In addition to five percent raises for non-sworn city employees, the spending plan would bolster support for a number of public safety-related programs.
New this year is a "real-time intelligence center" that would loop in the city’s new license plate readers, traffic cameras, and video systems from businesses and individuals who volunteer to have their cameras included. Gorton said the integrated system would help law enforcement better solve crimes but assured residents it could not be used to monitor routine traffic violations.
"It can't be used for traffic tickets or red light running or anything like that," Gorton reassured residents. "Those things are not permitted in Kentucky by the state."
The spending plan would also begin the process for creating a new joint police and fire training center, double the staff of the city’s para-medicine program, and increase funding for the city’s main youth anti-violence program, One Lexington. Gorton credits One Lexington with helping bring down gun -related homicides among Lexington youth by 75 percent since 2021.
Funding for a new park in the Hamburg area is on the list, as well as $2 million to overhaul Phoenix Park.
The budget also revives long-running efforts to relocate or upgrade city hall, beginning with a study of how much space is needed.
"Whether it's this building remodeled and added on to, or another building downtown that we would have fitted up, or what it is, we don't know yet," she said. "We're keeping an open mind on that."
Gorton said the city can’t afford the ongoing maintenance costs associated with the current building, which was originally seen as a temporary location for city government back in the 1980s.
The budget contains no tax increases, and continues to wean the city off of federal American Rescue plan dollars.
"There is ARPA that is assisting with this budget, but we have been very intentional over the course of our ARPA funding to be phasing that out as we go," Lexington Finance Commissioner Erin Hensley explained. "We didn't want to create a dependence on it, where once that money was no longer available we had an insurmountable task of being able to cover those costs.
The budget now moves to the council, which will vote on their version in June and hit the books in July.
