Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

$3.75 then once we get the chicken in we're gonna want to make sure it stays somewhere between 300 and $3.25. So while our grease is heating in the cast iron skillet we're gonna make our breading. Now as I said Kentucky is famous for its fried chicken because of Colonel Sanders, of course, and his mega empire, but we are not using his secret seven herbs and spices or 11 or whatever it was. My grandmother just used simple salt and pepper in hers. So we're gonna add oh, we'll we'll we'll tell you how many teaspoons in the recipe on the screen.

I'll just kinda do it by feel. And salt and crushed ground pepper. And this was just really all the seasoning grandma Fanny thought she needed, and that was just fine with us. So we're just gonna mix that around. And then I've got a buttermilk wash that we're gonna dredge the chicken in. Sometimes, nanny, that's why call her nanny fanny, if she didn't have buttermilk, she would just use water also, which was just as wet. So next thing we're gonna do is take our pieces of chicken. I'm gonna start with the smaller ones. I've got a lot of drum sticks. So I'm just going to dredge that in the buttermilk like that.

And dredge it in our flour mix. Get it real good. And I'll lay it on this platter until I get enough on the platter that's going to fill the cast iron skillet because we want them all to be cooking at about an equal amount of time. So I'm going to finish out the chicken. Alright.

Our drumsticks are breaded. The grease is ready. We're ready to fry some chicken. You You gotta monitor this the whole time because you don't want it to drop below 300 or you're gonna have well, you're not gonna have crispy fried chicken. And if it goes over $3.75, 400, then we're gonna burn it. So we wanna keep it right in that 300 to 325 bar for the prime. Okay. We've had this cooking for about five minutes. I put a lid on, called my mom to make sure I needed to do that. So that was a good idea especially on your first batch.

So I'm just going to check the bottom of this one and I think this is a perfectly golden brown color that we're looking for. Make it a little deeper if you like it. These drumsticks have been on about five minutes, I guess. And again, it's it's all about the look and feel more than the time. Alright. We're gonna put this lid back on again. Like I said, my mom suggested that this helps heat up especially that first batch. Alright. I'm gonna cook up this next batch of chicken and you're gonna go watch Jessica make an old fashioned.

Since Stacy's making such an iconic Kentucky dish, I wanted to make an equally as iconic cocktail. So we're making Louisville's official cocktail, the old fashioned. It was declared our official cocktail by our mayor in 2015 because it was actually invented right here in Louisville, Kentucky at a downtown club that was founded in the eighteen hundreds that still exists today. It's a really simple cocktail. We're using Jim Beam signature craft, old fashioned bitters, cherries, orange, and a little bit of sugar.

So what we're gonna do first is muddle our fruit, sugar, and bitters together. Got an orange slice here. We're just gonna drop that in the bottom. I'm gonna sprinkle in a little bit of sugar and this is really your preference for how sweet you like your cocktails or if you just want it more spirit forward. And then I've got a couple dashes of bitters right in there and add a little bit of water.

This is just gonna dilute it, get that bring the flavor of the bourbon out even more. And so I think the secret here to a really good old fashioned is to give this orange a good solid muddling. So get really hardened to the bottom of the glass. You want to get the peel so that the citrus oils come out, and then get the pulp of the fruit, and try to get the sugar a little dissolved in here and mixed really well with the bitters. Cocktails kind of came about before prohibition.

Your spirits might not necessarily have been consistent in quality or particularly good, so they started adding a little sugar, bitters, and fruit. But this version, the delicious bourbon old fashioned that we all know and love was made famous here in Little at the Pendennis Club. So that's our great tie in. Alright. That looks sufficiently muddled.

So I'm gonna go ahead and throw in one of my big ice cubes here to keep the cocktail from diluting too much more quickly. And I'm gonna pour in just about two ounces of bourbon. Give it a little bit of a stir and then we're just going to garnish with our cherry. Some people muddle it in, but I like it just kind of as a garnish and then eat that bourbon soaked cherry out in the end. I'm using Luxardo because I'm feeling fancy, but you could use something just as long as it's a little bit of an upgrade from a maraschino cherry.

But that's all there is to it, a classic Louisville original old fashioned cocktail. Cocktail. Well, Stacy, I am very excited to sit down and try your grandma's fried chicken recipe.

Well, I'm so excited to share it with you, Jessica. I tell you, it really takes me back. Not that we don't have this, my mom makes it pretty frequently, but I will admit, I went through a stage of not fixing it for a while, even though I'd grown up with it.

You know, you try to

be health conscious, right? But now that my kids are getting older, I really want to make sure that they are growing up with the same Kentucky culinary traditions that I did. And not only that they experience it, but they know how to make it too. Because when I grew up this was something we had almost every Sunday night. My grandmother would fix these huge spreads that looked like Thanksgiving dinner, so I'm glad to be able to share with you. And this Old Fashioned, no question why it was named Louisville's official cocktail and you just nail it

every This is definitely at least a weekly tradition in my house.

Well, of these Kentucky classics, we are glad to share with you and hope that you will make them, in your neck of the woods and come back and

Metro TV will start in thirty seconds.

Good afternoon. Welcome

to the sixth day of budget hearings. I'm Kevin Kramer, chair of the budget committee.

With me in chambers today is councilman Batron, councilman Herndon, councilman Joseph, councilman Bracher. I'm joined online by council members P Argentini, Parish Wright, and Moby Woolridge. And I will be joined in chambers very soon by my vice chair, councilman Winkler. Can I make a point of order? Certainly. I wanna congratulate the chairman for retirement from the awesome Mercy Academy. Let's all give him a hand. Thank thank you very much for that. I'm telling people I'm not graduating. I'm just finally retiring.

I mean, I'm not retiring. I'm just finally graduating, and I'm moving on to other things. So, I will be plenty busy in the coming year or two. But thank you. I appreciate that. Not JCPS. No, Avi. This this whole President League of Cities thing is gonna have me hopping on planes more often than I ever have before. So, if the clerk would please read into the record the required notice for virtual meetings.

This meeting is being held pursuant to KRS 61.826 in council rule five a read in full.

We will begin our hearing today with Louisville fire followed immediately by emergency services. Starting at five, we will have animal services. As a reminder, departments will not make opening comments, and we will begin immediately with council member questions. Council members, you are, you are asked to limit yourself to three questions at a time, and after that, you'll need to get back in the queue. Also, I'll call on first time questions first, before I call on those who have already been in the queue. The mayor is recommending an $85,600,000 operating budget and a $5,800,000 capital budget. Welcome, Chief O'Neill. Good to see you again. And lieutenant LTC is that lieutenant colonel?

Yes, I am. Kyle Beckham.

Kyle, good to see you. I I have to call you lieutenant colonel now? It doesn't it doesn't seem fair, but that's okay. I'm sorry, the lieutenant colonel knows what I mean. So let me start off asking about the results of the feasibility study for the replacement of engine 20 three's quarters.

So we've had to kind of hit the pause button on engine 23, reason being is we've got a lot of things that have started with what was in the budget last year as far as architectural plans, securing the firm. However, it's land purchase that is kind of slowing us down. We've looked at several different sites. We've got predictive software to make sure that it's in the best possible place for the runs that we make. However, we need to actually purchase the land and we've run into some issues with that. So we've lost our number one choice. We're moving on down the line to the next one and we're working with facilities to get that done.

Great, thank you.

Councilman Winkler. Chief welcome, thanks for being right here. Good to see you. Can you talk, I know we heard from fleet and facilities yesterday and I know that the equipment is technically not under your budget. But can you speak a little bit about the state of the fleet from your perspective and the money in the budget to replace aging trucks and sort of where we are on I know trucks have a very long lead time to get I know we put money in the mid year last year I think to get trucks in two years or three years from now if I'm not mistaken.

So if you could kind of just maybe talk a little bit about where we are in terms of fleet replacement and what that capital outlay looks like over the next three years.

Sure. So our state was bad When myself and Mayor Greenberg came in three years ago, we had two apparatus on order. We now have nine on order. The lead time, if I order a truck today, it'll take about four years to get here. So that is very frustrating. This is a nationwide problem. It's ridiculous. We're doing everything we can and working with different manufacturers to try to find ways around that. We have in a couple of them. So we have 31 frontline apparatus when you're looking at our large trucks, our engines, our trucks.

Engines, just for those, that's hose and water, the trucks have ladders and tools, and then we have five like specialty rescue trucks to make a 31 total. Of those, the NFPA says that nothing on your frontline should be older than 15 years old. We actually have nine of our front line that are older than fifteen and five of those that turned 15 this year. So 14 that need to be replaced. But they're coming in.

In fact, we are leaving next two weeks from now to do the final inspection on an engine that's coming in. We should have another engine coming in a few months after and another one hopefully, if not at the end of the year, early next year. So all those that are on order are starting to come to fruition so that we can replace that aging fleet. Now if you look at our auxiliary fleet, so as mentioned, the 31 Frontline, we have 16 auxiliary apparatus. So basically, even if you have a brand new engine, a brand new truck, at some point it's going to need an oil change, it's going to need a tune up, it might have something, it goes off track, we need to have a backup to put in place.

Backups are not supposed to be on track any more than twenty five years for our oldest, and all but one of our auxiliaries are older than twenty five years. So that's an issue. We changed, so we have been able, thanks to the Metro Council, thanks to Mayor Greenberg, in some of these midyear adjustments, we've been able to purchase additional apparatus to get us closer to where we need to be. Going forward, if we can get to a point where we purchase two every year, like I said, we have 31 Frontline. If we're purchasing two a year, nothing will be older than 16 years old. That's a sustainable model. If you could wave a magic wand and give me 20 of them this year, I wouldn't want because then in fifteen, twenty years from now whoever's in these seats are going have the exact same problem.

Thank you Chief. I do have two follow-up questions if you don't mind. The first is one thing I heard from your answer is we should put money in the budget to fund development of a fire truck manufacturing company here in Louisville. There seems to be a business opportunity there.

I think right out there at Ford they do great work. Make great automobiles. Could put an extra wing on there for fire apparatus.

Exactly. So let's do that. So if we can, we'll note that for funding. But in all seriousness, I'd like to sort of shift your focus a little bit to both the scheduled and non scheduled overtime. Sure. Okay. And maybe have you first address what is the schedule, why do you have so much scheduled overtime and what have been the budget impact of that overtime of why that's grown so significantly And then what is contributing even another 50% on top of that to your non scheduled overtime?

So scheduled overtime, our firefighters they work a twenty four hour shift. So we have a three platoon system, they come in, they work twenty four hours, then they're off forty eight. So a different shift comes in, works twenty four. When you average that out, it averages to a 56 work week. Basically, you'll have a seventy two hour work week and a couple 40 eight's in there, average of 56.

So there's built in overtime that is a part of their salary. And and quite frankly, firefighters make an artificially lower hourly rate so that the time and a half that's built in, that's scheduled overtime will then equal to a a salary that smooths out over a year to give them what should be a a fair salary, right? So that's the scheduled overtime. That is based on our staffing and that is something that is very easily predictable as long as we're close to fully staffed. Unscheduled overtime by its nature is unscheduled.

One of the things we have that most other departments don't is minimum staffing. So if somebody is missing, if they're sick, if they're injured or if they're on vacation, if they're on PPL, that position has to be replaced. That's a life safety issue and that's also contractual. So there is unscheduled overtime that has to be done to fill that. Now we've done a really good job in the past with the help of this Metro Council and this administration. I've gotten permission to hire an academy class every year. So three and a half years ago, we were sitting at about 75 vacancies. Right now we're sitting at 28. And that is something that we're staying on top of. So if you'll notice the trend in our unscheduled overtime has reduced tremendously over the past three years and that's the reason why because we're getting that staffing up.

