# Budget, Finance & Economic Development (BFED) Committee - March 24, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · March 24, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6727 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6727?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-03-24 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 25, 2026 - **Length**: 15,196 words - **Speakers**: Mayor > ⚠️ **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 Budget, Finance & Economic Development (BFED) Committee met on March 24, 2026, at 1:00 PM in the Council Chamber at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507. The committee worked through 5 agenda items during the session, taking 2 votes and receiving 3 informational presentations. No public comments were heard during the meeting. The committee approved 2 items: the February 24, 2026, Committee Summary and a matter related to Digital Accessibility. The remaining agenda items — a Monthly Financial Update for February 2026, an Opioid Abatement Fund Update, and a Review of Items Referred — were received as informational presentations without requiring a formal vote. ## Attendance The following 10 members were present at the March 24, 2026 Committee meeting: - James Brown - Chuck Ellinger II - Dan Wu - Shayla Lynch - Liz Sheehan - Lisa Higgins-Hord - Whitney Elliott Baxter - Dave Sevigny - Jennifer Reynolds - Joseph Hale No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions Two motions came before the Committee at the March 24, 2026 meeting, both passing unanimously. - **Motion 0258-26 — Approval of February 24, 2026, Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:04]: Moved by Dave Sevigny and seconded by Whitney Elliott Baxter, the Committee voted to approve the summary from its previous meeting. The motion passed 10–0, with all members voting in favor: James Brown, Chuck Ellinger II, Dan Wu, Shayla Lynch, Liz Sheehan, Lisa Higgins-Hord, Whitney Elliott Baxter, Dave Sevigny, Jennifer Reynolds, and Joseph Hale. No members voted against or abstained. - **Motion 0643-25 — Digital Accessibility Plan** [timestamp: 1:44:13]: Moved by Joseph Hale and seconded by Liz Sheehan, the Committee voted to move the Digital Accessibility plan forward and send a resolution to the full council. The motion passed 10–0, with the same ten members voting in favor: James Brown, Chuck Ellinger II, Dan Wu, Shayla Lynch, Liz Sheehan, Lisa Higgins-Hord, Whitney Elliott Baxter, Dave Sevigny, Jennifer Reynolds, and Joseph Hale. No members voted against or abstained. ## Contested Items - **Opioid Abatement Fund Priorities:** A heated discussion arose among council members regarding the allocation of opioid abatement funds. Some council members raised concerns about how the funds were being prioritized, as well as the inclusion of a symposium as part of the proposed spending. The specific members involved in the disagreement and the final outcome of the discussion are not detailed in the available meeting data. ## Approval of February 24, 2026, Committee Summary **Agenda Item 0258-26** | [timestamp: 04:01] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its February 24, 2026, meeting. The item was introduced with brief discussion involving **Dave Sevigny** and **Whitney Elliott Baxter**. No concerns, objections, or amendments to the summary were raised during the discussion. The committee approved the February 24, 2026, meeting summary **without dissent**. ## Monthly Financial Update - February 2026 [timestamp: 04:31] **Agenda Item 0259-26** Commissioner Erin Hensley, Director Wes Holbrook, and Director Melissa Lueker presented the February 2026 Financial Update for Fiscal Year 2026. The presentation was informational in nature. The key findings of the update were positive across both major financial categories: - **Revenues** were reported as above expectations for the period - **Expenditures** were reported as under budget No outcome or action was required as a result of this item, which was presented for the Committee's awareness and information only. ## Opioid Abatement Fund Update [timestamp: 16:54] The committee received an informational presentation on proposed priorities for opioid abatement settlement funds, with discussion centered on long-term sustainability and community impact. **Agenda Item:** 0260-26 **Key Speakers:** - Mayor - Commissioner Alan Bryant The presentation outlined the committee's approach to directing opioid abatement settlement funds, emphasizing priorities aimed at achieving lasting community benefit. Commissioner Alan Bryant and the Mayor were the primary speakers on this item. The outcome of the discussion was informational — no vote or formal action was taken at this meeting. The item appears to have been brought before the committee to brief members on the proposed direction for these funds ahead of any future decision-making. *Note: Additional detail on specific funding amounts, program names, concerns raised, or debate among committee members is not available in the provided source material.* ## Digital Accessibility **Agenda Item 0643-25** | [timestamp: 1:21:06] The Committee received a presentation on the draft Digital Accessibility Plan for Fayette County, delivered by **Troy Black** and **Liz Rodgers**. The presentation focused on three primary barriers to digital access facing residents: broadband availability, affordability, and digital literacy. - **Broadband availability** was identified as a structural challenge, with portions of Fayette County lacking adequate infrastructure for reliable internet access. - **Affordability** was highlighted as a barrier preventing residents from connecting to existing broadband services even where infrastructure is present. - **Digital literacy** was noted as an additional obstacle, indicating that access to devices and connectivity alone is insufficient without corresponding skills and education support. The item was presented as a draft plan, suggesting the document is still in development and subject to further refinement. Following the presentation and discussion, the agenda item was **approved** by the Committee. ## Review of Items Referred The committee took up agenda item 0261-26, a review of items that had been referred to them for consideration. This item was informational in nature, providing the committee an opportunity to examine referred matters as part of their regular oversight process. No specific speakers are recorded in connection with this agenda item, and no detailed breakdown of the individual referred items, debates, or concerns raised is available in the meeting record. The item was received as informational, with no vote or formal action required. --- ## Decisions - **0258-26** — passed (10-0): Approval of February 24, 2026, Committee Summary - **0643-25** — passed (10-0): Digital Accessibility - move plan forward and resolution to full council --- ## Full transcript All right, good afternoon. Thank everybody for joining us today. I'll go ahead and call to order the March 24th, 2026 Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee meeting. And we'll go straight to our agenda. And the first item on the agenda is the approval of the February 24th, 2026 Committee Summary. Move to approve. Second. All right, a motion was made to approve and second it. Are there any corrections, additions to the summary? Hearing and seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. The next item on our agenda is the Monthly Financial Update, February 2026. We have Commissioner Hensley, Director Holbrook, Director Luker. And with that, I'll turn it over to you, Commissioner. Good afternoon, everyone. We have the monthly financials through February. And we know you all have a packed agenda today, so we're going to be brief. I just want to remind everybody that for February, we had some of that winter storm activity that is still working its way through, primarily in streets and roads, in parks, water quality, those divisions that were helping out that response. We also still had some contractor payments that were working their way through in their expenditure categories, as well as salt and some of the supplies that we had purchased through that process that had not come in. And so you'll see some variances that happened in our operating categories that will be expended as we move through the month of March. You'll see quite a big drop as we go into March. And Wes is going to talk a little bit about the revenue, so I don't want to steal his thunder there. Just those things to keep in mind as we're going through February, that we will see a lot of this settle down as we get into March and we see the quarterly report going into budget. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Wes. All right. Good afternoon, Councilmembers. Just looking at the actuals of our budget, before we jump in, I do want to share that we have gone live with our online filing platform for net profits. Mayor put out a press release, and we have, you know, 40-some-odd thousand businesses that pay net profits, and so it's going to be a little bit of time before we start to see a lot of those come online, but that should allow us to get people's tax returns processed a little bit more quickly and get some of that money in that we typically take so long to process in April and see much more quickly where we are with those revenues. So that's something we're really excited about and something we'll see the benefits of as we move forward from this fiscal year to next and beyond. But just going into our normal report, one thing, as you looked at the report, you probably saw is seeing payroll withholding drop below what was expected to budget. And one of the things I want to point out there is we had one of our large payroll taxpayers that switched from paying by ACH through a payroll provider to sending a check, and that check had to go through the mail that goes through Louisville that then comes here, then goes to get processed. And so some of that can take a little bit of time as some of the mail gets delayed. And so in missing that payment, that caused our payroll to fall below what we had to budget. But we have gotten that payment in, they're called back up, and we should have a more normal payroll revenue budget, actuals to budget, as we look at our next monthly report. So just if anybody saw that and saw it go below what we had budgeted, just wanted to let you all know there's no reason to panic, at least not right now. Net profits has continued to exceed our budget. A lot of that has to do with some of the benefit we saw of the transfer from prior year to this year. We are also seeing estimated payments come in at a pretty good clip. So that gives us a lot of confidence as we go into April, and hopefully we'll see some really good collections as we come into our main tax season. Insurance is getting very close. We've run this negative variance, but we're still within about 2%, and so hopefully we can start to see that close a little bit more. Insurance is one we always see grow, as we'll look at and see whenever we look at actuals. We just may have been a little bit too aggressive in these first few quarters, but we should hopefully see that get pretty close to where we budgeted for the fiscal year. And then franchise fees has been one of our strong points this year, continuing to perform over budget from where we thought, and also compared with prior year. The only other area I really want to point out is on services. We have had a few