Music guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. the address and fire gate identification and numbering. Mr. Lane, you put this into committee, and I think we have some representatives from David Lucas here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't need to say too much. I think Mr. Lucas is going to give us an update, and thank you for coming today. Thank you for having me. Actually, this is a follow-up to the Services Committee last month when we had a presentation and went over details of address posting and changing of addresses in FireGates. What is in your packet is actually a draft ordinance change, which will outline many of the things we discussed. And also in there is the addressing guide, which is a document that we actually use now to give to developers and others and guide them in how we actually assign addresses. I can outline the changes that we have in here rather quickly, if you desire. And what we'll do is on page two, we actually eliminate references to fire gates, as we discussed before. Fire gate markers are mandatory now. We're going to remove them, so they're not mandated, but they will still be available for people who want to purchase them, and we will install those. We also clarify address assignment, the assignment of an address rather than a number, because we assign more than numbers. We assign suite numbers and actually assign people to a street as well. One of the large things we did was we add the requirements for posting of your address that you actually use contrasting colors. A lot of people would put their numbers up, white numbers on a white background. It was pretty much like having no number. So we say you have to have contrasting numbers. And also on large commercial industry or any structure that sits further back on the road, we actually require 10-inch numbers or larger rather than the 4-inch. As any of you have gone and visited commercial areas, when they sit further back or larger buildings, the 4-inch is inadequate. Also on page 3, we provided a process for the assignments and changes. What we did, we enhanced the process and actually outlined the addressing committee, its members, and incorporate the addressing guide, which is in your attachment, as a reference so that we can update the addressing guide and it will actually be on file. And we'll put it on our webpage as well so everyone will have that information available. On page 5, we actually provide a process for a property owner to request a change if they want to change an address or a number. It's a formal process. We don't have one now, and we're lacking that, and that's something that is needed, a well-outlined process for people to request a change, and it will go through them. There's also an appeals process also, which I'll talk about on page 6. Also on page 5, we update section 7 that will increase the number of days from 5 to 10. Once we notify someone their address is not posted correctly, currently it says 5 days. We didn't think that was adequate. We are increasing that to 10 days for them to actually correct the situation. We also added that the property owner must remove any obstructions. Sometimes they might have a number that's up, but over time, they could either trim a bush or maybe move the number to another location. And we also added something that was important, and that is a requirement of temporary signage at construction sites. We do not have that now, and we do have a lot of accidents and calls for service at these sites, and you get out there, and it's hard to locate them. So we're requiring them to put up temporary signage until permanent signage is required. Also on page 6, we added the formal appeals process. What this process does, it allows any action by the Addressing Committee to be appealed to the Addressing Board. We already have this board set up, and it has three members and two alternates. They're all citizens. They are not urban county government employees. government employees. And so any action by the addressing board, an assignment, a reassignment, a change, et cetera, could be reviewed by them and taken to them on appeal. And the appeal process is outlined on page six and seven. And those are pretty much the details of all the changes we outlined in our last committee. Mr. Lane, do you have any other questions? Thank you, Chairman. Yes, there was a couple of questions. Once we do this revised ordinance, would this allow us to accelerate our effort to have compliance of street numbers on all commercial and residential properties? Yes, it will. We'll be able to increase that. Also, I failed to mention that actually already on your docket in your council session will be to add code enforcement officers as a group that can enforce this, as well as updating our language to make sure all of our current 9-1 employees could enforce that in the addressing section. Okay. That's pretty good. The other question I had is on page 6, item number 7, where it says that when a billing permit is issued, that the owner of the property would put a temporary sign on the property. Can we maybe stipulate a request that that be made part of the billing permit that's issued so that there will be a specific notice time that the builder gets the billing permit that they're required to put the sign on? Yes, we've been working with building inspection on that process. They said it's actually already there, but they're going to increase its, I won't say priority, but move it to the front. And they actually reviewed this language and said this would be appropriate with their current standards. But they will, they don't want to hold up an occupancy permit for this, but they are putting it on their sheet, so it will be a checkoff, where it is not now. Okay. That's all I have. Very nice job, David. Thank you. I appreciate your work on it. Any other questions? Did you want to make a motion at this time? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to make a motion that we take the revised ordinance and move it to the docket for approval by Council. So moved. Do you have a motion and a second? Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, that passes. We'll take that to the full Council. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the private solid waste providers. Ms. Gordon put this in committee, and we'll let you go ahead and start with this. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The reason that I first put this in committee was because the city has set a goal for zero waste, and I wanted for us, first of all, to see what services each of the private haulers offers, to see for comparison purposes if they're offering the same services that the city offers because I think that if we're going to get to zero waste, it would be helpful for us to know what our citizens are getting in terms of garbage and recycle. And so that's really enough of an introduction. I appreciate Steve Feese and Kevin Bennett being here. And that's all right now, Mr. Chair. I think if we could have Steve Feese come to us. And I think you've presented a talking point here, if you could kind of go over that. And then what's also in the packet, if you kind of explain the little grid that you have in here, that would be great. Okay. Welcome. Well, I just want to briefly go over a couple of things. These are just issues that you really need to think about. Obviously, doing anything with the private sector will have some significant implications, both for the private sector or the citizens that are served by those folks, and it may have impacts for the urban county government also. There are two private hauling companies in Fayette County who offer residential recycling services for an add-on fee. A fairly low percentage of those customers actually take advantage of the services, as best we can tell. To substantially increase the level of waste diversion in areas serviced by private hauling companies, residents in those areas would need to have a required baseline or minimum service. and that would involve something similar to the urban county government, what we'd service. It could be recycling. Later on it could be poor organics, yard waste, and other materials. Establishing a baseline of service similar to that offered by the urban county government would have the effect of substantially increasing the volume of materials coming into our MRF. We think we can handle this right now. we are increasing the overall throughput capacity at a recycling facility by mid-2010. And, of course, we are looking at locating another facility in the not-too-distant future. Yard waste should be able to be handled at our current facility, And we are currently looking at adding on and widening the scope of organics that we can divert from the landfill, not just yard waste, but also anything basically that will degrade like certain types of napkins, paper, any kind of paper products, food waste, which is a, if you looked at our waste stream analysis that was done earlier this year, you'll see that that's a major portion of the waste stream that is still untapped. It's still going to the actual landfill. A few of the questions that will need to be talked about. Are private haulers required to accept all of the same materials accepted by the LFUCG? Will there be required frequency of pickup? Will there be stipulations on the type and location for processing the materials? For instance, could a private hauler opt to take organics to a disposal site outside of Fayette County where beneficial reuse might not be verified? Another one would be would this policy apply to generators both inside and outside the urban service area? For instance, we have several households that have service inside of what we call the full urban service area, like Palomar, Harrods Hills, for instance. But there are also homes that are these large farms that are outside the urban service belt. So that's another consideration. I think some of the things you need to talk about would be the franchise agreements. A lot of communities use franchise agreements to require certain levels of service. We do not have that here in Fayette County. Anything outside of the generators that we service is a subscription service only. We have a longstanding policy that allows residents who are in private service area to opt in for city service. They can sign a petition and go through a process. if their fees increase as a result of establishing a baseline of service. In other words, if private haulers make a separate trip to pick up the extra streams of materials, those fees are going to increase. And that may mean that more customers opt in for city service. That's a consideration to think about. We have some homes that come in every year. We had 200 this year. That's going to be starting on July 1st of 2010. We've had, in some years, 800 or 900 homes. It just depends on the situation in terms of the cost of private service versus the taxes that they pay. When we decrease the level of certain, when we decrease the tax rate like we have this year, we decreased it 10%, it makes it more attractive for homeowners that are looking at a lower cost option. It makes it more attractive to come into city service. But it also means that