Other things that can cause unscheduled overtime, if you think about large scale events like the flooding, if you have ice storms, if you have a plane crash, if you have other major events where we have to call in extra people because we've committed too many of our resources to what's going on right there and we have to protect the rest of the city. Those will hit those. This I know people are one of the old guys that still gets the Curry and reads it, but when they talked about Derby Week overtime. Our overtime is reimbursed by Churchill Downs because we do staff the commitment that we have at Derby Week at Churchill Downs represents the third largest fire department in the Commonwealth on those days, but that is paid back to us by Churchill as well as when we staff the state fair that is reimbursed by the Kentucky State Fair Board.

Thank you. I was I struggle so for a a number of years now, I've I've asked questions about deferred maintenance, deferred maintenance. And come to find out that some of the answers I've gotten around deferred maintenance aren't exactly what I was asking for.

Okay.

In my world, when you talk about deferred maintenance, I'm not suggesting that if there was a storm that blew through and you replace the roof, you start counting deferred maintenance after you fix the roof towards the next roof. That's just normal maintenance. Deferred maintenance to me is when I should have fixed it and I didn't and I keep putting it off, what's that expense? So I shared that with you before I asked my question because I'm kind of hoping that I'll get something that reflects what I'm hoping for. When you guys are doing just your general repairs, that things break you fix, I'm asking like what does that look like in terms of your expense?

And then when you start thinking about the things that are beyond their normal lifespan and you know that they need to be repaired, how are you prioritizing that?

So we have a facilities engineer that ranks all of those things. I'll give an easy one. You mentioned like a storm taking out a roof, right? Let's forget that. Just a typical we're the third oldest professional fire department in the country, and we have the facilities to back that claim up.

We have six active facilities that are over one hundred years So when we look at when does a roof need to be replaced on a regular basis, we map those out. So for instance, this next year, we'll be replacing the roof on Engine 12, which is on Manslick Road. That's not something due to storm damage or anything like that. It's just it's it's time that needs to be done. There are so in that category, we just Cliff Milligan is the name, does an amazing job of making sure that we are routinely checking whether it's HVAC systems, whether it's roofs, whether it's concrete on the drives, the front apron in front of the apparatus, the parking lots, etcetera.

Then we also have renovations and remodels, but all that's coming out of that same pot of money that we're given. So for instance, Engine 17 in the California neighborhood about a year ago was completed, a full gutting and renovation of that. We're about to finish the same project on Engine 20, which is in the Highlands at Bartstown in Maryland. That one, this is over 100 year old facility. That should be done in about another one months.

Point The next one is Crescent Hill on Frankfurt Avenue, engine four that's gonna get have a similar remodel because we're trying to modernize. I invite any folks, please come out, visit your neighborhood firehouse. You'll see there's some historic areas, but we have our firefighters living a third of our lives in there. We're in the middle of a renovation at our headquarters at 12th And Jefferson to improve the living space there as well.

So what I heard you say is you recognize that there are places where maintenance has been deferred. You have older buildings, and that's a part of the reality. In the conversation around taking care of those deferred maintenance pieces, you all were able to recognize and take advantage of the need to do that anyway. And you've gone ahead and refurbished beyond just the deferred maintenance. You've actually remodeled and brought things up to I won't say up to current standards. But you've actually taken advantage of those opportunities for repair.

As much as we can, we try to do that. Because to your point exactly, if we just when something breaks, fix it. When something breaks, fix it. At some point, especially with these older facilities, Right. We kitchens, as they're falling apart, we can okay. We're gonna fix this one cabinet. Well, at some point, gut it and do a whole new kitchen. And so that's what we try to do. And again, I I give all credit to it's Lieutenant Colonel Fecke's team that's over there in facilities that that handles that. They do a great job.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I'm shifting gears entirely. I'm going ask you three different questions from three completely different places. You guys are decreasing your contractual services from down to $2.62 by 262,900 and your equipment capital outlay by another 106. How how is that gonna impact your operation? Is did you find a way to do that through efficiencies or the the best answer is yes. I mean, I've got I want the right answer. I shouldn't say that. I want the right answer.

So some of it is on it actually is in different spend categories. So you're I'm sorry, you said the miscellaneous services or No, contract

contractual services and equipment capital outlay. Those were the two I was looking at most completely.

So some of that has just been rearranged in miscellaneous services. The other are in fuel and automotive parts. Fuel, shockingly, everyone knows, fuel is going up. So that's probably going to hurt us. And I don't think we're going to be able to make that next year with our fuel costs. Then if you look though at automotive parts, we're actually able to combine two different spend categories that were being utilized for those automotive parts and services. So we actually are remaining about the same.

Okay. So it's just a matter of accounting. Okay, thank you. And then the third one again completely different. How many fire recruit classes do you anticipate this year? And about how much per class?

So we've been doing one a year. We've got an academy class in of 19 people right now that will graduate at the end of August. We will open up hiring to start another class. So basically one a year. One a year and the number so right now we're sitting at 26 vacancies in suppression. We anticipate we'll have 19 graduate, that gives us seven vacancies. We anticipate 15 to 20 retirements. We're never quite sure, but that number, they typically retire August 1. So we'll have that before we actually put out final offers. So we'll be looking again to hire a class of about 25. Okay.

So we should stay fairly stable is

what I'm hearing

you say?

Yes, absolutely. Okay, great.

Thank you. Follow-up to that question.

Chief, just one quick follow-up on training glasses. If you're hiring an existing firefighter from another agency, can they come on board immediately or do they have to also go through the academy or is there a modified academy or how does that work?

So we had looked into doing that and it happens so infrequently that because we were thinking about trying to do a separate academy for what we would call a lateral move. And we don't get a lot of those. But every now and again, we do. So what we would typically do is if they are in our academy, we'll put them in day one like everybody else. They end up being able to be kind of a leader amongst the other people because they have some experience. And when they get to a point in the academy where any extra additional certifications, they've got everything, we'll go ahead and pull them on the street so that we can alleviate any help out our staffing, alleviate unscheduled overtime. They'll still get the opportunity to walk across the stage and graduate with their class. But we've done that several times that would pull people out early.

Madam Clerk, please close the record to reflect we've been

joined by Councilman Chappell. I'm Councilman Bachon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Chief, for being here and your team for everything and the outstanding work you do. I'm going to touch on the fuel thing you brought up a minute ago. But here on we've got a decrease in fuel cost of $105,000 from FY 2026 to FY 2027 with those fuel costs rising. I mean is that number it can't be accurate.

We're not going to be able to meet that, no.

So that I would assume, Angela, maybe this is a question for you that that number would need to be adjusted in.

Sure. This is Angela Dunn, CFO for Louisville Metro. Across the board with Metro with fuel costs, we typically base it on when we're doing our forecasting we're halfway through a year, we don't have a full year's worth of information to look at and so when we start building the budget we base it on activity from the prior year and what we've seen so far in the first six months of the year when we start our forecasting. So if we have based on basically previous activity, if fuel is coming in, if we're doing better on our fuel than what we had budgeted, we'll reduce that budget to meet what appears to be what we have identified as our average spend on fuel. So we've done that across the board.

I mean it's a fairly, it's a consistent way of how we budget for fuel year over year. Now if we get to a point we monitor it very closely and if we start getting to a point where fuel looks like we're about to exceed our budget, we'll look for other opportunities where we can increase the funding if we need to or we may just have to absorb it within the department itself sort of depending on where we're at. But that is how the fuel was budgeted this year.

Understood. My second question is related to the grant match. You have a grant match of $93,800 but that's not outlined anywhere in the OMB report. Can you

tell me what that's for?

That is a port security grant from the coast guard that we don't know for sure if we're going to get yet. It's in the process and we're hoping to get it. We're always applying for additional grants and trying to get everything we can to help out the city.

Thank you. Thank you. No further question.

Thank you. Councilman Herndon.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Dunn, what's the approximate annual fuel costs for all metro vehicles, just everyone, do you have an idea?

I do not have that off the top of my head but we'll get that for you.

I mean it was 50% and that could be a big number. I'm just curious.

Sure we'll get that for you. Sure okay thank you.

Councilman Piazzantini.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Thank you. So first question is probably more for OMB than the fire chief because it actually has to do with how we pay bonding for the fire department. So this budget, little backstory, this budget for the first time does not allocate any money for suburban fire. In the past, there had been a small allocation related to special projects and other, your sort of interdepartmental coordination with suburban fire. And that's not in the mayor's budget this year, which, know, look, okay, I get it.

They are a separate taxing agency. They are a separate elected body, you know, we could argue they, you know, they need to make up that cost themselves. I'm assuming that's the mayor's rationale. Similarly, Louisville fire is paid via the USD property tax, But bonds are paid via occupational tax from the revenue commission before, we take that revenue into the general fund. So my question for OMB is, do we have a there's a proposed, I think it's $5,800,000 ish in new bonds, which I'm not disputing why we're doing it.

We need to replace this equipment. We need to do this maintenance. My question is, how are we paying for these bonds and do we have a specific process in which we allocate these bonds to the Urban Service District tax, is the proper revenue stream to pay for Louisville fire?

Thank you for the question. So the answer is yes. There was a change in the state law KRS and I think it was 2025 that specifically stated that capital also needed to be covered. You know, any any capital purchase for the USD also needed to be covered specifically by the USD taxes. I'm summarizing, but that's essentially what it said.

So we have built in a calculation and it was on the when I presented our overview of revenues, there's a slide in there that outlines the USD and the revenues and expenditures associated with that. And we have carved out in that a line item that's for capital items. Now because of the way we bond, we bond everything as a whole. We don't do a separate bond for USD capital purchases. But what we do is is basically our proportional calculation. You know, what's the USD items in proportion to the rest of the items and we calculate out what that estimated contribution would be from the USD to cover the bond payment associated with those items.

So just for clarity, thank you. That helps. So and that makes sense, right? So but I just want to finish the mechanics of it. So whatever the amount is, and I'm going to use a very easy number, right?

Let's just say we're bonding 10,000,000 that are calculated within the urban service district. Let's assume that the debt service on that $10,000,000 is $100,000 for 2020. I'm making numbers up here, dollars 100,000 the debt service for this upcoming fiscal year. Does that mean that at some point you take revenue from the USD property tax and add it back to our general fund and add it back into our occupational tax revenue. So when we see the occupational tax come in, now we have accounted for and added back what was paid for out of the urban service district property taxes?

We are including it, the occupational license taxes paid for the bonds, but we're actually identifying it as an expense for the USD property tax. And so I follow what you're saying I think but it's essentially we're not necessarily making an entry back to occupational license tax. But that property tax is offsetting the occupational license tax when we include that expense in with that. And we can get your reconciliation if that would help. So there's not a direct payment back to the occupational license tax. It's just an offset.

Sure, because here's the issue, right? So the if you're paying it out of the occupational tax, the occupational tax is general fund revenue. The occupational tax applies to the whole city. It does not apply to just the USD or non USD areas. It applies to everything, and we can apply it to everything.

The, USD tax has specific things that it needs to pay for. So even if you make it a expense within the USD, if you've taken the money out of the general out of the occupational tax revenue, then you have deprived the city writ large, right? So not just the USD, but the rest of the city with that money that would have come in just because you've accounted for it within the USD. Yes, that's nice, but I'm not sure how that replaces the revenue for the rest of the city so that we're properly accounting for and taxing the urban service district for the services they are receiving and then making sure that the rest of the city's revenue is properly replaced. Does that make sense?

