["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] It's one o'clock. Let's begin the service committee for October 2nd. The first item on the agenda is the alternative neighborhood traffic improvements, and Councilmember Blevins brought this forward. Councilmember Blevins? Thank you, Mr. Allinger. I'm just going to turn it straight over to Mr. Frazier. Thank you, sir. I have a PowerPoint that I will be going through this afternoon, and I made copies of that for everyone. Good. If you would just pass that out. Yes. Just bring it to us, and we'll circulate it. Thank you. Thank you, Council. My name is Brad Frazier. I work in the Division of Traffic Engineering, and as you already said, this was a request at the last services committee on different alternatives as far as traffic improvements that could be done for traffic calming versus, say, doing just straight multi-way stops. What's being passed out is a copy of the presentation today, and the best thing to do is just simply go through it and answer questions at any time that you have any. What I'll be doing today will be going over three points. One, going over the current Neighborhood Traffic Management Program, or as it's known as NTMP. And then secondly, going over new options not listed in that program that we are currently looking at to go ahead and incorporate into the program. And third, since it has been a point and brought up by Council before, talk a little bit about speed humps and answer some various questions about them, their installation and their effectiveness. Why is a traffic calming program needed? The program was initiated back in 2000 to help alleviate some of the neighborhood traffic problems due to volume and speeding. The reason that a lot of communities such as Lexington need such a program in place to go ahead and combat these increased volumes. The more people that we have as our population increases, the more vehicles that are put on the road. Roads are also built to a very efficient means, so they can convey a lot of volume. So that is some of the effects that we're seeing in some of the neighborhoods. Vehicles also, by today's standards, are a lot different than what they used to be. You have better suspension. You have better efficiency. You have a very comfortable ride for the owner, for the motorist. So, therefore, that would tend to lend itself to them being more comfortable to drive a little bit faster through areas. Some of the objectives that are listed in the program is basically to promote safe and pleasant conditions in local neighborhoods and on residential collectors, to reduce impacts of speed and traffic within those same areas and on those same style streets, to preserve and enhance the pedestrian and bicycle travel within a neighborhood. And that's a critical one. If we're able to help offset some of the traffic problems, you will see a greater enhancement for the pedestrian and the bicycle user. And we also, the program is set up so that it has citizen involvement directly with the neighborhood and with council members. How this is accomplished through the program is based on three elements, education, enforcement, and engineering. Each of those elements are reflected in the program based on different stages of improvements, which are listed as Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3. Type 1 improvements is education and enforcement. And then beyond that, you get to the engineering, which will be Type 2 and Type 3 improvements. I'll quickly go through a typical process on how a neighborhood could go ahead and be a part of the program. Step one would be to go ahead and just contact us at the Division of Traffic Engineering. The second step would be we will go ahead and establish a boundary area of their concerns, some of the problems they are experiencing. Number three, evaluate that location that they've reported to us. Four, perform a traffic study. Five, report the results to the original neighborhood they inquired about it and to the council member. Six, work with the neighborhood to implement an appropriate type of improvement. And this is extremely important because they have a great deal of input on what those improvements are. And then item seven, to go ahead and reevaluate what improvements have been done to see if it has made a difference. Also in this process, Traffic Engineering does accept requests from council members directly. So it could be neighborhood or it could be a member of the council, which we've done many times to have an area studied. As I was talking about before, you have the three different types. Type 1, which is education and enforcement. Type 2 and Type 3 is the engineering aspects of the program. Type 1 involves signage, striping, and enforcement. Type 2 is when we actually play with the geometrics of the road and make enhancements out there. The speed humps, bulb outs, traffic circles, et cetera, as listed up there that some of y'all are familiar with. And Type 3, which is the most difficult of all, is where you actually do closures through barricades, do cul-de-sacs or barricade roads off, or do diagonal diverters. The first one is a Type 1 improvement, which is basically education. We do this through a different variety of ways through signage. One of the things that we talked about last time we were here, multi-ways, that's where that is in the category. Looking and evaluating areas for yield signage, speed limits, parking prohibitions, and the residential parking permit program. I have those two highlighted so I can inform council that those are currently operations within the Division of Traffic Engineering. At the end of this fall, those duties will be a part of the new Lakes and Fayette Urban County Parking Authority. Besides signage, we also do striping. Striping, we look to do center lines, edge lines for roadways, crosswalks, as long as we have accessible areas on both sides, stop bars at stopping conditions, and yellow curbing based on, say, sight distance analysis. I want to go over an example of one design that we're currently looking at in the 6th District. This is St. Anthony's Drive. As far as signage and striping, I just want to go through what we're kind of looking at for the people on this roadway. St. Anthony's is an incredibly long neighborhood roadway. It's 36 foot wide and it's approximately 3,600 feet from one edge to the furthest edge of the neighborhood. And as you can see from the photo, plenty of opportunity for speeding through there. So, one thing we're looking at in the design is to go ahead and try to delineate out parking areas and make it more narrow for the travel lanes. So, that's one option that we were going to propose to the people and the residents that live along that area. And then, secondly, go ahead and give some informational signage within that area to see if this will help with some of the problems that they're experiencing out there. The next step would be enforcement, which I believe is one of the most critical components of the program. Enforcement has two different categories as it stands right now. Increased police presence, which is the selective enforcement that everyone's familiar with. And then, radar speed trailers, or basically some type of driver feedback facility. Some of the selective enforcement numbers that we've recently received from Metro, I wanted to go ahead and report on some of them that was just sent over to us. We sent over a request for Middlethorpe where they've issued 23 citations to date based on their selective enforcement. Armstrong Mill, they're continually out there at this point because they've had, according to the information, sent over hundreds of people that are going over the speed limit. So, they're staying on that stretch between Manowar and Appian Way. Kennesaw Drive, to date, it was requested for selective enforcement, I believe, about a month ago. To date, they've issued 94 citations out there. And Cooper Drive, which currently has 20 citations when they did their selective enforcement in that area. The next step would be if we're, if striping and signage, if we go beyond that, then we get into the type two, which involves engineering. Now, we start playing with the road geometrics and actually change it. Before, you're actually trying to work on the constants of the driver. Don't drive fast through signage, through striping, trying to control them, trying to communicate to them. Then, you try to let them feel the heat through enforcement. And then, if all else fails, you take the driver out of it. You change the road to where the vehicle simply cannot go at those speeds anymore, which is speed humps and bulb outs, two installations that we currently have in the field that can be viewed. The bulb out that you see on the right is located at Madison Place. And for speed humps, we have 13 current applications that are in the field that can be seen throughout many of the districts. Type three is one that is very rare. From my information, we only have one that's in place, which is a closure of a roadway called Lane over at Mason-Healy. The reason it's so difficult is because you're actually closing off a roadway and diverting traffic in another area. This has to have heavy input, of course, not only from council, but it has to have heavy input from your service responders, the NPO, and other government entities. The next thing we'll go over is the new options that are going to be a part of the program. Back to type one, education, basically through signage. We have designed in-house some different types of signs that we want to make available to different neighborhoods if they wish to go ahead and have those improvements installed in neighborhood areas. The thought and the theme behind them is, once again, trying to communicate to the driver, you know, you really shouldn't be driving fast through this area. These are the next three that we have that were designed. The ones that you see that makes a reference to Greenbrier was done for that neighborhood and was recently installed. Apparently, it's a pretty popular item. We've already had two other neighborhoods call in requesting some information on that and we're anxious to possibly have that installed in their area. Another style of signage that I think is pretty important and, quite frankly, I really like is a product produced by a vendor. Basically, it's a very strong message sent to the driver. Another option that we're looking to incorporate is basically reflective signpost panels. The reason we have this listed is because not only do you have a reflectivity of a sign when you drive up on it at night, but also there's a coating on the post that has a very high reflectivity that can be seen from a great distance. In the back of your packet, there's two colored photos, and these are actual photos that I've taken in the field. I did not know how this would turn out here during the presentation, but I just wanted you to see them in the field. One was over 100 feet, just snapping flash of a camera, and the other one was up close as the photo shows on the overhead. LED blinker signs. These are fairly new, but we are going to make them available through the program. These will have the opportunity of really reaching out and communicating to the driver not to enter into an intersection unless obeying the laws and making sure that it's all clear. These are also extremely effective at night as well. Solar-powered beacons, I think everyone's kind of familiar with what's been going on as far as installations around town with these. These are extremely good and very flexible as far as installation since they are solar-powered. The one on the right is located off of Alexandria Drive, and the second one is off of Georgian Way. There's also another one similar to the one on the left that's located off Reading Road by an elementary school over there. I think it's Lansdowne