City Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. We'll call the meeting to order for a board of city commission. If you will rise, we'll ask Commissioner Good to do our invocation. Mr. Worch, if you will lead us in our pledge. Lord, we thank you for our city and the many positive projects that we've experienced and are ongoing. We ask and invite your Holy Spirit to come into our chambers and preside over our meeting today. We ask that you bless this board of mayor commissioners with wisdom and guidance as we strive to make the right decisions for our city and its citizens. Bless our staff and employees and those in attendance today. We pray always in Jesus name. Amen.

Stand and salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Commissioner Good and Mr. Worst. Appreciate that motion to receive and file the agenda as presented. Second. Any additions? All in favor say I. I. All opposed. All right. Will the motion to receive and file the minutes for the uh regular recess meeting of April the 1st, 2026? So move.

Second. Any additions or corrections? All in favor say I. All opposed. And for the regular meeting, uh take the motion for April 9th, 2026 minutes. So moved. Second. Any additions, corrections? All in favor say I. I. All opposed. All right, let's move uh into our our hearings and reports. Uh we do have uh AP3 here that after our comments and stuff, we'll ask them to to come up and present on the u the conference center. But um let's start with Mr. Goot this time.

Uh we just want to welcome everybody to this noon meeting. We have a lot to discuss, a lot large agenda, but I just wanted to make a few announcements. Tomorrow will be Arbor Day in Central Park at the Seventh Street 17th Street ball field where they're going to celebrate and plant uh the Kentucky State Tree, the Tulip Popppler. And also tomorrow we'll have a ribbon cutting at the new laundromat up on 13th Street. Uh we're coming into uh May pretty quick and National Day of Prayer will be May 7th at the uh museum at 8:30 in the morning and uh then repair is coming up soon on May 16th and we're asking for volunteers and that's all I have. Mayor.

All right, Commissioner Martin.

Well, welcome to our meeting. Uh a couple things. Uh I don't know how many people were able to get to the uh middle school uh heritage on the river, but it was a fantastic uh um event that they had out there between the history uh displays, the student participation, the volunteers, the lunch they put on the u u car show, the revolutionary war encampment. I mean, it was really something and u I don't think that there'll be a celebration that will top it. I was just really impressed with uh Rebecca Hal and Stacy May and faculty and staff and the and then the students that participated. Um, again, I want to uh point out how how thorough and detailed the agendas are that the city manager and his staff are putting together for these meetings. And I encourage uh those folks that are watching our our meeting on um on my town to uh go on the city website and and look at the agenda. you can follow it as you go along, but there's an amazing amount of detail and if you look at our agenda, you you will know in um in thorough detail exactly what we're doing. Uh, one other thing, uh, there was a meeting on Monday that the, uh, transportation cabinet had, and it was primarily about the, uh, potential changes that may be in store for Winchester and Greenup Avenue. And they have put a survey out there for

citizens to express their uh, points of view. And it's pretty important that you look at these. We don't have control over the survey and we're going to be told what the results are and what direction their state routes are going to be. And um you know we're we're living with changes that they endorsed in terms of our downtown and primarily the Winchester Avenue between 18th Street and the old bluegrass could turn into two lanes with a passing lane. And I I'm I question whether our community is is uh strongly in favor of that change. There are also three options that are are proposed for um Greenup Avenue and there's one that that is clearly the the choice to be made. I want to uh express our thanks to uh Tri-State Media for putting our last meeting on u on Facebook so that folks were able to view it. they weren't able to uh view it um simultaneous with the median um with a meeting because of a mixup we had. And it's good to have my town back. Um we've got a long meeting. Uh we appreciate the folks that are here and uh um hope you stay as long as you want to go through these details. We're looking forward to hearing from our architect on the conference center. Thank you. Yeah, Miss Bonner, uh, you may want to see if you can find that survey and put it on our website for the uh, Kentucky Transportation.

Very important. All right. All right. Uh, Mr. Rhyr,

I just want to welcome everybody to today's meeting. Uh, the room is full of a lot of positive movers and shakers that keep our community going forward, and I appreciate you being here. I want to say thank you to Visit AKY for all your work with the Appalachin Funders Network. We recently had hundreds of people come to our community. Uh they're already making an impact at one of our nonprofits. So, we truly appreciate your work on that. Secondly, Commissioner Goo mentioned repair. Repair Aare is back again this year. This may be our 25th year. I'm not 100% sure on that. That's a project that's always been near and dear to my heart. They're needing volunteers. 40 plus projects, but we need some volunteers to to come out. Whether you're Girl Scout groups, Boy Scout groups, you know, your your office may want to volunteer or you just want to come out and enjoy the day with uh movers and shakers in our community, we would love to have you. And then finally, I want to end with I want to thank the parks department. I've recently been uh very active on the hiking trails uh with some trail running and different things and they've done fabulous work up there, Sean. So, pass on pass that on to them for me if you don't mind. And that's all I've got.

All right, Commissioner Renfro. Well, thank you. Uh, appreciate everybody showing up. I echo Commissioner Martin and his uh request for you all to fill out the survey on Winchester. Very, very important. Uh, I don't want to say they're looking to do something we don't want, but they're looking to do something we don't want. Um, the other thing I have is I'll direct this toward Shawn Murray. The other night, um, I had somebody come up and tell me that they went down to play pickle ball and, uh, the waiting line was over 40 people. We may need to look at, uh, some expansion

on the pickle on the budget. Yeah, that's definitely look at I think we have some advocates for that in the audience. I want to join in thanking visit Ashlin. you did a super job on the funding group that were here and it was very positive for our community. Thank you very much and we're looking forward to uh what can come out of that. Absolutely. And you all have covered uh all my ground but I did receive a report though I want to just to give a shout out to the fire department uh chief uh excellent job on on your annual report and uh did you all get copies of this? We did. I haven't had the opportunity to look at it yet, but Excellent. Okay.

Always good. Okay. Thank you. All right. We'll move to our city manager report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Our uh we have a department head presentation uh this meeting uh the department of finance. This time I'd call Miss Vich forward. Welcome everyone. Thank you all for the opportunity to let me speak here today. We're going to speak some on the city's finances, our budget, and our finance team. Finance consists of various division divisions. We have the utility cashier's office who uh have an excellent staff that deals with probably 75% of the community that deals with the city, deals with that area and we're very proud of the job that they do. We have an administrative division and we also are in charge of the Ashland bus system. to speak today on a little on the city's finances. The city's had a challenging year when it comes to physical health and we were relying on the line of credit to main city operations, but our finance team and city management took a hard look at expenses and made some difficult decisions. Support success in this venture required support by city management and staff. And I am very proud. We have all worked as a cohesive team to make some hard cuts. Um, we cut about $3 million out of the budget. We have managed to reduce these city expenses without reducing services for our citizens. Physical responsibility in a city means managing our public's money carefully, transparently, and sustainably so we can meet today's needs without creating problems for the future.

With this FE phil philosophy, we continue to analyze how we're spending our money and reducing expenses. We did this through personnel reduction, the IT team creation, elimination of some cell phone allowances, the city performing work instead of hiring outside people to do our parks department and street department have done amazing jobs uh making improvements in our city. we um fiscal responsibility this I'm going to talk a little bit what we have in today's budget uh balanced budgeting is very important that we do not spend more than we bring in over time this proposed budget that we have is balanced we have this budget is a smart use of our taxpayer dollars we have prioritized our essential services and avoided any waste we will continue uh to analyze additional areas for expense reduction. This budget is focused on a very important we want to do exceptional essential services providing clean streets, dependable sanitation, well-maintained infrastructure, public safety services, and reliable water and streets sewer services. When this budget was put together, that was the focus of city management. This budget also supports parks, recreation and activities for children. Something else that we have initiated this year is long-term planning. We have each department has provided the department of finance a long-term capital plan. This plan will allow us to plan for larger capital projects. This allows us to be proactive in our budget to plan for larger expenses. We can now set aside money to pay for these items over

multiple years without having to borrow. We also and the important part of this budget that we are presenting today is maintaining reserves, keeping savings for emergencies or economic downturns. This budget reinforces our commitment to strong financial stewardship. We are rebuilding our reserves in our major two primary funds, the general fund and utility fund to encourage longtime long-term financial stability. These economic stabilization have been established to prepare for uncertainty and protect essential services during challenging times. This budget within two and a half years we will have 25% of our operating expenses in cash. We also have transparency and accountability. The finance department sends financial reports a path to every citizens in Ashlin to let them know where their dollars are being spent. We have we've done several public work sessions to discuss projects in open. We're providing more detail on agenda with physical notes and project summaries and putting our web agenda on the website before the meeting. Before I wrap up, I want to recognize our finance team. Their diligent and commitment behind the scenes are what makes our financial report and this budget possible. We truly appreciate the effort and expertise they bring to supporting the city and its leadership. Thank you for everything you do. Anybody have any questions?

To clarify, when you mentioned that uh we had an employee reduction. Yes. Um that was completely through attrition and not uh we didn't let anybody go there. The majority was through attrition. Uh we did um one person chose to leave. Yeah. Right. Right. Um but we Yes, we've done that through attrition. Uh there's more areas I think that we we've we've not filled vacancies to save money. Um we are clarify that. We're trying to get off our reliance on the line of credit, uh, which we have been off again, I think, for three weeks.

Um, and we're trying to plan for the city's future. Strong financial stability. Well, thank you, Mr. Very effective team. Any uh any other questions? All right, let's uh move into uh our report. And um we have with us from AP3 Monica uh Sumner and Jake Shymer. The Monica if you want to come and make your presentation or Jake I'm going to you're going to start it.

I'm going to start it. You don't want to hear me. She's going to get into the details but thank you mayor and commissioners for having us. We're really excited. I don't As you all can see as you drive down the street um there's a little bit of activity going on down there. can't be any more excited than we are. J for sure.

Good. Um well, as you see the the the prior buildings have been demolished and we are putting in the queson starting next month and we'll start going vertical in June. So, we're pretty excited about that. Um Monica is going to go page by page on the site plan and floor plans. One of the things I want to mention about that is Venue Works, who's the operator, has been part of the design meetings from really last summer. And they've really talked about the circulation and really the engine of the of the conference center, which is the kitchen. The kitchen will be very uh critical in delivering good product for the the conferences that Ashlin will host. So, it's real exciting. I'm gonna let Monica take it over from here, but thank you for having us and letting us talk through this.

Thank you for being here. Thanks, Jake.