I do follow what you're saying, but I think it might be helpful if we could sit down and sort of walk through the back office process of what that looks like.

Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Let's do that if you don't mind. I mean, you might start with just sending me how that reconciliation works, and then I'll set a follow-up call separately. We're not going to resolve it, obviously, here in this thing. Thank you for that.

Sure.

And clearly, this would apply to anything else that I'm picking on fire here because we're in the fire and there's 5 point something million in bonds. But this I'm not going to re ask the question for any other USD services, but SWMS, for example, but assume I'm applying it to any one of them. Them. And then for the Chief, Chief, I know you're replacing the one engine location or you're looking for where that needs to be replaced. That's great.

But LMPD, for example, just completed a FORCE study, right, looking at what, in today's day and age they would need as far as our current population or current demographics or current other data points, how many sworn officers we would need. Similarly, we have seen big movements within the Urban Service District even by itself. We have seen a net outflow of people, particularly from certain districts into areas outside of the USDA. I mean, there's been a net outflow of people from the USDA in the past fifteen, twenty years into the areas outside of the Urban Services District. And at the same so that could reconfigure where you need services and how many services and how many engines and how many and where they need to be placed.

Do you have a recent study or are we studying where our current because to your point, we're one of the oldest fire departments in the country. The decisions on where to put these places were made under a very different time and very different structure. Do we have a more modern study that tells us where our current where we should have or relocate certain places and whether or not we have the right amount of engines, right amount of people and the properly placed locations to optimally serve the urban service district?

Yes, that is something that we do track and you're right. Some of these buildings that were built over one hundred years ago, the city looked very different. What we look at is like some of what you're talking about with your population movements, we look at that but we also look at things like the social vulnerability index. That tends to be where our highest run volumes are. So we have to make sure that we're staffed in those area.

We track not only every incident that's an emergency run but types of incidents as well to make sure that we've got the right resources in the right areas. So we're constantly looking at how we move around. But that being said, we are actually fairly good with where we are right now. There's a few of our buildings that if I could pick them up and move them, we would, but obviously that's a large investment to try to move an entire station someplace else. With Engine twenty three, once that project is done, the next one that we'll be looking at is in the Smoketown area, Engine 9.

And as you know, that touches a little bit towards the Broadway Corridor in Nulu, which is looking very different. So as we change that study to look for the ideal location for that one, again, that's going to be quite a bit different than the current Smoketown area that we're looking at today.

Chief, just follow-up question. Don't take this the wrong way because I appreciate your work and I trust you very much. But have we had a third party, right? Again, it's not that I don't trust you. It's that we all have perspective and sometimes it's good to get an external perspective.

Have we had a third party? Because again, I will cede, I would bet that if we had done that use of force study just with an LMPD and not had a third party come in, the answer of what we would have needed probably would have been different. So I'm wondering if we've had a third party validate your assumptions or take a sort of unbiased view of it and also concluded the same that you have or not?

Well, we have not hired an outside agency to do that. Obviously, that would be a significant investment to do a study like that. But I can tell you that the software that we utilize is not biased. It's the same software that's used nationwide by many, many other departments, and it's basically a plug and chug. You put in the information, and it tells you without any consideration of politics or anything else about what's needed and what the best locations are to cover those different incidents. And that's all based on the actual data of emergency runs as well as predictive data that deals with population moves like you mentioned.

Thank you Chief, appreciate that.

Yes sir.

Madam Clerk for your calls of record reflect we've been joined by Councilman Parker a bit ago. I'm Councilman Winkler.

Chief, I've got another capital equipment question for you. Know a few years ago, not related to Louisville but nationally, the protective equipment that firefighters wear, that has been found to be carcinogen,

So you're referring to PFAS.

Yes.

It's a forever chemical that is found in our fire gear. We have made changes in the years in between. It used to be in every layer of the gear. Now the gear that we have, it's only in the outer layer. Anybody that does any type of hiking or things like Gore Tex that waterproof. So the exterior of our fire gear does have PFAS in it, yes.

And so my question is not really around whether our gear has it or not right because my question really is in the market is there a gear that doesn't have it or is the standard now it's in the outer layer and outer layer only and sort of regardless of that answer is there a plan to replace the gear with non PFOS or sort of this outer layer PFOS and what's sort of the timeline for that and what's the cost associated with it?

So we are constantly watching that and like I said over the past several years we have moved to make sure that all the gear that we replace only has it in that hour layer so it's no longer in that interlater that's up against your skin. But still that's less than ideal, but there really is not a gear out there yet that is cost effective, that's also functional, that is completely PFOS free. There are some out there, but the thing about it is, if it gets any type of oil or solvent on it at all, it's done and it has to be completely replaced. So it's significantly more expensive. And when you're talking about we're a 500 member department, you're talking millions of dollars to replace all that gear.

And then if it's the current PFAS free gear that's out there that just doesn't hold up very well, you'd be replacing it almost continuously.

Thank you. A couple other questions for me. There's a 93800 grant match. What is that for?

That was what councilman Batshan was talking about that is a port security grant that has not yet been completed.

Okay, thank you. Sorry about that, didn't mean to double up. Councilor Piajantini asked questions about capital. There's some operating question too about how much of the fire district is actually covered by the urban service district. I suspect when we do the reconciliation we'll get at that same question so I'm gonna let that one go.

I will ask has there been a cost and I'm not asking to purchase to accelerate our purchase of trucks and that they're very expensive I get that and it's but you know back to the comment about the lag time. I would think that there is some expense for us trying to patch trucks while we're waiting for a new truck. Absolutely. So is there any conversation about and I again I hesitate to say it out loud. But is there any conversation about accelerating our decision making on replacing equipment?

Like we know we need to replace it right. Mean you know you got to replace everything. If you plan on replacing it in eight years so you're not thinking about it because it's eight years away. But now it takes four years have to get

a schedule to try to replace things and we've got it mapped out for all of our apparatus. We've got it mapped out when we're at our facilities and replacing all those and to make sure that we're doing it on a regular basis.

So my question is, and thank you. I anticipated that was true, that you have a schedule.

Yes.

My question is that because we know it's taken that long and I'm guessing this is not a new reality, right? Because I know last year

they were talking about how it's to It's relatively new in the past like since about COVID time really. Okay.

So have we ramped up our scheduling then as a result of that?

We have and that's as you well know in the mid year adjustments when we've had a couple of times where we've purchased extra apparatus and if you look our capital budget for fleet has been historically 2,000,000 a year and it's been that same 2,000,000 for a long time. It got bumped up this year to 3,000,000. For us to be able to purchase two a year, we actually needed to be a little bit more than that. An engine is about $1,300,000 a truck is about $2,400,000 We're always looking for ways to get the cheapest thing we can. Inexpensive is a better choice of words to save money and to try to get something a little bit quicker.

We've worked with one manufacturer makes very high quality things that is trying to get us things a little bit faster. But yes, we've got I can tell you the most recent apparatus that we got in was truck four, which is down at 34th And River Park and we've got it on the list about the year that we need to order it and when we can expect to replace it and the estimated of what it will cost fifteen years from now when we

need to replace it. Right, great. Thank you. That begs then the next question. When, what is the difference between when we know we need to order, let me say it differently. What is the difference between when we actually order it because we know we need it. We know we need it four years from now, so we're ordering it today. When will we actually have to pay for that truck? And how do we, and this might be a question more for miss Dunn, but how do we then work in, because we can't commit, council can't commit a payment in four years. We we can spend money in the budget year or we can borrow money in the budget year and that has to be paid out.

So I'm I'm hoping that we don't order a truck and pay for it. It would feel to me like we should pay for it when we get it or at least not pay for the whole thing. What impact does that have on us as far as budgeting goes because we can't commit in a budget four years from now. Are Are we are we we bonding for the truck and then we'll just pay off the bond whenever we get the truck?

Traditionally we've done that and it's bonded and then when Seagreve or Pierce they don't get anything until we actually take receipt of the truck and everything's worked out. It's good for them to try to hurry up and get it to us because then they get paid. Sure. But I will say that recently we were able to work out a deal where the last truck we bought, it's a quint apparatus that has the ladders trucks as well as a pump for water. We got a $300,000 discount by paying for it now.

And what we're able to do then is go ahead and pay for it, get that $300,000 discount and then use that some of that money. We purchased a used Quint that was up in Canada. It was about 21 years old but apparently it had only been used for parades. So it's in great shape. So we were able to bring that down here and we've got it as an auxiliary now. So there's a couple different ways and Angie could probably speak a little more to that bonding. But yes, typically it's bonded and we don't pay it until we receive it.

That's correct. We have to have secured funding in order to issue a PO in order to you know order the trucks. So it is important that we get that approval when it when we need to order the truck. So that's why we build it into the you know, ask for it in the year that we need to make the order because we need that appropriation. As you know, we do bond it.

As if you'll recall, we don't typically issue bonds. We're about a year behind from when we issue the bonds. So even in any given year, once we've identified bond funding is what's going to cover this particular purchase, we're another year before we're actually issuing the bonds on those items. We do track as well sort of in back end of our accounting, you don't necessarily see it when you're looking at the financials, but we do track when bond funds are actually being spent on those particular items. So we do track that, we reconcile that with the bonds as they're issued.

And then every year, you know, we come before the council when we're about to whenever we've passed the budget that essentially passes another ordinance that says we're gonna go ahead and get started spending on these capital projects even though we haven't issued the bonds on it yet. And that when we do issue the bonds, we essentially pay ourselves back. So there's a little bit of a cash flow maneuvering in which we're sometimes paying for things upfront and then we're paying ourselves back when we issue the bonds. And so these capital items are accounted for in that same way.

So is it reasonable to hold on to the bond for the extra two years? Like we've we've agreed we're gonna do a bond right? It's in the budget. You have the authority to do that. You've done a bond for a bunch of other things and you've gotten that, but you didn't need this money yet. You know you're not gonna need it for four years. Mhmm. So instead of bonding the entire amount that Louisville has committed to, bond less than what we committed to by the amount for this and then bond for that later or do we always just bond all of it upfront?

We always bond for it upfront. It's certainly a question I could have with our bond counsel and our bond advisors on whether or not we could do that but our typical approach has been to just bond everything upfront.

Okay. Thank you. Councilwoman Perry Schreich.

Thank you, mister chair. First, I wanna thank you all. I appreciate the work that in putting your lives on the line that the fire people do. And, Chee, I feel like you run a great tight ship. I I think the budget, makes sense as presented. More my questions are more about as it deals with, personnel. And I did see where it says that you all are getting opioid settlement funds. So I wanted to ask if that's accurate and what would that be used for? That's my first question.

We are actually not getting any opioid settlement funds. But if you can find some for us, that'd be great.

We can work on that. I know that you all have adopted having NORCAM in in in some of your stations, and I know that some of your folks are trained and also help able to deal with people as they're out. So, really appreciate the intentionality on that. I think it makes a difference in the communities you're serving. Severe weather events, extreme weather preparedness, is that a part of your budget? Is that an area of growth or challenge? What are where are you at with that?

That is that is a part of the job every day. If you go by any of our stations 24 a day, any day of the week, they are prepared for whatever's gonna happen. They're ready right now. If a tornado were to strike, if a flood hits, that's just part and parcel that that's the job of a firefighter.

Thank you. And since you've dealt with some recent emergencies, are there any parts that tie even to equipment or having all the materials you need that you have, forecasted in this budget? Or you like you said, I know you do it every day, but if something like a string of major events happen, do you feel like you have most of the things you need?