we have to buy trucks and hire personnel to provide those services. I think if you want to support the policy of moving in the direction of zero waste and to really increase the amount of diversion from the landfill, then a baseline of service in some form or fashion is kind of one of the first steps. But also I think we need to look at that policy to be put in conjunction with some more stringent standards on our side, whether we implement a volume-based rate for our own citizens, meaning that they would pay different rates for the different size landfill-bound herbies that they have. $30, $69 a gallon, or there is always the mandatory option. We have to police that and everything, but if you look at cities that have made significant strides in the area of waste reduction, they've employed one of those two techniques. Either they've gone mandatory, which requires people to look and focus hervy, or they have used the option of volume-based rates, which provides a financial incentive for residents to put less waste into the landfill. And as long as we provide reasonable options for them to divert their waste, both in the organic stream and in the recycling stream, they shouldn't have really too much to complain about. That's really all I have on this, if you have any other questions. This was just a study that was done, and this was done back in the summer by one of our interns. I think most of it is accurate. There may be some things that have changed since that time. But basically, one of the considerations that we haven't talked about here is we've really just addressed the residential stream. Fifty percent of our waste is generated from the commercial sector as well. So that's a sector that right now we're not, from a processing standpoint, not able to service everything. We would have to have a new MRF in order to be able to really substantially handle all of the volume that would be generated if we required a baseline of service for all of the commercial sector. So that's something to consider as well. So I'll be glad to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. The first person on the list is Mr. Lane. All right, Mr. Lane, she said she can go ahead and start. All right. I guess I'd like to just restate what you said, sort of summarize. if what you're proposing is that the private haulers that operate in Fayette County, in addition to picking up solid waste, would pick up recycled materials, and that's your proposal. And by doing that, the baseline services would be relatively equal with what Fayette County is currently providing through your department. And then secondly, that would also help us recycle more materials, reduce our landfill usage. And I think that's a pretty good idea. I do have a little bit of concern about requiring the private haulers to provide services greater than you're willing to service yourself. And that would specifically go into the areas outside the urban service area, because in many areas, the urban county government will not even pick up solid waste in those areas, because the distance between the routes are fairly long, and it makes it less efficient. And I think it would be unfair to the haulers to require them to put in recycling or provide services you're not willing to do in those areas. But I think where it's head-to-head, I think I would be very agreeable with that. Does that make any sense what I've said? Would you like to comment on my thought on that? Right. And if we're moving toward really aggressive recycling strategies, That is one of the first steps, to have making sure everybody has kind of a baseline of service so that you don't have to pay extra in order to get the service. It becomes kind of the standard operating activities. Ultimately, we have to get to where we're changing the mindset where recycling and organics composting are the predominant means of waste management, and landfilling becomes the marginal activity. And so a step in that direction is to provide a baseline of service rather than treating it as a marginal activity as it is now. Is one of your recommendations that you want the council to pass an ordinance to make that mandatory to have recycled services safe? It's inside the urban service area, for example. Would that be something you would want us to pass an ordinance on to put that in effect? I think if this is up to you, I think if we're moving in that direction, this is something that would have to be done, yes. but we wouldn't be able to, we're not going to move toward a zero-waste strategy without these things actually in place. Do you have pricing information as to, for people that are, say, using M&M, I think it's one of the services that's a private hauler, they're using that service if M&M starts providing recycled material services. Do you know what their rates would be and how they would compare with what the Irving County government charges and what impact that would have on the property owners to have to put that service in? Well, there would obviously be an increase. We have representatives here from all the haulers. My feeling is there's obviously going to be an increase. Would it be passed on to their customers? And right now I think for most residential customers it's $25 and change per month, and it's $8 or $9 per month for a recycling collection. If everyone is doing it, it may have the effect of lowering the cost, because right now they're doing it just in, you know, there's just a few of the customers that are supporting that extra service. You'll have to ask them. I don't know what my thought is that if they're already providing the service, it may have the effect of lowering that cost. Now, there are some private haulers here that do not provide the service, and I'm not sure about their capabilities of actually having the capability of providing that extra service. Have you actually spoken with some private haulers and asked them to comment on that today? Are they prepared to? I have talked with one of the private haulers about the issue. All right. Thank you. That's all my questions. I yield to Madam Gordon. Ms. Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Did you say that I know there's some private haulers in the audience that they might be prepared to answer some questions. Sure. But first, Steve, thank you very much. Just to clarify one thing, on the handout that was included, is C&M Environmental the same as M&M? No, different company. That's different. Okay. So are these the two, Republic Services and C&M? M&M and C&M are the two companies that provide curbside recycling services. Am I correct in saying that? No. Kelco does also. I think this was done since this last... Okay. If you would, we're going to need you to come up there to the microphone so the audience can hear. Okay, so we don't have anything from Kelco, is that correct? I don't think they're listed here on this survey. And just to identify yourself... Brent Treadway with Kelco Environmental. We do offer. We started our company the summer of 08, and since that day we've offered recycling. We take everything that LFUCG does plus glass, which I know some of the others don't. We provide full recycling for residential. Thank you very much. Steve, I'm sorry. I just am trying to understand what we have in our packet. Okay. The page 55 is untitled at the top, so it's Rumpke. So it was cut off there. LFUCG, Rumpke, and Kelco. And then we have CNM, Environmental, and Republic Services. So that's basically five, four private and one public. Is that correct? That's close. I believe you're correct there. Okay. Well, my question to you is, quite some time ago, the mayor made the public announcement that our community would go waste-free. So I'm wondering what the plan is to do that. I think the year was 2020 when we're going to try to be waste-free. and the questions that you've brought up in your talking points I think are really important to the goal of being waste-free. So have you moved forward on that plan yet? Well, I think the two major steps that we have to take as a community in making two of the major steps are getting processing options in place, processing options other than landfilling. And the two major issues that you're looking at there are developing a MRF that can handle varieties of waste for beneficial reuse, both in the commercial and residential sector. That's why we're upgrading our existing MRF and looking forward to a few years down the road having one that can handle the commercial waste as well. The other aspect is the organics. yard waste, food waste, biodegradable paper products, Kleenexes, napkins, paper products of all kinds. Taking each, and so what has to be done is to develop a composting operation to handle those and then addressing with each segment of our waste stream, which we did the waste stream analysis, which kind of provides us a roadmap of where we need to go in tackling each of the components of that waste stream and developing an infrastructure to be able to recover that waste. We have to have that in order to be able to provide options for folks to be able to vert the material from the landfill. Well, Mr. Chair, it seems to me that, well, first of all, I really appreciate that some of the private haulers are here. And it seems to me, I'm not a member of the committee, so I can't really make a motion, but it might be a good path to have a working group, which included some folks from Solid Waste, some folks from the private hauling community, maybe some council members, to kind of work through this to see how we're going to get there. because I think if we don't have a plan, we're not going to get there. And I personally like the idea of becoming waste-free and getting almost everything we can and either recycling or composting, that sort of thing. But I think if we could work together to get there and have some sort of a plan, it would be very helpful. So I can't really make a motion, but that's where I would think we might want to go. Well, I think we're going to have a motion for Ms. Crosby here. I'll make the motion for you. I'll make a motion that we form a committee made up of LPCG solid waste, a representative from each solid waste private company to have, is there three? I think that they should all be able to have a representative through three or four. Four. Hold on, we have a quorum. Yeah, we do have a quorum because I asked Ms. James to be part of the quorum. So we have six. So I can continue. And then we have Mr. Myers. Yes, sure, you're fine. What I'll probably say is we'll make it go ahead and do a task force. And we have them, you know, that way we can include not just council members, but also outside individuals. and I'll ask the Vice Mayor to form that task force. Okay, I'll make a motion that we form a task force made up of the individuals I just stated and council members, and that will be his discretion how many people will ultimately serve on this task force. We have a motion second. Any discussion? Ms. James? I just thought I'm not on the committee either, but I guess I'm able to chime in and vote. But I thought we want to discuss some other avenues, too. I know that during the waste audit, we found that we had some compostable materials as well. So I would