are we expecting that um task force to present to to the mayor um and if you have already asked answered this i apologize do we what's the timeline on their presentation potential recommendations and expenses for the funding okay i was gonna say i have not been advised i'm out of my lane good afternoon the recommendations from the abatement committee have been given to the mayor she is currently vetting those and so we are waiting on her response and i'm sure there'll be a series of meetings between her myself and our suity coordinator on those recommendations before they come to you all okay i have some more questions about the recommendation but i don't want to get in front of the process that's been laid out but i will ask questions about what so we have 7.7 now how much do we have scheduled to receive in the coming years do we have a scheduled payment that is the wonderful thing about this which is very hard for strategic planning is that there is no schedule we could get a million dollars tomorrow over the next 18 to 25 years okay but we do know what the total amount that we're going to receive in in the settlement we just don't know when the payments are going to hit or do we not know that either no no okay um all right thank you i do have a few more questions but we can we can talk about them offline and it and but it has to do with the the allowable uses and i and i'm only saying that because i think and the task force would know better because i think they have been given the guidance but i think there is more flexibility in that funding being used to provide services or to engage the community in regard to opioid recovery solutions or prevention solutions which may allow for that funding to be expended in in more ways than originally intended is that i think you will be pleasantly surprised in the variety of the recommendations given by the oac okay i look forward to it thanks commissioner absolutely all right council members any other questions uh not seeing any so we'll move to the next item on the agenda which is the fy25 fund balance council discussion and before we go to the well we the way this is going to work council members we'll just go to the list and have each council member present on their request we'll give three minutes per item after the presentation then we'll just see what kind of we'll allow opportunity for questions for the presenter and then i'll just ask that no motions be presented until we go through the full list and then we can entertain motions going forward before we hop into the list i just want to take an opportunity to thank council members for their flexibility open-minded open-mindedness when talking about the list i think we're all aware of uncertainty at at all levels in regards to funding and that you know we are accountable for all the dollars spent and i know folks have taken things off this list they have adjusted requests on this list and i think it's all about keeping in mind for about fiscal responsibility for our city and our community so i just want to thank council members for having those conversations and being flexible going forward so first on the list well are there any questions before we begin uh council member ellinger thank you chair and at this point i'd like to make a motion that after speaking to the chair and council members um the micro transit pilot program that i have on for the fund balance I think it would be better served if I move that to after the presentation. We have the LexTran Microtransit feasibility update at our continuing business and presentations at the 3 o'clock work session. I think it would be better if we had the fund balance discussion after we hear that presentation. So I'll make a motion that I move that fund balance discussion to after the presentation. So moved. Second. All right. So a motion, even though I asked for motions to be after the presentations, was made before the presentations to move this item to work session. And Councilmember, I think the intent is to move the dollar amount of funding to be considered with this presentation at that time to be explained and also have a council discussion. Any questions to the motion? That was seconded. Not hearing any questions. All those in favor, please say, aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. So we'll have that presentation at that time after the microtransit presentation. All right. So going to the list now, the first item to be presented is on the street safety task force recommendation. And is that Councilmember Sheehan? Are you giving that presentation? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I jumped out of order. So the first item on the agenda is the council capital project fund referred by Councilmember Beasley. My apologies. Thank you, Chair. It's pretty self-explanatory. I just asked for $50,000 per council office for our capital project. So if there's anything special in our districts that we're trying to work on, we would have that fund. And because of how many there are, it's $750,000. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember. Are there any questions for Councilmember Beasley? All right. Thank you for that presentation. Next is the street safety task force recommendations. And Councilmember Savigny is going to present on that. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, as you know, we did a street safety task force partial report out to work session on October 7th. There's been a lot of work put into this by Councilmember Sheehan, LaGree, Baxter, Curtis, Vice Mayor Wu, and myself. As well as 16 task force members represented by traffic engineering, law enforcement, community stakeholders, law, engineering, planning, the MPO, complete streets, and the county attorney's office. But today, our ask is for $700,000 total, as was presented at work session, based on that report out. This could have a massive impact of the safety of residents and quality of life across all districts. I'd like Councilmember and Co-Chair Sheehan to share just a few things on the engineering asks. Councilmember, or Vice Mayor Wu will share some on the education asks, and I'll just wrap up with the enforcement asks, if that's okay. You got our recommendations overall from the partial report out at the meeting. But we have three engineering related asks. The first that were described in detail in that presentation. But the first for fund balance was an engineering roundabout study to hire a consultant. Engineering estimated this to be $365,000 to do a feasibility study to evaluate five locations for roundabouts. And these are the bigger locations that you might see a roundabout where you have higher traffic volumes. In addition to that, there's a $50,000 ask for a traffic circle quick build project. So this would be to show proof of concept and generate community buy-in for smaller traffic circles that might be related more to a neighborhood street. And then finally, a traffic engineering study for signalized intersections to look