# Council Planning Committee - June 22, 2010 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · June 22, 2010 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/1427 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/1427?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2010-06-22 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: June 18, 2026 - **Length**: 12,682 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Committee convened on June 22, 2010, at 1:00 P.M. to address four agenda items, all of which were informational in nature. The session covered a range of planning and development topics, including the ND-1 Process, Mobile Home Quality of Life, the Newtown Pike Extension Update, and the Liberty Road Update. No votes were taken during the meeting, and no public comments were heard, reflecting the purely informational character of the session. No presiding officer is recorded in the available meeting data. ## Attendance All ten council members were present at the June 22, 2010 Council meeting. No members were recorded as absent or late. **Members Present:** - Gorton - Blues - Gray - Ellinger - James - Lawless - Beard - Feigel - Stinnett - McChord ## ND-1 Process [timestamp: 07:11] The Council held an informational discussion on the ND-1 zoning process, focusing on what can be regulated under ND-1 and how it has been applied in practice. Feigel was the key speaker during this portion of the meeting, presenting on the mechanics of the ND-1 designation and walking through examples of its application in neighborhoods such as Chevy Chase. The discussion covered: - **Scope of regulation:** What types of land use and development standards fall within the ND-1 zoning framework - **Practical application:** How the ND-1 process has been used in existing neighborhoods, with Chevy Chase cited as an example The item was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken as an outcome. The discussion appeared intended to provide the Council with a clearer understanding of the ND-1 process and its regulatory reach. ## Mobile Home Quality of Life [timestamp: 1:12:45] The Council took up Agenda Item 2, a discussion focused on improving the quality of life for residents living in mobile home parks. James presented on this topic, highlighting efforts underway to support mobile home park residents. A key element of the presentation was a brochure that has been created to assist residents, which appears to be intended as an informational resource for those living in mobile home communities. The item was informational in nature, meaning no formal vote or binding decision was required from the Council at this meeting. The discussion served to update the Council on these quality-of-life initiatives and the resources being made available to mobile home park residents. ## Newtown Pike Ext Update [timestamp: 1:20:53] The Council received an informational presentation on the Newtown Pike Extension project, covering construction progress and future phases of the project. Blues provided the update to the Council. The presentation addressed the current state of construction as well as what lies ahead for the extension project. No vote or formal action was taken on this item, as it was presented for informational purposes only. *Note: Detailed figures, specific construction milestones, concerns raised, and additional discussion points from this agenda item are not available in the source data for this meeting.* ## Liberty Rd Update [timestamp: 1:32:38] The Council received an informational presentation on the status of the Liberty Road project. Baird provided the update, which covered current construction progress as well as potential delays associated with weather conditions. No vote or formal action was taken on this item, as it was presented for informational purposes only. *Note: Limited detail is available in the extracted data for this agenda item. For a full account of the discussion, including specific construction milestones, timeline projections, and any concerns raised by Council members, viewers are encouraged to consult the meeting video beginning at timestamp 1:32:38.* --- ## Full transcript Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Продолжение следует... Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok Субтитры предоставил DimaTorzok So, ND1 does not allow you to regulate any and everything that might be involved in development or building. And there are specific items listed in the zoning ordinance that can be regulated. And I'm going to try to run through them quickly and give you an idea of what they are. I hate to stand up here and read information that you have in front of you, but this is basically the rules. These are the laws. So, you can regulate things like external building materials, which are never regulated under typical regular zoning, but ND1 can. You can specify brick, stone, wood siding, whatever might be prevalent in the neighborhood. Roof lines and shape, roof pitch, we'll see an example a little later. Repeating elements like front porches, shutters on windows, things like that, or lack of shutters. We talked about the percent of the building facing windows and door openings, something like that. Front building features, for instance, suppose everyone had columns. That might be something that the neighborhood might want to say. If you're going to do a new building, you have to have columns. Garage door restrictions, that's sometimes a unique character to certain neighborhoods. If you think of many older neighborhoods, they don't have attached garages. They have detached garages. And if they are attached, they don't project out towards the street. They are back, set back. So those kinds of things, if that's the character, the neighborhood can be done. Simple things that are, again, part of basic zoning requirements like lot widths, building orientations, building heights, setbacks from the streets, rear yard setbacks. You can make them more restrictive than the ones in the zoning ordinance. And I'm going to give you, again, an illustration in a minute or two that will hopefully help you see that. Also, things like accessory structures, storage sheds, fences, things like that, can be restricted above and beyond what is regulated in the zoning ordinance. Architectural term of bulk plane restrictions, something like building mass or facade relief. Not all neighborhoods are characterized by buildings that have a flat face front parallel to the street. They may have setbacks, projections. So you can restrict those kinds of things. As well as off-street parking design, say, require that parking areas typically wrap behind the house rather than just projecting straight. You could do that kind of thing. Floor area ratios, that's a planning and zoning term. The best way probably to describe that is it's a restriction on the total square footage in a building. Expressed as a ratio between that square footage and the area of the lot, the acreage or square footage of the lot. And signs. These last two were fairly recently added because a little earlier, I believe it was this year, late last, as part of your package of last infill and redevelopment text amendments, you did allow ND1 to now be involved in commercial areas as well as residential. Originally it was done only for residential areas. I'm going to give you a couple little illustrations to show you what we're talking about. And these illustrations are designed to show you the impact of zoning regulations typically on what you can or cannot build on a lot. On the left, it's sort of a two-dimensional view. On the right, it's a three-dimensional view. But in typical zoning, and depending on your zone, you have a typical building envelope within which you can build a structure. So the way the ordinance works, it says typically you have to have a minimum setback. Not a maximum, but typically a minimum setback of so many feet from the street right-of-way. You have side yard restrictions that say you cannot be closer than so many feet to your side property line. And you have a rear yard restriction that says you cannot build your building any closer to the rear of your property line than a certain dimension. And those are kind of illustrated by the green outline on this hypothetical lot. Likewise, moving to the three-dimensional version, you have a height restriction, maximum height. So when you look at that, you can create a three-dimensional block, and anywhere within that, as long as you don't penetrate outside of those boundaries, you can build a building as small or as large as you wish. And in this illustration, we've shown just a typical house within that. But again, this property owner could add anywhere within that unless you had an additional level of restrictions. And this is the way zoning has worked. These are the property rights that a property owner gets when they develop that. And if any of the building penetrates outside that, as you know, they have the right to go to the Board of Adjustment and seek a variance to exceed any of these restrictions. So again, that's the typical situation. In this next one, these are illustrations from a study, which is required to accompany an ND1 restriction that was done for the Chevy Chase area. And as you can see by the little no symbol