At the moment, we do. I mean, obviously, we can always use more. I don't think any director is gonna get up here and and say they don't want additional resources. Of course, we do. But no, we are doing well, we are prepared, we've been had the opportunity to get additional training and that's one and and Councilman Piagentini to some of your questions earlier, we are consistently training with our brothers and sisters in County Fire On every month, we've got meeting together to make sure that we're prepared so that we can work together seamlessly. We're sharing resources in every chance that we can. And yeah, we're we're doing really well with our preparedness right now for things like structural collapse, trench rescue, confined space, all those things that would come with a weather disaster.

I appreciate that. Mister chair, my last question, I realize the other one was follow-up, is around the I've always asked about pay and wages, just making sure they're attractive. I know you do a good job on working on your retention with employees, and I just wanted to see what the starting wage, once an EMT is licensed, what's their starting wage? And is that comparable to the ambulatory folks, the folks that are out too?

So, you're saying compared to like our the EMS department or compared to other fire departments in the area?

Departments in the area as it relates to it, yes.

So we are competitive with fire departments in the region. Starting pay right now is $67,000 a year, and within about five years with the current contract they'll be making probably around 78. So they're doing well, obviously. We'd like for them to get paid as much as possible too.

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. And just one or two more. There's a $2,700,000 increase in your general fund appropriation. I know the state grants have remained somewhat flat, what would be the primary reason for that $2,700,000 increase in the general fund appropriation?

That's in personnel, that's wages. 94% of our budget is personnel, it's wages.

We saw an increase in wages, is directly too. Yes. Okay, great. Anyone else? Any other questions? Looks like you guys managed to sneak out a little bit early. So there are no further questions and so we'll go ahead and call this hearing to a close. Emergency management services is supposed to be coming in. As soon as those folks arrive, we'll get started. Count on a five or ten minute break. Thank you.

Welcome back.

Okay, colleagues. I wanna go ahead and get us going here. I'm councilman Kevin Kramer, the chair of the budget committee. With me today is vice chair Marcus Winkler, and members of the committee in chambers are Councilman Bachon, Councilwoman Mulvey Woolridge, Councilwoman Parker, Councilwoman Chapel, Councilman Joseph, Councilman Herndon and joining us online are Councilmembers Parish Wright and Piagintini. Madam Clerk, if you please read the required notice of virtual meetings.

This meeting is being held pursuant to KRS 61.826 and council rule 5A, read in full.

Thanks. Our second hearing today is with emergency services. As a reminder, will not make opening comments and we will begin immediately with council member questions. Council members are asked to limit themselves to three questions. After that they may reenter the queue.

Also I'll call on first time questioners before I call on those who have already had an opportunity. The mayor is recommending $64,000,000 in the operating budget and a 4,400,000 in the capital budget. Welcome Jody Meimann to Chambers. Let me start off by asking about how the drone as a first response or responder program is working in your operations. I I will say I had an opportunity last week to talk about how local governments are using the the newer technology and how we are able to partner with private with the private sector to supply the kinds of equipment that make things possible.

This is one of the programs that I was kind of bragging about. So if you could share with us if you could reaffirm my bragging, guess. If you could share how that program is working and what we're seeing happen.

No, thank you very much and again Jody Maiman, Executive Director of Emergency Services and we're happy to be here today. So yeah, that is a really good program, we're one of the only areas in The United States that's doing it across multiple agencies. So you see it specifically in law enforcement or fire or EMS or transportation or whatever but this is one of the only ones that's using it out of a nine eleven center. So I think we'll be a model eventually. Obviously it's taken some time getting equipment in, getting installed.

There's a lot of technology that goes along with that. We're in the process right now of hiring our five pilots from this current year's budget. So they're not in place but we have had over 500 flights where they have where the anybody between police, fire and EMS that's trained in the program or developing the program, Trevin being one behind us, our assistant director, where they've been very successful in all aspects of public safety. So specifically a couple come to mind in law enforcement. There was a situation where someone was hiding at night behind a garbage can and the infrared on the drone was able to point the police in the right direction.

And then specifically another incident was a fire in West End where it ended up being a fatality but two people did get out and one of them was on the porch roof of the back and in the 911 call she was saying that she was shining her phone light and the drone could see that through the smoke and they were able to alert the firefighters as they were pulling up that they did have somebody on the back. The bragging good, we appreciate that and the budget next year is eight more locations. We look to move that out more outside of February. We're partnering with JCPS because a lot of the technology is already there and we've already got MOUs with them. So instead of fire houses like we put them in the city of Louisville, we're looking more to put them on some type of school building as we go out.

So we're looking at the 6471 Interchange around there, Eastern High School, places where we can capture a lot of interstate issues that we have as well along with police, fire and EMS. Great, thank you.

And as we expand that program, I'm sure there's just a lot of communication that has happened between the drones and fire departments and stuff like that. So is it possible that mister McGarry might be here that we might ask him a couple questions about the the communication side?

I will point I will get with him and have him give you a call so that he Great,

thank you. So I look forward to chatting with him. Thanks.

Yes sir. Councilman Winkler.

Thank you Mr. Chair and Director Maiman thanks for being here. I think the technology is very exciting and appreciate the work to get that deployed. The question I'd like to ask relates to the current levels of EMS staffing. One of the challenges that I think is well documented is the runs that suburban fire makes into the USD, specifically around ambulance service.

We now have the reimbursement that we're required to make to the budgeted tune of 6,000,000 to $9,000,000 give or take. Think ultimately we'd prefer not to pay that $6,000,000 because we have Louisville Metro EMS making those runs wherever possible. Certainly it's a certificate of need, so the closest people need to respond. But making sure that we've got enough EMS coverage should lessen the burden of that cost. Can you speak to the state of current EMS staffing?

How many trucks how many EMTs and paramedics do we have? How many are we supposed to have? And many buses are staffed at any given time?

Yeah, so our goal is to put 20 trucks on the street a day and we fell very short of that in recent years obviously and we're actually in a better spot than we have been in many years. But one of the things especially when it gets to suburban fire versus Metro EMS is, Metro EMS is going go no matter where they're dispatched to. The men and women behind me that came to see this, I mean when dispatched they're called. Sometimes with our partners that doesn't necessarily happen. So the more trucks that we can put obviously in the urban service area downtown which is the majority of the is where the majority of the responses are, a lot of the responses are not the majority, but a lot of the responses are and they've got pockets in the city.

But on any given day those runs could escalate anywhere. So one of the goals that we've had is trying to partner with our other agencies to make sure that no matter what the run is because if you're a taxpayer and I'm a taxpayer in the Pleasure Ridge Park area. It's just as to me if I'm right here right now if I have an issue as a Pleasure Ridge Park taxpayer if they're the closest ambulance they should respond and I just use that as an example because of me. But we always look to put more people on track. We always try to get more staff and we're trying to evaluate the number of positions that we've got going into next fiscal year and to see how many more people that we can hire.

We just graduated 31 people from a recruit class just in the last few weeks and they're riding what we call third person over their dashboarding and as they get released we're going to see how that impacts our service as well.

Thank you. I know, I believe it was last year that we made significant improvements to the salary and it sounds like that's manifesting itself in larger recruit classes which I think is exactly the outcome that we were hoping for. Not to steal what maybe my colleague's question here in a moment but can you speak to the like what is the appropriate level has a staffing study been done and what's the appropriate level of EMS staffing for Metro EMS and how close are we to that number?

We haven't had a staffing server like a staffing survey done. We haven't done that. The problem that we've had is that because of underfunding in years past, the recruitment and retention problem that I've talked about in the last ten years has been a problem and the good problem that we have now is we've got people beating the door down whether it's new recruits or laterals that are coming from other agencies to be a part of the organization. So, you know, having that good problem, being able to hopefully do another paramedic class in the future with our own people, another advanced EMT class with our own people, and then to promote within the ranks to get us a better level of service that we want to put on the street.

And I apologize, I think you probably already answered the question, but I know a couple of years ago you talked about the shortage in staffing, we had considerably more ambulances, more buses than we had people to drive them. I'm happy to know that we're increasing the numbers. But I also know that even driving fewer ambulances than we might have needed, I can't imagine we haven't had a couple ambulances that are no longer going to be able to be in service. Short question, when we staff up, do we have the resources that we need for them to have to to be able to drive? Do we have enough amulances?

Are you speaking of the physical ambulance itself? Yes, the physical

truck itself.

Yeah. We've lost a few over the last several years, but there for a long time, we were we wanted to have 62 ambulances was what was certified through our agency to have. Have. And like I said, we've lost a few of those over the years. We got 1,500,000 in the upcoming budget to either buy new ambulances or to refurb a couple ambulances and or do a mix of the two. So we will be doing some replacement schedules in next year.

Okay. I know you had some parked that you weren't using.

Yes. Question is will we fill

those and some or will we fill those?

We rotate our ambulances a So they get used. If they're in service, they get used and they get rotated through the duration of several days. Good. Okay.

Thank you. Councilman Piazzantini.

Thank you. First question about the adjustment, right? So this is, as I understand it, I think Councilman Winkler, mentioned 6,000,000 to $9,000,000 I believe, and this may be again more of an OMB question rather than a departmental question, but I believe we allocated $6,000,000 for this, but it I don't believe it's actually in the EMS budget. It's actually in it's like a it's it's it's like an other adjustment. Can somebody clue me in into where this $6,000,000 is and how this is being accounted for and paid?

Angie Dunn, CFO with Louisville Metro. The $6,000,000 is budgeted in what we call the general adjustments line item that is housed within OMB. But that general adjustments is used for various things. We've got the arena authority payment in there for example and there's a couple of other sort of metro wide type activities that we house in this general adjustments. And so that is where we had placed the $6,000,000 budget for the the suburban billing. The suburban billing does also come through OMB. It's reviewed by EMS but it's a joint effort between EMS and OMB and OMB actually pays those invoices as they come in from the suburban districts.

Is that money, first of all, paid out of the that sounds strange to me because the other things you said that are in that account, I think, are general fund issues versus this, which is supposed to come out of the urban service district revenue stream. So how are we accounting for this 6,000,000 coming out of there when other parts of it don't come out of the urban service district? Not

aware that the 6,000,000 was dictated to come out of the urban service district. We need to

follow-up on that. Yes. Because look, this is a leader and not a leadership issue as far as you Chief Meinman, but the but look, I regularly downtown see suburban, EMS trucks. I don't remember the last time I ever saw a metro truck in my district, not because they don't want to because of the staffing. I mean, I'm anybody in metro EMS, it's not a matter of desire, it's a matter of function.

And the whole point of that adjustment was to have the appropriate taxing authority pay for, the services that they're getting, right? If constituents in these suburban fire areas are paying taxes for those folks that are then going into the urban services district, how much sense does it make than we're using general fund dollars of which those people that already paid the suburban taxes that are sending them downtown, then they have to also pay. That makes absolutely no sense to me. Yeah. I do want to circle back on that.

I think that's completely misunderstood. And I'll also circle back with the state legislators that sort of mandated this because, I mean, I can tell you their intent was double taxation, to eliminate the fact that the same people are paying for the EMS that are going downtown. I mean, why would we tax them when they're paying for that truck that goes in there? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Councilman, if you would, not related to the payment, I know you've been interested in it before, but I've got the statistics that I could send you or all the council members about each agency and how many times that they go into each other agency's area. So I've got that broken down so I can send that to you guys if you'd like to see it.

