Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Kick off All In for Agriculture Education Week at Tully Elementary.

Calcium. Calcium. Good. Calcium.

What calcium is

she doing? Poor calcium. It's high carbonate. Good.

If I had to say that there is one mission that we have with All In for Ag Week, it is that we're creating lifelong learners and critical thinkers around the issues that we face in agriculture. Giving them that opportunity around agriculture to be critical thinkers and problem solvers for the future of the issues that we face that we don't even know that we're gonna face in the future is the whole reason why we're doing all in for ag week.

You think the likes to mix the horses? You think it's better for the horses? When we support agricultural education, we are not just planting seeds in soil. That's not it. We are planting seeds of opportunity. We are planting seeds of confidence. We are we we are planting careers that are much needed.

But we know that right here in Jefferson County, the agriculture industry and community is so incredibly important. We do it in our own way through community gardens, through farmers markets, working to bring fresh and healthy food to families all across our entire city. All in for

ag really embodies opportunity and access for our kids through collaboration, through careers, and also through what we call vibrant learning.

It needs to be hot all around the summer. Yeah. And I've said when it when you place it in here, where you want real ground? Like

Being in JCPS, it may not be the place that you think of when you think of ag education, but I'm here to tell you they have blown us away. Every classroom we visited, they have knocked it out of the park. And it just goes to show that this is truly a program for everybody everywhere, and everybody gets to be a part of growing, the ag community in Kentucky.

It's like, what kind of soil is that that you see? It's rocky. It's very rocky. Valley

High School students experienced the Brown Cancer Center mobile screening unit.

So this is the mammogram machine. So this is where we position patients for their mammogram. Then, I would step back there and take their image.

We are in the back parking lot of Valley High School, and we are showing the students the mobile breast cancer mammogram unit. I hope that they take away that it's important for their family members to get breast exams and mammograms after 40 and that this is an opportunity that they can explore in the future for their health care to work.

Learning how to make a patient comfortable while doing, like, a intimate type of procedure such as a mammogram, like, where you're scanning them, their body is exposed. I wanted to learn how to make that person comfortable while doing things like that.

Back here, I need them to come up. We have two dressing rooms. So we can have two patients at a time getting dressed and being ready for their mammogram. Each dressing room has a door that actually comes out into the exam room. It probably sounds and looks worse than it is. Mammogram is really not bad. It's tight, uncomfortable, but I would say if you've been to the dentist, I think personally a dentist is worse.

Whatever we take from here, we can go home and research more and learn more about. And then we could be more educated in the health department for when we do get older and we wanna experience things like that. We see that, and we're like, hey. I know how this works. Maybe you go to a doctor's appointment with your grandma, and you're like, I know what that machine does. I know what to expect when she goes here and goes there. I think that's really good.

What happens when a student's childhood passion meets a business partner's commitment to the future workforce? Meet Atherton graduate, Ava Cochran.

My goal is to show students that if they're passionate about something, can absolutely make a career out of it, and they don't have to wait.

I've always loved editing also. When I was little, I would make little things on iMovie like trailers just by myself on my mom's iPad. I've just always had a little passion for it. When I found out about Atherton, I saw that I could go into a program with it, and that just increased my love for it a lot more.

I was lucky to have Eva as a freshman in intro to media arts, and she was a great student from the beginning. Like, she was wanted to sit in the front.

She was always raising her hand. I learned, like, storyboarding. Production. I learned how to write professional emails, which was really good. And then I learned all the Adobe's, and it really strengthened my, like, video editing skills. And there is a need for social media marketing. There's a

need for people to be able to create content that looks good and sounds good, and our students know how

to do that once they leave Atherton. I was looking for a marketing internship, and Mr. Borch told me to reach out to Jay Smith. I did a little internship with them for a few months with social media marketing, and I absolutely sell in love.

Because I worked with her in the school program, I knew her, and I knew the quality of her work already. So that networking was a much stronger just because I already knew the quality of her work.

We can't say enough good things about Jay. It's not just all about the technical side, like what kind of camera you're shooting on or what kind of programs. It's about being able to market yourself, and Jay has been instrumental in helping us with that.

I've seen other business owners who have been engaged for several years, and it has completely changed their business.

It really taught me my love and passion for marketing, something that I wanna do when I was little. Video editing can actually be a job that I can go into.

The Iroquois High School Family Health Center has been so successful that the mayor and metro council have provided funding to expand the service to Pleasure Ridge Park High School.

Well, good morning, and welcome to Iroquois High School. We're here because just downstairs from where we're standing in the library at High School is Family Health Center Clinic, and it's currently the only clinic of its kind throughout all of JCPS since its opening in January 2024. The Family Health Clinic here at Iroquois High School has cared for more than 1,800 students, staff, and their household members and has had over 6,000 visits with Metro Council support. I allocated funding just a few months ago in our mid year budget to build another family health center at PRP High School, and we are so excited to help expand the health services that are gonna be provided to JCPS families next up at PRP High School.

Our students sometimes need help or they don't feel good, they have a disease or they have something, and they come down to our clinic to get checked out.

In a school where more than eighty percent of our students qualify for free reduced funds, in a school where we have about 40% or more of multilingual learners, This clinic breaks the barriers of students who need it most. The center provides primary care, behavioral health, dental services on-site, allowing us to keep our students healthy and supported and most importantly in seat so that they too can succeed and thrive because they now have access to health care within our schools. Thank you, mayor Greenberg. Thank you, family health centers.

History came to life at the Living Wax Museum at Norton Commons Elementary.

Bringing that change, we must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try. Hi. I'm Frida Kahla. It means I paint my own reality. I love to paint. It's one of my most favorite thing to do.

So you're at Norton Commons Elementary in our gymnasium, and we are proudly presenting our third grade wax museum where our students picked a historical figure, whether it was somebody local from Louisville like Johnny Unitas or Muhammad Ali, and they researched that person, wrote a speech, and then today, they became that person.

Fate, Gabriel, that flies not within the stars but within ourselves. I impacted history by writing about space and time. I also inspired people with my speeches. I will be known for changing how people thought about being the first. Hi. I'm Mayby Bridges, and I was the first black American to attend in all white school. In life, there's nothing to be afraid of, only many things to learn and many ways to help those in need. Hi. My name is Marie Curie, and I'm a French scientist. I discovered radium and coloniac. I'm still famous for movies and music. Like, I store my speech in my hat like how Abraham Lincoln did with his with his pay with his special papers.

They did phenomenal. I'm so proud of all of them. They did such a great job. And, yeah, I'm excited for everyone to see it.

Students from Mesik Middle School will represent JCPS at the national level. Mesik took the top spot in Kentucky's Math Counts competition this year. And for the second year in a row, Muzique won the Governor's Cup. Thanks for watching our show. You can find entire episodes in our JCPS YouTube channel. Until next time, keep supporting our kids.

Come on. Come on. Come on. I knew it was something that was needed in our community.

On guard.

We are planting trees next to Value Market in Rutherford Elementary here in Iroquois Manor.

One minute Metro TV, one minute.

Sonya, I'll be I'll be paying attention to the meeting, but I have my camera off. So I will not be joining, but I'll be down as soon as I can. See you all soon.

Afternoon. Welcome to the fourth day of budget hearings. I am Marcus Winkler, vice chair of the budget committee. With me today in chambers are councilman Joseph, councilman Saum, councilman Herndon, councilman Piagintini, councilman Bass, councilman Raymond, councilman Chappell, and will be joined momentarily by councilman Malvie Woolridge and councilman Kramer. We this meeting is being held pursuant to KRS 61 dot eight two six and council rule five a.

So welcome everybody. As a reminder and we're also joined by councilman Batshan. As a reminder, departments will not make any opening comments, and we will begin immediately with council member questions. Council members, as a reminder, you're allowed to ask three questions and then we'll ask you to get back in the queue. And if somebody hasn't asked questions yet, we'll call on them before we get back to you. Today we'll be well, let's see. We've here we go. The first item on the agenda today is the parks and recreations, which we're joined by members of that team. The proposed budget is 40,700,000 of operating and 25,300,000 of capital budget. Welcome, Director King.

And let me start by asking you about the Iroquois Amphitheater. I noticed there is 1,700,000 in restricted funding. What is that 1.7 and why is it restricted?

That is largely the carry forward from previous year's operations. Those get restricted so that they remain available for capital and maintenance improvements as needed. They can be used to cover operating shortfalls as well.

And if you don't mind just introducing yourself for the record. Excuse

me. Executive Director Michelle King, Louisville Parks and Recreation. And

And I'm Jason Caniewel, the director at Louisville Parks and Recreation.

Thank you both. First in my queue is councilman Piagintini.

I know we're all shocked by that fact. Good. I I actually don't have a ton of questions. We just we just had a pretty extensive conversation at parks, particularly around capital projects and and, you know, things that pertain to this. So but there are a couple of specific things. Number one, special event rental. You had $429,000 and change budgeted in fiscal year 'twenty six, but $0 budgeted in 'twenty seven. And I'll pick on another line item, pretty detailed stuff. The other one is graffiti supplies. I'm assuming it means graffiti cleanup supplies, but there was $111,500 budgeted in 2026, dollars 0 budgeted in 2027.

Can you explain why we don't have anything budgeted this year on those two lines?

That's a very good question. You don't mind, I'm going to turn around and ask Aaron Jackson because whoever keys the budget in, that's where those numbers go. And I've not seen the page that you're talking about in particular.

I don't know why my questions always get referred to Aaron. I feel bad at this point.

No, I'll answer them. Just give a

quick No, no, no. Go ahead. Go ahead.

So I believe how that gets keyed is how things are actually put into Workday with as far as account codes go. So whoever keys the budget in this year is based on what was actually was actually coded by parks last year. So and I think Michelle can can testify to this. We've done a really good job going through all of our different divisions and parks. Meet biweekly now on where things actually get coded in Workday and I think what you're seeing there are zeros in places that make sense on paper as far as where in the budget it's just located in a different bucket and more descriptive bucket that whoever keep the budget.

Maybe just a follow-up then on where that ended up, if you don't mind. Because obviously, we're going to get some revenue on special event rentals. And then there'll be I'm sure we're budgeting something for graffiti cleanup. There is $1,500,000 in the Gulf deferred maintenance capital account. That talk to me about that?

