Council To Vote On NBA Search Funds This Week

The Louisville Metro Council this week will vote on whether to spend an additional 22 thousand dollars to try to bring a professional basketball team to the city.Sixty thousand dollars from the current budget has gone to an attorney who has worked for the Kentucky Fair Board to research NBA prospects. The council will review how the money was spent this week, and on Thursday they will decide whether to allocate more money to the effort.Budget committee vice-chair Kelly Downard says unlike the initial investment, the 22 thousand would not come from the city budget. Rather, it will come from individual council members' discretionary funds."Those people may all drop out—I'm not one of them—if they see something that's unusual or they don't want to be part of. I'm going to guess that we'll get a report that says things are pretty good," he says.Downard says he expects to have a report from the Fair Board this week that details how the money was spent. Councilman Dan Johnson put the original 60 thousand dollars in the budget. He was unavailable for comment.