Elementary School. Another design option that we're going to look into and also make available is the use of optical bars. The way these function is that it's an actual engineered design where you take a spacing of these bars that are put on the roadway, which can go ahead in eight-foot sections in the middle of the lane or actually off to the side. And you basically, long story short, you basically take the miles per hour that you find in the field that people are driving, and then you have a distance to where you want them at a different mile per hour speed. And then basically you start to shorten those up so that the driver goes across them about four bars per second based on a deceleration curve. So this helps. If they stay at that same speed, it looks like and feels like they're just going incredibly fast through an area. Another option is on-pavement markings, where we can actually go out and put the speed limit on the roadway or we can actually put different lettering. There's also new products that come out, as you can see, where you can actually put what some of the signage looks like directly on the roadway itself. Rumble strips is another option that can be employed. We have an installation that exists in the field located at Hume Road. They were put in to alert drivers that they're coming up on a very nasty curve and that they need to slow down because if they stay at the speeds that was found in the field, they could be in harm's way very quickly. Another option is looking at textured surface markings such as crosswalks. These are not actual brick areas. These are actually thermoplastic overlays that can be done. So basically, the material will be heated up and just applied directly on the roadway, which has a multitude of applications, not only crosswalks, but also as far as right-in, right-outs or even median islands. Now to get off the education, we're on to enforcement. One of the things that we're going to be making available is another function of selective enforcement, which is driver feedback signs. We had just recently opened bids for these signs, and it should be coming before council fairly soon. An option that we're looking to employ on the engineering end, changes to the roadway, is the use of what's called speed tables. The reason that I think this one may be a very good option, and I have high hopes for it, is the fact that it's basically your speed hump, except in the center we've added a 10-foot section. What that will do is basically it allows larger vehicles to traverse them a lot easier than just a hump. The hump comes to a fine point, and you immediately start going downhill. Here, as you can see from this photograph, and that's the reason I put it in there, it's not to say that this entity can now go over it. I'm just simply saying as a large vehicle, you can kind of see how it makes a smooth transition. With a longer wheelbase, with a wider hump, if you will, it makes it a lot easier. It's a better transition. The last thing I'll talk about is the effectiveness of speed humps. I know that everybody's had questions about them and wanted to know their effectiveness and how they work. Basically, what I'll go over just real quick is talk about some installations that we have studied in the field. This is a profile of what they look like. They're four inches at the center with six feet of an incline and six feet decline on the other side of the peak. Some of the advantages is a reduction of speed, volumes, and they're pretty much self-enforcing just because of their existence in the field. And they're relatively inexpensive when you start looking at other improvements that need to be done. Some of the disadvantages, they could cause problems as far as emergency vehicle access. The reason being is that if you have the emergency route totally laid out from block to block with nothing but speed humps, you'll greatly reduce their response time. But as an isolated case of one single road, not really. It may increase volumes on other streets in the neighboring area. If you employ these to where people no longer want to cut through this section, then they may choose another route to cut through instead of staying on the collectors or arterials. And the other disadvantage, which everyone recited at the last council meeting, the fact that other departments, if these are employed, they will not plow snow, salt, or have school bus access within that area. So why are they used? I came across this. This was an article that was in the American Journal of Public Health. It was published in 2004. There was a study done. It was a five-year study that was done in Oakland where they looked at 1,600 speed hump installations, and their conclusion that they found is that people living near a speed hump had a 53 to 60 percent reduction in the odds of that person being injured or dying because of being struck by a vehicle. So I thought that was a fascinating article and study that was done. Important points. I'll go over three installations that have been studied to date in the community. The first one is Snaffle Road. And this was done looking at the volumes before installation and the volumes after installation. And it was set up on a – this one was set up on a time index, about 45 minutes. As you can see, the morning peak before installation, 44 vehicles, and then it tapers off, and then at lunchtime it picks back up, and then the afternoon peak of 42 vehicles. And then after they were installed, traffic engineering went out and reanalyzed the area, and you can see the percent difference that it – with that installation is done. Over 70 percent, and close to 70 in the morning and afternoon traffic. So it's pretty effective. Being out there and looking at it in the field, you can kind of see why everyone was using this area to go ahead and cut across and get over to Line Drive. Transylvania Park was another area that was studied close to UK's campus. It is bound by Euclid and Maxwell. Same style study, time indexes, pre- and post-volumes, which means before and after installation. These volumes are a lot less because not many people at the time were taking Transylvania Park through there. But nevertheless, you still see a reduction except for one increase that occurred during the lunch hour. The last one is Northwood Drive. You can see how Northwood, very similar to St. Anthony's, you have a very long run through there, which a lot of people feel very comfortable driving at high rates of speed. This study was set up somewhat different. We actually took locations in the field, and we looked at the average daily traffic, which is what the ADT is, traffic within a full day, before installation and then after installation. We also looked at the speeds, which is based on the 85th percentile. The 85 being the number, that speed at which people were going at that rate or less. The percent difference, as you can see, these are huge reductions. You can see at 145 Northwood Drive, you have about 600 vehicles that are reduced per day just because of the installation. And the speeds were around 40 to 38 miles per hour, and they were dropping down to 32 and 33. So you had reductions of volumes and speeds within that location. That concludes the presentation on the different options that we currently have and that we're currently looking at. So I'll go ahead and take a moment to go ahead and answer any questions that you have about the program or how these can be applied. I just want to thank you, Mr. Frazier, for bringing our new options to our attention. I'll give credit to Council Member DeCamp, who actually asked for this some months ago, and I just remembered it a week or two ago when we had yet another four-way stop to put in. I'm glad to see we have some new options, and I look forward to using the toolkit in my own district. I'll open it up for other council members. Thank you. Ms. James? Thank you, Chair. This is exciting. These are really innovative, creative ways to calm our traffic. And as you were going through the slides, thank you for doing the side-by-side so I can make my notes so they'll go along. I have several questions that I want to ask. Yes, ma'am. On the third or on page two, labeled N-T-M-P, where you talk about the process. Yes, ma'am. And you're talking about, number six, working with the neighborhoods to implement the appropriate types of improvements. Yes, ma'am. I've had some experience with a neighborhood trying to get some traffic calming in their area, and it was very difficult to get neighborhood consensus. What will be the determinant factor? How will you know, how will we be able to proceed with something in a neighborhood if the neighborhood just doesn't seem to agree, can't agree on what needs to be done? Basically, in my mind, the way it would have to work is that is a neighborhood that would require more time and attention to come to some consensus, which is fine. Some neighborhoods are extremely quick to kind of know what they want, and others may not know what they want, and they kind of wonder if this is going to work or if we do this, how that's going to apply or how it's going to affect me. And so basically, to get to that consensus is more education and more with us being involved and, of course, the council members as well. We've seen that before, and that's absolutely no problem. We will go ahead and also, when asked, to give opinions of what we think would really help out based on our experience. But it does require that 65 percent majority. That's what I was going to ask, if there's going to be a postcard still. Yes. They make a vote, and they go ahead and they send that in to us on petition cards. Okay. But we have some that's, you know, for example, speed times. We have some neighborhoods that look to do it and chose not to do it, but they're still in the program, and we still communicate with them. They still contact us. And so we basically still try to work with them on going ahead and get some type of improvement out there. Okay. The neighborhoods are so diverse and so different. Some of them like to see physical improvements immediately to the road. Some of them, like St. Anthony's, didn't want a physical improvement. They wanted to look at striping and signage first right off the crack of the bat. Right. So each one's different. And can traffic studies be different? So can someone go out and have a whole different report from what our report shows? Yes. If, for example, and this is what Council Member Blevins was talking about, we have requests that come in through you all, of course, through the administration, and through the citizens. Let's call, just straight call in, email, for example, multiways. If someone asks for a multiway study, we will do a multiway study, period. That would be it, a 24-hour study of an intersection. But if someone wants to go ahead and look at a corridor or look at different alternatives for an intersection, could a multiway be here? If not, what else could we do? That throws it into a different study altogether. That becomes like a 96-hour study where we take two days of a regular work week on top of the weekend to see the driver patterns and behaviors. So getting to know that neighborhood and figuring out really what their true problems or true concerns are is very important from the beginning. Yes, ma'am. Okay. In relationship to St. Anthony's Drive, over there in that area, do the side road speeds affect that main road? So in that area, I know St. Anthony's is 25, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So some of the side roads that are there, I don't know, maybe Eastland Parkway, or I'm not sure what they are. Okay. And those are maybe 35s. Do you see a connection? Maybe that's not correct, but I know I was just yard-sailing over there one day, and some of the neighbors Trying to get there quick to get to St. Anthony's. Well, no, not really. But some