# Budget & Finance Committee Meeting - March 24, 2009 > Auto-transcribed civic record · March 24, 2009 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/820 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/820?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2009-03-24 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 12,391 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Budget and Finance Committee met on March 24, 2009, at 1:00 p.m., with Kevin Stinnett presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session, including financial reports, budget planning, and property management matters. One motion was voted on and approved, and the committee heard one public comment. The meeting covered informational presentations on the financial reports for February 2009, a proposed Committee of the Whole budget meeting for fiscal year 2010, and Council Links, while also taking action on the sale and disposal of obsolete property proceeds. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on March 24, 2009: * Kevin Stinnett * Ed Lane * Jim Gray * Linda Gorton * Chuck Ellinger * Andrea James * Tom Biues * Julian Beard * George Myers * Peggy Henson No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Request Ordinance on Asset Sale Proceeds** [timestamp: 01:00:01] A motion was made by Linda Gorton and seconded by Andrea James to request the Department of Law to draft an ordinance requiring proceeds from the sale of assets to be returned to the fund from which the assets were originally purchased. The motion passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed two financial matters affecting the budget: **Debt Service Savings** An amendment was approved to recognize $1,600,000 in debt service savings for FY 2009. These savings resulted from delayed bond issuance. [timestamp: not available] **Property Sale Proceeds** An appropriation was approved to return proceeds from the sale of obsolete property to the originating fund. [timestamp: not available] ## Public Comment [timestamp: 01:01:36] Warren Rogers addressed the council regarding public golf course subsidies and oversupply in Lexington. Rogers presented data demonstrating that the city subsidizes its golf courses by approximately $1.2 million annually. He noted that each round of golf costs taxpayers $8.50 in subsidies. Rogers recommended that the city darken all municipal golf courses to eliminate the ongoing deficit. He suggested that the land currently used for golf operations could be repurposed for other uses. ## Contested Items **Procedural Introduction of Warren Rogers' Presentation** A procedural dispute arose regarding how Warren Rogers' presentation was introduced to the meeting. Andrea James and Julian Beard raised concerns about the process, specifically objecting to the lack of public notice prior to the meeting and the failure to review the presentation materials before the session began. James and Beard characterized the approach as improper and argued that it deviated from standard meeting procedures. Their concerns centered on transparency and preparation—asserting that the public and attendees should have had advance notice of the presentation and adequate opportunity to review its contents before discussion commenced. The disagreement reflected broader questions about procedural compliance and whether the introduction of the presentation followed established protocols for public meetings. ## Financial Reports for February 2009 and Discussion [timestamp: 00:03:00] Mary Fister presented the financial results for February 2009 to the board. The report highlighted several key findings regarding the organization's financial performance during that month. **Revenue and Expenses** The presentation noted strong revenue performance for February. Personnel expenses were reported to be on target, indicating that payroll and related costs were tracking as expected against the budget. **Debt Service Savings** A significant development was the projected $1.6 million in debt service savings. This savings resulted from a delayed bond issuance, which reduced the organization's near-term debt obligations and provided financial relief. **Fire Department Overtime Concerns** The fire department was identified as operating over budget on overtime expenses. This overage prompted discussion among board members Kevin Stinnett, Andrea James, and Ed Lane, along with presenter Mary Fister. **Planned Budget Amendment** In response to the fire department's overtime overages, the board planned to pursue a budget amendment to address the discrepancy and bring spending in line with revised projections. **Outcome** The financial report was presented for informational purposes, providing the board with a comprehensive overview of February's financial position and identifying areas requiring attention through the planned budget amendment process. ## Proposed Committee of the Whole Budget Meeting FY 2010 Jerry Southers presented the proposed schedule for FY 2010 budget hearings to the Committee of the Whole [timestamp: 00:27:07]. The presentation outlined changes designed to improve the budget process's clarity and efficiency. **Key Changes Proposed** The proposed schedule includes an earlier start for Council Links compared to previous fiscal years. Additionally, Southers outlined a two-phase report-out process intended to streamline how budget information is presented and reviewed. **Process Context** Southers noted that no public hearing has been held on council recommendations in the past, indicating this represents a shift in the budget hearing procedures. **Participants** The discussion involved Jerry Southers, Kevin Stinnett, and Andrea James. **Outcome** This agenda item was presented as informational, with no formal action required at this time. ## Council Links The committee reviewed Council Link assignments and discussed revisions to improve the program's consistency and communication. Key participants in this discussion included Kevin Stinnett, Andrea James, Ed Lane, and Linda Gorton. [timestamp: 00:33:08] The committee examined the general link questions and report-out forms used for Council Links. A primary focus of the discussion was implementing a management summary format to standardize how information is presented and reported. The committee emphasized the importance of ensuring that all Council Links are publicly communicated, reflecting a commitment to transparency and accessibility of the program's activities and outcomes. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with the committee documenting the current state of Council Link assignments and the proposed revisions to improve consistency across the program. ## Sale & Disposal of Obsolete Property Proceeds [timestamp: 00:38:56] The committee discussed the handling of proceeds from the sale of obsolete property, specifically addressing concerns about funds that had been purchased with urban services money. Andrea James raised concerns about proceeds from property sales being returned to the general fund rather than retained in their originating fund. David J. Barberie clarified the legal framework governing this practice, explaining that the Kentucky Constitution requires proceeds from the sale of property purchased with urban services funds to be returned to the originating fund from which the property was originally purchased. The discussion centered on establishing a formal policy to codify this constitutionally mandated practice. Committee members including Bill O'Mara, Linda Gorton, Ed Lane, and George Myers participated in the deliberation. The committee passed a motion to codify this practice through an ordinance, formalizing the requirement that property sale proceeds be returned to their originating funds in accordance with Kentucky constitutional requirements. **Outcome:** Approved --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to request the Department of Law to draft an ordinance requiring proceeds from the sale of assets to be returned to the fund from which the assets were originally purchased --- ## Full transcript Thank you. A little after 1 o'clock on March the 24th, this is the Budget and Finance Committee meeting. Hopefully all my members have an agenda there in front of them. Our first item of business is our financial report for the month of close of February 2009. I believe Mary Pfister will come up and walk us through it. Everyone should have a copy there in front of them. Mary, thank you for getting this report to us. I understand it's hot off the press, so I appreciate the effort you are putting into getting this information to us this time of year, especially with your staffing levels being down and where they're at. And thank you to Bill O'Mara for acting commissioner role. We appreciate your support and help, too. Thank you all. I'm glad to be here today. You have before you the operating results for the general fund, the family care center, the donation fund, and our other special revenue funds, which houses our HOPE VI grant activities, all rolled up into one report, which corresponds to what you see as the general fund in our certified financial fund. annual reports. The story this month is very similar to last month. Employee withholdings, we did see that they were up in February from last February. A lot of that was due to the timing of when the December payrolls were due. December payrolls are due at the end of the last