Yes, please do. I mean, you've sent it before. Always take a look at that. Thank you. The other question I have is there's a large project. I think the mayor announced it, correct me if I'm wrong, direct remind me, it's radio infrastructure repair and rebuild. And it seems to be a $20,000,000 project and it's going to be $5,000,000 a year over four years. Is that does that sound correct? Am I wrong in this understanding?

No, sir. That was no, you are correct. That was a it's a five year project that we put in just to let them know that there's the potential to have to replace some infrastructure and it's our it's the infrastructure that's on our tower sites and out throughout the county that makes our radio system work. So that stuff goes back to 2006 and 2007 and some of it even older and it will make a digital platform throughout the county as well as that happens. But we just wanted to put it on the radar that could be coming up soon.

I don't even think that it would be that much money in the first year because we've got to do a scope of work and a request for proposal and really a request for information as well. So it's a slow process and it's a four or five year project.

But the outcome as you said is to it sounds like some of this existing infrastructure is analog and shifting it all to digital. So it'll be a process to get through it. And it sounds like we don't have to also do it all at the same time. It can be done over phases. Is that correct?

That's correct. Yes, sir.

And that won't impact operational capabilities if we do it over phases, right?

Yes.

Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Parish Wright.

Doctor. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being here. I realize that I asked questions of fire that was for you, but I do appreciate what both of your departments and everything you all do. Putting yourselves on the line means a great deal. But my question was around the opioid settlement funds. Now you are you all are receiving a portion. Just wanted to see if you can say how that's going to be used.

Sorry, give me just a minute to pull this up. Yes, EMA is budgeted to receive some of the opioid funds. We've got 3,100,000 going to the deflection program and then about $2,000,000 dedicated for call center expenses.

Thank you for that. And that makes sense with the expansion and everything. Okay, so the question I asked too was severe weather event extreme preparedness. Is that a part of your budget? What are you thinking? What are the priorities there, if you have any?

Yeah. So we, you know, we support we're we're not in charge of of anything directly. We're the overall coordinating agency when something like that happens, so we respond and really see the needs of the of the citizens. And if there's any good thing about a bad situation like that is we can do a local declaration of emergency to help us get the things that we need during that if we don't have them. So, our partners with all the public safety agencies and all of our utility companies do a great job preparing for things like that.

But if with us doing that state declaration that could end up being a federal declaration depending on the magnitude of what happens throughout the rest of the state, we can obtain funds and hope and usually the fact or the case comes true that we get repaid by the federal government if it if it becomes a a federal declaration as it did like this time last year in April when we had the tornadoes and the flooding.

Yeah. Thank you for that. That's what I was concerned with, and I appreciate that answer. My last question is around wages and pay. Where where is what's the salary of your lowest paid person, and is this an area of concern?

So currently our Metro Safe dispatcher starting with them, they just went through and got a new collective bargaining agreement. So they passed that the beginning of this year, I believe. And then our EMT folks are in contract negotiations right now. They were in a three year contract. It was short, and they're back in the contract negotiations now.

Okay. So do you feel like the wages coming out of there will be attractive enough to make sure you keep good people hired?

Well, I think Councillor McCraeber mentioned it earlier, they got substantial raises in the last collective bargaining agreement. So that's a good stepping stone to move them forward.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilman Chappell.

Hello. Thank you again so much for that tour of your very cool bus. Meeting space, whiteboards, TV, I wanted to live in there. I love a good meeting. And also, if there was ever a time to have a medical emergency, I think that right now we would be in really good hands. So thank you all for being here. I wanted to ask about three one one and the funding that's available in this budget. I know that there was a survey that just went out about three eleven and how to improve that CRM or client relations management system. And I was wondering if we have the money in this budget or previous budgets to fund the necessary changes to that program. And if we do does that also include the app?

So we do have some money but it's through the Department of Information Technology. So all that's running through them especially with the new AI stuff that we're that we've been testing and potentially rolling out in the future.

Okay. Thank you. Next question. There were eight positions added to the 911 in the last year which is really really wonderful especially because we've heard sometimes that calls aren't answered or answered as quickly as some folks in an emergency situation would like. How has these how have these hires impacted that position?

So in the nine eleven call center, it takes six weeks to go through what we call a recruit program a and then they graduate to the floor and they go up with a training person. So sometimes depending on what position they've applied for, what position they're seeking, it could take six to nine months for them to actually get trained and released. So it does take time. Slowly we see the transition but unfortunately while they're in that lengthy period of time, we lose people due to retirements or other reasons that they part from the agency. We continue to hire as much as we can. But again it is a time consuming thing once we do get approval through HR and OMB to hire those people to get them through that class and then to get them up on the floor.

What is the starting salary for that position?

I don't have it in front of me. Ballpark Do what?

Do you have a ballpark number? You can get the number to me later but like

Yeah I'll get the numbers to you. Let me get I'd rather not speak instead but I get the numbers to you this afternoon.

Sure. But based on what you just said, it sounds like any of those metrics as far as like call time or calls answered, I assume that they all get answered hopefully. But those have probably not decreased because we haven't had enough time to show that.

No. That we're supposed to answer in ten seconds or less 90% of the time. And on average in 2025, was nine seconds.

Well, that's great. As a millennial I never answer my phone so that would be my record. There is a $2,000,000 decrease in contractual services. Can you discuss what that is? We're glad to hear it. But just wondering what you're cutting out.

We'll have to look it up. I mean, could have just been some natural just changes in contracts, but we'll see if if there's a specific thing in there.

Sure. I'd love to know what companies are decreasing their contractual amounts if if they're remaining the same level of service. That's not something you hear of in 2026. And my last question, really quick one. How many full time and part time employees are there in your drone as first responder program?

So we're hiring five pilots in the drone program where we just took applications and they're doing interviews for those positions now and then moving into next year once that gets into place and they actually start in the center we may add a manager or a supervisor to that and potentially more pilots depending on funding.

So there are no pilots right now?

Well, we've got we've got the people that developed the program and a couple more that are trained and they're actually flying those currently on real incidents right now. They're just flying them from their own computer instead of in the center where they're going to be where the pilots are going to be stationed at.

Okay. And I guess if if you don't mind, there were two drones that were recently shut down in my district. Is there any sort of replacement plan for those? Is that included in this budget? I mean that happened like last week I think so I mean like

They weren't our drones.

I would assume not.

Yeah they weren't our drones I'm not sure if they were LMPDs or somebody else's but they weren't ours. So I'll check into that and I'll let you know whose drones they Sure,

thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Parker.

Yes, another angle on the drones. I was just wondering do you ever anticipate any type of cost savings because of the drone program? Would it ever reduce personnel or reduce runs or does it just provide better service more pinpoint service?

It provides better service I don't ever see it replacing people. This is to work with the people and to give them better information as they're responding. The only potential cost savings that I could see is maybe wear and tear on vehicles or fuel and where they're pointing the responders especially on the interstates and they're up there looking for something and driving from exit to exit looking for a wreck or a fire of some kind or some kind of issue, may be able to pinpoint them where they're not going two or three miles out of their way to get to a situation. So that would to me be the only cost savings, but no I don't ever see it replacing people.

Okay. And then your turnover rate is down and we've already touched on this a time or two, but is do you attribute that to the salary increase, the better staffing, and is there anything else other than those two variables that may be giving you a better retention?

I mean, like I said, it's it's got a point to the salaries. I mean, it's you know, they're they were very the city was very gracious a couple years ago specifically to EMS because they were very underpaid. And was one of that. And AMT recruits started out at $15 an hour a few years ago. So they were able to move those things up, those salaries up and I think that's one of the big contributing things to the retention.

Our business is EMS, Louisville Metro EMS concentrates on medicine. They're not and it's nothing against any other department but that's their job. They concentrate on medicine. So they're not fire, they're not EMS, they're not back and forth. They are there to do medicine and I think the people that work for us are there because of that and and that's that's the job that they wanna do.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Joseph.

Well, thank you for being here. I told my aide last month that I wanted to do a ride along with a good man whose last name was Myman who gives back to the community and they gave me two options.

Don't say Jason. I'm just kidding.

He's I didn't say it, but you did. But hey, school ends tomorrow for me, so I wanna spend some time with you this summer and get to spend a day in

your shoes as well. Absolutely.

So thank you for your commitment. My question in regards to the fleet that you have is vehicle wise, are your oldest vehicles when you would talk about like year likewise? How old would you say they go to?

So they go back not specifically having anything in front of me. Can and I can get you the entire fleet and the years of service or years when they came in. But you know, they go back some of them ten, fifteen years, but some of those have been refurbished. So they've got a new chassis, they're using the same box and the ambulance provider that we use and we've used for several years, they build those ambulances so that they can get refurbished by the same company. So we've used Lifeline Ambulance for many, many years.

It's the I mean it's to me the best of the best. You've seen the wreck some of our people have been involved in over the last several years and knock on wood, the injuries have been some of them have been severe, but our people have done very well in them. And I think it's the way that those ambulances are built. So like I said, we take pride in the design that we have. And we've got our shop does a really good job of a replacement schedule you know, with the money that's been given given to us in the budget each year.

What would you say would I don't even know if there's a guesstimate on this. Is the average lifespan of of a average vehicle for for your for your service?

Well, mean, you know, if you if you notice, they're everywhere. So they're running the wheels off of them. So, you know, they like I said, we've got a good maintenance schedule. We also use outside vendors to to work on our ambulances as well. I don't it's different with, you know, it's different with different ones. I mean, it's it it just depends on because some a crew might get in it today and be very, very busy and be all over the county and then a crew be get in it and they're just in the urban service district downtown around the hospitals the next day. So it just depends on the ambulance itself.

And because you brought it up a minute ago, don't know so much on budget, but just my own ignorance. You're talking about wrecks and whatnot. How in in your own line of work, how often is that a is that a thing?

It just depends. It it just depends. I mean, safety in general, you know, they're out there, you know, they're they're running red lights and they're running sirens and the best the best thing we can do for them is to provide them a good vehicle to use and to train them on how to use it. A lot of the accidents are not our fault. It's just they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. So does happen.

I appreciate you.

You. Councilman Winkler. Thank you.

Director, I want to talk a little bit about the $9.11 fees. So it's my understanding that historically, right, I think when we all had landlines, all paid a 09:11 fee and that paid for the call center or the connection to those lines. Can you speak to sort of historically how much revenue that generated and how much it generates today as landlines are a thing of the past?

Yes, we'll get the specific number to you. But I will say that 90% of our calls come in from wireless phones now. And that's creeped up. I think last year it was 88%. When I first started here ten years ago it was 84%. So that's creeped up quite a bit. So those numbers are going to theoretically go down over time. But I'll get you those specific numbers.

Yeah. And do you know is there I assume is the $9.11 fee is that set by federal regulation or state regulation? State.

Okay

and there's no state regulation that's been updated to address the because this is surely not a problem. Mean Louisville is not unique in its movement off of landlines right regardless of where you go in the state I am certain there is a similar migration from people from landline to cell phone. Hopefully this is an area where the state can update the law to ensure that there's appropriate compensation from cell phone bills that to replace lost revenue from municipalities and counties across the commonwealth. Don't know Angie if you you're sort of shaking your head if you want to speak to that or.

I was just gonna say we did get the numbers what what we are currently getting is 4 to 5,000,000 but how that compares to what it was previously we'd have to get you the previous numbers but I can tell you that since last year it's been around 4,000,000.

Okay but it is decreasing.

It is

down. The E9 on wired.