at locations and pull together data that might show where we might explore different interventions with the signalized systems to allow for different traffic signals to allow for different types of pedestrian crossings than we currently use now. And this would be primarily in high pedestrian focused areas. And that is $150,000. I'll turn it over to Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Council Member. On the education side, we believe with all of the recommendations that come with both enforcement and engineering that education and engagement cannot be an afterthought in this process. As we kind of make changes to our built environment, we have to make sure that the residents understand what those benefits are. And I think it's a move to improve our civic health and give opportunity to cultivate more knowledgeable and connected community champions, basically, to kind of advocate for some of these changes. The $115,000 from the education and engagement team is going to go to the public information and engagement team in EQPW to support ongoing education and engagement initiatives around safe streets. These funds will be available to the PIE team and the engineering team to work to implement these recommendations. It could include things like art incorporated into some of those quick builds, outreach initiatives, and public education campaigns. There are a good number of ideas behind this effort, and I'm happy to answer questions or talk into more detail about those. So, thank you. And if I can just wrap up, the last thing is traffic engineering. We're going to do a Mio Vision pilot. It's a product that allows you to see near misses, red light running, and get all sorts of statistics per intersection. We're going to do it at up to ten intersections. We're going to do it before to see what is happening at those intersections. Then we're going to put up some signage to see how signage actually can impact behavior. So that is part of the package. That's everything all in one big bundle. Thank you, Chair. All right, thank you, Council Members. Are there any questions? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, colleagues, for breaking this list down very clearly with the recommendations and the amounts. I really appreciate that. I had a quick question on the enforcement part for the last piece. $20,000 doesn't seem like very much to do what you're talking about. Can you explain a little more in detail the cost for the technology that you mentioned? Yes, so the product itself, Mio Vision, they're allowing us to pilot the, they're giving us free access to the product. It runs on our existing camera systems. So really the only expense is we want to try it at ten intersections. And then the real expense is to put signage in after we've tested it for a few months without signage to see how signage directly impacts near misses or collisions or behavior at an intersection. So the technology will be taking the data, it will be recording what's happening. Yeah, and it can tell you the near misses with pedestrians, with bikes, the number of people who actually run that red light versus someone counting it. Yeah, it gives you all that data the software does using our existing camera system. That's great, and that explains it, that it's a pilot program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, council members. Any other questions? Seeing none, we'll move to the next item on the list. And that's Council Member Morton and the Loudon Avenue, Bryan Avenue intersection. Thank you, and I'll give just a quick update. So the request seeks $110,000 to complete the pedestrian safety and accessibility improvements at the intersection of Loudon Avenue and Bryan Avenue. This project transformed a previously neglected pilot design into a shovel ready high impact initiative that directly benefits pedestrian, cyclist, and transit users in a heavily trafficked corridor. By completing 88 compliant ramps, crosswalk striping, improved signage, enhanced lighting, and more, this investment addresses urgent safety concerns, connects neighborhoods, supports economic vitality, and aligns with Lexington's Vision Zero and Complete Streets goal. So I'd like to highlight why I believe this should be funded. One, it prioritizes safe streets and roads. This project directly addresses pedestrian safety in a high traffic corridor, reducing the risk of accidents and injuries for residents, students, seniors, and commuters. Completing this project fulfills basic community expectations, safe, accessible streets for all users. It also advances Vision Zero goals. This project aligns with Lexington's Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries. It supports complete streets principles. The upgrades ensure that the intersection is safe and accessible for pedestrian, cyclist, transit riders, promoting equitable transportation options. It builds on existing work. So we know this was a pilot project several years ago. This project started as a pilot, but was left incomplete. Funding now will capitalize on previous investments rather than letting the design work go unused. Then also, it's ready to go, shovel ready project. All design assessments are complete and quantified. This project only needs funding to move from design to construction. With a clearly defined $110,000 budget for this, this is a cost effective high impact investment we should complete now, knowing that cost continues to rise daily. And then lastly, economic and social impact. It enhances pedestrian infrastructure, increases foot traffic for nearby commercial areas, supporting local economic growth. Walkable connected streets improve overall neighborhood livability, attract family, enhance community engagement. So funding this $110,000 project is a smart high impact investment that delivers immediate safety, accessibility improvements at a dangerous intersection. With design work complete and ready for construction, this project turns an unfinished pilot into a life saving asset. That aligns with the Vision Zero complete street goals. It enhances pedestrian safety, supports local businesses, and demonstrates the city's commitment to safe, equitable, and connected neighborhoods. With that, that's my request for the person. All right, council members, are there any questions to that item? Council Member Sheehan. I just want to make a quick comment. Council Member Wharton, thank you for bringing this forward. This is exactly what we want to see with all of these Complete Streets efforts that we're working on, where you have a project that was piloted and tested that is now turning into a permanent installation. And I oftentimes see people walking through this area. It is heavily used at this particular intersection, so I'm happy to support this project. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Any other council members have questions? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. So you're talking about the location that had that huge build and pilot, okay. And so is that scheduled to come out, or you're just wanting it to be more permanent? Can you explain that change? So this pretty much proposal makes that permanent. So it addresses, I don't know what will be coming out and what will be staying, but it will make that area permanent. Right now it's just, it's piloted, there's things falling apart, there's pieces missing, it's just a mess a little bit. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next we have Council Member LaGre. Thank you so much, Chair. Council Member Morton, can you tell me a little bit about the timeline of the project and if there's any kind of community engagement aspect, I was just thinking about some of what we shared with our street safety task force requests. And I know sometimes there are questions from neighborhoods about what's going on, what's happening next. Do you have a sense of any of those parts of this, and if that's included in this request? No, I don't have a sense of the timeline. I would, and this may be, I know Commissioner Albright's familiar, I don't know if she knows the timeline, but there will definitely be community involved to answer the other part of the question. Good afternoon, thank you for the question. To date, we have not done a lot of community outreach regarding the specifics, although we've been available to answer questions as we've received them. So that would be a piece we would do. Otherwise, to what Council Member Morton has said, we've looked at how to build this, so we think we can run it through one of our contracts pretty quickly. Okay, thank you. Well, if there's anything that we could collaborate on in terms of kind of neighborhood engagement or outreach or some of the materials that we've mentioned in our budget request around street safety task force, this could be a really nice place to pilot any of that. So thank you for your work on this, and I'm looking forward to the results. Thank you. Thank you. I just have a quick comment. Commissioner, I remember this project, and I remember putting some money towards this project. To Council Member Legree's question, the pilot was all about community engagement. So I feel like that informed the design and all that. So I wonder if that piece has been- I do feel like we have, yes. That box has been checked. This is not a new design. This is implementing the permanent design of what was done several years ago, yes, you're right. All right, just some clarity on that. So this is a shovel-ready project, ready to go, yep. All right, thank you, Commissioner. Council Member Morden, you have another item? I do, I have three more. So I'll give a quick summary, I'll do it in three minutes. I want to talk about the Neighborhood Voices Project. I'd like to give some insight about this project before talking about the funding request, because it's kind of one of my legislative items that have not been brought all the way to the public just yet. So the Neighborhood Voices Project is a council-led initiative with the Community Engagement Office and Planning, to protect, preserve the cultural history and identity of Lexington's historic neighborhoods, vulnerable neighborhoods, and communities under threat from growth, gentrification, and displacement. Traditional preservation tools fail to serve undervalued neighborhoods due to many complex reasons, this leaving communities without real solutions. This project flips that approach by starting directly with the people who know the neighborhoods best. In its first phase, the project will collect cultural and historic insight from a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including current and former residents, community leaders, local organizations, churches, and businesses. Outreach will be comprehensive, spanning from one-on-one interviews, community meetings, town halls, and door-to-door canvassing to ensure no voices go unheard. The insight gathered will drive three transformative goals. The first, informing and create policy. Use real community-driven data to guide development decisions, ensuring growth respects and preserves neighborhood identity. Two, capital investment. Channel investments into initiatives that celebrate and safeguard local culture and history, whether that be murals, statues, street arts, plaques, and other meaningful projects that leave a lasting imprint. And then three, building effective tools. So co-create a toolbox with the community based on solutions designed to address displacement, protect heritage, and address the specific challenges these neighborhoods face. The Neighborhood Voices Project is more than preservation effort. It is a commitment to equity, history, and community empowerment and solutions. By listening first and acting together, we can ensure that growth strengthens rather than erases neighborhoods that give our cities their character, soul, and stories. So with that, I've put in a $20,000 request to launch the Neighborhood Voices Project, a resident-driven initiative designed to strengthen engagement, trust, and collaboration between Lexington's neighborhoods and local government. Who will take part in this? My office alongside Councilman James Brown's office and the Office of Community Engagement is planning, excuse me, in planning, will be working to move this project forward. We have picked Smithtown as the first pilot phase, a historically underserved neighborhood with a strong sense of community identity that has changed and is continuing to change. And then, like I mentioned earlier, with residents of the past and present, community leaders, local organizations will actively participate in shaping this project. What will the fund support? Will it support community engagement listening forums, collect residents' input, neighborhood priorities, needs, and opportunities, and anything that may come with that? It will be put towards possible seed capital for neighborhood projects, enabling small-scale initiatives identified by residents, creating momentum for future investments and grant opportunities. And like I said, any other needs that may arise within this project. So why is this important to fund? Well, residents are put at the center, and they're heroes of their own neighborhood. This protects and puts residents in the driver's seat. They aren't just consulted. They co-create the future and their community. A playbook for the whole city. This is just a pilot. Smithtown is just a start, but this will be taken to other neighborhoods if successful. Direct capital investment to neighborhoods, actually preserving that history and culture. Trust in action, building trust, equity, history, and heart, and I will stop there because I'm out of time. Thank you. All right, thank you, Council Member Morton. Any questions? First, we have Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Morton, for bringing this forward. I think it's a really great idea. I just have some questions about the funding part of it. So I saw that the funding will go to