of the neighbors talked about how on their actual street it was 25, but some of the side streets it was 35. And so just kind of the feel that that wasn't a fluid speed for that area. And actually, I think one of the reasons that they were a little bit upset is because actual residents were getting tickets for speeding on that 25-mile-per-hour area. But I was just concerned as to whether, I'm curious as to whether we look at side roads as we do a traffic study. Are we looking at side roads as well? Is there a holistic approach to determining what's best for one particular street? We do. And once again, it's based on neighborhood input. If we have an area like St. Anthony's saying we have a problem directly on this road, just this one here, we will look at different intersections to see where volume is pumping in. Usually that kind of contributes to where these speeders are coming from. You can either have just straight speeding problems, or you can have speeding and volume problems, or low speeds but high cut-through volume. One area that comes to mind that we did a large study for was in the second district, which was Great Acres area. We looked at a whole roadway network, several roads, and two large connector roads that brought the traffic in. So, yes, that's definitely looked at. We looked at those connections to make sure and kind of see where the volumes were coming from. Like Snapple Road, it's obvious that it looks like that that is a cut-through situation. So, therefore, that would have some type of different application than you would for, say, another one. And then do you look at other cut-through possibilities beforehand? So, is it so that we, the neighborhood doesn't say, okay, we had a problem on one road, and now horizontal to that road we have another, here we are with another problem cut-through, so then you have the neighborhood coming back again asking for a speed bump on another street. And then we do it again. So, we just wait kind of until the problem to see if the problem decreases. The citizens and your constituents are very good, I don't know, at the very time, you know, to let us know quickly what's going on. But it doesn't save us any money to do those all in the beginning as one holistic study. It can, but you have to be careful because some situations, we kind of look at it. We look at the area in question, and we kind of figure out, based on our experience, what we really need to study first. Because if we go ahead and start doing large study areas for every request that came in, you would not be getting improvements, nor would you be getting reporting back for a very long time. This September, we've gone ahead and exceeded the count hours, the hours we do in the field. We've exceeded last year's already at the start of September. So, you know, we have a lot that's going on. But at the same time, we're trying to make sure that we're very effective as far as if we have an isolated incident, that's probably what we need to look at. But if it's something that looks like it's a lot larger or encompasses different areas, we'll go ahead and try to look at that immediately or add to it in the next go around. Okay. Is there, I have a little note down here. As we're looking at these improvements, which I think are wonderful, is it necessary to have some of the signage completed before we're the host of hundreds of thousands of people for the 2010 games? Does that have anything to do with your urgency or any urgency for neighborhoods to come forward with what kind of problems they're having? It, of course, is important to have that in mind. What we're going over today is basically just normal day operation of traffic. But as you're already alluding to and talking about, you know, down the road when we start looking at these other circumstances, these other populations coming in, it probably has some type of effect. But I believe the Urban County Government is trying to go ahead and look at that and stay on top of it. Traffic engineering, from a request to kind of have a feel of large volumes being generated, two weekends from now we'll be studying Keeneland traffic flows. Okay. And so that request came in so that we could have a handle and a true understanding of what we're looking at as far as volume movements. Okay. We can stand there and say, you know, well, to get on New Circle Road or to actually come in this way or to cut down Rice Road. But when you really study it and see those volumes, it helps out as far as an understanding of what's going on. Okay. And I'm looking on the speed hump, the engineering page. Are there such things as temporary speed humps? Is there something you can put out that's not a permanent structure that just stops people just for a little bit or slows them down? And this was, I apologize, this was before my time, but I believe that there was temporary speed humps that were done on South Point, I think, in the past. So that was a temporary scenario that was done, I guess, during the construction phase. There's what's called modular or manufactured speed humps made of rubberized material or polymers, plastic, that can be put in place on a temporary basis. But I need to tell you, from my understanding, because of some of the problems that they've had with those systems, Transylvania Park is one of those style speed humps. They have a lip on them. And the asphalt ones have a very smooth transition. So if someone was running up on it or, I think, a plow scenario or something, it made it a little bit more difficult. So we tend to shy away from those. Okay. Let me see what else I have here. For the signage, similar to the green flyer, which I think is very cool, who pays for those signs? These signs have to be paid for by the neighborhood, but it's a part of a split. Okay. In the program, we have matching funds depending on the PVA value of the area. So typically what we usually see a great deal of is a 20-80 split, 20 from the neighborhood and 80 from the program itself. Okay. And are the new signage, the reflective signage, are those graffiti-safe? I know we talked about at one point some little signs that were easy to remove. A lot of the new signage coming out now, they take into consideration in their design and what the materials are, as far as graffiti and vandalism. Some of them, actually, you can go out with a special wipe and actually wipe them clean, depending on the level of abuse they take. So some of that is incorporated into the design. Okay. Let's see. The rumble stripes? Strips. Strips. Yes, ma'am. What's the life expectancy of those? Do they wear down after a certain time? The thermoplastic material typically stay in the field within, say, about four to six times more than paint. And so what we're seeing on average with paint may be about two to three-year life expectancy because they're water-based. So you could probably get, I think, a life of about six, seven years. Six or seven years. Okay. And as far as you know, that's not, like snow plows and things like that will still go along the strips? Yes. It's basically just almost like the turn arrows you see in the middle of the road that look like they're humped up a little bit. Same style except it's a double layer. You have one and you have another that goes on top of it. Okay. So it shouldn't be a problem. Okay. And the driver feedback signs that were posted right under the speed limit signs? Yes, ma'am. Those are, like, temporary that you can move from one location to the other? Yes, ma'am. Okay. And how is it? Is the radar inside the actual signs? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So there's nothing under on the street or anything that's required? No, ma'am. The ones we're looking at are solar, so they're very flexible as far as installation. Okay. That's all that I have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Beard? Thank you, Chair. Two or three questions, if I might. Yes, sir. You had mentioned how these requests are initiated. Do you all ever initiate one and actually force it on a neighborhood if you see imminent danger? Since I've been here to date, we've actually made changes to things that we've seen on the road on our own initiative, but never, I guess, to the magnitude of, you know, we think this roadway needs speed humps and we just go do it on our own. I'm not seeing that since I've been here. Right. But other things as far as striping and installation of other signage, yields and crosswalks, yes, we've gone ahead and done that on our own accord. Do you get police input? Do they ever report situations that they've observed also? Yes. And you act on those? Yes, sir. The same as you would if it was me or somebody else? Yes, sir. Tree trimming. I've noticed an awful lot, I guess, about this time of year when trees have had a chance to grow somewhat, an awful lot of stop signs that are partially or totally obscured. Do we have a program for going around and getting rid of that? If you have or if anyone sees a stop sign that has tree limbs or a tree that's encroached within that area, go ahead and contact traffic engineering and or the urban forester. Typically, if we get it, we will go ahead and respond and see if it's something that our crews can simply remove a branch or two. But if it's something much larger, we go ahead and send it over to the urban forester. Yeah, this looks primarily just like a normal growth, maybe a two-year cycle, but not necessarily a one-year cycle. Small stuff like that, we try to take care of. Okay. This is a little tougher one now. Recently, we put a multi-way stop at Malibu Drive and Belafonte. Yes, sir. Generally, Malibu Drive is an east-west and Belafonte is a north-south. When we looked at the numbers, I think Malibu was like 200% of what you needed to justify it, and Belafonte was 70-some-odd percent, 78% or something. I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this. Let's say a car is on Malibu Drive and it's not going through, it's turning onto Belafonte. Does it get counted twice? No, sir. Why not? It doesn't get counted twice because that's considered a one-turn movement of that one vehicle that comes through there. So the one vehicle is being accounted for. Well, I mean, but how does it get – if it's turning onto Belafonte, it's Belafonte's problem now. Right. And that was the whole purpose of doing it anyway, because Belafonte had a problem. Right. If I recall correctly, and I could be mistaken about this, and I will verify and then let you and counsel know, but I think that we look to see if that becomes a – well, let me take that back for a second. If we go ahead and set the counters on each street or each pass, no, it'd have to be counted. It'd have to be counted twice, I believe. Now, I think about it because you can't make a distinction between a certain vehicle. So if it comes over the one counter on Malibu, it's calculated and recorded, and then if it turns and goes over the other counter on Belafonte, it would have to be double counted. Yes, sir. Sometimes those counters only go halfway across the street. Some of them do. We try to go ahead and set out counters for the – like if it's a two-lane, you'd have a counter and counter for the lane to see the volume in those lanes. But if you have multi-lanes, like if it's a left or something, you'll see those out there as well. And it basically works on a perimeter system so that when a car goes over it or goes nearby, it's tagged and recorded as far as the disturbance to that area. But in retrospect, now that I think about it, it'd have to be – a vehicle that come down and then turn onto the other road, that would have to be counted twice because it would go past one and then go ahead and go past the other. Okay. Thank you. I think that's all I have. Yes, sir. Thank you. Dr. Blues? Thank you, Chair. Brad, thanks very much for this presentation. It really has been helpful and enlightening