That is the revenue that is brought in year at the end of FY twenty twenty six, whatever revenue was left in golf that gets put into that golf capital account.

Okay. So then you have the golf improvement plan. So that's what it's going into. Does that quick follow-up question. Does that include we have just we as in Councilman Batshuite and I have just put forward something that will increase potentially golfies. Is that assumed here or not assumed?

No, that's actual cash from previous fiscal years. So because it's an enterprise fund, revenue remains at the end of fiscal year, it gets put into that capital account.

And last question for now, the loop projects. You have a bunch of loop projects in your capital thing, capital report. Does public works how does communication with public works, are they aware? Is that queued up for this year? No problems related to that?

We work very closely with Public Works and their Louisville Loop folks, Steve Arnold and John Swintoski are the two project managers for that. There's back when the Louisville Loop was still within Metro Parks purview and design and construction and administration. That that's how old that those those funds are in our capital cost center. So when projects are going forward public works is actually writing purchase orders and encumbering funds with money that is actually in our budget but it's for the Loop project.

Great. Okay. And look, this is not an this is not gonna be an easy budget. I mean, I know, there's there's a lot of things that have been prioritized here, but I I know that I've been very supportive of the loop continuing through my district now because of redistricting. A lot of that's in councilman Kramer's district now. But, yeah, I would love to see us continue. I know it's been a slow slog, but continuing to get this done. It's it's it really has helped out with connectivity, I know, in our area. So thank you for that. Thank you, mister chair. Approve.

You. Councilman Batshaw. Thank you,

Councilman Winkler. Thanks Jason and Michelle for being here. I want to jump back on golf for a second. Is the enterprise golf budget in the parks budget or is it a separate budget? It's within parks budget,

our normal the $7.00 5,000,000 which is parks and recreation.

Is there a way we can get a breakdown of just the enterprise fund budget?

I believe that's something we can run. Yes.

Absolutely.

Okay.

As

far as my next question is, how many employees in golf work outside of just golf?

None. Other than well, our assistant director over it that includes golf, includes other divisions but then below that are.

So come wintertime the golf employees are are they laid off? Are they furloughed? Are they?

They work on special projects, do winterization, work on equipment, preparing for the next season. They do work on the courses during the winter as weather allows as well.

Okay. In the past, how many of those employees worked outside of golf previous to these last couple of years?

None that I know of.

Mike Okay. Ginder, my third question. Mike Ginder's salary is he's the New Acronomist. And is he being paid out of the Enterprise Fund? Or is he being paid out of the Parks budget?

Mike Ginder previously was one of those positions that worked in golf but elsewhere. He was he is an agronomist. We have since hired Mark Wilson as the full time golf agronomist. He is entirely within the enterprise fund and Mike Gender has now been moved out of that enterprise fund he oversees our ball fields and cemeteries division.

Okay thank you.

Councilman Chappell?

Who? Me? Mhmm. Okay.

I thought you said Chapman for a second. But anyways, that person doesn't exist on council, so that would be me. Hello. Thank you for being here. Takes a second to settle and and organize all the papers. In the, deferred maintenance projects for fiscal year twenty seven, there's $100,000 for the Iroquois culvert replacement. I was told that was gonna be $300,000. So is there going to be more money needed down the road? Or is this just a third of Is this one third of that quote going to cover the work

it's a portion of the culverts plural there's five or six that we know of right now that could stand to be replaced. Prioritizing those five or six there's one in particular That needs to be done sooner than later which is why. You see just a $100,000.

Okey doke I guess we'll take what we can get right. Council M. P. Argentinian believe kicked us off with a question about the Iroquois Amphitheater funds. I think there was $1,700,000 in funds. You didn't

Pardon me.

I'm so sorry. Councilman Winkler asked about that and you know in looking at the deferred maintenance projects for fiscal year twenty seven again there's $550,000 for the HVAC replacement at Iroquois Amphitheatre so could that money just be used to pay that and so then we have $1,000,000 coming back in? I guess in a way we're spending a saving a good bit of money.

We could. Typically when there's a large capital project like half $1,000,000 HVAC equipment purchase and project that that would normally fall and hit our capital project list not necessarily the enterprise fund for the amphitheater. Although in theory it could.

I would add that it is I think fiscally responsible for us to keep some funds in that because the operating costs and revenues at the amphitheater are highly variable from year to year. There's so many different market factors involved that having that in reserve can help us prepare for needs in the coming year.

Sure. And if we paid off the HVAC with that money, I mean, we'd still have a million bucks in that reserve fund for Iroquois Amphitheater, which would be wonderful. But you bring up a great point. Danny Wimmer Presents is now our producer for shows.

Talent agent probably is.

I think that's a yeah. There's a better word for it. Promoter. Thank you so very much. Councilman Syme. DWP is our promoter for events at Iroquois Amphitheater. I think that this is the first or second season that they have been organizing the shows. I know that there's been some other changes such as management at Iroquois Amphitheater, some concession stand contract negotiations and changes. Could you talk about what that revenue has looked like for the amphitheatre from last year to this year and any impacts that our promoter may have had in in that?

We can't give a perfect look at this year. So many things start getting sold and then we don't settle up until after shows. So there's kind of a long time frame to get final numbers. We do know that we've seen more shows come in. We do have a different breakdown of our revenues now.

We share that with Danny Wimmer so that Danny Wimmer presents, excuse me. So that there is a balance there of more shows but we're also splitting the revenue. I think that what we've seen is that we have a lot of high visibility and we've seen a lot more visitors to the amphitheater and so we're just now in that second full year. Last year was the first full year for that partnership and I think we're still trying to see how that settles out. We can follow-up with some more specific numbers though.

Sure absolutely and I guess with this being its second year with EWP and then I'd be interested in the two years prior to that. So you know maybe looking at the last four or five years and the performance of your Point Amphitheater And I'm I'm hoping that it's improving because it's an asset. It is. A wonderful landmark in District 15. And I'm gonna have to jump back in queue unfortunately. Thank you.

Thank you. And, madam clerk, please let the record reflect that we were joined quite some time ago by Councilman Parker, Councilman Parish Wright and Councilman Linninger. I'd like to ask a question about the amphitheater. What is the annual operating costs associated with the amphitheater?

We have that

information but we can follow-up with that.

Yes, think it'd be good to understand because while I agree having money in the excess account for the amphitheater makes sense, I don't know if $1,700,000 is one year of operating expense or is it twenty years of operating expense, right? And I think having that understanding would probably better tell us how much of that money you need to keep in reserve versus how much you could deploy into deferred maintenance. I'd like to pivot. The indigent burial budget, that's under the Parks and Rec budget, is that correct?

There's no budget but the process program

is under Parks and We manage that through Catholic Charities now correct?

No their contract expired. Okay so

who's doing the indigent burials? Jefferson County coroner's office

and they're handling the vetting and the things that happened before. However the burials are still being provided and done by the parks and recreation department.

Okay. So can you just explain that real quick. So you were doing the actual burials?

Yes.

Okay. Tell me if this is a better question for the coroner or for you all. What percentage are burials versus bearing cremains?

That's probably a better question for the coroner's office. And I think there was recently a house bill that was passed that I think it made made it easier for indigent. Persons to be cremated rather than buried. And again that that's the corner levels office not ours. Handle the cemeteries the burial process, and maintaining those cemeteries. But the other outside of that realm, that's really not our

Okay. And so then one last question on that topic. Room wise, because I know that was an issue three, four, five years ago. Where are we at from a space perspective?

We've probably got about 35 spaces left. We've got new property under development right now for the new cemetery on St. Anthony's Church Road and it'll be ready by the time it's needed. Perfect.

Thank you Jason. Councilman Lininger.

Thank you Mr. Chair and wonderful to see you executive director and director and please bear with me vice chair because I know this is going to start sounding like a district specific question but it isn't. In the budget we have some money for Ben Washer Park and I I had it's sort of similar to Councilwoman Chappell's question where I we've discussed how much money you know is gonna be needed for the park and this is you know south of that And so my question is process wise, does that mean that this is money that's sort of down payment into an account that we anticipate spending in a future year with more funds? Because I think that the majority of what is planned for the park probably needs the full chunk, am I correct?

There is the opportunity to phase the plan in Ben Washer and so that is what we're looking at right now. So we had some initial funding for the playground and took the opportunity because there's a new flow of activity there because we do have a partner operating Our Place Cafe, Bridge Kids International to make sure that the investment in the playground was done smartly and that had opened up some of those additional needs and the phases that we think we can fund with this allocation.

Okay. I guess what I was trying to get at is how much in capital are things that we're saying these are our intentions eventually we're not getting through all of this but we're putting money towards this and these are projects that we anticipate happening perhaps in multi year phases or with additional funding in multiple budgets?

I think what we try to do when we look at those larger park plans is to be able to identify what are some distinct phases and look at funding needs for those phases so that we can start and finish a phase.

Okay. And then my next question is about the building maintenance and repair. There's some pretty heavy fluctuation year to year we went from 339,900 in the original FY twenty six budget to 1,886,600 and now we're back down to 97,600,000. Why are we flying around so hard here in these numbers? I know that it's I know that decrease based on current year trend was you know the short answer given but I'd love to hear a little more about that.

I think that kind of goes back to Councilman Piazziatini's question about where things are budgeted in Workday. You know we just switched over to Workday four or five years ago. We're still trying to understand how to use Workday better to track where expenses go. You know the overall budget doesn't change. It's the smaller buckets within the overall budget.

That's what we're trying to straighten out on where things get charged to. So that building maintenance and supplies that particular account code. I'm not sure what what exactly got charged there last year versus the previous year. But there. There are fluctuations with that particular line based on like last year we had a significant flood along the river which that affected about a dozen parks. So things that would have happened to Cox Park and Thurman Hutchins and Hays Kennedy, those kinds of repairs, some would be charged there. So there's things like that that could affect that particular line.

All right, thank you.

Councilman Bass.

Thank you all for coming. I don't have much. I just wanted to we appreciate everything you all do and continue to do in our parks and I know you all been out there doing the work and to brag a little before I get to my question, I've had three calls this week on people who have visited Sun Valley Golfs this last couple weeks and are amazed at how much it has improved since last year. So kudos for that. I guess the only question I really have is outside of this budget and in this if this was a perfect budget year what do you all need that you feel isn't being addressed on here that maybe we can look at or there's lack of funding somewhere that needs to be a priority?