month for a large percentage of our employers. So since January 31st was on a Saturday, they would have had until February 1st. So that explains a lot of the inflation that you see as far as month-to-month for the month of February. Year-to-date our license fees are tracking above our monthly budget of about by about 2.8 million dollars. You can see that they are over from last year as well. They're up from last year. We had projected, budgeted it to grow at about 2.5%. We don't think we'll be real far off from that. So that's good news. The business returns, you can see that they're up 1.2 million year-to-date, and we are anticipating that we may have quite a few refund requests in April, given the economy and what's going on in that account. Insurance premiums are up as well, and that's kind of a category that is really hard to target. But the long and the short of it is that revenues seem to be coming in relatively strong. to budget. We have some items that were budgeted like a property tax sales for $3 million that we know is not going to happen. And we believe that we won't make budget on all of our revenues but we'll be fairly close. On the expense side, personnel you can see if you look at the what we're calling our scorecard, our dashboard, the 8.5 by 11 sheet, you can see that last year at this time in the very last column, our personnel expenses were 61% of the year in expenses. Right now we're tracking it being 61.1%, so we're right on target with last year as far as how we are coming in. The The only thing that's really notable in personnel is that the fire is over budget in their overtime. We will be bringing forth a budget amendment to adjust their budget, to take action, to get them in line. You should be seeing that. It's not on this week's council, but the next work session. Operating, we've been taking a lot of efforts to contain the cost in this category. We actually working back some time ago in November, the mayor had asked departments to plan on receiving an annualized 2.5% cut in this area. We have the plans from the departments and we are in the process of finalizing an actual budget amendment so that we make that reduction formal. So that will help us to secure funds in the operating expense area. So are there any questions on the reports? Okay, members, if you'll log in with the computer here, if you'd like to have any questions for Ms. Pfister. I'll go ahead and start off with one while some of us are logging in. Go back to the information you gave on the personnel expense for fire. Do you have the total amount of overtime used prior year to date as well as what we're currently at? Because I know there's been some differences in how we've accounted for it in our budgets every year. We used to only put in half the amount at the beginning of the year. Then we'd always come back traditionally and do a budget amendment. I think we did it differently this year and the year before we put it all in up front. And I'm a little concerned. I know you're bringing us a rather large budget amendment next Tuesday as to how that compares to prior years in terms of use of overtime. Can you get that information if you don't have it with you today? I do not have it with me, but actually that's one of the things that we've done. I seem to have lost my ink pen. One of the things that we've done in looking at fires over time and projecting where they'll be at year end is we've looked at what historically they've used from this point until June 30th. And we've used that as our measure because things are seasonal as far as what special events they cover, things like that that can drive some of their overtime. But I can get you more information on their overtime. Yeah, and when you look at that, I understand that the events we have remaining, but also how much we have currently spent and what events have occurred that may be different or cost more than they did in the past two. So if we could get that information prior to getting that budget amendment, that would be great. Okay. And then also, if you can clarify for those watching exactly what we're talking about when we say there could be large refund requests on the business returns in April, I think there's a confusing notion out there about what we're talking about. Can you explain that a little bit more about why we may see that number go down? Okay. For businesses who operate within Fayette County, we have them pay us a quarterly estimated tax payment, very much like self-employed individuals do with their federal income taxes. So they pay an estimated amount each quarter. We know that, based on history, that a lot of our employers, when they do their tax projection, they just pay in one quarter of what they owed last year. We are anticipating that because of the economy, folks will experience a decline in their net profits for their business for the year, which will therefore make them owe us less. So if they've been paying in based on what they owed us last year, and this year's tax liability ends up being less than that, we will have to refund money back to them. Good. Thank you. I think it's important everyone understand why we're anticipating that refund on April 15th. Let's see. I had several council members signed up. The first council member up is Vice Chair Lang. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the spreadsheet, the legal size, under the operating expenses category for the month of January and the month of December, the actual expenses were down substantially from the monthly budgeted number. Is there some reason for that? Is there some deferred or delayed payment, or is that actual savings we're looking at? I think it's just timing of payments. Remember that everything that we have is a cash basis. We stay cash basis until June 30th. So it's probably just the timing, but I can look to see if there's anything in particular. I'm not aware of there being any extraordinary expense savings this year in those months that will drop to our bottom line. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next I have up Council Member James. Thank you. Chair. Mary, you talked about the refunds that will potentially be requested. How much did we appropriate for any refunds? Like, did we put a line item? No, we do not budget that separately. It's just net within the revenue line. Bill and I have had conversations about breaking that out so that we can contract more closely. And is that, does it have to be paid out of the FY09, or does it sometimes roll over? Bill, do you want to take that as far as the timing of the refund? We usually audit the return to verify the refund before paying it out. And so the complexity of that review determines the time from when it's requested versus when the refund is made. So the answer is actually both years. Some will come out of 09, some will come out of FY10, depending on the complexity of the review and when we get that completed. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman James. Councilman Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Bill, back on the business returns and the quarterly estimated taxes and this refund is an annual refund, correct? Well, it would be a refund on their annual net profit return. And it's made once a year? If there is a refund due. If they have overpaid us, then they would ask for that when they file the return. And to further give you a background, some corporations tell us just to apply it to next year. Well, that was going to be my next question. And we're not anticipating many people telling us to do that this year. Well, in this climate, that probably wouldn't be a good business decision. But that was my next question is whether there is a mechanism to apply it forward. And it sounds like there is. It's to the taxpayer's discretion. Okay. All right. Thanks. Good question. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Bill, sorry. I still think it'd be good to have you folks with mics on so that you could just stand up and talk at any place. On these business estimates, is there, I mean, if they're good estimates from the businessman, has he not been sending in less money all along and not refunding, not expecting a refund? Or do we have a rule similar to the federal government that you've got to pay up to 90 percent? We follow the federal, it's 90% of this year, 100% of last year to avoid penalties. So many software, I'm told, just automatically put in one quarter of last year and then they have to override it if they want to go toward the 90% of current year. So we many times see them paying based on whatever last year's return was. Okay. I never quite understood that as far as a businessman would be concerned, but as your practice of experience, I mean. Well, we're talking about tax managers in a large corporation or CPA firms for smaller corporations. So it's a matter of their approach, avoid penalties, take the safe approach 100% of last year or if you want to maximize cash flow, you try to project out and hit that 90% number. Okay. Thank you. Does any other committee member have a question for Mary or Bill? I do have two questions to follow up. One, on the franchise fees, I know they're tracking up, but they are generally a percentage agreement, correct? And one reason why they may be tracking upward is because obviously we've had some rate increases with a couple of our utilities here recently. Everything you said is correct, and