Nice to be back with you today. Um, we're going to take a look at a a brief presentation. Uh, it can go 10 to 15 minutes or even longer. That's your choosing. I'm glad to stay and answer as many questions as you might have as we go through the the product here that we're showing. Uh just to let you know the design team which is um uh robust in experience and breadth and depth with these buildings um have been meeting for twice a week since July of last year. It has been very very intense to meet the schedule and that's all because uh we want to get you all open and booking events. Um that's what this is about. So with venue works at the table with us helping with design decisions and so on relative to delivering quality events to the people that want to come to this conference center. Um I believe bookings are going to begin uh fallish of uh of 27. So that was our date we had to hit and we've been working backwards and it required an intense amount of work and we are very glad to show you today where we are. This is the front uh rendering. This is not a photograph. Um this is a rendering that our team generated uh with computer design software to help show you what uh all of the materials are, the proportions, the colors, the sizes of everything and so on. So you're seeing that there. If you recall, one of our early early designs was um hearkening to the steel of the bridges and the industrial uh history and tone of the city. And that's the black piece that you see there in the front. It's going to present itself like a bridge buttress, if you will. the rest of the

building. We have a lot of glass for natural light inside and uh then very uh typical materials around the building, concrete, stone, and that kind of thing. Um but I did just want to remind you that uh we did take great effort to have the building have some uh presence and familiarity and context um to the downtown of Ashland. All right, that's looking from the other view as if you're standing across the street in front of the Paramount entrance. You see the uh just the tippy corner there of the Paramount uh in the view there on the right. Uh we do have the buildings connected and we'll see that in the plan momentarily. But there is a setback there. If you notice the two fronts of the building, in other words, don't touch. there's a reveal or a setback there to allow the Paramount to stand as its own unique and magnificent structure and then the complimentary building of the conference center uh appears to be next door. So with that, we'll take a look at a site plan. Uh the drawings that you're going to see today uh aren't super fancy and pretty from here on out. They are construction documents. We have laid a little bit of color on them to help explain things, but what you're looking at here, you see the streets labeled. Uh we've got Winchester Avenue at the top of the page. For example, the Paramount and all of the other buildings on the site are to the left. Um and they are grayed out. Um and they um there are words on there. Paramount Theater, Paramount Stage House, etc. They're at the corner of 13th in Winchester. the big square white box then at the corner of 14th and Winchester um that just represents the conference center and then behind that along Carter Avenue is an 87 car parking lot. The little patches of green are representing just

some planting areas or green strips just to help define for your eye visually the distinction between the streets and the parking. So, with 87 parking spaces, truck loading back there, delivery drop off, um plenty of accessible parking spaces and so on, that really fills out the site. There's not a lot of room left. Um we built edgeto edge. So, let's look at the floor plans. All right, I'm going to get your eyes oriented. To the top of the page would be Winchester Avenue. You will see to the left hand side kind of a gray square that is connecting the yellow colored lobby of the conference center to the Paramount. That is a vestibule or breezeway type structure. Um it allows you to go to and from the conference center to the Paramount. And I know you all recall conversations about how each of these facilities will can and and will at times function as one. supporting one another. Uh and so it was very important to get that connection and there's a series of double doors there on each side. We had to have that for fire code reasons. Uh but folks will be able to pass to and from those buildings uh as the need arises. The dark uh just below that and to the right that dark sort of purple color that is a cafe. And the reason why I highlight that is because that is designed to not only serve visitors to the conference center, but it can also support events and functions and gatherings at the Paramount. So, there'll be a real cafe there um serviced by the kitchen at the Paramount. And uh strong food and beverage service is the goal of AP3. Uh how many of us go to events and conferences and all we have to say when we leave is, well, the food wasn't very good. you know, great conference, but

the lunch could have been better or what have you. The goal of Venue Works and AP3 is to provide quality food and beverage service along with the conference that's being held. So, that cafe right there in the lobby will allow folks to grab a drink, grab a snack uh to and from those events. And that's a big feature we wanted to point out. So, with that, overall, let's look at the yellow areas, which make an Lshape, right? Uh and th that's the lobby space. That's just open publicly accessed space. It is about 6,000 square feet of space. You've all been to conferences and you know that that is also pre-unction or support function space. There will be signup tables, registration tables, maybe exhibitors, things on display out there. So, it is not dead space by any means. It is a lot of space. But if you've got, let's say, a thousand or more people um at a conference, you've got to have space for them to mingle and talk and and so on. And so it all of the um activities don't just happen inside the conference meeting room or the banquet room, but much events happen also in the lobby space. So we were cognizant of that. The top of the design there faces uh Winchester and it is entirely glass. with the steel structures present that I mentioned in the in the first view. So very connected to the street, very open to the street in terms of pedestrian activity and so on. All right, the large pink uh area right in the middle of the page are meeting rooms. They are um there's four of them that can be divided off or it can be one large one or two small ones and one medium size. In other words, it gives the conference user u the purview to design the layout of those rooms however they need or multiple things can get booked at once. There may be two or

three different parties in the building at one time doing various meetings and whatnot and that can happen. Each of those meeting rooms is 1780 square ft. And the total meeting room space of all of those pink uh areas were open as one. That is a 7700 square foot meeting space. So nice and sizable, roomy. Uh no columns in the middle of it. Free span. Um an engineering feat. Um so everyone can enjoy a column free space. Over to the right hand side, sort of in the upper right hand corner of that yellow space, you'll see two little black uh squares. That's an elevator and elevator service room. So, there is an elevator in the lobby along Winchester Avenue are two open exposed stairs. So, folks can go from the bottom floor to the second floor um freely with nice open stairs that again view out to the street and so on. London, we've got the elevator. Just to the plan south of that elevator is an escalator. Again, we learned from Venue Works and knowing our own experiences at conferences um when you're moving massive amounts of people, hundreds of people from say a lunch um keynote speaker event and then the conference session happens within 10 minutes, you've got to move hundreds of people between levels very quickly. And an escalator is the most uh efficient way to do that. Of course, folks may choose to use the stair or even the elevator should they need or want to, but that escalator really puts this conference center at a higher level and makes it very very marketable for venue works. There is another pink room that you see there kind of isolated toward the bottom of the right hand side of the page and that is a meeting room and it can be

used for staff for staff meetings and organizing. It can be used as a support room for the conference holder, maybe a work room for them, or it could just be rentable as a meeting space as well. Uh, and I do not have that square footage documented. I want to say that's in the neighborhood of 3 to 400 square f feet. So, kind of an average size meeting room, a little on the larger side of average for organizers to use or to be rented out for smaller meetings. just to the right and of that pink room, the yellow extends to the bottom of the page and there's a lobby vestibule there access point that connects to that back parking lot. So, we've got 87 cars that can park around back and there's other parking opportunity opportunities on that side of the site. And if folks do park there, why then they don't have to walk all the way around to Winchester Avenue to get out of the rain or some something and get in the building. They have access back there as well. And we've worked hard to make that attractive and approachable. So, in other words, it won't just seem like the back door, but it will be just as nice going through that back door as it will the front door, which fronts Winchester Avenue. Those green areas or blue green areas that you see, that is all back of house. There's various functions there from electrical and mechanical rooms to freight elevators. Uh there are a few small offices. um about 2500 square foot of that is office uh strictly for venue works and security function and so on. Um so there's a a back of house there receiving area and so on and there's access into each of those individual meeting rooms from back of house so staff can serve food items, beverage items or deliver uh goods and setup materials into those rooms as required. And then there is access. If you see where the yellow and the green connect, those are access points so that staff

can circulate out into the lobbies and hallways for various setup and and assistance needs and for janitorial. Back over to the left hand side of the page, which adjoins the Paramount, um there are some um pinkish orange colored rooms um that are bathrooms. So large public restrooms accessible to the the visitors of the conference center and we also have located one small staff restroom and then a family restroom uh for any participants here that may need assistance of someone there would be a availability for that type of space for them as well. All right, that pretty much sums up a a highle overview of the first floor. I can entertain questions or go on to the second floor.

Go on up.

All right, here we are. So, on the second floor, you'll see the yellow L-shaped lobbies again, um, as mentioned in the first page. So, that's sort of your your orer there, and that runs the corner of Winchester and 14th Avenue. You can see along the front wall or the top of the page there, those large open stairways are showing themselves. We still have an elevator to the right and below that an escalator. So that gets you oriented in terms of circulation. When you land on this floor, which is the second floor, that is what we're calling the ballroom. This has a uh a little nicer finish out, a significantly taller ceiling. And this is what it what it says it is. It's a ballroom. It's for large events, beautiful banquet type space, um awards ceremonies and events. Whatever you can imagine happening in a nice ballroom in a conference center, it can happen here. The um space is divisible. Uh we have two larger ballrooms to the left. Ballroom A and B are about 4,000 square ft each. And so would the um the last one there on the right. It could also be one 4,000 foot space or as we're showing it here so you can understand the flexibility that the design offers. There are three divisible rooms all um between 12 and 1300 square ft each. And again that space can be configured in a variety of ways uh depending on how the place is booked out. So again you could have one large event or multiple smaller groups happening at the same time. The greenish blue areas again are back of house and this is really where we can start to talk about kitchen service. Um this is the primary food service floor in terms of providing for banquet service and so on. Not that there couldn't be any on the lower floor, but we've provided the bulk of the kitchen support here. Should there be food

service and beverage service needed on the first floor, uh staff would uh prepare those things on this floor, put them on a cart, roll it down in the freight elevator, and distribute accordingly. So, we have uh I do want to point out just to the south of ballroom A, which is the one on the left, you'll see sort of a pink and white box. There's another one under ballroom B. Those are um little light rooms. So, if you are in the middle of a uh hosting a a banquet, a guest speaker, a party, I mean, it could even be a wedding party. Um, and the room is dimmed, we don't want the service staff opening a door and it's bright white back in those service areas and making noise and all kinds of things. So, we've even buffered those spaces with little vestibial airlocks for light and sound. So, the experience in the ballroom is a quality one from atmospherically also to food. And that takes us to food. And let's go to the next slide. This is a blow up of the kitchen plan. And don't worry, we are not going to go through every element of that. But this is an opportunity for us to show you the in-depth nature of venue works planning with our kitchen consultant. And every piece of equipment that you see here from left to right has a very distinct purpose and function. This was designed uh with the sequencing of preparing foods from the beginning of chopping and dividing and and preparing those items into how the meal is then cooked, plated, and distributed. We have uh to the right hand side, the far right hand side is the dishroom and it's located far far away from the cooking area which is somewhat in the center, maybe center to left. And so there's just a a vast magnitude of equipment, dish cleaning, handwashing, food storage, and and prep

on this floor. This floor is a good opportunity for me to point out the freight elevator, which is uh sort of on the left hand side a bit. It's a large box with an X through it that goes all the way down to the lower floor and up to this floor. And if you are attending a conference, um obviously it's a freight elevator. Many things can happen in that elevator to get goods to and from the floors, but it also will hold a large vehicle like a Suburban, for example, a Chevy Tahoe, a Suburban, that type of vehicle in case there's a conference which needs to display one of those. We've all been to those. Maybe a fire chief's conference where they have a fire vehicle. Sometimes conferences raffle off cars and why then we could get a car all the way up to the second floor for you should that be needed. again that allows Venue Works to market quality conferences for your center with that ability. All right, let's look at the next floor. Now, I did mention that the ballroom space is very tall. So, that allows us to sleeve in two layers of kitchen within the same volume of space that that ballroom takes up. That kitchen uh also extends to this which is a third floor or kind of like a mezzanine and it is primarily um you can go to the next page if you would please. It is primarily uh where the food storage is. So, it's 5,000 square ft of storage and prep um on that floor. And you're seeing a stairway on the right. Um various things. Um let's see. Yep, I think I've covered it there. Just want to make sure I cover all my my uh elements here that I think are important to point out. Um the freight elevator. Yes, exit stairs. We do have a small break room in the lower right hand corner um just for the staff here um to

take a moment and get off their feet. This it's hard work working a conference so we wanted to give them a little bit of space as well. The boiler room is on this floor. There's dry storage, freezer storage, cool storage all along that back wall. Um so the kitchen is very very intense um as you're seeing for yourselves. And that wraps up the items that I felt necessary to share and um be glad to entertain more questions. Um and I don't don't think we have a a picture of it but the back of the building uh for load in. Yes. And how it's going to work with

uh the Paramount and the conference center. Yes. And how that angles in I think you all have the u the detail. Let's go back to the site plan. But um that would be where you'd load in the car or a boat or Yeah.