I think that we always have a to do list. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't. So there's always the opportunity to continue investing in maintaining the assets that we have. And then we have some really wonderful opportunities to fund new projects and new amenities and new parks. So the list could be much longer but I think that what we have here hits on the highest priorities and make some tough decisions but addresses the greatest need first. Okay.

I'm going to shoot to one of

these questions we have on here. Is there a plan for all the tree fee in lieu of the accounts? Currently there's 328,000 in 12 accounts. Why are we adding more tree funding to the fiscal year twenty seven capital budget? I'm going to ask assistant director Masuda.

Oh, practice it. Please say your name.

Ms. Sude, it's Rick Holder, Assistant Director overseeing Urban Forestry Division. Majority of the money in three fee account is dedicated for River Road. It's a specific zip code that money is dedicated for and we are waiting for the River Road enhancement project to be completed for tree planting in that area. And then other small accounts, do you have plans for the next coming planting season?

Thank you.

Councilwoman Parish Wright.

Oh, I got a head of person ahead of me.

Okay. They've asked questions.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. One, I have about six questions that I will also email because I don't know if they've been asked before. I don't want to and you may not have answers to some of these now. I have noticed that I always email my questions out. And I have not been hearing back from the different departments. So I would appreciate, just even if it's a nod to a timely response or saying, hey, we'll get this answered to you. I know we say that here, but waiting in email has been something different.

I want to first thank you all because we have three metro owned parks in District 3 that to me are receiving a lot of support especially Gigi Moore. It's gotten money in the budget for the last three years And so we're working with the Parks Alliance to do something with that. So my questions don't just come from me. They also come from community. The first question I have is, why do we need to invest so much money into the Belvedere? Has the broader Louisville community requested this as a priority? Could this money not be better used elsewhere in the city budget? Is this even enough money to accomplish the full renovation? I just feel like it's always coming up. It's there every year.

What what is the end goal here? The Belvedere is not a facility within parks and recreation. Okay. Good. Thank you. The next one is what we're investing millions into the outskirts of the county but a family in the West End or maybe in the South End without a car can't access necessarily the Jefferson Memorial Forest and it is effectively out of reach. So, does this budget include funding for park, shuttle, or partnership with Tark to provide direct weekend trans transit to Jefferson Memorial Park and other larger regional parks. Have you all talked about that?

We don't have a partnership with Tark. I think Tark routes have been outside of our purview as well. We have been investing at parks across the entire county so that hopefully we're investing in a park near you.

Thank you. And I just want to see that people can also enjoy. We hear a lot of bragging rights around Jefferson Memorial Forest, but there's a lot of Louisvilleians who aren't able to access it. So just thinking in that. My last question is, with the mayor's proposed budget allocating 3,000,000 for deferred maintenance and continuing the commitment to Parks for All, is it equitable investment strategy? There is a clear mandate to address decades of underfunding that we have left. I know it's never enough money for deferred maintenance. My colleagues talk about that all the time. But does the parts department track those repair based on zip code? And how are those prioritized?

Those are mainly prioritized by need. You know life safety issues are kind of first and foremost that get addressed. But you know after that you know we prioritize projects that Need the most attention and need the most attention soon. Trying to catch things before they become actual life safety issues so that's kind of how we prioritize We really don't look at at look at it district per district or if you're a Republican or Democratic district we've got 125 parks spread up throughout the entire county and that's what the way we look at it. It it's our family of 125 parks regardless of its specific location.

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.

And Jason, I believe we directed a lot of your deferred maintenance budget as well, correct? I mean, we specifically say where it's going in the budget. Correct. So, okay. Councilman Raymond.

Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple questions. First about emissions fees or costs. I see emissions receipts in the budget but then there's some other items. There's a summer camp revenue, and then there's something called swim pool receipts, which is quite low. So I wanted to ask about those different forms of revenue and how they're determined. You know, the summer camp cost, I know, is $60 a week, which folks in my community say, oh my gosh. It's so cheap. And in an adjoining district, they say that's too high and I can't

do it.

So how are the fees determined? And then is there ever any thought given to differentiating them around town?

Well, you've definitely outlined a lot of the consideration that we take into account when we're looking at fees. Many of our fees just quite honestly haven't been adjusted for quite some time and that is something that we are actively looking at across the Parks and Recreation Department across different programs and different amenities. So costs for everything have gone up including our costs. But another way of looking at it is what are those programs that should be part of our core services and core offerings. What are those that maybe are at an enhanced level and provide more individual benefit.

And so that's something that we're also actively working through in a recreation programming plan right now. So all of those things get taken into account. We want to try to provide the most opportunity for the most residents of our city as possible. So we are taking those things into account but I think that a lot of the decisions have been based on historic practice and we can continue to review those and look for opportunities to increase revenue to support operations while we're still ensuring access for as many participants as possible.

Okay. And then next, you know I'm so excited about the Camp Taylor Waterpark. People may have forgotten that it was scheduled to open last year. Mhmm. Right? And some delays mean that it's opening this year. As you all work on projects, I know that this is not a parks issue. It's a it's a metro issue. But I wanna hear your take on how we can incentivize quality on time work and penalize late shoddy work.

Those are the questions we are also asking and we have been working with Kevin Moore, Director of Procurement at OMB to find opportunities in our contracting language. There are some things that I think restrict how much of that we are able to put into contracts, but there are some opportunities. Another thing is in our RFP awards, making sure that we are waiting past performance appropriately. When we have experience with a contractor we are the best reference we could ask for. So we can also take a look at it there.

But that is an ongoing question across several departments as you know and it is something that we're actively working with OMB to find some better paths forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you both for coming. I have some questions about very,

very basic maintenance issues over time like over the years, are we still mowing as often as we used to?

Are we still re striping our roads like we used to in the parks?

Are we putting fresh coat of paint on handrails? I mean really the smallest most basic maintenance issues. Are we liming up our trees? I know Jason we talked about in my I want all my trees limbed up because it's good for the trees. It's also best practice and it also gives us visuals and better security. Those things that are the underpinning of the much larger issues that we are we able to keep up all that kind of stuff as we prepare and plan for the other things.

I'll give you the short answer which is yes. Some examples, mowing, we are doing better than we used to do. Our most recent year we were on eleven day average mowing cycle. Now obviously that's an average, sometimes rain keeps us out of mowing cycle. But our goal is 14 and we're doing better than our goal.

So I just couldn't I can't say that enough and loud enough to tell you how proud I am of our maintenance divisions for being able to meet and exceed that goal. Things like tree maintenance, we you know, we have a fantastic urban forestry team. We also have hundreds of thousands of trees across our parks. So, we also appreciate working with folks that are in our parks and see needs and let us know hey there's some attention over here and so we try to be very responsive to those so again I encourage folks if you see areas of parks where they could use some tree work increase some sight lines We want to hear about it.

I'm not just picking on you, street trees everything. It's sexy to plant trees but it's over time it's not as sexy to keep

the maintenance All is incredibly

of us on trees in general follow through and keep up with what we need to do to make them as healthy as possible. Thank you.

Councilman Bechon.

Thank you. Think we touched on this a little bit but I just want to kind of follow-up. Does Parks have the capacity to complete all the projects in a timely these projects timely in regards to the capital projects?

I think we are set up right now better than we've ever been. We've had two vacant project manager positions for quite a long time. If you look at last year's number, we spent well over $34,000,000 worth of capital projects and that's completed actual projects. That was with a team of four. Now we've got a team of six. So we're and I think those kids are kids those engineers and architects.

Young professionals.

I'm sorry. My fault?

I

did. I'm sorry.

But I think they're hitting the ground running and I think we're poised to have a very successful upcoming year.

I'm going to follow-up on that one just a little bit and make a twist on it. What would it take to get caught up at least 90% on deferred maintenance?

On the projects that we have remaining in There's deferred not that many. I think with the staff that we have now, probably the next twelve to fourteen months, I think we'll be in a really good shape.

I'm gonna I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. Special event rentals, I know councilman touched on it a little bit, but is what I'm reading here is looks like we only are generating $429,700 a year in special event rentals. Is that correct? Like I'm going to use the example of renting the space at Farnsley Mormon or something of that nature. Does that seem that doesn't seem accurate to me.

That's in That's all. That's in there. That is accurate. That's again another example of us going back and reviewing fees and as we've done that I've asked that question of when was the last time we reviewed these fees and most of them at least a decade. So the time is right for us to continue to look back.

Also with the example, specific example of Farnsley Mormon, we just opened two wonderful new spaces there and we have reset fees in accordance with that. We were doing that to be very mindful to not price people out of using those assets, but they are much more appropriate and we are just now starting to see the result of those improvement projects with the pavilion and the visitor center. We're already seeing rental rates that were much higher than we saw before And we also missed out on about a year worth of revenue from those rentals because they were under construction at the time.

What is the current new rates for that space?

I'll have to send you the rate sheet for that.

Are we how do you know how far booked out we are in that space? I'm sorry, excuse me. How far out is that booked now?

I know that we have bookings already into the summer. I don't know that it's fully booked, but we're starting to see those roll in for that visitor center space. The manager out there, Patty Lynn is really pleased with what she's already starting to see and we have more opportunity to continue marketing that and I'd say thank you to our council partners. I've seen many posts highlighting the opportunities out there and I appreciate that.

Thank you. Chair Winkler, can I ask a non related question? What would it take to set up something similar to what Deputy Mayor George did with Public Works, which I think is phenomenal in the monthly check ins we do with public works. I think

that would

go leaps and bounds with this council to do something in that rim for parks.

We have talked about that. And I think just time got away from us on trying to actually sit down and get that scheduled but we do we do not disagree at all. I think we should start

yesterday. Thank you. Councilman Biajantini.

Thank you. Just first of all, let me just say that if we need to increase the fees for pools, we haven't done it in a decade, then please bring that to our attention. I mean, I I tried to have an intern actually go through the go through the, Louisville Metro Code of Ordinances and find all the fees and fines and different things and see what hadn't been updated. It's, impossible to figure it out. I even had the county attorney's office take a look at it. They couldn't figure it out. I think the only way to sort this out is gonna is gonna really rely on the executive agencies who have jurisdiction over these to come to us and say, hey. Look. This hasn't been updated in a long time. We need to update this to keep up with inflation.