areas of some strong collections relative to what we thought. Detention center bed fees are an area where we're receiving more revenue than we anticipated, and also excess fees in collections, we typically see those come in a little bit stronger at the end of the sheriff and county clerk's terms, and so since we're at the end of their four-year term, we'll see those excess fees in collections be a little bit stronger than what we might have seen in the previous few years. Overall to budget, once we consider that we do have a large payroll payment that's missing, it looks a little bit better, but even still, we're above where we thought we'd be at this point in the year, even without that large payroll payment. So overall, still a pretty good picture, and a little bit better than what it may show on the report. With actuals, again, like we've talked about all year, even when we do have some of these variances or some of these timing issues, we have had strong growth over prior year. We just, without the huge boom coming out of the pandemic, we were able to capture a little bit more of that and be a little bit more accurate in how we budgeted our revenues. So I'm happy to take any questions if council has any, otherwise I'll turn it over to Director Luker for the expenses. First up, we have Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I'm a little bit confused. You mentioned that we had an account move from ACH to CHECK. That seems opposite of what we want. Is there a reason to do that? So it moves, and a lot of people, a lot of businesses will look at their payroll provider, a company like an ADP or a Paychex or something like that, and then they make changes for a variety of reasons. Some of it's maybe to have a little bit more control of it in-house, to cut fees, whatever that may be. And so whenever that leaves ACH in the reporting and then goes through the mail, then we get hit with that timing difference. That's something that we're trying to reach out and see if there may be a different way to accommodate that payment. Okay. Yeah, because it seems like a lot of your efforts to try to streamline these processes and modernize them, we would want more people moving to these more electronic forms. Yeah. As I know, I've heard you talk about the bins of mail that we get and how much effort it takes to go through all of those and how long it takes to process that. So it seems, you know, the opposite of what we want, to have one of our large accounts moving from ACH to CHECK. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. Next, we have Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Remind me, Wes, if the online portal, are there any fees associated with that? Not with the filing of the return. We do have some credit card and ACH processing fees if there is any balance owed. But if there's no balance owed, then it would be no fee associated with it. The fees are through the credit card processor. If it's an ACH, it's 30 cents, regardless of the size. And then it's 2.35% on a credit card transaction. Okay. Great. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. And, Wes, I'll just ask you, the process that you just went through to make that option available online, is that something that would be beneficial to present to us to maybe express the benefits of that and to help create awareness to let folks know that that's an option? Yeah. I think we certainly want to do that. One thing that, and this is something that Commissioner Hensley and I have talked about, a lot of the CPA firms and accounting firms are already in the process of doing their tax returns. And so to move it to online versus whatever process they may have had in place may be a little bit of a lift, especially because they have a lot of clients. So this is something that we do want to highlight after we get through tax season because we don't want to put something else on our providers who are working very hard to get their tax returns in. Okay. So, yeah, let's just talk about that and maybe set that up as a presentation to this committee. I think that would be helpful for us to understand and maybe create some public awareness around. Great. Thank you, Director. Good afternoon. I think this is the most time on the clock I've ever had whenever I came up here to play cleanup for the presentation. So maybe take advantage of it. So with our expenses, we have, we're within 3% of our personnel budget. We are seeing savings in our full-time salaries and we saw some savings with our payouts that we had in January. We are running over budget in our overtime category. So that's something we're watching and we will be cleaning up as we get the rest of the overtime and all of the expenses from the ice storm that come through. With our operating, you'll see a large variance there, it's $14.8 million. We are still receiving, as the commissioner said, we've still got variances in there for salt, which we know we've expensed in contractors. And so as those invoices come in, you're going to see us bring budget amendments forward to make those adjustments that we need to cover those costs, moving the dollars around. We've also got savings in our professional services, in our equipment, supplies. We had savings in our vehicle fuel and repairs and maintenance. Now we know the vehicle fuel we're watching as the fuel prices have gone up. And so we'll see that one probably track closer to budget in the next couple of months as we are watching that and are aware. In addition, there is the fund balance dollars in here for the homeless task force that were added. So that's part of this variance that has been set aside for that. And then there's a little bit still remaining with the medical debt. That funding is part of this $14.8 million variance that we're seeing here. The insurance will be bringing a budget amendment forward to correct that. The costs came in after we had set the budget last year and they came in slightly higher than what we had budgeted. So we will bring something forward to correct that. Debt service, we just had sold that bond last month or the month before. I can't remember what month we're in now. But so we're seeing those payments. Partner agencies, the majority of that one right there is LexTran. That's for the microtransit. So there's that there. The capital, you'll see it's a large number. That is due to the CBDA. So that was the CBDA where we have to capitalize the leases and all of that. And so you notice it more on the next slide year over year. But that's what that large expense is. We didn't actually have $9.2 million of capital that you'll see in the budget this fiscal year. So overall, with our expenses, we are about 6.3% within budget, doing pretty well. And we're looking at that as we're working on the FY 27 budget as what we could utilize and get reallocated if we need to. So we're continuing to watch that closely. And then if we look over prior year, we are spending more in every category. So even though we weren't spending to budget, we are spending more in all of the categories. And here you can see the big difference in the capital. And that is the CBDA leases that we had to capitalize. So you can see that difference here. So we're not actually doing 211% more. It's just really a GASB accounting standard. But that's causing that to look a little funny there. But overall, we're doing well. We're under budget. But we are continuing to spend, and we're continuing to watch as we get the bills in. And all of the invoices, all the overtime, and getting all of that handled, and taken care of, and cleaned up before we close the fiscal year. So are there any questions? Okay, then committee members, are there any questions for Director Luker? I'm not seeing any. Director, I think you knocked it out of the park. All right. Are there any questions for the commissioner or either one of the directors before we move to the next item on our agenda? I'm not seeing any, so thank you all. Committee members, also in your packet is the ARPA financial update for your information. And then the next item on our agenda is the opioid abatement fund update. We have Mayor Gordon, Commissioner Alan Bryant here to present the mayor's prioritized recommendations for the opioid settlement funds. Thank you, Mayor, for being here, and the floor is yours. Thank you very much. It's a little odd to be on this side, but I do thank you very much for your time and for having us on your agenda. And before I get going, I'm going to introduce the topic and tell you a few of the beginning things, and then I'll turn it over to Commissioner Alan Bryant. I also want to publicly thank Carmen Combs, our substance use disorder intervention coordinator, who wasn't able to be here today. But she has been with us the entire time, helping lead the way, as has Brittany Smith, where are you, from our law department. So let's see, am I supposed to do this? I've not done this before. Let's see what happens here. Okay, so what are the opioid abatement funds? So these are those monies that stem from the National Opioid Settlement. And the National Opioid Settlements are a series of legal agreements where the manufacturers and distributors of opioids have been held responsible for their role in exacerbating the opioid crisis. And they are literally paying billions of dollars to resolve these lawsuits. This is with state governments, with local governments, and the funds are directed to the uses that you see there, particularly addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery efforts. The emphasis is really on supporting communities that are impacted by the epidemic, which ours is and has been. And so the Commonwealth of Kentucky is supposed to receive approximately $980 million plus over the course of these several years of payments. So in 2017, our city joined the lawsuit. We were joining about 30,000 plaintiffs around the country. And this lawsuit was against the distributors and the manufacturers of opioids. And I know that many of you have read about this in the news. There are three tracks to this, trials, settlements, and bankruptcies. And the monies are coming from those three ways of the lawsuits proceeding. I wanted to talk a minute about the Opioid Abatement Commission, which I appointed a couple of years ago. And this commission's mission was to recommend uses of the money that will come to Lexington-Fayette County through these lawsuits. This commission, I'm extremely proud of them. And in a moment, I'm going to introduce them. Many of them are with us today. They took two years to very methodically talk with entities who had ideas, look at things like our jail and what we're doing out there with addiction treatment. And look at new programs, at interesting things, the ear. All I need to say is the ear and they know what I'm talking about. Our members completed the recovery ready community assessment, which led us to be recognized by the governor as a recovery ready community, which is a really good important thing. And after several months of reviewing and discussing all the possibilities for use of these monies, they deliberated and made recommendations to me. And I have reviewed all those, I've prioritized them, and their recommendations are all part of my recommendations. We really agreed on all of that. And the goal here is for long term sustainability of the use of these monies. And you will see that through the recommendations. We don't want to just spend it all and be done. Now, I would like to also recognize