versus the little yes symbol, what Chevy Chase was saying is that if you're looking at that two-dimensional building envelope, this shows what would be possible. And they added additional square footage restrictions or floor area ratio restrictions and rear yard restrictions that made that building envelope much smaller than what typical zoning would allow. Likewise, on a detail, they found that the typical roofs lines within the subdivision had a certain pitch. So they're saying no to the flatter pitched roof versus the higher pitched roof. So again, these were the kinds of restrictions that when they did their ND1, based upon their character study and based upon what was in their neighborhood, this is the kind of restriction they put in place with their ND1. And again, I hope just by giving a couple of those examples, it helps give you an idea of why a neighborhood might want to engage in an ND1. A couple of examples of the kinds of restrictions that have been put in place. Now, how do you establish an ND1 district? As I said earlier, it is a zoning process. But the first and most important step probably is that discernment process that the neighborhood has to go through in deciding if it wants additional regulation. And if so, what do they want to regulate? And I will say this is the hardest thing for any neighborhood to do. As they get down and start breaking down what individual items contribute to their character and what they are most wanting to do, they will find that there are exceptions everywhere. And therefore, it's a very involved process for them to figure out what their character is and what they might want to suggest be regulated through ND1. That's really done through a process called design standards analysis that the neighborhood must undertake, have a review of the character of their neighborhood and break down what are those definable elements that make that neighborhood like it is. Once they get all that together and they get a consensus, we have not had one that I can remember where we had 100% of the people come together and file a zone change on their own for their properties, which they could do if they had 100% agreement. So what typically happens is they will approach either the council or the planning commission and ask them to initiate the zone change, which under law, those are the two bodies outside of 100% of the property owners that could actually initiate a zone change request and start that process. And with the planning commission's recent changes to their bylaws, a postcard is sent to everyone proposed to be in that area so they have the opportunity to come and comment on whether this process should even be started. And again, the planning commission, I know in their case, and I'm sure the council too, would be looking for a very high percentage of support because when these aren't successful, it's because a very large percentage of the neighbors don't agree with the restrictions that are being proposed. So after it's initiated, you go through a process. The planning commission must hold a public hearing, and then their recommendation is forwarded on to the council and you all make the final action, the typical zoning process with which you are very familiar. So once one gets in place and you want to, a property owner decides for whatever addition they want to do, they need relief from the restrictions. The zoning ordinance was recently changed to simplify that process somewhat. It used to require a full rezoning and coming back to the council. We have made it so that now, unless the council declares certain restriction, I think 100% under their purview, they can file to the planning commission. It's very similar to a board of adjustment action. You do have to file notice so that neighbors are notified that the application is being considered, and the planning commission makes the final decision on that. Typically that's five to six weeks from the time they file, by the time we do all the notification requirements and things like that. So we've talked a lot about the neighborhoods, and we've said it's a tool, and we've indicated that the intent of this when it was put into place, that the neighborhood would be driving these requests, not the government. So as we say, they are the primary force in developing an ND overlay, and they have to really put sweat equity into that because it's their responsibility to do the design character analysis, to work to get the consensus, propose what the boundaries should be, what the restrictions should be, and we are always there providing technical support. We probably, in the Chevy Chase case, were involved in 20 to 30 evening meetings over the course of a couple years, working with the neighborhood on that. But we do not prepare the design character analysis. Now you wonder, where have they been created? Greenbrier was our first, and they have actually come twice. They did an initial restriction, did a couple. Then they found they wanted to add a couple more. They went through their process of building their consensus, and two different times they have gone through creating their ND1 overlay, and then in a second application some years later, actually adding to the things that were being restricted. The largest and second that we have is the Chevy Chase ND1 overlay, which was adopted, I believe, about two years ago now. Again, after a long process. Neighborhood does have a character, but there is a lot of diversity in the architecture, and a lot of the work that they did was to address those and to address some of the anomalies. The holes in the donut that you see there are the Morton Cassidy School area, which cannot be regulated anyway. They are exempt from zoning regulations. Christ the King Cathedral complex, and the business areas, because at that time when this was being done you could not do the business areas, so the business areas were exempted from the Romney Road shopping area that most people are familiar with. We have had a lot, and this doesn't even represent all the neighborhoods that have come and talked to us, but based upon the information that we have going on, this kind of gives you an overview of where we have had different neighborhoods considering ND1, at least taking it past just the first meeting. The two that we do have in place, as you see, are the Green Barn Chevy Chase. Westmoreland is a case that was actually initiated, went to hearing, and imploded on itself, to be honest. And the Planning Commission, since it was their application after that very contentious hearing, rather than forwarding it on to you, just withdrew the application to kind of stop the pain that was going on within that neighborhood. But again, I won't talk about all of these. Some of them are farther along in their character studies than others, we do expect a few of these to be coming forward asking for initiation before too long. Again, I've already articulated the successful ones we had and the one unsuccessful. In reflecting the keys, really get down to success is the up-front work that the neighborhoods must do. As I said, the sweat equity that needs to be put into working on this and achieving consensus, and in every case we find that the front end, usually folks get there, get a very high percentage. But as it moves into hearing and the reality comes closer and folks that are maybe opposed start working, the ones that may be a little bit on the fence, we do find usually there's an erosion of the support. And it usually gets much closer to a middle split or even falling. One of the most common things we hear at the hearing is, yeah, I was in favor of this when I started, but I didn't know everything that I know now, and therefore I am withdrawing my support. And that is a very difficult thing when it gets to that point within the neighborhoods and at the public hearing. Another point is that neighborhoods need to understand, many neighborhoods have private deed restrictions that cover this kind of thing. And many of them get uncomfortable enforcing those private covenants against their neighbors. And they would like to have the government and the taxpayers take over that burden and that responsibility and that stress. And that's not what ND1 was designed to do. Certainly some of the key character elements that may be in play may be ones that arose from private deed restrictions. But, again, it's not been successful when it's clearly what is being intended is to have the government take over what is really a private policing matter for private restrictions that were set up by the developer, by the neighborhood back when the neighborhood started. So that pretty much, I hope, gives you the overview that you were hoping to see. I am here to try to answer any questions. And I brought a whole group of our folks that work out in the trenches in these conversations to answer anything that I can. Thank you very much, Mr. King. We do have some Councilmembers who have questions. So we'll start with Councilmember Beard. Thank you, Madam Chair. Is it working? Yes, it is. Chris, what do you do about the exceptions that are in the ND1 but are set back in exactly right or the pitch of the roof isn't exactly right? And I assume they're grandfathered, but are they penalized later for wanting to add a family room in some