Right? So or to just keep up with what is needed. So please let us know what that should be changed to. I'd be glad to sponsor it. As we've done with the golf courses, right? We're gonna keep up with inflation. We're gonna keep up we're gonna still keep them accessible to the public. We're not gonna outprice the market, but because it's public golf, not private country club. And at the same time, you know, we need to increase these fees from time to time. My question is and and I've asked this almost every agency.

It doesn't mean that I'm saying we will do this, but I am asking what you would do practically. Just think about it for a second and give me an answer. Practically, what would you do if we cut your general fund budget by one percent? To be super clear, what that would mean for you is about $280,000 out of $28,000,000 Now the reason I'm saying practically is some agencies look at me and they're like, they almost talk about it would be like catastrophically the world would fall apart and their whole agency would stop because of a 1% cut. That's nonsense, right?

But practically, what would you do? Would you put off projects? Would you have to look at human resources? Like if $280,000 came out of your budget going into fiscal year twenty twenty seven, practically what would that mean?

We would look for opportunities to reduce contractual and supplies, which is what we have done in the past. We spread that across all of those cost centers so that no single cost center feels all of the pain. So that might mean less equipment for a new recreation program. It might mean some less tools being replaced in some of our shops. But we would try to minimize the impact in any one area so that we could continue to deliver services.

Okay. Great answer by the way. Very practical. And let me just say for anybody that's coming, expect me to ask the question for future for other organizations within the the executive branch. Thank you very much for that. I I appreciate the

honesty. Councilman Chapel.

Gigi Moore Park is a very under invested park and it needs all the love that it can get. So I'm just trying to understand their budget for that master plan, which was created in 2025. But it says that the total projected cost for the project is TBD. To date, it's gotten 2,182,080 and $88, and I'm assuming that includes the $200,000 we dedicated to that project in fiscal year twenty six. There's another million dollars going in in the proposed budget for fiscal year twenty seven which that would bring that total up to about $3,100,000.

Is there a projected cost for this park? And I know that the Parks Alliance has been doing really wonderful work over there and I trust them fully with our parks. I'm just trying to understand how much more money will this small park need? I don't believe there

is a master plan developed yet. The Parks Alliance has partnered with us and done some amazing community engagement and research and work into what the needs are at GG Moore but we are at the phase now where all of that information is to be taken and developed into that design. So that's why we don't have a dollar figure for that yet. We have a good idea of what it will take to reimagine an entire park that way. But we don't have the dollar figure for each of the types of amenities that would be put in place.

Okay. Just there was a chart provided to us. It says current park master plans as of May 2026 and it does list GG Moore Park and it says that that was created in 2025. So that's why I'm questioning you know this park is getting $3,000,000 but why do we keep putting park money into a park that we don't know what we're building towards?

It's more it's more of a site plan than a master plan. It was included on that list because it is something that we we want to try to keep track of. The progress that the Parks Alliance has done with the public engagement which I I don't wanna diminish what what it's done and not put it on the on the list. So what was done was a very intense public engagement on what the needs of the park are and the desire of the residents who use the park. And I think we're in the process right now of trying to take that information and kind of flush out some concepts.

And now that, you know, I think there's adequate funding to go ahead and get started with design, construction documents, actual construction. So there should be no delays once we actually get concepts down and approved. Sure. And

thank you for explaining. There's been some nuance to that master plan list, but I understand you want to include it. Special events, switching gears to that. There were four zero nine special events that you all had cited, I guess, in 2025. We also have the mayor's office of special events.

And I also wanna say my office is probably responsible for 300 of those 409 events. So I'm just trying to understand those special events and how they relate to maybe the budget with the mayor's office of special events. And one of the reasons I asked that is because you all not only supply stuff for parks but you're also supplying things for street festivals. For example, the Schnitzelburg Walk was this past weekend and my office paid $750 for picnic tables to be delivered. So I'm just trying to kinda get a better understanding of whose responsibility it is and how that revenue is coming in and who is maybe keeping that revenue within their budget.

I'm just trying to crunch some numbers.

For special events that happen in parks on our park properties though that revenue the fees that are charged which of course are often not charged in the case of Metro Council and Metro held events because by per ordinance we don't charge those fees for Metro properties but we do have special events that happen in our parks outside of metro held events as well. So those do generate fees as well. Those fees come to parks and stay within parks if they are fees that are charged for events that are off park property and so for Metro Council we will provide those picnic tables and things like that like you referenced the Schintelberg walk those fees would also stay within the parks revenue we do support the mayor's office of special events so we provide picnic tables and trash cans and bleachers that's another great asset for those events as well there's those are not revenue generating for us.

And understandable and thank you so much for delivering those. Understandable the bar the owners that they better be coughing up some dough next year because we're not going to do that again. But likewise the same with special events there's $0 that's budgeted in for and I believe councilman Batshawn was touching on this earlier. So sorry if it would if this seems redundant. But in fiscal year twenty seven, there is a $00 budgeted for fiscal year twenty seven. The year prior there was nearly half $1,000,000. So I'm just trying to figure out where you know what's the need for the decrease Are looking

at the detailed budget? What what what are you looking at?

Yes. I am talking about the detailed budget.

What page? If you don't mind I don't want to waste a whole bunch of your time but if you all can get us the page number we'll absolutely get you that answer on what that pertains to.

Sure thank you. I think I have one more and then I'll get back in the queue. Master plans, when would can we I know we've talked about this a dozen times before but master plans, when do they expire? There's one on the master plans for 1994 for Iroquois Park, 2008 for Wyandotte Park. Only 10% of that master plan has been funded and I have a much better master plan in my head. So when do the when do we say let's shelve this? Let's clear out this you know like total so it doesn't look like we have $90,000,000 worth of unfunded master plans you know like when does is it just when there's a new one?

Not not really I think in general I think and again it's not a finite number, but roughly around ten years is probably about how long a master plan would be relevant because that's got to do with the demographics of the neighborhood, which often change over the course of ten years. So I think the list that we provided, there's the old legacy list of things that are sitting on a shelf. Those were included just to show all the old master plans that were done, that were not funded, that sat on a shelf to collect dust. There's the other, the newer section, I don't have it in front of me, but there's another seven or eight that are more recent that we've actually been working on. And I think what is different now than in the past is then when we go forward with a master plan project, we actually advocate the funding to actually construct and implement that master plan.

We don't want to just collect a bunch of master plans to put on the shelf. So that's why there's not so as many as there used to be. I think we're working on master plans, getting that public engagement, and getting construction dollars and rolling right into construction and implementation.

Great. So I I was just gonna say I understand that number of nearly $600,000,000 of master plans that have not been funded probably isn't right. So thank you, but I I appreciate you making a point with keeping it in there.

Thank you, councilwoman. And I'm just gonna follow that one just really quickly. This the master plans are honestly largely not the fault of the parks department.

Those of us who've

been on council for a while may have asked for a master plan in a park in our neighborhood. One of us in particular who's sitting in his room who doesn't have a single metro park in his district anymore had a master pad two park master pipe plans done for small parks in District 11. We did a master plan for Waterson Park and we did another one for Pee Wee Park. The Pee Wee Park master plan was considerably more expensive than we expected it would be. We did fund the Waterson Park and that one is finished. It's awesome. We broke the Pee Wee down into two phases so that we could try to pay for that over a series of years. And redistricting happened in the interim. And so we had started the first phase. And I don't know We didn't.

Okay. Don't know if the second phase ever got finished or not, but the council person switched districts. So again, a lot of those and I appreciate, Jason, your answer that in the past when we asked for a master plan, you did one. Now the answer is if you ask for a master plan it sounds like the parks department is going to say, look this is expensive. It takes a lot of work to get these done. And having this on the shelf doesn't do us any good. If you're serious about this, you should have a sense of about how much you're willing to spend on this master plan before we begin so we can start allocating funds. Again just a little color to background there. Dan Simon, Councilman Simon I'm sorry, earned the title. Thank you Mr. Chair.

Will there still be a staff member at the platorium after transferring the position to OMSS Senior Nutrition Program?

It will be an OSS position.

Okay. The requirement for a full time staff position was added to the operating budget in '26. Is that still going to be your requirement?

That full time position will be with OSS.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Parish Wright.

Thank you, mister chair. Just wanted to have some follow-up to Councilwoman Chapel's questions around Gigi Moore. I too had approached the Parks Alliance with some frustration that there's been money for that smaller park but it's a nice it's a it's a nice used park but around because money has been in the budget since 2023 and we did not ask for any increase. The the increases came and we talked about the things that community wanted and they would like for the splash pad and all of that stuff to be updated And with that, with the new requirements, there would be a restroom put in, which everyone is looking forward to. We did just have a meeting there last week with the new director of Parks Alliance.

And they're already going to start replacing the basketball court. We, Councilwoman Chapel and I also share a park, Watterson Lake Park, that has a lake in there that the community has asked me about for the last three years that is just there. The lake is technically in Councilwoman Chapel's district. The rest of the park is in District 3. There is at one point, it was a fishing site. It was a place where there was regular fish brought there and and we've been trying to figure out what to do about that lake. I have not seen anything that says that it will be addressed. So, my question is, are there any plans around Waterson Lake? Have you we've sent in some feedback, but have you heard any feedback about what to do with that lake? And will it just sit there?

Because it's we've done cleanups. We've done all kinds of things for it. And I am excited that Gigi Moore is getting the support. You know, I didn't think the small square footage of that park was going to be 3,000,000, but with the cost of inflation and all of the things, we are getting a design for that done. But I am interested in taking care of the other two metro owned parks in my district, and that is Harrison and and Waterson Lake. So any plans around that would be, I would love to get that.

Sure. So Waterson Lake, I think there's money in FY '26 deferred maintenance to add some bollards or some boulders along the road to keep cars from driving into the park. So that's one of the projects on our backlog. We just recently added lights throughout the park. So we try to increase security with the lights, trying to keep cars in or out the other part.

But the lake itself is is an anomaly. That was actually an old borrow pit from when they built the Waterston Expressway. They dug a big hole, used that dirt to to build the road. So I don't know how Parks ended up with it as as a lake, but it just got left as an open hole that held water. They called it a park.