and seems to give us some real options in addition to asking you simply for a stop sign study. And, of course, we're all familiar with the pattern where a council member asks for a multi-way stop and traffic engineering comes back and says it's not warranted. And it goes to the service committee. Yes, sir. And then the council finally approves a multi-way stop. And that has to do with my question about the nature of our requests. Would you say it's better for us to ask you to study an intersection with reference to an area and suggest solutions rather than asking you simply for a multi-way stop study? I would imagine that from your all's constituents that you have, that you probably have people to ask you directly for, I'd like to see a four-way stop here at this location. But I think that's, even because we don't have a good sense of a range of possibilities. To answer your question, we can do that. So, basically, you know, could you look at this intersection for us for possible problems? I think the last one that Council Member Blevins sent over, it was a multi-way request. Or, and or, other improvements for that intersection if that does not pan out. I believe that was correct. So, that kicked it into a different study area for us as far as just simply looking at that multi-way and or. Now, it opens it up to other things and other possibilities. So, the reporting that would be coming back is that did it meet warrants for multi-way, yes or no. Say, for instance, if it was not or not recommended, here's some other things that we could recommend that could be done there. And then, I think from there, the Council Member would probably have to take that and re-communicate that to the neighborhood depending on what that change would be. Right. And I know that problems at one intersection might be related to problems at other. Yes, sir. At other areas. And I appreciate that study you folks have done out in Great Acres. And I know you'll be following up on that with the neighborhood. Yes, sir. Later on this month. Council Member James asked you about temporary speed humps. There are, I think, at least in some areas, temporary speed circles or intersection circles. On a temporary basis? Yes, so that you could put in a circle and see whether a traffic circle, see if it works. Yeah, you can go ahead and you can typically go ahead and either use temporary paint so a neighborhood can visually see it in the field or actually maybe take some type of a flexible curbing and apply that as well and see if they're going to be satisfied with it or not. But, yeah, you can go ahead and reflect improvements in the field so that the neighborhood can visually see what that may be and they can decide. It helps them to decide if they really want that or not. And get some sense of how it might work as a permanent installation. Yes, sir. One last question, and this has to do with page 3 of the document you gave us. We probably all know about chicanery, but what's a chicane if I'm pronouncing that right? Right. What that is, if you look at page 1, the third slide down at the bottom, that's an example of what one looks like. It's basically where you take an entire area. It's almost like making multi-use of different bulb outs or chokers, if you will, to go ahead and instead of giving a straight shot of a roadway, you try to give it some type of curvature within that roadway so that people can't just drive straight extremely quick. They have to slow down because they have to gently go to the right and then to the left and then on and on. So that's basically what that is. Well, thank you. That's a very informative report, and I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Mr. DeCamp? Thanks. Thanks very much. It's a really good report. And I want to thank you because you certainly responded quickly to the neighborhoods in the third district when they've had a request. I think most of the questions have been asked, although I just have one, and I think it's almost the same one I asked the last time. Yes, sir. And I'm sure it must be discouraging to you because the quick fix is to put a stop sign up. And the neighbors request it, and the council member brings it forth, comes to you, you recommend that it not be done, and then we override it, I would say, 90% of the time. Over the years that I've been here, I've seen hundreds of stop signs put in that have not been recommended by traffic engineering. Right. So I guess the question I asked last time was I know that you have some standards that are put forth, I guess, by I guess a national group that what makes a stop sign possible. Yes, sir. I mean, why should it be put in? Yes, sir. And I think that in most cases, you base it on that and turn them down accordingly. And my question was, is there any opportunity of sort of not looking at that, those standards, and looking at adding one that that become a traffic calming method, as opposed to looking at the accidents that have been there and, you know, so on and so forth. Because that's what I would say 90% of it is, is a traffic calming, trying to anticipate that there not be an accident there, and the stop sign will make it so that the accident won't happen, even though you don't have the record there to make the recommendation that it be put there. So it, you know, everybody, I remember Mr. Heidenreich, he used to be head of traffic engineering when the city was about 150,000, and he said to me one day, you know, Dick, he said there are 150,000 people in Lexington and there are 150,000 traffic engineers. So everyone has sort of a vested interest. And, you know, I think it's a difficult problem that we get into, but we keep on overturning you, and so maybe we need to look at stop signs in a different way. And it is there. I mean, do we continually just look at those requirements that are set up on a national basis? We do look at those requirements, those Federal Highway Administration standards, through the manual uniform traffic control devices. In it, it does say that as far as a traffic calming effect or speeding effect, it doesn't really recommend making use of multi-way stop areas. There is things that traffic engineering does look for, not only, I know a lot of the reports that you see, you see a lot of volume numbers, but there's other installations that have been recommended based on if there's a real sight distance problem, a large number of pedestrian areas. We have one that's over at Masterson Station that we are currently looking at doing a pedestrian count on top of the traffic volume, and I think that will probably greatly influence what the outcome of that would be. So to answer your question, yes, sir, when we evaluate these and we look at these, we try to look at, as far as the installation, not only just the volumes, but we also look at to see if it's a sight distance problem, if there's a lot of pedestrian usage of an area, that does play a factor into it. Well, to the best of my knowledge, they do end up being a traffic calming way. It does affect traffic calming. I mean, I've seen it in my neighborhoods where they've been put in and they weren't recommended, but it has slowed down the traffic some. So, you know, you can't win for losing. I understand, sir. Thank you. Mr. Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Frazier. It's a great report today, and I echo the sentiments of the committee here that you've done a fantastic job when our neighborhoods have called and asked for questions. You know, you've been out in my district and helped us out with some issues. I had a couple questions. The rumble strips. Yes, sir. And the speed tables. Yes, sir. I think you said that the rumble strips are, at least no removal can traverse those, and probably school buses as well. Yes, I believe so. Yes, sir. For both of those issues? I don't want to speak for other departments. A lot of the things that you hear from traffic engineering is, like you all said together, you know, with speed humps, when we report to you and report to neighborhoods, this means that these services won't be provided. The reason we say that is because that is what's being communicated to us from the other departments. These are the options that the administration has seen it through the commissioner and through our director, but now this is the first time this has been exposed and laid out to you all just to show you. It was almost perfect timing, actually, due to the request. But the next step as far as what you're getting at as far as these other improvements, especially the tables, talking and working with those divisions saying, now, you know, we had a problem with the speed humps because it was too much of a crown, too much of a peak, too quick. Okay? So we took that information, we went back and worked on it and thought about it and saw other examples that are used throughout. So now we have this that we come up with, which this was their concern. Now this should go ahead and negate that. But we have to go ahead and talk to them and see what their input is and how they feel about it. But that's our hope. So that's why it was listed as a recommendation. Okay. My next question would be, is there a cost for each of these? Yes, sir. And if so, are they both passed on to the neighborhood? The rumble strips I would not think would be so much as a cost because it's basically making use of the thermal material that we have. It would almost be like standard striping that we would go out and do for somebody. But the speed tables coming to pass, that would have to be done on a bid basis just like our speed humps. So there would be a cost. Okay. Okay. What about the optical bars? Is that, again, no cost on that one? Yes, sir. Okay. And on the driver feedback sign? Yes, sir. I didn't realize that that was temporary. So you kind of move those around? We kind of move those around from place to place. That lacks a selective enforcement. And we'll leave them up. And then the good thing about it is not only does it just give feedback information to the drivers, the people in the neighborhood, it's recorded data. So our intent is to go ahead and have this information and pass it up along to Metro. This is what we've seen in this area. We had a call in. We had a concern. We installed these for about two or three weeks. You know, we download the information, and this is what we've seen. So this should help out as far as on their enforcement end as well to help build up a database. Sure. And so the slide that you showed that had the different times and the speeds that correlated with them, did that come from those signs? I'm sorry, sir. What was that again? You had a slide that showed different streets, and you had the time of day that people were traveling on those roads, and then there you go, back, back, back. I'm sorry, sir. Is that what you're referring to, sir? I think it was a different one. There you go. Okay. Did this information come from the driver feedback signs? No, sir. It came from putting our counters out in the field. Okay. And that allows you to see, but that doesn't tell how much they were speeding, right? Not the individual ones, but as far as a group. If you look at the last set of numbers on the bottom rows, you'll see that 85% are pre and a post. That pre 85 represents the 85th percentile speed. Basically, 85% of the traffic that was recorded out there was doing, at 105 Northwood Drive, 38.2 miles per hour or less. Okay. So you had 15% driving faster than 38.2 miles per hour. So that's what that represents. And the pre means before the installation of the speed hump, and the post is after it was put in. Okay. And then I guess my final question is, how do we go about getting those temporary signs, the driver feedback signs posted? Bids should be coming to counsel for approval. We've already opened the bids for them on a per unit basis. So you should be seeing those very shortly. Okay. Do you know how many you're going to purchase or try to purchase? I think we're going to look at this point to get four at this point. Okay. And then as time goes on, because, you know, we make use of the funds, we can go ahead and maybe get six. Just see what the demand is. I have a funny feeling once they get out there and they have that use, I think they'll be welcomed by the neighborhoods. Oh, yeah. So I can see that increasing. I believe they will. So hopefully we can buy more than that. Yes, sir. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Yes, sir. Mr. McCord. Again, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this. You know, as we go along, it seems to me this is the main thing that we as council folks, especially in the districts here all the time, is, you know, help us with this traffic situation. And so I appreciate you kind of bringing a number of these things to light. Let me ask you a quick question, though. I've heard this and I've never seen it. Is it state statute that you cannot use a stop sign for traffic calming? Am I up? I have to apologize. I'm not sure. I know that it's not recommended in the federal highway standards that we go by. It may be an urban legend, so I just wanted to check that. But it's generally not the practice of it. As Mr. DeCamp had said, you know, that's what neighborhoods view it as. It really doesn't have a whole lot to do with intersections. And so anything that we can do to kind of look at that flexibility of stop signs and so forth is good. I would recommend that you all take the information that you've done for us today, boil it down to maybe a one-page type thing for the neighborhood summit coming up on Saturday, and just make sure that this gets into the hands of all of those folks that are attending. Because I do believe there's an educational curve that we've got to start working on as to what are your options, and that when you've got an issue here, it's not a matter of throwing up seven stop signs in a row to slow people down. That we do have options here. But any way that we can communicate that very easily and simply to neighborhoods I think would be a good thing. And then, as I say, kind of piggyback off of Saturday's neighborhood summit would be great. And then I think the same thing would be great for us so that when I come to you and say, I've got this situation on Sud Street, and this is what the neighbors are saying, you know, what I'd like as a council member is to be able to sit down with traffic engineering and let you kind of line out, okay, Jay, here's option A, B, C, and D. Here's how much A costs, B costs, C costs. You know, A is the best recommendation by us because of this type of thing. That, I think, would be very helpful to me to go back and work with the neighborhood and say, look, you've got really four options here. You know, option D is actually a stop sign. It's actually the last option. But here are the others and here's why. I think right now a lot of times we're sort of at a loss for explaining, you know, why speed humps aren't necessarily the best thing for your street and so forth. But I think as we go along, because we didn't move the open service boundary in the comp plan, because infill and redevelopment is such a high priority and you're hearing more and more about it, we've got to look at this different. And, you know, I'm affected from the growth of northern Jessamine County and Garrard County. Everybody's cutting through neighborhoods now trying to find a way to get off of Nicholasville Road and Harrisburg Road and so forth. So I would appreciate anything you guys can do from a process standpoint so that when I come to you and say, hey, here's a situation, we've got a way to kind of work through that that's real effective. And I'll just share one frustration as we work on this process. There's a street that's heavily used. A lot of people are asking for traffic coming on it and they're asking for a stop sign to be placed here and there and everywhere. I've had three separate groups come to me asking for a stop sign to be placed at three separate locations. And the process is such that the way we normally do it, we ask them, you know, we'll go get a petition signed and, you know, we'll work through that and then we'll say no and then council will work on overriding it, you know, as we've talked about before. What's frustrating for neighbors and for us is if we could sit down with you and say, here's where they're asking for help. And, you know, they're looking at three separate stop signs. This neighborhood will all come together and sign a petition to slow it down if we give them the one option. But rather than a bunch of neighbors going out and getting a petition signed and getting rejected on a stop sign location when maybe it was just one block up or maybe it was just something else, I think that's where there's a great deal of frustration from the neighborhood and from us not being able to help people. So as we work through process, I'll just kind of give you that example as something we could, how do we work through something like that where we have multiple groups within a neighborhood asking for the same thing, but they're asking for it in different places. And we don't want to have everybody out there trying to get a petition during the wintertime and then just be turned down and say, well, that's the process. So anything we can do, I really, really appreciate all that you guys do. And it's going to be more intensive as we go along. So this is very timely on a lot of fronts. Thanks. Appreciate it. Ms. Crosby. Thank you. Currently, how many radar speed trailers do we have? I'm not sure how many that the police have their house over there. I think maybe if I recall correctly, and this is just a wild guess, I think I've seen that they've had like three or four. So you wouldn't know? It was my understanding that maybe they were getting some new ones in. So you probably wouldn't know if they've gotten those yet. I do not know. I'm sorry. All right. Thank you. We see somebody back from police. Do you all have any idea? I believe the number is four as well. I think we've got two. We ordered them a grant. I left traffic months ago. I'm not sure, but there are new ones coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it. Mr. Maloney. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation. I like the new signage. The only problem I have is there's areas, if you put these signs up, nobody's going to be able to see them. I'll give you an example. Like on Unity Drive, Simpson Avenue, there's a lot of apartment complex on Alexandria Drive where they're overcrowded. People's cars are parking on the street, and it's become a dangerous issue. And in certain areas, especially on Alexandria, where I've heard reports where people have been hit and no one and they're not going to the hospital because of their documents and all that. But they say it's not uncommon to have a couple people hit a month there and not be reported to the hospital. And I just haven't seen anybody or a traffic engineer anywhere where we have tried to do something about these parkings that are overcrowded apartment complex that are starting to take up all these streets in a very crowded situation where we're having a lot of wreck, people running into parked cars and all that. No one has really took any. Are you all looking at any of that? Yeah. We have a residential permit parking program that if you have constituents along that street area where, as you're saying, if you have a lot of people that are not on that street that park in that area, could be eligible to go ahead and go through the process as far as having it reserved for parking for people that are directly on that street. Part of it is you can get everybody. Everyone and people get the parking. It's just it's so dangerous parking on that street because you've got a lot of turn-ins and turn-outs to these apartment complex. And what happens is the traffic, foot traffic, is unbelievable on this area because there's a lot of shops and things where people are walking through the cars, parked cars, and getting hit. And I don't care about the parking sitters. I don't think you're going to do any good. The thing is, certain areas like those situations, Unity, Alexandria, Simpson Avenue, especially with the bars at night around UK campus, there shouldn't be any parking period on those streets. And especially if these apartment complex are not building an amount of parking space for what they should have. And my concern is the safety of the people who are walking traffic, foot traffic, through there. It's very dangerous. And I think there should be some kind of policy that you all have in a situation where that much foot traffic is going in that area. There shouldn't be any parking on that street at all. And I don't know if anybody's ever looked at that. If you have specific references of those areas, we can do it. Alexandria Drive between the sales road and Cambridge, it's unbelievable. I mean, it's just the car, the bumper, the bumper, and you've got all those apartment complex. And then you've got all those retails in that area where a lot of people are there. I mean, it's unheard of. I mean, you could have two people get hit a month. Well, they're not going to go report it because of their situation unless they get hurt bad enough. And there have been times where people hurt bad enough. And on Unity, that is off the Threadmill Road. And you've got cars around, really hit and parked cars all up and down there when the cars are parked illegal. And we've called many times to get them cars towed away. And it's just too late by the time the cars come around and hit them. But, I mean, I think you all are going to have to be a little bit. I know parking is important, but to me, the foot traffic, and as you know, as times get tough, a lot of people are going to have to walk in a lot of places that they can't afford the gas and all that. And it's up, and to have that many cars parking somewhere like that, and that many people getting hurt, and parked cars getting hit, I think you all are going to have to make, I don't care how wide the road is, and you all think it's wide enough for them to park there, that doesn't mean, to me, in that situation, it doesn't mean anything. What basically is the concern is citizens walking and foot traffic. So sometimes you all may have to make, put your foot down and say, there'll be no parking here because of site problems of the residential area. And I hope you all will look into that. It was Unity, Alexandria, from Purcells to Cambridge. Yeah, Purcells to Cambridge is terrible. And I mean, that gentleman there, after we talked about the party block, you can sit down and talk to him, and he can tell you all about Alexandria. Thank you. Ms. James. Thank you, Chair. Can I ask for clarification on something? We were talking about, you were talking with Council Member Myers about the driver of feedback signs. Yes, ma'am. You said there was going to be some recorded information. Yes, ma'am. Does it count? Yes. Wonderful. That's great. Also, I know that you're going to do this, but just I will support funding requests for brochures, some easy-to-read brochures that we could pass out to our neighborhood associations. Once you've cleared everything with all the departments and made sure there's no plows, and I guess you have to get with Faye County Public Schools about buses and things like that. Once all that is complete and pricing and everything is complete, I would support some funding for some really high-class educational tools for our residents. Thank you so much. Thank you. Brad, thank you so much. I just have one little question. When you were talking about St. Anthony's and you were talking about putting parking on that, do you look at putting in bike paths when you do those kind