Thank you. So I do think that that's something that perhaps we can advocate with our state partners for an update. Perhaps using CACO and KLC as advocacy groups, because again I'm sure that this is an issue experienced by every nine eleven operator across the commonwealth. I want to pivot again around nine eleven but something off of Councilman Parker's questions related to technology. And so my question is are there emerging technologies around nine eleven call centers where whether it's an AI agent or some form of technology that either screens those calls, evaluates the non emergency or emergent calls, and how that impacts our outlook for staffing long term, or more importantly our ability to answer the phones even quicker, right, which is really the end goal?

Yes, it goes back to the question about even the drones. Want, I guess it's AI, one of the big things that you're talking about. That's one thing we don't want to replace people with is AI and we're learning a lot about in the nine eleven field about the use of AI for alarm center for alarm calls that come in as well as non emergency calls. So we're testing these platforms in three eleven in a non emergency type of setting and then we're learning what the rest of the industry is doing on specifically the non emergency types of calls with AI and the technology. And we just went through a new computer aided dispatch completely replaced.

Went live in March 2023. So that was a $20,000,000 project when we did that. So you're constantly you're constantly having to see what new technologies are out there. And you know, we're responsible for dispatching many many agencies throughout the community. So we also have to pay attention to what technologies they want and how they tie into our computer aided dispatch or our system and then the fees that go along with that too.

When you talk about the alarm calls, is it safe to assume what you're referencing there? I would speculate that the vast majority of like home burglar alarm calls that you get are false alarms because somebody I. E, might

turn the Fire alarm, forgot

to turn off the alarm before

they Both, open the both of them. And even medical alarms sometimes. There's a lot of those that are false calls as well.

Okay. So this technology would screen those out or better identify what is actually an emergent situation?

Yes. Thank you.

So just an immediate follow-up. As we're seeing an increase in the use of cell phones to reach out to you guys, do we have the capacity to accept text messages and specifically to accept photographs?

We we do. We're in the process of going live with the text now. We rolled out the video to 911 last fall. And it's it's one of those things where if somebody calls in and our call taker has to ask them if they would like to share their video. And sometimes they don't wanna share their video because they think they're being watched.

But

we do have that technology. It's not just photographs, you're doing video. Video, that's correct. Okay, cool. Thanks. Councilman Mulvi Bulridge.

Okay, I told you I wasn't gonna have any questions, but I lied. I know in previous sessions,

we've had

questions on overtimes. And I'm just looking at the detailed budget here, and I see that per what it says here, it looks like, and I'm gonna be reading it wrong, in 2024, 2025, it says the actual, there is no overtime. Don't know if that's reality or not because I know that this is in the past with my husband working in dispatch, there's definitely overtime. And I know EMS definitely overtime. Current to date, there's $730,000. I'm just wondering, would it make sense to budget in overtime knowing that there is overtime in this field of work?

I think you were looking at the scheduled overtime line item that has zero and right above it there's the non scheduled overtime.

Okay. Yes.

Yes. So there was overtime.

So should there be is there scheduled overtime that should be budgeted or just or no? Because there's 729,000 that's been used to date.

There is very little scheduled overtime. It's typically almost always non scheduled overtime.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I'm sorry for that. And since Councilman Piagetini is not on, I'm going to ask a question for him that he's asked of everybody thus far. He said that everybody's been asked to cut somewhere, right? And thank you all for doing that across the board. I know you all look very closely at this. But one question he's asked everybody so far is if you were to ask to cut 1% of your budget, you have what, $53,000,000 budget right now, so $500,000 If you were asked to look at this again, is there anywhere that you could think off the top of your head of where that could be cut? Again, asking you to do that, just thinking outside the box is there a place you could do that?

I mean there's because most of our budget goes to personnel and existing contracts. If we had to cut any more, it's going to affect operations on both sides.

Got it. Thank you. Just had to ask for him.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing anyone else in the queue. So, Director Mabin, we'll call this hearing to a close. We're a little bit early, so well done.

Thank you all.

Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. We will start with animal services as soon as they arrive. My understanding is they are in transit, so just kind of stay focused. We're about a half an hour early. I'd like to start at least fifteen minutes early.

Testing for a Webex.

Welcome back to our last hearing for today. I'm Kevin Kramer, Chair of

the Budget Committee. I'm joined by my Vice Chair, Marcus Winkler. I'm joined also in chambers by Councilwoman Parker, Councilwoman Woolridge, Councilwoman Chapel, Councilman Joseph, Councilman Herndon joined online by Councilmember Parish Wright. I'm sure other council members will be joining because we are a bit early, and I wanna say thanks to Animal Services for being here early and more importantly for being ready to start with questioning. So without further ado Madam Clerk if you'd please read the announcement.

This meeting is being held pursuant to KRS 61.826 in Council Rule 5A. Read in full.

Thank you. As a reminder, departments will not make opening comments and we will begin immediately with council member questions. Council members you are requested to ask three questions at a time after that if you'd get back in the queue please. Also I'll call on the first time questions from council members before I call on folks who've already been in the queue. The mayor is recommending a $6,500,000 operating budget for this department. Welcome, Director McClinton. Last fiscal year, there was a struggle with a high turnover rate and strain on the remaining employees. For FY 2026 your turnover rate did increase or I'm sorry, did decrease by about 4%. We're moving in the right direction. What new efforts have been implemented to continue this trend towards lower turnover rates?

Andy McClinton, Director of Metro Animal Services. So yes, turnover is last time I was here, I spoke about it, how it's going to be a focus for my staff and I. When I arrived, it was 36.54%. Last year, we got it down to 29.34. And right now, it's about 25%, 24%.

So since the last time I was here, probably biggest things that we have done is professional development days for the first time since I think it's never been done before we are shutting down the shelter for one day a month so we can do training. We have done several different types of training mostly for mental health and helping train with the animals. Something else we have done is we have started kind of a new hire orientation for those first ninety days that has helped because we see that we lose people in their probationary period and then we've just tried to expand our training opportunities for all the employees. Our supervisors know how important it is so I'm hopeful those changes will continue to make difference in our rates.

Great thank you. Councilman Chappell.

I wasn't prepared to go this quickly. Was still crunching some numbers so hopefully somebody else will get in the queue so I can jump back in.

Okay. You guys are planning on delaying hiring for some existing personnel in order to save 26,700? It's just a delay, it's not Correct. How is that going to can you talk a little bit about what impact that's going have going forward because it's saving 26 this year but obviously that's back in the budget.

Yes, so the it the reason I kind of decided on that is we have right now three adoption coordinator openings and throughout the year because that is probably the toughest job I have. I'm not saying all the employees jobs are very strenuous and tough but the adoption coordinators that is probably the toughest job I have there. So I typically run with about two vacancies sometimes three for the year. We fill them, they don't stick around, we have to get rehire. So holding these spots for three months, I am confident that I will get the turnover fixed.

We're still in that process. But I think that's the lesser of the evil for me was to hold them for three months because I typically sit with at least two, sometimes three vacancies. So that's and the way that we handle that is other employees obviously step up but we also have two kennel attendants that step up and then we have a temp agency that they'll come in and all they'll do is strictly clean for us. So I'm able to offset it and we'll still be fine. But I will I definitely need those positions just because I saw such a major increase in intake in 2025.

We're doing better this year, but I need those bodies, but I can push it back a little. I can have help other places.

Okay. Thanks. So what I heard you say, and I'm sure Craig, part of the reason that you struggle there is because the turnover in that particular position is so difficult. Putting this off will give you a chance to try and take care of some of the stresses that are causing people to leave So that when you hire new people you'll see less turnover in those spots. So putting it off will give you a chance to do a better job reducing turnover into the future. And as we all know that turnover is very expensive because training new employees is

100%. Yes.

That is what I heard. Correct. Okay, good. Thank you. Just want to make sure I didn't mess that up somehow.

Councilwoman Parker.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

You're expecting your agency receipts to go down and can you explain that?

You're talking, let me just let me figure out what you're referring to. You're referring to my operation receipts or?

I think it's just your general receipts or is that not correct?

No not that I'm aware of. We did some you know the operation receipts, we did do some recoding and some other things got kind of moved around but overall.

I can add a little bit to that. Andy Dunn with the office of management and budget. It was just a change in how we're budgeting. So we're no longer budgeting for those anticipated revenues as compared to previous years. Now as those revenues come in, they will be recorded there and they will go towards, you know, the overall operations of the department. But we're just not budgeting for them in that line item.

Okay and what about FOMUS, Friends of Metro Animal Services is that the same situation or are you anticipating those receipts to be down?

No, FOMUS doesn't, they do not affect my budget and they have been a great partner and they continue to be a great partner. So FOMA specifically doesn't affect it but I think donations.

Yeah, think in that one we just budgeted what we brought in last year. So we used to sort of budget ahead again an anticipated amount and rather than doing that we just brought the budget down to what we actually brought in. Okay. So

whatever they have to contribute that's just that's extra?

Correct. It is totally separate from the metro government budget. Okay.

Thank you. Councilman Joseph.

Always good to see you sir.

Good to see you.

My question for you is do you could you give me I don't know. Yeah. I'm just gonna ask for it. Like, do you have, like, a daily or weekly cost breakdown of what it would be for to to house an animal in your own services roughly, like a a dog or a cat or what have you?

Let me see if I have the fee schedule right here. I don't the fee schedule I have in here. I don't know if it shows exactly everything but that is something I can definitely put together for you. Just it's it's set by ordinance. How much we charge for the boarding fee? How much we charge for there's a whole set of fees that's set by ordinance. I've got some of the fees that were changed but I don't have the actual exact.

Yeah. That also the ordinance does that include as well what it cost MAS to like on your all's end of things to house like what that would cost? Yes. Okay.

Yes. That's that's all set by what we charge is set by ordinance.

Okay. Go ahead. John, cancel it. I think, Director, I think we're getting crossways on the question. Okay. I don't think he's as interested in what the fees are. I think the interest is how much does it cost us? Like we have a dog that's in a kennel.

I gotcha.

And there's a we're paying for that.

Definitely.

The question is how much are we paying per dog per day?

Okay.

Or per

cat per day? Or if you have ocelots, how much are paying for ocelots?

And that's what I'm saying but you're saying that you got?

Well, yes. The fees that we charge are set, but I can I can tell you what our actual cost? I'll come up with that for you as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I could give you a a dog and a cat, just a a general approximate. Here's what cost with food, with shots, with all that good stuff.

And then of that, if this makes sense, it makes sense in my head, it doesn't mean it's going make sense when I ask. What it cost well, how many of the times do you all get that money back from that animal? Does that make sense?

I know what you're saying. Yes. The fees that we're collecting or charging. Yes. I can give you I can give you the funds.

That's all. Okay. Okay. So

I understand what you're saying.

I see. Okay. So it all comes back. All of the okay. It all came through. Then

If I could. Yeah. So the question thank you for both of your answers. At the root of this, it would be nice to know how much it costs us to take care of these animals and does the fee structure even come close. So are we charging fees that that aren't even close and that assumes that we're going to collect the fee, right?

Because I know there are lots of animals that we never get any of the fee for. So the question becomes then for those animals that we do get a fee for, does the fee match what it costs us? And how much short are we still what it costs us to run the operation because we're not able to collect the fees in the first place. Does that capture everything you were looking for? It does. Thank you.

No I appreciate it. Sorry for making that more difficult than it needed to be.

Not at all. I'd much rather have it clearly clearly explained so I know exactly than to try and guess for you. So no I can get you that fairly quickly.

Thank you. And then where do we stand right now in regards of like overcrowding?

Right now it's of those things where it's I don't want to talk about it but I'll talk about it. So compared to last year we are about 300 animals under. And then but we are moving into our very, very busy season.

So

the last couple of months, I hate to talk about it because it's bad luck, but we typically have had 15 to 20 open kennels and for us that is really good. Typically we come in, now during the summer that's going to be a much, much lower number. We're going to come in and have a few kennels available. So we are gearing up for that time. Right now, like I said we're about 300 down from last year.

Sorry if I brought a jinxed question. And the last thing I have is do you all have a human to animal ratio in your all's line of work where like in like in the Like

a best practice for how many

Yeah. If you've got animals in a building, is there does there have to be so many humans per so many or animals per human? Is there really a

I am not aware of any now. Some of these guys have been around for a long long time. They might be. But what we try to look at every day is there's basically the four most important things we do daily is clean kennels, feed and water and medicine and then if we can get them out of their kennel. So we worry about how many of those adoption coordinators, how many kennel attendants, how many folks are there at the facilities that can clean, that can feed and that can give out the medicine. That ratio, I don't know if there's a national standard, I'll be glad to check. But the biggest thing we worry about is if I can get those four things accomplished on a daily basis.

Well, you so much for your

time always. Yeah, thank you.

Councilman Chappell.

Alright. First question, how do you feel about mini horses? I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. We're past that. Thank goodness. I don't think there are

too many horses here today. I was gonna try and bring one but like I didn't think they

were Settle for those cute kittens.

They're coming.

They're They're

good. I'm looking forward to our next clinic that we have next weekend. I'm sure you all are as well. I don't know if we're gonna surpass our numbers from the last clinic, which was so successful. And I just wanna thank you all for bringing that into the community because it shows that we really want to show up for our animals and and help people keep healthy pets. Looking at your budget, you're actually going down $660,000 from last year. Could you address that?

Sure. So when I look at the general fund appropriation, that general fund appropriation did go down to I think it's I'm not super good at math but 29,200 and then there's some other decreases there's 200,000 from KHS that would not be in the budget this time because that money is carrying over from last fiscal. And then there was some I think some you can probably answer this. I know that what she was talking about earlier kind of affected some of the money that was counted prior is not will not be considered in the budget. So I can let.

Right. Some of that's like that 300,000 that we talked about with Councilman Parker's question. We didn't budget for the 300,000 in agency receipts. So some of that $600,000 change is just where that's being

reflected. Okay. And I'm gonna back up because I want to say for everyone watching some of the amazing things that you all are doing. Looking through your report, you took in 9,746 animals in 2025 surpassing the previous record of 8,749. That's well above the five year average of $7,500 or 7,500 animals.

Despite this increased intake, you all have achieved a 93.7 live release rate and that's well above the national average was unfortunately 82 to eighty three percent. You have placed 208 more dogs with rescue partners. You facilitated 450 additional adoptions and expanded foster placements by 652. 99 dogs adopted through events at the mall, 22 dogs at Petco events, 400 cats at feeder supply stores, and I believe last weekend, there was at least 40 or 50 dogs at the Lou Hammers event. And then we're also looking at our Facebook following growing from 22,000 to 79,000 people.

And I want to give credit to miss Stephanie Jackson who's right there in the back who does a lot of that work. So thank you. Your spay neuters are up. I'm not going to read off the numbers. Your wellness exams are up. Treatment requests are up. Rabies vaccines up and you started a community pet pantry and you're also doing a monthly professional development for all of your employees at LMAS. I would say these are all amazing things and despite the number of animals you all are digging in, you are doing great work. So I want to just commend you and have that on the record that you all are doing really incredible stuff.

Thank you.

I will get back to my questions.

Your

agency receipts is projected to decrease by nearly 50%. It goes from $816,000 to $436,000 Could you address that?

This what she was talking

It's that $300,000 that we reduced. We're not budgeting for anticipated revenues. We adjusted the budget down for more reflective of what they had actually brought in an agency receipts in prior years.

I see where that is correlated. Question I'll get back in the queue. Your spay neuter there is a budget in fiscal year $2,178,800 Year to date and this is through March 31, there has been $93,700 spent. That means as of April 1, there was still $85,100 left for spay neuter. There is $0 proposed in this new budget.

Is that because of the carryover but even then we're still going to be performing spay neuters at a lower rate than we did in the previous year. So should we not be adding money to that carryover?

So the 200,000 was from '20 6 for KHS and the 1 and 78 that's going to start June 1 for the voucher program. The contract went out this week And then as far as the money that's been spent, that is money that when we send out to have some of our dogs, cats spay or neuter, that's where some of that money comes from. We have a third vet starting in July. So with that third vet that will free up one of you know right now I have two vets. One that does you know a high amount of the surgeries, one that does a lot of the treatment requests But as you can see with all the treatment requests and all of that, we really only have one doing the surgeries and she goes back and forth.

So with the third vet, I'm confident that we will not be sending near as much out. And then our vet services, that number has gone down because we're not sending as much out. So that's a pull that I could pull from as well if I get to the point where I'm needing to send stuff out. So I'm comfortable with the third vet is massive for us. You saw the number of treatment requests. You saw the number of just everything. So if it gets to a point where I'm having to start sending stuff out again then I could pull from the vet services. So that's the option I would have.

Totally understandable and you actually answered one of my other questions on if you had hired that other vet. So I'll get back into the queue. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Parish Wright.

Thank you, mister chair. I first want to show you all this cat. Alright. Name is Miso. We actually adopted him from you all and my legislative aide bin adopted a dog. So, I know that your programs and services want. I want to echo what councilman Chappell said. You all are doing great work, and please please know that you are seen, and we want to help and support the best way we can. My questions are around you have four senior managers. Right? Can you tell me and those are to help operate the shelter. Can you tell me what each one of them do? I'm just thinking about how you're moving things around, and I know you have a great need. But I think I've met one or two of them. Do you have four senior managers? Yes. Am I correct?

Yes. They're here. They are here. So no, obviously I'm the director. And then Adam Hamilton is the deputy director.

Adam runs, he's been here the longest and Adam did this job prior to me arriving as an interim. But Adam is, he handles, the other two assistant directors report to Adam but Adam still runs all of our ACOs and Adam is our resident computer guy begrudgingly he's the resident computer guy And Adam is the guy that makes all of my not mine, but all the ideas and projects and everything that we're trying to accomplish. Adam is the one that is helping me along with that. And then Jerry Foley, he is Assistant Director. He is over all of our adoptions and all of our intake which obviously is a big role.

And then Justin Franklin recently moved into his role. He is handling kind of all the finances, all the ordering, which for that many animals is a big deal. So he handles kind of the HR, the finances, the books and the ordering. And then Stephanie Jackson, who we spoke about earlier, is the communications manager. So she not only handles all of our social media, all of our media requests, she also handles our fosters, all of our volunteers, and then our lost and found.

Okay. That's very helpful. And I ask because the the most complaints I see are not just that people don't get the service they need. It's just the wait times. Yes. And the intake process. Those are what residents have complained about the most is the is the wait times and just wanted to know if you had a plan to reduce that. Is that a hiring thing, of like hiring them and training them before they're able to do it? Or are you doing it all together? Like are they being hired and trained on there and so that ends up making it take a little longer?

Yes. I think what happens is we're very young at adoption coordinator and that's the bulk of

our

employees. So we have a lot of newer folks that are learning and we are trying different ways to speed it up. It does come down to some of its manpower but a lot of it is just the processes and them picking up and learning. That's why the professional development day is so big because we'll hear complaints during the week and then we'll try to cover that on our professional development day with scenario training. Another thing is we are working very hard to try the Internet at our buildings is not the best.

The IT is they're working with me I couldn't ask for more help they're doing great it's just going to take some time so the more that I can get away from paper and the more I can get to people being able to register and do things before they get there and doing it wireless, I've got to get the signals fixed there. But no, are very aware of it and we talk about it. It's just a matter of getting folks trained and then we've got to get our internet and our wireless capability improved.

I appreciate that response because that was a question I was going get back in the queue to ask if you were bringing up any online capabilities of people checking in in advance and, you know, taking care of some of that intake process. So I'm glad to hear that that's something you're looking at. So my last question is around owner surrenders. Is that something that will ever be back in in play? I know it's a big deal, and it really gave people in a responsible way to deal with pet situations.

I know I can't even imagine how expensive it it was on your budget because I don't know all of that. But it is something that people ask about a lot is, well and then there's not a place. There's not always places people can be referred to. So if they come to you and they are told that we don't have owner surrender, then are they given a great connection, a warm handoff to another place? Because to me, that's what I worry about with affordability and people not being able to afford their pets and they wanna be responsible and bring em in but you know, what are some options? Just where you're at with owner surrender.

Sure. We we do accept owner surrender. We might do it by appointment but we have other resources, we have other rescues. The big thing we try to figure out is why do they want to surrender it. Is this something because they can't afford the food Then we have the pantry.

Is this something that the owner can't afford the medical? Then we do have the vouchers. Is it because the behavior, we can give them some resources there. Now we will take owner surrenders, but it would be about appointment. But what we want to do is give people options and resources because the last place or that pet needs to be my folks are awesome.

They do a great job taking care of them but the last place we want is for that pet to be at our place because when they get and sit in those kennels it degrades them and they just they start to it's just a bad. So we'll do everything we can to try to keep that pet out of it. So if you ever have certain situations any instances that you know of examples please let me know and we will try and work with them the best we can to keep that pet in their home.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Wolveridge.

Thank you. Thank you for being here and for everything that you all do. I also want to. I also want to say thank you for the clinics. Our office is thankful enough that we're able to partner on a few of those a year Yes. Not only with us, but with some of the other council districts. So thank you. We get, thankfully, a a great turnout, I feel, at each of those.

For

sure. I'm gonna ask a question. Colleagues have asked some great questions thus far and some that I had on my list. But I'm asked a question on one of a colleague who couldn't be here, he's asked of all departments. Everybody has done a great job of the mayor's ass survey to kind of cut where they can. So one question he's been asking is if you still had to cut 1% of your budget, which right now you're at a 6,000,000 budget, so $60,000, is there somewhere that you could say right now that you could cut? Again, not asking for that at this moment, just saying if you could think outside the box of is there an area that you could say maybe, we could, I don't know, without it killing your operations.

As long as the thing I can't affect, and it's obviously not just my budget, every budget everywhere, it's personnel. So as long as it does not affect personnel, I'm open to anything. I think I would probably look more toward increasing revenue. I think we do a pretty good job of managing the money. There's some stuff that we have done.

What I think will help moving forward with lowering some costs but also help with revenue. So I mean if we can figure something out, now I obviously wouldn't be real thrilled about it but if I had to just I can't affect the personnel they're too valuable. I need everybody I can get but if there's other things I could look at but I would probably more lean toward increasing revenue.

Yeah you have a great team that's for sure and I appreciate everything you all do.

Thank you.

Councilman Winkler.

Thank you. I want to go back to the fee structure and really Angie I'll ask you this question because I think this has come up a number of times. It's not really a question it's probably more of a request. It's come up a number of times in various hearings. We've talked about it in other forums as well.

It might be worth independent of the question of LMAS but just either A, I don't know if the administration broadly is working on an audit of fee structure to make sure that they're in line with costs or if not if there's like a budget impact of doing that sort of analysis I think that might be helpful for us to know and targeting sometime next year to have a report that would say here's what things cost, here's what the associate fee is and then we can make a decision should the fee cover 100% of the cost, should it cover 80% of the cost, but I think it'd be helpful to have that information and again I don't know if a resource is required to do that sort of more comprehensive study.