I don't know the history behind it. The problems that exist with that particular lake area, really shallow. I think at its deepest point is about six feet, and that's kind of in the near the shore in the pavilion where the path goes around in the circle. As you go down further away from the shelter, it goes down to about a foot to foot and a half. That depth is not sustainable enough to actually sustain a healthy fish wildlife ecosystem.

The lake turns over way too much. The dissolved oxygen in the water gets way too low for fish to sustain living there. We've looked a couple times at what to do with it. I think the biggest challenge that we have, there's really only one way to do it, and that's to dredge it out and dig it deeper, which comes in a very expensive, your 2,000,000 to $3,000,000 range just off the top of my head. But that's kind of order the magnitude of a project like that. We know what it needs. But to get there, it's almost unachievable financially. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. The dredging came up. The community has asked about that. There is a family of geese I hope I'm saying that right because yeah that are growing. And they're in the yards and things like that. And I think the boulders and things that we talked about. But I do want to be able to give the community some answers around that lake part. Well, whatever. The shallow pool, dirty looking pool water. But I think that it's important for us to I would love to talk about how we can work together. And we had we talked about this a little bit, but we didn't do anything with it. And we'll we'll not, you know, I think it's just sitting there. It's not healthy. It's not good. So what can we do about that?

But other than that, I think I'm I'm happy about the improvements because those are what people ask for more lighting because people were also driving up in the park. And so the boulders will help with that.

Right.

But yeah, if at a later date, I know it's not a priority now. I would love to talk about the lake more.

Yeah. If you don't mind, reach out, and we'll set a meeting up. And I'll probably ask our friends from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife to join us with with their expertise and maybe that they've got some better ideas.

And my colleague said it's a gaggle of geese. So, thank you.

Good to know.

Councilwoman Chappell.

Thank you for that history lesson and also that explanation. Pretty neat. And that's actually a great place for birding if you're into it, Watersome Lake Park. Three questions. Signs and markings, there's $400,000 in an account for signs and markings in fiscal year '25. There is 200,000. In fiscal year '26, there is another 200,000. Neither of those accounts have been touched. Do you still need that money, and what are the intentions for it?

The short answer is yes. And I think the report you're looking at does not take into account. We've we've hit that account quite a bit the past three or four months. That account were utilizing road striping, parking lot striping. I think some of the stuff at Iroquois, we're gonna end up paying out of that out of that account as well.

And signs, everybody needs signs, park signs, rule signs, road signs, no parking signs, don't park on the grass signs. So that that's the account that that we're using. It has been in there the past three years. And I I think due to our focus on actual capital projects, things like signs and stripes have kind of fallen behind. So with our two new engineers, project managers, engineer and architect, There's going to be a whole lot more action with those accounts coming soon.

Well, thank you for that. I'm very excited and thank you for the candid answer as well. Let's spend that money. And ask anyone from my office. I love signs. Bathroom inventory. So we have a couple of bathrooms that are on this list that are due for repair. I know that a couple years ago in Wyandotte Park, we had paid for some repairs of the bathrooms. I think they've since been shut down. And I know that this is a difficult list to keep up because we've already talked about a couple of things that are in front of us that are already outdated information.

But how can we get a better idea of what bathroom facilities are out there? And not only which ones are out there but which ones are operable to date. I I don't know if you have that information right now and I I don't expect you to go through the list with all 125 parks but it it's just fruitful information to know especially if we gave Wyandotte Park $300,000 and that kept the bathrooms open for one year. That's a problem and how do we solve it?

We'll be happy to provide provide you with that list.

Thank you. And then my last question. The Soil And water conservation district has seen a large decrease this year. Could you talk about that decrease?

Let's ask Angie Dunn.

Answer your question.

Good afternoon. Angela Dunn, CFO for Louisville Metro. We do recognize, you know, the budget has the the Soil Water And Conservation Conservation District. It wasn't fully funded for its operations, but it did receive some partial support. You know and this is one of those things where this budget just reflects some really tough and necessary choices that we had to make you know amid our rising costs.

We really had to focus on our core government services. And what the city's priorities are you know with our public safety, housing, economic opportunity, and our early childhood learning. You know there were many external partners that you know we had to really review. You know these are those one time appropriations that we go through every year

and

review and this was just one of those that we had to make some tough decisions and while they didn't get their full funding they did get partial funding.

Thank you and since it is trending downward that's really problematic because it makes me think that next year it's going to go lower and continue to go lower and lower and lower until it is no more and that doesn't align with my personal sustainability goals and I'm sure a lot of other council peoples as well. And as a former conservation district supervisor, I I really wanna remind everyone that the conservation district is federally mandated, state run, and locally funded and they depend on us. These are elected officials. And I also wanna make the distinction between the soil Jefferson County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Jefferson County Extension Office. Two different things.

And the conservation district has elected officials. And we support other elected officials such as our county clerk, and we don't bat an eye at that. But when it comes to these elected officials, we're really turning our back on them. And so we have been funding them at an abhorrently low level at a $113,500. And to see that cut in half is very disheartening. And they're running circles around what our office of sustainability is doing. And I know that's not you all, but I'd just be remiss if I didn't go to bat for them because they're doing really great great work and I want to see this funding restored. Thank you.

Councilwoman Ray.

Thank you very much. So, forgive me for being a little late to the party But first, want to say thank you for all the work that you guys have done this past year. I've seen a lot of good things happening, and we're making progress even though the things that are breaking down continue on a pace. But thank you for all the work you've been doing. I want to ask a couple questions about lapsed funds. So you've got the mayor's budget proposals to lapse over $1,300,000 in project balances. Is it possible to redirect those funds to your deferred maintenance list?

That's a decision I think for those funds that OMB will direct with the mayor's office. That's not a department level decision. Okay. So the next They're allocated for specific projects. So when they're no longer needed for that project, they go back for reallocation.

Okay what about the maintenance barn because there's 990,000 plus to rebuild the barn but there's been very little spending on it now that one's being lapsed also.

That is a redirected project So we have the opportunity that we are working with fleets and facilities as managing the facilities and EMA who is also in need of a new facility. So the funds that were allocated for hours are being redirected to help EMA fund their new facility they can move out of the current facility and it will be an ideal spot for our urban forestry division to move into so that's really finding kind of efficiency through partnership. Okay,

that makes sense. And then golf also has a deferred maintenance account. Golf course needs list $526,000 but there's 1,500,000 in a deferred maintenance account.

That the golf course deferred maintenance account that is the capital account where the revenues from at the that remain at the end of the the year, the excess, those are carried forward and put into that capital account. So, those are the dollars from previous year's operations and those are available for us to use for some deferred maintenance and capital projects within the golf enterprise. Okay. Do you

have any idea how you're going to be using them?

We have a three year golf project plan. So we'll be using those will supplement some of the revenues that we see year over year to help implement those projects and then on to the next three years so.

Okay thank you very much. Thank

you. Councilman Herndon.

Thank you sir. A question about bathrooms we get that all the time in public parks. Know in

the most recent California Park survey that

was number two on the

list by far only behind lighting which I know that you've done work there to improve that. What's the basic cost of putting a bathroom in a park and then also maintenance the annual upkeep for that? I

think in general a brand new restroom in a park like California would be in the neighborhood of $405,100,000 dollars It's built to be indestructible, one that won't burn, catch fire that easily and be hard to tear up. As far as operations costs, I don't have a breakdown on I guess probably the personnel expenses that we would have. It's a good thought. We can probably try to put something together for you.

I'd just like to note just general,

I know that I represent Waterfront Park, but they have a dedicated crew that takes care of everything. But I know that public restrooms take a beating I understand and no matter where they are but just wanted to understand what if we ask for that what does that even mean I'd always try to want to know before I begin to ask for those kinds of things.

Let us put some numbers together for you.

Okay thank you.

Madam Clerk please close the record to reflect that we were joined by Councilwoman Rury before she asked her question and we're also joined by Councilman Reno Weber. Councilwoman Chappell.

I had one more queued up I thought I was tapped out but here we go. One of the justifications for cutting the extension office's budget, I believe two years ago was that Louisville Metro was going to take over five of the community gardens that they were managing. I have not been able to find any documentation about those community gardens, their plots, how much it cost to maintain them, you know, who's overseeing that program. I'm just curious in how our community garden program is going and how it's going to be supported into the future.

We have a site on our website for urban agriculture and they can find some information about the community gardens that we administer in park spaces and including the form for signing up for those plots. At the time we took over four community gardens we since closed one of those it was some very low use and it was in a very swampy area of Blue Lake Park so we worked with the handful of gardeners there and found them sites at mostly at Farnsley Mormon which is a quite a large community garden site. So we currently have sites at Emerson Park at Farnsley Mormon and at William F Miles in that's actually part of the Parklands but was a community garden space there before the Parklands. So we do still manage those we have a position in house that manages community gardens and also works to provide some urban agriculture programming within our recreation system so taking some programs into for example spring break camp in our community centers so there I don't have I think the fees right in front of me they're quite reasonable as we've discussed our fees are for community garden plots we are right now working through the planning process to add a new community garden in Butchell Park.

So, we've been working with the homeowners around that park and with the Councilwoman Raymond's office to find out more about the interest there and what would be the ideal community garden in that space.

Sure. Thank you. I would would love to see the total cost in this budget for that position that's overseeing that as well as any programming or overhead costs that that department might incur just to make sure that we are supporting them at a level that does help them carry out good and effective programming.

Thank you and colleagues I apologize, Captain Herndon.

One follow-up on the bathroom on the restroom thing. When you do you over time when you decide to put up a new restroom in a park, is there a certain threshold of use that you wanted to you're not going put one in a pocket park obviously, but is there a certain threshold that you determined that was worthy of it of the expenditure?

Not necessarily pocket park per se. I think it's more of how and what the park is used for. Obviously if there's a spray ground within the park per code we have to have a restroom. So there's that that kind of situation the other kind of situation is we've got a park with a ball field maybe in a multi purpose rectangular field that there's a lot of play there there's a lot of kids and families that are going to watch and practice. Those are the kinds of things we take into consideration.

Okay thanks. Thank you. I had a couple questions. When I look at yours there already been several questions about special events. Oh I should point out and I apologize for not being tardy. Councilwoman Wilridge has joined us. I thought she preceded me. So I apologize for not recognizing you much sooner. And I was paying attention on so not just asking random questions. I hope this isn't a repeat.

