# committee of the Whole - June 16, 2009 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 16, 2009 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/950 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/950?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2009-06-16 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 18,766 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 LFUCG Council met on June 16, 2009, to address changes to the Master Plan Budget (MPB), presided over by the Vice Mayor. The council considered five agenda items, took seven votes, and heard three public comments during the session. The meeting focused primarily on budget matters for the fiscal year 2010. The council approved the review and approval of late item changes to the FY 2010 Budget, adopted the Mayor's proposed budget with amendments, and approved an amendment to the franchise fee revenue projection. Additionally, the council approved a motion to bond $1 million for the Trail Bond Fund. One item—Non-Budget Signage Recommendations—was referred for further consideration rather than voted on immediately. Overall, the council approved four of the five agenda items brought before it, with one item referred to committee or a future meeting for additional review. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on June 16, 2009: **Council Members:** - Council Member Gordon - Council Member Martin - Council Member James - Council Member Lane - Council Member Ellinger - Council Member McCord - Council Member Stenet - Council Member Myers - Council Member Lawless - Council Member Feigl **Other Attendees:** - Mayor Redekop - Jerry - Bill O'Meara - Mary Pfister No council members or attendees were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included seven votes on budget and administrative matters, all of which passed. **Motion to accept late item changes to the FY 2010 budget** [timestamp: 0:06:38] Moved by Mr. Tenet. Passed by voice vote. **Motion to bond $1 million for the trail bond fund** [timestamp: 0:08:41] Moved by Council Member McCord and seconded by Council Member Gordon. This motion passed unanimously with 11 ayes and 0 nays. The following voted in favor: Council Member McCord, Council Member Gordon, Council Member Martin, Council Member James, Council Member Lane, Council Member Ellinger, Council Member Stenet, Council Member Myers, Council Member Lawless, Council Member Feigl, and Jerry. **Motion to refer non-budget signage recommendations to the Planning Committee** [timestamp: 0:30:57] Moved by Council Member Martin and seconded by Council Member Stenet. Passed by voice vote. **Motion to amend franchise fee revenue projection from 3% to 3.5%** [timestamp: 0:40:27] Moved by Council Member Stenet and seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Passed by voice vote. **Amendment to increase franchise fee revenue projection to 4.2%** [timestamp: 0:52:25] Moved by Council Member Stenet and seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Passed by voice vote. **Amendment to increase franchise fee revenue projection to 4.5%** [timestamp: 1:02:46] Moved by Council Member McCord and seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Passed by voice vote. **Motion to accept the Mayor's proposed budget with amendments adopted by the Council of the Whole** [timestamp: 2:09:38] Moved by Council Member Gordon and seconded by Council Member Stenet. Passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed multiple financial actions and appropriations across various city departments and services: **Revenue and Transfers** * Increase in franchise fees by 1.5%, generating $252,000 * Transfer of $1,280,000 from the overtime account to the regular personnel account for firefighter recruitment * Use of unspent 2006B bond funds ($185,000) to reduce debt service in the general fund * Utilization of debt service savings for design of Station #2 relocation ($25,043,880) **Equipment and Purchases** * Purchase of 6 radar trailers for police districts from the asset forfeiture account ($69,000) * Funding for office relocations within the Phoenix Building ($25,000) **Personnel and Staffing Appropriations** * Funding for two vacant auditor positions ($140,000) * Funding for two vacant Nuisance Control Officers ($25,000) * Funding for reclassification process for Coroner's Office employees ($25,000) * Funding for a Social Services Coordinator for Black & James Center ($100,000) * Funding for an Administrative Officer (grade 118) for Day Treatment Center ($100,000) * Funding for a Director position in Budgeting ($123,347) * Funding for a Director position in Office of Policy & Budget ($153,180) * Funding for an aide to Council position ($70,701) * Funding for 4 additional animal control personnel ($58,080) * Restoration of animal control funding to reflect 5% reduction level ($52,100) * Funding for a part-time CSEPP Coordinator as a contract employee, 100% grant funded ($23,000) * Funding for a Paramedic Nurse Coordinator as a contract employee ($11,850) **Employee Benefits and Services** * Funding for YMCA membership subsidy for non-collective bargaining employees ($100,000) * Funding for optional flu immunizations for LFUCG employees ($100,000) * Funding for personal protective equipment and college scholarship reimbursement for Fire & Emergency Services ($435,000) **Other Appropriations** * Funding for Sister Cities salary level to FY 2009 level ($40,000) * Funding for study with UK ($100,000) * Funding for Council Members' NDF and Operating Accounts to FY 2009 levels ($245,850) * Additional funds for increased advertising expense for Council Clerk ($199,520) * Correction to LexCall Staff Assistant (107) civil service salaries and benefits ($100,000) * Renegotiation of online research contract ($100,000) ## Public Comment Three council members addressed the body during the meeting, raising concerns about signage regulations, state revenue conditions, and budget implementation. **Signage Ordinance Review** [timestamp: 0:28:50] Council Member Martin raised concerns about neighborhood and commercial signage issues. He noted that neighborhood groups were experiencing difficulty posting signs for meetings, while commercial property owners faced restrictions on sign size. Council Member Martin recommended reviewing the signage ordinance and referred the matter to the Planning Committee for further consideration. **State Revenue Trends** [timestamp: 1:07:24] Council Member Lane presented state revenue data indicating declines across multiple tax categories, including sales tax, corporate income tax, and individual income tax collections. He urged the council to maintain vigilance regarding local revenue trends and to be prepared for potential budget adjustments in response to these statewide economic conditions. **Budget Accountability and Implementation** [timestamp: 2:05:53] Council Member Myers emphasized the importance of council oversight extending beyond the initial budget adoption process. He proposed a resolution to mandate hiring for key positions that had been approved in the budget, ensuring that budgeted positions would actually be filled and the budget would be properly implemented. ## Contested Items **Revenue Projection Increase** The council debated a proposal to increase the franchise fee revenue projection from 3% to 4.5%. Council Member Ellinger opposed the increase, arguing that it was irresponsible given declining state revenues. Other council members supported the proposal, citing recent data and economic recovery indicators as justification for the higher projection. This disagreement resulted in a split vote. **Budget Adoption and Administrative Oversight** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding the extent of council control over budget implementation. The central concern was whether the administration could make significant cuts to the budget without requiring council approval, despite the budget having already been passed. This debate reflected broader questions about the balance of power between the council and administration in managing fiscal decisions after the budget's adoption. ## Review and Approval of Late Item Changes to FY 2010 Budget [timestamp: 00:00] The Council reviewed and approved late item changes to the FY 2010 budget totaling $682,040 in net reductions to the General Fund. These changes were submitted by the administration after the Mayor's proposed budget had been presented. **Key Speakers** Mr. Tenet and Jerry led the discussion on this agenda item. **Changes Presented** The late item changes involved reconciliations from various funds and included adjustments to both revenue and expense items. The net effect of these adjustments resulted in a reduction of $682,040 to the General Fund. **Outcome** The Council approved the late item changes to the FY 2010 budget. ## Motion to Bond $1 Million for Trail Bond Fund Council Member McCord proposed bonding $1 million for the trail bond fund to support green infrastructure initiatives [timestamp: 00:09:14]. The proposal was framed within the context of federal transportation reauthorization, with McCord emphasizing the need for flexible local funding mechanisms to leverage available grants. The motion was discussed by Council Members Martin, Lane, and Ellinger in addition to McCord. The key rationale presented was that establishing this bond fund would enable the municipality to access and maximize federal transportation funding opportunities while maintaining local control over how those resources are deployed for trail development and related green infrastructure projects. The council voted unanimously to approve the motion to bond $1 million for the trail bond fund. ## Non-Budget Signage Recommendations [timestamp: 28:50] Council Member Martin brought forward concerns regarding neighborhood and commercial signage regulations during this agenda item discussion. The Council engaged in deliberation about the existing signage ordinances and their application across the municipality. **Key Participants** The discussion involved Council Member Martin, who initiated the matter, along with Council Member Stenet and Council Member Lane. **Issues Raised** Council Member Martin presented concerns about how current signage regulations affect both neighborhood and commercial areas. The discussion centered on the need to examine and potentially revise the existing ordinances governing signage throughout the jurisdiction. **Action Taken** Following the discussion, the Council voted to refer the matter to the Planning Committee for further review. This referral will allow the Planning Committee to examine the signage regulations in detail and consider potential changes to the ordinance framework. The outcome indicates the Council's intent to pursue a comprehensive review rather than take immediate action on the matter. ## Amendment to Franchise Fee Revenue Projection [timestamp: 0:34:40] The Council discussed and debated an amendment to the franchise fee revenue projection during this agenda item. The proposed change involved increasing the projected franchise fee growth rate from 3% to 4.5%. **Rationale for the Amendment** The amendment was based on recent data indicating higher-than-expected collections and projected increases in utility rates. Council members determined that the original 3% projection did not adequately reflect current revenue trends and future expectations. **Key Speakers and Discussion** Council Member Stenet, Council Member Ellinger, Council Member McCord, and Council Member Gordon participated in the debate regarding this amendment. The discussion centered on whether the increased projection of 4.5% was justified and appropriate for addressing identified revenue shortfalls. **Outcome** The Council approved the amendment to increase the franchise fee revenue projection from 3% to 4.5%. This adjustment was intended to better align the revenue projections with actual collection data and anticipated utility rate increases. ## Adoption of Mayor's Proposed Budget with Amendments The Council voted to adopt the Mayor's proposed budget with amendments. The final budget totaled $279.03 million, adjusted from the Mayor's initial proposal of $278.8 million to reflect amendments including a franchise fee increase. [timestamp: 2:09:38] **Key Speakers and Discussion** Council Member Gordon, Council Member Stenet, Council Member Ellinger, and Council Member Myers participated in the discussion on this agenda item. **Outcome** The motion to adopt the amended budget passed with support from most Council members. However, some members expressed concerns about the revenue assumptions underlying the budget proposal during the deliberation. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to accept late item changes to the FY 2010 budget - **Motion** — passed (11-0): Motion to bond $1 million for the trail bond fund - **Motion** — passed: Motion to refer non-budget signage recommendations to the Planning Committee - **Motion** — passed: Motion to amend franchise fee revenue projection from 3% to 3.5% - **Motion** — passed: Amendment to increase franchise fee revenue projection to 4.2% - **Motion** — passed: Amendment to increase franchise fee revenue projection to 4.5% - **Motion** — passed: Motion to accept the Mayor's proposed budget with amendments adopted by the Council of the Whole --- ## Full transcript If you look at attachment one, it's the first sheet after the agenda. The totals from Schedule 1 and it's the Council member changes. The total that you all have voted on, and these would be cost addition to the Mayor's proposed budget, $735,943. was approved from the individual council member changes, $176,872. And although you haven't voted on it, what's been submitted as laid item proposed changes, and attached to this is the laid item changes from all funds, but the changes affecting General Fund are $682,040 credit. So at this point, what you would need to balance the budget would be $230,775 of additional funding. You can do that by making changes to the revenue. You can make changes to what you've already voted on or make changes to any other expense in the form of reduction to come up with the additional funding requirement. But one thing we will need to do is you guys will need to review and approve the late items also today. Any questions? Yeah, yeah. The late items, is that the 600? That's the Schedule 4. It's the last document attached to the packet. And that number is? Schedule 4. Yeah, yeah, but what's the number? What's the total on that late item? It's 682? Yes. 682.040. All right. Take us to that again. I can't find it. It's the schedule for the last documents attached to the packet. All right. The first sheet shows LFUCG, fiscal year 2010, budget late item change summary. And the first two pages would be the general services fund. And then the next item, I mean, the next attachment is family care center fund 1102 and so on. It's late items that affect the various funds. And I have somebody from budgeting here. And we have a correction to the fourth page from the back of laid items that we'll pass out to you. It's for the sanitary sewer. It doesn't impact. This is not something we've seen before, right? Okay, that's fine. Go through and tell, you know, I've been on here, I've been there three years, and I'm going to admit to confusion about this. So for new council members, it's probably also the same way. This is reconciliation of late items. They normally pop up after the mayor's proposed budget has been submitted. And they give rise from revenue adjustments, budget amendments that have been passed or in the process of being passed since the mayor's proposed budget, with future implication for expense, revenue, or fund balance. A late item can be an additional expense item and or full cost relating to personnel action approved by a blue sheet since the Mayor's proposed budget and also corrections to the Mayor's proposed budget through errors or admissions. So those are primarily all the different reasons or areas that would give rise to a late item. But primarily it's changes that occur after the mayor's proposed budget has been submitted. And this is normal. This is my seventh budget. It's happened every year. Just may I ask a question, please? Are these changes submitted by the mayor's office or these incorporate the changes made by the council as well? No, these come from the administration in one sense or another. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just I have a quick question because just to be clear, several of these items relate to the stormwater fund which currently we don't have. So can I presume these are projecting after January and particularly this first one at the top, which is the $359,620 one, is that a personnel cost? Are these personnel costs throughout? A lot of the changes to the Stormwater Fund are aligning their proposal with the rate plan that's been set in place. Their original budget didn't incorporate what was passed. So it was a little, it was higher than what's actually going to go forward. So a lot of their changes are getting them in line with the rate structure that you all have presented and approved. So in terms of indirect costs throughout government. How are we going to charge other funds for people who work in that fund and those sorts of things, but to base it based on the plan that was approved. Okay, very good. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. On the agenda. Okay. We can. Mr. Tenet. I would go ahead and put it out there and make a motion to accept the late item changes to the FY 2010 budget. So moved. Second. Motion and a second to accept the late item changes. Floor is available for discussion on the motion. Is there any discussion? Mr. Martin. Can you tell me where the, I'm looking for this 682-040 number, and I know we talked about that, but I'm still trying to find that. Just give me a page number or something. There you go. Sorry. Jerry. Yes, sir. Let me get there. I can't find that number. It's the second page on the General Service Fund 1101. And if you look at the second page, page two of two. Why don't you go up to help him? All the pages are numbered. It's this number, less this number. This is the increase. Is that incorrect? No, that includes $100,000 from the Mayor's proposed fund balance. But what we want to do is net these two numbers. Okay. Okay. So what I understand, Mr. Vice Mayor, is that at the end of the General Services Fund 1101, after item 20, the 701-800 minus the 19-760 is going to give us the 682-040. So that number is a net number that's not actually on our materials, but you'd have to net out two numbers that we do have. So I understand that. Any other questions? Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Ready for a vote then. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Okay. Go back to item number two is Council Member McCord's recommendation, which is the last item on Schedule 3. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just with time constraints the other day on Thursday, it felt like it was easier to bring this forward this morning. But what I'm proposing is a million dollars bonded for the trail bond fund. And for a couple of reasons very specific, not only does this government now and this city have a tremendous amount of momentum in this direction, but the federal transportation reauthorization bill known as Safety Loo comes up for a reappropriation in Congress on September 21st. Safety Lou runs out on September 21st, and there's a tremendous amount of pressure and in a positive way to change some of the way that formula works and to look for a lot more green transportation infrastructure. And by a city having cash money, money that they can use for match money, readily available, this million can turn itself into a whole lot more. And so I move that we accept a million dollars into the trail bond fund or to bond a million dollars for the trail bond fund. So move. There's a motion and a second. Floor is available for discussion. Council Member. Yeah, well. All right. Yeah, we'll start using this then. it's available. Electronic communications. Council Member Gordon. Thank you Vice Mayor. The column Jerry impact on fiscal year 10 budget is a zero but then if you, is that correct? The bonds will be sold toward the end of 2010 and the debt service would be in 2011? Yes, ma'am. Okay, very good. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I support this motion. I think that this is where we decide whether we're going to have a continued to SANE efforts to increase the trail system in Lexington. I think those of us who went to Madison, Wisconsin, were very impressed by what type of activity that a large trail system provides. It's a community amenity, and I think it helps to promote folks who are active and get out of their house and to ride to work and things like that. So I think it's a show that we're interested in a sustained effort in this, and so I support it. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member McCord, is there a list of, is there a trail that you have in mind that this will be appropriate to, or this just goes into a general pot? General Potts, and one of the other recommendations that's not really a committee recommendation, but one of the things that I would like for us to work on, and it can be done very quickly, is to establish a policy for our trail funds and so forth. A lot of times what happens is that we assign monies to a trail, and the design component of it is very inexpensive, but it takes five to six months to do, and it drags into another season. And what we'd like to do is start looking at a kind of a first in, first out, so that some of these designs that we have for trails kind of all around the city, once we have money available and those final barriers have been removed, that we start building that. Local money like this allows us the flexibility to do those type of things along with leveraging when we get grant money for other trails. Do you know, did the mayor include within his proposed budget any money for trails? No. That's why I wanted to put it back in. Thank you. Thanks. Council Member Lane. I have a question for you, Mr. McCord. We had some money already approved for the coming fiscal year, I believe, that was sort of reallocated towards the horse park, trying to get that completed, which I supported that idea. But if we are able to get matching money with this other million dollars that we're proposing today, would a priority be to where we've shifted money, putting money back in those areas first before we did other? I think, Council Member Lane, that's a great point. That's why there needs to be a – we don't have a policy as to how we use this, and once we get past the budget, that was one of the things that I wanted to work on, was to come back with a recommendation of policy because you're exactly right. You want to be able to know where it goes, and ideally you want to have what we're calling a first in, first out, meaning projects that are ready to go wherever they may be get funded, and then we keep backfilling these types of things. But the answer is that we need a policy, and we want to work on that after the budget. Good. Because I am supporting this, but I feel that where we had money already approved and we've shifted it to accomplish this project. The horse park, we ought to get those people taken care of. Thank you very much. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. McCord, how much will this cost us in 11 if we're deferring in 10 in fiscal year 11? I guess while you're up here, the next question I'm going to ask is, what have we deferred from 10 to 11 that we're going to have to be paying for? because we keep saying it's not going to cost this budget, but it does cost us money sometime. I see people standing up and then sitting down. I'm not sure what papers I need to answer what questions, so I was trying to come prepared. Your first question was how much the million dollars would cost us. All right, well, that cost us an 11. Okay. Okay, we have trails on 10-year and an estimated 10-year bond is $120,000 a year for a million dollars. And then my next question, how much have we deferred because we keep saying it won't cost us in this budget but it will cost us an 11. and that might be a question you might have to get back with me, but I know there's other issues that we've talked about saying, well, it's not going to cost us this year. Right. A million dollars for PDR is a 20-year, so that's $75,000. This would be for 10 years $120,000 if the trails, that's another million. Then we did $2 million of infill, and I believe that is 20 years, So that would be another $150,000. So I'm not doing the math in my head. About $300,000. Thank you. And then that would be consistent through the... That would be for the next 10 to 20 years, depending on whether it was a 10-year bond or a 20-year bond. And how much do we have for trails in this budget right now? We have on the 2010... Well, you see I didn't bring everything I needed. There were two items that were related to trails that were not decided to be on the 2010 bonding because we thought we could get federal funds to pay for those projects. We thought, but we didn't get it? Well, I mean, we're all in the process of applying and waiting. So there's no – I'm not sure if there's a definitive answer on that specific project. Do you know? Some we have gotten answers on. Many others we're still waiting. So I'm not clear as to which one this is. I agree with you. We need to be careful about the additional bonding. but I think in these cases we're getting matching money. I thought you were going to ask me related to that. I mean, that's a commentary. Yes, sir. Back whenever we were going through the budgeting process very early in the year, we had the spreadsheet of trails that were under-designed, scheduled for construction in fiscal year 10. It appeared that we had enough bond money from previous years to do all those designs and construction, But a couple things happened. As we got into the spring, we were awarded some additional grants, which we had to put up match money for, that took some of that bond money that we had available. And we also received a large sum of money, our A money, for both phases of the Legacy Trail. The legacy trail, the Lexmark phase of the legacy trail, in order to go ahead and have an opportunity to have that ready for next year, what we needed to do was to use some of that trail bond money in order to start the design process. And that would take away some more of that bond money. So basically what was happening is because of the matches and trying to get trails started, what we had on our spreadsheet for design and construction in this coming fiscal year, we started to lose some of that bond money that we didn't realize was going to happen back when we were going through the budgeting process and took bond money out. So, the influx of an additional million dollars, what that would do is it would replace, as Council Member Lane said, some of the money that we've had to displace to go ahead and start the legacy trail design for Lexmark, but would also leave a pot of money if that becomes the process for a first in, first out. And some of these designs, even though you may have a very simple trail design, if there's issues that come up, there's unforeseen things until you actually do a design, work with neighborhoods, some of those get held up. What I would envision, the million dollars would potentially not be needed, the entire million dollars in this fiscal year for construction. But a portion of it may. there may be other opportunities for match later in the year where you'd want to have that pot of money and not put off construction of a trail. So I hope that answers your questions, and I'll be glad to take any other ones. Thank you. Council Member Lane, did you want to say something? Just as a follow-up, on our typical match from the federal government on trails, about it. Are we getting more than one-to-one on some of those? I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Like if we put $100,000 up, will we get $100,000 from the federal government and maybe something from state? What's the typical match for every dollar we put up on trails? I believe the TE grants are a 20% match and the CMAC grants are a 20% match. Now, the stimulus money did not require a match. However, it's not available yet and that's where we had the problem with the legacy trail. In order to go ahead and start the design, it's going to be several months before that ARA money is available to us. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. Mr. Martin. So we've talked about and improved some things here about one-to-one matches. re-advited a million dollars for the PDR program because we got another million dollars. Here's a situation where we put up a million dollars and we get, what, four on top of that. Is that right for a total of five million dollar project? So that's a good return on our money. Thank you. Anybody else? I was coming ahead, Jay, just in support. But, you know, it's like you said, a lot of, you know, substantial traction and support has been illustrated for the trails, and you're to be commended for that. Everybody's worked with you on this, council as well. One of the things that is you've been to Louisville, talked to Dan and David Jones and what they're doing in Louisville. One of the, I guess, concerns that go along with the inspiration of the project is, at least for me, is that I still think of the language that we were using the other night about streets and sidewalks, connectivity. When we go to Madison, one of the things that we saw was we were right there in the downtown, and you could jump right onto a trail, and there was even, you know, you looped back. And you said the other night or the other day, one of the days when we've been having some of these meetings, we were talking about, you know, you grab what you can when you can on these projects. That's what you've learned. Is there something to learn from with that in mind, you know, that we have sort of grab bagged at it and done what we can? And we have had some plan. It's not like we haven't had any plan at all. There have been. There has been. But my question has to do with having seen these trail systems where there's real connectivity, in a sense, and inspirational sort of places where they land, you know, a lake, a river, whatever it may be, a bed and breakfast, you know, the pub, whatever it may be. You know, there's going from somewhere to somewhere. and seeing what they're doing in Louisville with the lace, what do they call it, the golden lace, something, emerald, right, the Emerald Trail. So is there a chance to go there? What's your thoughts there on opportunities? Well, and that's kind of why this is key is that if a city has money that it controls, that it's flexible with, then you can take advantage of these situations. You have, as you saw the other night, you do have a Greenway Master Plan here in Lexington. and we do know where we should build and can build. Partly, there's the issue of feasibility, and that came up the other night, where what is a feasible project? One of the key reasons why a legacy trail is so important is because it connects an urban core to a rural setting and to one of your largest tourist destinations. And once you have that in the ground and you've got a date certain, 465 days to have it in the ground, And then what that does is it all of a sudden becomes a Drano, if you will, Vice Mayor, for some of these things. And you start looking for key places where you want to put this, not just out in the field. But I would point you back to Boulder, Colorado. One of the interesting things that they did, and I know Council Member Ellinger and Council Member Myers and I spent a day riding and looking at this, but they had an EPA mandate to do flood mitigation. And what they ended up doing is every time they had a stream to ford, they went ahead and put a bike connectivity in an underpass. It didn't lead anywhere. It was out in the middle of a field. But once they started filling those in, they used a situation like our water quality issue, and they started building that in. And Boulder, Colorado had 37, 39 underpasses to the tune of a million dollars apiece, and you never intersected traffic. You could kind of go from here to there. And they used situations like that to build where they could and then connect it. So your point is well taken, and you want to try and build where you can, but having money that the city controls and you have kind of a first-in, first-out policy allows for us to take advantage. So part of, I mean, just thinking hypothetically that part of the next phase could be adding to the plan already established that would add tactics like what you just described in Boulder, right? Absolutely. So that we then would be deliberately, intentionally focused on taking those initiatives that pull it all together, right? Absolutely. And one other thing I'd point out to council members that was a lesson learned in Madison was that having monies like this allows you some flexibility in a situation where they had a neighborhood where they built a trail behind the neighborhood. The neighbors said, we don't want any lights back here. No lights, no lights. Well, the city knew that someday they probably would like lights back there or new neighbors might, when they moved into those homes, might demand that. So they went ahead and used some money while they had it all tore up, and they put just the conduit in so they could drop lights in later. Those are the types of things that if you've got some local monies you control, versus some of these monies that we get from the federal government. And, Mike, you know how frustrating it is. When you get this federal government money, it takes a long time to turn it from the grand award into asphalt. So if you've got local monies and can be flexible, you can keep this on track. And I really see, you know, you don't want to miss this, that the federal transportation bill only comes up every five years. And there is a strong, strong push in Congress to change from just roads, roads, roads, roads, roads to other types of infrastructure. And if Lexington has resources that it can draw upon very quickly, we stand to benefit tremendously. How that will play out, I have no idea, but it's wise planning. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? All right. Hearing none, ready for a vote. All in favor, please indicate my punching eye. electronically motion carries unanimously thank you council member McCord all right next on our agenda is Okay, we've completed, so just to confirm, we've completed the item number one, item number two. we've passed the motion on item number three we are to summarize right now Mr. Martin that's right Doug's Doug has distributed everybody has at their place an email from Council Member Martin to Rebecca and then Jerry Councilman Martin. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This is a non-budget recommendation. If you recall, many of the links made non-budget recommendations, and this is just a request to add that to the lists. I don't think we voted on these at all, but it was a request to, I think, the Council Administrator to add this to the lists. I just have become aware of some issues about neighborhoods having trouble putting signs out, announcing that they're having neighborhood meetings or neighborhood sponsored functions. And I just would like to make a recommendation that we look at this in the coming year to see where the ordinance is, how it's being applied and whether we need to revisit the signed ordinance. I also understand, since I sent this email on Friday, was that we're also having some problems with our commercial signs. I think the commercial developers and owners of commercial property have been told that they're limited to six square feet in the size of their commercial signs. And so I think I'd like to add that as well. But this is a non-budget recommendation. I don't know if this needs to be voted on or not. I guess I'd ask Jerry about whether we need a vote on this. But it was just a link recommendation, I guess. I would like to add it to our personal item. There's probably two things. There's probably several, but two things come to mind. You can add it to the list of items to be considered after the budget, or you can make a motion to refer to either services or planning committee. That's probably what I would do. I guess I'd make a motion to refer this to the planning committee. Okay, there's a motion and a second to refer it. All right, there's a... All right, it's Council Member Martin's motion. So do you want to take into consideration any of these comments? I think it's appropriate to send it to the planning committee. It's a part of the zoning ordinance. It's Article 17 of our zoning ordinance, and it is administered by building inspection as a part of our zoning ordinance. So I think that's the appropriate place for it. There's a motion and a second. Floor is available for discussion. Council Member Lawless. I'm trying to. All right. Thank you. All right. We've got Council Member Blues, then Stenet, then Lane, then Lawless. Thank you, Vice Mayor. That was going to be my recommendation, too, to put it in planning. This is not a simple issue, and I think we really ought to see how it squares with the sign ordinance. There are, as you say, other issues, commercial signage as well, so it's appropriate to go into planning. I think we ought to do that. Council Member Stenet. Council Member Moore, I was just going to give you some food for thought. We did address this issue three years ago in planning committee, and we did make a policy change then. I don't know why they haven't conveyed that to you, but we do allow within 24 hours if those neighborhood signs for meetings are put up and taken down, then they will not be in violation of the current signed ordinance. But there may obviously need to be further discussion and maybe put that as part of the zoning ordinance itself. But, again, that takes a zoning text amendment, which is a much different process than many of us go through when we approve an ordinance. And so I welcome changing that whole zoning ordinance if you want to do so and move forward into planning. But we did change that as a policy in Fayette County. We did change that three years ago and vote on through the planning committee. I think we have some systemic issues to address, and three years is a long time for even my memory. Council Member Lane, then Lawless. There's other issues regarding signage for the commercial real estate properties. And as you all know, I am involved in that business. And the Commercial Property Association of Lexington, at their most recent meeting, indicated that something like 35 of their members have been cited for illegal commercial signs. And so what I have suggested is the attorney for CPAL is going to be conferring with our legal department with the idea of coming up with some type of a text amendment that would then be submitted to the Planning Commission and then would come back through Council for review. I would like to suggest that we try to clean the whole sign ordinance up where we're at it and perhaps put Council Member Martin's suggested change in there just to sort of do an overhaul of that ordinance. As I understand it, I think it was done 26 years ago or 28 years ago and hasn't been revised, the zoning ordinance hasn't been revised in that area for that period of time. So this will give us a chance to sort of bring it up to the modern era that we're in today. Okay. Councilman Lawless, you're okay with no comment. All right. Looks like we're ready for a vote then on the motion. All in favor, please say aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Okay. Moving right along. It looks like then to just sort of summarize where we are, and correct me if I'm mistaken on this, anybody. We are, if we go back to Jerry's second page, the summary of the numbers, we have a net additional $230,775 that has been proposed. That's net of additions and subtractions. So the floor is open for discussion regarding how we deal with that. Any? Yes, sir. No, no. It's just page right here. Jerry's got it up right there. Council Member James, thank you. I'm still looking at hand. Council Member James and Council Member Stennett. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My question is probably more for Jerry or for George or Council Member Myers. Within the outside agency oversight and one of the proposals had to do with the insurance, has that calculation been taken into account in revenue discussions as far as the increase in that? I don't think it has. I'm not even sure that it's been done, and I'm not sure that it can be done. So we might want to call. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about, Mary? Are you talking about the health insurance? Actually, those revenues run through the self-insurance fund, so they would not have anything to do with the budget for the general fund, except for that if there is a deficit at year end in that insurance fund, the general fund picks up a proration based on the number of employees that are in the general fund. But it doesn't work in reverse. But it won't. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Myers, you want to? Mary, Ms. Vister, how is the calculation made to determine what we put in that self-insurance fund? It's based on what the projected costs are. Every year when we set the plan rates for the employees, we look at how much the average claims will be for single plan, married with child or family plan. And so then we project out what we think the enrollment will be and, you know, how much there's a decision made on how much the employee is going to pay and how much the city will pay to supplement. So that's done really at the plan design when we're going through the benefit process during the year. And what time of the year is that done? It's normally in the fall. We did it, I want to say it was like September, October-ish of this year, because the decision has to be made on whether we're going to change rates or not when we go out for open enrollment for the employees. So then, is it your anticipation that the rates will go down for employees based on this pool being subtracted, or? Well, actually, in the last two years, if you remember, we have had a deficit in that fund, and at year end, we've had to kick in additional money from the general fund, from urban service, and from the sewer fund to cover the deficit. Off the top of my head, if I recall, 2008, I think it was around $3.6 million. So what we are anticipating is that that additional funding will go away. Okay. And that's what was the impetus for moving in this direction, was that $3.5 million that we had to spend. Right. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think Mr. O'Meara summed it up last week, gave us a target that the mayor proposed in his budget of $278 million.8. I think that's right. Is that correct? $278.8 is the revenue current projected number that the mayor balanced the budget with. and in recognizing that we have another 200-plus thousand to come up with. One idea that we did talk about when we went through franchise fees and permits about five meetings ago was to change the projected revenue number on franchise permits. This is the permit from Kentucky American Water, Columbia Gas, et cetera. If you look at the last nine years, we historically have averaged about 9 percent, But if you take out years 2004 and 2005, where the percentages are 46% and 25% increases, which were very abnormal, we usually track between 4% and 6% revenue stream each year. In this budget, the mayor has projected 3%, somewhat a little more conservative than some of the averages in the past years. So what I would look at with a lot of the fee increases from Kentucky American recently, from Columbia Gas, that there is a strong possibility, and I know we did talk about it briefly, that this number could be very conservative. So I would make a motion and put it out there to change it from 3% to a 4% projected number. And, Mr. O'Meara, I don't know if we just do the fuzzy math about 3 into the 17.3 to get another percentage point. I mean, we don't even have to go a full percentage point. We can go half a percent at 3.5, and that's a very doable number. Even if you look at the last three years, FY 2009 will finish at 6.2%. which is still a lot higher than 3%, especially with all the rates. Again, this is based on the rates customers are paying. So unless we see a significant usage go down, which hasn't happened yet, possibly in water it has, but most of the rates are going up, so our percentage will go up. So I would make a motion to amend it to 3.5%. Second. There's a motion and a second. The floor is available for discussion. Is there any discussion? Council Member, are you wanting to speak on this? Okay. Anybody else? Does anyone want to speak on this motion, Council Member Ellinger? I didn't hear. What will that raise in the difference then? I'm actually doing the math for it right now. Give me one second. Let's see. I want to say $2.8 million would be the difference of half a percent. Is that what you got, Bill or Mary? Yeah, Vice Mayor, can I continue up with that then? We just need to show up that number. While he's working the number, Councilman Ellinger. And one thing I did leave out, Councilman Ellinger, this is also the 278 number does not include the fund balance from FY 2008. Keep that in mind. So if we do have an economic downturn during this fiscal year, it does not include the $4 million fund balance from 2008. Did we chew that up in 2009? No, we have not. So it does not include. So should the economy do, does turn worse, we have a $4 million cushion that could be there. But we can't use it to balance the budget. That's the policy we changed. For what it's worth, I think we should also be mindful that at least the three years that I've been on the council, it's been a struggle to actually meet the budget, the original budget, in terms of expenditures. This year, the budget was $273 million, right, Bill? $273 and change? 273 in revenue. 273 in revenue. The budget, the original budget was 273? The original budget was 275. Okay, and we ended up at 268, right? 267.8. Okay, I'm just, yeah, order of magnitude. I'm trying to just get an order of magnitude. Original budget was 275 million for fiscal 09. And we're spending, hmm? That's why I was saying it was 273. 273.8. What page? Your summary, I believe, last week. Okay, excuse me. FYI 09 adopted budget, 273.8. 273.8 million. We are actualizing in terms of revenue and roughly expenses, 268 million and change. Yes. Okay. So the point of that is that we have, I wouldn't say the word struggled to achieve the budget, but we have not met the budget. We haven't spent as much as we budgeted for what that's worth, as I said beginning. If the same model translated into this year, the budget is $278,000, and we were $5 million short of that, so we arguably might spend $5 million less. If Council Member Stenitz's point he made about the fund balance, you've got that reserve in addition to the Economic Rainy Day Fund. And, Council Member, I was just waiting on, that was my comment on the motion. We have a motion on the floor. Is there further discussion about the motion? Yeah, Council Member Ellinger. Okay, well, I guess two things then, because you brought up the $4 million that we had from 08. Do we not have responsibilities if we have a surplus to put into contingency fund by statute if we have a certain amount? And I think in the 2009 we haven't done that either, have we? So that might be a liability, too, that we have by statute if we don't change that, correct? I'm pausing to organize my thoughts. In the FY09 budget that was adopted, there was a portion of that saying that it was expected to have retirements and have out of the ordinary expenses and that we thought we would have to draw from the contingency, economic contingency for that purpose and we would not make the $50,000 per month contribution into the 2009, into the economic contingency in 09. So we haven't dipped into that contingency so there's discussion on whether we should should not put that $50,000 per month into the 2009, and we want to see what our fund balance and what our results are and discuss that with you. That's 2009. 2010 is based on the assumption. I guess to get back to that, he said that we still have a $4 million that we have that we can look back on and say, well, we always have that to fall back on. Is that true or not? Well, depending on whether we put 25% of the unrestricted into the economic. But is that not required by statute that we do that? The 2009 budget had a statement and was passed by council that suspended that for 2009. But if you have a surplus in that part of it, that you have to put 25% in that, plus you have to put the $50,000 per month? All those are true statements. In the 2009 budget, the council passed a suspension of that. Okay, so I guess I'm trying to get back to where he says we have $4 million as a surplus. Is that a correct statement that we always can look back on that as saying? It depends on whether we take 25% and put it into the economic contingency. Okay. And then the next question I have is the change to the 3.5. Would that be a recommendation that you would make? Change to the 3.5. To answer the question, I think it's a little short of $800,000 going from $3,000 to $3,500. I guess when we're looking at our estimates and our calculations, and when we make that as a recommendation, would that be something as revenue that you would agree with that we should use that as to help balance this budget? That we expect our expectations to grow in this? Because you give us different expectations, and you calculate what you think they're going to be. Now, is this something that, I mean, I guess we can put revenue numbers at whatever we want, Not to say they're going to reach it, because it's all on expectation. You'd bounce this budget on a 3% growth, and now we're looking at 4.2% growth. Now with this one, would this be something that you would recommend? Because you had a certain number initially that you thought it would be, and now we're changing that number. Do you agree with those changes in how we calculate that number? If you're asking me, is the 3.5% a reasonable budget for franchise fees for next year? Yes, that's my question. I think the answer is yes. Okay, thank you. Very small variables. Any further discussion on the motion that's before us? Okay. Council Member Stenet, would you restate your motion before we vote? So, and Mary and Bill, you all did get the numbers about 800,000? No, it's 88,000. 88. Mary, why don't you come up to the mic, please? Thank you. Because what we're looking at now, just so everybody's clear, 3% is generating 17.3 million right now. So a half a percent will generate? If we increase the FY09 projected of $16.8 million by 3.5 percent instead of 3 percent, we would end up with $17.388 million, which is $88,000 more than what we currently have. So it will get you $88,000. Okay, I see what your chart does. Is it you're basing on prior year increase versus what we're actually collecting, the overall sum that we're collecting, I mean, in terms of what we hope their revenues are? Yeah. Okay. So. Then we have some more work to do. But I'll stand behind a 3.5% number, unless anybody wants to amend it to 4. Because, again, in FYI 2009, we projected 1.5% at the original, and now we're coming in at 6.2% approximately. I don't know if that number has changed dramatically, but that's a huge jump from what we projected. Okay. Councilman Lane, is this on this motion? Yes, sir. All right. Yeah. Excuse me. I'm losing my voice. I ran the number. We would have to have a 4.17% increase to increase the revenue by $200,000. This is an increase over this estimated revenues for this year. instead of 3.5. You want to round it to 4.2. It'd be 7 tenths of 1% increase in growth. Excuse me. It'd be 1.2% increase in growth versus... No, it's 4.2 versus 3%. That would bring our revenue up to about $17 million and $17.5 million, a $200,000 increase. Are you talking about the overall budget number or the franchise? No, I'm talking about the franchise fee number. All right, what I'm saying is if I understand what you were saying, we were going to increase the franchise fee to pick up an additional $230,000 approximately. That's not what you're... No, my motion was to leave it at 3.5%. So we pick up an additional 88,000 approximately right now. Okay. I mean, you can obviously change 3.5% to another. No, I was just giving you the number. We would need, we probably need to go up to a 4.2% increase to get up to 200,000. Is that an amendment to the motion? I'm not making a motion. That was just for the information since you were trying to run the number on it. You want to amend your motion? I'll make that amendment to 4.2. So moved. Accept that, Mr. Stenet. There's a second to the amendment. We vote on the amendment to the motion. Council Member James. Lawless? Okay. Okay. My question is for Ms. Pfister. over, is there historical data that tells over the past, I don't know, whatever number of years, say the past 10 years, what the revenue has actually been for the franchise fees that you could give us? I mean, are we, it's, page 14, a little book. And the franchise fees is a function of weather and of use. So it can fluctuate. I'm listening. I'm sorry. Are you able to find it? Hold on. I've got to find my little book. Jerry, do you have that? Can you put it on the overhead if you have it? Thank you. Oh, no, that's okay. What's that starting year that's on that bar graph? A one? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So you can see that it does fluctuate. And, you know, it fluctuates both on the usage and on what the weather patterns are. I mean, it's hot versus if we have extreme weathers. Weathers. All right. Thank you. That chart helps. If you can leave that up there for just a moment, that'd be helpful. Thank you. Any other discussion on the motion to amend Council Member Gorton? I'd like for... Is this on the... Well, I don't know if this is... Are you working off the electronic list? It's a tough one because now we're having to escape that now because we've got an amendment. Well, I just want to ask Bill O'Mara or Mary Pfister, if the 4.2 percent, will you confirm what number that will get us? So it's not really quite what would balance the budget. It would be about $29,000. That means we'd be down to one one-hundredth of one percent. Yes. We're getting close. Can you speak, since we're on the air, to the impact of what the increase in, I think we've got an increase in water rates. We've got KU who's either applied or been granted an increase in rates. And if I recall, Columbia Gas, they went down. And Insight, I mean, can you speak to the impact of increased rates, which we know are coming, on this franchise fee? No, ma'am. I have not rerun the numbers based on any rate increases that have... I didn't mean specific numbers. Do the rate increases affect the franchise fees? Yes, ma'am. Okay, that's all I wanted. They will make it go up, depending on weather and usage. Usage is the same. The rates would make it. It's a function of both rate and usage. So if rate goes up, usage goes down, we don't see the same percentage increase in revenues. Okay. The opposite can occur. And my other question, just based on this budget summary franchise permits, is there any reason to, I mean, to expect that we've only had, we haven't had a year where they've been below four, where the percentage is less than four percent since fiscal year 03. And so what would be the reason to expect that we would go down? Major changes in usage based on weather. And that's an every year kind of thing. That's correct. And that hasn't happened since, for quite a number of years. You want very hot summers. You want very cold winters. Well, some of us do. Thank you very much. We're still on the amendment. Council Member James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Bill, follow-up question on that. What typically happens when that franchise fee has been estimated and then comes in at a higher rate? What happens to those funds typically? It's all part of the general fund. Okay. And so we would have probably seen budget amendments that came to move revenues, franchise fees, revenues to support other programs, divisions, projects within government or just. It's all part of the general fund, part of the total budget. Okay. So it's not captured in any kind of line item that says this is a franchise fee revenue. Yes. It's recorded as franchisory revenue, just as other revenue lines are a part of the general fund. EMS fees, parks, franchise fees, the insurance premium tax, the license, property taxes, all of those are contributing revenues to the general fund. Would you agree that we do have certain revenues that once they are received are appropriated for particular things? things? Is that a correct assumption that I'm making? We do have that. Sanitary sewer is a dedicated fund. Urban services is a dedicated fund. These are general fund revenues. Okay, so this is not, there's nobody expecting or looking at this saying that we need this in order to be able to do this. It doesn't go towards any right-of-way personnel. It doesn't go towards anything in particular. It just goes back into a general fund pot, and then nobody's expecting, nobody's looking at a percentage higher than the estimate to offset any cost related to anything that they're doing. Well, you're saying globally anything, and I'm sure that, you know, we want raises, we want to fund the debt service, all those things come out of the general fund. So all revenues combined support all those expectations combined. Okay. Okay. I'm probably not able to express what I'm trying to ask, and maybe I'm just looking for an answer that I'm not. Well, if you're asking me if they're dedicated funds, the answer is no. Okay. Is that? It's kind of what I'm asking. Dedicated informally is kind of what I'm asking. I don't know of informal dedicated funds. That doesn't make any sense. That's an oxymoron, isn't it? Well, it's a contradiction of terms. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Is there anybody else on the amendment? Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I wanted to ask another question. Is new growth figured into the projection for the additional franchise fees? Residential growth? I don't believe we have broken down our projection of franchise fees into that type of component, such as property taxes has that type of a process where you look at new assessments versus growth and existing assessments. We more look at the trends of actual collections and whatever are proposed. so many times when we're the proposed rate versus the final rate they're oftentimes different and a long delay between when it's proposed and when it's actual so we kind of don't use that proposed rate and trying to guess what's going to be approved by the PSC so we more look at the conglomerate of actual collections and just project off of that. I'll look here and see if I've misquoted our process. I think the only thing that I would add to what Bill just said is that part of the thought process when we were developing the budget and when we held it to 3% was taking a conservative look at what the growth would be. Just as with the property tax, we scaled back based on what the growth had been in previous years, anticipating, you know, that the recession was going to come to Lexington. I think that that's the same thing that we did here, you know, just anticipating that we may not see the growth from new residential developments. Okay. That's what I needed to know if it was already figured in there. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My amendment was at 4.2 because I thought that's the number that got us there doing the math. But as we've recalculated, it looks like that number to reach what we need to reach is actually 4.5. And I'm comfortable making that motion to adding to the amendment just 4.5, changing the revenue projections for franchise fees. So move. All right. There's a motion and a second by Council Member Ellinger. Motion by Council Member McCord. seconded by Council Member Ellinger to amend the motion. All right. Is there a discussion on the amendment to the amendment? Hearing none, let's vote on the amendment to the amendment. All in favor of the amendment, Council Member McCord, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Motion carries. Okay. Everybody didn't? We've got 11 votes here. Does anybody not vote? Wait a minute, wait a minute. I had reset, so maybe Jeanette can check get on here. You're on there, okay, great. All right. Motion carries. I'm trying to reset is that okay I'll go back to the agenda all right now where are we we're back to the original motion by councilmember stennett right there more mr. standard are you gonna vote on that All right. He said yes. Okay. Now we're back on the... Okay. We're back to the original motion then. The motion as Mr. Stenis' motion has been amended to 4.5. Okay. Is there more comments on the original motion? Are there any other comments on the original motion? All right. Hearing none, all in favor of the motion, please indicate by voting. We're voting on Mr. Stendit's motion. I want to indicate by voting aye. Yes, Council Member Lawless. well we've already voted to do that we are now voting on Mr. Stenet's motion as amended to 4.5 right so alright all clear ready to land bringing it in you did register Yes, you did. This time you registered Ms. Gordon. Hallelujah. All right. Mr. Jerry? Yeah, we're down to 1 100. We just delivered 1 100th of a percent on the budget. You want to give us an update on where we are? This shows precision by this council, surgical precision. With the amended changes to the franchise fee, the new fund balance will be 100, it'll go from what was in the mayor's proposed budget of $100,650 to $121,880. Say that out loud, Council Member Gordon. Well, that's perfect. That's pretty good. I don't know how much better you can get than perfect. Council Member Myers, looks like you want to say something. Jerry, does this include the money for the infill and redevelopment that we talked about last week? Yes, it would. Okay. Thank you. What else do we need to do? We have to vote on the revenues. Thank you, Mr. Ellinger. All right. Mr. Lane. Vice Mayor, I have a report from the state on the revenues through May and I felt that it would be valuable information to share with Council, not You know, just to give a general trend of what's happening statewide and how it might have an impact on our local revenues. Okay. Do you have any objection to me running that flagpole here for a second? No, it's fine. Okay, thank you. Please. I've got a letter from the state budget director, Mary Lassiter. I'm going to pass that around for you to take a look at. And I've got a little overhead information that comes out of the letter I was going to put up on the screen. Could you zoom in on the top paragraph up there please? That's it. I thought that the letters are coming around but I just wanted to show these data that among the major, these are major tax accounts or revenue accounts for the state that the sales and use tax receipts were down 4.2% for the month, but for the year they were only down two-tenths of one percent. What this shows is that retail sales activity has been declining steeply and so we're you know they were up for we're down 4.2% for the month, they were only down 2% for the year so you can see that the sales have been tailing off. Corporate income taxes at $8.8 million, that's a negative number. That reflected tax refunds, but corporate taxes for the year were down 38.8%. Individual income tax collection fell 6.2% in May, but it's down 3.7% for the 11 months year to date. So you could see that revenues for May were down substantially in that category. Property tax collections decreased 1.8% for the month, but were up 1.9% through the first 11 months of the year. I wouldn't consider that too much because tax collections vary. They're cyclical because they're billed out in October, November, and they are up because your value of real estate is not going to decline rapidly. And then cigarette revenues were up because of the tax increase that we had. And coal severance was up because coal mining with the higher oil prices has been increasing year to date. Now, if you go back and look at the next page, which is not going to be on the overhead because it's fairly small type. You'll notice that on the very top line, this is on page that says Kentucky State Revenue, General Fund Revenue. If you look at the very top, you'll see that the tax receipts for all tax receipts for May were down 3%, and for the year they were down 1.8%. I'm really sure this with you because even though Lexington is doing very well, we have the lowest unemployment rate in the state. We do have a lot of economic activity here. We are still experiencing a decline, which is reflected in our May report that came in last week. And I just want to – I'm not suggesting that we change our budget estimates, but I think we need to be ever vigilant as we go into the first few months of the next fiscal year to watch our revenue, and then we may need to make some adjustments if our revenues continue to track in the same direction the state has been going in. That's all I have for you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Lane. Council Member Lawless. I agree with Council Member Lane. I'm troubled by the projections we received last week that were $13 million short of what the Mayor's budget. No, it was... We were off a million dollars in the corporate income tax number from the previous year, and we were off a million dollars year to date in payroll tax. So a cumulative, I think, Bill, wasn't it two million overall? Roughly two from the trending number from last year. That's outside that unusual $900,000 income tax. I didn't bring the slides, but Mayo 9 year-to-date versus Mayo 8 year-to-date, which is kind of comparable to what we have here. I don't have it with my hand. Okay. You're getting praise up here, Chris, for having that reservoir of data. I think what Council Member Lawless is looking for, you're going to the, yeah. If you want to compare to what the state's report was, we were up a half a percent in withholdings. We're down 0.82 percent year to date in net profits compared to last year. They flatten insurance and up 9.8 franchise fees. So the total of the four largest categories in the general fund, year-to-date 2009 over year-to-date 2008, we're up $2 million. If you compare that to budget, we are below budget. Okay. I don't know, maybe I was in Oz, but weren't your projections for FY10? FY10? Uh-huh. It's the 278. It's the projection total general fund dollars. For FY10, it's 278.8, Mayor's proposed budget. Okay. I think, can I help just a second? Perhaps. Yeah, I'm just confused. I think maybe what you're thinking is the same thing that I'm thinking, and I'm a little confused too. My recollection was that we were trending numbers from April and May 2009 compared to 2008 revenues in withholding income, that is withholding the payroll tax and the corporate income tax. when you take those together, net of that unusual item, the $900,000 corporate income deal, that tax or that income, that revenue, that we were down a couple million dollars. I thought, and where is that? Please go forward until you see. Did it miss something? I believe this is the slide that you're referring to. There we go. Right. Now, instead of comparing to same period last year, I was showing that our current projected year-end collections for these four accounts is below what we had previously projected for these four accounts. Is that? Right. So it all depends on what comparisons we're making. I was trying to show you the one that would compare to the states year over year, but I did present the fact that we have reduced our projections in three out of those four categories and it's because we do see the softness of the economy affecting our revenues right now as Council Member Lane is pointing out that the state is experiencing. And wasn't there a FY10 new projection of a considerable decrease in expected revenues in all categories from 278 to... No, ma'am. Next slide, please. The slide that you're referring to is I was showing that our originally adopted budget was 273.8. The projection where FY09 would end that was made in March was $270. The one we're now projecting for FY09 is $267. The mayor's proposed budget for 2010, as presented, is $278.8. So with the soft economy and the state projections, how do we get from 267 to 278? Hold on just a second. We based the 2010 revenue projections to say that the current economic recession will turn around in 2010. So we were projecting that six months of the year would be trending up rather than 12 months trending down. And what we've been trying to see is when is this economic recession going to truly hit Lexington. And what we've seen is one month up, one month down, one month up, one month down. And then we did see two months that were down. So now we're asking, is it here? And every time we do this analysis, we see timing differences. The vice mayor referred to unusual events that were identified that skew the numbers either one way or the other. Mary Pfister did an additional analysis looking at actual payments in the withholding category, industry, trying to take away the noise of cash flow and timing differences and unusual events to try to look at the core payments. So not to try to make this too complicated, but instead of saying, when did we finally put the money in the bank, what was the money for? So your withholdings that you paid us, whenever you paid us, for April, whether that came in in May or June compared to the withholdings you paid us for the same period last year, how does that compare? And so we saw that for two months, February and March, this is not cash flow, this is trying to match what the payroll withholdings were for that month worked, regardless of when we received it. So what we're trying to do is identify whether we have slow pay, when they pay us, or low pay and erosion in the withholdings, trying to get to the underlying economics there. And you can see that we had some ups and downs. October and November is explained again by unusual events. You have three pay periods for major employers in one month last year versus the following month this year. So November spiked up because of that comparison. November spiked down because of that comparison. December showed a negative 1 percent. Then January to January was up 5.1. and March were down. But then when we analyzed our May receipts received in May for payroll worked in April, it's up 3.3. So we have yet to see a true bottoming out or erosion in our payroll base. It's very confusing. We expected to see it. February and March started to show that it was here. Then there seemed to be good news in April. We're chomping at the bit to analyze June payments to analyze May payroll. The other thing, I went to the same site Council Member Lane did and the State Budget Office puts out economic briefs each Friday and the one dated June 5th was the only one that was available and posted yet. And they talked about National Association of Business Economic Outlook. And this is prognostication. It's, you know, their opinion is more or less better than yours or mine. If anybody had the exact right answer, they'd be millionaires. They'd be billionaires. The panel of 45 economists said it expects the economic growth will rebound in the second half of 2009. However, the group still expects to see a decline in second quarter economic activity. Almost three out of four survey respondents expect the recession will end by the third quarter of 2009. Nineteen percent predict the turnaround won't come until the fourth quarter. Seven percent say it may not come until early 2010. None of the panelists expected the recession to continue past the first quarter of next year. That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. Right. But it's what we have available in order for us to decide is the cup half empty, half full? Have we hit bottom? Do we still have it to expect? I guess my question is last week if I understood correctly you came and said we have new projected 09 numbers. 