of things? We can. We can look to put in bike pathways within an area. Once again, it depends on what the level of improvement that can be recommended based on what they feel like they'd like to see, if they'd like to see bike paths out there. It's currently got parking. That one has parking on both sides, and so basically we're kind of just, you know, just adding the striping to go ahead and reemphasize that you can park in this area. So we're not changing any of the parking, but we're trying to give a lane definition. Your driving lane is not so incredibly wide anymore, half of 36 feet. Now it's more like down to 12 or 11. So that will help slow people down. As bike paths, has that been a method of slowing traffic down by putting that in or not? I'm actually really not the true expert that can answer that. Kenzie or Keith Loven in engineering could probably help with that a little bit more. It is recommended. It is looked at as far as a means to help calm traffic because you now have not only vehicle interaction, but now you have bicycle interaction in a street area in its own designated lane. So it mingles with the traffic and becomes a part of it. Thank you. Thank you so much for the information. It was very helpful. The next item on our agenda is the block party permit process. Mr. Maloney. Thank you. I brought this up, and what I want to do is just kind of, we just had a block party in my district, and I just want to use the example, how they got a permit and how I went through the process and how it can be better. And what I like to do, I have a couple people here who are in the, the president, Todd Strecker is the president of the Neighborhood Association of Calumet Terrace, and I believe, are you, Annette? Annette, who happens to live by the party where this incident happened. And first of all, what I want to do is ask whoever is a traffic engineer who gave this permit to kind of come up and speak if there is somebody from traffic engineer who did this permit. And I'd like to go over a few things that you all can look on. I don't want to read everything, but you all turn your page over. You'll see where it says the residential block party policy, and I just need to know, and that's why I was going to use the example while we go through here, this party that we had here. When they, if you turn to look at the policy, I don't want to go through all that, but you all can, it's explanatory, but if you look at the next page where the applicant filled it out, my question goes back to how did number one, if you read how it states, to an adult resident of the interested neighborhood or Neighborhood Association president or church pastor, how this person, who signed this, and how did this fall under the number one guideline on the policy of block party? I want to know how that, and where that person is. Is there anybody who was in the neighborhood, interested neighborhood, or they're a Neighborhood Association, or was there a church pastor that signed off on this to make this happen? Who's going to speak on this? Who wrote the permit? Council members, my name is Jeff Neal with Traffic Engineering. I guess this particular permit, the applicant was in the area, but he didn't actually live on Davenport Drive, which was the street where the block party was to be permitted. Well, how did it fit for 103 interests up there? Well, it probably doesn't fit the letter of the requirement. Okay. That's why we're having a problem here, folks. I don't mind having block parties with neighborhoods where Neighborhood Associations are involved with this, and they block it off, and everybody who's invited in the neighborhood. But this party shut down part of Lusitzen, and not only did it shut it down, you're talking anywhere from thousands of people that could not get home, number one. Number two, it did shut down a main artery, Purcells Road. Purcells Road is off of Alexandria Drive, and the party was one block from Purcells Road. And the other thing is, and I guess the police will have to answer these questions, and I mean, Mr. Director, this is why I think we need to revamp this party ordinance, I mean, this party block party. And I think the concept is good as long as the neighborhood's involved, but to have something this magnitude, that we're talking thousands of people, and they don't, and none of them follow the guideline on number one, which is the main important policy in getting a party block, is, to me, is, that should never happen. When we look at these party block policies, we need to follow every one of these guidelines, and especially if they don't pass number one, we don't need to go number two, three, four, five, six, seven, because number one is the main thing while we have, and I think the concept is good. But the thing that gets me is something this magnitude, and really what concerns me, if the city knew about it was going to be this large, and a week later we had a similar party downtown, that both of these could have combined and had it all downtown where it should have been. And that's what I think, and that's what, this is why I think a lot of folks in the neighborhoods here, because this happened last year, and I said last year I didn't want this to happen again this year. And I didn't think it was going to happen until my phone rang about a hundred times that day, and I went out there to check it out, and they did shut down the sales road. And it became a safety issue, not just a noise ordinance, but a safety issue when people could not get on, get home from the sales road there. And what bothers me is why the permit was allowed again after we sat there last year and said, we learned a mistake, it's too big of a party to be having, why are we allowing this thing to happen again? And I don't know if you can answer that, or how did we get by with it this time after I asked you, and we said we weren't going to do it? I would have to go back and check my records. I don't recall this being an issue last year. Oh, this was a big issue, because I'm, this is like a broken record. It was this time last year I made this same speech in front of a different body of council, but most of them were here. But I just can't, do you look at every one of these watch parties? If I'm John Doe and I come down here and I say, I want to have my street, and I don't live on this street, do you go back and do research to make sure that they are a neighborhood association, they live in that neighborhood, or they follow one of these guidelines? Do you do that kind of research? Yes, we do. We do that research to a certain degree. But this one here you all didn't do? Is there a reason why? Apparently not, and I'm really not sure of that reason. Normally there is some proof that the neighborhood has been invited, whether it be a flyer. Sometimes we have petitions go out and actually have them submit names to us with addresses. We don't do that all the time, but just on a case-by-case basis. There are two neighborhood associations in this area. One is this gentleman here who happens to be close to the vicinity, and the other one is Cardinal Valley. And either one of them got a flyer or brochure, because they were the first people I called to ask them if you all requested a block party. And either both parties said no. And, I mean, I'm not going to try to jump on it. This year we're not going to have this, and hopefully you'll follow this, but I think we still need to make some changes on this policy and procedure, because it may not happen in my district. It may happen to somebody else, especially around the University of Kentucky. You may have a fraternity, block one of the streets off, have the same problem that I have. But I'm going to have Mr. Stricker get up and speak on behalf of this. I do want to ask one other question, and I don't think you can answer it, but the police on enforcing the noise order. And I didn't know how that happened, because I think Mr. Stricker wants to get up and speak on his complaint that he had from the neighborhood association that he got a lot of calls. There was a live band there, and you could hear two neighborhoods over. For instance, I'll tell you where you're on Davenport. You're talking all the way over to Saddlebrook Neighborhood Association, and then you're also talking the colony, because I got some calls from the colony, which is pretty far away from all this. Where does a noise ordinance come into effect, and how do we enforce it on these situations when we have loud music like it's playing? The permit that you all are talking about has nothing to do with a noise ordinance. It doesn't give a variance on any of those things. It simply says they can block a street for a party. A noise ordinance is still in effect. If I came to that call and there was a noise violation, our first attempt is always to work with people. We would ask they turn it down. That's what we do on most situations. We say we have a complaint. Would you turn it down? If we have a call back, we'll cite you. And that usually takes care of the problem. So it does not give a variance for the noise ordinance. That can only be granted, I think, through the commissioner's office. This particular day, I was not there. I didn't work it. We had two calls to the Alexandria-Devonport area that day. Both were given a Code 5, meaning no citation was issued. I don't know the times on those. And we also had two calls for people blocking a roadway in that area as well. I can't give you the details on them because, like I said, I didn't work them and I haven't done enough research. But there's no variance to the noise ordinance. If you have a block party permit, that means you simply can block the street. You can't change alcohol laws. You can't change noise laws. So we would still enforce as if there was not a block party, but we'd always ask. We just try to be good neighbors that way and ask people to turn down first. Well, I could understand turn down, but my question goes back. If a police officer gets a call from somebody like in the colony of Saddlebrook, and they say where the music is coming from, and they just go down to that area and say at that time the police may be in the middle, listen to the band, calm it down, quiet it down, do they go back to that complaint with that resident who complained on the colony of Saddlebrook to go out there and talk to them and sit there and see if they can still hear it or not? Are they supposed to do that or not? There's not a procedure on how you would handle each one. Sometimes the people want to give them anonymous. We'll get an anonymous call. We always, I always try to tell people if they turn it up after we leave, call us back and we'll deal with it. And to be honest with you, a lot of people you have to sneak up on them. If you get a second call of a party, they'll turn it down when they see you coming, so you park and you walk up. Again, there's no set policy and procedure because each one's different. But if somebody from the colony called and I went and told the band to turn it down or deceased and then I got a call a half hour later, I wouldn't have to go to the colony to ask them. I'd go right to the source and try to catch them and issue the citation and shut it down. So each call is different. Did that answer your question? I don't know. Well, I think it did. I mean, Todd probably will be able to. He has some questions on that. If it's okay if I can have Todd come up and give you some. We're still using this case, this scenario. And then maybe after Todd does that, we can come up with some ideas on how we want to revamp this party, because I think Todd has some good ideas and some problems that we had. And Annette, I think, may have something she may want to add on. You don't? You're okay. Okay. If you have any questions, just call me. Just give your name and address, if you would, for the record, please. I will do