Don't believe it is. When you were talking about special event rentals, there was not a conversation around renting fields and other places in parks that folks do on a regular basis? I know it seems like two years ago, maybe last year, there was some conversation around the contract prices that we were offering for some youth sports. Does this budget reflect any change in approach in regards to our contracting with outside agencies to use fields for sports?

No. I think this budget reflects continuing what we've done in the past two years.

Okay. So we'll want to go back and take a look. Thank you. And then in the previous budget, there was 111,500 budgeted for graffiti supplies and we've zeroed out graffiti supplies. Does that mean we are fortunate no one's doing graffitis in parks anymore?

That that was we wish. That is really more of a reflection of where we're charging those costs. More than likely, we would see cleaning supplies as the budget for that.

Okay, good. Sorry about that. Vice chair is telling me that might have been asked. So that concludes there is no one else in the queue for questions. So that concludes our conversation with Parks. I do want to say before we leave so thank you for you guys being here. The zoo is here. But before we move to the next piece, I just want to make a couple comments and ask for some help. As we're moving through the budget hearings, please try as best we can to keep our questions to the budget and not district specific issues. If we have district specific questions, the better way to handle that is we would always handle those and that's through email or direct contact with the parts department.

Conversely, if we have a budget question that is worthy of the public discussion, that it's a budget question that want to dig into and that we might have follow-up questions for, it might be better to ask those questions in this venue and not email those later. Those emails will be shared with counsel so the public understands, because this is a concern of mine, so the public understands. Any communications that take place, the entire budget committee gets access to all of that, so this is not kept behind closed doors or in secret or anything like that. But if it's a question that warrants a follow-up, if it's sent as an email, we may not realize what that question was, and we may miss an opportunity for a follow-up. So if it's a budget related question, if you could please ask it in council chambers.

If it's a district specific question, please follow the lead of Councilwoman Parish Wright and send emails that are district specific or make phone calls that would be more district specific so that we can stay focused on budget topics. Thank you for any help you can give me with that. So we'll adjourn this one, and we're going to wait five minutes to give the part the zoo time to bring up some really cool budget discussion. Look forward to seeing you guys. Five minutes.

If I were you, I would not leave council chambers, because it's worth staying to see what's coming up. So, colleagues, there are a few times a year where it's not as fun to be budget chair, and this is one of them. I have to ask that we move back to our seats and get ready to move back into session. Special thanks to the folks from the zoo who are now who are now responsible for having to take these animals back to zoo and get them back in their pens. We really do appreciate the opportunity to have them visit.

Visit. So as soon as the zoo as soon as the folks from the zoo are settled and we are back in chambers, we'll go ahead and start the meeting. I will remind you again once it's quiet. Welcome back. I'm Kevin Kramer, chair of the budget committee.

I'm joined in chambers by my vice chair, councilman Marcus Winkler, joined also by councilman Betchaun, councilwoman Mulridge, councilwoman Murray, Councilman Reno Weber, Councilman Joseph, Councilman Chapel, Councilman P Argentini, Councilwoman Parker, Councilman Sam, Councilwoman Bass, Councilwoman Raymond, Councilman Herndon, and Councilwoman Shamika Parish Wright. We are not currently joined by anyone online but that may change. Madam clerk, will you go ahead and read into the record the notice of virtual meetings just in case someone joins us virtually?

This meeting is being held pursuant KRS 61.826

in council rule five eight.

Thank you. As a matter the departments will not make opening comments and we will begin immediately with member questions council member questions. Council members you are allowed to ask please three questions and then join back in the queue. Welcome Director Maloney. I'd like to go ahead and start with the first question if we could.

Today we'll be discussing the Zoos budget. So upon, I'm sorry, you and I and Kelly have had a chance to chat if Kelly wants to step to the microphone as well. But can you give us just a real quick update on how things are moving along with the Kentucky Trails project? Specifically to the budget, can you talk about what the phases may look like and what your current status is as far as funding and what you anticipate both from the state and going forward. Sorry, that's a lot, but I know you know.

Sorry, that would have been good. Thank you for having us down here. Good afternoon everyone. And in addition to me being here, have Steve Taylor who's our assistant director. We have Stephanie Moore who was assistant director at the Zoo before she was promoted to Executive Director of Finance for Metro and then Kelly Grether who runs our development part.

So Kelly may come up and talk as well. As it stands right now, the construction fencing is up for Kentucky Trails. The mayor strongly encouraged us to get moving and we appreciated his encouragement. And so we started moving. We have a construction management service.

Construction management services are delivered by Wittenberg that went out to bid. They won that bid. And this first phase is for infrastructure. JLL, by the way, the city uses has been very, very helpful to us as well. So this first phase is site work, earth moving, it's conduits, it's sewer, it's excavation for the water feature that will be there with a liner that I imagine this will fill up a lot of it will fill up on its own, but this water is not managed water at this won't be managed water at this point.

And then concrete bridges will go in as well as some of the lip along water feature to make sure it holds the liner. There will be no animal features at this point. There will be no guest amenities and it won't be open to the guests. But the goal is to make it look like it was a big Parklands area. Hopefully, Phase two will start before Phase one is completed.

We'll be able to start parts of Phase two and that will really depend on funding. As it stands right now, we have a little more than $12,000,000 in cash on hand. And then we just had the infusion from the state and the city. So it brings us up to just around $22,000,000 Kelly, is that correct? Sorry, dollars 30,000,000.

I guess we got some more money somewhere along the line. I'm just out there raising it. I don't pay attention to the numbers as much as Kelly does. So despite business first headline, it's a $77,000,000 project. So we're moving along and hopefully it will move in the way we think it will.

Thank you. Councilman Winkler.

Thank you. Speaking of Kentucky trails, I know one of the things the zoo dealt with for years was the sinkhole and the impacts on the train and budgets. Can you without getting too much off topic here from a budget related perspective, but how much of the budget for the Kentucky Trails project deals with sort of subterranean work or do I assume we've done engineering there and no concerns about where it's going?

Yes, can't speak to too much because it's still in litigation. The collapse took place in 2019 but the Louisville underground sued the zoo. So it's still in litigation and we're grateful to the county attorney's office. As for any additional areas of the mine, they do not extend under the Kentucky Trails site. So I don't believe we own the rights underneath it.

But as far as we are all the information that we've received and any kind of maps or anything else there isn't any excavation under that site. But the one thing that did impact us, I really wanted the CSU's geothermal to be able to cool and heat the buildings at Kentucky Trails. We can't do it. We can't we're not allowed to drill down. And we tried to do it horizontally, which is possible, but there just isn't enough space to do it. So unfortunately, can't I wanted to do something a little bit more energy efficient.

Thank you. Councilman Pia Argentini.

Thank you. Dan, why don't you talk just for a second about how the zoo ranks as far as attractions for this city? As far I mean, you use whatever stats you'd like, but I just want to level set, and this is going play into another question or two about the budget here, just to be super clear. But I do want to level set how the zoo ranks as far as overall attractions for Louisville Metro.

We're number one paid attraction in not only locally but regionally and certainly throughout the state. We outdraw Kentucky Kingdom, Mammoth Cave, The Ark Encounter, we outdraw all those and I was telling Councilmember Kramer just before we started. As of today we'll cross into and I haven't seen the numbers yet because I don't think they're out yet but we'll be above 750,000 guests for the year, fiscal year. We haven't started Wildlights yet. So that'll be on the May 15.

And I don't want to jinx anything, I'm not that superstitious, but we could easily see in the next by June 30, we could see 900,000 plus.

Thank you. Yes. And I think Business First said as far as like it ranks up there with like the Yum! Center as far as total people that come to the city, right, or that come to one venue, right? And the reason I'm bringing this up is I've got a concern in what we see here, right, related to the budget. Your general fund appropriation is actually going to go down almost $500,000 if I'm reading this correctly. Is that right?

I think the total is 440,812.

Yes. I mean your total funding because obviously you have agency receipts, the total budgeted $16 plus million, but your total funding is up. But that's because you guys are crushing it. And so what I'm concerned with, maybe this is more for Angie, want to understand from the administration's point of view. Because I got to tell you, there's many other departments and projects in this budget where we don't know what their outcomes are, we don't know what their value really is.

And then the, well, we're not sure what is happening with this or it's not been successful, ergo we gotta throw more money at it. And meanwhile we have a department here that's wildly successful. They need money to operate and then the administration's made the decision to reduce their budget. Can you talk a little bit about the thought process behind that?

Sure. Thank you. Angie Dunn, CFO for Louisville Metro. Obviously the zoo is fantastic asset that the city has and we certainly want to support it as much as we can. Zoo does have somewhat of an advantage in that it can generate revenue in a way differently than a lot of our other metro agencies can.

And so when we found ourselves, you know, sort of having to review and make some tough decisions this year about how we allocate the general fund. We certainly wanted to provide, know, sufficient strong support for the zoo, but also had to take into account the fact that they they do have the ability to generate revenue where some of our other departments do not.

Yeah, no, I get that. But I just, let's put it this way. I just wanna be clear that we should be supporting departments within the city, not just the zoo, but all departments in the city that are doing a great job, and funding them so they could be even more successful or at least keeping them flat. Even I get this year is a tough fiscal year, and look, I'm asking everybody where they can cut money. But we're restoring them back to two year ago funding from the general fund.

If I said to half these departments, hey, we're gonna put you back general funding wise to two years ago, they would lose it. Some of them I can't prove even remotely the kind of value that the zoo drives for this city. I'm just concerned with the penalizing success trend that I tend to see here. Although I understand that we had to make the mayors make tough decisions. Last question for Dan related to capital status.

This is related to your general repairs, right? There are a couple fiscal years of funding kind of left over. You've got, I think, fiscal year 'twenty four through now. It's about $1,500,000 ish that's not been totally expended. That could be an accounting thing, but and it could be just the timing of how you guys have to do general repairs. Can you just there would be another $600,000 appropriated, which I think is typical. I think we do 600,000 We've been doing that amount for the last several years. Can you just talk about the ability to use that money and why it seems like it's not been expended yet, although it probably has.