So here's a site plan on the screen and you'll see a light gray hatched straight line running left to right directly in between the conference center and the parking lot. If you can all lay eyes on that. If I had a pointer, I would point to it for you. But I'm not tall. I can't that tall. I can't reach that. But that is the truck loading area. So trucks will be able to enter off of 14th Street. The Paramount loading dock is still accessible, both of their loading doors. And then likewise, the if you would go to the first floor plan now, which is the next one. Um and then the um conference center. There we go. Thank you. Um there's this weird shaped little appendage coming down off the lower left hand side in that blue green color. Everyone see that it's angled there because of the fire separation we had to design to keep the building a certain distance away from the paramount. So that was all to meet the um code requirement for that. So that's why you see that little clipped off corner. But then on the right hand side of that clipped off corner is a straight piece and that is the loading dock for the Paramount. So the loading lane will be shared and we have images where we when we studied this you could literally have a tractor trailer parked at the Paramount and a tractor trailer parked at the conference center at the same time. Now they can't use the driveway at the same time but if one is there loading and another one shows up that is fine. It works. Um, and so then a car or goods for the events would be offloaded into that odd-shaped little room and then delivered to the appropriate elevator or appropriate space in the building for the conference center. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, I hope I described that sufficiently.

You did a great job. Any any questions? The square footage of the ballroom, the ballroom square footage. I think we worked it up one. I have some cheat notes here. M 11, 800. Yes. Yeah, correct. 1,83. Yep. Exact numbers. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you. Fantastic. Monica, thanks for, you know, being here today. Every time you speak to us, it's clear, it's concise, and it's straight to the point. We appreciate that. Well, thank you very both of you. And we're very excited to have it open, get it built. We're try we're trying. That's his job. Anything else? No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all.

Thank you. I I do have a question and that's it's probably for our staff, maybe not so much you all, but when do we need to go ahead and start the process for naming rights to do the request for proposals on our end and and get that? I've been working on that.

I I think we're ready now that we have some renderings that you could probably share so folks have some idea of size and scale. Um, I I think we can uh begin to work those up and get something hopefully maybe within the next uh let's say maybe the next month we could have something for you all to consider and and maybe start processing the way to how to how to distribute those requests. That's my suggestion and and recommendation at least is request for proposal. Can can I add one thing to that? Sure.

Um because of the timing to book these events, we're going to start marketing probably within the next month as well. So, we need to start thinking forward for that as well. So, yeah, I certainly agree. I think, you know, we get the process rolling. You know, we do public uh requests for proposals. So, any any company, any organization that would have interest could uh put in a request and then, you know, we'll we can go from there. That would allow us to help obviously fund the operations. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. All right, good report. Um, and moving on, uh, we'll move into our public participation. If there's anyone would like to address the commission that things that are not on the agenda, this is the time for you to be able to do that. You're allowed five minutes per subject. Uh, indicated by the green and yellow and red. That means you're out of time, but anyone like to address the commission? Yes, ma'am. if you'll come and state your name and your address.

Well, I am Celeste Coons and I'm the executive director of Visit AKY and I did want to um this is one of my colleagues. Um it's Adam Hedrickk. He's the president of Ashlin Emotion. But I truly wanted to tell you all a little bit about the Appalachia Funders Network from last week and some really cool things that have come from it. Um the biggest thing that I wanted to share with you guys is the executive director of um Appalachia Funders Network had a post and I just wanted to share a little bit of it with you because it actually made last week worth everything and talking about convention centers and all the conferences and things that we can do. But it says because what we became clear is the real infrastructure of this region isn't just financial, it's relational. It's the networks of trust, mutuality, and shared purpose that allow us to weather storms and still find one another when it matters most. And Ashlin showed us exactly what that looks like. With such generosity and pride, the community wound us in a way that made us feel more than hospitality. It felt like a reminder of who we are, what we carry, and what's possible when a place shows itself fully. More soon, but for now, just know there's deep gratitude and renewed sense of what we can build together. And I thought that's a great way for him to leave us with that thought that we did a really good job. And I have to say, I'm very, very grateful for the city and how you showed up, for Michelle, for how she helped with the buses to make sure these people got around to see what we have here. I am very honored and blessed by that. Um, we are going to focus a little bit more on the filling up of the convention center and conferences. And after I saw

what we could do, the sky is pretty much the limit for us now. And the amount of good that we've seen come of it thus far is amazing. What Daryl's seen at the, you know, CB Knuckles Museum is amazing. He's excited. But there'll be more to come from this. And they've already they've offered me to apply for being a Vanguard leader for the League of Cities in Chicago. They choose 40 cities out of the country and they have a conference in Chicago to talk about how we make tourism equitable and how we can be equitable to our city. So, I'm super excited about that. But I just wanted to also be able to introduce you to Adam Hedrickk who is over Ashlin in motion and he just wanted to approach and say hello. You can just come say hello sir.

Hello everyone. Thank you for your time. just wanted to approach and say hello and properly introduce myself to everyone as the president of Ashlin Motion um in regards to uh what we do with the community and um yeah just kind of never I got a chance to properly introduce myself to everybody so I want to do that real quick. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mun. Appreciate that. Thanks, Mr. Hedrickk. All right. Anyone else like to address the commission? Come right.

Yes, sir. if you'll come to the podium and state your name and your address. Let me just Hello, my name is Rub Robinson. I'm a sophomore Ashen Paul Blazer. We are here to discuss the possibilities of adding additional pickleball courts at the Central Park. Our short-term goal is converting the two current tennis courts to pigball courts with adding more in the future. 50 to 70 middle school and high school students are there on any given night from all the local schools. There's a need for more courts for the tennis players. The tennis center could offer days and times for free playing time or new courts could be relocated in the park. Thank you for your time.

My name is Gavin Vincent. I'm a junior at Paul Paul Gblazer High School. I find myself at the poker ball courts about six out of the seven days in a week. And every single night I'm there, I find I look to my left at the entrance. There's multiple people leaving because the courts are filled. Sometimes it takes 20 to 30 minutes to play a game and it's not even guaranteed at that. You can spend hours and do nothing there. So, from the addition of four new pickle ball courts, I think it would majorly increase the availability of playing and getting more people to visit our community. I've met tons of people from West Virginia, Ohio, from 80 to 8 years old. People come and play every day and I think the addition of four new pickle ball courts would majorly increase attraction and our community. Thank you for your time. Well, we appreciate both of you coming and and uh supporting that project and we're we're kind of all over that. We understand uh the need uh and the want. Uh so we're working on that.

Thank you. Yes, sir. I just want to say I had no idea you were coming today. So my opening statement was not from you all. It was somebody I was talking to last night playing trivia, but uh evidently they knew what they were talking about as well as you all. Good job, guys. I want to thank you guys for coming. Come back sometime. Gavin and Reed and uh I'm down at the pickle ball courts regularly. I was there last night. There's over a hundred people at the 100 kids at the pickle ball courts and this is on this is 8:30 at night on a Wednesday night. And so we see the need and and we're working on it. Thank you for coming. I want you to take my place in about 20 years.

Yes, sir. if you want to come to the podium and state your name and your address, sir.

Hello, my name is Andre Nelson. I live on 824 Montgomery Avenue. Um, there's a couple of things we were wondering about. One is there a number of handicapped people or disabled people and there's a particular person who likes taking up all the parking spaces. So, we was wondering if we can get any kind of handicap parking on one side of the street. The other thing is there's a lot of speeding up and down that block. Again, there's elderly, children, and animals. Um came to a incident even the year before last that the certain person I was speeding decided to say, "Screw everybody. Just get off my just don't come on my property. We was wondering if they could cook some kind of speed bumps over there. It's right between the pool and a shopping mall area.

What What street are you talking about? Montgomery. Montgomery. Yeah. What now? What's your address? I'm on 824. 824. So, and when they come around that corner, they speed it. That's down by the mall. Yeah. It's a little bit up. You know where the pool is at behind Unity Square. That's Unity Square. Yeah, it is. Is that right? Is that a one-way street?

It's It's a two-way, but um these particular people get to the corner and just jet through there as fast as they can. There's a lot of kids, more kids than there is than they used to be. And there's a lot more people that's disabled like myself, my neighbors. And you know, they also have a dog that the same people that somebody say something, they let the dogs out that it's a pit bull if they let out at night. There have been several phone calls. People call kind of regulate me as the block captain. So, I talk to these people, but my thing is there's kids, there's animals and they need to slow that down because if a kid gets hurt, it's going to be too late for I'm sorry. Um, and the other thing is about our water. It's going up and up, but we can't even drink the water. We got to buy tap water or we got to buy filters. And people are wondering about that. to them.

Mr. Nelson, I appreciate you coming out. It's good to see you. I haven't seen you in in in a while. Um, have you voiced the concerns about the traffic issue, the parking, the speeding with a police department?

Yes, I did. They had to come out several times and like one time um while talking to these people about the speeding, I went down there because I usually get along with everybody the way I talk. But um these particular people mention something about well you think you're the only one you have a gun and you're only I'm like no it's not about a gun it's about people being safe on the street if one kid gets hit and let my kid I'm going to be very upset then your dog people are running literally down the street to run to my yard to tell me about the dog. Well, I would encourage that you talk to your neighbors, uh, pass along the information for animal control for our city, uh, have them come out if there's concerns there, but I would suggest for the traffic issues that you you reach out to someone in the police department and see if they can help you on that end.

All right. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Thank you. What was the water issue? It's calcium or something. They keep saying that the bill's going up, but we can't drink the water. We got to go and buy water or we got to have filter to drink the water cuz I'm still not sure I understand what can drink the water. There's something they they put out signs saying that we can't drink the water not to drink the water. It may be contaminated. But if even with my filter, I got to fill that up every three other weeks to change it. Well, you have to buy drinking water. But the water went up. There's someone putting signs out. There was some letters that came out about the water. You're talking about a boil water advisory. Was this a lead thing?

Yeah, it's a it's something it's it's a Director Atkins, maybe you can maybe you can talk to him after the meeting or something. That's a federal program. They're just going around checking a notice about a study that's being done. Yeah. Okay. Cuz all your water is okay. The water's coming up. No, actually, if you don't flush if you use flush your toilets and you let the water set, you can see all the black soot that's around it. Yeah. So, we got to you got to either buy water or buy filters. And then they said that the water's going to be going. Well, we flush hydrants, you know, in the spring, usually in April that they'll

Yeah. that I'm a little familiar with construction and stuff like that being from New York, but that is not natural stuff in that order. And you don't want that when you have babies and stuff like that. um have enough elements as it is, but you don't want to drink that stuff into your water. Then they telling you it's going to go up. It doesn't really make sense. No, you got to pay for it, but we also got to go and buy water. Okay. Thank you, sir. We'll take a look at that. Chief, did you want to comment or I'll have Okay, sounds good. All right. Anyone else like to address? Yes, sir. Hey, I live at 820 Montgomery.

