# Council Environmental Quality Committee - January 31, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · January 31, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2378 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2378?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-01-31 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 15,095 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality Committee met on January 31, 2012, at 11:00 a.m., with Chair Blues presiding. The committee heard four informational presentations during the meeting and received one public comment. No votes were taken during this session. The agenda focused on updates and reports across several areas of environmental management. Committee members received an update on the Stormwater Program, a presentation on Greenways Responsibilities, a Financials Report, and a review of Items Referred to the committee. All four agenda items were presented for informational purposes only. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on January 31, 2012: * Blues * Stinnett * Gorton * Farmer * Crosbie * Myers * McChord * Martin * Henson * Lane * Kay No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included appropriations for two environmental and recreational initiatives: **Stormwater Program** LFUCG received an appropriation of $12.2 million for stormwater program capital construction and operations. [timestamp: not provided] **Greenway Maintenance** Parks and Recreation received an appropriation of $150,000 for Greenway maintenance and management. [timestamp: not provided] ## Public Comment Edward Cushy addressed the board regarding the exemption of a large horse farm from the water quality management fee [timestamp: 1:37:12]. Mr. Cushy raised concerns about a horse farm located in the South Elkhorn watershed that is currently exempt from the water quality management fee. He noted that despite the exemption, the farm has extensive impervious surfaces and contributes to pollution through manure runoff. His comments highlighted a potential inconsistency in how the fee exemption is applied, particularly regarding agricultural operations that may have significant environmental impacts on local water quality. ## Contested Items **Funding and Maintenance of Greenways** The committee was divided on whether to accept new greenway acquisitions without secured maintenance funding already in place. Members supporting the current deferral policy argued that accepting new greenways without guaranteed long-term financial commitments would create unsustainable financial burdens for the municipality. They advocated for maintaining the existing practice of declining acquisitions until funding mechanisms were secured. Other committee members emphasized the importance of proactive planning and structure to effectively manage both existing greenways and future acquisitions. They contended that a more forward-looking approach would better serve long-term community needs. The disagreement resulted in a split vote, indicating that the committee could not reach consensus on this policy matter. ## Stormwater Program Update Water Quality Director Charlie Martin presented an update on the stormwater program [timestamp: 00:14:17], covering progress on consent decree requirements, environmental projects, and flooding initiatives. **Performance Standards and Compliance** Martin reported that all 40 performance standards under the consent decree were being met, demonstrating compliance with regulatory obligations. **Supplemental Environmental Projects** The program approved $820,951 in green infrastructure projects under the Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) requirement, representing progress toward environmental improvement goals. **Financials** The update included financial information for Fund 4051, though specific details were not elaborated in the presentation summary. **Priority Flooding Projects** The committee discussed progress on priority flooding projects, noting that $4.7 million was spent in fiscal year 2011 toward the program's $30 million total obligation. This represents approximately 16 percent of the planned expenditure for these initiatives. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, providing the committee with a status update on stormwater program activities and financial progress. ## Greenways Responsibilities Acting Commissioner Susan Bush presented on the status of the greenway program, covering current acreage, funding sources, and operational challenges [timestamp: 1:03:31]. **Key Topics Discussed** The presentation addressed several critical areas of greenway management: - Current acreage and inventory of greenway properties - Existing and potential funding sources for the program - Challenges in maintenance and long-term planning **Committee Actions and Decisions** The committee identified several needs to strengthen greenway program operations: - Formalize the establishment of a Greenway Coordinating Team - Update the Greenway Manual to reflect current practices and standards - Establish a centralized maintenance budget to ensure consistent funding for upkeep **Policy Reaffirmation** The committee reaffirmed an existing policy to defer accepting new greenways into the program until adequate maintenance funding is secured. This approach prioritizes the sustainable management of existing greenway properties over expansion. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature, with the committee receiving updates on program status and identifying organizational improvements needed to support effective greenway management and maintenance. ## Financials Report The committee reviewed financial details for Fund 4051, with presentations from Charlie Martin and Stephen Mulligan [timestamp: 1:31:04]. **Financial Overview** The report presented the following financial figures for Fund 4051: * $11.5 million in revenue from ERUs * $12.2 million in appropriations **Concerns Raised** The committee identified discrepancies in fund balance reporting. Specifically, a prior audit had noted a $6 million fund balance that was not fully reflected in the current financial statements. Committee members requested clarification on how the fund balance was being rolled forward and what accounting methods were being used to reconcile this difference. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature. The committee did not reach a final decision but instead requested additional information and explanation regarding the fund balance accounting and roll-forward procedures to resolve the identified discrepancies. ## Items Referred No specific items were referred to the committee during this meeting. While the agenda included a section designated for matters referred from other bodies, no such items were presented or discussed. The committee acknowledged this agenda category but proceeded without addressing any referred business. --- ## Full transcript Artists I can find here and the types of art? Well, we have several different local artists that we represent. Those include artists like Kelly Brewer, Bill Fletcher, Jason Janicki, Bob Sanford, several artists that have been around Lexington for quite a while, and some new artists as well. We also have several national artists that we represent, including artists like Tom Bloomline, Veronica Clark, Kathy Peters, and Pat Roberts. Great. And the types of art I can find? We have paintings that are oils. We have pastels, watercolors, acrylics, and bronzes as well. Great. So once I find that perfect piece of art, I can bring it here to be framed? Absolutely. You can bring in your own piece and we custom frame it. Or if there's a piece that we have in the gallery that you'd like to switch out of frame, we can certainly do that as well. So what do you like about Gallery B being downtown? We will have been downtown almost five years. And in those five years, we've really seen a lot going on in downtown. I think the downtown Lexington Corporation has had a lot to do with that. There are a lot of businesses that are now coming into downtown that haven't been here before. And one of the things that we like to do is actually partner with those businesses. So we've used shorties around the corner with our receptions. We've been able to pull from the artist attic as far as some of the different artists that we represent. It just gives us a chance to be involved in the community down here and be a part of some of what's happening down here in downtown. So where exactly is Gallery Bee located and what hours are you guys open? We are located right in the heart of downtown Lexington. We're at 145 West Main Street, and we are open from 12 to 6, Tuesday through Friday, and 11 to 7 on Saturdays. We often are open for special openings and receptions, which we can do by appointment. We usually have openings about every four or five weeks. And then, of course, we're involved in Gallery Hop. Where can I find out more information about Gallery Bee? You can find us on our website at www.gallerybeedlexington.com, and we're also on Facebook, or you can call us at 859-233-0843. Thanks so much, Annalisa, for being on our show. And to find out more about what's going on downtown, visit our website at downtownlex.com. I'm sorry. Of you And you give yourself away And you give yourself away And you give, and you give And you give yourself away My hands are tied The body bruised She got me with Nothing wins And nothing left to lose And you give yourself away And you give yourself away And you give And you give, and you give me some way We go without you We go without you I can't live We go without you Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. And with Council Member Kay, we can make quorum and open the meeting of the Environmental Quality Committee for this last day of January 2012. At the end of the meeting, there will be, I believe we should have time for public comment, and if members of the public wish to comment for a three-minute period, check in with Mr. Schoeniger. before the end of the meeting. So thank you, Council Member Kay, for being here and fleshing out the quorum. Glad to have you. Our first agenda item is the stormwater program update, and Water Quality Director Charlie Martin is here and ready to roll. Welcome. Thank you, Chairman Blues. Well, here we are again. I'm here a lot, but it seems like last year I was here a lot because of sanitary sewers. You know, the remedial measures plans and the capital improvement plans associated with that seemed like it dominated a lot of our conversations through the course of 2011. So I wanted to kick off 2012 talking more about the other side of our shop, which is the stormwater program, because I think there have been some significant accomplishments in that program that I wanted to make sure that the committee was aware of and also seek advice, I guess, on the path moving forward. So we're all in sync as we move forward with many of the requirements associated with the stormwater program and, in particular, the consent decree. Topics I wanted to talk about today in particular has to do with consent decree progress in the stormwater program. Again, we really haven't talked much about that, There's really two key areas that I wanted to focus on. One of them is performance standards, and the second one is the supplemental environmental projects. In the stormwater program, there isn't the huge capital commitment as we're finding in the sanitary sewer system. It's more about doing other things that improve our overall water quality. We'll talk a little bit later about some of the capital component that's in one of these SEPs. but largely there are things that are less apparent, I think, to the average person regarding the consent decree requirements for the stormwater program. I want to talk about some of the other water quality initiatives that we've accomplished over 2011, and lastly provide some financial information for Fund 4051, which is the Water Quality Management Fee Fund. the performance standards this would be the first part of this is that they are the enforceable component of the consent decree there are 40 specific standards and their performance standards because they are measurable as to whether or not lfucg is doing it or not doing it and so you know obviously if we don't do it then we are subject to stipulated penalties ranging anywhere between $1,000 a day to $5,000 a day. So we stay very focused on these performance standards. There are 40 of them, and I want to just update you is that whether 19 have had hard deadlines that said complete such and such by such time, all of those have been met. There are 17 reoccurring deadlines, things that we have to do every month or once every six months, that all those have been met to date, and then there are four additional ones that require completion within a five-year permit cycle, which began in 2009, and that we are on schedule for those. The good news, the first of good news today, is that all the performance stands are being met. So we're in really, really good shape as far as the consent decree is concerned regarding this aspect of the stormwater program. Switching gears, there's the supplemental environmental projects, and I have this up here because this is the obligatory language that you have to use regarding any discussions about supplemental environmental projects. I won't read that to you, but that is straight out of the consent decree, and that's something that the attorneys inserted in there. It's required for everybody because they want to make sure that we're not taking credit for projects that LFUCG is doing without giving due credit to the enforcement action that resulted in them. So, Supplemental Environmental Project 1 is the Coldstream Park stream restoration. Hopefully you've got a better view of this up here than the front one does because of the lights. But essentially this is a view of the stream standing on one of these low bridges. And you can see that there's a lot of erosion here