Yes. At any given time, we have 10,000,000 to $12,000,000 worth of capital improvement needs repair and replacements and other projects. That money right now is we're hanging on to that for a couple of different projects, primarily the elephant to rhino conversion. The initial estimates came up, we had 500,000 towards that. And again, Stephanie can maybe talk a little bit more in detail, but we were holding on to that money.

The estimates to modify the habitat for rhinos came back at a much higher level than we had expected and that doesn't even include what we would do for the rhino area to convert it over to another species, probably Okapi. It hasn't taken care of the old train station at the front area and such. Maintaining and improving the asset is one of the most important parts of what I think our jobs are at the zoo. I can tell you that Kentucky Kingdom is not sitting around not improving their asset. So those monies will be spent.

We're just trying to spend them as responsibly as possible. I'm just hoping that we can figure out a way not to spend as much for the elephant to rhino area.

Yeah, makes sense. And again, a perfect example of the zoo had to make a very, very difficult decision that was related to the health and welfare of the animals. Right? There's this for anybody who doesn't know, there's all the zoos that could provide really a reasonable habitat for elephants, which requires a certain amount of herd, a certain amount of elephants in the same area. You need a certain size area for them and all this stuff.

Then they all started to shed their elephant exhibits. So there's a handful of zoos that still do it. But many of the zoos, including ours, had to make a very, very difficult decision to let that exhibit go, which is why conversion and expanding into areas where we can. And look, when we were at National League of Cities out in Salt Lake City, a bunch of us went to the zoo out there. Now their zoo is a fraction of the size of our zoo, but it was very beautiful. So I don't want not I didn't mean that to denigrate their zoo. It's very nice. But they had a an exhibit like what you're trying to do with the common wild. It was, again, small, but they had one that focused on local wildlife. It was very well very well done.

So love that you're adjusting, but doing it in a sustainable manner in a way that respects what you're doing mission wise at the zoo and doing so successfully from a fiscal point of view. Again, when I look at your overall funding and what you've been able to do from a commercial point of view, it's just terrific.

And I appreciate that. We do have the ability to generate revenue as Angie said, the CFO said. But we also don't have any other choice. We're compelled to do it. We have to do it otherwise we can't operate.

Thank you. Councilwoman, Chapel.

Thank you. And it was a very special Mother's Day this year for some animals at our zoo. So congratulations to, the monkey, Clobus monkey, the giraffe, and the Stellar sea eagle. So we're excited to go meet those babies when they're ready to make their debut. And I think that we bring you here just because we like the animals that you bring. So thank you for bringing the sandal grain as well as the Argentine black and white tegu.

Did I get that? That's Chiquita. She's a gorgeous lizard.

Chiquita and Julep, they were a delight. And so in looking at your budget, you are the most entrepreneurial agency that we have in Louisville Metro and 75% of your budget is self generated. And so I'm just wondering has that number stayed consistent, that percentage stayed consistent of 75 because I think that we're seeing Louisville Metro, the government's investment going down as councilman Piagetini was insinuating, but your overall budget is actually going up. And so that leads me to assume that maybe last year that number was maybe 70% and this year it's 75 so the more you're generating the more of your budget you're paying off is that the correct assumption?

It varies from year to year, sometimes it's 23%. I'm coming up on my fifth year, this is my fourth budget. So I think it's been right around somewhere between 2225% if I'm recalling correctly, somewhere in there. Is that right, Erin? Yeah. And so I think it's been at least somewhat consistent that way.

That's fantastic and just really wonderful to keep it up. Another really great point that you all have is your personnel. So you've been able to make some hires, your turnover rate might be one of the lowest in Louisville Metro at 7.99%. That's really, really incredible. Looking at your field positions though, you've gone from two twenty seven employees in fiscal year twenty five to two sixty two in fiscal year twenty six.

And that's that addition of 35 positions but your budget only increased by $1,000,000 I understand that not all $1,000,000 is going towards personnel and some of those might be seasonal workers but could you kind of explain how you hired 37 additional employees with relatively no change to your budget?

I think a good portion is probably seasonal. Stephanie? Stephanie Moore, ladies and gentlemen.

Hi, I'm Stephanie Moore, former Assistant Director at the Zoo, now Executive Director of Finance with OMB. Most of those positions are seasonals. That's just a snapshot in time. So it really depends on, and I I don't have the date that it was right in front of me, but if it was March date or even April 1, that's when we're onboarding a lot of seasonals. And it just depends on the timing. Last year, they may have onboarded a little bit later. This year, they probably came on a little bit sooner. But our full time position count of filled positions is about a 122 with another eight to 10, I think, part time. That has stayed relatively flat, and the vacant positions that it currently exists are all in the process of being filled. Thank you. Thank you. Yes.

I I promised my 15 year old daughter that I would ask this question. Okay. She was very disappointed that because she was 15, she was not able to be a summer or even apply to be a summer worker. So I promised her that I would say if there's any way to change that policy, she would like to raise that issue for you, not for her because she will be 16 next year, but for future hers who are so excited about the work that you do.

That that might be a bigger policy change for Metro because I believe that's a Metro policy, but our our concessionaire who does our food and retail does hire 15 year olds so she could still be at the zoo, not necessarily working with at the zoo, but she would be physically at the zoo working.

Thank you so

much. You're welcome.

And I'm sure miss Diane Taylor would love for your daughter to come volunteer at the zoo, that's a direct way to work with the animals even if it is more intimate with bodily fluids than directly with the animals. But a great experience nonetheless. And my last thing, it's not necessarily a question. But I think everyone's really excited about that train. And there is an Instagram meme account called River City Rules. And if you have not seen a post that they made recently about how excited the livilians are at a train coming back to our zoo, that speaks volumes for it. So thank you.

Yeah. I don't think any of us wanted to lose the train. And again, that decision was made prior to me joining. I almost didn't take the job because of the collapse because there's no other two directors dealing with a mine under former mine under their location. But in any event the train, I know the Zeus did everything they could to figure out how to still preserve the train and it just unfortunately the collapse is just too close to one of the tunnels. I was only going to say about the seasonal workers. I try to know all the different seasonal workers. Everybody looks like they're 12 to me by the way. They really look young. But I do pretty well with their names and I was speaking to a group of them.

I started as a seasonal employee at the Bronx Zoo when I got out of college. That's all I could get at the time. And so I told the given the length of my career and I told the seasonal workers, said just think about it. I said in 2065 you could be director of the Louisville Zoo. So I think they just looked at me and they said man that guy is really old.

Yeah that's what they took. Councilwoman Parker.

This coming year you've got increased projections for your revenue with your agency. What do you attribute that to? Is it increased prices? Is it specific attractions that you've added?

It's a combination of several factors. We have wild lights that start in just a few more days and that's certainly we're looking forward to another food and beverage sales and additional ticket sales. Our membership rate did go up slightly as well. We have some of that and then there's a fee that is associated with every purchase online that we were just eating and we're going to try to have that shared by the actual people who are buying these things online. So it doesn't apply to anybody who comes up to one of the windows in person but it's not uncommon to have an online fee that seems like there's an awful lot of vendors who already have that.

So I think that's where we see the increase.

Okay, I own

a small business so I get that fee because nobody pays cash anymore and they just use their card.

Yeah, that seems really the case.

Anyway, so do you, does Suzu ever, are you all always pay as you go for your projects, do you ever have to bond a project?

I think it has been in the past Angie?

We do typically bond the large projects even I think the maintenance fee a lot of times, the 600,000 maintenance that they get is oftentimes bonded. It sort of just depends on how much capital funding we have available and where we apply that when it comes to the overall list of capital projects. But by and large any sort of large project would be bonded. Okay,

thank you.

That's it.

We do work extremely hard to determine what good value we're bringing especially in anything that people are eating or drinking and then making sure the animals are active and the place is spotless and our guest service is excellent. And as many of you have come and walked the zoo with me, I always say people don't ever notice when things look great, they only notice it when it looks bad. And so we really do work hard to try to make sure despite the squirrels pulling out as much stuff from our trash cans as they can but we do work pretty hard to keep the place looking really good because and Stephanie has made this point a number of times while we were working together. People have to choose to come to us. They have to choose to spend their leisure time and their discretionary dollars.

We're not like other agencies and so we want people to keep coming back.

Thank you. Councilwoman Perish Wright.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Framing my question inspired by Councilman Reno Weber, my daughter and my granddaughter both attended Mother's Day. And when I was taking her to school this morning, she said there were no elephants, and they both were upset. So I just wanna know, was that a budget decision to not have elephants? Do we expect anymore just so I can go and look cool to my granddaughter?

What are your granddaughter's names?

Her name is Aya Joy.

Aya Joy, one granddaughter.

Yes, have one granddaughter and three grandsons.

Got it. Please let Aya, how old is Aya Joy? Seven. Seven. Please have her go to the Elephant Sanctuary website, the one in Tennessee, and get an opportunity to see how Punch and Mickey are doing. They are thriving. We weren't giving them a bad life in Louisville. We just couldn't do for them what the sanctuary can. And they have several thousand acres. Mickey has made the relationship with another animal that we were hoping to get them there while they were still both hiding each other.

And Punch was never all that nice to Mickey by the way, I just want people to know, they had to depend on each other because they only had each other. Could we have elephants again? Absolutely. Would it be in the same space that we have now? No.

It just wasn't a good spot, a good space. It was antiquated, didn't give them a lot of shade at all. And so if we were to do elephants again, would change our master plan and it would be an investment that I think when I explained to the board, the foundation board, think they all choked for a second because it would be several $100,000,000 probably to build the kind of habitat where you can maintain a herd structure and things. So please tell Ida Joe that I spent a good portion of my career working directly with elephants when we were still in there with them. Love elephants, but I knew that we couldn't do for them what the sanctuary can do.

I appreciated that. And just wondered if it was a budgetary decision. It sounds like it was more of their well-being. And was thinking about the sinkholes and things like that and just wondering how that would happen. But thank you.

Yes, you're welcome.

Councilman Winkler. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Question back to the Kentucky Trails expansion. Do you have or have you modeled any projections on anticipated revenue increases or is it just way too early or you've got some ideas of what you think that will do to revenue long term, both in terms of total number of visitors and then I know you've got several premium experiences planned as well as facilities that will be for rent, I think there's multiple revenue streams there. So can you speak to that at all?