it's seasonality. Was it very cold? Was it very hot? Was it very dry? Was it very wet? So our franchise fees go with how the usage goes with that utility as well as the rate base. Yeah, and we don't have any flat fee franchises, do we? They're all percentage? Everything I'm aware of is a percentage. Okay. And then the last question, I guess, for Mary. Under total expenses, we have in there for this February 2009 number about a $9 million deficit in there or $9 million less in expenses. Some of that or most of that is debt service that we haven't issued bonds on, correct? Right. I know we're going to talk about that here next, so I'll bridge into that discussion. Okay. That's okay. During the budget preparation for 2009, there was a placeholder in the budget for anticipated debt issues with a debt service price tag of $6.3 million. That was put into the FY09 budget because it was anticipated that the FY07 CIP bonds and the FY08 CIP bonds would be issued. They were not issued early enough to where we would have to have a debt service payment in FY09. So, therefore, we are going to have a savings in our debt service for FY09 from budget. Any idea of what that savings will be? Is it going to be the full 6.3 or the 5.9 we talked about last week? Well, last time you met on the budget, I mean the council met, you had budget amendments that you heard that were reappropriating some of those funds for SALT and reappropriating some of the funds for utilization by bill for some temporary employees. So I think we've already reappropriated about $265,000 of that. So there's still about $1.6 million sitting there. But I need to caution you that that $1.6 million is not going to drop straight to our bottom line because we have things that we know are going to happen. For instance, we budgeted $3 million for a real property sale that we do not anticipate actually happening by June 30th. So that's $3 million. dollars. We budgeted a million dollars in stormwater revenue that the stormwater fee, even if it was passed today, we would not be able to bring that million dollars in. So that's a million dollars that has to be funded somehow. So now we're up to four million. We have health insurance and the health insurance fund we are projecting it to have a deficit this year. We're still working with Humana to finalize the numbers, but the original projections that we had received on cost estimates for Humana, we have not held true. And so they have come back. They've told us some of the reasons that they feel like that we are experiencing a higher cost than what they have projected, but that will have to be funded. Right now, the rough estimates are that that will be about a $3.6 million deficit. And the general funds portion of that will be about $2.9 million because we allocate that based on headcount. So you can see that very quickly it gets eaten up. 6.3 is zero very quickly. Go back to the $1 million stormwater anticipation. Okay. Have we already spent that money, do you know, or is that just anticipated spending? Is there a way to cut that expense down by not doing some of the things the last 90 days of the year? I don't know what our current expenditures are, Bill. Do you know off the top of that? I mean, are we already busted their budget, or are we waiting? Actually, Charlie Martin and I have a meeting Wednesday to go over that exact point and try to identify that number. Very good. As in tomorrow. Okay. What about the $3 million real property? Can you explain to this committee about what kind of property we're talking about, land, vehicles? What made that real property up? Actually, I think the council knows more about that than I do. Mary, do you? I think it was a piece of property. And, again, I think that you guys probably know more about that. It was 100% that property, one piece? Okay. Anybody have any other questions for Mary or Bill before we? Councilman James. Thank you, Chair. Mary, my question is more procedural than actual on this issue. But in a case where, well, we all knew that the FY07 and 08 were delayed, but it was probably, it took more conversation for me to draw the connection between the debt service budgeted amount being there and sitting there available for potential projects that needed to be funded or deficits that needed to be made up. And I think we kind of found out by fluke because we saw some budget amendments come through. How can we work on a process that lets us know, the same as we know that we don't meet the retiree numbers, we get, you know, we've constantly heard those updates. We're not meeting the retirees that we're expecting. So we hear a lot about what we're not meeting. But in this case, we had a potential of 6.3 that the council have put in their budget. What communication needs to happen so that we are aware in advance of the budget amendments coming through that something like this is a potential? because we're sitting on things as well and have some things that can't come forward from the legislative perspective. Do you have any ideas of how to improve that process? One of the things we may want to look at is quarterly having us present a projection of where we think our year-end is going to be because I think that if we had actually presented projected revenues and projected expenses, then these items that are kind of our laundry list that we keep tabs of, this is going to be up but this is going to be down, would be flushed out so that you all would be more aware of it. But we are constantly meeting to make sure that we're striving to keep a balanced budget. And so we monitor things on a monthly basis. but typically the presentation to you is more on what has actually happened, not what we're projecting per se. So maybe it might be helpful if quarterly we start to do some kind of projected year-end presentation to you. Is that an odd request or is that something that typically happens when you talk about a budget? I would think that it's not an odd request. I just kept feeling like that I'd missed a conversation, and I try to stay pretty up on the budget, and I just had not heard that debt service being available for you. So I do want to encourage any kind of process that we can help with as a council to make sure, and it might even be that through, even as we're figuring out our budget, that eventually becomes the urban county government budget, that if we have a laundry list of things that we create from the get-go, because there were things that we did at budget time because we had to because of budgetary constraints. So I think if we can have that thought even in our links, committee members, you know, if there's something we're not able to fund and we're cutting things, as we look at the 7% and the 15% cuts in each division of government that we make, if money becomes available in a situation such as this, then this is kind of the top priority because I do think we need to look at that from a legislative perspective as well. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Chair. One more thing that I want to add, and I forgot to mention. Last month when you received the long report debt service was part of the operating. This month we pulled debt service out, so if you start to compare this to last month, you'll see that the numbers have changed and it's because we pulled debt service out so that it would be more useful information. Okay? Very good. One point to make on that debt service, it will be included in FY 2010 budget. Yes, we have already issued the bonds and actually we did get some savings. We issued the 2007 and 2008 three and five year projects together and they ended up with a debt service of $3.6 million, and then we issued the 7 and 8, 10 and 20 year projects together, and they ended up with a debt service of $2.2 million. So we have a total of $5.8 as compared to what we projected at $6.3. So we do have, on a going forward basis, good news that we, you know, the market in that regard did help us. Very good. Anybody have any other questions for Mary? Thank you, ma'am. We appreciate the update in the report. Next on our agenda, we have the proposed committee of the whole budget hearing meetings for FY 2010. If everyone could please turn to the second page there. Jerry Sethers is going to briefly go through each one of those items, kind of give you a snapshot of what we're doing at those meetings and what we expect the outcomes to be, and justify a couple of these dates on here. I know a couple of people had questions as to why we schedule at certain times. So Jerry, if you could briefly just go through that list for us. Okay. This should be fairly familiar to most of you. This is kind of the schedule we've used or the approach for kind of scheduling the meetings to ratify the mayor's proposed budget. Meeting number one, as you see, the mayor's proposed budget, that has been moved up. Initially it was scheduled for 4-7. Now it's been moved up to 4-14. Also, what's different about this one is this will be the first year that Mary is going to be providing a kind of an overview of what's in the Mayor's proposed budget. Last year there were some problems and confusion and concerns. People misinterpreted some things. So to maybe attack that and try to keep confusion to a minimal, we're going to have that meeting a couple of days after the mayor releases his proposed budget. Also the council links will be able to start earlier this year than what they've