like on that task force to include representative of Seedleaf, which is the organization that's doing our pilot program for composting, and we're working with urban county government that way because that's an additional cost, an additional bin, processing, and such that needs to be included as well. I'll accept that as organization. I think that's a good idea. What I would do is just if you all would send the request to me, and then I'll pass those on to the vice mayor when I ask them to form the task force, but I think it would be a good idea to include that in the motion. Is there any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, that passes. And I'll get that to the vice mayor as soon as I get your all's ideas on who you'd like to have on the committee. Mr. Lane? Yeah. I think it would be appropriate if we could ask the representatives from the private haulers maybe just come up and make a very brief comment about whether they like the idea of adding recycling and maybe composted materials into the service they have to offer here in Fayette County. And that would give us sort of an overview of whether they're going to be, you know, really gung-ho to work on this project or if there's some problems they may foresee that we may do. Sounds good. We have a lot of people from the private sector. If you'd like to come up and give a – I see Mr. Loy here. Just give your name and who you're with and just some brief comments, if you would. That would be great. Hi, Kerry Loy, M&M Sanitation, Republic Services. I'm the general manager here in the Lexington Market. Our company currently provides MSW, or residential trash collection and recycling. Recycling is on a subscription basis, and it is voluntary. Approximately 25% of our customers do the subscription recycling here in Fayette County. I am not opposed to recycling whatsoever. You know, we promote that. Our landfills at this point in time, we do a lot of gas-to-energy projects, which is another way to recycle. You talk about pulling the organics into this and trying to eliminate them completely. I just want to point out that that is one of the items that goes into a landfill that helps the production of methane in a landfill where that gas can be used later on to power energy for homes or business. We currently don't offer a separate service to that, not opposed to doing it, but just like to look at the cost part of that. One other item might be that I know that currently all these services are offered in Fayette County, but not everybody's using the service. I know Steve mentioned making it mandatory. There needs to be some incentives for the citizens to do the recycling, not just making it optional. You know, whether you supply them a certain size cart and make it more cost effective, maybe you give them a bigger recycling cart and a smaller trash cart. There are some things that probably need to be done on the, you know, the Lexington side of things. Private industry follows along those lines. You know, we're trying to hold our costs down for our customers to maintain those customers, and we fight every day for those customers. The other haulers are heroes. You know, we basically, the pie doesn't get any bigger in Fayette County. You know, anything new that comes into the area right now on the residential side of business is automatically basically annexed in the city. So we're fighting over the same piece of pie all the time, which is, you know, it's just business. But we're certainly open to being part of this task force and look forward to that. We'd like to be part of the solution future Fayette County. And that's all I have to say. Any questions? Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Lohen? Thank you for coming. And is there anybody else who would like to comment? I've put a list in the back. If you'd like to be on the task force and be involved in this process, we can have you go ahead and sign up before you leave. But if you'd like to come speak in front of the committee, just give your name and who you're with, and that would be great. Ms. James? Yeah, I just wanted to, you're saying one representative per private order. Okay. Because I thought if there had, you know, three representatives here versus somebody that had one representative here, we just want to have one representative from each. Okay, thank you. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon. My name is Stacey Chambers. I'm with Rumpke of Kentucky. We do serve residentially here in Lexington as well as commercially and are in the process of implementing a recycling program residentially, which will be subscription as well. I just would like to say that we'd be very interested in working on a committee to move this process forward to know what your requirements are of us as private haulers so that we can help you achieve your goals as well as ours. Thanks. Thank you. Any questions? Anybody else like to speak? Yes, sir. My name is Jerry Thomas. I'm with CNM Environmental. And we are actively recycling at this time. and we would like to work with the urban county government to reach a goal of zero waste. Thank you for coming. Ms. Corton, I think I has a question for you. Thank you for being here. You had some asterisks at the bottom of your information, and I wanted to ask you a question about one of them. It says that you fine your customers who put trash into recycling containers. I don't have that paperwork in front of me. Do you have an extra copy, Paul? And I think the city, if I recall, the city puts a note and notifies people when they They have inappropriate materials in the recycling. Do you see