Scott Llewellyn, who as many of you know, is our outreach coordinator. I think Scott's with us. There you are, Scott. So let me tell you who our commission members were. Dr. Stephanie Raglan, and as I say your name, I don't think Stephanie's here, but will you stand as I say your name? Dr. Stephanie Raglan was our chair, and Tara Stanfield was our vice chair. And members of the group were Lori Brock, Matt Webster, Angela Evans, Chief Lawrence Weathers, Connie Neal, Dr. Mark Woods, Gary Biggers, Kimberly Baird, Lindsay Jasinski, Dale Sanders, John Moses, Sierra Bowman, Margaret Pisicano. Have I missed anybody? And they spent many, many hours on this good work, and I thank you very much. Thank you. Now, I have one more slide, and then I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Alan Bryant, who will get into some of the details. LFUCG currently holds almost $9 million in litigation funds. And approximately $30 million, these are all approximations, because as more and more companies are sued, and recognized as part of this effort, more money has been coming in. This $30 million is expected to come in over about 18 years, and the first payment was received in December of 2022. So 18 years forward, we'll be receiving money through that period of time. And the timing all depends on the bankruptcies, the payout schedules from the lawsuits, et cetera. And the expenditure of the money has to follow the opioid abatement purposes, which are in the law. So in other words, we cannot spend these funds outside of what the approved legal entities are, and that is all set by KRS. And so I would like to ask Commissioner Alan Bryant, if she would come up and finish the rest of the presentation, then we're both available for questions. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor. So let's get into the legalities of this opioid money. It is very clear in the KRS that it's to be used for those who are experiencing opioid use disorder, those who are affected by opioid overdoses, and those who have substance use disorder and or mental health co-occurring disorders. So that is very clear on that. Some of the uses that are of interest probably to those of us in LFECG focus on the prevention, intervention, harm reduction, and supporting recovery. So when it comes to opioid abatement related housing is of particular interest, transportation, any kind of employment, education, or training services. When we're educating our law enforcement and our first responders, engaging our non-profits, which many of them are here today, any kind of wraparound services. So whether it's case management, providing behavioral health, help with job assistance, housing, any type of public education and awareness. Any kind of supportive housing for those, again, housing for those who are experiencing opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, mental health, co-occurring disorders, and those who are incarcerated. So the treatment and recovery for those inmates who are either currently incarcerated or get ready to get out or are on parole. So as we look at our priority areas, and the mayor has done a wonderful job of prioritizing these. We focus on not only sustainability, as she said earlier, but also equity and inclusion of those affected by opioid disorder and opioid overdoses, and also including evidence-based practices. Our first priority is to put into an interest-bearing account. So this will be a separate account that we have now. And those funds would be allowed to grow, and we can use the interest to help sustain some of these programs. Just as an example, if you put $5 million in an interest-bearing account, if it's 4% interest, then we'll have $200,000 per year. With $200,000 per year, you can imagine some of the things that we can do, and that helps increase our sustainability. Now, as the mayor said, we have approximately $9 million right now. We are set to get approximately another $21 million. So we have money coming in. It is hard to plan, because we don't know when it's gonna be. But again, having this interest-bearing account will help with some of that sustainability of programs until we realize all of our funds. Priority two is to provide supportive housing and integrative treatment services. And again, these are for those who are affected by opioid use disorder, with a co-occurring substance use disorder, and mental health disorders. So we want those treatment services that also align with our homelessness task force efforts, and the task force is working on those recommendations right now. Housing would be a mixture of temporary, transitional, or permanent supportive housing. We would include wraparound services and any kind of recovery supports. But in this housing, it has to have some type of emphasis on treatment or recovery. So we want to have a safe, stable environment for peer support. We want to have intensive case management with life skills support and trauma-informed care. We want to have behavioral health and medication treatment, coaching, everything that we have encompassed in our harm reduction framework. And of course, job assistance, transportation assistance, and other wraparound services. Priority three would be allocating support for our own community corrections. Again, we want evidence-based treatment for those who are incarcerated. So we're going to invest in all of our opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, and mental health treatment inside of our community corrections. That also includes medical assisted treatment, which we say MAT. So we want to expand that program to include assessment for initial treatment, as well as continuation of a treatment while they are incarcerated, and links to MAT treatment once they are released. Part of what needs to occur, and is, but we want to expand on that, is the re-entry planning. Even something as simple as obtaining an ID, obtaining housing, obtaining a job, having those plans in place so when they are released, that they are able to get onto a stable lifestyle, which helps reduce recidivism and overdose risk. Number four is launching a tiered community grant program. And this will be for our local non-profits. We imagine it would be very close to what our ESR program is. We anticipate having a micro and macro grant opportunity. So the micro grants would be smaller grants, and they would be given on an annual basis. Our macro grants would be every two years, much like our ESR and our non-profit capital grants programs. And again, it's for our non-profits and our local 501c3s. I also want to emphasize that the programming that they have must focus on harm reduction, recovery efforts, intervention, and prevention. The other is our priority five is investing in our local substance use disorder intervention program. Currently, we have our efforts of persons like Scott Llewellyn, who does a wonderful job distributing naloxone. He distributes approximately 5,000 kits per year, which has greatly helped, along with everyone else in efforts in Lexington, Fayette County, to reduce our overdose deaths. In fact, since 2022, we've had a 54% reduction in fatal overdoses, with 25% being a decrease from 2024 to 2025. So we want to expand on this program. That includes staffing, that includes more NARCAN distribution, and we want to have more partnerships with our public health, public safety, and community organizations that are also focusing on the same efforts. And lastly, our priority six is to host an opioid response and recovery symposium. We would do a pilot, just to see kind of how it goes. The idea is to focus on Lexington, Fayette County efforts. What is working? What's not working? What is everyone doing? I'm kind of mapping out what happens with someone who has opioid use disorder, mapping out possibly if they're incarcerated, where do they go for treatment? And how do they get jobs? And so, again, we would include some evidence-based lectures, of course. But the biggest thing is to see where we are and where we need to go and look at our current spending and programming. And 15 seconds, wow. Thank you, Mayor and Commissioner. And before I turn it over to council members for questions, I've seen Dr. Raglan joined us, so she's here if you want to stand up and be recognized. And let me also thank the folks that are involved in this task force. Thank you all for your dedication, work, and commitment to this initiative. So, thank you. Council members, questions? First, we have Vice Mayor Wood. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for the report and the presentation. I have a couple of questions. One, talking about that first priority of moving the money into an interest-bearing account, where has it been living since December 2022? It is also in an account that's, of course, accruing interest. This would be a totally separate. So, think about it as an operating account and then more of like an endowment account where we are literally living off the interest. Okay, and can you speak a little bit, like in the slides it said, our first payment was received December of 2022, so it's been a little bit over three years. What is the timing or the timeline, because we've gotten this question from some of our non-profit partners. Absolutely. About like, where's this money, how come it's not being spent yet? So, can you kind of speak to what the timeline and the plan there is? Well, after today, I mean, we're going to work on the details immediately. I mean, that is, we'd like to get it out as soon as possible. Focusing as our mayor has outlined our priority areas, and that's the priority that we will go in implementing whatever priority that's listed. Okay, so this money is getting distributed sometime this year, or what's? I mean, that would be my hope, yes. Okay, thank you, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next, we have Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. Absolutely. And thank you to the commission members for all of your hard work and dedication for this area that's so important to our neighbors here in Lexington. My first question is, are there any differences between the commission's recommendations and the mayor's priorities? Very slight differences. I mean, they pretty much agreed priority by priority. She has listed them, of course, in what she wants to see done. And of course, the first thing is the interest bearing account. That's easy, we can get that done. Well, I don't want to speak for Commissioner Hensley, but that's something that can be done pretty quickly. So they pretty much agreed. So I'm curious, what are the differences? What were the differences between the two? Just the, probably the grants programs would probably be the biggest one. Just realigning those, simplifying it to just the micro and macro grants programs, and not having the multitude of different grants programs that were recommended by the commission. That's pretty much it, yes. Mayor, you want to speak more to it? On the grants, there was a tiny difference because I felt that as a public entity, they had to go to non-profits or 501c3s or entities attached to non-profits. The recommendation did not say non-profits, so I put that in there. And that was really the only difference. Did the commission prioritize their recommendations? And if so, did they prioritize them in the same numerical order as the mayor? The recommendations were listed, but not in a certain order. Thank you. Let's see. Can you talk a little bit more about priority for launching a tiered community