And what's your name? Donald Tumbler. Okay. I'm a fresh ampute. Uhhuh. I either got to go all the way down to one side to get on the road to get in my car or all the way down to the other side. I called Ashlin. I think it was two weeks ago to talk to him about putting a dip in the sidewalk so I can roll my wheelchair straight to the car. And uh they said they'd get somebody out to assess the situation. Still nothing. Well, u I guess we'll have to throw that to you and take a look at it, I guess. Yes, and let us know. Okay, we're on it. All right. Thank you. Thanks for being here, guys.

Thank you. Appreciate you guys. Anyone else? All right. Hearing none, let's move into our old business. Uh Mr. Wheeler. Item A, second reading and final adoption of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, amending the zoning map, the official zoning ordinance of the city of Ashlin number 101 series of 1986 as previously amended by changing the zoning classification of property known and referred to as the Rosebud Mobile Home Park located at 2401 Beach Street from R6 single family residential medium density to PUD planned unit development. So move

second. All right. U gentlemen, would you want to make a comment or anything? We have our developers with us. Absolutely. Love to. Brian Lubeck. Uh just wanted to quickly thank you all the commission for the consideration and the approval. Katherine at the city planning zoning has been great to work with and everybody's been very receptive and it's made this process very easy. and we are going to be advocates for this committee and everybody else letting them know that this stuff is happening and there's good opportunity for growth in this town and we're excited to be a part of it and we just want to thank you all my partner here and I and we're going to do our best to bring some really nice new housing to the town. Well, we're excited to see what you do out there. We appreciate it. Thank you guys every Thank you and appreciate your investment in that nationally. Absolutely.

All in favor say I. I. All opposed. All right, we'll move into our consent agenda. A resolution of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, adopting, authorizing, and approving the course of action presented by the city manager on the items appearing on the consent agenda for the regular meeting of the board of city commissioners of April 23rd, 2026. Salute. Second. Second. Any uh discussion? Yeah.

Let's see. Um, Mr. Grub, how did we arrive at the street paving list? We got I think Barry's coming up, too. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, in the past, we'd circulate a list and folks could kind of add to or subtract from. This is the first I've seen of a list. Mayor and commissioners. So, uh, how we come to the paving list? So, basically the paving list is made based off visual inspection and we also have a CAD file that tracks when a street was paved, whether it was paved in 2006 or 2010. And then the engineering department will monitor monitor the streets and whenever it's time for them to be replaced either through um years of life or either through you know they need multiple repairs or they have ruts that's how that's how it's decided that a street's added to the paving list

and this list stays fluid. Correct. Yes sir. Absolutely stays fluid stays fluid. We may have same thing just like we do with water and sewer sewer line repairs. We may have something that jumps up to the top of the list because, you know, a rut's made or or something of the sort. Okay. Thank you. All right. Great. Any other questions? Yeah. On item F is in Frank, the uh original contract was $98,000 for the roof and we had a change order of $55,000 added to it. What uh what happened there? on item F.

I can give you an answer on that. So on that one, what happened is we, you know, we went out for bid and they they put the bid in once after the bids were approved and the contractor went to inspect the building, they realized that it was not constructed to the way we thought. There was no decking over the perlland. And so without that decking, it requires a different type of installation. And it actually would not be cheaper to install decking. I asked Jacob that and they said no, it would not be cheaper to install decking. But because the deckings was not there, it changed the type of installation that necess necessitated the um change order. And we did confirm with HUD that a change order was sufficient. They did not need us to rebid that even though it was a significant uh price increase. It just, you know, after you sign a contract, you realize, oh, wow, that's not what we thought it was going to be. That's before you bid on the contract, you think you would check on a few things. I But okay,

it looks like you may have saved some on the neighborhood uh roof that was originally budgeted at 300,000 and you're doing it for what? 71. Which one is that? Neighborhood. Which item is that, sir? No, that's that's just how much we have paid to date is 171,000. So, that one is still 300,000. Still going to be 300,000. Yes. It's pretty expensive roof. It's a pretty large building. Yeah, it is. They're on there right now. Yes. Anything else? Thank you.

Okay. on on item H. Is that still the U is June 8th um 2029? Is that the original completion date? Is that changed or stayed the same? That stayed the same, sir. And um you know, we talked about making a visit up there. Is are is there any plan for that? Yes. Yes, we can coordinate um some proposed dates and times to go take a tour of the facility. Absolutely. I've got more. I'll see if I can work that out.

That'd be good. Um hold on. Um on item I, what do we what do we expect to come out of this study? The regional water resource uh coalition cost sharing. It says to help in regulation for communities under long-term control plans. What are what are we going for there? You know, we we got a lot of studies going on. It's hard to

So I'll I'll make an attempt to cover for Mr. Hall. He's uh he's out today had surgery. Yes, sir. So I'll make an attempt of what I've come up with. Uh this is something that I'm not extremely familiar with, but dug into it a little slack.

Thank you, sir. Um so from what what I've been able to interpret um it's collectively scheduled meetings um where members of uh the coalition which has been um SD1 Louisville MSD uh Paduka Ashlin Mazeville Henderson and the city of Frankfurt I believe they've we've pretty much come together and we've uh collectively hired a firm to keep in touch with the Kentucky energy and environmental cabinet to discuss uh regulatory approaches um to terminating long-term um control plans and other similar issues. So, I think it's to keep up with the legislature and, you know, things that are coming down the pipe to to for us to stay on top of them and also to be able to voice our opinions collectively as a group on, you know, well, maybe we agree with that or we don't agree with that and then they take that into consideration. This is something that uh um I didn't immediately recognize it u director Atkins. So, thank you for you you refresh refresh my recollection for sure. This is something I believe director Hall brought to us uh last year and and you've you've basically covered it. Th this is part of a large group of utility uh companies or I think they're all municipalities, but to try to um to to try to limit the application of these long-term control plans that you know at least with this with respect to the city have been very costly over the last I don't know 20 20 years. How long have we been under a long-term control plan? Seems like it's been forever and

it's been at least 20 years. culminated in a you know a you know a needed but very expensive uh new sewer plant. So in an effort to try to uh you know reduce some of those implications that's what this coalition has we were asked to join the coalition. And this was not something that the city of Ashlin started. Um I believe director Hall was contacted LA I think it was late last year uh by a group that wanted to uh you know contract with uh I can't remember created a lobbyist to lobby general.

That's what I was getting ready to ask. Would they act as a lobbyist?

This was uh ordinance number 64 of 2025. Uh yeah. So with and Strand Associates was involved Strand Associates and law firm of English Lucas Priest and Alsley regarding regulatory approaches to terminating long-term control plan plans with the Kentucky Energy and Environmental Cabinet. Uh and there was a contract that we entered at that time, a memorandum of understanding agreeing that the city would be a member of the u as a member of the cso coalition uh would agree to the terms and conditions along with strand hiring that firm that I just cited.

Thank you, Mr. Wheeler. And I guess I got the same question on Jay. We're spending $222,000 in engineering for the optimization and growth distribution system modeling. And uh in summary, it says any future modeling that would come within system upgrades especially due to large demand customers. Anybody got a clue?

So, um I believe that the funding for this contract, it was um we already had the city already had an existing contract with HDR to look to uh rehabilitate the 13th Street tank. And um it was determined uh maybe some point last year or the year previous that um 13th Street tank rehab really wasn't feasible, wasn't needed right now. So, the funds were reallocated um to do system modeling and in specific in in uh areas like East Park, what it would take to push more water out the East Park. So, I think the funds were reallocated to um do system modeling and investigations into that.

Any other questions? One more thing. um a sidewalk replacement. Um under M same question I had about the uh street list. How did we select the sidewalks to be replaced? U by whom? I mean, who made the selections and uh are we applying any 7525 to any of these sidewalk replacements? Yeah, it may.

So, similar to similar to the selection for the paving, um sidewalks are handled pretty much the same way by Chris Breeding in our engineering department. um based off visual inspection and also um if a citizen calls in and requests for a section of sidewalk to be replaced, if the whole um if the whole section can be replaced or majority of the section, really what we try to do is get um get the most um the most uh the most efficiency out of our money. Um, so to to make a patch in one section in Ashlin and then make another patch, you know, 10 streets over, we don't really get a whole lot of sidewalks done because they have to take the cost of, you know, forming up the equipment, taking um from A to B. But if we can get sections um that are large in one area, um they form it up and it actually ends up being a cheaper cost for us so we can um do more sidewalks at one time. Um but that's also based off of visual inspection. Um the guys will go out and they'll drive um Ashlin or go off street view and they'll look for sidewalks that um don't meet ADA compliance and they especially um hone in on on school districts and you know walks to school and those types of things.

I believe this list was actually started prior to you coming back. Am I correct? Uh since this is be the third phase. Yes. I remember um one of his predecessors uh they they went around town and then they were uh different areas of the town looking at sidewalks and different conditions and stuff and compiling list. Think I think Darren Stafford actually started that that that list when he was here 327,000. We have 217 left.

Uh yes sir. And you know the summary while it it's good it doesn't really say what you know Blackburn Avenue is a big avenue runs from 6th Street all the way to 45th Street. Williams I mean all these are large you know it doesn't really pinpoint where this work's being done. Absolutely, sir. On uh future pay applications, we'll we'll hone in on the specifics of of where it's at on each street. And u again I don't know how much the 7525 or is being applied. Do you know?

Um I believe the 7525 is by I don't think it's getting used sir special. Yeah. which you know um the policyy's there for a reason. I mean it allows us to do a lot more sidewalk work if the owner of the property is contributing in some fashion to the work being done. Isn't that just for if the the resident is requesting it? I've heard that spin. I I never knew it to be the case. I'm asking. I don't know. No, I'm just saying we'll pull the ordinance and we'll send it out to to the commission so that I'm not sure I'll hand but we'll pull the actual ordinance and send it out. So you

that program has not been used in about seven years. Um Mr. just been doing sidewalks. They just been doing sidewalks. We've we've we budgeted some for this year 5,000. Michelle, do you recall previously uh before seven years? I wonder what the seven years had anything to do with. Something comes to my mind in terms of the seven years.

Um, but we do have it in the budget to start it again. We we have to do one. We used to have several people that actually applied. That might be something that might be something that we maybe put advertise on our Facebook page that is a program the city offers and get it started again. Thank you. That's all I could Could you check with our visitors there, Barry, before they leave? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Okay. All right. We have a first and a second. No further discussion. All in favor say I.

All opposed. All right. Let's move into our new business. Item A. First reading, approval of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, authorizing and directing the mayor to execute a contribution and aid construction agreement for electric distribution service between the city of Ashlin, Kentucky and Kentucky Power Company for the installation of electric distribution facilities at Delaware Street for the water booster station on Florida Street at a cost of $1,35354 the department of engineering. Some move. Second discussion.