the planning division, and I guess I'm just curious exactly what, I know you listed what the funding is for, but I didn't know if planning felt that funding was necessary, or if they would have full discretion over how the funds were spent. It just seems like grant matching and stuff like that doesn't necessarily feel like something planning does. I think it's more so just my thoughts of, and when we do pilot projects, we shouldn't leave folks at limbo with no type of financial resources. So when we're thinking about, for instance, community engagement listening forums, we know that we love to bring food. We love to bring different things to meetings. Well, how do you have money for that? We know that there may be a need, possibly, when we dive deeper into it, to contract out and use different services. Whether it be, and I don't want to throw them on the bus, but whether it be Civic Left or anyone, that we might want to do that community engagement piece. That's the community engagement piece. Aside from seed capital, when we're getting into this project, one of the big thing is, well, how do we preserve the history and the culture of the selected area, whether it be a statue, a mural, or anything? So having some dollars to see, maybe that $20,000 could fund it, or maybe it's just an initial investment to go look at other things. So it's just pretty much giving, I will say, making this initiative impactful and not just advocacy, making it impactful is what I'll say. I guess I just have concerns that the money would be housed in planning. I don't know if it would be better somewhere else. I don't know if Commissioner Horne wants to, I just don't know if any of this, if the outreach part of it could be done without additional funding, or if the money that we're going to set aside should potentially live somewhere else. Well, let me say, this is a planning outreach program as it was originally developed. And I wasn't aware of a funding request until I saw the list that came out in your packet. And then Council Member Morton's office was kind enough to send me, at the end of last week, a heads up about it. That being said, the project was put together with no expectation of funds, completely handled in-house by outreach, which would eventually result in a report being written about the neighborhood, its culture, its history, its residents, its desires, etc., etc. All that being said, I do take it as a sign of enthusiasm and encouragement for the program. And I think that your question, I have the same question. If the funds are in planning, are we deciding how those funds will be spent on whichever neighborhood we're working on? Or if this is a council decision, is that funding more appropriately held by council instead of planning? Truthfully, I don't care where the money sits, but what counts in- I will ask the commissioner, Hensley. Do you feel like there is a, I mean, I just don't know that this is the appropriate place to put this money. And I think it's, like I said, I think it's a great project, and I just don't know why it would be in planning. Like the extra, sorry. I don't have an official financial opinion on that. Well, I just, or if anybody else was involved in the project who, I don't know. I just feel like to say that it's going to planning isn't the appropriate place to put it. Yeah. I don't want to jump in front of anybody else with questions, but I think my thought about the answer of planning is the appropriate place. I think so for now, but just because we don't know what, and I'm working with Council Member Morton and Planning Department on this project. We don't know what all the potential ask for funding may be. It may be used for an engagement strategy, which may be canvassing. Which our planning department doesn't have the capacity to canvass, so we might have to contract that out. It may be for a historical survey of the neighborhood, which we may also have to contract out. So I think planning, in my opinion, I think planning is the logical place to house this money. But the way it's spent is actually a collaboration with the council office and the engagement team and the planning department to determine the next steps and use of the funding. Okay, thank you. We could certainly give it some thought. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Since this is a new initiative to me, I have several questions. So you listed in your memorandum and talked about the sustainability of this initiative and that a foundation would be established, and who would be establishing, what entity will be established in the foundation? The foundation of the program, the project? You said, see capital for neighborhood identified projects. Establish a foundation for future grant opportunities and capital leverage, so speaking to sustainability of this project. So what entity is establishing the foundation? I think since it's a new project, that the foundation is being established within this department. And what it would do is if it's successful, if we believe, if the council believes it's successful after the pilot, that that would allow for other neighborhoods. That foundation is set so another neighborhood can then take part in that Neighborhood Voices project. When it comes to, I guess, when it's tied to the grant, I think that was, I mean, maybe for lack of language, lack of terminology, is just to have access to those dollars. If needed, if we found a project that costs more than that little ask, that we can have access to try to go get more dollars, I would say. So who, what entity? I'm just trying to make sure it's not the government establishing the foundation. Who's going to establish this foundation to help for the financial sustainability of this initiative? I guess I'm not quite understanding. I don't, I'm not quite understanding the question. I'm just assuming that you mean that you're hoping this initiative, this whatever group is going to establish a foundation to provide financial stability for this initiative in the future. That's how I read it. So maybe, yeah, my bad. No, that's not what I meant. I guess what was the meaning of it was to establish a foundation to move this project on to the next neighborhood. Not for nothing tied to funding, nothing, yes, my apologies. And then what role or roles is the Division of Planning and Preservation playing in this initiative? They're directly with us leading it. So the Community Engagement Office, alongside with Council Member Brown, we're putting our ideas together and they're helping. We're taking our ideas with their ideas together and they're putting it into action. So they are leading the charge, the Community Engagement Office in planning. And then you said this was a council initiative, so what roles are council expected to play in this initiative? So council led, just meaning my council office and Council Member James Brown's office, so council led, yeah. So do you envision this being a city-wide initiative where the rest of us would have to