other area of their house? By the fact that they are out of conforming. I would say generally that would be the case. Of course, they would become nonconforming, and they would not have to undo anything that already exists if an ND1 is put in place. So it would depend on how that impacts future additions. Any future additions, any modifications would have to meet the requirements of the ND1, however they were expressed by the neighborhood. But not just a black mark, but the fact that they were nonconforming going in. Right. That's correct. The second thing, if you could pull that, and this is a matter of curiosity, since I spent 50 of my years in Chevy Chase slash Ashland Park. Pull that slide up. Sure. I tried to read this. This one that was from a couple of their study? No, it's the actual slide of the map. Oh, okay. Sorry. There we go. Yes, sir. What are the boundaries? Sure. I'd be glad to run through that. Basically, this is Cochran and High Street, Page Creek Road. This is the Morton Cassidy complex here. So it basically runs from Cochran all the way out just past Cooper. That's the first lot at the corner of Page Creek and Cooper. It did not include Indian Mound, Wood Lake Way, or Lakewood. They did not include themselves. So from there it extends on to the east, including the lots, one lot depth along Cooper, on to just the first lot past Chinua, and then it runs parallel along the back property line of Chinua. It includes the ones at front along Fontaine, basically between Chinua and, help me here, that's Ridgeway. At Ridgeway it dips down and excludes the lots along Fontaine, basically between Ridgeway and High Street, and comes along the back of the business areas. The one you were having trouble with is Culpeper, I think. The street to the southeast, if that map is oriented right. There's Culpeper. That would be Culpeper. It does not include Culpeper. That would be Culpeper, yeah. Culpeper is the street just outside. You know, historically Cooper Drive was always the defining mark as far as it looks. It looks like pretty much, well, maybe not, but mostly it looks like it's traditional Chevy J's. This is the boundary that the neighborhood brought. I know their original study included the entire area, and I think they may have made some adjustments as the process went along, if I recall correctly. One or two properties in the Romney area. I could comment on that if you'd like. There's a couple of houses that have been built on Romney that are knocked down. There were some other neighborhood associations that actually asked to be included. Chevy Chase Neighborhood Association initiated this, but there were some other neighborhoods that asked to be included in this, and it was just based upon their request and their involvement. It does extend somewhat outside of the Chevy Chase neighborhood. Obviously it's a lot denser in that area, it looks like. A lot of sizes are smaller. A lot of different character. There was actually a slide that had a summary. I thought it just got a little more detailed than you all really needed to see today. I thought about including it in the presentation to show the range out of the hundreds and hundreds of houses in this area, how many were bungalows, how many were this, how many were that, which was part of the analysis that they did in their neighborhood. Do you give them guidance or suggestions as far as setting the boundaries? We work with them. We try to facilitate their process, I think, is the best way. We don't tell them what to do. We help them work through the processes that they need to to help arrive at a decision and a consensus. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. That kind of went towards my question on how you determine the boundaries and who actually makes that and how big or how small do they have to be when you do that, and what percentage have to agree on that. There are no magic rules on that, Council Member Ellinger. But typically, again, we have not had a group come to us, say, of one whole street or one large area and saying, we are 100 percent in agreement, we want to file a zone change on our properties, which they could do. So typically they are approaching the planning commission so far rather than the council, but, again, either of those bodies could be the official initiator of the zone change. Again, we have not ñ there is no magic requirement. There's been talk about that, but under straight law, you or the planning commission could theoretically initiate a zone change anywhere, anytime, regardless of what the property owners think. As a practical matter, that doesn't happen. It never would, in my opinion, unless there was just some community resource that the community or the council felt so strongly about that they were going into it knowing that the people affected were going to be opposed. But that's not what this was designed to do. So, again, the planning commission looks for a substantive support. In fact, through the postcard process, before they vote to initiate it, all we do is we send out a postcard and say, check the box, are you in favor or against this? And then we report back to the planning commission only how many we were sent out, how many we got back, how many were in favor, how many were opposed or expressed another opinion. And that's, again, just one of the things the planning commission takes into account or you would take into account if you were considering whether to actually, officially initiate one of these because, you know, there is a burden that goes with initiating one of these on staff, on the time of the planning commission and the council, and on the relationships in the neighborhood. And in my opinion, it's never a good idea to go into one of these unless there's a demonstrated strong consensus to do it. Thank you. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Chair. I had actually asked for this to be put in committee because I have quite a few questions, and you can stop me if my time is up. I was interested to hear that this had actually been initiated in 2002 by a council member at the camp. Did I understand that correctly? He had been working for a long time for a conservation district, something that would be less than H1, and he had a working committee of a number of folks that met a large number of times in talking about that and looking at different models throughout the country, Nashville and some of the others. And in the end, I can't remember whether it was directly related, but when we had our infill and redevelopment study and we hired a consultant named Nori Winner, who made wide-ranging recommendations, included everything from this type of approach to ND1, to all the other changes that we made relative to infill redevelopment. It all came to council as a package. Well, I guess maybe I'm making a presumption here that, and I may have his former district wrong in my mind, but I'm presuming that this came about to address maybe some of the student housing issues around the university? Not specifically, no. But it was part of that conversation that was going on at that time. We had seen the first manifestations of the so-called vinyl box additions. So all of those issues were in the air while this was being discussed. But, again, there are no limitations to where this can be done. Any neighborhood, whether it's a new neighborhood or an old neighborhood, is eligible to go through a process and do an ND1. All right. Well, and that was another question I think that you maybe mentioned, you addressed it a little earlier. This doesn't have to be initiated by the neighborhood, correct? It can be initiated by council? Technically, it could. And basically you're looking for consensus of the people who live in the district, correct? Typically, yes. I think that's, again, the intent was that this would be neighborhood initiated, neighborhood directed. But state law gives the right to start a zone change with the planning commission, the council, regardless of the feelings of property owners. So when I say that you can do that, whether you would do it or not is another question, but you do have that legal right. Well, and the reason I'm trying to kind of focus on this a little bit is that I saw this possibly as an alternative to address some of the concerns of the neighborhoods around the university area, that this might be a way for them to control some of the types of additions that they don't really want to see in their neighborhood. But I was told that they apparently couldn't get the petition signed because there weren't enough homeowners that lived in the neighborhood and that there were a lot of rental properties owned by landlords and that they were not willing to sign the petition. And that was just what I was told. And I would not be surprised at that. But, again, that would not preclude the council from doing the required character studies, recommendations, and initiating a rezoning process. So that is a possibility then? It is a possibility. And that would then have the government, the public sector, taking over all the costs and work associated with that and then whether or not you would work with the neighborhood and property owners, knowing that they would be opposed, or whether you would just go ahead and use the power of government to impose that on there. And that would be a policy choice that this council has a right to make. Okay. So that is an option for that neighborhood? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Actually, I wanted to talk about the implementation also. When you said that standards are to be interpreted by the building permit, at the building permit counter, as I recall, the ND1 overlay for Chevy Chase, there was really very little left for interpretation. Could you kind of elaborate on that a little bit? Well, I guess I would have to go back and bring up the specific things for Chevy Chase. But I do know that even though every attempt was made to articulate those as very clear standards, building inspection has encountered, even within those clear standards of such and such a roof pitch, some question of whether something complies or not. And they have gone through a process that after they review, if they have questions, they can engage outside advice on whether it does or not. Or the applicant, the property owner, can submit an architect statement articulating why that architect says it does conform with the standard, and they can accept that. I believe Mr. Crow is here, could talk about specific cases. But although every attempt has made it as clear and bright line as possible, what you find in this line of work is there's always somebody that brings one that has you scratching your head. Okay. Council Member Feigl, your time did expire. Would you mind if we give the other two council members an opportunity, and then we could come back if you have more questions? Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Chris, for this information. You know I've always been interested in the ND1 since my own neighborhood association went through the H1 process before I was even on council. And we found out kind of incidentally about the ND1 being a possibility to address some of the things. So I think what Council Member Feigl is talking about is a possibility of this being a way to control things like setbacks and roof pitches and the things that neighbors worry about. So I have a few questions. How does the ND work with the comprehensive plan updates? Can there be within the comprehensive plan update suggestions of neighborhoods that could be eligible for ND1? Absolutely. Of course, every neighborhood is eligible. But I think you've brought a good example in the East End Small Area Plan. One of the things that that plan suggested is that perhaps an ND1 might be a way to have the neighborhood changes that are anticipated because of the changes going on because of the HOPE VI spilling out into the neighborhood, that perhaps ND1 would be a way to make sure that those impacts are more compatible than traditional zoning would allow. So that's an example where a comprehensive plan amendment through a small area plan suggested that ND1 might be a good thing for that neighborhood to consider. Does the small area plan then stand for that design standard analysis? Can that be used as that guide? Typically the small area plan would not have that level of detail of study of the individual architecture and setbacks within those areas. Typically you would have to supplement that. And would that be urban county government's responsibility since that document is now our possession, instead of it falling back on the neighborhood to do that? A good question. But the answer is we do not have funding, we do not have money for consultants, we do not have the in-house expertise to do that. So if the government did want to take that on, and we understand that there are neighborhoods that aren't Chevy Chase and aren't Greenbrier, don't have architectural character experts living in their neighborhoods and things like that, and that those kinds of neighborhoods might need a boost. Okay. But again, I think that would have to be done either through increased staffing or through having money to engage an outside consultant to help. And probably to make sure we had a process indicate when we should use public money to do that versus just the neighborhood doing it. Especially when it's part of our own urban county government standard or comprehensive plan. Comprehensive plan. Okay. That could be one criteria that could be. Okay. And Council Member Feigl kind of alluded to this. So the percentage of agreement has to be by owner occupied. Is that true or is it property owner only? Again, I don't know how to express this, that there is no standard that says X percent of owner occupancy, renters or whoever have to agree to it in order to do it. That's just a yardstick that the Planning Commission uses and I'm sure this council would use if you were trying to consider whether we were going to go to the time and expense to start a zone change process. So there's not a postcard process? Again, we do. You don't have this rule, but the Planning Commission self-imposed through their bylaws, that before they will initiate one of these, they will at least take the temperature. Okay. And you talked about that there was a commercial or retail component to an ND1 and something, a text amendment we recently passed in a regular ND1 if there is a retail or commercial area. Is that excluded from the residential conversation and taken up separately or is that all one conversation? We've not had one yet, so we really don't know. But my guess is the way that would work is that you would certainly, the character of the business properties would probably be very different than the character of the residential properties. Okay. There may be some elements that would be common, maybe heights, something simple like that, but some of the other detailing you might only make applicable to the commercial properties and not applicable to the residential and vice versa. Okay. Would be my guess is what you'd probably find when you did the character analysis. Okay. And the ND1 is attached to the property and not the owner of the property, so it goes on in perpetuity? Absolutely correct. Okay. That sits on the property regardless of ownership. And how do they know? How does a new property owner know that it's in an ND1? They would have to do the same due diligence as they would to discover their current zoning. I can tell you by the number of folks that come and check, very few property transfers, somebody absolutely checks what their zoning is. We tried at one time to see if we could require that a zoning statement be attached to every deed, and we're told that state law determines what can be required at a closing, so we were unable to explore making that a local ordinance that would require that to happen. Thank you. We have two more council members who haven't spoken. Vice Mayor Gray. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question has to do with you mentioned Romney Road, the commercial development on Romney. Yes. That that was not available or the commercial was not available to be included at the time? At that time. When it was originally written, it specifically said it was for residential properties only, and it was in our round three infill and redevelopment regulations, and if I'm not mistaken may have been one of the recommendations of our task forces that that be changed, and that was done. So that's a very recent change. How might that have been, well, not the process but the outcomes, how might the commercial have been included, and is there potential to do that today? Certainly. That could be initiated as a separate new ND1 application to look at those commercial areas, find their character, and propose regulations that would make any redevelopment of those properties compatible with their current character or the neighborhood. My question also has a little bit to do with what Council Member James was speaking about in terms of the role of the planning department. I'm not saying this is correct or not correct or right or wrong, I'm just trying to get a sense of what the philosophy is that drives the role that you currently describe as the planning department's role when a citizen's group or neighborhood group comes to you. Because you mentioned Westmoreland and I think we should be curious about why Westmoreland, I think you used the word failed or was not passed, and that should be as much an issue, a policy issue for us as the ones that have succeeded or the ones that are in process today or are coming before you. And for me, all of these questions relate to the economic value, economic value. Quality of life today is a driver in creating economic value, and they work symbiotically. So the role of the planning department, as I read, again, this is more to do with, I'm trying to understand the philosophy that is governing. On one of the slides it says neighborhood residents are the primary force in developing an ND1 overlay. And I observed that in the Chevy Chase, the group that they came to me, I think they probably met with some other council members anyway, they met with me at one point in time, probably two years ago. And from my point of view, they had done an impressive job of developing their proposal. Another one of your bullet points says technical assistance is provided from the division of planning staff. However, the staff does not prepare the design character analysis. So in the Chevy Chase example, for