done in the past. If you look at item three, we're recommending that to begin on 4-17 to begin having their meetings and doing their scheduling and contacting the various departments that they'll be working with. And also if you look at item number seven and meeting, I mean meeting number seven and meeting number nine, we're breaking the links up into two report outs. Last year and in prior years that's been one of the big problems is we've tried to do the report out all on the same day and it's created confusion. So now this gives you a little more space and a little more time and hopefully you get a good product. The rest of the items pretty much, if you look at meetings 10 through 17, they're pretty much the meetings that have been like they were in the past. Those are the primary changes this year as compared to meetings in the past. Any questions? Councillor James. Thank you, Chair. Jerry, in the past, has there been a public hearing regarding the council recommendations? No, not the council recommendations. It's a requirement that I think it's 30 days after the mayor proposes his budget or her budget that there has to be a public hearing on that budget. But to answer your question, no, there hasn't been a public hearing per se just on council recommendations. Okay. I did want to just mention to committee members that I guess we have flexibility in this, so if committee members felt it something that we wanted to share with the public before we have first reading or at the first reading or something, we should maybe look at a public hearing to hear from our citizens on our recommendations. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, and good point. I know normally we do have some time during some of those counseling meetings. We do often hear from the public or different organizations too. So we can pick a day as we get closer to that deadline to have some more information from the public. Does anybody else have a question on the calendar itself? We did in our meeting in determining the calendar also talk about which links would report out first and in what order. So we like to go ahead and assign an order so that way, link chairs, you can expect on when to be able to report out. Because I know in years past we kind of just went along with whoever was ready. This will give a little bit better definition to the process and allow you to be a little bit more prepared. So what we came up with was Council Member Lane, who was chair of the General Services Committee. We'll go first. And, again, that first report out of the day is on May the 14th. May the 14th. Public safety, which I'm a member of that link. Council Member Crosby as a chair will report out second after the general services link. Third will be the public works and environmental quality link and Council Member James as chair. Fourth will be the finance, budgeting, and social service and outside agencies. And then the last link to go would be the general government link, which is normally the largest link and has the most outside meetings of people outside of government. So some of the rationale is try to let the links go who only have people to meet with inside government. That way you can go ahead and schedule your meetings a little easier than our other folks who have to meet with outside schedules. That's from Lane. Just for clarification, all those meetings won't be on the 14th. They're going to be scheduled for other days. In other words, only you and I are going to come out on the 14th. Right, right. They begin on the 14th, and we'll pick back up after the chamber trip on May the 26th, which will be meeting number nine. Councilman Blues. So you're thinking that finance and budgeting and general government will probably go on the latter date? Yes, sir. Probably only on the 14th would be general services and public safety. Okay. Thank you. Again, we're starting a little early on those, but, again, it's to give us more time for our deliberation so we don't have to rush so much at the end of the schedule to get the budget passed. Anybody else have any other questions on the schedule? Thank you, Jerry. You're welcome. Next on our agenda, we have the actual council links. Everyone should have a list of the committee assignments. Also in our packet, if everyone could refer to page, actually, four of the packet, the general link questions, these are some questions that we've identified in the past. some specific items to ask for each link so there's some consistency. On the next page after that is a proposed budget link report out format, and that's in the Microsoft Excel. We don't necessarily have to fill in the blank, but we can do it on the Microsoft Excel. And what we tried to do was look at general information that you can have a snapshot of that department or division so we can easily look at anybody's link and see that same information. We're just trying to get some kind of consistency on reporting out so we don't have to flip through volumes of paper. So this year we necessarily don't want volumes and volumes of everything you went through. We want more of a report, a snapshot and a summation of everything you covered, your recommendations, your additions to the budget, your subtractions, so we don't have to kill too many more trees than we have to. So I'm open to comments, suggestions if we want to change it. Council Member James. On the council, the link questions, I think one and two, because the hearings that I've sat in thus far, there aren't any increases. I mean, pretty much everybody's going either the 7% or 15% or flat. So I think those one and two need to be revised in some way. I'm not sure of the wording that would be appropriate, but that probably won't get to where we need to get to. On one, you could possibly put in any major increases or decreases. You know, they could have a decrease in that could affect their operating for the next year. Okay. And then in number two, that is FY 2010. This was just the questions from last year. This is not, to me, the final format. Oh, I'm sorry, yes. This past year. Anybody else have any questions on the questions or comments? Sure. The only point I would make is on the questions, that's just kind of a starting point. What I've noticed in the past is that these are kind of opening questions, and as the links move and interview their different groups, then they build their own database of questions. But this is kind of just starter questions. Well, and with that, I think that's been – that's almost a weakness of the link, because the links, because if we're really not consistent with our questions, then when we come forward with the recommendations, then they're not really comparable in the recommendations that come forward. So, you know, where somebody might have more questions about personnel or somebody might have more questions about facilities or something like that, I think the more consistent language we have in the links, the better it is for reporting. Anyone else have any comments or questions on our link process? That's our link. Yeah, the only thought I have is keep in mind that we're going to be reviewing a lot of materials, and I would encourage everybody to use a management summary format as much as possible for the materials that are presented when we do the report out. Just a thought. I don't know what that means. I'm sorry, would you say that again? I didn't understand what you said. Management summary report out? Yeah, management summary is rather than have pages and pages of information, you try to distill that information into a management summary. Like an executive summary? Executive summary, same principle. Okay, thanks. And that's what we're trying to do with the FY 2010 budget link format. Under highlights, you know, I envision you being able to list the highlights of everyone's budget or changes basically from the prior year and then whatever the link recommends will be several listed. I mean this could be two or three pages for some links on the final report out, but we're just trying to get a better way so there is a easier way to summarize every link and be able to flip to that page and see the same kind of information. So we're all consistent. Councilmember Gordon. Councilmember Gordon. into that problem again. Very good. Anyone else have any questions on the link process? I might suggest that we give Jerry Sothers a list of each of the links meetings so that he could be the clearinghouse and any council member who want to attend could check with them, find out what the dates are. I'd also recommend that any additional questions that the links feel like they may anticipate asking that they get that information to Jerry and we start compiling a list, and prior to the first link meetings, those questions be put out to the link chairs. Yeah, this is just a working list, so we'll try to clean it up some and add some language in there. If anyone else has any other questions you think we need to ask, again, on a consistent basis, trying to be consistent here, please give it to Jerry, and we'll try to type it up and get it out to everyone before our first budget meeting. Anything else on the process? Okay, moving to the next item on the agenda, the sale and disposal of obsolete property proceeds. This item came back in November of last year, and I believe David Barbary had sent a memo to Dr. Stevens at the time who was chair of budget and finance. Everyone should have a copy of that memo. David, did you want to say anything in reference to the memo? Can I give us a brief explanation publicly of exactly what this memo says and what the issue is? and I'll open for anybody who has any questions for David. Good afternoon. We were basically asked, I guess it was represented perhaps by Commissioner Coe, that there were some surplus fund sales taking place where it was less than clear where the money was ending up. And there is a provision, although it was my impression prior to this issue coming up, it's not often followed. there is a provision in the Code of Ordinances, Section 715, that addresses the sale and disposition of obsolete equipment and whatnot. I think the specific concern was, despite this ordinance and the way it reads, there is a constitutional provision in Kentucky that says if you have a special tax, you are supposed to use the tax funding for that same purpose that the tax was implemented for. and I think it's traditionally been the practice that, for instance, if you have the special tax, like the, I think we call them 115 funds generally, those normally from cradle to grave stay in the same funding source because of that constitutional issue. And I think the confusion might rest in what our actual practice is right now or whether we're deviating from that typical 115 practice, I think, is the issue. Thank you, David, for that summation. Council Member James, you have a question? Yes, I was actually the committee member that wanted to look at this issue. When we saw the surplus list of property, and I looked online at the sales, and I noticed a lot of the waste management vehicles on there. But when sales were occurring, the money was going back to the general fund, and we were accounting for that in the general fund dollars. And so, I don't know, the memo kind of makes it seem like maybe we were wanting it or we were doing it appropriately, but actually I think at that time we were operating, whether it's appropriate or not, but we were operating under the assumption that it could go back. So I think property sales, whether they were the urban services district tax, things that had been purchased with that tax or general fund dollars, they were all included in that $3 million, I believe, that Mary referenced earlier of the expected property, the return. So that's why the question came forward is because if something is bought with urban services funds, it probably is appropriate for it to go back to that. And your memo, I think it brings some clarity, but it's still kind of vague. But I think that this committee may want to think about some type of resolution that really clarifies what is our intention with urban services purchased property. Do we want it to go back to that specific fund? Because five years from now, the council sitting here will have the same question and will have the same kind of thing back and forth. And, I mean, if there can be any more clarity to it, I think we should clarify it. I just know that waste management is looking at a lot of expenditures, and if we keep draining and draining from that fund, we may not have what we need to be able to purchase some things in the future in that particular fund. And, you know, what do we owe to our citizens that are paying for a particular tax for a particular thing? The example I thought of last night was the stormwater fee. if there's something that's purchased or something that happens with a stormwater fee, and we end up using that for building a building or something that has nothing to do with stormwater, I could see how taxpayers would be a bit upset about that. So if anybody has anything additional to add, please do, but I think we need to make clarity of it instead of leaving it vague. You may want to actually clarify what the existing practice is. before you, you all, clearly it's within you all's purview if you think there's an issue with us doing it, with the administration not putting funding in the appropriate source and you think it needs to be clarified in the form of an ordinance, that's certainly something you all could do. But I think Mr. O'Mara could probably speak to what the existing practice is with respect to the funds. Thank you. Mr. O'Mara, welcome again. Thank you. Let me clarify what's actually going on and then you can decide whether further action is needed. The standard practice prior to last fall was the funds were returned to whatever the originating fund purchasing the equipment was. There was some discussion last fall as it was that really required. And so the sales that were last fall were all put into general fund. fund, the issue came up, the law department's interpretation came, and a journal entry has already been made to return the funds that were put into the general fund last fall to the appropriate funds from the dedicated fund. And so past practice was if it came from urban service, it went back to urban service. Future practice is if it came from urban service, it goes back to urban service. So that's where we are right now. MR. Councilman, sorry, Councilman Gordon first, then Councilman James. Councilman James. Councilman James Johnson, Bill, since you said current practice and past practice, it seems to me that it's been basically up to the discretion of the people making the decision as to where the revenue goes. So I would favor codifying where funds can go if they originally were from a dedicated enterprise fund. Going forward, if we have that in code, when this group and you and all of us are gone, The code could always be changed, but the practice wouldn't be able to be changed without the code changing. And I think it's inappropriate for dedicated taxes and funds to be spent for purposes other than what they originally were intended. Since we look at fund balances and whether taxes and fees can be raised or lowered and what the future needs are, it would keep it cleaner, and I think the citizens would benefit if they knew that those taxes and fees were only going for that particular fund needs. So I would simply make a motion that we ask our law department to look at bringing forward an ordinance which would codify this and put it into the code of ordinances that urban services funds and any kind of revenue from sales or you'll know how to better put it, David, go back into that fund so that it doesn't go with the flow according to who's here making the decision. Second. Okay, I have a motion on the floor in a second. David, did you want to say something before we have discussed this? I'm assuming unless you tell me otherwise, your only focus is on these special taxes. Yes, that's absolutely right. Okay. Discussion on the motion. Councilman Lane. Yeah, I would take a counter position to that. The state government, when they have surplus property declared, it's sold and the money goes back to the treasurer and then it's reappropriated by the General Assembly. You know, I feel that that would be a more appropriate way for us to handle the funding because that way the council members at that time could decide whether to put it back into the fund from which a particular capital item that was sold may have come or to reappropriate that for another use for the taxpayer. So I would take a counterposition to the one, Council Member Gordon, because if we lock money into a fund and it's in there forever and ever, when there are better uses for it and the decision can be made by Council at a later date when that all the information is available and an appropriate decision can be made. I think that is in the better interest of the taxpayer. Thank you. Council Member Beard, do you have a question on the motion? I already had it turned on. I guess counter to Council Member Lane's comments. the let me get let me get my thoughts a second I'm getting a sidebar that's all right I thought maybe I might pick up some information folks the utilization of the equipment and putting it back into general fund when we have a situation where the Urban Services District Fund has an excess in it, could lead some citizens to believe maybe that there should be a tax reduction. And that would be, in my mind, only fair to do so. And by not putting this money back into that fund, it would skew our decision somewhat. The other question I guess I have involves the co-mingling that probably took place when we were getting rid of equipment last fall. and the situation of pooling equipment for utilization both of the people that are within the urban district services area and the general fund money as far as the utilization of the equipment that was paid for out of the general services fund, general services district fund. And whether that's splitting a hair to ask you all to do that minute amount of accounting that it would take to keep track of that, I don't know whether you've addressed that at all, Bill. I keep on looking at you whether you're going to answer all the questions anyway. Could you repeat your question? Well, you know, we took, we had a bunch of equipment of all different types, but we took certain items of that equipment and pooled them for the use of the government in general. If some of that came from or was purchased by general service district funds, but is now being utilized by the rest of government, how do we account for that, I guess? that's the same as selling it if we're using it and it is not obsolete at this point. It may even be