This is to support a pump station that cost $1.5 million. Is that right? Yes, sir. That's correct. How many people are being served by that pump station or how many users? Um uh you have a clue? I'll uh ballpark say there's close to 10 houses, but I'll I I'll get a definite answer and I'll I'll shoot that back to you. I mean, that's a pretty sizable amount of money for the number of users. I was just curious. Yes, sir.

All right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Item B, first reading and approval of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, authorizing and approving change order number one between the city of Ashlin, Kentucky and southern Ohio trenching and excavating decreasing the amount of the contract for the power mills infrastructure project phase 4 by 50,24424 and increasing the contract by 155 days for the department of engineering. So move second discussion. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Item C.

First reading and approval of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky authorizing and directing the mayor to execute an agreement between the city of Ashlin, Kentucky and Advantage Plus Realy LLC for the purchase of property located at 1540 Carter Avenue by the city of Ashland in the amount of $175,000 and authorizing the mayor to execute any and all documents associated with andor necessary to complete said purchase of real property. So moved second discussion. Excited to see a potentiality for a farmers market and it's going to cover this for years to get rid of an eyesore. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Show my abstension. I'm an adjacent property owner. I don't think I

Okay. All right. You got that? All right. Yeah. All right. Item D. First reading an approval of an ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, authorizing and directing the mayor to execute an agreement between the city of Ashlin, Kentucky and Mytown TV to record, broadcast, and post meetings of the Ashlin City Commission for a period of one year in the amount of $12,000. So move second. Discussion. All in favor say I. I. All right. Item E,

reading an adoption of municipal order entitled a municipal order of the city of Ashlin, Kentucky, authorizing the Ashlin Police Department to apply for membership in the Bluegrass and Central Kentucky Unified Police Protection System backups and if approved, authorizing the mayor and chief of police to execute an interlocal agreement andor any other documents authorizing the participation of the Ashlin Police Department in the Bluegrass and Central Kentucky Unified Police Protection. protection system backups. So moved. Second.

Second. Chief, I you know, um, can you explain us just a little bit more? I mean, I've the jurisdiction all the way into the blueg grass of central and Yes, sir. Uh, this program's been in place since about 2014. It started with a uh a few central Kentucky agencies uh in in around Scott County uh in those particular counties around Lexington and felt need that they needed to support each other maybe in high uh high visibility events or strategic activities or just working cases where they're all close together. um in the initial uh plan uh we looked at it and it just did not benefit us at that point in time. Years later, as our progression has occurred uh through investigations, task forces, and things of that nature, we're pretty much now um we're we're the agency on the eastern uh side of the state. Uh this allows us and how we're aligned our area of operation with our task forces and activities going on. This is more conducive to uh us participating in this along with um if there's a tragedy or weather event or whatever, we can move right into place without asking for for permission for mutual aid. the the the agreement that we're signing off on is agencies that are already pre-planned, pre-desated who they can call and come straight in to help and vice versa. Um, this also allows our officers to go to other locations. Uh, as this program has evolved more eastern uh side of the state, it allows us to have jurisdiction

in other locations. It's a little bit different than the fire department where they can just go uh we have to take our color of law or our authority with us. So this is what gets rid of some of those formalities. Gotcha. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Any other questions? All in favor say I. All right. All opposed. All right. Um I'm going to switch this around if you don't mind. I think we probably should go into our executive session before the budget session. That will be done on this side of the room and can move to the next. Uh so I'd make a have a motion to go into an executive session to discuss possible litigation. So move

uh also property acquisition. Oh, probably.

Okay. All right. And property acquisition. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. All right. We shall return. Here we are. Heat. Heat.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey.

Here we are. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. you. Here

we are.

Heat. Heat. Here we are.

Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat.

Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Here we go.

Heat. Heat.

Here we are. Here we are.

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Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat up here.

Heat. Heat. Here we go.

Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. We're back in the from our executive session and there was no action taken and I think Mr. Wheeler, you have an additional item.

Uh yes, mayor. um request consideration that a motion be made uh to authorize and direct the mayor to submit a grant application uh in the amount of $1.5 million to uh support property acquisition. So move second discussion. All in favor say I. All opposed. Thank you. We'll get that out. Thank you. Yes, sir. All right. Uh, so we'll move into our budget session and I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Beach.

Um, during the original budget, we said that we would um offer AIM to come in and speak on dues in publications in the general fund. And the list of those are on page six.

Sorry. Sorry. Adam, would you like to speak on behalf of Ashley Mission? Yes.

Okay. On behalf of Ash motion, just want to say thank you all for having us here and let me talk. Um, currently right now in our current bud current budget we have, we are set up to go through towards um the first two first Fridays of this year of the uh the May and June one. So, um, we kind of now been backed up after we receiving funding a couple years ago. And so I was here request um $70,000 make it for that year and for this current year in order to continue providing events for the for downtown Ashley they um the contribution is normally 35,000. Um I Ashlin um visit AKY was going to do the events but their board voted for them not to participate and AIM is going to take over the events. So I would suggest to put this money in contingency to allow you all time to give us a project budget on which events you're going to do to show where the money is being spent.

Yeah. So that's the problem that that we've got. We we don't have any um idea of where the money goes, you know, no budget, no explanation, you know, that's what we need. Okay. If you can get that to us before our next commission meeting, um we can uh give it to the board for consideration. And u where would you like that dropped off or sent? If you can send you send everything to me and if you have any questions feel free to call me and we'll work through that's what I did with Celeste to come up with what events are going to be done and the approximate cost of each. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it doesn't need to be elaborate just um

just an explanation where where it goes where the money goes being spent on exactly. Yeah. Right. Seems like a fair ask. Yes. I think yeah fair. So when we do the budget ordinance, we'll have that money in contingency and then you all can make the consideration of, you know, how much you want to give. Well, with that being said, can we visit visit AKY or revisit visit AKY and look at their proposal? So her proposal, as far as I knew, was to provide the events and if she had any special events, she was going to come to you all. Okay. And we can take those on the individual circumstances. Yes.

The December proposal that um I submitted was for things like infinity pawn like events that we had last week. Any kind of um conference or conventions. That's kind of what that was broken down into. We had had a prior, you know, agreement that AIM would subcontract visit action to do the events. My board voted on us being able to go strictly into just tourism, especially since what happened last week was so amazingly great and knowing that we're able to go out and sell that to the rest of the world and bring them in and bring everybody else's dollars in. That's the the long and the short of of why. Can you also submit to the board any special events that you want to do? I know you do not have the payroll cost now since you're not doing this event. So what what you gave me at the 120,000 has obviously changed,

right? 100%. And I do have a a as much as I don't want to lose her, this one won't be with me anymore. So, you know, there's only two of us going to be in the office now, which that also kind of ties up what we can and can't do to make sure that we're able to to get out and do what's needed and go to our marketing colleges and trade shows. So, I'll I'll submit and go ahead and readjust based upon what we're looking at now and submit that. I can do that tomorrow. Who's on the board of Ashley Motion? Currently, it is me, Amanda Clark, Ashley Layman, Jeremy Shfield, and uh David Turner.

Thanks. Let me ask you this. We what historically we've given Ashley a motion what every year? 35,000. Uh, have we not voted to give them 35,000 the previous year? Was it not okay? It was okay. They've received half of their allocation right now. I don't think they've made any requests for their allocation. So, we if we okay the 35, we we you have okay 35, but we have no information what they're doing with the 35. It was voted in last year. Yes. Okay. But when you all vote in the contributions, the agency sends us a letter and saying that they are they want their contribution.

Okay. So, they're still out 17,500 roughly. Yes. Something like that. If if that's if we're looking at right at half or something. Okay. And for them to request that, they would just need to submit a Yes. to submit a request request for a and you know something to show us what they've spent this money on. If that's the case, then would you still you wouldn't need the $35,000 from previous year. Correct. That's currently we're still um we're still paying off things from that previous year. Um so current that's what we were hoping for. Um that that's what I was consider ask for. Exactly. So, so the the 30 So that previous year is that for calendar year 2025.

Yes. No. No. That just meant that they previously year what they they got 35,000 in previous years. It was 22 or 23. I think you didn't get the money. I haven't looked at that. It was 23. Full disclosure. It was not a year that I was actually here. So Okay. Okay. and and the events that you're still or the things you're still paying off. I mean, we have no information whatsoever what you all have ever spent the money on. Okay. So, something itemized essentially of like where this went housing. Yes. Which I can do. I mean, that's something that and what the remaining monies are going to be used for.

Okay. uh currently remaining in the account is um $7,79544 with 5,000 was given to us by Fidelity to be allocated to America 250. Yeah. And I think there's a request from uh Visit Ashlin to purchase some stuff. Yeah. At this point. Yeah. We talked about it this morning being able to get it to me so we can go ahead and order Uncle Sam and the the materials for allias to get started. So, okay. Yeah. I don't think anybody on this board wants to see any downtown event prohib, you know, eliminated. Oh, yeah.

Or or go forward. You know, we want to see it grow go forward and continue to grow because they're successful events that bring thousands of people to our town. That's something that, you know, we still want to support and and make that happen. So, yeah, I will be as cooperative as possible to on my end to make sure they happen, too. Well, I'd encourage you, you know, moving forward to have have presentation here at the meetings, you know. Awesome. Commission meetings and you don't have to come to every one, but if you maybe come once a quarter and give us an update of what's going on so we'll know. Just know when here's where things are going, here's where they're heading, here's where we're at. Accountability. Absolutely. Charlie is there. Very good. Excellent. Excellent. Celeste, who's on your board.

Um, so Manda, Jeremy Sutherland, um, Vicky Rain. Vicki was here with me earlier. She was she had to go back. Um, Katherine Lamp from foundational Lee Lro from and and um and Cara softly from the hotel. We have a another member that's Joe Abden. He restaurants, but he's not been there in a few months. So, we try to get back out. So, we do have a spot for that um for restaurant. Can you repeat it for

who did you say from restaurants? We don't. Yeah, we had Joe Ad who we had had come back in December and he hasn't been back since. So I'm not sure. He was representing hotels and motel. Yes. Oh, he wasn't representing because he replaced uh Whitney Low and Michael Miller and Sergio Garcia. Okay. Sergio was wasn't he restaurant? I thought Michael because if you don't have a hotel motel association or restaurant association, that's why they're all just kind of dispersed and you'll see everybody's name on here and what they represent.

Okay. So well well we just gave you Susan was very good to get this ready for us. This is I believe after last budget session where we discussed this. This is the ordinance from 2019 where it was established statutes behind it and then the information that we have on uh the history of the members as appointed that way you can yeah review it. I definitely think if if we if there's possibility we should have a commissioner or mayor representative on there.

I know that there are KRS statute where there's certain things that we do have to have. So Har represents hotels because she's the sales director of the Delta and we I thought we needed the restaurant piece. Um that's

so right right now just to kind of outline what we've got. We've got um representing Ashlin Hotels and Motel is Lee Ladro and uh her her term is from March 14th, 2024 to March 13, 2027. Um we've got Jeremy Sutherland representing Ashlin Hotels and Motel. His term shows August 27, 2023 through August 26, 2026. We've got um Joe

Joe Abden fulfilling an unexpired term from Michael Miller that expires on August 26, 2026 representing Ashlin Hotels and Motel. Um we've got Katherine Lamp. Uh her she is representing Ashlin restaurants. August 27th, 2024. Expiring August 26, 2027. Amanda Clark representing Alash Ashlin Alliance Chamber of Commerce. She's 2027. Well, she's 20 uh 826 of 2027.