get involved? I see it. I think we're going to, at the end of the pilot, we'll be able to decide how the best, would this fit, would it be better to go through council offices and engage with the planning staff to do it? Would it be better to be just through the city planning office? We've kind of got to figure that out. But right now it's council led. And I think it's working good through a council office because we know that the district council members know those areas or have relationships in those areas, can build trust in those areas. So it kind of is a bridge, understanding that there is a lack of trust in certain neighborhoods with the planning department, so it's kind of a bridge to that way. So we'll, but at the end, we'll decide. We'll provide recommendations of, well, how should this, what should this look like moving forward? So since this money will fund the pilot projects, my next question was about how are you selecting the neighborhoods to go into to work with? So do you have that process laid out, or is that part of it? So we haven't laid the process out. We are, at the end, we will decide. Yes, we obviously, a lot of neighborhoods should be able to voice their concerns. But we did an emphasis, we first looked at neighborhoods in transition as a platform. Knowing that there are some neighborhoods that may feel pressured on the growth that are not in the neighborhoods that transition. So at the end, we'll look at possibly, well, what is the criteria for this project? For this specific pilot program, we chose Smithtown one because I'm leading this in my district to, well, mainly because it's in my district and I'm leading it, and then we didn't want to infringe in another district. So we chose Smithtown. So I hope it's open to the whole city. Correct, will be. That's the plan. Eventually, in the future. So after this pilot, like I said, the plan is to look at this pilot and make it open to the whole city. But fitting criteria, I would say. How long do you intend for this money, the 20,000, to last for your initiative? It's not that much money, and this project, as you've laid out, has some really amazing and awesome, huge goals. So what is your funding plans for the future of this, because I know 20,000 is not going to go very far. So this, yeah, this is just, I guess you would say, just the start. And I requested more, but through compromise, I brought that down a little bit. And I can request a lot more, a lot of things, thinking innovatively. But what I think is it's a great seed, and we know that we have the budget coming up next June. So if this project needs more money, or if there's a capital project that is highlighted by this project, we can seek a request for that. We can use the seed, probably, to try to go get different grants. If there was more money needed for the project, I know that we do not have a fully allocated fund balance. So there's other methods to come get other dollars, I would say. Okay. I just want to thank you for bringing this forward, and encourage you to, we need to meet, because theme A in the comprehensive plan is something that I took on, and it overlaps with what you're doing a whole lot. So we should talk more about my work with theme A of our comprehensive plan and this project, because I can see a lot of overlap and ways we can work together. Sounds good, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next we have Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Martin. This project is really innovative, and I love the idea of capturing people's voices and connecting it to planning, so I think it has a lot of potential. I guess my questions, so you took it from 40 down to 20, correct? So your current ask is 20. And kind of along the lines of what Council Member Lynch said, when we talk about the neighborhoods, I think that it's great to gather information. I guess what concerns me is maybe a little bit lack of detail of how this is all going to happen. And after Smithtown where I have historic neighborhoods in my district and minority neighborhoods that I know would also love to be heard. So is your goal, you said that right now you were doing your district because that's what you had capacity to do. Is your goal for this to be beyond just council members gathering information and passing on to planning? So no, so I guess I'll reiterate. So this is just a pilot phase. It's piloted at Smithtown because Smithtown falls in the first district. And we looked at, we thought about other neighborhoods, but we came to the decision, well let's do Smithtown because it's in the first district. We don't want to infringe on any other districts. But with that being said, the pilot is to set it. If this is successful, the council believes it's successful and wants to buy into it, then any neighborhood that meets that criteria, whether it be in the 11th district, 1 through 12, could take part in the project. Based on the recommendations that come outside of it. If it's a council, continues to be a council office led initiative, then obviously that council member would have to take that on with the planning office. All right, so I know that sometimes we tend to take things on, but we don't have the capacity as easily to run programs. So ideally, how would this information be collected and then passed on to planning for their use? So tech planning is actually carrying the load. So planning is the one right now that's currently doing some interviews, going out there doing some one of the ones that's kind of organizing it. So you would do it in partnership with planning. And would most of the information collected be one on ones or a group, or how would it look to collect that? We're emphasizing, as I always do, comprehensive outreach, fully impactful community engagement, fully impactful public input. So to me, what that looks like is meeting the folks where they are, whether it be one on one camps and meeting those current residents, meeting the past residents possibly, one on ones. Community meetings, so Smithtown Neighborhood Association has a meeting. So going to those neighborhood associations, talking to them, going to different organizations they have meetings around, speaking with them. Town halls, inviting the full community out on a larger scale, folks that have been past and present, folks that have ties to Smithtown. Churches, there's plenty of churches in the surrounding area. So going to St. Peter Claver, going to Pilgrim, there's plenty of non-profits and business in the area. So doing that comprehensive outreach, and even to the Northside, even other neighborhoods that are close by to it, like the Northside Neighborhood Association, getting that comprehensive outreach as well. To get their opinions- To get their input. And their input on their neighborhood about planning issues. Correct. Okay, I have one more question for planning. I don't know, I just see Mr. Horner. Is Director Duncan here? No, okay. So planning is going to kind of take charge of this program and collect the data and then have it kind of educate our planning process and the comp plan? Yes, the origination of this program, I think, came from outreach, planning outreach. And the idea is, as Council Member Morton has explained, is to create the history of a neighborhood. Part of which, the purpose is, once you have a report prepared, for any development that may be coming near the neighborhood or in the neighborhood, it would be made available to developers as well, so that they would have the information that has been gathered and prepared for that. That's the actual, I believe, origin of this program, which, as Council Member Morton has explained, this is a pilot in working out how all of this is going to work. And certainly citywide, and there's only a certain amount of this that can be done in a year based on the staff and whatnot. Which one would be next? What criteria do you use for those determinations? All of that is yet to be fully fleshed out in terms of what the program may look like. That was really helpful how you described that and how I like the idea of the information being available to developers or people that were interested in moving into the area and doing a project. So thank you very much. Vice Mayor Wolk. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to comment that I applaud the motivation and the idea behind this effort. It does have a lot of alignment and sort of echoes of the work that we've done with public input subcommittee, with street safety task force and the engagement in education. The idea of creating a more educated public and future community champions as well. I would just echo what Council Member Lynch said, theme A, equity policies one and two, planning education academy. There are some ideas that have already sort of been underway that we've been working on. So I would encourage you to be able to reach out and kind of collaborate with those kind of efforts. I think it's always more helpful when more folks work on a project together so that we don't have sort of disparate efforts kind of splitting up resources as well. Thank you. All right, thank you, Council Members. Council Member Morden, you have another ask? Indeed, two more. All right, I think that was the hardest one though, so. So the next one, this request seeks $50,000 allocation to support the launch and reach the full implementation of the newly established Boys and Girls Club Lexington Chapter serving the Russell Cave Road Corridor. A high need area currently without structured youth programming, this program will provide after school and mentorship services up to 200 students from Windburn Middle School and Bryan Station Middle School focused on academic enrichment, character development, and family support. Local community partners have already stepped up to fill gaps, demonstrating strong community commitment. FCPS is providing the space for the program at Windburn Middle School as the home. Food chain will donate daily meals. CHI St. Joe contributes staffing support, and other organizations are contributing resources and expertise. This one-time city allocation will fund essential startup operations including, but not limited to, staffing, transportation, curriculum materials, and meals, and leveraging matching support from the National Boys and Girls Club Network and local partners. The city's investment would follow the precedent set by Frankfort, which has a city agency, will city Boys and Girls Club to Lexington. And they provided $55,000 to support the launch of the Frankfort Sister Chapter and also provided a building to host them in, enabling a proven model to thrive locally. Investing in this initiative would directly advance city-wide priorities in public safety, economic development, and youth empowerment, ensuring equitable access to opportunity for one of Lexington's most underserved communities, while complementing existing community support. Addressing the need for the youth programming, the Russell Cave Road Corridor area lacks accessible, structured, and affordable after school programs, leaving hundreds of students without positive outlets for growth. The Boys and Girls Club offer a proven national model designed to improve academic performance, emotional development, and leadership skills, filling a major service gap in the northeast of Lexington. Launching this program ensures youth in this community have equal access to enrichment, mentorship opportunities aligning with Lexington's goal of education and equity, and also neighborhood safety. Gun violence prevention and intervention, prevention starts with connection. Young people who have mentor structure and positive role models are far less likely to engage or become a victim of gun violence. National Boys and Girls Club outcome shows participants are 40% less likely to engage in risky behaviors, and 50% less likely to be involved in juvenile crime compared to their peers. Let's go on. So economic development. Well, actually, I want to go back one. Recent events in Windburn underscore the urgent need for the investment. A community member, a city employee, was recently shot in the neighborhood. In fact, some recent arrests indicate that youth and young adults known to the area were involved. While he survived, the incident reflects a larger and ongoing problem in Windburn and surrounding communities has consistently been identified as an area with elevated gun violence and criminal activity. Which means there's a need to address that head on. Economic development and support. This initiative directly supports household economic stability by providing dependable after school care. Parents can work full shifts, maintain consistent employment, and pursue job training without worrying about supervision or safety of their youth. Strategic investment in our youth and community. The requested 50,000 is a high return one time investment that provides life changing opportunities for 200 youth. This is not a cost, it's a strategic high impact investment in the safety and success of the future of our community. And I will leave it at that. All right, are there any questions? Council Member Morton, Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Morton, another great idea. I just have a question about where the funding is going again. Is it, is the allocation, you have a board chair listed, but I don't know if that is the board chair of the upcoming chapter, or- So it's the board chair of the local chapter. And he's just, I put him as the point of contact. But what it will be is it will go to the capital area chapter bank account, and it will be earmarked for the Lexington chapter. So it'll go to like the Kentucky- So it's the capital area oversees the sister boards, the Frankfurt and the Lexington. Okay. So it goes to the capital, but earmarked for only Lexington. Thank you. All right, Council Member, is there any other questions? Council Member Morton, you can present your next one. Yes, indeed. This one, I think, is very, very simple. And I won't even go into reading all this. In the budget this last year, we funded community centers with youth programming dollars. All of our community centers and parks and recreation receive those dollars. We have Black and Williams Community Center, which is a gym in our Georgetown Street Corridor area. They fall in the Housing Advocacy and Community Development Office, so they did not get those programming dollars. So this request is just to give them that fair, those programming dollars so that they can provide impactful and expanded youth programming for that Georgetown Street Corridor. Knowing that, similar to the same argument I just made about the wind burn, that Georgetown Street Corridor needs as much investment as possible. Tied to programming, tied to addressing a lot of our challenges head on. I'll leave it at that. All right. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any questions? Seeing none, we'll move to the next presenter on the list, and that's Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I have two requests for our fund balance discussion. The first is for a Caring Places pilot program. So you all heard last week at the Social Services and Public Safety Committee an annual update on what they've done with the initial fund balance request that we blessed them with. And this is for the kick start, their pilot program. They want to work with some specific neighborhoods regarding the village model and implementing that before they go city wide. And so the funding request will help them with their pilot project and will fund all of the necessary needs for their pilot project except for the personnel piece of the project. So that request is for a Caring Place. I'm happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions for Council Member Lynch? I don't see any. Council Member Lynch, I'll just make, and I made this comment to you, I'll just say it for the record. I just wonder if there's any flexibility with the leadership group of the Caring Place to consider other neighborhoods. The two neighborhoods that I think were in your proposal, I think they touch each other. I think it may be some benefit to have a little more separation in neighborhoods, just to impact more people, or just to see what other challenges may arise. Is there an opportunity to have a conversation about that with the leadership group? I definitely think so. They're definitely open to work with any neighborhoods that are wanting to bring the village model to their neighborhoods. So I think they're definitely open to suggestions for other neighborhoods that would be ready to come on board to work with them. Okay, thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you Chair, thank you Council Member Lynch. Really supportive of the project in general. I just am curious if they have any other fundraising efforts in place currently. I know we gave them the fund balance money allocation last year, and then they've come back to us again. I just want to make sure that they are set up for sustainability and that they're not just relying on us. I just was curious what their private fundraising goals are currently. They have a caring place, a non-profit has fundraising, folks that do fundraising already. And then the steering committee has already been working on different funding models for sustainability purposes. So it's already part of the discussion. They've already been working on that. Great, thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right, thank you. Council Member Lynch, you can do your next item. Thank you. My next item is to purchase some tough books for our code enforcement staff when they're out in the field. So they were given some Lenovo laptops, which have not worked out very, very well. They've experienced fatigue and breakage at the hinge points of those laptops. 20 were purchased and nine already have been sent in for repair because these are for officers that are out in the field doing inspections and other things throughout the day. And so these laptops are just not working out well for them. And what they would prefer to have are the tough books that our fire department and police department have that they use in their vehicles, which will help them do their jobs when they're out in the field more efficiently. They have a better, longer life out in the field than the laptops that they currently have. Because they've had to repair the laptop so often, it creates a lag time, because then they've got to upload all the new information into the new device. And so, just for efficiencies purposes and to make things a little easier on our staff when they're out in the field working, the money is for to purchase some tough books, similar to what our fire department uses and our police department uses when they're out in the field. It just makes, it's easier for the staff, and their director still is also looking at some ways to kind of have a mounting device in the vehicles, so that it just makes it a whole lot easier once they have the tough books, to be able to use the technology in their car when they're out doing their job. So that's the background for this ask. All right, thank you Council Member Lynch. Are there any questions about that item on our list? Seeing none, we'll move to the next presenter, and that's Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, I did pass out a one pager about our request. So this is on behalf of the Corridors Commission. Back in 2010, prior to the World Equestrian Games, we installed a whole slew of wayfinding signs around town. But there was no maintenance budget assigned to those signs. Since they have fallen into really bad disrepair. There are 77 signs up currently, some of which aren't even on a listed corridor. And we have decided, or it's been decided, I guess, that the Corridors Commission will be the responsible party for the maintenance of these signs. Because our budget is so small, we are working to try to revamp the wayfinding sign program, because all of the signs that are currently up do not meet federal and state roadway regulations. So if we were to take one down and fix it, it would have to change, and then none of them would match. And that doesn't work well for a branding program through the city. So our current recommendation is that all of the signs, as a phase one of replacement of the wayfinding signs, phase one would be to just remove all of the signs that we currently have. And we can do that in house for a very small amount of money, which is wonderful because it was about triple if we went out into the community to have this done. We're requesting $55,000 just to remove the signs. They will be scrapped at that point. And then a small work group of city employees, including myself and the Visit Lex staff, are creating a new wayfinding program with criteria that we hope to bring to you all during budget season as one of the Corridors Commission budget asks in the spring. So, that's it. There's some pictures on the back so you can see how terrible they look. They're in really bad shape. My favorite's when you come out of the airport and you're like, welcome to Lexington, and the sign is peeling. So, anyway, I'll entertain any questions. All right, thank you, Councilmember. Are there any questions for Councilmember Baxter? Not seeing any. Councilmember Sheehan, I'm going to skip over me and pass it to you to present. And I'll come back. I'll do my last. What if I wanted to go last? That's okay. I'm kidding. Okay, so colleagues, as you are all aware, we have been having community discussions around access to an expansion of solar energy within our county. We have committed to prioritizing rooftop solar to meet our net zero emissions goals. However, rooftop solar is very costly to the homeowner or the business that is installing it. Especially when federal funding for solar is decreasing. And there is currently a proposal by KU under review by our public services commission at the state level to reduce the credits solar owners get when they send excess solar energy back to the grid. In the past, we have operated a program called Solarize Lexington to help owners at all income levels with installation through, basically like bulk rates for solar installation. And as a part of that program, we have offered two rounds of grants at a million dollars each to low and moderate income homeowners for installation that was run through Ms. Griggs' office in environmental services. Due to the goals that we have set for our community, I'm asking for us to do another round of grants for low to moderate income homeowners. Ms. Griggs already has a wait list of 16 homes. And this funding would cover the $460,000 proposed would cover 20 homes. So just a little bit more than the current wait list we have. Solar energy is not only cleaner for our environment, it helps lower utility bills for the homeowner. So this is particularly important for the low to moderate income households. While we have done a million dollars of grants in the past for the other two rounds, and we have exhausted those funds and started a wait list each time. I've asked for a lower amount to cover the current wait list, but also be moderate in my request considering the size of our fund balance currently, potential future needs, and the other asks that we are reviewing today. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Sheehan. Councilmembers, are there any questions? Not seeing any, so I think you were crystal clear on that. And Councilmembers, thinking about my ask, which is next, I'm going to defer my ask. I'm not going to make the ask right now. I think there's a legitimate reason to ask for it, but I think there's still work to be done by the Digital Accessibility Work Group. I think we're making good progress. We have a draft plan to present to our work group. And I think there may be time in the future, an opportunity in the future to make the request, so I'm just not going to make it at this time. So with that, that brings us to the end of our list. Councilmembers, if there's any motions, I'll entertain them. Councilmember Baxter. Councilmember Baxter. All right. Is there any motions to be made? Councilmember Morton. I'll make a motion to approve all of the fund balance proposals presented today in one swoop. So moved. All right. There was a motion made to approve all the items presented and seconded. Are there questions to the motion? Councilmember Savicny. My only question is I just want to make sure it doesn't currently include yours that you put on the, you know, you basically bypassed and it doesn't currently include the one for the transit one because we're not deciding on that until after the discussion. So just clarity on the motion and just to be clear, the motion was to accept all the ones that were presented today, excluding the one that we moved to the work session presentation, and then mine that I did not present on. Okay. All right. Are there any other questions? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? That motion passes. So just for clarity's sake, Commissioner, so we have assigned the funding for all the items that were presented. The item that is going to be presented at work session is that money is considered allocated to that. That dollar amount is considered allocated. Do we need to clarify if that's a transportation initiative or do we need clarity for that? We are showing at this very moment that we are assigning $2,265,000 to projects as stated, which leaves $4,031,172 currently unassigned pending a presentation at work session today, which may come with an assignment this afternoon of a further dollar amount. And so when you make a motion later today, that will further assign from unassigned. All right. So, council members, is there any questions about that and how we're going to proceed going forward? In all the money that is, I mean, all the funding that hasn't been assigned, we're okay with just having it unassigned for audit purposes. That is the wish of the council. Is that correct? Well, I think it is. I guess the question is, is that an acceptable unassignment of the funding? Yes. If that's your austere action to me, it will remain unassigned until you designate otherwise. Yeah. I think Council Member Sheehan has a question. Just to clarify, so when we are being audited, how are unassigned funds taken into account? Because I feel like we have had funding, we had an account in the past that was, it wasn't technically unassigned, but it was flexible. Yeah. There's actually a category in the audit that says unassigned. Okay. So it just stays right there. And whether you all know it or not, all day long, every day, we add and subtract from that unassigned fund balance when we do ad valorem, when we make changes to the budget. And so when we bring back to you things that draw from fund balance, that's reducing the unassigned fund balance. This actually is putting into the unassigned fund balance for the current year. And so it's adding and subtracting all day long. But it doesn't negatively affect us in an audit. It does not. Actually, it's a positive. Okay. Our rating agencies will actually look at that as a positive. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member, and thank you, Commissioner, for the clarity. Yes, sir. Are there any other questions in regards to what actions that we've just taken? If there's not, the next item on our agenda is the review of committee referrals. Is there any actions to be made on that? If not, then I'd just like to say thank you to the administration for your work with us on this fund balance and this committee of the whole. Thank you to all the council members for their collaboration and understanding and clarity on making informed decisions. And with that, I'd entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. All right. The motion was made to adjourn and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, we're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.