new or relatively new. I can't answer that question with knowledge. I can tell you that Fleet Services tracks who bought the property and keeps that with the property until it's disposed of. So the originator of whose money purchased the equipment is captured and retained throughout the life of that equipment by fleet services. Now if I bought a backhoe with Fund A and it was used for 10 years and then Fund B uses it for two years and then it goes to fund back to A, I'm not sure how that accounting is done right now. Well, I mean, the use of it, in my mind, if you want two discrete funds, Fund A and Fund B, if it's utilized, bought by the Fund A and utilized by Fund B, it's the same as selling it. And I can't comment. That's not my area of expertise, so I would have to research to tell you how we handle that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilman Henson, did you have a question on the motion or comment? Yes, ma'am. I agree with Councilmember Gordon that if it's purchased, if items are purchased with a dedicated tax, then they should remain with that division. But I also had a question like, and I'm not sure if Bill could answer, but say 10 years ago a dump truck was purchased by sanitary sewer. They no longer need that dump truck, but Solid Waste could use it. Could they transfer monies, the value of that property from one division to another? And I believe that's pretty much the same question. Is that what Councilmember? That's part of his question too, and I would have to research that and give you the answer on how we handle it. Thank you for seconding my motion. Okay. But in any other case, if it is not a dedicated tax, I certainly think that it should go where the money is needed. So if we sell property that was not purchased with a dedicated tax, normally it goes to the general fund? It was bought with general fund dollars and the proceeds from the disposal go back to general fund dollars. Okay. If the equipment was bought with urban service money, the proceeds goes back to the urban service. Okay. That's how we're doing it now and we did it in the past. Exception was this one sale and we've corrected that. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Chair. Getting back to Council Member Lane's point, and I appreciate that notion that Council should be able to reallocate the money if necessary. But it does seem to me there's an advantage in having within a particular fund and the users of that fund the flexibility to plan and to improve, to let's say consider selling outmoded equipment in order to purchase newer equipment, more efficient machinery, whatever, and having a reasonable assurance that the proceeds would go to their upgrades. grades, Council would still have to approve the, as I understand it, the sale and the purchase. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've cogently made my point. Mayor Mrakas- Thank you. Council Member Myers. Mayor Mrakas- Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with, she asked me what her name was. I agree I agree with Councilmember Gordon that if you purchase something out of a dedicated fund, it ought to go back, the sale of that merchandise ought to go back into that dedicated fund. The main reason is because I think that we should always be looking to decrease taxes. And so if, for example, we bought a bunch of new garbage trucks, and then we sold 30 old garbage trucks, instead of taking that money from the sale of the 30 garbage trucks and putting it in the general fund and spending it somewhere else, we ought to put that back in the fund so that when we need to buy another piece of equipment for solid waste, we use that funding so that eventually we can decrease that tax instead of just continuing to drain the public over and over and over. So that's why I think this is very important, and I support you 100% on it. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? Any other comments, questions, suggestions? Okay, we have a motion on the floor. Councilman Gordon, you want to restate it just for clarity purposes, what the motion was? Without the background comment, the motion is to ask law to draft an ordinance which would require urban services funds to receive the revenue from any sale of equipment that originally was purchased by them. Okay. And any other special. Any other, yes, excuse me, and any other kind of a, David, kind of a catch-all for anything that originated in that fund and is sold. We should go back to it. Very good. Okay, we have a motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Nay. Okay, one opposed. It passes. Anything else on this item? Thank you, David, for being here. Bill, thank you, too, for sticking around for that. But because this is our last regularly scheduled budget and finance meeting before we get into the budget, Councilman Lane has a couple items he'd like to introduce to us that may have some impact on our budget deliberation. So if the committee will allow some leeway here on the agenda, Councilman Lane, I'll turn it over to you. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. The first item is the report toward a long-term fiscal management plan for Lexington, Kentucky. This has been released this week, and copies are given to all council members. This was a task force that looked at how we can improve our fiscal policies. And I might add in here it did stipulate that surplus funds and surplus items that are sold should be reallocated back into the general fund. It's one of the recommendations. And I voted for that. Yes, I did. In any event, because our agenda for budget and finance is so busy for the next few sessions, I would like to make a recommendation. we asked the mayor to bring this report forward in our next work session where they have time available. I don't know that I need to do a motion on that, but I just wanted to give you a heads up. Secondly, today, Warren Rogers is here, and Warren has asked to make a short presentation relating to public and privately operated golf courses. And so I'm going to ask Warren to come forward. And Mr. Rogers, the chair has graciously granted you five minutes for your presentation, and then you can have all the questions you can stand after that. Can you get through in five minutes? Probably ten. Okay. But I'll go quickly. Before you start, can I ask a question? Yes, sir. James. Just a procedural parliamentarian question. Our agenda is published with particular items listed and goes out to the public. Like, what is our freedom or liberty of adding new items to an agenda without notifying the public of that particular item? Well, we can add items to the agenda as long as the committee agrees to do that and have it be heard at any time. Okay. Yeah, it's not a special meeting or anything. Now, this item in particular was asked to be on the February docket, and we could not do it on February, and it was accidentally left off this agenda. So that's why. Oh, okay. And that's why he's here today. Normally, I would not like to do that. Was it referenced in the February meeting that we would be discussing it in March? No, we had already put out the timeline. We had enough to do in February that we could not get it on then. Okay. I'm not real comfortable with it, but if you're, as the parliamentarian, the chair of the committee, if you're fine with doing that, I just know how important it is to let our citizens know of issues that are coming forward, especially with the golf courses that has been something that's had a lot of conversation in the past. And speaking as chair, not parliamentarian, but the reason why I'd like for it to be heard is because our budget deliberations coming up. We don't have another meeting until really end of June at this committee. It becomes the committee of the whole, and so we'll be discussing the budget, and this may have an impact on some of our thought processes on golf courses as it pertains to the general fund counts. Okay. Thank you, Chair. So one more procedural question then. If I may, will we then be allowing anyone to come if they have a concern like I just heard you say, if it's going to impact the budget? I'm going to presume this sets the precedent that anyone can come to speak about an issue. Is that correct? Well, I think they do anyway. We have many outside agencies that come and many other people that come anyway during our budget talks. This, again, was meant to be on the agenda for March because we could not handle it in February, and it was left off. It was my error, so I asked him to come if we have time today to get it on our agenda. Okay. And, again, it's for information purposes only. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Warren Rogers. For the purposes of this meeting, I am chairman of the Kentucky Club for Growth. Andy Hightower, the executive director of the Kentucky Club for Growth, is here with me, And we want to talk to you today about Lexington's golf subsidy, subsidizing the most nonessential of nonessential services. Let's see. Your presentation. I'm a lifelong course member, resident of Lexington. I grew up playing Lexington Public Golf Courses, Meadowbrook, Tates Creek, Lakeside in particular. So I understand golf in this community and how it's developed over the last 40 years. During the Mayor's Budget Address, he indicated that, of course, in FY 2010, we'd be looking at a $27 million general fund shortfall. And so that kind of got the club looking at going through the budget and figuring out what, you know, where can we come up with ideas to help the council make this short fall up. The 2007 management audit with respect to Parks and Rec and specifically with respect to golf, and I think this is found on pages 98 through 103 of that management audit. indicated that, of course, Lexington owns and operates six golf courses. Four of those six, in fact, lose money on operations. The general fund provides a $1.6 million subsidy for golf services in Fayette County. Of course, $1.2 million of that is debt service largely on the Picadome facility. I also pointed out that there is no life cycle management of services, for instance, golf carts. There is no regular schedule for when golf carts are replaced to minimize costs of maintenance, et cetera. It's just when there's money available and golf carts need to be replaced, they're replaced. What this management audit in 2007 found was that Lexington subsidized each participating golfer, everybody that tees it up on a Lexington golf course, $3.21. cents and that if you spread that loss out over every citizen of Fayette County, it's about $1.65. Again, all of this contained in that management audit. Management audit recommended, made several recommendations. It's said to establish an enterprise fund for golf services, implement the recommendations for the golf program, try to eliminate the general fund subsidy. If however this golf program is unable to eliminate the subsidy within 18 to 24 months, then the city should evaluate contracting management and operations of the city's golf courses, basically outsourcing it. Of course, we are at the end of that 18 to 24 month period and that subsidy has not been eliminated. Recommendation 64 said to create equipment replacement plan and a dedicated funding for replacement of golf equipment. Recommendation 65, increase golf fees to fully recover costs by allowing the general fund to subsidize golf operations. The city basically, it said, is forcing non-golfers to pay for the recreational endeavors of golfers. And then Recommendation 66 said reduce the costs by contracting out course maintenance. And 67 said increase the golf capital improvement funding. Next slide, please. Of course, you're familiar with the bluegrass diamond reference. That is basically referencing the geographic pattern between all of the cities in the bordering counties, the county chairs of those cities around Lexington. And so we looked at all of the golf courses in that area. And, of course, here highlighted are those courses, and the ones that highlights are the Lexington City golf courses. And you can see just as a general pattern, these are priced from most expensive to least expensive, and you can see that Lexington golf courses tend toward the bottom of this list. Next slide. Go back two slides. There you go. Okay, we can see here, it's kind of hard to see on the slide, but we in Lexington actually budget a deficit for golf. You can see that the 2007 actual costs, including debt, a little over $4.7 million. In 2008, that was $4.6 million. Expenses in 2009 in the current budget, a little over $5 million. On the revenue side, what we see is revenue in 2007 of $3.172 million, actual in 2008 $3.277 million, and interestingly enough in the 2009 budget we see that jump all the way up to $3.837 million. We had a hard time accounting for what is going to be the increase in how is the revenue going to increase half a million dollars from 2008, 2009. We're just not, we don't know why. But that in itself would create an operating deficit of, even if that revenue number is met $478,000 and if you add in the deficit including the debt service then you would have a deficit of $1.184 million and if you look at that on a per round basis that's about $8.50 per round. Again, every time somebody tees it up on a city golf course, the taxpayers are subsidizing $8.50 for that effort. If what we did to solve this was just to say, take $8 more, raise all the rates, $8 on all Lexington City Golf courses, this is how that previous slide would look. You can see that the Lexington City golf courses are, you know, in competition, compete still favorably with other golf courses from in the Bluegrass Diamond area. Next slide, please. But the problem is raising fees will not solve the deficit. that raising fees will only continue to reduce the number of rounds played at LFUCG golf courses, continuing the city's golfing loss. Obviously, you raise the fees, people will tend to golf at Lexington golf courses less, and they will begin to take advantage of other courses in the Diamond area. The problem is an oversupply of golf courses and golf holes in the greater Lexington area. This slide you can probably, again, see better on your presentation on your handout there. But basically what this tells you is that rounds of golf in Lexington have reduced significantly from 1997 to 2007. Overall, a difference of about, down about 35%. It was a little bit hard to calculate this because Picadome was not a city-owned golf course 10 years ago. So that actually, it's probably actually a greater percentage than that over 10 years. This is just a slide to show us all of the various golf courses in the Bluegrass Diamond area with the golf figurine showing the private daily fee courses, not private country club courses, but daily fee courses, and of course the dollar signs showing the urban county government courses. I do apologize, there is an error there that should say Lakeside Golf Course instead of Lakewood Golf Course. But this kind of just gives you a geographical idea of exactly how many private golf courses there are in central Kentucky, daily fee courses, again, competing with the urban county government's courses. Next slide. Oversupply of golf in the Bluegrass Diamond. And Tate's Creek's head pro, Aaron McDowell, said the downturn in numbers is largely because of golf course saturation. This is out of a July 2008 Herald-Leader article. He goes on to say, I just think there's a lot of golf courses in the area and not enough people to play on them. Next slide, please. Mr. Rogers, if you can back up three minutes and wrap it up. We're close to our time limit here. Wrap it up in a minute. in just a minute. We're a slide or two away. Thank you. The pro at Carmelo at Kearney Hills, Carmelo Bonassi, said very much the same thing. You can only spread so many golfers around so many courses. An oversupply of golf in the Bluegrass time, there's no doubt. Mike Fields said the same thing, same article. Fields agrees with most of his colleagues that the course saturation is the reason for Lexington's dip in golf participation. The situation is we have a $27 million FY10 shortfall. We're subsidizing golf in Lexington to the tune of $1 million. We have an oversupply of golf in the Lexington area, and Lexington's golf courses are in direct competition with private enterprise. Our recommendation at the beginning of FY2010 to darken all Lexington golf courses for the upcoming season and then set about determining the best use for that public space. That's our recommendation. Immediate savings, of course, we would eliminate the budget loss, potential savings. That would bring all of this property, hundreds and hundreds of acres of property into the tax base. It's currently not in it. We could retire the bonds on the purchased land. and of course we would have income from leasing that property or sales to it. There's a moral argument to it that this just kind of wraps it all up. Certainly abundance of golf. The city of Lexington is unfairly in direct competition with local entrepreneurs. We have a million-dollar deficit operating this way. It's certainly unfair competition to all the other private daily fee courses, and we're spending a million dollars more a year that could be spent on other essential public services. Other cities are doing this, gotten out of the golf course business, and many are considering it, including San Francisco and the state of Georgia, on all its state park golf courses. Just a final slide here, management audit recommendations. It says, by allowing the general fund to sell to golf operations, is the city is forcing non-golfers to pay for the recreational endeavors. Questions? We have a couple questions here. Councilman Beard. Thank you. When you say $1 million, are you including the 1.2 debt service on Picadome? The operating deficit is $400,000 plus the one, let's see, $700,000 debt service on Picadome, total of about $1.2 million. Okay. And the second question is, with as much saturation, and I do agree with you, there is saturation. And I've seen it, and I guess people went into it with their eyes open. You know, there's some interesting golf courses that attract people just because it's new and different. And I'm sure that they'll continue to get some of that anyway over time after everybody gets an opportunity to play the same course once or twice. To darken the golf courses and then sell them, what are they going to be worth? I mean, nobody's going to want to buy a Picadone golf course and have us break even on that because we'll have to retire the bonds at some point if it's sold. Or if we turn over operation, what are they going to do? They're going to do the same thing that we're talking about doing, that's raise rates. They will maybe operate it a little bit more efficiently, and they certainly will