that, and I will provide you with a letter. This is how I work. I'm not a happy camper, Chuck. Okay. But this will all become clear. I've addressed this to you. I'm Todd Strecker, President of Calumet Area Neighborhood Association. My address is 1400 Parterre Court here in Lexington. I'm going to read it for the record. Many residents in our neighborhood are not happy with the block party incidents where permits have been issued by the city, specifically those held on Devonport Drive near the intersection with Alexandria Drive, the incident that Richard's talking about. Both recent parties have resulted in gross violations of noise ordinance restrictions to the extent that residents living as far away as Biley Road have heard the amplified music and DJs speaking. In my case, and I live on Parterre Court just off of Biley, I could hear music while inside my home with the windows and doors closed. This happened on Mother's Day this year and on whatever the date was, and we're trying to figure out what that was, September 9 or 16. I don't recall. It was a Sunday. In the most recent case, which was a Sunday afternoon, I called the Division of Police to complain about very loud music at about 5.30 p.m. It's got to be on a tape. I was told the persons involved had a block party permit from the city. We just heard that explanation. I asked why the music was not being turned down, and I asked for a West Sector person. I was put in contact with a sergeant there. I won't say who that was. The officer in West Sector told me four officers were on the scene to ask those in charge to turn down the music. Thirty minutes later, the music was not turned down. The officer called me back to say the block party would end at 9 p.m., but the organizers they contacted agreed to lower the sound level. I said I could still hear the music inside my home with the windows and doors closed, and I'm on Parterre Court. I don't know what the distance is. It's probably three-fourths of a mile. I said given the situation had not improved, why could the police not shut down the amplifiers? The officer said they could not do that since there was a permit. Now, that's in direct contradiction to what you were just told, isn't it? The permit was for this block party, not for sound, and they were in about as gross a violation as I can think of. Now, I'm going to say something that's probably controversial, not hostile to the Division of Police, believe me. Many friends. It appears Division of Police personnel do not believe they have a mandate to take action and enforce the noise ordinance in this type situation. Why is that? I would like to hear from Chief Beatty and Mayor Newberry on why the law could not be enforced, because it wasn't, and I was told it wasn't because there was a permit, and there wasn't a permit for noise. There was a permit for a block party. Now, I'm going to say what Richard said. The block party permit system needs to be seriously revised in our view. For openers, neighborhoods must be part of the approval process. In these most recent cases, we were not even notified. I found out when I heard the music, and this lady here who lives pretty close to it called me up after the first one in May and said, I can't believe this. She lives fairly close. And I said, well, Annette, I'll do what I can do. And she said, thank you. Now, the next part. If a commercial entity is involved, like a radio station, as was the case in this block party and the one preceding it on Mother's Day, at Devonport Drive, in my view, events should be held at a venue appropriate for SANE, not on a busy neighborhood service street, which is what Richard just said. Aside from high-intensity noise, the situation was seriously disruptive. People couldn't get in and out of there, and clearly unsafe traffic-wise. It was backing up traffic onto Bursells Road. Wasn't that a police safety issue? We had four police officers. That's what I was told by the sergeant in charge. Did nobody see this? Richard saw it. I didn't go down there. I suggest considering a deposit fee system be instituted where there is any commercial involvement. I recommend at least $1,000 be placed on deposit with the city when application is made to cover all costs, security, cleanup, and so forth. Also, if restrictions like unacceptable noise levels are violated, the deposit should be forfeit. Neighborhood deposits would, of course, be much lower. And I've read through enough of this to know that in many places this is like $45 to cover administrative costs for putting out cones and that kind of stuff. That's not what we got here. What we have here is a major, major, loud, amplified noise party that tied up that intersection and lots of people. And the first time it happened in Mother's Day, I thought it was not on my street but on the one behind it and just down a short distance. And I walked around and went down there and they said, no, it isn't over here. I thought it was down a little further. The intensity of that noise was unbelievable. And I was getting phone calls and Richard was getting phone calls. I must have gotten 50 phone calls. Now, the Division of Police say they didn't get that many. Well, I'll tell you why. Because people don't think anybody's going to do anything. That's why. And like I said, I'm not hostile to the Division of Police. I don't think that they perceive they have a mandate to take action relative to location and population. That's what I think. And I think the mayor needs to get into this and the chief needs to get into this. We're unhappy. We cover a lot of areas out there in our neighborhood association. I'm going to a neighborhood association meeting this evening and we're going to discuss it among other things. This has got to stop. And I think it's in your hands in terms of the ordinance to get it stopped, but it's also appropriate that the Division of Police is given a mandate. If they go down there and the police officer told me this, four officers were on the scene trying to find the guy who was in charge and told him to turn it down. It didn't happen. This went on until 9 p.m., right? 9 p.m. And when they finally shut it down, that's when the noise stopped. I'm sorry. That's not right. Thank you, Mr. McKinney. Ma'am, would you like to come up and give your name and your address, please? I don't think she has anything to say. Oh, you don't want to? Okay. Mr. Loney. And I appreciate Paul. He's given us some ideas of what other cities are doing. And I think one of them here, I think Reno, Nevada, kind of hits on what Todd was talking about on some liability insurance or something like that. But I really want to go back. First of all, we've got to follow the policy and procedure. And I think what has happened on number one, if we'd have done what we're supposed to have done, this would have never been an issue. And we need to start really doing what we're supposed to do, follow the guidelines, and especially if one doesn't come in, you don't even have to worry about the rest of them. Number one is the most important one, and none of it follows number one. I mean, I don't know if there's something that we need the law department to draft up, another ordinance. But I think the concept is really this should – they do a good job of these block parties. I mean, a lot of these neighborhoods do what they're supposed to do. But this situation has gone on twice, and I really think it's three times, because we did it last year this time last year, and I was against it, and then twice this year. To allow a permit like this for a party this size, either – if you do get something like this, then maybe this city needs to start looking at downtown, having a party downtown, or Alphabete, or Horse Park. Some kind – a number of some kind of unique party that needs to be somewhere where you can have the parking for it, where it does not shut down this neighborhood, especially for public safety issues, the noise ordinance, and the people driving situation. I'm a professor on Purcell's Road, so I'll be glad to open up to other council members who may have some questions and comments on what they think might be helpful. Are there any questions? Mr. Maloney is not a part of this committee, so somebody would like to make a motion on his behalf. That's Mr. DeCamp. Yeah, I have just one – well, I have a question and a motion. I'm just curious. How many block party permits have we given in the last year? Anybody know? Approximately. Mr. Neal, do you have that answer? If you turn to page 1, that kind of gives a breakdown of how many block party permits we've given on a normal year. The FY 2007 is a very low number, but that was the first part of May when that number was – Okay, I see where it is now. Thank you. In 2005, we gave 40, 42, and 06, and 17 this year. You know, I think we do have a real problem here, and we can do better. And I think certainly as we become more urbanized, this becomes more of a problem. So, Mr. Chair, I make a motion that the chair of this committee appoint a separate committee to look over our permitting process for block parties and see how it could be improved and bring it back for the next meeting so we can either vote it up or vote it down and take it to the council. I think we have some good examples to work from. I think Paul has brought forward some, and I think that that's – you know, we can go ahead and hash it out as much as we want today, but I think until we have a new draft that shows how it could be improved. So, I make that motion. Second. We have a motion and second. Any discussion on that? All those in favor, would you please say aye and vote? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes, and I will put together a committee to do that. Hopefully, we can get that back by the next council meeting. Anybody else on this topic? Mr. Blevins. Yes, thank you, Chair. Could I have the police department representative come up, please? As you know, we've had – I'm over here. As you know, we've had a similar event just in the last few months in straddling our districts between myself and Mr. McCord. Same exact situation where we had – I'm speaking about the church group that had the large festive occasion. And the same exact problem occurred, and the problem was that there's confusion over what the permit they're given means. In our case, it wasn't a block party permit. It was a fireworks permit. However, in neither case does that absolve the entity from adhering to the noise ordinance. So, my request to the police department is, could we implement a very short brief training program, perhaps at roll call or something simple, just to make the officers aware that, hey, just because they have a permit, there's almost never a variance in the noise ordinance. And I think we could perhaps cure a lot of this. I still support Council Member DeCamp's motion fully to go do a committee and revamp our application here for other reasons. But I think there's something we can do today, starting now, and maybe help this out. It'll be done in an hour and a half. I already made a note. Okay. Well done. Thank you. I stand by what I said. We will enforce the noise ordinance, and somebody gave you bad information. I'll get on that in an hour and a half. Thank you. And is there anybody who would like to be on that committee? Let me know as I'm forming that. Mr. DeCamp, would you like to chair that committee since you brought it? Okay. Just checking. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the Meadowbrook Part III Golf Course Subcommittee update. And, Mr. Beard, would you please give us that update? I think everybody understands what the situation is with the Meadowbrook Part III Golf Course, but for the benefit of the citizens, in case they don't, I'm going to give everybody a heads-up on it. We do not own, we, the LFUCG, does not own the Meadowbrook Golf Course site. It is owned by the Fayette County Public Schools, and it sits behind Southern Middle and Southern Elementary Schools on Wilson Downing Road. It's roughly 27 acres in scope. It's a Part III golf course, no carts, primarily utilized by elderly. There's some women's leagues, and also for teaching younger folks how to play golf without the intimidation of a large course. We, the subcommittee, met on the 17th of September, and we thought the first place to start was to meet with the Fayette County Public Schools. We were quite fortunate to be able to book an appointment with Superintendent Silverman the following Friday. All three of the subcommittee members, Dr. Blues, Don Blevins and myself, and Linda Gordon also, who was a previous Fourth District councilperson, and who is presently a large councilperson, all met with Dr. Silverman, and we discussed the situation. They have been approached, not officially, but they have been approached by a party, undisclosed, who is interested in purchasing that property. The number changes somewhat. I've heard 2.4 million, I've heard 2.5 million, and Dr. Silverman said 2.7 million. They have an appraisal to that effect, but we don't know how that appraisal is qualified. Best in best use is my guess, which means residential of some sort, and some level of density, high level of density. There seems to be no immediate urgency for the school board to act at this point. I don't want to speak for Dr. Silverman. Of course, he has bosses, too, as far as the school board is concerned. So, the board itself. We felt, and we notified Dr. Silverman, or Superintendent Silverman, if I can get that out, that we intended on getting our own appraisal. I've asked Brian Markham in purchasing to kind of kick the tires to see what that might cost. It's a little bit more complex than I thought because it presently is zoned for recreation use, and they can zone it, upzone it, obviously, to residential if the zoning committee or commission actually passes that, and we still have to approve it also. There are other issues about that property other than just its benefits as far as golfers are concerned. It is roughly 25% of all the green space in the 4th District. It's relatively centrally located within the 4th District, and my colleague, Mr. Blevins, Council Member Blevins, continually points out that it is a very large 27-acre sponge that, if black topped over or roof topped over, could create a serious stormwater problem. I think the sentiment, at least within my district and with some of the council, is that we find some way to keep that operating as a golf course. I think we need to see what the appraisal is, and when we get the appraised number, we'll have something to talk to Dr. Silverman about. Again, he did not seem to want to press us that we had to have an answer by X date. It was a very cordial meeting, actually, and so we intend on pursuing the idea of getting an appraisal. We'll probably have to get an appropriation of some funds to do so, however. When we find out exactly what that's going to cost, I'll probably be coming back to council for an approval to get an appropriation for the money to go ahead with that. It'll take them a little while also. This isn't something that's going to get an answer to by the end of October, or maybe the end of November, for that matter. I'd like to go ahead and get it taken care of, though, because golfers are going into the winter season, and they'll want to know what they're going to do as far as their leagues and things are concerned for next year. That's all I have. If anybody has any other questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them. Any questions for Mr. Beard? We'll keep it in the subcommittee, and you just come back with further information. One question that Mr. Maloney had last time was about the $750,000 purchase agreement that we had. Do you have any information on that for us? I do. I don't know. We didn't get any specific names about the parties involved. I believe the number, and Dr. Blues and Dr. Blevins, Engineer Blevins, the number, I think, was $800,000, wasn't it, that he mentioned, rather than $750,000. And it seems that they were ready to close. Documents were drawn they were ready to close. And within this government, somebody decided to delay that closing the first time. It was rescheduled for closing. And the school board folks were left sitting around the table waiting for somebody to show up, and nobody ever showed up for the closing. I don't know whether that was a miscommunication, but if it was, it could have been cured pretty easily at some point. So beyond that, I don't know. I tried to reach Commissioner DeBoer, who was at, get some information from her, and she really didn't, wasn't able to help me at all. Have we contacted the law department to see if this is an avenue, by chance, or is this no longer an opportunity? You know, it's an avenue to the, I've got a couple of other directions I can go also. I'm kind of anxious to see how that number was arrived at, if for no other reason, because it's a large difference between $800,000 and $2.7 million. Ms. Gorton, I think. Like a million nine. I do that math quickly. Ms. Gorton. I do think that the avenue, the previous avenue, where we were trying to work out a trade, and, you know, that fell through, and they ended up paying for the Gaines Way property. I think when all of that happened, it's my impression from our meeting that the school folks then thought it was finished, and they pretty much closed it off. I think this would be a brand-new overture with maybe different opportunities that would not relate to the old avenue. Could we get something from the law department just to make sure that that no longer is an opportunity? I will attempt to, yes. Thank you. Mr. Blevins. I believe that Commissioner Askew said pretty much that to that effect at one of our recent meetings, didn't he, that we had, because of, by virtue of a vote several years ago, by virtue of not closing, we've already, that whole $750,000 option is now off the table. He did say that we could sue, I guess, potentially, but he felt our case was not the strongest. Any further questions for Mr. Beard? Thank you. We look forward to getting more information. Now, the last issue is items in committee, and I would like to pass the chair on to, where is the vice chair? I'll ask Ms. Crosby if you would chair the meeting, please. I would like to make a motion. Sure. Go ahead. Thank you. I would like to make a motion that we have the vice mayor put an ad hoc committee together for the issue about the liquor that was put into committee that I brought up, and I would ask him to make an ad hoc. I think instead of putting a subcommittee, I'd like to get an ad hoc committee, which would get outside just council members, who would bring in people who are involved in the community, as we had a big outpouring of different views coming in from the community when we looked at the Sunday alcohol sale. So, I make that motion. Second? Is there a second? Okay. Any discussion? I'm not sure what the theme. Could you clarify this? It's titled, it's like liquor influence. Yes, what I would like to do is make a motion. I mean, it says alcohol impact on local government. I guess I can cut to one martini. I don't know really what you're talking about. Okay. On that, I would like to have the ad hoc committee look at the effects, the issues, the education, the awareness, the treatment that we go through that alcohol deals with for the local government, from the public safety aspects to the treatment, the different costs that go in associated with alcohol, and I would like to get different groups' viewpoint on it, and I would actually like to ask the vice mayor to appoint Ms. James to be the committee chair for that. You know, I still, I'm sorry if I'm being really dull about this, but I don't understand what you're driving at. Well, I'm looking at the different, what we look at as a government. We heard all the different issues that come about with the alcohol use and the problems associated with the drunk driving, with the different education, the treatment, the costs that are associated with that, and I'd like to look at that from our perspective. If we're putting enough money into the different programs that are affected by the alcohol use, and by having the different groups here, both for the alcohol industry and also from the different churches and different groups that came in and talked about the negative aspects of it, we could come up a committee and look at the different issues of making sure that we're addressing alcohol, but the awareness aspects of it for education and also for the treatment aspects of it, like what we do with the Hope Center, what we do with the drunk driving, and issues that we could look at through the jail on what we do for education, awareness, treatment. Well, it sounds to me like a little bit we're closing the barn door if the horses run away, but if that's what you want. Council Member Pierce. Thank you. It would be interesting also if we could develop some statistics on DUIs and incarcerations and things of that sort pre-Sunday sales and after Sunday sales. I'm kind of interested. Sometimes we just sell right along and we forget about what we've done, and we were told that it would be a huge problem, the Sunday sales, and I'd be interested in finding out if that's accurate or not. I think we can ask the committee when they do that. We can put that information. We can do it before and after then and see what the effects are on that, too. All right. Thank you. Council Member Bradley. Thank you, Chair. I agree that this is a good idea, and I think, Dick, what they were looking for when we were having the discussions was we agreed that there were studies already made nationwide and one that took an entire nation of Canada, in fact, that showed there were no ill effects when you added or no additional effects when you added Sunday sales. But the question was asked, are we as a community doing enough today for the alcohol impacts, the social ills that we have in the community today? Are we doing enough now for the things we already have? And the question was asked, would the council look into that now that we've expanded sales? Let's go look the other direction and say, are we doing enough as a community to help with the alcohol social impacts? And some of us at least agreed to do that, and I agree with Council Member Ellinger's proposal that it shouldn't probably come from just this committee. It ought to be comprised of other folks outside the government as well. So I'll support you. I think it's a good idea. Anybody else have any questions? We have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye and also vote electronically. Aye. Aye. Okay, motion passes. I'll pass it back to you. Thank you. Are there any items in the agenda or items in the committee that you all would like to have brought up at the next committee meeting or that there are items in here that you would like to have taken out? Otherwise, we'll just go through what was brought forward through the traffic engineer and try to work our way down the list. Is there anything that's hey? Mr. Beard. Yeah, I would move that we strike Council Member, former Council Member Wiginton's suggestion about honoring employees who are deceased or disabled because, in fact, we already do that, do we not? We do. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? We'll take that one off. Let's see what we have on here. Seeing none, we will work on getting. Yes, Mr. Lam. I'd like to add an item. Is it an appropriate time to do that? I'm sorry? I'd like to add an item. Okay. You need to do it at Council meeting. You need to do it at Council meeting, sir. Okay. Any further information? Well, can I get a motion to adjourn? All those in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned.