# Homelessness Prevention & Intervention / Continuum of Care - Full Board Meeting - January 26, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Board · January 26, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6672 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6672?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-01-26 - **Body**: Board - **Last revised**: February 15, 2026 - **Length**: 9,949 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. 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 This Board Meeting took place on January 26, 2026. The meeting covered 5 agenda items, all of which were approved, reflecting a productive session with no items left unresolved. A total of 6 motions and votes were taken during the course of the meeting. No public comments were heard during this session. The board approved a range of governance and operational items, including a Governance Charter, Board of Elections matters, the LexCount Methodology, a 2026 Evaluation Schedule, and a COC Process Document. ## Attendance The following board members were present at the January 26, 2026 meeting: - Amy Beasley - Amanda Bryant - Ron Delgado - Diane Fleet - T.C. Johnson - Chris Primo - David Shad - Liz Sheehan - Bella Stowe **Absent:** Joy Andrade, Billy Love No members were recorded as late. ## Votes and Decisions The Board took action on six items during the January 26, 2026 meeting, all of which passed by voice vote. No roll call votes were held, and no individual vote counts were recorded. - **Minutes Approval** [timestamp: 0:01]: The minutes from the previous board meeting were approved by voice vote. [timestamp: 01:38] - **Governance Charter** [timestamp: 03:46]: The board approved the governance charter by voice vote. - **Board of Elections Slate** [timestamp: 05:25]: The board approved the Board of Elections slate by voice vote. - **2026 LexCount Methodology** [timestamp: 10:08]: The board approved the 2026 LexCount methodology by voice vote. - **2026 Evaluation Schedule** [timestamp: 15:44]: The board approved the 2026 evaluation schedule by voice vote. - **COC Process Document** [timestamp: 49:32]: The board approved the COC process document by voice vote, with the condition that the office retains authority to make revisions as needed based on updated HUD guidance. All six motions passed. Because all votes were conducted by voice, no individual ayes, nays, or abstentions were recorded in the meeting data. ## Appointments The Board made several leadership appointments during the January 26, 2026 meeting, establishing the committee and officer structure for the coming period. - **Liz Sheehan** was appointed **Board Chair**. - **Lella Still** was appointed **Vice Chair**. - **Billy Love** was appointed **Chair of the Data and Systems Integration Committee**. - **Amy Beasley** was appointed **Chair of the Program Performance and Evaluation Committee**. - **David Shad** was appointed **Chair of the Advocacy Issues and Programs Committee**. ## Governance Charter Approval [timestamp: 02:45] The board discussed and voted on the governance charter during this agenda item. According to the meeting record, the board reviewed the charter and proceeded to a vote, which resulted in approval. No key speakers are identified in the available meeting data for this item, and no specific details regarding the content of the charter, arguments presented, or concerns raised during the discussion are recorded in the source materials. **Outcome:** The governance charter was approved by the board. ## Board of Elections [timestamp: 03:46] The board took up the matter of the Board of Elections, addressing a need for new leadership within that body stemming from resignations and term limits. A slate of candidates for chair and vice chair positions was presented to the board for consideration. The board approved the slate as presented. *Note: The available record for this agenda item does not include details on the specific individuals nominated, the names of members who resigned or reached term limits, or any debate or concerns raised during the discussion.* ## LexCount Methodology Approval [timestamp: 06:58] The board took up the LexCount Methodology Approval as a resolution item during the January 26, 2026 meeting. The discussion centered on approving the methodology to be used for the 2026 LexCount, including changes to data collection standards. No specific speakers are identified in the available record for this agenda item, and details regarding the particular changes to data collection standards, any concerns raised during deliberation, or the substance of debate are not captured in the source materials. The board approved the resolution. ## 2026 Evaluation Schedule Approval [timestamp: 15:44] The board took up the matter of approving the evaluation schedule for 2026. The resolution was presented for board consideration and subsequently approved. [timestamp: 15:44] No key speakers were identified in the available record for this agenda item, and no specific concerns, debate, or additional details regarding the schedule's contents were documented in the provided materials. **Outcome:** The 2026 evaluation schedule was approved by the board. ## COC Process Document Approval [timestamp: 49:32] The board discussed and voted on the approval of the COC process document. The document was approved with the provision that the office retains the ability to make revisions as needed based on updated guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). No specific speakers were identified in connection with this agenda item. The record does not detail particular points of debate or individual concerns raised during the discussion. **Outcome:** Approved, with the condition that revisions may be made in response to updated HUD guidance. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the minutes from the last board meeting - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the governance charter - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the Board of Elections slate - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the 2026 LexCount methodology - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the 2026 evaluation schedule - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the COC process document with authority to amend as needed --- ## Full transcript We're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order, and we're going to start with roll call. Good afternoon. Joy Andrade is excused. Amy Beasley? Here. Amanda Bryant? Here. Ron Delgado? Here. Diane Fleet? Here. T.C. Johnson? Here. Billy Love is excused. Chris Primo? Here. David Shad? Here. Liz Sheehan? Here. Bella Stowe? Here. All right. So you all should have received a packet, and you should have the minutes from the last board meeting. And so if you can take a few seconds to review that. And if anybody has any corrections or additions, let us know. All right. We're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Good afternoon. Joy Andrade is excused. Amy Beasley? Here. Ron Delgado? Here. Diane Fleet? Here. Diane Fleet? Here. T.C. Johnson? Here. Billy Love is excused. Chris Primo? David Shad? Here. All right. Everyone seems content and well. Anything you want to add? Any corrections? No? Do I have anybody who would like to make an approval of the minutes? Thank you. Any opposed? All those in favor of approval, say aye. Do we get a second? Oh, a second. Thank you. I was so close. Second. Okay. I'll second. All right. Great. No discussion? Now we're taking a vote. All those in favor, aye? Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. The minutes are... Next, we are going to public and partner comments for issues on the agenda. Does anybody have anything they want to add? Good. All right. I'll just do a little intro on this. Just some background on this next item. You may recall that within the past couple of years, we had revised our governance charter. And so now, each year in January, in order to keep that updated, we bring that to the full membership each year to allow them to go ahead and vote on LFUCG remaining the COC lead agency. We also, within that document, have specified that our board elections will take place on the first meeting of the calendar year. So we have some volunteers who have agreed to take on the officer positions that we will also have you guys be voting on today. This will be a full COC membership vote. So we may need a little bit of assistance, potentially, in having you raise your hand so we can clearly see where we may not have microphones at all tables. I might need your help a little bit with this. So we're going to talk about the governance charter first. And that should be in your packet. Would there be a motion for approval? So moved. All right. Second? Second. Ooh, so many. Let's be happy. All right. Everyone. Everyone seconded it. Who is the second? Everyone. Okay. Okay. And definitely open to any discussion. No? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Now, the Board of Elections. Yes. We have a slate before you. We can put this on here as a full slate that we can vote on that way. Or if the membership has a desire to go through that individually, we can do that as well for convenience and space on the packet. I just grouped it together. Presently, we do have a need to make a change in terms of our chair and vice chair. As you know, Bruce Davis resigned from the board amidst some health issues. We've gotten some great updates. He's doing well, just taking a little bit of time. He didn't want to fill a seat if somebody else can take it. And then Diane has graciously served now for two years in a chair position. And per our governance charter, you can only do chair or vice chair two consecutive years in a row before you have to take a year off. So we did have a need for both a new chair and vice chair this year. For our committees, there is no such restriction. It is an annual term, but there's no limit in terms of consecutive terms. So at present, Council Member Liz Sheehan has agreed to chair the board. Lella Still has agreed to come on as vice chair. Billy Love, who is unfortunately ill today, has agreed to take over the data and systems integration committee chair position. Amy Beasley, Council Member Beasley, has agreed to chair the program performance and evaluation committee. And David Chet has agreed to continue chairing the advocacy issues and programs committee. So if we want to take that, and is there a motion from the membership? Is there a second? I'll choose one of the names. All right. Any discussion, questions? All right. Hearing none, can we get a full membership vote? All those in favor, please say aye and raise your hand. Aye. All those opposed? All right. That motion passes. Moving right along. So next we're going to go to data and systems integration committee report with Marissa. Hello. I'm back here. Hi. So this is Joy's report out. I am just the microphone. So we were able to meet for the data and systems integration committee on December 3rd at the Dawn Ball Campus Center. The meeting was called to order at 1.30, and previous meeting minutes were approved with no changes. The new business that was on the agenda was regarding the LexCount, which shameless plug, if you do scan the QR code that's on the screens, you can sign up for the LexCount if you have not already. We went on to approve the 2026 LexCount methodology that will need a vote for this meeting. The count will take place on the evening of January 28th. So we are exactly two weeks away from the LexCount. This is going to be our point in time count as well as our housing inventory account because they do occur on the same day. One key change this year, because our methodology has remained the same for the past couple years, is going to be that we are collecting gender as well as sex. HUD is providing us slow guidance in determining exactly what information needs to be as a part of our point in time count. However, the last information we received was that they would not be collecting either. However, in an abundance of caution and because we know that things can change really quickly, we wanted to collect both. One, because sex is going to be the data standard at the federal level at current. However, gender is consistent with our previous data collection efforts. So that way we have that continuity for local data as well as that federal data element as well, just in the instance if they come back and say that they do want that information. Again, the committee approved that plan to bring the methodology here to the board with the asterisk that we move quickly. If there is any further guidance from HUD, that way we can ensure that our methodology is going to be compliant with federal regulations. So that we'll need a vote. Next, we talked about the federal uncertainty regarding our local system and that providers were feeling especially cautious about accepting new referrals, specifically from our coordinated entry. And that is something that I know that we'll talk about further in this board meeting. But we are seeing that impact to housing triage and coordinated entry and that membership. And the board should be aware that that may result in changes in those coordinated entry reports and a change in the number of referrals from previous years. Other information that we discussed for continuing business was HUD has now just now released those HMIS data standards. They are available on HUD exchange and HDX. And there are continuing HMIS training opportunities with our data analyst. And then something that we'll talk a little bit further as well is that the mayor's task force for homelessness is now meeting monthly. And we'll be meeting after this board meeting. So we encourage everybody to stay. But yeah, I think that that is pretty much the end of this report out. The next meeting is February 4th at 130. Change of location. So make sure it's correct in your calendars. It's going to be at the Marksbury Family Branch, the library. And again, we will need a vote on that methodology. So the motion for the methodology for LexCount has been submitted from the committee. So do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Any questions? All right. All those in favor of approving say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. The motion carries. Next, we have Program Performance and Evaluation Committee report with Liz Sheehan. Thank you. We met for this committee on December 10th. And the first thing we did was our welcome and introductions, followed by the approval of our meeting minutes from our October 15th, 2025 meeting. We had four different program reviews that day. We started with Arbor Youth Services Rapid Rehousing Program that serves 18- to 24-year-olds. This is an emergency solutions grant. A couple points of discussion that we had during this presentation is, one, that employment for the participants in the program has been a challenge, particularly getting people to stay in a job. Some of them are leaving the jobs really quickly, like within 72 hours. And some of that, the suggestion was that it was based on some mental health and anxiety, but then also unrealistic expectations of what the job would entail. But there was mention of goodwill being a good resource for career coaches. We also talked at that point about some of the different challenges that we're seeing across service providers. And one of these things is job placement and that these kinds of systematic or issues that go across organizations are things that we should be raising up in the task force as we're having discussions about potential community solutions. We also talked about exits to permanent housing for this group and what factors were involved there. And we talked about standardizing the data process before our 2026 meetings resume and that Adam will be in touch with organizations about what that's going to look like. In the next presentation, this was for Greenhouse 17, the domestic violence bonus initiative, through the continuum of care funding. This program served 10 families to get them into housing. Most families served were single-family households, so the number of overall persons served was low because it wasn't large families. Exits that weren't to permanent housing, someone went to emergency shelter, someone did rent on their own, moved in with family friends. So there were a variety of situations. And then we also talked about, for this particular program, the funds that have been used to support a farm stipend so that the residents in the program could earn money and kind of establish stability for themselves. Then we had two program presentations from Mountain Comprehensive Care Center. The first was the Bluegrass Region Permanent Supportive Housing Program through the continuum of care funding. This is a program where we discussed that people that are served by this program have a hard time finding work or maintaining work. A majority of the people are in the older-aged population. And some of the exits were to sober living or long-term treatment programs. This is one of the particular programs that, because it's a permanent supportive housing program, could be affected by the changes that were proposed in the notice of funding opportunity where we would have to focus more on transitional housing rather than permanent supportive housing. But as we know, there's been some changes even in that due to a recent court case since we had this meeting. So we'll have to kind of keep an eye on those, and Jeff will keep us informed. The other program that we had a presentation on was the Mountain Comprehensive Care Rapid Rehousing Program. This is also a continuum of care funding program. This serves people with high service needs. They have, again, issues getting people to participate in jobs. They're really trying to encourage them to work with their case managers and job placements early in the program and not waiting until the last minute. There was a comment that we might need to work together as a continuum, as we're especially looking at these changes in funding, to start blending services to kind of work as a group instead of individual service organizations. The next item on our agenda was our approval of our 2026 evaluation schedule, which is in your packet, and we will need a vote for that. So I'm making the motion from the committee for approval, so we need a second. Do you want to do the vote? I can. I'm chair now. All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, that passes. And then we had some just general public comments from those in attendance. Our next meeting is February 18th at 130, and that is going to be at the Bluegrass Care Navigators Building, so 1733 Harrodsburg Road. That is the end of my report. Thank you, Madam Chair. That was lovely. All right, next we have advocacy issues and programs committee rapport with David Shadd. Right. We met on December 17th at the Dombaugh Campus Center at 130, approved the meeting minutes for the prior meeting, October 22nd. We had a presentation from Civic Legs about engaging individuals with lived experience and asking for the group's feedback on some of the issues that we see in the homeless world. We've talked about some of those already in other reports, but I'll just kind of hit the highlights on some of the others. So this group, Civic Legs, was looking at ways that they could gather information to have input on the downtown master plan, focusing on the needs of Lexington's unhoused population, particularly some of the groups like youth homeless. So we talked, as a group we discussed some of the population trends, increasing the number of families with children who are experiencing homelessness, people with more disabling conditions and more chronic health issues. We also talked about patient dumping in shelters that were lacking medical staff and resources, so people coming from medical facilities who were just inappropriate for shelter, the increasing number of families that had children sleeping in cars, and also things like the increase in housing costs and landlord resistance to vouchers, which were causing some displacement in long-term rentals. Also, we discussed sort of this general post-pandemic change in how homelessness is viewed and the increasing negative perception towards people who are homeless, particularly downtown. And I think all of us have seen that over the last few years, and we've discussed it in here as well. We talked about some of the funding issues, which I think we have touched on in other committees, concern about the HUD COC funding and some of the changes that were part of that. We talked with the Civic Legs group about some of the ways that the legislation and the legislative changes have impacted homelessness, particularly the Safer Kentucky Act and House Bill 5 and how that looked and how we've been able to deal with that. We also discussed the significant—this is more important now than ever, I think— the increase of the local government's investment in providing the supportive services and homeless services. I think Jeff pointed out that 69 percent of the funding comes from local funds versus 31 percent of federal funds that are designated for homeless, and notice the state's absent there. So we also discussed the absence of any significant state funding towards homelessness. We talked about, again, the potential COC cuts and the risk of ultimately losing 125 or so beds should the changes actually occur. Lots of things. So many things. We also talked about some of the positive programs that we have seen and sort of innovative ideas. We talked about Greenhouse 17 and Goodwill and some of the programming that they have had and some of the improvements related to accessibility, improving housing outcomes, and yet again, the concern about the potential federal changes that will reverse some of the progress that we have had as a community. And, you know, the group talked very much emphasized to CivicLEX the importance of housing being the focus of what we're doing, developing programs, you know, everything should be with the aim of ending homelessness and moving those people into housing. So that continues to be a priority, and it has to be a priority in how we discuss homelessness. What else did we discuss? We talked about the FLEX funding as an example of how needed some of those resources are and that $300,000 that was essentially used within three months and how that demonstrates the scale of need that we have in this community. And then we talked about, okay, also how housing is important, but just housing is insufficient and how we have to develop a system that has appropriate support services for particularly groups like SMI who are moving into housing who need more support, and in order to keep them in housing, we're going to need to offer more services built around them and designed to keep them in housing. We discussed the task force. Jeff gave an update on that. I think we've covered that in other reports. Let's see. And continuing business, we talked about the HUD data standards, and Marissa's already touched on that. We talked about the LEX count, which is a new data standard that's coming out. Marissa's already touched on that. We talked about the LEX count, which, again, we've already covered in other reports. And we talked about the new meeting calendar. So all the continuing business has been continued from other places, so I will not discuss that anymore. And the next meeting is February 25th at 1.30 at the Don Ball Campus Center. Thank you so much. Does anybody have any questions of David or any comments on anything? David, when you said the 125 beds may be lost, where are those beds located? Sorry. Housing units. With the COC program. So we'll actually have an update on the director's report. Okay. Thanks. Anyone else? All right. Good. Thank you, David. And I'll say I get excited and stop taking notes, so, you know, it's worth it. Next we have encampment SOPs in review report with Steve Gayhafer. Good afternoon. We had five camps that we've cleaned up since the last meeting. Two of those were not active. One of them was in an emphasis area. Three of them had homeless in them. There were seven people total of those three camps. Five of them engaged in services and one of them declined to be relocated. The total cost was a little over $8,900, which is kind of expensive for five camps. But one of them, the one that's in the emphasis area, was almost $4,000. It was expensive because it was just hard to get in and out of. If you're familiar with Casey's on Man O' War at Tate's Creek, the bridge that goes over that there, that whole area is a park down in there and it's a flood plain, and there's just no way to get down in there. So everything has got to be hand-drug out, and it was a fairly large two or three camps kind of in one area. So it was a lot to get taken out, which is why that one was so expensive. But the rest of them were pretty good. I think since I've come on, we're getting into camps quicker and working them quicker, so we ought to be able to get them cleaned up faster, which should help reduce the trash and the cost and all that involved in them. So I think long term it'll help a lot and still get the same amount of services covered with them, not having to cut any of that short. That's it. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions on the encampments? Just one question, and this could really be answered by anyone, I guess, who knows. When we look at the cost per encampment, as well as the total cost, you spoke about location and circumstances in that instance. What are some of the other factors that go into the cost? Because just tracking this one and then tracking a couple of the last few, there's a pretty wide range. Right. So what are some factors that are taken into consideration there? I'll go ahead and speak to this just because I presented in council at the Social Services and Public Safety Committee on this topic, and that kind of dovetails into some of the content discussed there. So one of the major factors that we've seen driving up encampment costs is things like the implementation of House Bill 5. Oftentimes now people, due to just fear of potential charges, they're going to try to stay a little bit more hidden. So sometimes the discovery or notification of a camp takes a little bit longer, which can make the camp more substantial. We've also seen several camps recently that are probably better described as structures. They would include things like pallets and things that have been constructed into full scale housing structures. Not within this report, but another one that we saw back around the summertime even had its own kind of swimming pool. We've seen some things that are so elaborate that the amount of debris, the weight of the debris, all of those factors tie in. As Steve discussed, sometimes we are dealing with camps that are in locations that it's more the ability to get equipment into the area or the specific type of equipment that's needed to perform the removal. It can just increase the level of cost. But I'll definitely let Steve add anything that he would have because he coordinates a lot of that work directly and definitely has more of an expertise on the removal aspects. Yeah, a lot of it is just accessibility to them. And the ones that are harder to access typically have been there longer as well. So they are bigger and that makes the cost substantially more expensive. I'm starting to try to hit some of the places that have been kind of traditionally known to kind of get on the forefront of catching them early versus having them reported to us by either code enforcement or whoever calls in to try to keep those costs down. But everything is getting more expensive. We had a huge encampment removed over Russell Cave that involved the federal government property, the railroad, a couple of different private property entities. We got that cost down pretty substantially because we got solid waste involved. And they hauled off, if you know what a typical construction dumpster is that you see, they probably hauled off six or eight construction dumpsters full of trash. That would have been, I don't know what that cost would have been if one of our contractors would have had to pay for it up front. They also don't get the pricing that the city gets. And then we're paying them to go sit in line at the transfer station. So all of that, you know, actually the weight of it is a very small expense compared to what they're going to charge us just to go sit in line at the transfer station. And I don't know if you've been out over Frankfort Pike sometimes, but they're lined out on the street. So they could be there for two hours trying to dump a trailer load of stuff. So solid waste is really good about getting involved with it. That helps cost a lot. But a lot of it is they're just getting more and more remote. And as they get more and more remote, they can't drive their dump trailers to them and load them up. They're having to be hand bagged up and then carried out to somewhere they can get. This is just a curious question, but do you ever have children at the encampments? Or is it usually men or men and women? Or what have you noticed as far as who makes up who's staying at the encampments? I don't know of us having any children at any camps we've worked. Typically, when we see situations with children, we're more likely to see that in the form of something like someone sleeping in a vehicle. Typically, we would see a lot of single males. We also see a lot of couples because of the lack of a shelter that can accommodate couples that don't have children and the desire not to separate. Anyone else have questions for Steve or anyone else about encampments? All right. We will now move on to the Jeff Herron portion of the board meeting, the director's report. All right. First, just some discussion on the budget, including only innovative and sustainable solutions funding for this. So we are getting closer to closing out our fiscal year 25 funds. We do still have a second year earmarked for the landlord partnership program with Lexington Housing Authority. Presently, they're working on spending down the first year funding. That was not an automatic renewal. So I do have that highlighted just as not yet being fully under contract. We have a very small remainder. We projected out the additional amount of money for community actions, family winter shelter program very well, got within $600 of the final expenses. And then we do have a couple of programs within this that are still spending. That's going to be primarily the programs that were funded under the open application for program funding under $40,000. We still have the housing flex fund on a pause at current community action council. I think it's still processing some costs with us. I think this should reflect everything Arbor has spent to date. The reason we paused was knowing that the amount of applications in process were quickly totaling an amount that we had concern about being able to honor all applications that we had in process. We wanted to take a pause to get the invoicing caught up, arrive at an amount that we have currently, and also look at some policy changes. At this time, we expect to be able to come to the advocacy issues and programs committee next month with proposed changes that would help us to keep the spirit of the program, but maybe help the dollars stretch a little bit further and last a little bit longer. We did not anticipate that the amount of $300,000, we would have any fear of exhausting within approximately three months of operation. Other than that, I think that's all the notes that I have on the 25 funds, fiscal year 26 funds. We did have several programs that were on previous multi-year awards. We are just now starting to process funds for the third year of Hope Center Street Outreach Agreement, have several of those on my desk right now. We do have an automatic renewal for another year of intensive case management with Center for Accessible Living. And then we have three items that I've highlighted. One would be, again, that Landlord Partnership Program, since it was not an automatic renewal. And then the Housing Flex Fund. Just obviously, we would need to find a way to make that program sustainable before we would want to roll out additional annual commitments of funding. So we're going to be continuing to take a look at that data and those policies within the advocacy issues and programs subcommittee. Going to work to verify that all previous year funds have been rolled forward. But to my knowledge, we should have everything sitting in the current year. The board did vote to approve some funding to help with the winter response. And then we also had the emergency repairs that went to Greenhouse 17. We are going to be rolling, we just rolled onto this new year of planning grant dollars. And our HMIS subsidy has already been paid out. The reason that the programs that are not under contract yet, particularly the Lexington Housing Authority Program, separate that out so that technically it's not allocated yet. And I wanted us to be able to see that visually. They have hired a new landlord liaison and she's started work, I think, back in December. So there is some movement with that program and we'll be able to keep the board of the membership updated on progress to make decisions about future terms. Any questions around the budget report? All right, we probably won't be making a lot of major commitments until we're a little bit further along in the work of the task force. So right now, you're probably only going to see RFPs or funding go out for essential items. But we're really hoping that we can engage the task force members and use our available funding to really try to repurpose some funds to meet some new goals, roll out some new programming, see if we can find some more effective strategies. So since we're on the fun subject of everything going on in the world, we'll do the continuum of care program update. This has been quite a ride. I will do a brief summary and then get into where we are now since everybody might have different levels of information coming to this meeting. Typically, we would see a standard year be something like a July release of a notice of funding opportunity or a NOFO. Then we would have an application and a local competition. The local competition would usually end sometime around September, usually by late September or into October. we'd be submitting our overall collaborative application. In fiscal year 24, last year for the HUD calendar, we submitted under a two-year NOFO that was not supposed to require a competition or application in calendar year 25. In July we received an email from HUD that we should expect a competition would occur and that it would include priority changes. That NOFO was ultimately released after the federal government shutdown. It was released in November and the fiscal year 25 NOFO contained substantial changes. It was going to, for example, limit the amount of a community's annual renewal demand or their annual funding requests that could be used for permanent housing and cap that at 30%. To give an illustration, Lexington receives about $2.55 million in continuum of care funding and about $2.3 million of that goes to permanent housing programs. So 30% would be in the ballpark of $750,000 and you can do the math, that's a lot to cut. That represents the 125 beds that David was discussing earlier. We kind of looked at how many beds we would potentially be able to preserve with that 30% and what we would ideally be seeing as a loss. There's also going to be a significant delay in the award of funding and funding was supposed to shift to support transitional housing and supportive services. The NOFO explicitly did say that we should be looking at other sources to provide housing such as local and private dollars and should really move to shift this funds back towards services. Obviously the impact of that being significant was of concern to governments, advocates, individuals that rely on these programs. Quickly several lawsuits were filed by both states and national organizations. One of those lawsuits ultimately resulting in some changes to this process. So HUD was stopped from moving forward with their initial fiscal year 25 NOFO and then there was the release of a revised NOFO and then a court order has blocked them from being able to move forward with either version of those NOFOs and ordered them to move forward in processing awards for eligible renewal projects for fiscal year 25. Where we stand right now, last week on Thursday we received guidance from HUD about the renewal process. They have been clear that as long as that court order is in effect, they will move forward in funding renewals under the original fiscal year 24-25 NOFO. However, should that court order no longer be in effect, they do choose to go forward with their published NOFO from December. So we are still at risk if at any point that court order is overturned to returning to some of the policy changes that were set forth in that NOFO. Presently our understanding is that the COC is not supposed to have to submit an application if we are not reallocating any funds, either COC or DV bonus funding. Our recommendation would be that we should go ahead and not reallocate funding, that we should try to preserve all of the permanent housing that we're currently funding through that source. HUD also will allow communities that are not making changes to go ahead and enter an early review process. That fund, those funds won't be awarded until the litigation is resolved. However, some of the front-end processes in reviewing those programs would be able to move forward to facilitate a more quick award once everything is resolved. So right now I can advise our project, our program recipients that at this time we're being advised you will not have to do a renewal application within e-SNAPS and that there should be no action needed on the part of the COC unless we do pursue changes. So we should be set for an automatic renewal. However, knowing that at any time a decision by the court could change the course of the competition, this office felt that it was wisest to go ahead and bring a updated process document to the board and ask for you to potentially consider approving that. And if you did that I would encourage you to include in the motion the ability for the office to make revisions or changes based upon updated guidance from HUD. Our concern is if we did not have significant time to go ahead and bring the board back together and review these documents again and approve them that we would be unable to meet key milestones that might take place within the competition process. Generally speaking, for example, in a typical year we would be required to go ahead and have our applications from our recipients turned in to us no later than 30 days before the end of the competition and then to notify them in writing of the outcome outside of HUD's e-SNAP system no later than 15 days prior to the submission of the application. And some of the windows that we've seen in the NOFOs that HUD has released for 25 are reduced overall time frames to where it could pose a challenge for us to be able to meet those milestones should they be present. The December released NOFO did remove some of those milestones for us but others still did apply and so that is our recommendation. We have tried to reflect in our process document within your packet. Marissa has done a lot of work to go ahead and denote all of the changes and capture that record referencing the court order that is currently in place. And we have made sure that since we're returning to the original 24-25 NOFO that funding policies and priorities are reflective of that NOFO with a few minor tweaks to avoid potentially charged language that the current administration may object to and could impact funding. So on page 8 of that document I will also note that the levels of funding are going to reflect what was available to us under the fiscal year 24 annual renewal demand. Since we're returning to that NOFO we are under the assumption that that applies. On page 10 of that document we have outlined what a potential application timeline looks like. This was before we received guidance that there should be no action needed by us. So theoretically the board could approve this process document. We would not be opening an application process at this time knowing that we've gotten that updated guidance. If we were to have a change and have to do a competition we would be looking at trying to do a quick turnaround to meet the early review process. So all of these dates moving forward from that point in the document are kind of tentative placeholders and would likely be revised because the timeline is going to shift. Presently we are on track for a February 9th submission of our application or in this case potentially no changes. I think I've covered all the high points of that document but I will definitely take any questions and I'll kind of pause at this point in the director's report because I know this is a very dense and technical and convoluted process and I want the board to fully understand anything that they might be advising on. Anybody have any questions about the process document or kind of the chain of events around the COC program this year? So just for clarity because you started out with the the recommendation right to allow the OP office to be able to to amend the document as needed as things occur. So just just to ensure that I'm understanding the recommendation correctly so we would be voting to approve this now as the governing document for the competition but then should HUD make a change to the COC program or you know some change at the you know at the judicial process force a change then we would need to vote to approve a future document once that document is changed is that? That that's the proposal that I'm kind of putting out. Now be mindful that if we do find that the timeline allows us to call a meeting and to have that conversation that would definitely be our preference. It's really more of a safeguard if the timeline that's laid out before us just makes that infeasible because we do have to potentially meet milestones we don't know whether or not those will apply whether it's feasible to bring the board together prior to that and still leave a window for applicants to produce and submit their application and then for us to get the COC approval from the board on both the priority listing and the application. For example this document was just released on the 9th and it's exactly 30 days so if any of those milestones like the 15 day or the 30 day applied from the start we would just have concern. So does that help? Yeah I just wanted clarity on I think in particular the the timeline and that makes sense right if you know the court action or HUD makes a change later on that would need would that they would alter that timeline they it would make sense what you're proposing I just wanted to ensure that I understood correctly. And to be transparent like we would only try to be making changes within this document that are necessitated by changes in HUD's NOFO. Glad to answer any additional questions or have more conversation. Hearing none is there a motion and if there is a motion do you think about what language that you use to make that motion? Well I just think whether or not you want to include that option for us to be able to make revisions based on updated HUD guidance without bringing it back to you. That's just the main thing that you would need to consider. I fully leave that decision in your hands but I just want you to make sure that whatever motion that you vote on matches your intent. I'll make that motion that we approve the document and allow for your office to make changes should the need arise. Thank you all. Any further discussion before we vote? This would be a board vote only. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? That motion passes. Before moving on to the winter response update I'm just going to go ahead and make another announcement that is related to funding. As several folks in the room unfortunately are aware, overnight two billion dollars in awarded SAMHSA funding notice of termination was sent out to the recipients of that funding. Locally, to give you an illustration of some of that impact, that would impact the Hope Center, LFUCG, Chrysalis House, Community Action Council, Mountain Comprehensive Care Center. That being funds that primarily targets individuals with substance use and mental health issues. It awards funding for a variety of things. For example, Community Action Council funds their street outreach program which focuses on work with individuals with substance use disorder through that source. At the Hope Center they were using some of that money for transitional housing as well as I think medication-assisted treatment. LFUCG had used that for staffing and to help distribute Narcan within the community. Chrysalis House had a program that is housing for pregnant and postpartum women. So there's kind of a variety of things that are at jeopardy here. We have been instructed and I do have a contact at the state level that we can put you in contact with. The state is wanting to gather some information around the impact, what's being cut, what it funds. So that is something that we would definitely be glad to have email conversations with you about and get you in touch with the right people. LFUCG already called an emergency meeting today to begin assessing the impact so we know the full scope. Obviously we'll do whatever we can to mitigate that. The reason that I wanted to share that update with this group is because I think it further compounds our concerns about federal funding. For example, the continuum of care program. My concern would be, would we ever potentially see a similar situation with the COC program? We know that there's active lawsuits currently going on and that HUD has clearly expressed a desire to make policy changes and that if they have any ability to change and operate with the fiscal year 25 NOFO. However, if they were blocked by the court from moving forward with that, would they potentially move forward with the fiscal year 25 awards and then simply at a later time seek to terminate them? So I just wanted to kind of put that out there so that we are not bombarded or blindsided in the future if something like that were to occur. I also think it's extremely important for the board members who are also serving on the task force to have that information because I think that that is relevant to the conversation that we are having there around needs to look at different funding sources and how we fund the interventions that the task force is going to recommend. It also has potential if something like that were to occur to displace more people from housing and so it would be impactful to the level of homelessness within the community. One positive thing that I can give you since I've given you some not so positive things, there is currently a bill that is being proposed at the state level that would fund, I think they're calling it homelessness prevention, but it seems to be very closely tied to the continuum of care program. It would allow state funds, I think right now they're proposing two million dollars to be awarded for use of things like to be used as match funding. The COC program does require a 25% match so that could help those dollars stretch a little bit further. It also allows for those dollars to potentially be used in scenarios such as there being a abrupt disruption to funding and so that is a bill at the state level that we would definitely be in support of. It would help give a little bit of a safety net for these types of situations. I would have to double check but I want to say that's House Bill 354 but I will double check and get that information to you early in the legislative process but that's one of the items that I've already gotten from our law department to review and provide input on. Any questions or discussion before we move into winter response update? So Jeff, were the cuts primarily to substance use programs? Was that the, or was it broader than things that dealt deal with substance use? So it seems like a lot of the programming might potentially, the reason being presented is that the funded programs no longer meet the agency's priorities. So I think a lot of it does have to do, for example, in the instance of LFUCG's grant, I strongly believe a lot of that has to do with things like the distribution of NARCAN and harm reduction practices. We know that harm reduction is one of the models that this administration is not in favor of. But there are some other programs that I think kind of, you know, touch our population. For example, if David wants to speak more to the Hope Center's programming, they had recently been awarded some funds that were going to provide some transitional housing. Yeah, and I'll add that we were awarded funding in October. So it was a NOFO released by the current administration and awarded this year. It's like we just finished the hiring process and training, and I just had a meeting with the SAMHSA project officer last week. But the purpose of that grant was to provide support services to case management, housing navigation, and also mental health services to homeless individuals who had co-occurring disorders. So I was excited about that because very seldom do these grants include the homeless population. So, you know, that was a huge deal for us, and so it was a bit of a shock to not be in line with their current priorities when it was their NOFO. But I don't know. Nothing makes sense. But yeah, so our other project was, it's the seventh year of an eight-year, no, it's the eighth year of an eight-year medication-assisted treatment project aimed at individuals coming out of the criminal justice system who are on MAT. So, but the new grant was targeted homeless, HUD homeless. So yeah, I think that's a big loss and not a great sign of things to come. All right, any other questions before I move on? Yeah, just one more. You know, you, you know, in the previous question and in your answer you talked about, you know, one of the reasons that that you may suppose that those, you know, those cuts were made were because there was a misalignment in priorities, right, or the program was no longer a priority. Are there any other particular items or particular, you know, programmatic aims that LFUCG or the continuum as a whole currently has or practices that you think would make it more at risk in comparison to other communities for funding being cut? I don't think so. I do know that if HUD were to, for example, be able to move forward with the revised NOFO that they wanted to implement, that would just pose some problems for us being able to quickly implement some of the changes that they are looking to see. For example, one of the things that we're gonna be scored on is if we have, I believe it's three members of law enforcement or maybe it's two members of law enforcement and one person from business. And so that would be three board seats that we would have to have filled by two law enforcement representatives and one representative of the business world. So just being able to quickly, within like a month's time frame, be able to make a change like that seems infeasible and also it forces us to make decisions about our governing board that are based on just quickly checking off criteria instead of really having an ability to pursue individuals that have a desire to serve on the board that we think would be good stewards of the board. It would also, another area that I would be concerned about is just based on how the state operates policies related to sex offenders and notification requirements and things, we could be at risk of losing some points there. There are some areas that I think that we might have a slightly increased risk, but overall I think we're going to be very similar in the level of risk as other communities. And as far as the SAMHSA funding goes, so far there's not been anything that's been disclosed that gets down to the programmatic level. One of the agencies impacted told me that they reached out to their grant officer at the federal level who just advised them that they don't have any further information or clarification to provide. So we just have the general knowledge that allegedly it's not meeting the priorities, but we don't have any substantial information to work with that tells us how that we could revise those programs to meet the priorities. The only other thing that I would say with that too is even with the previously released NOFOs, typically HUD provides us with detailed instructions that provide us in much more detail exactly what they're looking for. But for example, the COC billed NOFO, which was released under this administration, it was yes, no answers. And that was it. So without those detailed instructions and because the application was never opened to us before it was revised and then the court ordered to be put aside, we don't know, right? Some of these may just be yes, no, or it may be an opportunity to provide greater narrative. At this point, we're unsure. Yeah, to Marissa's point, it's not even just what the criteria is, but how it's being assessed. Like if we have to attach a document as evidence, we don't even know what that might look like right now. All right. If there's no further discussion on this, then I will go ahead and just give an update on winter. So for our primary winter response, which is the temporary shelter that's located out on Versailles Road, we're just getting initial invoicing for that program. So right now we are on track for the budget and I don't have any budgetary needs that I would be bringing to you at this time. I can say that so far to date, we've served about 570 unique individuals. Occupancy has fluctuated with the weather, but typically we're running somewhere around the neighborhood of about 85 to 90 percent. Right now, we have activated the weather plan for today and extended through Tuesday, at which time I'll get in the office next week and be able to see a more accurate forecast for next week. As of this morning, we did not have any open male beds at the shelter. We were down to approximately 15 or so female beds that were available. So definitely as you would navigate situations or needs, check on capacity, especially if it's a male. Consider if there's eligibility to stay at the Hope Center. We have to really kind of just think about maximizing all of those resources. I also wanted to give brief updates on some of the other programs that we have. I would be able to tell you that Community Action Council I know has served numerous families so far. I'm trying to find those numbers for you offhand. Marty, do you happen to know those numbers offhand? Okay, about 23 or 24 families served to date, and I know at least three have exited to permanent housing or exited the program. We've also been able to work with the Catholic Action Center and their Give Kids a Home program. If there's anything that we're unable to meet, we can work with them to expand the availability of family shelter. We're also prepared to keep a close eye on the invoicing and bring any additional funding requests to this board. Marty and I are just now starting to get some more reliable information. What we saw in November wasn't really enough to give us a projection of full spend for the season. Bluegrass Care Navigators program has been running at or near capacity, so we've also been working with the Catholic Action Center. If there are individuals that don't have needs that truly meet the full criteria of Bluegrass Care Navigators, we've also been able to place some individuals at the Catholic Action Center in their dignity beds. So I just want to say thank you to all of our providers for the communication and collaboration that we are actively working, and just would like to request that everybody continue to do things like support the winter shelter, providing services where you can. We are going to try to get some group events scheduled very soon, so I'll be reaching out to some partners for that. I know many of the partners, Arbor Youth, Community Action Council, New Life Day Center, several folks have been going out on a regular basis individually, but similar to what we did when we had the previous Hope Village, we'd just like to have a couple of dates on the calendar that we can have multiple organizations at once, kind of maximize the amount of resources that someone can get on a given date, and really just kind of shop for the things that are most relevant to their situation. Any questions from the board related to the winter response? Real quick, have you had any concerns or anything with the community or neighborhood? Like, is it going well in that site so far? I've only had from the community a handful of concerns. One issue that we were alerted to fairly early on was a person who was in the community who had a One issue that we were alerted to fairly early on was a shopping mall, shopping center next to us had an issue with some residents parking their personal vehicles on their property, which is posted as private parking, so we had to make some announcements to avoid people getting towed. That's why any time that I send out the winter weather plan activations, you'll see that I do make a note about directing residents to park on our property to try to mitigate that, knowing that some people, their vehicle might represent all of their belongings, and trying to do what I can to avoid that. Other than that, we've had very minor concerns like trash occasionally, so we worked with environmental services and solid waste to increase the servicing around that area. And then I had one business owner contact me. There were several layers to that conversation. One was a claim that individuals are being brought in from other communities to stay at the shelter, and somehow we are making money off of the shelter. Processing the invoices for this project, I can tell you I'm in no way making money. We are spending a significant amount of money on the project. We do have data collection in place to help us collect information about location of previous permanent residents so that we can better understand where individuals' homelessness is originating. Generally, that's not a significant amount of our year-round data. It's usually 10 percent or less, and even specifically previous winter resources. We've collected data and found that we're not seeing that at high levels. We do also generally have practices like declining out-of-county hospital discharges, in addition to being concerned about making sure that there's available beds for those who are experiencing homelessness in our community. It can be difficult for somebody to find alternate housing at the end of the season in a community especially that they're not familiar with or maybe don't have any resources or networks. The other things that that business owner was concerned about seemed to be more about how increased police presence in the neighborhood was impacting her business. I'm trying not to state the name of the business, but the nature of their business, the customers may not enjoy police being around because they may potentially be purchasing things like drug paraphernalia. Those are the only major contacts that we've received. Other things that we've dealt with are just typical daily operations. We do have a number of folks that have been restricted from the shelter. Unfortunately, when I review those, generally those are justified. There's a balance of keeping people safe and giving people second chances and we're in constant communication with the team. They're always just looking at how we can be fair but operate a successful and safe program. Other questions? All right, so our next regular meeting will be March 12th in this room, 1.30 to 3.30 and now we'll open up if anybody has anything they want to add to the agenda. Any announcements? Anything going on in your agency or that you know that you want to share to the community? I will give an announcement related to the announcement about the next meeting. We did attach the calendar year 26 meeting schedule to the board packet notice when it went out. Just make sure that you are saving a copy of that, printing it for yourself. We do have several subcommittees that have relocated to new spaces this year. We will try to draw attention to that in reminder emails, bold text, underline, red font, whatever we can do. But I know whenever we have those changes, somebody's going to go to the wrong location. So please just try to look at those before you head out the door for any upcoming meetings. We have also updated the LFUCG and COC website links so those should go to the 26 calendar. But if you have any difficulties finding that, feel free to reach out. Another shameless plug to sign up for LexCount. So please, please, please do that. There's also some wish list items that might be needed to pass out that evening. So you might look, it might be something you can just offer, or maybe a group could offer. So that would be great. Again, the Homeless Task Force takes place after this meeting. So you're welcome to join in on that. There's also committee meetings as well. So if you go to the website, you click onto that committee, you're welcome to attend those committee meetings also. So you might not want to do the big task force, but you might be really interested in shelter models and that committee or something. So please feel free to attend that as well. Anything else? Anything else? Do I have a motion? Do I need a motion? Do I have a motion to adjourn? So we have a second. Oh, so many of you. All right. Do I need a vote? Or we just go away? Go away. Carry on. Be free. Thank you all.