Councilwoman Parker.

Yes, thank you. This question, it might help answer Councilwoman Mo Mulvi Wolveridge's question about the 1%. So there are two capital accounts. One with $2,484 in it and another one with $242.43 that haven't been utilized in the past several years. So question is, these accounts be lapsed or put back into the capital budget or your budget?

My guess is the ones that are set by Metro ordinance that we cannot touch. So there's and we'll have to we'll find out and do the research but what I'm what I think this is because I've asked the same thing last year and I think this is what it is. So there is a Metro Council ordinance that one count has to have 5% and then another count has to have 20% of the revenue from the license fees. And they set that up so that we would have that fund. So my guess is that's designed by ordinance and that money stays in there and it has to carry over. But I'll find out for you. But I'm fairly certain that's what it is.

Okay. I was wondering about your foster program.

Okay.

Do you I know the foster program is great because it helps decrease your inventory.

For sure.

So do you have a big advertising campaign in some way to help increase the number of fosters?

We do, we do a bunch of things online and we held, they've been holding some foster kind of orientation open houses at shelter, encouraging people to come in and then next Friday the twenty ninth we have fostervolunteer appreciation night and we've already had over 200 people sign up to attend. So that's another way but yes we do it online and then we have had open houses.

Do you feel like it's increasing?

It definitely has. The foster numbers they went up. Let's see we did we put six fifty two more animals in the foster last year than we did the year before.

Do you think that attributes to the 300 down that you are right now or is that 300 just intakes?

300 is just intakes. Without the Fosters I can assure you I would not have the open kennels that we have right now and the intake would be much higher.

Okay and I've got two comments. Councilwoman Chapel, she got voted the council member with the most animals. She's got like 10 or something. I've only got five. But anyway.

We can work on that if you need to.

Wanted to tell you a funny story about fostering. My daughter, she used to foster kittens and she was on her way to pick up a litter of kittens and while she was out almost there, she saw three German shepherds running loose. I think it was Southern Parkway Parkway or someway. She had her own two German shepherds in her Jeep. She stopped and got those three German Shepherds, and she had five German Shepherds in the back of her Jeep. She was she took them there. Of course, y'all couldn't take them. You said you have to hold on to them for five days. So she kept him all those extra three for five days. But

We appreciate it.

But then, anyway, I wanted to just mention about your website. Mhmm. When you go on your website, it's kinda hard to navigate, and it's hard to con it's hard to get through to anybody. And I've I've witnessed that myself, and then other people have mentioned. It's just hard to get through to anybody. So I don't know if that's been fixed or because that was about a year ago.

It's probably improved some but one of my goals for '26 that's probably getting pushed a little bit further out is to have our own freestanding website. Because our website right now is tied to Metro government. So I would eventually like to have our own standalone. You see that across the nation a lot of shelters have their own. We have talked about it. It's just it's on the to do list. I would like to get there. Some of it's improved but I can't disagree with you. There's some things that it does run a

little Well if you're interested in a pet and you don't just go there and you wanna talk to somebody, you know I don't want people to be discouraged and then they end up going someplace else. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Perry Shroy you'll notice that you are not the only one in the presence of really cute kittens right now. Councilman Chappell, you have the floor.

Hey, everyone. I wanna introduce you to JJJ. This is Jonathan Joseph Junior. He's gonna make a great addition to the Joseph household.

With the chapel budget.

So yeah, let me just mark here one more adoption this year. Actually, Ben Harlan, who works in Shamika's office, adopted one of the puppies that you brought here last year. So great adoption rates here at Metro Council. And I do just wanna say when you factor in reptiles, I think that councilwoman Parish Wright has more animals than I do. And then I also wanna point out that councilwoman Parker has a dog bar.

So at sometimes, she's the mother of a lot of dogs when they're in her presence. Right? My last question has to do with wages. And I know that there were contract negotiations recently. And about a year ago, we received a lot of letters from Louisville Metro employees talking about how it was really difficult to make ends meet with their wages as full time workers. Can you talk about how that's been addressed in this budget and how those negotiations went?

Far as most of my employees are union employees. So their contract was settled. Probably not in a place to comment on the negotiations because that's between the FOP and Metro. I know they got raises, all the union employees got raises and they got back pay. However much it was for each, it's probably I'm not exactly sure on each one.

But the majority of my employees are union employees. And I know my non union employees, looking at comp comparisons and doing that right now. So from what I've heard from most of my folks, obviously they appreciated the raise.

Thank you. That was my last question.

Councilwoman Parish Wright.

Thank you. Just one last question. There seems to be a lot of confusion with the Jefferson County Animal Control, which is a business that charges to pick up and hold strays, and a lot of residents are confused about that. And then I saw where, the attorney general has sued, the owner of the Jefferson County Animal Control. And just wanna know, since people like to loop you all together, what are you all doing to correct this misinformation?

Because we sometimes people get confused on who's calling them, who has their pet, or if they're being charged or whatever. Like, it's is have you seen any confusion? What are you all doing around this to show that there's a difference? Because there is a lot of misinformation out there.

Yes, is a bunch of misinformation. And I think that's what's been so helpful with our large increase in social media and our large volunteer group, our large foster group. But the biggest thing is just putting the word out there that we are Louisville Metro Animal Services. We do not charge. So it's an education thing.

And then when we get complaints, we try and make sure and tell them that this isn't us. We don't charge. But the biggest thing is just online awareness and media coverage, media awareness. I'm aware of the pending and what's going on. We've done some stuff with Google trying to fix addresses and names and that thing. So no, we're very aware of it and we just try to use our large social media presence not to draw attention to these other people because I think that hurts us, but it's to draw attention to us and what we do.

Thank you. And if there's anything that we can do and we can share in our newsletter, or anything I can share with my constituents to clear that up, or more branding from you all, let me know.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

And then I had a last question and it goes back to previous questions about your reduction in your revenue forecast. And I apologize, I've asked this for several different LMAS directors before you. So this is not personal to the way you're running the office. I generally ask what the percent of pet owners have their pets licensed. In the past, some years I've been able to get an answer to that, some years not.

It's obviously a very hard number to come by because you may not know where all the pets are. But I think it's a safe bet that there are a large percentage of folks who are living in Metro Louisville who have pets who are not paying for a pet license. So my question to you is this. What can we do as a metro council, a metro government, to incentivize your department to do better at driving up that licensing rate? Mhmm.

Question one. And then question two, if you guys are serious about this, that comes out badly. Let me try that differently. As you all get serious about that, what can we do to help you incentivize pet owners to get their license? We talked about making it a requirement, like, through veterinarians. Veterinarians won't do it, understandably, because their argument is people won't bring their pets in anymore. And I I I certainly don't wanna, you know, drive a reduction in the vaccinations. Right? But there has to be some conversation around increasing license fees. I don't hear anything in today's discussion about you all thinking about that.

As a matter of what I hear is and I hope this doesn't sound like a value statement. But it feels like you're saying, well, we projected we would do this with license fees. We can't do it anyway. We're just going to give up and say we're only going to collect what we've always collected. I would be much more satisfied if you said we're projecting x amount of dollars for increased license fees. And if we get that much money, this is what we wanna do with it. And we'll let you have it to do with it what you will. Right? That's my offer for an incentive.

Alright. You ready? Then tell

me what incentive I can offer you.

Yeah. So I'm glad you asked the question. Because this I do get a lot of questions about this. And I know you've asked me last year. So we have done something about the licensing. So in November '25, we switched all of our licensing to a company called docuPAT. So docuPAT is in over 300 shelters across The U. S. They want to have roughly 600 by the end of twenty six. So this company comes highly recommended and this is not my idea.

This is Adam. Adam tried to do this a while back and just for whatever reason, but we were able to get it going. So docuPAT does it, you can do it online, you can do it by mail, you can do it by phone, you can come into our shop. But they handle all the registrations. The biggest part is we were able to send them all of our old data for folks that are no longer registering.

So they do emails, they do mail. Had Adam, I'd ask Adam to look it up to do a comparison between November of twenty five last year to I want to say it was the beginning of May, whatever day we had to do it. And in that timeframe, our licensing are up about 1,200 in that period. So this has just started, it's new to everybody and I have talked to some council folks because a lot of it's online. But that's what I also heard from a lot of people is make this simple.

Why can't I go online and do it? Now there's also a large portion that hates online. So docu pet was they can do it all. So we're up about 1,200 licenses. Based on what I'm seeing and what I've already seen, it's just six months in, so I got to be careful.

But the goal was based off last year's number, would be about 19.5 a month. Right now we're doing well over 19.5 a month. I'm confident that it will continue as more people they hit people with emails, hey you've got thirty days it's expiring. And then the incentive, we do have some incentives and it was passed in a microchip ordinance a while back and that was the lifetime license. To me, that is a phenomenal deal.

It's $25 you get a lifetime license, they have to be spayed and neutered, they have to be microchipped, they have to have the rabies. And every year you have to give us the rabies, show proof of rabies. So that's one incentive I would say. But that's also you got to be careful because if everybody does it, yeah I'm going to have a really good but so that's something we talked about when we did the ordinances. We might look at this in three years, two years to maybe up that $25 So I think that would be the biggest incentive is I think punitive has been proven time and time again especially in the dog world.

It doesn't work. It has to be incentive to do it. So they get this with docuPAT, they get this nice fancy tag. There's a bunch of pluses with the tag. I'm not going to go in all to it and give you a docuPAT commercial.

But the most important part is yes, we heard you and we wanted to because the more people we can get a collar on, the better. So we are up. I hope to come back here next year and say we made an extra $70 $80,000 off license fees but let me be clear that the most important number for me is that 1,200 the hogs are registered. That's 1,200 more tags that we've given or docu pets given to people. But no, any way we can do to incentivize, I'm all for it.

Great. And I'm assuming cats too.

Yes. Great.

Yes. Thank you. That's encouraging. And we will next year, if I don't remember to ask the question next year, if you will remember to brag on the fact that we actually saw an increase. And again, if we come in with an increase in revenue over projections, that's always a good thing. I don't think anybody's going to complain if you made that decision. Thanks again. I don't see any other questions. I want to say thanks especially for your being here. I'm assuming that the little ones that are in the room with us at this moment are up for They are.

Adoption as well. So can we have them take center stage here so that anybody that might be paying attention on TV gets a chance to see these three? It's three, right? Precious little things that are wandering around council chambers. I'm hopeful that my wife and daughter are not paying attention right now. Because I will tell you that all three of them are cute enough that if I was ever going to take a cat home, it would be today. There's a big if in there. I'm starting to travel a lot more than I ever have, so having a cat at home would not be good for me. But yeah, if you can, yeah, if we can get And them at the podium then we know where the cameras are.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah. You can just stand right there.

Yeah, and the cutest one is on Maryland, is on Councilwoman Parker right now.

Metro TV, we're wondering if you could get a close in shot on these kittens.

There are two. Hang on just just a The third one's coming. We are not gonna end this meeting until these these cats have a chance to be adopted. They

are all look, turn

back No. Didn't say until they've been.

I said until they've been a

chance to be. Turn towards out there

because they're they've got you on the camera now.

Chance There

you go. They are beautiful.

Turn the audio, turn the audio play.

There we go. So, we are finished a few minutes early. I appreciate Animal Services being here. Good luck on the licenses. I'm really proud of the work that you guys have done so far. Thanks so much for what you all do.

Thank you all for the support.

We be adjourned for today.