09 numbers which were several million dollars lower than before. Right. And that the recommendation by the administration was for us to go on and pass a budget with the $278 million projection and then reassess at the first quarter. Is that correct? That is correct. That's what I said. So that's kind of what we're moving forward doing at this point. And my question is, and I don't know if anybody can answer it, is if we pass this at the $278 million, knowing that things aren't looking as bright as we had hoped for FY09, that after that first quarter, will the council be involved in adjusting this budget, or do we pass this budget and then any reductions in the budget are done solely by the administration? I know if things go up and there's an adjustment, a budget amendment to add money to our general fund or to any project. That has to come before the council. But what happens if there is a shortfall and after the first quarter it looks like, you know, things aren't as rosy as we thought? Are we going to get another bite at this apple or is it going to be solely on the shoulders and the will or pleasure of the administration to cut the budget as they see fit. Do people understand what I'm saying? Because in prior years, my understanding is positions don't get filled because the administration watches the budget and says, oh, we have a shortfall, so we're going to put a freeze on hiring, or we're going to do this, we're going to do that. They only come to us if there is an increase, a budget amendment to increase the budget. So in passing this at the recommendation of the administration at the $278 million, are we, after the first quarter when those new analyses come out, are we going to have an opportunity as a council to go through this process and adjust the budget accordingly, or are we just handing it over and what happens happens? Do people understand my question? My answer to you is yes. Yes what? Exactly. There were like three questions, I'm sorry. Yes, the administration does it or we do it? And it's both. And let me explain why I say both. The budget is passed by council. Changes to the budget have to and require council approval. Management of the budget is the administration's responsibility. Informing the council of what management is doing is management's responsibility. For instance, if there is a hiring freeze that is reported to council, headcount reports how many open positions is incorporated into what is reported to council. Now, if you want more information than totals, we can certainly furnish that. Again, I would remind you that if you pass a $279 million budget, because that's what's on the table right now, the largest single expense category is salaries. Sure. And we have said going forward in the mayor's proposed budget that we are not funding X number approved positions. And we listed, you know, that total. There's a schedule in the mayor's proposed budget of the total number that are not being funded. That is how one of the major, many of the components of this budget. budget, we'll be tracking that throughout the year and reporting that to council. If we have a significant decrease in revenue, in my opinion, this budget is tight. We've tried to squeeze wherever we can squeeze and root out wherever we can find additional revenues. So anything that we have to do to respond to significant economic downturns are going to be painful and have to be presented to Council for approval. So through budget amendments or just reported to us, for instance, hiring freeze, say in code enforcement? Mayor Redekop, And that's what I'm saying, it's in both categories. There's management of the budget and there are changes to the budget. Depending on the severity, one migrates from one to the other. Mayor Redekop, Okay. Councilmember Gordon, you're up next. Maybe you have – can somebody help me with this? Does somebody understand what I'm talking about here? Councilman Watless, I think that if there's an anticipated material change in revenue, then administration would have to bring forth a budget amendment to change that revenue. And because we have to keep a balanced budget, we would have to bring forth, with that change in revenue estimate, a change in an expense category that you all would either approve or disapprove. So I would see that if there is material change, that you all would have to be active in the approval of that change from a budgetary perspective. If it's not material, then I would anticipate that administration would try to manage through it until it becomes evident that it is going to be a material thing. So does that make sense? I think kind of. One of the things that I wanted to add to what Bill had said was, if you go back to Bill's page three presentation, where it shows that we're down, or that the difference right now in employee withholdings is only up 0.5 percent, we all have to remember that the 08 numbers included an extra payroll. So, and this is all cash to cash, so we included more, we, you know, collected more in 08 because we had one extra payroll. And if you look at the schedule that kind of takes that out, you can see that we are, you know, we are trending up until February or March. The challenging thing is in April, you know, is April up because April's up or is April up because there was layoffs and people had payouts of their vacation and sick because they've been laid off. That's, you know, that's the dangerous thing here. But, you know, historically, we are seeing prior to February strong revenues in our withholdings compared to prior year when you take out that extra payroll. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Well, I'm very comfortable with what we have done here today. and Council Member Stenet worked his magic and came up with $279,030,775. And, Jerry, I was going to ask you if we're scheduled to ratify the budget today to put it on the docket. And so thinking forward, will you be cleaning up these numbers between now and 3 o'clock so that we can see what we've actually done today and how the numbers work? Yes, I'll work with budgeting and whoever on to get you some numbers. Also, I hope to have a motion that will give to the Vice Mayor to request the motion to be passed to adopt the Mayor's proposed budget with amended changes. And I think we still, if I recall, have we, we still have not adopted revenues. Is that correct? Well, if you vote on accepting, right. If you, at this point, if you vote on accepting what you all have done indirectly, you have because the fund balance, the revised fund balance, includes the revenue for projections. So you don't think we need to have an official motion? I think you need to vote on accepting the mayor's proposed budget with the amended changes. And that will, at this point, get it all, I think. Okay. Well, I'm very comfortable with what we've done, And so I'd like to go ahead and offer that motion to accept the mayor's proposed budget with the changes that the committee of the whole has made during its meetings. There's a motion and there's a second to accept the mayor's proposed budget with the amendments adopted by the council of the whole. All right. The floor is available for discussion on the motion. Council Member Stenet. Is it? Yeah, I'm now looking at my monitor for Council Member Stenet, Martin, Ellinger, and Myers. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I definitely support Council Member Gordon's motion on several issues that come to mind. One, we do have the $4 million fund balance that we talked about earlier. Whether it's $4 million or $3 million, we're going to have to debate that later on after this budget anyway this year. Second of all, we have the Economic Contingency Fund at $13.5 million approximately in there should there be another economic downturn or July and August come in well below. The third point is we know for a fact that we will not spend exactly $279,035,000 next year, one, because we won't hire everyone we plan to hire July 1. So there's going to be some, a little bit of cushion. I'm not going to say hundreds of millions or thousands of dollars, But there will be some there, assuming no other expenses like utilities go up. So I think I am very comfortable with this number, based definitely on those three points, and I'll definitely support Councilman Gordon's motion. Thank you. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This is a moving target, and I think I just am very impressed with Bill, Mary, and their team and the quality of work that they've put into this. It is a moving target. This is a guess right now. And in a period of possible declining revenues, we will watch this extra diligently through a period such as this. When we've got possible increasing revenues, we don't have to watch so closely. But when we have decreasing revenues, we've just got to keep an eye on it. As Council Member Law has indicated, we need to watch this through the process and maybe have monthly updates to see how we're doing in the funds. But I've just been very impressed at their professionalism, and I know that this will continue through the fiscal year 10. We'll have many more sessions like this to talk about where the numbers are and how we're doing vis-à-vis the projections we've looked at today. These are just guesses today, but they, I think, are very educated guesses based on the best available information that can be had at this moment in time. And so I support the motion to adopt this, and with, I think, all of our understanding that we're just going to keep an eye on this and see how things go. That's what this year is going to be about. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilman Ellinger. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm going to take the opposite approach. I think this is irresponsible. We had our estimates coming from our budgeting folks who said that in March we're supposed to be growing at 3%. Now we're estimating at a 4.2% growth when our revenues are decreasing. We should be looking at decreasing our estimates and not increasing them by 1.2%. So I'd say we should set our revenues at $276 million, not $279 million. I think that's irresponsible, and we're going to have to be cutting, And I think you do it on the front end, and you don't do it on the back end after a couple months and say, well, we know we're going to do it. We're setting a budget up that's going to fail. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. With respect to what we did today in terms of raising the revenue projection for franchise fees, I'm in agreement with that, because I think it's clear that those fees are going to go up and we're going to draw in more revenue. with regard to the other revenue streams increasing that projection I'm not in agreement with that and I guess Mr. O'Meara could you come up and you may have said something today with that last spreadsheet wasn't really especially but the last chart that you put up there you may be changing what you said last week and so I want to ask you I was in the last week or the week before you were asked a question and you said the revenue director as a revenue director you don't believe in this number the 3% but as a commissioner you do support that number and I'm and maybe I'm not getting that correctly so if I'm not I want you to correct me because I don't want to I would I would do not remember making a statement like that I did say as a revenue director I'm a very conservative person and I look at revenue projections in a conservative manner as total finance I'm looking at the total from everywhere which means we're not going to spend everything we're going to spend that's projected. As both people, I have foot in both doors. I am recommending to go with the 279 now, 278.8 plus the 200,000, acknowledging just exactly like Councilmember Martin said, we're going to have to watch this very closely. And here's the choice I see that we're making. Do we want to make in very short amount of time very deep, not pleasant cuts in our budget or do we want to wait until we have full evidence that those are required and do them at a later date? Now waiting, it has implications and has risk. But if you want to make very hard choices, I would do it with more time and analysis than less time. Okay. So what do you think about that projection, though? Because moving it to the $279 million, everybody's agreeing with that because what we've done is move the franchise-free, that franchise-fee projection. Everybody's okay with that because it's pretty much guaranteed that's going to come in. But the other part of that, before we do that, what is your thought on – you put another little chart up there. What I want to know is based on the work that you guys did here, how comfortable are you? let's take out the franchise fee increase and let's take it back down to the 278 or 276. How comfortable are you that your analysis right here makes you comfortable with the revenues coming in? We're talking about the payroll tax, business license, all those other things, not counting the franchise fee. Because out of the four funds that you put up there, franchise fee is the one that we're projecting to go up the most. It's also the smallest fund. So how comfortable are you that this work right here shows that we're going to meet our number at the end of the year? Well, the word comfortable I'm going to avoid. What