grant program? What do you mean by tiers? So that would be, again, the mini and micro, the mini, micro, and the macro grants. So again, the mini grants, the micro grants would be smaller ones. Again, we have to hash out the details, but they would be somewhere around maybe $5,000. Don't hold me to that, but it would be very small ones that they could get for maybe help with some programming, but the macro grants would be the larger two-year grants, what we're more used to with the ESR, where they can really plan some programming, possibly staffing, and what have you. And then my next question is regarding at council's meeting with the mayor when we're talking about budget and our budget priorities. I brought up the fact that our SUTI office is strong but mighty, and that just doing the work of just the opioid funds could be a full-time position. So did you all discuss funding another position in the SUTI office just to help with the distribution of the funds and managing of the grants? And if not, how is your division going to handle this additional workload? No, no, no, no, no, definitely we would need assistance because it is just with us in my office, we have a person, Theresa Maynard, who does our ESR and NCG, and she probably spends 75% of her time on that. So we realize the time and the capacity for people to handle grants programs like this. And so if you recall, one of the first items that I listed when we talked about the SUTI program was staffing. Great, that's good to hear. That was very important on my list. And then I think my final statement, how much time I got, 57 seconds, is just a comment. I don't love priority six, throwing money at a conference. I think the money is better spent towards helping folks in the community and not throwing a conference. For people that work together, especially coming from the non-profit world, I know we work together a lot. I already know what the issues are, the gaps are, and I'm sure a lot of that was brought out in the commission's work. So I feel like the data's probably already there. So I don't think throwing money at a conference is a good priority at all. I would say put it back into the community and the folks that are doing the work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to everyone who has been working on this. I have two questions. Has there been any discussion on how much money will be allocated to each priority? Because when you have six priorities, and I know we're saying we already have $9 million and we'll get $30 million over time. But when you break that down annually, it's less than $2 million. So when you're talking about six priorities areas, has there been any discussion over, will the first number one priority get a higher percentage of the money, and then it goes down from there? Or has there been any discussion about that? We have not allocated a particular amount of money to any of the priority areas. That is something that we will be working on in details, that kind of details. You will obviously know what we've allocated to various programs and priorities, because it has to come through you all via the budget amendments. Another piece here that kind of speaks to funding the community organizations and the non-profits. My other question relates to some changes in federal funding that we have seen. We have seen changes in priority at the federal level that impacts mental health services, but we've also seen some quick pullbacks and then reallocations. Is there any discussion about potentially setting aside some of this funding to fill those gaps if we were to see changes in federal funding? So absolutely, with our SAMHSA grants that we had, it's one of those that was pulled for 24 hours and then it was returned to us. We have realized that that left us very vulnerable. That's $500,000 a year for our SUTI program. However, with these funds, that would help guarantee that not only would the SUTI program continue to function, but also expand in their programming as I explained earlier. And I thought of a third question, quit briefly. I know that we have our local opioid funds, but then there's a state level allocation as well. So are there things that we might be looking at here that would actually be able to be funded by the state? Or is the state only providing funding to communities that don't have their own local allocation? So, I'm going to speak to this from a non-profit agency standpoint. Knowing that we have, as Fayette County is larger, and knowing that we have such a great amount of funds and will receive even more funds. It has been difficult for our non-profits to apply for state grants because they know that the money is, we have money here. Which leads to our urgency to get the funding out. Okay, and I think that's, if you have conversations with the state about this, that same question about the federal funding I think would apply there as well. If they are allocating some funds or setting aside funds that might actually be able to help fill gaps should any federal funding change. That might be something that the state could consider that would be broadly applied rather than our local funding. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Higgins-Horton. Thank you, Chair. I just have one question for you. I think a couple of my other questions have already been answered, but thank you all again for the presentation today, Mayor and Commissioner. And for all of the, actually the group that put this together, so thank you for the recommendations. Is there a reporting function that's quarterly or annually to be given to the state or the national entity, or are we a separate, independent entity? There absolutely is, I believe it's August, it's annual reporting for August that we have to report what funds we've used, which we've not used any. So our reporting has been very quick so far, but yes, there is absolutely reporting that has to be done. Thank you. All right, thank you. Next, we have Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, Mayor, and everyone that served. I know you all did a lot of work, so I appreciate it. My questions are mostly around the grants. How would you prove, or how would you weigh the organizations in terms of their success rate around this topic? How would you measure who gets them and who doesn't? Well, so much like, again, I go back to ESR because that's what we're good at, and again, the grants will probably most likely be formulated just like them. They have to have the gold seal of transparency, so that is something that they have to go through that says that their accounting is accurate and transparent and no illegal issues. Also, there are places on the application where they have to talk about what their programs have done in the past and provide data for us. We also do a very good job of when we are receiving ESR grants and applications and we're looking to see who we're funding, running it by the grants program here and saying, okay, has this agency ever had a grant through the LFUCG, whether it's passed through or whatnot, and what were their outcomes, were there any problems with that? So it's subjective, however, it is reliable. That's what we have used, and it's worked well thus far. And do you think there would be a way to ensure that, excuse me, that we're not only giving grants to organizations that we've given grants to in the past, but we're really expanding who we're reaching with this money? Well, it's a competitive process, and so they would have an application process that they would have to fill. We'd have review committees just like we have for our other grants programs, and so what we anticipate is probably your smaller agencies will probably be the ones that will apply for the micro-grants. They typically don't do as well on their applications, so providing some resources for them so that they can have better grant applications is something that we're probably going to have to do, just like other grants programs. Yeah, that would be great to make sure that they have the tools that they need to succeed. And then you mentioned programming and staff. I know that this is one-time money, but I also know that we're getting it over a long period of time, so I wonder if there would be a way to include some sort of programming and staff considerations, at least in the larger grants. Well, what I've always explained is that when you're in this arena and you're in public health and you're providing intervention and prevention type of programs, you cannot do it without staff. So that obviously has to be part of the funding, because yes, I can have as many materials as I want, but if I don't have a staff person to distribute the materials, then I don't have a program. So that is understood. That's great. That's wonderful news. And then in terms of how quickly, I know you said you were hoping that we could get money out there this year. What type of timeline and reporting are you expecting for this? Well, so the entities, organizations, whoever received the micro-grants, they would have to turn in quarterly reports, and they would get their payments. It's prepaid, so they don't have to pay for their expenses or their programming first. I mean, we're prepaying them. However, they won't get, for those who are on the two-year cycle, will not get two years worth of funding at one time. We do it annually, because we're also constantly looking at their outcomes. We have people who do visits, which that's part of accountability and seeing what is actually being done. That's great. I like to hear that people don't have to, or organizations, I should say, do not have to up front the cost. That's a huge barrier for a lot of non-profits, so thank you very much. That's it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Next, we have Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation. I'm also going to have some questions for probably Commissioner Hensley, so she might want to make her way up to the front while I'm asking these. I'm going to say, how did they educate themselves? And I know they're all educated in this area. But my guess is there's a ton of also lobbyists and special interest groups with opioid money. So I'm just kind of curious, how did they inform themselves to kind of get to the point of these priorities? Well, as the mayor alluded to earlier, they spent two years of presentations coming to them monthly. And don't forget, these are seasoned professionals who have more experience than any of us up here. And they already are coming with knowledge, evidence-based knowledge on what is most efficient for combating opioid use. So they already come with that knowledge. And then they've spent, like I said, two years with the presentations and learning even more specific to this commission and to these issues. Moreover, the recovery ready assessment required a deep dive into the resources and gaps that Fayette County has. So that was a humongous tool in creating these recommendations. Great, thanks. And did we, was there any sort of analysis, like is there best practices in other cities? Are people, is there conferences, are there people talking between cities as to what each city is doing? I'm just curious if there's, or since we're all experiencing it at the same time. Sure, absolutely. So our city coordinator, for example, goes to conferences. She keeps abreast of the news and communications that are specific to the opioid abatement money. Great. And then you had mentioned one thing. Are you, were you all thinking of this