it there, the last asterisk about the middle of the page? They find customers who put trash in her. Who is they? Well, it says CNM Environmental. I thought that was who you were. Are you CNM? I am, yes. Under the recyclable column, I guess it only applies to commercial, and I was wondering if you know how many commercial places got fined last year. I do not. You do not. Does anybody at your place have information like that? Do they look at every commercial business's recycle to determine that? I was just curious. I'll research that. At this time, I don't have an answer for that question. Okay. Well, thank you very much for being here. I think, Mr. Myers, you had a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming in today. I just had a quick question. Do you know what percentage of your – is your recycling program subscription-based also? The residential is prescription-based, correct. Do you know about what percentage of your customer base uses it? I did not bring any of that information. I didn't know I was going to get up here and talk about all that. I just came to be a spectator today. Okay. But I'm willing to work with you guys on any aspect and have those questions answered for you at a later date. Okay. Thank you. Mr. McCord. Thank you. And, Mr. Loy, anybody can answer this question. We talked about incentives and, you know, incentivizing on the customer side. My question is, is there any incentive that this government can help you with? If we move to 100 percent recycling and so forth, is there any opportunities industry-wide for you all that we can help you all with? Because as I was sitting here thinking about it, you know, we certainly want to make this a win-win-win. And if there's something out there that, you know, our private haulers, you know, have attained said level and so forth, that only benefits the community. But I would be curious if there's anything we can do to help you, whether it, you know, because like you say, there's only so much of that pie, it doesn't get any bigger. And in that situation, what can we do to help you and help your business? Well, I guess initially I would think that it was mentioned franchising. franchising. That may be opportunities for more business for all the haulers. That I can see is an opportunity not only for the private industry, but for Fayette County in general. And there may be some competitive offerings there that maybe improves everything for the county. Okay. And maybe during the course of the task force, those things could be uncovered. Yeah, I think, you know, I would challenge you all as members of the task force to do a little research before that's formed and see what is out there, whether it be, you know, something like, you know, we talk about LEED certified. And if you build a LEED certified building, it enhances your stature and so forth like that. If there's anything like that, please bring that to the task force because, again, I want to see you all benefit. and it may not be in the ways that we may be thinking, but if you can help us move to 100% recyclable or zero trash-based, we need to be doing something for you as well, and it may just be elevating your status in the industry and making you a better place to work or those types of things. So just anything that you all can do to help us be aware of that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. Ms. Gordon, did you have a question? You're on here. Okay. Ms. Crosby? I was going to follow up on what Council Member McCord said. Obviously, a lot of this will come up during the work of the task force, but I would also encourage Mr. Feast, because we were in a meeting where we had people who were wanting to go with the LPCG collection who were literally asking if they had to recycle. So I think the same incentives would apply to ourselves as well. And if we're going to ask for incentives for a private collection, maybe we also need to be trying to think of some incentives for our own. Thank you. Ms. James. Thank you, Chair. A couple of things. I'm enjoying this conversation. I think this is great that we can all work together. And one of the things that I had spoken with Commissioner Taylor about during the budgeting process was that we do have this zero free by 2020 thought, but it's never really been implemented or endorsed by the council. Like, we need a resolution of commitment. And I think I would expect that out of this task force will come that. So since we're all together working together, then maybe we come out of that with a resolution of commitment with what we pledge to do to aim towards that 2020 goal, because it really is about what the intention is and what the end result is and if we can make those steps. And that means that when it's time for budget time and anything else, hiring, equipment, capital expenses of facilities, then we realize that that's reaching towards that trash-free goal. And another thing from some of our chamber trips, I am very pro-business. My husband's a business owner. I know it's very important. But one of the things we've learned from chamber trips, and I think Madison was the place we recently visited, who's very green. Everything they do is very green, and they're very environmentally conscious, is they said, why would we incentivize for doing what's right? And although I really, I know that a lot of times we need a bait on a hook in Lexington to do things, I think we really need to understand how we benefit just by doing the right thing. And so I would strongly discourage starting, setting a precedent of establishing an incentive program for something that we should do for our future, for our children, for our environment. and for what's right for the city as a whole, and less likely consider incentives for this particular thing. So that's just my two cents. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Lawless? In a lot of ways, I agree with that. And yet, I think the place in which I disagree is I see how many things that have happened just since I've been on the council that because there wasn't a stick, nobody went for the carrot. So I know that where my niece lived probably 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago in New Jersey, they already had a fine for people who had recyclables in their trash and vice versa. And at that time, we didn't even have recycling in Lexington. And I was like, wow. But I also have, and I talked to Commissioner Taylor about this, there have been several communities that have gone with a cash-for-trash type program, and it was my understanding that the new MRF and the new trucks that we would be getting for recycling, and what it would do is it weighs how much recyclables there are, and people, different companies would give gift cards when you got so many points like Starbucks or, you know. And their recycling went up like 70% and 80% in these communities. So I think we need to maybe think on both sides of that. And, you know, things that we do now we take for granted that nobody would do because they're the wrong thing to do. Like when my children were little, they let us smoke in the hospital. pediatric ward. And now you've crossed the street to smoke in your hospital. So people, you know, those kind of behaviors are learned over time. So that's my two cents. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from Council members? Once again, I want to thank all the private haulers for coming in here. And there is a list in the back. If you'd like to be part of the task force, please sign up. We'll get back with you on when we'll be having our first meeting. I'll get with the vice mayor in the next work session to get this started. And thanks again for coming. The next item on the agenda is the loading and unloading. And this is put in by Ms. James. And I know I saw some e-mails today, so I'm not sure exactly where we want to begin. But I'll go ahead and you start. And I think we have Jim Woods from Traffic here. We might want to start with Traffic, too, here. Thank you, Chair. I do seek the guidance of the committee, definitely, because just a brief background. is Tom Blues and I, Council Member Blues and I were in a meeting discussing the 2nd Street, short street conversion, and between planning, traffic engineering, police, and parking authority, it was determined that loading and unloading zones were going to be an issue as we looked at converting those streets. and it was said that our ordinances that we had on the books didn't necessarily address the things that needed to be addressed in order to, I'm sorry, I was distracted, in order to be able to, for the police to do what they needed to do when the street converted. So I thought it was suggested at that meeting that we go ahead and address it ahead of time. But since then, you've seen the emails kind of going back and forth, and it seems like no one's really ready to address it. They don't really know what angle to come from. I don't know if people are waiting on the conversion to occur, but I think the businesses and maybe even the residents along that area or that drive that second short street area would like to see that be addressed as an issue and some solutions brought forward, and maybe even some changes happen before the conversion even occurs so that they can get used to that so we can troubleshoot. So that's the background on that. You may know more than I do because I haven't read the latest email from this morning except for very briefly. Well, there's been quite a few. Mr. Woods here, if you want to just kind of shed some light on where we are and what we need to do or where we need to go. I think at this point it might be best to wait for further discussion on amending any of these ordinances until we know a little better what direction we're going with the parking, because there's other issues that are going to, that these kind of bounce together, the parking, left turn movements at intersections. There's some issues with church parking on Sundays, and these things are kind of tied together along with the loading and unloading zones. So what would your recommendation be at this point then? At this point, well, we're still, there's public meetings still occurring, and there's some issues coming up out of those public meetings, too, that will affect loading and unloading, and there's businesses involved here. So I would recommend we wait until after the public meetings at least, and in the meantime, police and fire. Can we keep this then in committee, and then when you come back after your public meetings, you can give us an update on where we stand, and then we can go from there? Right. There will be probably a comprehensive report done. Chris King and Planning is overseeing these meetings. There's one tonight, as a matter of fact, at 630 with the businesses and the property owners along there. So it would be best to wait. And when do you think that comprehensive plan will be presented? I know there's going to be more. Even after the night, there's going to be probably some more public meetings next in January. So I can't give you a date. Sometime in the early spring? Right. Okay. Okay. And whenever a decision is made, if the decision is made on these streets and there's funding available, it's going to take at least six months to implement the changes. So we still be proactive. Right. Okay. And I don't know if Lieutenant Will Be hears from police and Gary Means and the parking authorities here if they want to comment or not. But it's up to you all. Ms. James. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Woods. And I think that maybe, you know, until they're ready to report out, I just think it's important that this issue stay on our minds. Right. And if there's some way for us, I don't know if there's a way for us to track the amount of citations given right now in loading and unloading zones in that area. But I think that would help us to become aware of the difficulties that maybe the police are having with citations or something. But I think, you know, I don't know. I know that it's an issue. If you drive anywhere downtown during a business day, you know that loading and unloading is an issue. Blocking, you know, certain lanes are blocked, certain ways to turn on streets at intersections. It kind of distorts your view. So I think somehow we need to have reports of what's going on and whether that's a, you know, a monthly update or just a written report. But somebody felt it enough of an issue to bring it up and ask me to put it in committee. I don't know who was at that meeting. I might try to ask who was in attendance at that meeting. But somebody thought it was important enough to bring it up, but I just can't figure out who that person is right now. Thank you. Do we have a representative from police, I think? And also, if you could come forward, I think we also have Mr. Means from Parking Authority. If you could kind of just give us a little summary of what's going on right now If you could answer her question, that would be great. Hello, I'm Lieutenant Richard Willoughby with the traffic section. I just recently replaced Lieutenant Pape, so I'm still kind of getting up to speed on this issue. I spoke to Doug Pape about that today. As far as the loading and unloading zones, the police have really not taken a strong stance on those. Obviously, we've tried to work with those businesses that utilize that. So as long as they're trying to get their loading and unloading done within 30 minutes, it's not been an issue for the police. One of the issues that we have noticed from this, looking at some of the e-mails that I've seen today, one of the issues that we would be up against with the loading and unloading is if there's the way the ordinance reads now, that it allows if the parking spaces or the spaces for loading are full, they can park beside those or outside of those designated areas, and we wouldn't be able to fight that in court. So that's going to be an issue for us. And that makes sense because if there's no parking lane and it's both the roads have been converted to two-way, there's no place for them. They're going to be blocking one of the lanes. So maybe that was the police issue. I don't know. That's probably one of the issues looking at that. Okay. That's something we're about to address. I see Mr. Means, thank you. Do you have any comments? I can just add a couple of things. I think that lane being blocked is probably a key issue where now on a two-lane street, you can go around that truck. So that's obviously going to be something we need to address. But also in our ordinances, there's times that it's not allowed. And right now, no trucks are allowed to be loading between 4 and 6 p.m. A lot of our bars and restaurants like to get deliveries during that period of time so they get ready for that night rush. So there's some things like that that we need to address in the ordinances. But, again, I don't think anybody's prepared to submit some suggestions for those at this time. Length of trucks is another thing that's in our ordinances, and some of the delivery folks that I've spoken with are even looking at going longer with their vehicles because it's more beneficial for their business, which that's going to be a potential traffic issue. So there's several things we need to look at. Thank you. We also can provide the stats that Ms. James asked about as far as how many citations are written in loading zones. Thank you. Ms. Lawless, did you have a question you're on here? So you've already spoke. Okay. Is there any other questions? We'll go ahead and keep this in committee, and then, Mr. Woods, when you can get a comprehensive plan back to us, the sooner you get back, then we'll revisit this issue and keep it in committee. Any other questions? At this point, we have items in the committee. Is there any items? I think we, Mr. Schoeniger, if you would, kind of just update where we stand on the items we're getting down to getting caught up here. I don't really have an update for you. You didn't refer to me as commissioner, did you? Oh, did I? Well. If you did, I don't want that. Congratulations. I don't have an update. Okay. With that, I'll see you have a question, Ms. Wallace. Yes, the one I put in about West Main and Vine Street pedestrian safety, I met with the state traffic people and Commissioner Webb and the city traffic people, and we have resolution to that, so we can take that off our list. All right. We have a motion. Do I have a second? We have a motion and a second. Take this one out. Any discussion? All those in favor for taking it out, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, we'll take that one out. Any other issues in here? At this point, I see none. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. We have motion and second. All in favor say aye. All in favor, we are adjourned.