826 2027. Okay. Um Cara Hedrickk uh at she is an atlarge representative. Um, her term expires August 26. She's expired and so is Vicky Ram. She's expired. And then Vicky Ramy is also at large and she is expired. There's only allowed to be two at large, which is not a resident of Ashley, I think, is how it is. So that's why even though Cara Hedrik is hotel, that's why she has to go over to the atlarge because she doesn't live in

as then the statute behind it gives you the parameters of where the the appointees go. Thank you for this. I honestly thought that was representing the hotel and like this was, you know, that was the thought that I had that Joe was the representative for restaurants. So, I really appreciate this 100%. So, you need to be one, right?

You need new members on the board. You've got two atlarge members that we show having expired terms. Okay. Vicky Ramy and who? Okay.

Let me see if I can get that in here. We also have representatives from summer motion that are here. dynamic duo. If if you go over to the ARPA fund, this is where those dues in the contributions I'm 14 flipping 14. Go girl.

We have proposed to give poke landing days 45,000 um and summer motion 70,000. It is in the arpith fund because we are doing it out of our ARPA interest income. Uh and the 70,000 is an increase from their usual contribution, but they're going to do some additional uh things with America 250. It's an increase, right? It is an increase. Yes. Is that number what y'all are looking for? There you go. caught her. Well, so

I don't think there's any doubt we're going to do that. No, we're going to do it. You got Thank you for all you all do. Thank you all. A lot of work ahead of you. We're we're good on all these. Uh yes. Yeah, it's going to be a while before we finalize the the budget, but it'll be actually it will be in the next budget anyway. So, it'll be like getting the check July 1 or 30. We always make sure they have a July one. Yeah, we're best friends on my birthday. Somebody's here always at city building. All right. Very good. thing. You don't need to hang around.

All right. Uh, we we last ended with the um before we started coming, guys. Thank you. Thank you. The Ashlin bus system on page 23. Robin's going to go over the Ashlin bus system for us. The Ashlin bus system accounts for the city's transportation system 23 which is federally subsidized by the Federal Transit Administration. Give him a second to flip there.

Uh, revenues are budgeted at 1.7 million with general fund funding 683,000. Expenses 1.7 million. Budgeted our salaries and benefits for 1.3 million, operating expenses at 352,000. We're expecting to receive $990,000 in grants. That wrership income, is that increased? Wrership increased from fiscal year 24 by 16%. And miles driven by 24%.

Okay. We're going to try to do some more marketing and stuff for the market. Now, I think that's that's a true track and see how if that is working, if that works. We do do that. Fair transit.

Yes, Erica has done a lot of in-house marketing for us. Um some finance team members have done some marketing and we're getting ready to do um a marketing campaign on the bus app and we're working on a paratransit app. Um we're doing a marketing campaign will be done on it and anformational thing hasn't even been sent the utility bills on paratransit to show our citizens that we do offer that service because I think that is you know not every understand that the city offers that service.

Well I think we have all these great programs and great services. We just I I don't think we're as good as we can be by getting that word out there and that telling city manager and Shel to you know let's let's do some marketing in in other places you know than besides Facebook and that kind of stuff. So with the bus system we we heavily we have strong customers and uses of it and we are in constant contact with them. Um, you know, when we had the bus app, we were we were like making phone calls to the directors of these agencies that are our larger users of the bus system.

Can somebody uh touch on the uh unrestricted phone balance 2.4 million? The negative 2.4 million has to do with the state unfunded pension. Um the accounting standards for that is in an enterprise fund which is like a business top fund that we have to put the our portion of the CRS debt on our books. That's why is it a negative fund balance but we're not obligated. We are not obligated for it. No for payment. Yeah. I just want to point that out since it was I appreciate it.

Could you turn to page 24? This is the city's recreation operating fund which accounts for the city's park systems. Revenues are budgeted at 1.7 million with 1.649 million being transferred from the general fund. Expenses at Central Park is 1 million. Dawson Pool 229,000 Sports Park 183,000 and other recreation areas 100 252,000 with salaries and benefits being 1 million operating expenses 578,000 and capital outlay for 51,000. This is uh for a new truck to replace a vehicle that was totaled last year. Sean, I was going to ask you on that. Are is is your department is parks and cemetery, are they up to speed with the vehicles and equipment that they need?

We're probably uh vehicle.

Okay. That was very definitely I'd also point out the same situation applies to this negative fund balance is because and it is a the reason we we show it as a negative is we have a fund a separate fund from the general fund. But I mean this is basically a general fund expense. It is. Yes. I mean it just we're it's an accounting uh deal. Yes. And it has to be accounted there because we do have the revenues and the sales in Dawson pool. I mean we don't expect it ever to make no be on a positive side.

This is a contribution by the board to the citizens to provide parks and recreation. Right. Right. Are we still utilizing the prisoners for grass cutting at the cemetery? There's a problem. It has been very helpful. We're very appreciative of it. uh we've got this early in the season though we're able to take care of it. Okay. And as we get into some of those moments where we have like some promotion and some of the bigger events going on, it's hard for us to get staff. So we may ask for some assistance, you know, from time to time for them because that is going to be at this point we're

okay. Well, I spoke with Jaylor Hensley yesterday. Uh they are uh been cut quite a bit of employees. Gotcha. So at first they weren't going to be able to do the cemetery this year. Now he feels am pretty sure that he can provide all the services that we need. Okay. Thank you very much. I was just just curious. And we also at least I raised the issue of of incorporating the cemetery back into the parks. Is that a legitimate consideration?

Are you talking about the boards? Yeah. Well, I mean the whole thing, the financing. I mean, it it was under the park system and it was pulled out. They It's under the park system as far as the department. It's the department of parks and and that's never changed accounting wise. It's always been separate and it has to be separate. Yes. Yes. But but structurally who's over and stuff like that, it is under under the park system. In the park system. Yes.

And something we're looking at seeking in the recreation fund is a um a grant to see if we can get some money to provide lighting at AK Steel. We're we are looking we're doing just some preliminary research on that and hopefully we'll have some better information to bring back to you on a couple months.

Okay. Thank you. If you turn to page 25, this is the Ashen Cemetery Fund which accounts for the Ashen City Cemetery,000 expenses at 249,000. Salaries and benefits 183,000 operating expenses 66,000. And we've advertised the cemetery. Yes. If if you look into the lobby right now, she she has information. She's done it on Facebook and we've looked at other avenues also to do that.

So, we're and I know we've talked about expansion and it's been mentioned about expansion. Well, it's on the property that we own. Opening up sections that are owned by the city that are over by the mausoleum. moving forward with that. Yes, we we have and we've done it all with our own city staff and it just keeps um a greater inventory for the cemetery staff to show. Okay. I'll say two years ago this uh the deficit was $300,000. Yes.

We uh they buried 300 people over a year. So we lost $1,000 on each burial. Now we've cut it down to we're losing 58. That to me raise the rates that we should have raised a long time ago. Yeah. What is it? Looks like we got a million dollars in unrestrict unrestricted fund balance. What's that? Uh it is the inventory. Oh, the the graves unsold graves. We actually at audit time we count how many we have unsold and we put a value on the grave depending on where it is. We also count how many we have in sold unsold in the mausoleum. Put a value on it and that's put on our books that you can find. Okay, good deal.

Here's going back to the board. So, give you all a copy. This is what I have uh trying to work from. I told you we're trying to straighten out all the boards. Oh, the the existing. So, the departments have to be separate separate accounting. But we can can we combine the cemetery and park board? We can combine the board. Yes, combine the board. Yeah, it's the department of parks, recreation, cemetery. And I checked with Sean. Sean was fine with that.

Okay. Uh the parking garage fund that accounts for the parking garage located at 17th and Carter. Uh there's no budgeted revenues this year. Expenses $124,000. Salaries and benefits 67,000 operating expenses 56,000. And of those operating expenses, 83% of it is the maintenance on the elevator, utilities, and insurance. So, it's operating at bare, but it's not making any sense.

On the on the um the elevator, have we got it really up to date? I mean, do we don't Okay. Yeah, it's required a lot to have it up to date. We needed inspections, but it's not been remodeled. What? It's not been totally redone. That will cost you all hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's You probably have quote. Is it analog or is not? Is it me? Did we get the people that were stuck in it the other day? Yes, sir.

Are they still call the maintenance company that comes in and goes in the after hours? Mr. referring to those are emergency callouts. So we are having significant issues with both elevators. They are getting maintained anymore. Well, maybe next year we look at redoing them and see what kind of at least we can get a price on it. Is there a grant or something? See what we're up against. No grants that I'm aware of for elevators.

Elevator grant. I'm going to ask a real silly question, but this is what I understand it to be. Those bank employees who rent spaces in that parking garage, the revenue goes to the bank. Is that correct? I think the bank provides it for their employees, but the people that rent from the bank office suites that the parking is included in their rental agreement, the bank still keeps it. Yes. And they keep just the first floor, right? No, it's like the first in the bank. like

Yeah. So, and it is they keep the money through the life of the lease that they have with particular people in the bank. So, if their lease is 10 years, they keep the money for 10 years. Can we advertise those spots? Yeah, we have. They're they're free. I mean, I think we've rented a space since we've had it, haven't we? Can we advertise those or offer those to people? Well, we were going to put a a a banner up that said free parking. You know, that was my understanding. That that is my note that it still want free parking to encourage people to come downtown. I'd have to Well, it helps alleviate the problems of the two parking. Yeah.

So, could we find out if those, you know, you go first, second, third floor, whatever, u those spots are reserved. Can we find out if those individuals are still reserve? Oh, it's in the contract that the bank gets to pick what spots they reserve. Maybe what we ought to do is get a list from them of the current spaces rent. Okay. Because at one time that restaurant was going to, you know, their their workers were going to rent so many. No, it was South when uh when it was going the building the chimney

the the Yeah, they were going to rent spaces over there. But now that's kind of on hold right now. But the new restaurant. Well, since parking's free, why would they rent? Well, I mean, yeah, to reserve a spot, right? To reserve a spot. And we have significantly reduced the operating expenses in the garage. We used to have two full-time workers over there. You got you got one now, right? It's even

Sean, are they working there part-time, I think, or even from that now we're just doing patrols with the Bruce working downtown just to take a look through the bathroom. So, if we don't have anybody over all the time, why why do we have $67,000 in salary? It's salary for the person that working over there part-time. That's what they budgeted. Okay. Well, as part should we not split that salary? We we actually account for it in other places. In other places, we actually account for it where they actually work. So, they put on their time sheet when they work where. Are they park employees or street employees?

Yeah. Okay, page 12 27 is the Ashlin Conference Center. It has revenues 660,000 that is revenue on the CDs that we have for the bond issue and the um state entitlement. The conference center is 3.7. That's in addition to the 25 budgeted in the conference center grant fund. Uh unrestricted fund balance is 9.6 million. That's your bond issue. We're have debt payments of 516 375 when we get the center up and running. Capital outlay is 3.2 million.