I'm going to say is that we're predicting based on how we think the future is going to be. And so I look at economists, the leading ones, and they say it's going to turn around. They can't decide when. Is it going to happen sooner or is it going to, as in October, is it going to happen next March? We are, we built the two point, of the 278.8 which is now 279 assuming that we would turn around December forward and that we would not experience large decreases. If I don't have it with me, I may have it, but it's a big, busy spreadsheet. We went and looked at withholdings. Can I stop you for a second? Yes. That statement you just made, you built the budget based on those revenues coming in. But then when you had, I think it was the April numbers, that caused you concern. What I'm really asking is, did this analysis turn around that concern? It mitigated that concern because what we saw was payroll for April of this year compared to payroll for April of last year is up 3.3. That means people are paying us slower, but they still have a solid payroll base. That's what that April number makes me hope, gives me hope to mean. It could be the opposite, as Mary Pfister said. said it could be the anomaly from payouts from mass layoffs. I have not read about mass layoffs in Fayette County. Large chunks of people being laid off such as we have read in other parts of the state and the country. We do have people that have lost their jobs and laid off. We do have an increase in unemployment. Those are all documented. How severe is it to affect our revenues is what we're trying to ascertain and we do not see an evident trend yet and that's why we want to wait and see more data. Okay. I hope Mary's coming up with something. We also have pulled, just so you know, we've pulled from the state the wages covered by unemployment for the Fayette County, just Fayette County, not the MSA. And we were seeing a 3-4 percent growth back at the time that we were proposing the budget. Now that's that has trickled down to a 2 percent growth, you know, as far as increase in the average rate wages one year to the next for wages covered by unemployment. So, you know, we are still seeing an increase. What I'd like to point out to everybody, if you go back to Bill's previous slide, I'm sorry to keep, okay. If you go back to this and you look at the May FY08 number, the 135,242,000,000, that number includes 27 payrolls. This year, we only, the 235, 978 is only going to include 26 payrolls. So we really, the numbers, the flat receipts are showing that we're up 0.5%, but we're really up something higher than that. And it's really hard for the Division of Revenue to ascertain exactly how much we're up because, you know, they've got such an antiquated system, they can't just push a button and say, tell me how much revenue is up on payers that pay biweekly. So the employee withholding, when you look at the flat receipts, it doesn't look that great. It looks like we're down. And on the cover, it looks like what Councilman Ellinger is saying. But when you dig into the details, you can actually see that when you look by payer, pay period by pay period, we are seeing an increase in what they're paying us. Since you referred to me, can I ask you a question then? With this information, when you predicated this budget then in March, did you know that we had 27 pay periods and we don't have 26? Yes. And we budgeted for a 3% growth, and now we're budgeting for a 4.2% growth with knowing our revenues are down? Can you tell me why that was not an issue then and it is now? Revenues were not down when you took out the impact of a 27th payroll. When we were projecting the mayor's proposed budget, when you take out the impact of the 27th payroll, revenues were not down. But didn't you go ahead and make that estimation in March when you did that? Yeah, and if you can look here, the 27th payroll that we received in 2008 was actually received in July for June payrolls. So this is showing all apples to apples as far as number of pay periods. And you can see we would have been making the estimate with January data. You can see that we had a 5% growth in July to July, 1% in August, 3.1%. The October and November. In October we had three pay periods this year, so we were up 22%. In November we were actually down 13% because there was three pay periods in last November. But you can see that until February, we were trending positive, pay period to pay period. So February and March was the first time that we saw two negative pay period payments from our employers out there in a row. April appears to have recovered. Did April recover because things are back on track? Or did April recover because people realized they're losing money and they laid people off? We don't know the answer to that, and we won't. Okay, so we're not knowing that answer. Then how can we, in good faith, raise our estimates from 3% growth, which we're going to do, to 4.2% growth? Because that's what we're doing now. We did not raise our estimates. The increase to the 4.2 is just a function because we're lowering what we're anticipating to come in in 2009. But in order to make that $279 million, we have to make it 4.2%. Do we not, instead of 3%? That's what our growth is going to be. That's what we're estimating our growth as. Yes, sir. If our estimates for 09 hold true, then it would require a 4.2% growth. So we're increasing our estimates from 3% to 4.2 with what? If our 09 estimates hold true, yes. And that's as of last month, we just got those in. Right. So we're within a month of knowing exactly where we're going to be. better than what we were in March when we initially did that. So actually it's going down, but we're raising them. Well, but I would argue with you that we had projected a 3% growth, and April is showing a 3.3% growth. So if April holds true... It's still below 4.2. Well, the 4.2 figure is off of a projected 0.9. Do you have by chance what our growth for revenues since probably 1980 and show us that figure? Because that's when we had our worst recession. We had that at one point. You showed us way back when. Vice Mayor, this is out of order because we have a list of people waiting to speak. Well, she brought my name up, and when she referred to me, I'm just going back to this. There's a time limit that we need to enforce. That's fine. For Councilman to put the clock on me then. I'm ready. Let's just take a breath here. Let's get this answer, okay, Chuck? I think this is an important answer. Yeah, it is. There are other people that are going to want to talk about the same issue. And I think it's important that we do it when we are actually in a recession, and not when we're in positive growth times. So you can see that this goes back to 2001, and you can see the percents there of what we've been averaging as our growths. That's great, but really what we're referring to at this time is not what happened in 2001. What we're looking at is probably what happened in the recession of 1980 and what was the growth patterns in that time. And I think you need to go back further and look at and chart that more than just what's happened here in the last few years. And I think that's going to be a little more reflective of what we can anticipate. I think what we have seen back in the 80s and what we've seen when we hit any recession is that the net profits decline because employers are apt to keep people on salary even when their profits are declining to try to wait out the storm. So we see a decline in net profits first, historically, and then, and at that time when net profits decline, we normally see a growth in employee withholdings because people lay people off and their vacation and sick and so on and so forth is paid out. And so typically, in the first year when the recession hits us, we see the decline in net profits and we see a growth in employee withholdings. withholdings, and then in the subsequent years when we actually see the decline in employee withholdings. Because employers typically will keep people on staff until the last possible moment. If you can't find this information now, it would be fine if you just sent me or sent the council for the last, since 1984, for the last 30 years, what the percentage growth of revenues were, and then it can give us a better feel of what we can expect. because I'm sure there's going to be years that's going to be up over 4.2, but I'm sure there's going to be years that's going to be below that. Okay, and you want the employee withholdings? I want our revenue growth from annually. Total revenue? Yes, because that's what we're looking at here. Okay, you can do that. And that way I will yield any more of my five minutes. Council Member James. Thank you. I have a comment, but just to respond a little bit to what's been going back and forth, is one of the things that I've learned about this recession compared to others is that I don't know, and I didn't necessarily follow politics back when I was in middle school very much or whatever grade I was in then, but one thing I've heard is that this recovery seems to be much quicker than the previous recessions that have occurred before. There's more of an active effort, and we do see some rebounding a little bit more quickly than previous. So I don't know if there's a best look at looking back historically, if there's going to be something we say, well, we have to look at emulating the recession from the 80s because that's exactly what's going to happen. It'll follow that trend. The tactics are different now, and the way in which we learn, you're supposed to learn from how you responded before, so you wouldn't typically do the same things. It's just like your regular household budget. If you know that a certain thing hits you real bad, you would prepare for that, and your response would be different and make you in a less exposed way once you hit that recession. So I know now with that recession that happened before, anything, we're all preparing financially, different for a possible recession that will happen. So if we've not been through it before, we're going to be different this time. So just historical data, I don't know if it's relevant, and you can't predict behavior within numbers as well, and that's really tough to do. So basically it's just kind of a shot in the dark, and I think what everyone has said is right. We've got to watch it closely, be aware of it. So my comment that I initially was going to make was Council Member Lawless spoke on, oh, how do we know if the administration decides to do something different than what we've put in the budget, how do we know that? And we know every week. We get our packets on Thursdays to prepare for our Tuesdays. We've got to read those packets. We've got to read the information. We get our work docket, and then we get a docket and budget amendments on Thursday nights. We've got to read that information. And then we've got to call to question anything that we are concerned about. If we see something within that budget amendment, something on the work session agenda, and something on the docket that we are not for sure about, we have council committees that can deal with those issues and get the data. if the question, if knows nobody to come to the mic, or if the questions cannot be answered within an amount of time that we feel like is appropriate at that setting. But we have an avenue. So we get the budget from the mayor. We go through the budget and make our amendments. We pass the budget. The administration makes decisions, and then they have a blue sheet. They have an administrative process. We don't – our legislative process is the council meetings. So anything related to this budget that we're passing today, we should see that it's the transactions regarding that budget happen within all of it's in front of us. There's nothing that's hidden. It's very obvious to us if you read the packet and read the information. So that's what I'm saying is this has been a very strenuous process going through the budget. But guess what? It's not over. The budget process continues throughout the year as we look at budget amendments and our council work session dockets. Everything that we do, all of our business transactions, everything that's supposed to have a match that we've seen come forward, we should be looking for that grant match to come forward. We've got to be aware of it. It's a lot to stay on top of, but we can do it. I feel hopeful that we as a council can come together and look at the packets, talk to each other, communicate, and make our legislative process work, because this ain't it. It continues throughout the entire fiscal year. So that's what I'm kind of urging council members to do, is don't feel like this is our only time to give input about this budget. We give input about the budget every single week, or we're supposed to, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, and at our standing committees. So please be sure that we, and our oversight committees, Please be sure that we are working diligently to do that and don't feel as if our hands are tied because they're not. We have the key. We have the key. We have the ability to untie those, untangle those knots, unravel those ropes, and make it clear. And we have the authority to do that given to us by our constituents. And we have the obligation to do that by the taxpayers who pledge that we are, charge us with leading that information and passing the ultimate legislation related to that budget. So I apologize if this sounds like grandstanding. It's not. It just clearly is that we do have an ability to, it's not micromanaging, it's working along with the administration to make sure that we're making the best choices with our taxpayers' dollars and with this budget that we've approved. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. As the maker of the motion, I did want to respond to a couple of things and ask Bill O'Mara and Mary Pfister a question. I don't think that any of us up here want to be irresponsible. And if I thought this was an irresponsible budget, I would not have made the motion. The budget is a framework. That is what it is. We all know that week in and week out, as Council Member James said, we change the budget. every year since 1973, I'm sure, and before. And so I think it is a responsible framework for us to go forward, and we shouldn't forget that we have Budget and Finance Committee every month where we see the revenue and expense report. That is our big control, is we get those reports. And so we have an opportunity in a bigger level to make changes if we have concerns. There have been two years in the past 11 where I voted no on a budget because I thought it was not a good budget. But I intend to support this motion. And I know that Bill O'Mara on June the 9th when we talked about our revenue update, I believe you said, because I wrote it down, that our top 30 employers through May had increased net profits. And I wrote that down. Is that payroll? Payroll. Which to me says that there is a little bit of an uptick perhaps. I guess I would ask you not to put you on the spot, but if we pass this motion, are you going to have trouble sleeping tonight, or do you think that it is a doable budget with $279 million revenue estimate? I don't want to put you on the spot, but I do want to know if it makes you nervous. I'm always nervous. Okay, well then that puts it in perspective. Okay, that puts it in perspective. I am going to be able to go to sleep tonight, was your first question. Am I worried about this summer? You betcha. Just like I have been since December. Yes. And so I want to see what's a trend, what we can explain, what's confusing. but I guess my moment to reiterate, the numbers don't tell me that we have to cut $3 million worth of payroll. The numbers don't tell me that we have to cut $3 million worth of programs today. We may. Yes. In October, I may be here wringing my hand saying we've got to do this. I don't see the numbers telling me that we have to make that kind of choice today. Well, I appreciate all your hard work and Mary and Elizabeth and all the folks who've worked on this. Thank you very much. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to just say I'm voting for the mayor's budget for these reasons. I think we need to evaluate the economic trends in Lexington for several more months. before we determine what to do. Are we having a long-term decline or is it just a dip in our revenue on a short-term basis? If the revenues continue to trend downward, we have a number of options. We can reduce the size of government, which is a serious decision to make, or we can use our rainy day fund. And I would prefer to use a rainy day fund if it's just a short-term dip because that's why we have put that plan into motion so we don't have to adjust the size of government for a short-term period of time. We can use the rainy day money to help us through. But we need to be vigilant to keep tabs on what the economy is doing for the next few months so that we can adjust rapidly and respond to the market conditions in Lexington. But I'd like to just close by saying that Lexington is the state's best economy and we have a very dynamic city here. The employment levels are highest in the state. So if anybody has a chance to work through this, we have the best chance. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Vice Mayor. You know, it's been said a couple different times, a couple different ways, but we're really in a place where no one of our generation has ever been before, and times are different, and you make the best decisions based upon the information you have at your disposal. And the reason I seconded this motion is that I think based on the information we have at our disposal that we are making as wise a decision as we can, you know, one of the things that I want to point out, two things, one about the administration and one about this council. First off, to the administration, I really want to compliment you, everybody in the administration, but especially, Bill, some of the work that you've been doing over the years behind the scenes, bottom line is we didn't know what our numbers were a couple years ago. And with the PeopleSoft debacle and STARS and everything else, we had no ability to have a grasp on anything and to be vigilant about our numbers. And with a lot of work that's behind the scenes that, frankly, constituents and residents will never know or appreciate or may never care about, we now are in a position where we can make good decisions, and I want to compliment every single person in the administration that worked on that and people on council that worked through that. The other thing is that, Council Member Lane, when we got on council five years ago, you started trumpeting the very small economic contingency fund we had. We had maybe $4 million in there five years ago when we started. We've more than tripled that. We were at about $13 million, all because you kept trumpeting that and saying, we really need to put money away for a rainy day. Council Member Ellinger made a comment as he passed by, this is the worst recession since the Great Depression. And so, okay, he's right. Then we've got money to work with for an economic contingency because this council had enough foresight a couple years ago to put money away and start stocking it away in our savings account. And last year we made some decisions because we thought some things might be very unique that we put that on pause or we suspended how we did that. but we made decisions at the time with the information that we had. And I think that, Council Member James, you bring up a great point, and that is that we should be vigilant 12 months out of the year. I think we're in a position to actually do that now much better than we were even a year ago. And I think that we need to be vigilant, as Council Member Myers says, about things other than just the numbers, a lot about the policy issues. and has been said so often we need to hold those accountable that are in charge of our economic development and keeping that vibrancy that we've got here in this city. But I would just contend that during this budget process, it's one thing to say I'm against this or that, and we all have different reasons why we vote different ways on budget items. but it's one of those things where I also watch who has brought forward cuts and ideas for cuts. It's one thing to say I don't agree with this, but it's another to say here's where I see the opportunity. And if folks aren't willing to do that, then, you know, to me, that's taking an easy way out. And, yeah, I can stand up here and say this makes me nervous or that makes me nervous, but at the end of the day we've been put up here to make decisions and we make the best ones we can at the time, and I appreciate everybody through this very difficult process. It's probably been the toughest one that I've been involved with in five years, but I'm very grateful for the work that we've all done. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Council Member McCord. Council Member Martin, then Council Member Myers. Nobody here has a crystal ball, and we make the best educated guess as we can. If half the people think the economy is going to go up and half the people think the economy is going to go down, when the economy goes down, does it mean people are right or wrong? and it means the economy went down. So I think no one here knows the future. We'll make the best guess we can. We plan for the future. We have contingency funds. Unless there are specific budget recommendations to make at this time, we will pass this budget, and we'll come back in July and come back in August and come back in September and look at this again and watch the numbers. It's easy to call it irresponsible, but it's harder to find the type of money that would take and reduce all risk. There's no way we can reduce all the risk right now. What we can do is continue to watch the budget and continue to watch the numbers and plan for the best. We don't know what's ahead, but we're going to keep watch. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I shortchanged Council Member Myers a little while ago when he had the floor and seated and yielded to Council Member Ellinger. So I've got to apologize to him and give him back to the floor back to you. I'll yield my remaining two minutes to Council Member. Thank you so much. I've got plenty of time. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And actually, Ms. Gordon asked Mr. O'Meara the final question that I was trying to get to when I had that line of questioning was really, do you have heartburn over this number of 4.2? That's really where I was wanting to go. and it sounds like you don't have, so I'm going to trust your non-heartburned stomach. But the questions that I asked a few weeks ago got back to some of the points that were being made by different people, which was, at the end of the day, what reasonable expectation does the council have and the citizens have that what the council passes in this budget takes place? And that was a question, you know, we had a debate with the chief of staff a few weeks ago, and Commissioner Law is going to answer some questions, but it was referred to committee. so he's going to respond in the committee. And we've heard different commentary about the fact that we have oversight over the budget and when things happen, budget amendments have to be made, et cetera, et cetera. But what we don't have, it's my understanding when we pass the budget, is the ability to then say that everything that's in the budget is supposed to happen. And so with that, what my concern is is that when we look at some of the positions that we put in this budget, like the auditors and the code enforcement officers that, you know, Mr. Ramirez said, let's not make a rash decision now, let's wait three months out or 90 days out, three months, and see where things have shifted, if they have shifted, and if we need to make some adjustments, make them at that time. I'm in favor of that with this caveat. At that point in time, we've passed the budget, and we don't have the same ability to make changes that we have today. At the same time, though, when we pass this budget, we don't have the ability in passing the budget to mandate the things that I'm concerned about not happening, and that is the hiring of those certain positions. So what I'm going to do today during work session, well, I guess I need to do it. I guess it doesn't really matter if it's done with or after the budget is passed, is to bring forth a resolution or an ordinance, whichever way the law department says it has to happen, authorizing and directing the mayor to hire the people that we put in the budget with respect to the code enforcement officers and the auditors. And I don't know if anybody else has positions that they put in the budget that they want to see that happen to. But my concern is not micromanaging. It's simply that those services and those programs that the citizens have asked for that we voted unanimously to provide won't happen unless those positions are filled. passing a budget doesn't direct the mayor to fill those positions. The auditors have been in the budget for a couple of years now but have not been hired. I want to make sure that doesn't happen this year. So I'm going to vote with this motion to approve this budget, but I'm also going to bring a resolution or ordinance, whichever one it is, authorizing and directing the mayor to hire certain positions that are in this budget. And that kind of goes along with what Council Member McCord said is, you know, bring solutions to the table. And so that's the solution I'm going to bring. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers. I'm seeing no one else on the monitor. Are we ready for a vote? Vote on the motion. Council Member Gordon, Council Member Gordon's motion is to accept the Mayor's proposed budget as amended by the council recommendations. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by voting aye, and all those opposed by voting no. All right. Motion carries. All right. All right. Do we have anything? I'd want to, as a comment by the chair very quickly, just reinforce what many council members have already said. Thanks to the administration, everyone who worked on it, Mary Bill, y'all staff, mayor, mayor staff, all the commissioners, council's office, Jerry, thank you. Thank you, sir, for hanging in with us. All those who supported the staff, the council aides that supported the links, there's a lot of heavy lifting that went on in this process. It's often we don't acknowledge that ourselves and give us a little bit of a pat on the back for all these marathon meetings we've been in. Bill, just a commentary on what you had to say about being nervous all the time. It reminded me, Warren Buffett said, take care of the downside, the upside will take care of itself. But it's worthwhile, I think, too, at least my observation in this conversation today and the conversations we've been having, it's worthwhile to reflect on the commitment that each of you all have for this. I'm not being solicitous. I mean this when I say this. It's not to cliche. It's not gratuitous. You know, every time I hear one of these conversations, I see, you know, in even the debate, you know, we're really operating at a very precise level here. We're talking about a budget where the debate is over 1.2 percent. And some might argue that's, you know, really getting into the weeds and so forth. But it also, if you look at it another way, it reflects the commitment and the precision that we're committed to. And to layer on a little bit of what Council Myers was saying, it also translates into the expectations and perhaps the higher expectations that we've all been talking about in the course of these budget meetings, the higher expectations we have with respect to implementation and execution in every dimension and accountability for that. And so I just want to thank you all for that, acknowledge it. I know everybody else has thanked each other. And we're ready to, I suppose, then to move on. Is that right? For those who are really good at procedure, help me out here. We've got this afternoon the motion to ratify the budget, and then we'll have two readings of it. Right? So we are commendably on schedule for confirming a $279 million budget, which is clearly not chump change. So thank you all very much. I think that it's appropriate then the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. Have I missed something? All right, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. All opposed, no. Thank you all. We are adjourned.