And many more opportunities to buy Dippin Dots. Apparently, I'm not sure, they're consumables. I'm not even sure I refer to them as food, they certainly are popular. We have projections

We're going

hear from the Dippin Dots Corporation tomorrow. I think so.

They're from Paducah and people love them. So I mean no disparaging at Dip and Dots, we love Dip and Dots. Stephanie could say we do have projections and we foresee that's how we're going to pay for the extra staff.

We looked at

attendance increase. Traditionally, when there's a new exhibit, a large exhibit at zoos, you'll see a 10 to 15% bump of attendance. So that would be an increase of some membership revenue and admissions revenue as well. With the other revenue opportunities that are in the exhibit, the Kentucky and the Conservation Center, for example, will have a classroom space. So that's additional summer camp kids and programming that'll be throughout the year. The train obviously is gonna be a big draw, knock on wood hopefully. But we've we've projected that that will be well attended in Britain. And the the so sorry. The increase of projected income is about 1 and a half to $2,000,000. And then we anticipate that that will fully fund the additional staff.

It'll be about 20 to 30 additional staff needed between seasonals and full time, part time. So we expect that that will fully fund that as well.

There is another point to this as well. It was in addition to choosing what was on our master plan with Kentucky Trails because we thought there'd be appeal especially to our friends in Frankfurt. There's also the opportunity to construct that new area without negatively impacting our guests because they'll be able to watch the development and building in the construction phases, but it doesn't impede their access to the zoo. When the time comes for us to have to redo the Old Africa area and that area is aging quickly, When we have to close that area down we will have this additional space in the zoo so it won't so negatively detract from their experience.

Yeah, mean I think it's an incredible addition. I look forward to construction starting and then all of the positive impacts on the city, on attendance, on your revenue. I think it's really outstanding. Know Councilman Chappell asked the question about the impact on your budget and I know one of the at least in the past when this has struggled with attendance, it's primarily driven, it's highly obviously weather dependent attendance. I think we've been very fortunate at least these last two or three weeks you probably couldn't dial up better weather for attendance. Great. And so, you know, we'll hope that that continues throughout the summer and and drives further further attendance gains at the zoo.

The

weather's gonna be weather, and this is what we it's my mantra. When it's good, we just have to be able to seize on it. So that's when everything has to be has to be excellent. Service, food, experience, animals, active, and etcetera. So the weather is going to be the weather. And yes, impacts us. But yes, had in April alone, we had attracted and welcomed over 131,000 people.

And one last follow-up question to that, Dan. You all implemented dynamic pricing a couple of years ago, correct? Can you speak to what impact that's had on revenue overall? Approximate, we think we're capturing 20% more annually, 5% more annually.

It's worth I'll let Stephanie speak to the specifics but it's worked out really well for us and I think we've had very little concerns.

From a guest perspective, there's not been any real complaints or issues or anything. I think people are used to seeing prices changing just depending on what you're doing. If you go to hotel room or you go see a show somewhere depending on where or even airfare, it certainly changes drastically just depending on what the circumstances are. We've seen an increase of probably about five to 8% of our per cap revenue on admissions revenue over the every year since we've implemented dynamic pricing and that was implemented in 2020. That turns into an you know several $100,000 of admissions revenue that we're seeing every year.

We're also seeing the flip side of that is if people are well, you know, it's a family of let's say six today that show up at the zoo, we can convert them into a membership because it may be cheaper for them to get a membership and come back year round than a one time visit. So that's our our team is trained to kind of look at the situation and determine okay you might want to just consider a membership and come back and you'll save a little bit money of money today. So we're seeing it on both the admissions and the membership side.

Absolutely. Councilor Herndon if it's okay. He's got a direct follow-up. I'm going to he's next in the queue as well. I know you haven't spoken but not ignoring you. Okay. Councilor Piajantini.

The your other question as question I'm withdrawing from the queue because this was going be my question. I just want to confirm that we don't have to pass any additional ordinances for you guys to adjust your pricing. You have full rein to mark adjust your pricing. Correct.

Councilman Herndon. Hey Mr. Chairman all I wanted to say was how very proud I am that my hometown gave you Dibbon Dots.

It's a yeah I didn't know that Paducah was the home of Dibbon Dots until just a few months ago. So we're going to do our best to see if Dippin Dots wants to have a pavilion down at Kentucky Trails area. Again, soft pretzels and Dippin Dots are number one and two sales. So we're happy about that.

Councilwoman Raymond.

Thank you. I have the privilege of representing the area around the zoo, and I just wanna commend Dan and his whole team on their really effective community engagement. There's a quarterly neighbor meeting, And Dan would be a great politician because he knows sometimes you just have to stand at the front of the room and take it. Right? And that really goes a long way.

I've got the best job in Metro. I mean, no offense to anybody else. I I I wouldn't wanna do anything else that I'm doing.

So we get hardly any complaints about the zoo. And if you see the traffic coming off popular level, that would really surprise you. Right? So you you guys do an incredible job of of working with neighbors and keeping them informed. So thank you for that. What percentage of the of visits are from louvilians versus out of towners?

Yeah. They and I wanted to also thank you for our our Zulu sign that went up, and it seems awesome. It's right across from the from the zoo. Worked with a group to help with strategic planning and they did a whole study. Our penetration rate is super high for like those people within the thirty minute drive of the zoo. We do really well with the next band and even the next band. Think, and Kelly and Stephanie, I think probably I would guess at least 70% probably. What is it?

Yeah. We're about 85% in Jefferson County or the MSA of Metro. And then the other, that might be a little bit lower than that, about 80%. And then we're out into the state and about 15% external to the state of Kentucky. So we've in the past several years, we've had guests from all 50 states, many countries. So we do a zip code analysis and look where people are coming from.

Cool. But say

again, 85% Jefferson County.

Yep. Yep. Right. Or the MSA, the Louisville MSA, I believe. So just in Kentucky, I apologize. So Oldham, and I'm gonna I'm terrible at geography. Jefferson, Shelby, Bullitt, Oldham. I think those are

And then Kentuckians and then outside of Kentucky. Yes.

Yeah. And we and we get a lot of you know, we get lots of people from Southern Indiana.

Mhmm.

Yeah. So 15% of

our I wonder how we could bring more Kentuckians in because from my time in Frankfurt, I mean, the Louisville Zoo is Kentucky's zoo. Mhmm. And so it sounds like there's some opportunity there. What's the population that you see the least of? My hypothesis is people in their twenties.

I I would actually say we're we're making great headways with that population through our happy hours and trivias, trivia nights.

That's right.

So we have hump day happy hours, Wednesdays throughout the summer. Wildlights is another great example of that where you're getting that date night crowd or girls night out crowd. But the trivias, the happy hours, the the after hours events are where we see them. The happy hours are especially great, I think, for that particular group because it's a much smaller group. You don't have the full zoo, but you get a small area of the zoo. You get two drinks and a snack and some really cool animal encounters while you're there. So that's a really

great issue.

Well, was my question. What population are we not engaging as well? And what are you all doing? But it sounds like you're right.

And Deputy Mayor Maiton is a big fan of the happy hour. So we appreciate her.

Is she going be a big fan of you? Yeah. If you putting that on blast. Then my last

question Z.

My last question. Is is this a a rumor or is it true that when our sort of next big exhibit was being ideated that we coulda had sharks.

Oh, I know that it was on our map. I don't think we ever looked at that as the next step, but there is there is a

There is a shark conservation institute that was on the master plan, the 2016 master plan. So that that that is an area.

I don't know where we're I I don't know where we're gonna

What would sharks cost?

Big fan. Oh, I well, you start managing water for for fish, that becomes a whole other thing. But we we could we could talk about that. I I I don't know if it's the top of my list.

It it is something that going back to the mine collapse that occurred. To do that shark conservation institute as we had originally planned it, there are certain areas at the zoo where our central services like facilities, horticulture, our animal hospital commissary, those would have need to be relocated. The area we had identified to relocate that locate them is now a giant hole in the ground. So that with the loss of that space it's gonna be figuring out what can if we do go down a road of doing sharks what where could that even go because we'd have to relocate items.

Okay. I'll put it on the wish list, chairman. Thank you all.

Great. Thank you. I don't see anyone else in the queue. I will just follow-up to one of the questions that was asked earlier about funding for operating. And again, to your all's point, your operating numbers, you all are doing a great job generating revenue for yourselves.

I just want to make sure the viewing public understands there is $5,000,000 in this proposed budget to support the work that's being done at Kentucky Commonwealth or Kentucky Commons. And all of us have heard and understand that when we build out Kentucky Commons, that will drive even more guests and will continue to fund that operating expense. So it's not like those two things can be 100% separated from each other. It's one thing to fund something as operating when that's what they do. It's another thing to fund capital when that growth increases the operating opportunities and operating revenue. So I just would want to say that on your behalf.

Appreciate that.

Very supportive.

If you look at our zoo and the capture that we do, many guests we welcome, we are in the top 17% or 18% of zoos in the country for sure.

Great. And I did have one question. Was looking at your somebody mentioned earlier your turnover rate. Your turnover rate was 4.3 last year. It's 7.9 this year, almost eight actually. That's still considerably better than what we're doing on the metro side. So we really can't complain. But are you guys a little nervous about that turnover rate and what are you thinking about doing about that?

Yes, I looked at that because I was curious as well because even though that's not a big spike of sorts, but we had three retirements, I'm sorry, five retirements. And in that period of time, we had somebody who took the job, accepted the job but then didn't show up. And then we had, I think, five people who left Metro. So in a year where you've got more people who retire it's going to take a toll.

Yeah and we don't want to insist that they have to work until they can't. We're joined by Councilwoman Hawkins. Any final questions? Just wanted

to close with one other comment and just remind folks that back in 2019 when we had the budget chore form Councilman Kramer and Councilman Parker would remember this, there was talk at that time of selling the zoo. Mean serious conversations about selling the zoo and I'm glad those didn't go anywhere because it's a critical asset for the city. I think you all have done an outstanding job running it and look forward to what comes next.

Yeah, me too. I'm glad we didn't do that.

Great. Thank you. Colleagues, we'll take a brief respite at 05:30. The public hearings start for public input on the budget. I'm sorry, at six. The public hearings start for input on the budget. And we will have folks who are hoping to speak until that last person has an opportunity. Join us at six.

Refuse. Some of them don't. So I have to call and see. Alright. Okay.