What are we earning in interest income off the time deposit? It's been anywhere from 3.7 to 5%. Um, it was 5% when we first did it. Uh, the banks kept it at that way, but when interest rates decreased, we still have one at 4.75 and then we have one I think is at 3.75. What What is the number in terms of actual income? Uh, income I project be close to a million dollars. And this year is just a capital construction. Correct. On all of the uh deposits relating to the conference center.

Yes.

And that was included in the capital staff when we figured up the $35 million expense to build it. Um this year is just for construction. That's one reason we want to get our reserves up and running is we're worried about once it opens the actual operational cost. So, in our long-term planning, that operational cost will take money from our general fund because in the first three years, they said it it definitely would be a loss. So, we're planning for our general fund to have to fund this. So that's always in the back of our minds when we did the budget and plan the budget and we're planning our finances. We get over to the Paramount Arts Center. This is our first year. It's the next fund on page 28. This is you all are contributing 350,000 towards operations in this fiscal year. It has revenues projected at 3.485 million, expenses of 3.485 million with a general fund transfer 324,000.

Will we have uh will our audit firm have access to audit members? Uh we they need this is something that we need to probably talk about here. You want to carry on? I think they are wanting to do their own accounting work possibly. Is it the contract for them to do their own accounting work? We pay the revenues. We pay the insurance. That makes me a little uncomfortable. Well, I like the old saying trust but verify. Well, that's I would agree to that. I I've talked to both Tony and Andrew about um working out something where we can verify the income and expenses.

I think that's a must. Yes, I do. Also, so the we purchased this we're like some of their expenses and I'll give this to you. This is what um HR Cook provided. Excuse finances little notes and scribbles because this is what we were trying to Thank you.

This is the budget they presented to us. The difference in it is um stuff that the city pays for ourselves. I do not like the hybrid account system. Um, just on that point, I've got a copy of the the management contract here. Um what we did work out when we discussed the contract terms on page four of that contract 6.5 reporting of monthly financial subcontractor through AP3 shall submit monthly financial statements to the city refle reflecting the use of the operating account funds on before the 15th of each month that was made part of the contract when it was negotiated.

Has that been consistent? It has not been never received anything other than we have we have received um I think we received January fe I'll have to go back and look exactly but I do think we received January February and March at the end of March but no the first couple months were not consistent and seeing a financial and a piece of paper and knowing what the actual purpose of the fence is is what we want to see. Do we want to see the backup to these expenses because it's the city's money? Certainly agree. Do we know if the accounting is the accounting done on on site or is it done somewhere else?

I do not believe that they have any accountants employed on site. That's a that's just uh an assumption more than anything based on the job descriptions that I've seen posted. And if you look at second page, it it it reinforces Andrew's assumptions because there is no um accountant. There's a ticket office operations manager. Uh but there is no accountant in the budget there. So I say their accounting cost are part of some of their line items that they present on the first budget under general and administrative expense. So, we have to approve this. Is this part of our

The agreement says you all will approve the budget. Yes. And the budget is being budgeted in the city budget. What they spend plus what we spend. Because I think everything needs to run through the city's budget and audit. So, is is this the total cost?

Total cost. Yes. That's what we pay for. And that's what they pay for or proposed to pay for. We're paying all the utility bills, all the phone bills, all the internet bills, and we're paying some IT cost, and we are paying the utilities and insuranceances. We have property and general liability insurance on ourselves from the building. I would just encourage staff to look at, you know, potentially ways that we can uh work together to audit some of these funds to make sure that they're in compliance with what they need to be uh so we can actually track where, you know, our taxpayer dollars are going. Yes.

Any questions? I know this is new to all of us. Take a little bit of digestion. unrestricted fund balance that that's probably the transfer where we purchased it. That'll wash out at the end of this year to zero.

Okay. And when we do move forward with the um request for proposals for naming rights, that will be a line item under this account. Yes, they uh we didn't budget this year because this is the parame conference center. They're going to do naming rights at the par. Yeah, it it'll all kind of be on one thing, but we can divide it. I got you. you know, then um since there was nothing, I budgeted conservatively until you all have something signed. Um it's budgeted as zero. Okay. I can't imagine calling the Paramount anything else than the Paramount.

Well, I think it's not the the naming rights would be like the the stage or the lobby, concession stand like that. Yeah. Yeah. And even in the naming rights of the Yeah. Yeah, the conference center. We may not want to name the, you know, the Ashlin conference center. We may want to keep it. And I'm talking about the the lobby, the ball rooms, uh the individual breakout rooms. Those are all potential. I mean, I think there's a lot of u potential for income on that to be used for operations.

Yes. that will offset uh any any direct taxpayer money that uh would be needed to to fund the facilities. A couple of uh possible participants and they don't bat an eye on the the higher one. So, we'll have to whatever happened to the naming rights that they already had before we took it over. I think they were just trying to do that. They never got in. They never got into it. You're talking about pack. Yeah. Yeah.

And there is some money. Um Andrew's been working with the different um charitable foundations that put on the festival trees. There is some money in here if you all chose to sponsor the festival of trees and get them started back up. Yeah, I definitely want to. Yeah, we we definitely want to do that because that was one of HR's concerns and Andrew got on the phone with the people that did that and we are going to meet with them. But there is funding in there for that. Good.

All right. Page 29. is the capital purchase improvement fund. The capital purchase improvement fund we have other financing sources of 9.69 million and the other financing sources don't do include a bond issue to uh fund the public services building. If you go to page 30, this is the proposed capital projects. When we are going out and seeking debt, we looked past the public works building to look at the needs citywide um to make sure that, you know, being proactive. We're trying to plan out our capital and things needed. There's a lot of work that has not been done in this building for years. that if we bond money for a public works building we would like to tackle which is our HVA system. Our HBA system is outdated. It does not meet its needs and the last time that we had it inspected. Uh there was even mold in it.

Replace the windows in this building at 125,000. A lot of them are broken. Have not been replaced in a long time. We we'd like to tackle that project, too. Are all of the uh city building improvements in the general government 879,000? Yes. Mhm. Good. The new public's work is building this was initial estimate of 7 million. We don't know what it will cost at this point, but if it's less, we will bond less or we won't use the bond money and give it back. That is basically a placeholder. Yes. Yes. We have a dump truck at 115,000

and we have a for the street department and then we have a packer truck for the sanitation department at 280. What about that dump truck? Is that part of the team that you all um that is for the water. That's a separate dump truck. Oh, okay. I was actually um flipping to the detailed thing we had in the black clip this evening. This is this is capital for the general fund. It's for police, fire, public services, streets,

uh the dump truck is an F4 uh 550 and they will not only use it for um repairs they do during the summer. They're actually going to put a new snow plow because they need a new truck um for snow removal. Also, the the also when we do the new public works building, we've we've ran out of room at the police department. We have 350,000. And when the police department was built, it was built to be expandable over the back section of it and to put a second floor on there to give them more room. I think a lot of the criminal investigations where we have a lot of equipment,

how how did we come up with $350,000? I think that was the number police. I think I think the amount was put in there as a result of getting the project started. I we didn't have a an exact amount or anything. We were trying to get engineering to give us some documentation, but uh uh I think you all put I think finance put the value in there. I'm not because I didn't have any figures.

I'm sure. So, we don't really know how much it gonna cost. Yeah, someone's I would have no clue. But what was what was the original cost of the police department? I'm just curious. 5.1 5.1 million. Well, square footage. I mean, you could kind of calculate based on somewhat on square footage. The part the part that we're talking about was removed from the project, right? So, um I don't have the original figures on what was removed is what we're trying to put back to what was originally designed. Well, you know, we might be lucky to do it at 350. That looks like a number.

Chief, what else with that expansion? What will that give you and your department? Well, uh we're running out of locker room area. Um, we're running out of room for our digital forensic area, examination area with more equipment that we're obtaining from from resources. So, um, increasing the size of our investigator staff. So, we're running out of room what was originally designed for only three or four people. uh it will give us room to move those personnel to that particular area and some uh the interview rooms and stuff.

You sketched out any schematic of it or uh I I had attached it to the uh plan that I submitted to to finance what it generally would look like in the footprint. Um, it would also expand the locker room, add additional uh restroom facilities, and it would also make create some storage space that we're running out of room. While you're standing there, you've got three patrol vehicles at $266,000. How many patrol vehicles do we have?

Um, it's laying right there. I had of mark cars. We have 58. And that is to replace three of those. Uh it would the plan was originally uh we have plan for 10 years replace two and three at a time during that period of time and this is still consistent with that period or that plan. Um, unfortunately two of those cars that will be replacing our total revolver collision. I'm sorry, but when you say two or three at a time over how many over 10 years? It was 10. It was 10 years when we initiated the assignment.

I mean, even if you figured three a year, that just gets to 30, there's still 28 vehicles left. Well, the the uh assigned vehicle program extended the life of these vehicles and we're trying to get 10 or 11 years out of these vehicles before we move them into another part of the city to use. Uh we have been doing that slowly with some investigative vehicles out of our fleet. And with the three that you have in here to buy, that would eliminate three that we have. Is that it? It would probably eliminate one because we have two two right now that are sitting at their uh that are not repairable from collision.

Two of those we've probably got in church proceeds on. That's right. That they're out of thing that we're replacing. Okay. We're we're in litigation. When you say you're out of locker room, so you talking about the where the guys change clothes? Yes. Well, let me ask I'm confused then the take-home fleet. When the guys come to work, they're not in uniform when they're driving the vehicles. They're inadequate wear. Some come to work straight in uniform. Some come to get dressed to have Are they subject to call as soon as you leave the house? As soon as they call out on the radio and get in that car, they are on duty, but not necessarily in uniform.

Uniform. Correct. And we're they're not they're not supposed to wear uh extremely casual. They're not supposed they're supposed to be uh closed properly. And chief, for folks that don't know, you know, we have a parking lot across the street over here on Greenup and it looks like it's full of of cruisers. People may think, why do we need more cruisers? Those cruisers are for folks that live beyond the take-home travel radius. Am I correct? Plus, some may not have uh room at their home or their property for uh their their cruisers. That's correct. And then there are some where we're not full staff. Those vehicles are waiting to be assigned and they're also used as backup vehicles to when some are in repair for a lengthy period.

How close are we to being fully staffed? Uh we're we're person we're five personnel shorter. How many vehicles end up being parked over here on a nightly basis? Uh it it varies. Just a ballpark. uh average because of between the pool cars and unassigned vehicles and the officers just that just let's just use the assigned vehicles. How many in assigned? Yeah, probably around six or eight. I counted nine the other day

and and commissioner's right. We have we have personnel that don't have room at their home. Some choose not to take them home and some go beyond the distance. Do you have any number in your head in terms of the cost increase in cost of insurance to the department with the take-home vehicle? Um I think the original plan under that fleet plan. It was determined from a fleet size. I think the cost was over a certain amount of vehicles. I don't I don't have that. I just curious those numbers. It wasn't per vehicle. I believe it's per so somebody in a fleet. Has that the takehome has it eliminated the um uh the wear and tear on the cruisers?