money as an endowment? Or are you thinking of it as we're going to spend these funds in X number of years? Well, we can't plan for years yet because- Right. I mean, it's different if we knew that we were getting $2 million every year. We don't know. I mean, literally, I recall with that December 22 payment, we received two payments over a couple of days, and over $2 million. Unexpected, we just woke up and it was there. So. But if I might add, I understand what you're saying. A piece of this would be like an endowment. Okay. The piece that's invested would, in my estimation, pay for certain things, whether it's the grants or whatever, in perpetuity. Okay, all right. Which I think is a really good thing because we would have that every year. Right, but you haven't necessarily presented that concept to say, hey, we think that we should put 25% of the money we receive in an endowment to basically fund something in perpetuity. You're just kind of talking broadly right now. Except that we have talked with our commissioner about how, and law, about how we might do this. Okay. So it would be separate, nothing could touch it except- I get it. could be used toward these things. Right, but there isn't anything that ties the money to an endowment, like normally, if you have an endower, they would say that, so that really would be the council making a decision to create an endowment. Yes. Got it. So thank you, and then, Commissioner, I have just a few 46 seconds left, so these are quick ones. How are we going to keep track of the funds? Like, are we going to have a separate fund? I'm so glad you asked. And then, so I'm going to ask a couple of them together so I can get mine in. Will they be part of the standard budget process? So will we see them as a separate item in the book? And then, since it's part of the process, my guess is the council would be the people voting on the eventual use of the different funds every year. Right, okay, so I'm so glad you asked, because we have pending budget amendments ready. To date, this has been held in the general fund, and it's been held there waiting to see what this looks like. We wanted to place it somewhere where it is most appropriate, and what this most looks like is kind of like a local grant. It has restrictions, but they're somewhat variable, and that gives us the most flexibility to be able to do some staffing, to be able to do some grant opportunities, to be able to do all the things that the commission and the mayor would like to do, and then whatever other opportunities would arise. It gives us some flexibility, and so we had the BAs pending this conversation, prepared to move it over to a 3,000 fund. So much like a grant, you would see that come forward as the new year would roll forward, and we would budget those funds. The revenue would show up when we budgeted that year appropriation, and the expenditures. So if we had a macro grant year, or if we had a micro grant year, you would see those come forward every year, and they would run through the BA process. They would not be in the typical budget, because they would run more like a grant cycle than they would like a regular budget fund. But that's kind of how we've been conceptualizing it. We have had it in an interest-bearing account, and have had it invested since we've been acquiring it, and so it's been earning, but to the mayor's point, setting aside that different, more restrictive, more endowment would come back, more endowment-looking would come back, and that would create a different function for those two different pots, one that's more restricted and spinning off that residual revenue, and the other that's more available for use. I understand, thank you so much. Does that answer all the questions? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Nix. This is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I apologize, I'm without a voice, so I'm going to try. I don't have a voice this week, too. Thank you all so much for all your hard work on this. It's been a long time in the making, and I'm really excited that we're having this presentation today. So I'm sorry if I missed it, but are we under the assumption that the funds can be used to support staffing, or it's the interest that will come out of that account that we would? Where's this money going to come from for the staff? So the opioid money that we have right now, so say it's nine million is the only money that we receive, which now we're going to receive more. As long as it is an allowable use, as outlined on, I forget, page five or whatever, that would have to include staffing. So for example, providing recovery treatment, somebody's got to do that, so staffing is allowed on that. Can I go back? Yeah. So whether it's employment training, somebody has to do the employment training, somebody has to do the education and law enforcement, so yes, staffing is allowed. As long as you take it back to we are serving those who are experiencing opioid use disorder with co-occurring substance use disorder and or mental health, or have experienced opioid overdose. Sure, okay. I guess I was thinking more of the internal administration of the funding. So that would go, Brittany, you want to answer that? She's talking about staffing. I know the list says, but state law notes this isn't an exhaustive list, so I just want to make sure that it's going to be a big undertaking for our staff to do all this work, so I want to make sure that we can. She's talking about staffing. I'm thinking of it similarly, and please tell me if I'm wrong, as to our ARPA position that we have. That was a grant-funded position. I get a thumbs up from the commissioner in the back. I just am curious if this would be a similar position. That's a very good comparison, yes. Spectacular. I share some concerns with priority six and the symposium, and I'm curious if you could just give us a little bit more justification for why the commissioner and the mayor felt that this was so important. I was going to ask if I could speak to that at the end, but interestingly enough, to Council Member Lynch's point and yours, that was one of the things that I wondered about, but Dr. Raglan reminded me that the discussion among the commission members was not only professionals who did the work, it would include the public, it would include those who've been in the system, and we called it a pilot because we were envisioning one time. We don't know if it would be something that would be successful on a regular basis, but the whole idea is to include everybody that we can who is looking for education or contacts or that kind of thing. So more of a community conversation versus a conference. And we're not talking about millions of dollars here. Yeah. A few thousand. Sure, okay, all right. And then I guess my, I know Commissioner, you mentioned bringing budget amendments back to us as expenditures were outlined, and my preference would be for us, for you all to come back to us when you have kind of settled on some dollar amounts and give us kind of an overall presentation of, you know, we're going to put X amount of dollars into the grants. We're going to put X amount of dollars into our endowment fund, you know, so that we can kind of get a broad roadmap of where we're going as opposed to just one-off expenses. I think that would allow us to. Periodic update. Awesome. More regular than annual, which is typical, but we could, I mean, certainly, I have no problem doing that. I guess just maybe for the first, yeah, the first go round, I personally would like to see kind of where we're going with what funds we have now. I think that's all, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, I have a few more questions related to the grant program. You talked about it basically kind of doing this like an ESR process. Correct. Can you first tell me who is in charge of, like, reviewing and grading ESR applicants? So it would be experts, so let me back up. Yeah, so let me back up. With ESR, we have our four priority areas, and the review committee is composed of people who are well-versed in that area. So, just like that, ESR, we would have people on the review committee who are well-versed in harm reduction, prevention, recovery efforts. Would that review committee be formed out of the membership of the larger commission? So, can I, do you want me to tell them what we're gonna do with the commission? So, the commission, of course, their purpose was to come up with the recommendations to pass on to the mayor. Now that job has been completed. They will be absorbed into the overall Mayor's Substance Use Disorder Advisory Council, which many of them came from that anyway, and we have quarterly meetings with them and discuss various issues related to substance use in the community. We would invite those in that council, which would include commission members, to be on the committees. Now, we have to be careful, because then, if you are on a committee, you cannot then grade your own application, right? So, they have to think about that, but we also have people in our government who are also experts in either programming or this topic in particular, or grant programming. So, the way we composed our committees, we are very thoughtful about it, particularly so that we have a well-rounded committee with people of different types of experiences. All right, thank you for that. I have kind of another question and thought about the timeline. I think, like, I understand that we obviously need to create a process to think about the strategies as well, but it gives me a little bit of heartburn to think about the fact that we first, we got our first tranche of money three years ago, and there's, I know our nonprofit partners are kind of really eager and waiting for this to help their work. So, thinking about going forward in terms of how to allocate this money, I think a similar process to the ERSR grant makes total sense. This is already kind of what we do. Are we able to spend as we go, basically? Because we have no control over when the next batch of money is gonna come. I am very reticent of the idea of, like, let's see what happens, let's see what happens, let's see what happens, and then we formulate a plan and distribute it. With the money that we have now, the $9 million, can we start spending it? You know what I mean? And then when the next batch comes in, we apply it to the same process and we spend that. No, we will be extremely thoughtful and strategic, as we have been, about allocating to various pots of money. We do not want to bankrupt our account. Remember, first, that we will also be moving money into that interest-bearing account that Council Member Savigny and the mayor discussed. So we will have that, always, and that interest from that as well. But being very strategic about placing money in the pots, the priority areas, again, we don't want to bankrupt our account. So we may be very conservative in our first round of grant submissions. Okay. May I add, quickly? Yeah, please. But I think what you're getting at is, we don't want to sit here and save it all. Correct. Not either. And so we've got a couple different things going on. There are some of those priorities we could spend before the grant process, I think, pretty easily. We've got to work out a lot of the details of mechanisms, but we also don't want to just keep holding onto it, because we know there are folks in the community who can use this. And we're, this spring, I'm expecting and hoping for the Homeless Task Force recommendations, we can look there and see what goes directly to these funds and could be used. So I think it's a yes and a no. We're going to have to set up a process for the grants, which I'm not sure how long that takes, but there are other places where we could spend. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is Council Member Morton. Thank you, Chair. Well, first, thank everyone for all the work that was put into this, all the commission members that are here, the administration for all the work that they, and time that they put into this. I guess the presentation recommends establishing an interest-bearing account to allow funds to grow. Can you clarify if there is a target balance or percentage the administration recommends to hold before making allocations to start with? Again, we have not hashed out those details. We are coming to you today with the mayor's priority recommendations. And going forward, we will come up with that, again, strategic plan of placing money in pots. And you're right, some of the low-hanging fruit, I mean, I don't know how long it takes to create an interest-bearing account, but to me, it's probably fairly quickly. There's things that we can do that are quicker and then other things that may take a little bit more time. But to your question, no, there is not an amount set aside yet. And that will be brought to council before that is made? So, again, we'll be doing the amendments and you'll see where money is placed. But also, as I was talking to Council Member Baxter, I have no problem coming with regular updates where it kind of groups together what we're doing, where we're getting ready to go, just to keep you abreast and so that you're not piecemealing all the amendments together and having to track yourselves. So then, can you share the admin's thoughts or stance on balancing the urgency of the opiate crisis and the need to invest in people now with the strategy of delaying expenditures to grow the fund? Just kind of the balance of that. Can you repeat your question? I'm sorry. Yeah, just balancing, just the stance of the admin stance on balancing the urgency of the opiate crisis right now and the need to invest in people right now with the strategy of kind of going into the interest-bearing and growing that fund. Well, I don't see why we can't do both at the same time, as the mayor alluded to. There is no reason why we're not gonna be doing this, do number one, and number two, and number three, number four. It can all be planned as much as the capacity that we have of our staff at the same time. And so I don't think that we have to say that an interest-bearing account is more important than getting the money out to the community. They're all important. And remember, the interest-bearing account, that interest will then be taken and put back into the community at another time. It ensures our sustainability of programming. Okay, okay, let's see. How will council weigh in if there are differences in perspectives or priorities tied to funding allocations, and how will council's input be incorporated into the priorities for next steps? Well, again, when we come for, however we determine whether it's quarterly or every six months, that'll give you an opportunity as well. We always have the budget amendments, so that will give you an opportunity during council work sessions to weigh in as well. Okay, okay, so, yes, ma'am. Mayor, may I? Yes, ma'am. Just real quickly, because I know you have other items on the agenda. Would it be helpful, I think, also, Council Member Baxter had a similar question, because what we can do, if you kind of say, this looks good, we could come back and say, here's what we're thinking, X amount in the interest-bearing, which I had all along thought maybe three to five million, but we don't want to take everything and put there because that limits us. We could come back with kind of a fleshed-out idea. Would that be helpful? Because I know it is a little, it's a little nebulous, but we wanted to get these to you right away, so we would be happy to come back with some kind of more specific ideas. X amount in an interest-bearing, X amount for grant, whatever. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. I think that would be helpful. Does that help? I do, I do think that would be helpful. And then, and I guess I don't have any other questions, but I just know as we look at our budget process and how we have the administration's priorities and we have council priorities some way, so maybe that the council may have other priorities tied to this that they may feel that should be added in, so I would hope that that could be looked at as well. But for me, I'd like to see these funds be invested into our people directly through Innovative Solutions and other municipalities. These dollars are being invested very broadly, whether it be youth programming, programs that residents can see and feel directly, particularly in areas of prevention and assistance. And I'd like to explore how we can take those efforts, especially looking at direct services like crisis response models, community repair medicine expansion, front-end intervention services, direct assistance, and recovery support services. And then lastly, I know I'm out of time, but when we're looking at those grants, I hope that we do a focus on some of our grassroots and neighborhood-focused organizations that are directly on the ground, have the connections with the people. And I know that sometimes they just can't access some of those grants, so I hope that we get them in there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Allender. Thank you, Chair. And this might be for you, Chair. What is our process on reading this out, and what's our timeline on this? Because I know I was contacted by some constituents that wanted to make some comments, but they can't make comments during the committee meeting, so when will it be at work session, and what's the process? So I was gonna ask the committee what their thought was, but I'll share what my thought is. I feel like today's presentation is the first step with actually moving forward to spend some money and sharing some priorities. I think what got kind of flushed out is that myself and other council members would like to see what the allocations are towards these priorities most immediately. And I think it's probably just to not hold it up any longer is to let that presentation come with the budget amendments to a work session, and then we can kind of dive into it then. I think if it comes back to committee, then it's on the committee schedule, it may slow it down. So I'm inclined to, because I don't think there's any action that we have to take today. This is just a presentation. But we ask the administration to bring us a presentation when they come with the budget amendments to a work session. So will we have a certain time, then, that if people wanted to comment on it, when they would know that would be the time to do that? Well, we'd have to schedule. I mean, it's about scheduling, if that's what you're asking. Right, right. I just know there are some people wanting to make some comments, but in committee it's hard to make comments at this point. Well, just thinking about that, if that's the intent of this committee is that you would bring us this presentation and this plan when you bring the budget amendments. What is realistic, do you think, in the next couple of months? I know we're in the middle of budget, but I think that would help us at least know a time frame and be comfortable moving forward. Yeah, I mean, I don't like to set a date right here without in such immediately and without thinking about everything. But I mean, I would say in the next couple of months, even sooner. Because I was just thinking, if we read it out normally our process is the next month when you have a next committee, and that would be on the 21st. But it doesn't look like we're going to follow that process. So we'll let them come back to us when they're ready. I think Council Member Brown was alluding to coming to work session. Right, right. Right. So that's, of course, we don't have the limitations of timing as with the BFED committees. And when it comes then, we'll know that week before when that's going to happen. So if some people wanted to comment on it, they'd have that opportunity then. Thank you. And I'm not trying to skip order or anything, but I think the question was raised, was there an opportunity for public comment about all these recommendations and about what the commission was considering at the commission meetings? Was there a public comment opportunity? So public comment could all, we had public comment at every commission meeting. So that was one. And then people could submit presentations and whatnot on the commission's website as well. And then they'll have opportunities during the work session. But for two years, there was public comment. And is the commission currently still meeting, and is there still opportunity? No. The commission has been absorbed into the MSU DAC. So there hasn't been opportunity for the partners to comment on the priorities. They had an opportunity to comment on the commission's recommendations. Yes, because it came before the commission. They had to vote for it to go forward to the mayor. And the public at that time had an opportunity to comment on those recommendations. So I want to introduce you to Dr. Stephanie Raglin, if you don't already know her. And she would like to answer that question as the chair. Thank you, Mayor, and good afternoon to the council. As it relates to public comment, we had a couple of town halls in the early stages of our time together. We went one side of town to the other. We wanted to make sure that we were inclusive in having them to come and offer us feedback as to how we would allocate this money. And so we had one on the south side of town and one on the north side of town early back. And then there was also individuals who came to our Opioid Abatement Commission meetings. And they were able to speak at the end of our meeting times as well. And that took place every time that we met. Did that answer your question? Yes, ma'am. I think it did. All right, next we'll go to Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I am interested in the commission's recommendations. Could you send to council a copy of the commission's recommendations as they were presented to the mayor with however that document came, if it came with priorities or explanations for each recommendation? I'm interested in what they actually shared with the administration. Could you send that to council? Absolutely. Awesome, thank you. All right, thank you, Council Member Beasley. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for this great presentation. I do just have a couple quick questions. And one of them is, how many people showed up for public comment when you all had the meetings or the town halls? Does anybody have a rough estimate? I would say there were at least a couple every commission meeting. I can't speak to the town hall specifically. Do you remember, Dr. Adler? That's a junior moment. But nevertheless, if I'm not mistaken, at the town hall on the south side of town, we had maybe 15 or 20 people. The weather, I believe, stopped because there was a severe storm that night. And I'm not so sure about the other side. It may be about the same amount of individuals that came to the other town hall on the north side of town. Thank you. And also, my last question is, how long ago were these town hall meetings? Again, that was in the first year when we were starting to put things together. We thought that that would be advantageous to have input from the community. And then, of course, when we started the recovery-ready communities, then we had input from many of our providers and even those individuals who are not providers to help us to navigate in making these recommendations. OK, so the town halls were like in 2023, 2020? 