example, did the neighborhood, they developed their own character analysis, right? Yes, they did their own surveys. They have a consultant to assist them. My recollection is they had any number of design professionals living in the neighborhood. Okay, so they had the resources within the neighborhood. All right, I think this is really important, because if our planning department's philosophy is fairly passive in terms of actively recommending, engaging, suggesting, and the neighborhood doesn't not have these design professionals, then they are at a disadvantage if this is indeed a model that will create economic value over time. So if you were to look at the Westmoreland example, did they have design professionals to assist them within the neighborhood? They had folks within the neighborhood, and they had a number of things that they wished to have considered. So did they have the critical mass of design professionals? I mean, looking at Chevy Chase, I know a handful of architects myself, including a brother who is in that neighborhood, and I don't think he was involved in it, but there are a lot of people in the landscape architecture, architecture, design, urban planning that sort of migrate to Chevy Chase. It's a mature, established, well-designed neighborhood that was created 80 years ago or 90. So I'm, again, trying to see where there may be a need that we are not meeting systematically. Vice Mayor, I'm over my time. Yes, and if you didn't get to finish, we'll put you back on. Okay. We do have Council Member Blues. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would guess from what I've seen so far of the ND1 process that it really has to be neighborhood initiative and neighborhood driven, and that design professionals are not really, I think that's an advantage, but probably not an absolute necessity. It seems to me that the folks involved get a good deal of assistance from the Division of Planning, advice and information, that they get a pretty good education along the way to the extent that they stick with the process. And I know this can be a, you know, certainly can be an advantage to have architectural expertise among the residents, but at the same time, it's simply not going to work if this is a largely a government-pushed process. It's got to come from the neighborhood. I would tend to agree with that, and also I have found usually the times that we would be least received in a neighborhood is when we come from downtown and say, here's what we think you need to do. Now, if they come to us and say, we're at a loss, help us decide what we need to do, we're right there. If I may also somewhat answer what I believe the Vice Mayor's question was leading towards, you know, we do not, if a neighborhood has one architect, they've got us outgunned. We have no design professionals in architecture or urban design on staff currently or any position for that on staff. And that's just by the way not necessarily our choice, but through the way the positions have been approved for our division, the mission our division has been given, and the staffing that we have. So we have had folks in the past that did have some of those. In fact, one who's retired, Henry Jackson, I believe you know well, was very involved in the Chevy Chase one because he lives in that neighborhood and was able to give his urban design experience and expertise to the neighborhood as well as many others. So we talked about that in the presentation we did last month on form-based codes. So, again, if that becomes our mission, we would embrace it. But, again, I think when it comes to character of neighborhoods, it's usually better to listen to the people first and help them get to where they want to be rather than going out to them. Although going out and educating them to the fact that their neighborhood does have a character that can be compromised unless something happens is part of our mission. As Councilmember Beard will know, we had a lot of discussion in the Lansdowne neighborhood on just that point last night. So, again, we do see it as part of our mission to educate, facilitate and help. Councilmember Blue still has another question. And I apologize. That's okay. I got a little off. Chris, is there a history of appeals to the Planning Commission for relief from, you know, from the None so far. So nobody has appealed from Greenbrier, from Chevy Chase. And that would say that those neighborhoods by and large were successful in determining what was Consensus. What really mattered, you know, out of that whole cookbook list, what really matters and what can you live with as a group is the tough question that those neighborhoods have to work through. Well, that's a testament to the success of the process. So far. We still see it in its baby steps phases. We do think it is a great tool. Thank you. Councilmember Feigl. I certainly don't want to preempt anybody else. So I think all the rest of the people on the list have spoken before. So we'll move back to you. Thank you. First of all, I think there might be a misconception here. We don't have when they submit this design standards to Planning Commission. It doesn't necessarily have to be signed off by a certified architect or a licensed architect. Correct. That is correct. You know, we don't have one house in this neighborhood over 20 feet high. You don't need an architect. They say all we really care about is not having our houses over. We don't want somebody to go 35 feet high. And maybe the zone in that particular property only has a 30-foot setback. Maybe the houses were built at 40 or 50 feet. That's what Greenbrier discovered. So they came back and said, well, can we have a deeper and you really didn't need an architect to do that. Right. And that's why I mention that because I think there's a real opportunity for some of the neighborhoods, maybe who don't have that expertise in their neighborhood, to take the model that's already there and just tweak it to fit their own neighborhoods, whether it be, you know, the pitch of the roof or whether it be the setbacks or whether it be the facade. And I don't really think it takes a professional architect to be able to evaluate that model and see how it fits a new neighborhood. It's not needed in all cases. Right. So I think that probably is an option for them. And when I said that there weren't enough owner-occupied homes around the university for them to circulate the petition, I didn't mean that they had to all be owner-occupied. It's just, I guess, and I'm making an assumption, that the homes that were not owner-occupied maybe was a large section of the community where they might not get, you know, 75 percent of the people to sign the petition. They might still get 50 percent to sign the petition, and then it would just be the will of the council as to whether or not they wanted to take on that political challenge. That's correct. I would agree with everything you said. Okay. All right. And, I mean, the architects that were used in the Chevy Chase, obviously I think you pointed out they were volunteers. So I don't think they contracted that work out. Also, I wanted to talk a little bit about the recourse. You and I talked about this a little bit right after we implemented the ND1 overlay, and the recourse at that time was only that they go back through the planning commission for a rezoning. A full rezoning process back to the council for the most part. Right, which was a little cumbersome for somebody who just wants to make a slight change to the pitch of the roof because it's very costly, they have to hire an attorney and everything. So we came up with an alternative, right? We modified that process to a much more simplified process, which is much more akin to a board of adjustment type of variance procedure. But because of using the tool of zoning, it goes to the planning commission, not to the board of adjustment. So they do still have to notify people within a certain radius? They do. And do they have to hire an attorney? They do not have to hire an attorney. But as long as they get the neighborhood within that radius to agree to it, then it's generally? I would say it generally would be. I mean, you know, for the most part, the planning commission members aren't on a mission to be the taste police, but it does allow a process whereby the neighbors do get to weigh in, and that process is then transparent rather than a decision being made in a back room somewhere. It is daylighted, and people have a chance to participate. Well, and I wanted to mention that while there hasn't been an appeal so far, I was talking with an architect just the other day, and I don't think he minds if I mention his name, but Graham Pohl is doing a redesign of a home over there, and he was not aware that there was a process whereby he could seek some relief. And this was just a matter of a window being placed on, because I think the design standards specify that there has to be a window on every wall or something like that. And so in this case, the people who are building the home would actually be looking out the window and peering into somebody's backyard, and so they were actually just looking for some relief for that, and Graham didn't know that there was a process. So I just wanted to make that clear that there is a process. Time has expired again. Let's put your name back on if you have a few more. I think I just have one other question. How about we go on to Vice Mayor Gray and then Council Member James. This is just a little bit more on the conversation we were having earlier, and I'd like to engage Council Member Blues because I'd like to understand. Let me put it this way. The way that I am translating the question related to the question that I have is really related to the active engagement by the planning department, and you mentioned, Chris, that you all don't have the skill sets, the professional skill sets, for example, architects within planning. I would not be suggesting that we would, as a government, go out and recruit or proselytize. That's not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that when a neighborhood group recognizes a need, then what resources can they tap into to educate, to be educated, and to get traction with an opportunity like this, if it indeed is part of the toolkit, that will enhance economic value over time and that we have data, perhaps, that will confirm that. We may have data that doesn't confirm it. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that my hypothesis would be that economic value is increased over time when neighborhoods are where there is some level of guidance related to these issues, good planning. I think there is a good body of evidence that confirms that. And when we don't, that when we don't honor or respect urban planning principles, then we can have more rapid decline. So that seems to be the hypothesis that brings people to us as a government to gain help and guidance. I would agree 100% if you change the word planning to design, urban design. Urban planning and urban design are not synonyms. They are very closely related, but the practice of the profession of urban planning transcends much beyond design. But I would agree 100% that good design, good quality design, and neighborhood stability all bring economic value to the community. So for me, the strategic question and the policy question is, are all of our neighborhoods who come to us for assistance, guidance, direction, are all equally equipped or prepared? I would say no, obviously. It's not all neighborhoods. If all are not equal in that, in engaging the opportunity that we may have with these tools, then they may, you know, they are at a disadvantage. So how we address that is what I'm interested in. I'm not saying that we're going to answer that question today. I'm just trying to understand that question. And I have a world of thoughts, and at the appropriate time, I would love to share with any or all of you on that exact topic. Council Member James. Thank you. Chris, can planning commission or council recommend a change in the standard once ND1 is enacted? So if we as a council or planning commission see that a certain standard, we're repetitively getting, you know, appeals or problems, we can do that? You can do that. It would take the full process starting back at step one and change the basic rules. You could do that. The planning commission or council could initiate that. Okay. All right. And I've got a world of thoughts too, and my world of thoughts stems from me on the citizen side working, attempting to get information about ND1. And mind you, this was seven years ago. I don't know how many years ago that's been. Yeah, I guess like six, seven years ago. It was a huge barrier as a citizen with no money and no architecture experience. Vice Mayor, I think you're right on point with that. The barrier is the H1 process. You walk in and there's a lot of help. There's a lot of guidance. You know, the guidelines are there. I guess this was something that's been in place for a while. And from the research that we found, like in Nashville, and please tell me if I'm wrong, but in Nashville and some of the places where ND1 is really neighborhood conservation. And what some of the cities did, it seems, maybe it was Nashville. I'm not sure which one it was. But they had one office, and the office was split between preservation and conservation. But the same procedure was followed. It was just whether or not you wanted to, if you had the standards for historical preservation or if you had standards for neighborhood conservation. That doesn't happen in our city here. It's through, you know, independent work of the neighborhood that gets help from the planning department to the ability that they can. We tried in Public Works Link several years ago, put money in for the ND1 person that would be like a Betty Kerr to historic preservation that could follow all along. Because if a person applies for ND1, I mean for H1, do they have to do all that investigation themselves from a neighborhood perspective as far as getting pictures and determining setbacks and determining roof pitches and that sort of thing? I believe they get a lot more assistance from H1, from the historic preservation staff though. Betty, is she with you? Yes. Yes. She could comment on that. But I think quite often there have been other processes in play as well from the neighborhood side. So from the citizen perspective, Vice Mayor is right on point. Fortunately, I think I took a third shift job, and Sarah and I were neighbors, and she was a full-time mom at home, and she came baby in tow to do research on things in our neighborhood. And we looked at lots of pictures of setbacks and roof pitches, and I learned a lot. That was actually one of the reasons I ran for office, was because I saw that there was a little bit more engagement and process. Here I go with the restructuring thing again. But there needed to be a different process established to make things a little bit more fluid when it came to from a citizen perspective. So to say that a neighborhood is not at a disadvantage is not true, because you are if you don't have that level of expertise, then that's where the strength of the small area plans has come into play. But now we need to make sure that that process becomes part of the comprehensive plan update and that there's another step to that. So if we implement a small area plan, we've got to make sure that we then have the funding to do the design character analysis to then implement what all those hundreds of residents, owner-occupied and not, participated in and what needs to happen. It just seems, again, to be it seems like a very exclusive sort of thing and almost a very privileged sort of thing to be able to get. And we have neighborhoods such as my neighborhood and others surrounding the East End area and all really throughout Lexington that have certain characters that are really being threatened with new development. But you also have to it doesn't just need to be on the end of the residents either. It needs to be a combined thing because you get into some of these standards and it prices people out too. So affordability also comes into play. Thank you. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Chair. I just had one last question. You had mentioned that the schools and the church and the commercial at this point are not included in the ND1 overlay. So I know that Christ the King is thinking about building a new rectory on their property. So does that mean that they don't need to comply with the ND1? I apologize. They were not included in the ND1 because they were not residential. So they are subject to zoning restrictions. Schools are not because they are a creature of state government and therefore they are exempt from local regulation. The churches are subject in that zone. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that is a residential district and they would be subject to a conditional use permit review through the Board of Adjustment. I'm going to look back. Heads are nodding in the right direction. I didn't want to see this. So before they would be able to build that rectory, they would have to file for a conditional use permit to the Board of Adjustment. Notification would be sent to the Neighborhood Association and the surrounding neighborhood, and they would be able to weigh in and comment on that proposal before the Board made its decision. But would not necessarily have to comply with the ND1 overlay? They would not. Thank you. Chris, it looks like I'm your last question. I wanted to be sure I understood what you said about the petitions, and it seems to me I remember this came up as an issue a few years ago. The issue of I believe you said that a renter can sign the petition. Is that correct, that it does not have to be the homeowner, or did I misunderstand? Anyone can submit a petition on anything, and the Planning Commission will take it under advisement just as you would. But when the Planning Commission made the bylaw amendment that said before they initiate an H1 or before they initiate an ND1 or any other overlay over properties, they want to go through a process where they will send a postcard informing every property owner, it goes to the owners, it doesn't go to the tenant necessarily, that that proposal is being suggested and asking for that basic feedback. Are you in favor? Are you opposed? Do you have any other comment? And then that is reported back to the Planning Commission, just the facts, just the numbers, as one of the things that