We we've got some vehicles that were pretty much we thought were dead in the water. We still have them when we implemented them. The mileage completely went down and they're being still being driven today. um cars that we initiated in the very initial purchase um are nowhere near the mileage that we anticipated uh when we were only had 10 or 12 cruisers in our fleet. I mean, we're getting full life uh factory warranty out of these now.

Um the wear and tear on them is completely opposite of what we what we've dealt with in the past years ago. And pretty much uh about pretty much the same fuel consumption and tire use. It's just the vehicles are not driven 24/7 365. And we also staff or we also provide vehicles for our school resource officers. That's correct. So are you saying we actually save money by going to the home fleet?

Uh exactly. it I'll just say the initial expense was the was the biggest cost when Mr. Grab and I found opportunity to to initiate it a few years back. Um it was it was the perfect storm. Funding was available. Now it was time because the vehicles cost so much the vehicles cost so much to be equipped. The technology that goes into it.

It no longer was a disposable vehicle. It was a capital investment. So you have to make these vehicles last a long time. Well, I for one would like to see a little um u number that you can define maybe a little better than $350,000 on the on the building improvement. I mean, I'd like you to see you work up some numbers. Okay. That we would we could rely on to some degree. Is that fair? That's fair.

Yeah. Um, any more questions with the police department? Thanks. The next uh is a storage facility at the drill tower with the $2 million grants that the fire department has received in equipment. They've ran out of storage room to do these. The chief um proposes to do a storage facility at the drill tower to uh do some trucks and drive equipment there.

Well, doing that and having the equipment um is having the equipment not at your direct disposable that going to reduce I mean what are you going to put over there? Well, we were looking at putting over there and to address how the cost was obtained. It was talking to several contractors and explaining to them what we were looking for. Pretty much assigned a cost per square foot.

What size ve what size? about 125x 50 or 60 um in in size which would produce about seven six base spaces and also the ability to build rough storage racks around the uh exterior walls. We were looking at putting only two bay doors on it to have an area where you could drive through the building over the road and have areas where the six bays would be. the things that we're looking to store in there. We have, of course, our hazmat trailer, our collapse rescue trailer that we just recently got with the grant. Um, we have more than likely looking at putting our boats over there. Our dive trailer would go over there to free up a lot more space at Central St.

This would be the the equipment that would be used on a less frequent basis. That is correct, sir. That is taking up space in your stations. That is correct. And that's probably closer to the river. It is close. I mean, yes. Uh due to the fact of what is stored in some of the trailers, we would have to provide a means of controlling the environment inside the building. But as far as putting a restroom in it or water facilities, I don't think that we would need that with the drill tower next door. Is there water drill tower? Yes. And there's a restroom in the

there. Yes, there's two of them. There's a classroom in there. We use that space quite often. Chief, would this also provide additional room for potential training if need be? Yes, within Central Station, definitely. And it would also place all of our equipment in one area that could be accessed such as for maintenance at different times of the month. We have to do inventory on that equipment. We kind of put it in one location uh to be done because we've got some stuff kind of spread out that we would consolidate together. Okay. It would have electricity in the building. Yes. Yes. We would have to have electricity along with probably some kind of heating and cooling system

to control the environment. We figured also with the 100 foot um the way we had it configured on the on the plot uh where we could take our aerial truck and pull it through the building in case we needed to have shelter for dealing with any maintenance issues on that or extending the aerial ladder out to do maintenance on it underneath the roof. And the last um part of this budget

is the payment on one of the aerial platform trucks. What uh how much capital expense was there last year in the general fund? Just ballpark if you remember. I mean is this a representative number? It's high because of all the capital that we're doing with the public works building and the two other buildings and the maintenance that we're doing on this building last year was uh 1.2 2 million. Oh wow. But just a little bit more. But and that that includes pavement on a firet truck.

I got you. when when we talked about um doing these items and capital planning, we are trying to plan and like the fire trucks, we've made payments on them in three years or set aside the money and fund balance so that we don't have we've done those three firet trucks without assuming any debt.

Chief, when when are we expecting the arrival of a new aerial truck? New aerial truck was originally slated to be delivered in August of this year. It looks like now it's going to be on towards October time frame. Um they've not ran into any snags, but production has slowed in some areas and and they always get down to this point have to adjust that date plus or minus 60 to 90 days. Is the set from corporation still on strike? I I believe technically yes, but I was also informed that most of the workers have come back to work.

So, do we have a plan for the existing aerial once we receive the new one? We put it in reserve. It is going to be in reserve and it will be housed at station two. Uh they have a base. We'll have to to move a reserve truck out of there, but we plan on keeping it for as long as we can until it becomes a mechanical burden to have in reserve because, as you know, we ran into several cases over the last two or three years where we've had that piece of equipment down. We had to borrow a piece of equipment from a neighboring department that was gracious enough to give us that. Yeah, that's great.

Thank you. Is there any areas over the the budget you would like us to retouch on or we're capital intensive on on this and and need to be when you look at investments of any company or anything, you also have to have investments in your people and we have not done that to to much degree. I mean, we take care of them in a lot of different ways. Shouldn't say that, but um

Well, are there areas that, and I had this conversation with Miss Ve earlier, are there areas that we uh may be able to shave a little bit in order to look at potentially uh offering something to our employees. you know, I know they haven't had a cost of living adjustment, not so much a raise, but a cost of living adjustment or CPI within the last, you know, couple years or year or so. Is there areas that we might be able to shave a little bit off uh to to look at maybe doing something like that?

There there are still areas that I think that we can combine jobs and what things people do in personnel. My staff is certainly doing it. They've done it every day for two years. But finance stood up and were a leadership of that. There's other departments that have also done the same. I don't want to do that. No more.

No. We don't want to do you say we don't want to do that. Make making people do more duties. They're not no one's losing their job. That's not what we're saying. We're asking people to do more duties than they are currently doing. You know, I think that one one suggestion I had was, you know, we're pretty heavy on um paving near close $1.9 million. Would there would we be able to maybe shave there and then shave somewhere else and you know just shave a few areas?

If you shave paving, you'll have to do it in future years. The only gift that keeps on giving is shaving personnel. Um if you shave paving, you're going to have to make that paving in future years. But we're not talking about cutting anybody's job. We're talking about people having to do more work. We've got options. I also an option paving. You're going to have some reduce the amount of the uh stabilization fund. It's just how you want to slice up the pine composition of it.

Um to give you a little bit of a reference point, a I think a 1% cola is salary benefits. uh citywide about 378 is that yes about 378 and you have a possibility of 120,000 in contribution dues um

because those were significantly double and visit AK has never asked for anything so that's 120 and then AIM has asked for 35 additional so if you give them additional to do downtown activities even say you give them There's $120,000 savings there. It could be uh either one of them.

I wouldn't mind seeing you knock off $250,000 in paving and 50,000 from the sidewalks. I think uh the uh and give each employee $750. the CPI for the previous or ending ending December. Um, don't quote me, but I think it's 2.9 2.9 that's where it was. Yeah. Uh, I would like to give employees that that's just, you know, just keeping the purchasing power employees the same.

Yeah. I know we've asked a lot of our staff uh over the last, you know, since we've been office, 16 months now. You know, we've we've looked at ways to save money. We've combined jobs. I I don't think that we um I think we can probably still look at some of that um in certain areas that have been vacant for a long time. Uh but I think we also need to look at, you know, everything's gone up, inflation's been significant. You know, gases are $4 a gallon.

You know, when our folks are doing more, you know, I think we uh we need to consider that. Um you know, they're they're cost of living in that, you know, and and I say that, but we also do have a lot of folks here that make a whole lot of money. And I think that will it needs to be addressed eventually through attrition as well. So I think there's a lot of areas of and avenues that we need to look at our pay and our compensation. Well, I'll tell you one thing. Two years ago, the mayor and I were sitting out there at the time and I think I can quote you. You said you were talking about the budget then. You said you were upside down $3 million. I haven't heard you say that this time. So that I'm proud of you.

That was our goal. And when you said that, I didn't see anybody batting an eye, but I was like, "Oh, God." Well, and then one more thing. I know we talked about that that economic development line item. Is that something that that I've missed in this budget or is that something we're going to create? We we've actually got money budgeted in both major funds. Okay. Okay. Um we it's what two and a half years that we projected we would be at 25% of operating. Yeah. If you look at page six I'm talking about for economic development itself.

Uh that was I'm not sure how that came up it was mentioned but I don't know what year it was but we did legally restrict a portion of the fund balance at that time of $2 million. We did not set aside $2 million cash into a separate checking account or savings account. That's what I understand was we did we did restrict a portion of the phone balance. That's what I voted on. Can can we create the the ordinance is just a restriction fund balance. I thought it was cash.

No. And we were never we didn't have the cash nor we were ever instructed to put the cash on again. Would the board support creating a fund for economic development? Well, where you going to get the money? I mean, that's Well, you all actually have the money we'll come up with. There's something that they're You all have an ordinance now. And it's not money that has to come out of our pocket. It's for example,

if I come in and I bring um $100,000 of payroll tax within jobs, you all have an ordinance where you could actually refund 50,000 of that or whatever you choose back to the company and it's not money out of a cash account with us. It's just reduced our revenue we get. You all have economic development tools in hand that does not require us setting aside cash in an account nor giving out cash.

We did that with AK Steel for years. When if they agreed to keep 500 jobs in Ashland, we gave them back 1.375% of their payroll tax to the company and the company used that to build equipment to keep these jobs in Ashland. That was money we did not get in our coffers, but it's not money that we had to save us out to our coffers. So almost like an abatement. Yes. Yes. thrown away. I personally like the idea of having a microenterprise loan or emergency

loan funds for companies or someone that might want to start up or will start up. You know, mom might talk about large amounts, but I think that would be a a tool in our tool belt. So,

and the perfect time to do it is we have about $250,000 of ARPA interest that has not been used and we can cut down some items there. we could set that aside an economic development loan revolving loan fund where they actually pay it back and you would have constant help to your businesses. food for food for thought and and a full disclosure. It's not something new we've had in the past and we've not been very good bankers just to be free. I mean, but in terms of payback and that kind of stuff,

so we probably need to bring this. Commissioner Martin has another obligation. So, we need to uh decide how we want to extend this or complete this. You know what I would suggest? We've we've got a two week break before we meet again. I've we've got two months before we have to finally adopt the ordinance. I've uh got a lot of stuff to digest that we've gone over. Yeah. I you know I just assume wait a little bit before but if somebody wants to keep it going now I'm I'm not keep in mind

possible I would I mean I'd like some direct especially on the co-as if we can if we're talking about that so we can go in and look at it and try to it changes every number in the budget we can go and meet with you guys and if you got questions give them a call and we're getting close oh yeah I'm I see what you When when would you when would the sooner you know the better if I get an idea so I can try to make it work for you guys is what I'm saying. I have auditors coming June so hope we have it done 14. No we've got six weeks or five weeks before the auditors come. The next regular meeting is May 14th. Yeah. Which is a good fit all. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, I want to commend finance and city manager on the work you've done. Done an excellent job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Outstanding job. I'm sure finance finance staff done a nice presentation. Department eds, everybody's contributed very well to the effort. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. All right. With that, we stand a journ. Thank you.