23. 23. OK, thank you. Thank you, council member. I just have a few points more so than questions. And again, I'll thank you for your work. I'll thank you for moving this forward and bringing it to us. I think a lot of us have been eager to kind of, because we've heard from our nonprofit communities and the challenges they have with receiving money from the state since Lexington has its own tranche of money. I would just like to say, for the micro-grant opportunities, that we look at some of the smaller service providers and allow for opportunity for innovation, kind of like we do with the OP office. But I wouldn't want us to tie the hands of the funding going out just strictly on innovation. If projects get presented in the micro-grant opportunity that yield results, I would like for us to consider that and not make it be completely focused on innovation. And I'm kind of the same mind frame as the vice mayor. I think the spend as we go should be what we do with this money. If we're sitting on about $9 million, I think hopefully, the plan that you bring to us invests most of the money back into the community now, but then also plans, has some sort of formula to say towards that endowment. I think that piece is important as well to keep the work ongoing. And then I'll also say, and I guess this is another question, is somebody needs to be responsible for showing and detailing the results of the work and the funding that's spent. And it was mentioned that we could have something similar to the ARPA financial update in the packet with these funds to just kind of keep us abreast on what's going and how funding is being spent. So I think, I don't want to speak for everyone, but I think most folks are supportive of the priorities. We may just not agree on the order of some of the priorities, but I think having a plan presented to us and some justification will help us better support these recommendations and the funding allocations that go towards them as opposed to BAs getting voted down because we disagree on priorities. So I think that would be helpful. So I know you were looking at calendars, and if this committee is okay, I don't think, I don't, I really don't want to ask them to come back and report. I'd really want to ask them to come to the whole council and present. So I'm saying hey, it's not, and so it seems like that's how we want to move forward. So we'll do that. Is there any other comments or questions to this presentation or item on our agenda? It doesn't look like any. So thank you, Commissioner, thank you, Mayor, and thank you to the task force for your work. Thank you. All right, committee members, that was a heavy lift. So we'll move to the next item on our agenda, and it's the digital accessibility presentation. This plan was in your packet, and I apologize about getting the presentation to you later. But, so I'm going to ask Troy Black, Administrative Specialist, can you all please keep it down? We still have a meeting going on, so thank you. Troy Black, Administrative Specialist and CIO Rogers is going to do today's presentation. Before they go, I just want to thank Troy, Amy Glasscock, Kevin Atkins and his office, Sharon Murphy, Council Member Joseph Hale, Heather Gatti, Jamie Rogers, CIO Rogers, for all the work that they've done on this initiative. So with that, Troy, I'll turn it over to you to present. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm Troy Black. I'm Administrative Specialist in the Office of the Mayor. And I will start with the background. Congress passed the Digital Equity Act in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The act sought to close the digital divide and ensure all communities have the technology and skills needed to participate in the digital economy. Digital accessibility allows individuals to have the necessary information, technology, resources to participate fully in the economy, and society. This includes access to education, job opportunities, health care, civic services, online commerce, and social platforms. Kentucky's digital equity plan was presented early 2024. And the state was awarded federal funding to implement the plan. The plan was developed in collaboration with Kentuckians to address issues like internet affordability. Hey, hold on a second, Troy. I'm sorry. Hey, can you ask them to keep it down? I didn't have to gavel. I was going to have to gavel them down. Sorry about that, Troy. No problem. Please continue. Recognizing the importance of facilitating a plan for our community, LFUCD officials began discussing how we might align with and support the Digital Equity Act of 2021 and the Kentucky Digital Equity Plan. It was determined that we need a local plan to support the digital equity plan. It was determined that we need a local plan inclusive of community voices that identify services and gaps, guides policy, and promotes access to resources. In August 2024, digital accessibility for Lexington was referred to the Urban County Council's Budget, Finance, and Economic Development Committee. Council Member James Brown, in coordination with the offices of the Chief Development Officer and the Chief Information Officer, formed Lexington's Digital Accessibility Workgroup. This is our timeline. August 2024, digital accessibility for Lexington assigned to the Council Committee. September 2024, community members and organizations selected to the workgroup. October 23rd of 2024, Digital Accessibility Workgroup had our first four meetings. December 2024, workgroup began efforts to enhance Kentucky digital asset inventory. March 2025, the public input event and survey discussed by the workgroup. June 2025, the Draft Digital Accessibility Roadmap template for Lexington. And June 28, the Digital Accessibility Expo event was held, and we launched the public input survey. August 2025, survey results from 219 residents to help form the draft plan. October of 2025, survey and the draft plan was presented to the workgroup. February 2026, draft plan was launched on Engage Lexington for public input. And March 2026, the draft plan being presented to the Council Committee. Approach and data gathering. Formed the Lexington Digital Accessibility Working Group guided strategy and identify accessibility barriers. We analyzed case studies from similar cities to understand trends, gaps, and effective solutions. Engage the community through a digital accessibility expo and survey to gather resident input and raise awareness. Data was collected from 219 residents, highlighting challenges with internet access, devices, and digital skills. And we collaborated with key stakeholders such as libraries, schools, nonprofits, workforce partners, and ISPs to help coordinate the efforts. And this is information from our Get Connected Lex Expo. The event began with remarks from the mayor highlighting the importance of digital inclusion in Lexington. Vendors shared resources and connected attendees to digital services in Lexington. Sessions covered internet safety and AI, accessibility and education and workforce development, and technology's role in healthcare. The event also included a panel discussion, a catered lunch, and the official launch of the city's digital accessibility survey to gather community input on barriers to access. And I will hand it over to Liz from here. Clicker, so as Troy mentioned, we launched our community survey after the expo event, gathered over 200 responses, good mix of council districts represented, you know, different age demographics, that sort of thing. That said, it's not necessarily a scientific survey. This was not a random sample and all the, you know, data quality metrics involved, but it is a good data point for us to consider, was a good data point for us to consider. We noticed that challenges vary across neighborhoods and age demographics. Language barriers still exist. Obviously, there's low income challenges and also in Lexington and Fayette County in particular, a rural and urban differentiator. So that kind of led us to, we need targeted solutions for this. This is not a one size fits all remedy to this challenge for this community. So the three themes that sort of emerged from the survey data along with data that we gathered from the US Census, from the state's Office of Broadband Development, from resources like ISP reports that offer provider data and that sort of thing, are that we have three kind of pillars of challenges in the community. The first being availability. This says coverage of Fayette County is at 99%. That was June of last year. I shared with you all some more up-to-date information. We're getting closer to 100 across the county and we'll hope to achieve that later this year. But deployment in the rural areas is still a challenge. We do have a lot of competition in Fayette County, which is good. There are 11 sort of larger area service providers that now include satellite and fixed wireless offerings. From our survey, we did have 13% report that they had no service or slow service. Public Wi-Fi was also something that we tried to measure here. The reach and reliability of that kind of varies, but we do have public Wi-Fi at several of our parks. Gatton Park is a good example of that, where there's Wi-Fi across the park that was provided by one of the service providers in the area. Still, just a data point that we measure in terms of availability. Affordability is the largest barrier by a long shot. You'll see that 96% of our survey respondents cited that the cost of broadband service was a barrier. Many providers do, though, have affordable plans defined as about $30 to $40 per month for, I believe it's at least one gig broadband. There are special plans for seniors and students. There's additionally the Lifeline plan, which is run through a federal program for low-income households, is still active. So we kind of think there that just amplifying those messages, consolidating that information in one spot may be a good way to get the word out about those plans. Cost of internet-capable devices is also a significant contributor at 78%. Most people in Kentucky, most people in Fayette County do have a mobile phone that has some sort of access to the internet, but there's sort of a difference between, you know, there's phone activities and there's laptop activities. It's kind of the way we think about those things. Some things are much better on a larger profile experience rather than a mobile phone. And then there's a significant gap with digital skills. Most of the training that's offered in this area is focused on employment or re-employment, workforce development, things along those lines. But that misses populations that aren't looking for a job, that aren't actively seeking to skill up or skill out or re-employ. So some of those opportunities are misaligned with groups that are in need. In particular, I think we looked at, again, low-income households, we looked at seniors, we looked at justice-involved individuals, folks who speak English as a second language. So definitely need to try to find some training opportunities more in line with their needs. One of the things that emerged from the survey in terms of topics of interest was online safety and cybersecurity along just with regular digital literacy. So privacy, I think, is becoming a big deal with particularly the aging population. And then we did see 58% of respondents that expressed interest or openness to learning. That's not topic-specific, but across the board. So our strategies moving forward are really to just align the resources that are already available and to also be mindful of this challenge across all of our other programming that exists. We also recognize this is not, the government is not the only solution to this problem. We have a lot of non-profits, we have a lot of for-profit businesses that are sort of operating in this space. So what we hope to do, first and foremost, in the availability pillar, reliable internet community-wide. Again, we hope to have some news to share on that by the end of this year, but the fiber projects to be completed, we will still have some outliers, I believe we'll have some multi-dwelling units in particular that may still fall into those service gaps, but more opportunities than ever to get them connected. Fixed wireless is kind of catching on as a good solution for those types of facilities. And then do things like creating an online resource, consolidating information about financial assistance from either state or federal programming or from service providers. Again, those affordable plans still exist, they're just maybe not advertised very well. And then there are connections to be made with existing programs. Again, for-profit businesses are offering this training. I think we can align some of our existing government programming across the board here. And then amplify digital learning opportunities and literacy. The laptop giveaway that we did at Black & Williams Center a couple of months, six weeks or so ago, is a good example that wasn't just a laptop giveaway, that was paired with a learning experience. So, you know, a device in your hand is a good thing to have, but if you don't know how to have meaningful online interactions by way of that device, you're not gonna be able to participate fully in online life. ADA accessibility is also emerging here as an issue. It's something that we have looked at during our website design in particular, trying to make sure that all that content is accessible to people using assistive technologies, you know, for vision impairments or that sort of thing. But making sure that the resources we create and share online are accessible to individuals of all abilities is also gonna kind of underpin our efforts here. Just a few examples of other models and opportunities to follow. Our workforce development group is so small but mighty. They do very cool work over there. And I know that Amy has already kind of shared a couple of things upcoming for this year. Opportunities that align with AI literacy training in addition to, you know, your good old-fashioned digital literacy. The Lexington Public Library. If you have a library card, you have access to gobs of free content from lynda.com. That's, I think, imparted with LinkedIn Learning now, but if you have a library card, all of that is free. Sometimes it's topical, sometimes it's broader, but it's something that my team uses pretty often. Jubilee Jobs, they attended our expo and are just a really good resource for, again, the employment angle of all of this. You guys heard a presentation from Partners for Youth just last week, two weeks ago, and their Digital Scholars and MetroCats programs really align with this need as well. And then we had a couple of examples for digital literacy among the senior population. There's, out at the senior center, they do weekly technology with Brad, and Brad shows up to help people with their devices or help them get online or, you know, do their telehealth appointments and that type of thing. We also had a participant in our work group from K-North, they have a program called Digital Dashers that sort of pairs digital navigators with seniors to kind of help them with setting up their printer at home or, you know, again, navigating through those online experiences. Goodwill Kentucky launched a program this year that offers kind of entry-level training on Google Gemini. So they're reaching those people seeking work in the AI space or just seeking to improve their understanding. And that's available through the end of 2026. So again, these things exist, they're out there. It's just they've never been out there altogether. So I think our forward efforts are really gonna focus on consolidating those resources, you know, making the city's website maybe a connector to get this information out to people more efficiently and more uniformly. And I think, oh, that brings us to next step. Sorry, Council Member Brown. So we do need to prepare a final draft of our digital accessibility plan. I believe there's a draft copy in your packets. But we need to fine tune that a little bit. We'll have council consider adopting a resolution that sort of just acknowledges the work and supports the different plan elements as they continue to mature. Refer some recommendations that fall under the responsibility of existing LFUCG programs or business units. And then continue working with our partners, continue identifying additional partners, connecting people with opportunities, sort of the space we intend to live in going forward. And now I think we're ready for questions. And I hope Troy didn't leave. He's right behind you. Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. And thank you, Troy, for your work on this as well. Committee members, are there any questions? All right, Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your work on this and for the presentation today. I know that we, in our fund balance conversations, we allocated, I think, $50,000 towards this initiative. Do you anticipate, did that? No, we pulled it back. Okay, so then would that funding request come through our budget to support the action steps? It may. I think the CIO and myself wanna have some conversations about how that may get implemented, whether we ask for it in this coming budget or maybe wait till fund balance, just depending on timelines. So you may see an ask come forward. Okay, thank you, because what I appreciate when we're doing these action plans is that we are identifying goals and strategies to reach those goals, similar to what we did with the Street Safety Task Force. But I do think when we are creating an action plan, we also need to identify the resources to implement that, because we don't want all of this great work that you've done to then kind of sit on a shelf. So thank you. Thank you. Commissioner, did you wanna speak to that at all, about potential funding? No, yeah, I fully agree. I think for the low-hanging fruit here, we can get creative with existing resources. We're not biting off any big expenses coming right out of the gate. You know, we're honestly trusting in the charity of some of our providers here, too. You know, again, there's been significant movement away from the affordable connectivity program that existed at the federal level for so many years. We had, in Lexington, 20,000, 25,000 subscribers to that, and that's gone away. But it's been replaced somewhat by the service providers actually kind of lowering those barriers a little bit. I think increased competition in this market really helps with that as well. So those are sort of the further-out-there goals, but some of the near-line things that we identified here, we may be able to achieve with existing resources. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. I did struggle when we first, like I remember, sitting at a table and having a discussion about this a while ago. What did the act actually do from the federal government? Like I know that the, like it said that the state was awarded something. What was the state really awarded? Was it funding to create a plan and then support local plans in some form or fashion? I just struggled to understand what actually occurred. So there was to be from the NTIA a funding opportunity for digital equity specifically. Right. That was decommissioned. That program went away. There are still potentially, with the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, the BEAD program, which the state was awarded a little over a billion dollars for, there will be what's called non-deployment funds associated with that. So once those funds are exhausted to build out broadband capabilities across the state, there'll be some of money left over for non-deployment. And that aligns directly with what we're trying to do here. But no one knows what that number is gonna be yet. There's actually like as we stand here, conversations going on at the federal level about what happens with the non-deployment funds. Okay, that's my thought was, yeah, Kentucky was going, I mean, the thought as a state, you would be focused on getting internet access out to every region in the state that you can either via Kentucky Wired or whatever that, however we're pushing the money to make that happen. And then this is kind of like, this is then basically now what are the extra things that we can do to support people's access and actually using things, correct? Yes, and I will say that if future funding opportunities present themselves, you are usually more competitive if you have a plan. Yes, so yeah, we're a little forward looking with that and we'll stay hopeful, but having the plan is sort of step one. Okay, that makes sense. And I did read that it looks like you have a written plan, at least that was attached in the packet. And I like that it made sense. And I do appreciate the work that you all did on that. All right, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions? So I think the next step would be maybe to come back to this committee with the final draft of the plan and a draft resolution, adopting the plan and recognizing the work group for their work. We could make a motion and move it out and do it to the full committee if the committee so chooses, but I don't have a committee meeting. We don't have a committee meeting, I don't think, until June. I think it's my last committee meeting before the budget just takes it over. Is there a motion to move this forward and bring a resolution to the full council? Do you want to? Is that what you want? Yeah, I do want. I'll make a motion to bring it forward. Second. All right, so. Oh, there was a visual. All right, Council Member Hill made a motion and it was second to move this forward and move this plan forward and a resolution to the full council. Is there any questions or discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any that oppose? Hearing none, that motion passes. Before we wrap that up, I'd also like to thank Leighton, our PIO, and Partners for Youth for their help with public engagement with this effort. They were very, very helpful. And Christy Stanbaugh as well. And Christy Stanbaugh, the Senior Center and the library were great partners. Thank you all. Thank you all for the presentation. The next item on our agenda is the review of items referred. I'm going to hold off on that unless anybody has a motion to take anything out. Yeah, we'll pick that back up at the next committee meeting. And that brings us to the end of our agenda. And this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