they then consider before they take that step of officially starting that process and moving it towards a public hearing. So technically this could be, if it's in an area where there's a high percentage of rental housing, it could be initiated by the rental population who don't own the homes. Is that what you're saying? And then that's discovered on into the process whether the actual homeowners want this or not. Again, property owners are notified officially, and then they have the choice whether to comment back or not, but they are all notified, so they are aware that property they are on is having a new regulation proposed to put into place. Okay, very good. I don't see any more questions, so thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate your leading us through this and helping us understand the ND-1 process, so thank you. Thank you. The next item, and I'm not 100% sure whether we actually have anything to discuss, Council Member James, this is the mobile home quality of life, and it looks like you have information you're passing around. So if you would like to go ahead and give us a brief kind of overview of what this is. Sure, thank you. I'm passing around a brochure that was put together by our, we were blessed to have an intern that worked with us, meaning the subcommittee, Caleb, and Caleb put together this mobile home park guide, and this was based on improvement of quality of life in the area and kind of the issues that were coming up in the mobile home park. So I'll offer this to you for your feedback. I'd love to see this, you know, whatever we need to do to spiff it up a bit if we need to, for you to offer me any ideas. And I'd love to submit this to our public information and allow this to be one of our LFUCG documents that is available in our public information area, as well as, you know, when a person moves into a mobile home and we know that, to be able to send this out to them. Also it would be adult services would have this available for folks as well as they come and are inquiring about life in a mobile home park. So this is just for your review. Take some time and look over it if you like, and I would be happy to make any modifications, but I would like to see this move forward. Is this something that you've had an opportunity yet to run past the different divisions that are on here? I have not, actually. Is that something we need to do? I would yield to that suggestion. I think that's a great idea. So you think maybe just send it out to each one that are referenced to see if the numbers are valid, web addresses and things like that? I think that would give it one more level. I appreciate your bringing this. I think this could be an excellent tool for mobile home owners. And maybe at the August 24th meeting we can look at it again. Sure. And between now and then, if you could e-mail it out to the different, it looks like police and social services and code enforcement and various divisions are on here. Okay. Well, if anyone in the meantime thinks of another division that needs to be included, please just send it to me and we'll modify it. Is there any question? Council Member McCord. Well, first I just want to say thank you for putting it together because this is a tremendous template for everything that we do, whether mobile homes or not. This is something that a lot of folks would desperately need, and what I would encourage you to do is just put it onto a template that we can put mobile home here and we can put this for neighborhood association or whatever because I think this is a very valuable resource, and I appreciate you taking the time to put it together. Sure. We also have it in Spanish. Excellent. Very good. Thank you so much for bringing this. And if we have input or other questions, those could go to you. Yes, that would be fine. In the meantime, maybe could your aide put it out to the divisions to get some input? Sure. I do have a little bit more follow-up or report out of the subcommittee's work. The past few months were a little bit more hot and heavy than the past couple of years with the Mobile Home Parks Subcommittee, and the good news is a lot of the responsibility is not urban county government to follow up. The bad news is there are several different departments of state government that are involved at this point. Me and my assistant and Caleb, our intern, met with Representative Jesse Crenshaw regarding some issues that were going on that our state statute regulated, and he gave us some recommendations, and we have been working with the Attorney General's Office and Richard Maloney's division. I think it's buildings. I never get it right. Building, construction, and housing. Fire Marshal is involved as well. So at this point, a lot of the things that need to happen on a state statute level, I don't feel a need for the subcommittee to meet again anytime soon at all. I'm interested in, Chair, the committee's idea of how do we continue to follow up on what's happening in the state, where is that information reported out. I don't know that all of this would be resolved within my term on council, and I don't really want it to be lost at all. So I don't know if we can ask for some type of report out, review. I don't know if it would be December, November, Decemberish or something, but we need some type of status update from the state level. Some of it may involve lobbying that might be necessary from our local level. I still haven't met our lobbyist, and I don't know if that person is going to change in the next term. Has anybody met her? I haven't met her yet. So I'd be interested in maybe being able to have an opportunity to talk with her about what do we need to be lobbying for on behalf of our Lexington citizens in the mobile home parks and the issues going on. At this point, I don't think the subcommittee is needed because it ends up being, it looks like it's only one particular mobile home park. They have several different sites, but it's managed by one particular place. There are the issues, but the changes that could occur could affect all of Lexington and all of Kentucky, really, based on the discoveries that were found out from the subcommittee. And just so we all understand, are those things that you did discuss with Representative Crenshaw, did you say? And then Richard Maloney's division at the state level, is he aware? Yes, as well as the Attorney General. So that's all in process? Yes. Okay. But at this point, they would report out to the subcommittee unless we said, okay, your new report out is planning committee or council administrator or mayor's office or whomever. But it needs a home for contact. I wonder if it would be appropriate for you to work with Paul so that we could get that report out at a late-in-the-year planning committee meeting. We can do that. And the appropriate people to make it from the state level. Does that sound like a plan? That sounds wonderful to me. Sounds great. Okay. Any other comment about this or question? Okay. Thank you very much for that follow-up. You're welcome. Thanks. And our next item is Newtown Pike extension update. And Andrew Grunewald is with us to give us a brief update on that. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'll be kind of brief today. I just wanted to give you an update on both the Phase 4 and the Phase 1 portions of the project and then tell you a little bit about Phase 2 and 3, I guess, phases yet to come. What you're looking at here right now, this morning I went out and I took a few pictures of the construction going on. This is the bridge. We're standing basically in the lower Rupp Arena parking lot looking back at the bridge, kind of back at the R.J. Corman Railroad yard. If you can see, one of the abutments in the background plus the center pier, this side of the bridge or this side of the deck was poured. This side of the deck was poured last, I believe it was last Wednesday night. We are looking at pouring the other side tonight. These pours usually start about 2 o'clock in the morning. They go all night until about 8 o'clock in the morning. It's a tremendous amount of concrete. If anybody's bored and they want to come out and see it, it will be going on all night. The... I don't know what I've done here. I have a Master's in Engineering. I've still got it out of some loop. These are just some more of the pictures here if you could just scan on through. This is on Main Street basically looking back. You can see the water tower. You can't really see all of the bridge, but just have it one more. This is looking from the Salvation Army parking lot. This is actually standing at the edge kind of looking straight over. You can kind of everything get oriented from the water tower itself. The good news is that we are on schedule. This pour, I think, is about a week ahead of schedule. They had Manchester Street closed. It was supposed to be reopened on June 1st. They actually met that deadline. The road itself is expected to be open September 1st. Of course, all the construction will not be finished, but the anticipation is that the contractor will meet that date. There will be a lot of work to come this fall as well, but the intent was to have the road open for the World Equestrian Games. We have had a lot of activity with our contracts. There are some things that are in front of the council now for change orders. For instance, we are putting up mast arms, which the city of Lexington is paying for. It's a gift to the project, and the state was very happy for that to take place. For our Phase I area, this is down in Davis Bottoms. Currently we've closed on 11 properties. This plus the 18 that we've already bought puts us right up around 29 or 30 properties. We've relocated 16 temporary people into pre-manufactured homes. We have two more that we're going to relocate. We're going to meet with them next week, hopefully have them moved in, say, within two weeks. We hope to have the majority of the property bought before the end of the year. There's no doubt in my mind that some of these will be fairly complicated. We'll have to go through a combination process. We do hope to have the noise wall under construction late fall and be under construction of the neighborhood itself within a year. The sections, which would be Section 2, and that would be from Versailles Road to Broadway, as well as Section 3 or Scott Street Connector. I think you all are all aware that there was a good amount of money that was put into the state six-year plan. Most of that money was state bond money. It's still being evaluated by the Transportation Cabinet to figure out exactly when that money will be available and at what point we'll initiate those other two phases. Phase 3 from Versailles Road to Broadway will come first. My hope is it will be initiated within the next two years since this is at least a biennium plan. So we'll begin buying right away. Phase 3 will come at a later date, let's say at least three or four years out. I can answer any questions if anybody has any at this point. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Chair. I'm probably going to just fumble through this, but some of the folks that were in an earlier meeting might be able to add to it. I understand that there needs to be a LOMAR applied for. Is that what we heard this morning? I understand that. The letter of my provision? The letter of my provision will go into process. It doesn't necessarily have to come before the project itself. We can do it at any time. It's hard to explain. The State Transportation Cabinet essentially would be considered building this. We could ask them to do it. There's no guarantee that they will. So we, the City of Lexington, will probably undertake that task to complete it. Okay. Just wanted to put that on the radar. Oh, yes. Our drainage people have made me well aware of that. Thank you. Council Member James. Thank you, Chair. Andy, thank you for the update. Are the neighborhood meetings still going on with the residents? Yes, ma'am. Every, I believe it's fourth Thursday of the month. We'll have one this Thursday. They're still pretty well attended? Mm-hmm. Okay. How many people come? The weather plays a big part of it, but anywhere from, I'd say, 15 to 30. Okay. And what process of new home ownership are the residents that are attending, what process are they in as far as, I know because there was some credit building and financial things that were going to be happening. How's that going? We're still working with a lot of the residents. There has been a very big shift in the way credit is evaluated, even since we started this about two to three years ago. We're not exactly sure how that will affect them. For instance, it's harder to get a loan now than it was two years ago, even with the great amount of equity in the house. I'm fairly confident that we'll be able to overcome all these problems, but exactly how it will affect them I can't give you an answer right now at this point. Where do you get your confidence? Where do I get my confidence? Well, the Transportation Cabinet has an obligation to make an individual whole. If the individual cannot receive a traditional loan from a bank, the state will actually initiate the loan papers. They don't like to do that. It's a last resort option. So there is a mechanism to fail safe if all else fails. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. Yes. Andrew, I'd like to put an exclamation point behind Councilmember Feigl's comment about the letter of MAP revision. We had quite an extensive discussion about this at Water Resources Oversight today, and given that there are citizens who are going to live in the area that's been redeveloped, I wonder if we should ask our chief executive to write a letter of support for this LOMER, because some of the ones that are on the books that have never been written are 25 years old. And so now the citizens who have the cost of not only their insurance but their inability to refinance and things like that are being affected. So I think it's a big deal. The good thing about the only area of this project that's affected by a FEMA floodplain is the actual bridge itself over Town Branch. Our redevelopment area in Lower Davistown or Davis Bottoms or the South End Park, it is not covered under a FEMA. There is no FEMA floodplain associated with it. That's amazing. Associated with this project, there will be no residential properties which will be affected by the LOMER itself. The only properties which will be affected, at least by what we do, will be one or two commercial properties as well as the RJ Corman Railroad Yard and Rupp Arena. So have you officially asked for the letter? Has someone from Urban County Government officially asked for the letter? For the bridge, for any of the pieces of the project that are appropriate? No, ma'am. We haven't officially asked for it, but we have stated it in our environmental impact statement. For instance, we know the bridge itself will not cause any adverse effect on anybody. We just know we have to remap the floodplain in the area so that as other areas develop, they'll know what changed due to the bridge. Okay. So it sounds like it's on your radar. Yes, ma'am. That it is part of the project and will be. I realize that the state may or may not give it, and one of the pieces of property that's on the list that's many, many years old is also a state property where the letter was never given. So just I wanted to put a ditto under Council Member Feigl's request. I don't think there are any more questions, so thank you very much for your presentation. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. And then the final issue on our agenda is the Liberty Road update, and I think Mr. Bob Baird is here to give that. Welcome, Bob. Thank you. I went out and visited with the fellows from the state, the inspectors who are overseeing the day-to-day construction activities, tried to feel out where they may be looking at delays. Really the only thing they felt may be an impact at this point is the weather. They've got a lot of ground exposed out there and a lot more still to go. But given good weather, they felt comfortable that the schedule was doable and they would make it. Right now they're within about a week of switching out signal locations, and they think they're about three weeks away from getting traffic switched over where they can then tear up the existing road and rebuild it to its new dimensions. So should be seeing a lot of activity. Well, there's a lot of activity now. If the weather holds, it will be a lot more in three weeks and on into the end of August. Council members, do you have any questions while Mr. Baird is here? All right. There are no questions. Thank you very much, Bob. Thank you. Council members, if you'll look at your back page, we have the issues outstanding in committee. And it seems that two of the next items that we're hoping to hear, which weren't ready this month, are the encroachment issue, which is Council Member Stennett's issue, and the fence height issue. We had originally scheduled those for June, but they were not ready. So, council members, I'm hoping, do you see any difficulty with hearing those? Our next meeting is August 24th. I think, Madam Chair, I think with reference to the fence height regulations, that we are slouching toward Bethlehem on that. Thanks to Chris. He's working on his own text amendment, and I think that we'll be able to bring that to you by August. That would be excellent. And then, Council Member Stennett, the encroachment issue, is that? We were waiting on the administration to come back to us. It should be ready by the August date, unless I talked to Charles. Okay, good. So, Paul, if you could give him a nudge just to double check and see if he will be ready for August, and then we'll look at any further update on the mobile home brochure. And is there anything on the list that needs to be removed? May I just make a comment on the Parks Master Plan funding? Yes. I probably need to move that certainly until September, maybe October. We've missed a few meetings this summer, and we were trying to get a speaker in and have been unable to do that. So I'd like to move that forward to September. Our last scheduled meeting for the year is in October, so we could put the Parks Master Plan funding in September if that would work. I think we might be able to do it by September. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there any other information on any other issue? If not, do I hear a motion? Thank you. All those in favor say aye. We stand adjourned.