raise rates, absolutely. So that's a downward spiral somewhat over time? Well, the problem is there's too much golf. There needs to be golf courses taken out of play because the competition, there's not enough golfers to sustain the golf courses we have, not enough to sustain the urban county government's golf courses for that matter, and that's why there's an operating deficit of at least $450,000, And frankly, I think it's probably twice that because I think the 09 revenue projections are much too high. Although they did, and the management partners did not have this information, but we did increase rates. At this point, I don't know what the history is of utilization, how many rounds have been played and all that. That's not available to us yet. Well, golf in general is declining in the number of players, and certainly the economy's, I think, impacted that. Oh, I'm sure it has. Even more. And Tiger being out for nine months. All of that. Helped either. Thank you very much. Okay. Thanks, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to – I'm curious about why Parks isn't here to hear this. we'd be happy to sit down with the parks people and go through this and I'm sure they're looking at the same numbers and seeing this well I mean a lot of what you've pointed out is very true and it just concerned me and I don't think it was necessarily up to you to get parks here but since we are having a public meeting on camera it would have been nice to have some feedback from our parks people who apparently weren't aware you were bringing this to us. So that was my first concern. As to Picadome, I can't remember. Council Member Ellinger, were you on the only one left who was on the council that purchased Picadome? And we purchased it specifically because we wanted it to remain green space for the stormwater effect. Right. Because of the incredible bad stormwater problems over there. So, you know, history, it's important, I think, that we know at least for that golf course why we purchased it. Now, that's not to say it has to remain a golf course. Exactly. But I think in the scheme of stormwater, that was the big impetus to purchase it, was it would become and remain green space. So I guess really, you know, it would be a good thing to have this discussion in the public with parks to talk about this issue. It might be one that we choose to do or not do. And I was curious about who you are, not who you are. I know who you are. Right? Right. We've been in this something or other for a long time. But your group here. Right. The Kentucky Club for Growth is a 501c4 nonprofit organization. and our mission is to find good free market solutions to public policy issues and to look at and, you know, to the extent possible protect the taxpayer and see if we can't winnow the size of government wherever it needs to be done. Okay. So just my closing comment would be if we wanted to hear this again in the public with parks and I'm sure there are other stakeholders. to where they know it's on the agenda and coming up for discussion and the information is made available ahead of time. I would really appreciate that. We'd be happy to come back, make a proposal or another presentation at any time. Yeah, a couple of thoughts on that, Councilman Gordon. Councilman Lane is the Chair of General Services and this will be part of his discussion with, as he addresses parking right during that discussion, but I don't think anything can be done in terms of his presentation between now and probably the end of June, our next meeting after the budget process unless we want to consider even this type of idea during the budget. Then obviously anyone could come and we'll have a public forum for that. But until then, we probably won't be able to address it after the budget unless it becomes up to the budget that this is a viable option. Council Member Beard, I see you on the list, but Council Member James is also on there. I'll go ahead and recognize her first. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to ask, Council Member Lane brought this issue forward and, I guess, organized this presentation today. Is this something you're looking at in your budget link that you will be proposing not funding golf courses? I mean, I'm just trying to figure out the process of why you felt like it was appropriate to bring this presentation to our budget and finance, as opposed to going through the process through the budget link, as the rest of us will be doing. Well, to answer your question, I have not seen the presentation. I didn't know any of the specific details of the presentation. Mr. Rogers is just another constituent who asked to speak to the meeting, and, of course, we've tried to put that on the last Budget and Finance Committee meeting and didn't get on the agenda. So, I mean, any constituent that would like to bring information to the committee, I would be open to asking them to present the information. In this particular case, I haven't seen the study. You know, I think there is some merit here. I mean, we have shortages in other areas. I know lacrosse and soccer and some general, you know, fields for all types of activities, we have a tremendous shortage. So, I mean, there might be an idea here. I have not discussed this with parks either, so I don't know. But, I mean, maybe we could take a golf course and convert it to another use. and where we have a terrific shortage, we would still be able to generate revenue and provide services and reduce our deficit and maybe make the balance of golfing more appropriate for the size of the golf community. But I had not seen the report. I did not know the essence of the report today. And I think that's a concern. It's very rare that at least the introducing committee member hasn't seen the information that's coming forward. We usually try to review information ahead of time. I don't know. I just procedurally, this just seems all screwed up to me. And are you a member of this PAC? Are you a member of this PAC organization? No, I'm not. Okay. Chair, I just, again, I mean, as I said before, it's just, it's done now, but this is just not the way that we should probably introduce things into committee, especially if the presentation wasn't even reviewed ahead of time. And normally we wouldn't except for the error made for this agenda, but we appreciate your comments. That's Councilman Beard. Thank you. Mr. Rogers, one other request, if at all possible. Yes. It's either my old eyes or many of these tables I just cannot read in the story. If they could be blown up and put into more billboard size, I might be able to handle those. We'll do that. Have that in your box first thing tomorrow morning. That'd be fine. Thank you. Sure. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Chair. I hope that as this discussion might go forward, that while the government wants to be as efficient as possible, its purpose is to serve the public. And I can see that if we darken all public golf courses, we'll price a lot of people who can't otherwise play golf out of the market. And so I think we should proceed with caution here, mindful of our responsibility to the public. We provide a lot of services, and this is an essential one. So I hope that going forward we will bear that necessary balance between efficiency and service to the public in mind. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lane. Mr. Rogers, I think it would be helpful if, you know, perhaps you could send a complete copy of the report to each of the council members and also maybe to the parks department. Yeah, absolutely. So they'd have this information to review and hopefully it would be a little bit easier to read. I agree. Even though my eyes are maybe a little bit better than Mr. Beard's, they're not that much better and I had a little trouble reading them too. We will do this. And largely this is research that was done. It's basically government numbers that we're just basically assembled in one report. Thank you. Thank you sir. Appreciate it. Any other items that come before this committee? We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I see shadows of pain I see a place You are my, my, my You are my, my, my Thank you. So we got to talk about it. What's wrong? We got to run to you. Let it go. Why don't you check me when you're gone? What's wrong? How much? What's wrong with you? How much? How much? I'm a sinner, I promise you, tell me my, help me, tell me, oh, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm Don't you hold me, baby? Don't you hold me, baby? Ain't no reason Ain't no reason You're not like me Ain't no reason I don't know You're not like me Thank you. Thank you. That's where you feel if you found one Where the mountains are bright and joyous and clean Three miles, three miles, three miles on the street Since May, there's trouble closed every night Since May, there's trouble most every night Where once we dance our sweeter routine It brings a wine and carol Where the grace of life and joy is complete High for the street, high for the street Thank you. A thousand years are over Thank you. I'd like to know what's on his mind He says everybody don't knock my mind When a man of right, the joy is complete You keep us here, keep us here When a man of right, the joy is complete Keep us here, keep us here Thank you. I'm going to make a little bit more of a little bit more of a little bit more. Thank you. . Thank you.