where the hillside has been cut out by high flows. You've got essentially clear cut because of farming all the way down to the edge of the stream. you've got a lot of problems with that stream as far as its stability is concerned. And when we were trying to develop supplemental environmental projects, which are projects that we agreed to do as part of the consent decree in order to reduce our civil penalty, this was one of them that I had identified that I thought that it was an environmentally beneficial project, but also one that was doable. Bringing you to where we are here, this is the Coldstream Farm area. Here's I-75. Newtown Pike would be down here, and this is Citation Boulevard. So about where this symbol is and where my pointer is, is where the new Eastern State Hospital is being built. And Legacy Trail follows its way out this direction. You can faintly see this. There is a yellow outline there. Essentially, that is property that is owned by Urban County Government and managed by the Parks and Recreation. That was deeded to us as part of the initial development plan for Coldstream Farm. In 2007, when we were negotiating the consent decree, I looked at this. Another staff member had brought it to my attention, is that there was a stream that was in need of restoration. We owned all of the land already, so that seemed to be a very logical one to be able to pursue as a supplemental environmental project because we kind of would be able to control the schedule and control our own destiny. So we agreed to do that, and that is one of the projects that is listed in the consent decree. It's a $1 million commitment to do stream restoration from Citation Boulevard, essentially to where my pointer is right there. Just up from there is the existing lower cane-run pump station, so we had to stop before we got to the pump station. we're in the process of selecting the design consultant councilmember blues was kind enough to devote his time to help us with that selection process the project has to be complete by january third of 2016. essentially we have five years in order to be able to complete this project or then we would be subject to some type of penalties but we think that it's we're on schedule to do that we think it's going to be a really great project not only as far as helping water quality of water that flows into Georgetown's water supply, but also because of the presence or the direct proximity to Legacy Trail, is that I think we're going to get an additional bang for our buck as far as the environmental education and experience for people that are using a recreation facility. One of the second supplemental environmental projects had to do with green infrastructure, such as rain barrels, rain gardens, vegetated roofs, impervious pavement, such as that. The green infrastructure step was fairly general. The requirement is that we spend at least $230,000 to implement one or more green infrastructure projects. In July of last year, the staff, during a brainstorming session, came up with the idea that maybe we should be able to submit some of the projects that we're doing under the incentive grants program that's required by ordinance to see whether or not we could count those as well. And we submitted that to EPA, and in a record-setting prompt response of one month, they endorsed that, and they endorsed it heartily. They complemented LFECG for an innovative way to be able to do with green infrastructure projects. So I want to talk a little bit about some of those projects. One of them is the Ross-Toron Architects. This is over off of Old Lafayette Parkway. Essentially what this project is, as you can see, is that they retrofitted 10,000 square feet of asphalt parking lot with pervious pavement. If you drive over there, you can see the lines on this here. But if you drive over there, essentially they have been able to not only reduce the amount of runoff coming off that property, but they also set themselves up to be eligible for a credit on the water quality management fee. The value of that SEP was $109,000, and it's about 95% complete, which usually means the paperwork still needs to be done. Likewise, the second project that we had was out at the Coca-Cola facility out on Lee's Town. What they are doing is building a rain garden bioretention system, which is this picture right here right now. This will look much better when we get to springtime, I can assure you. They're also doing an infiltration chamber and a 10,000-gallon rainwater harvesting tank, essentially taking runoff that comes off the roof and things like that and using it for irrigation purposes rather than just allowing it to run off the system. The value of that one is $189,000, as you can see. One of the third projects, this one will be built sometime this summer. It's got a lot of different components of it, pervious pavement, underground rainwater harvesting system, and also an oil water separator for the existing detention basin. But this is a fairly pricey one of a little bit over $300,000. The last one, and this is my personal favorite, is the Ronald McDonald House. They have got also a little bit of everything, but essentially they've retrofitted their parking area using both either pervious asphalt or permeable pavers. along with installing rain gardens in a bioswale essentially surrounding that property to the tune of $201,000 and change. Again, also minimizing the footprint that they are impacting as far as runoff from that facility. Here's the good news, is that we were required by the SEP to spend $230,000. we were able to submit and get approval, essentially conceptual approval from EPA, for $820,000 worth of projects that we were already doing, essentially killing two birds with one stone and at the same time being able to meet the SEP. So I kind of look at this as that we saved ourselves $230,000, which for me was extremely good news. But anyway, that SEP is being met. So that moves us on to the third supplemental environmental project, the one that most of you are probably most aware of, which has to do with the priority flooding projects. Those of you who were part of the Social Services Committee last week, you might see some of this as being familiar. But essentially this step requires us to evaluate the priority ranking methodology, which has been in place since the mid-'90s, and complete $30 million worth of capital constructions on projects that are currently on or that are on the priority list. As I said earlier, this list was originally conceived in the 1990s, and there's a formalized process for adding projects to the list. It has a matrix of 22 different factors which lead to an overall severity score. I recommended this as a supplemental environmental project relative to the consent decree because I felt like maybe the process had somewhat become cumbersome as far as how to add new projects to the list. And that if we were going to move forward with flooding prioritization, incorporating some of the sanitary sewer factors involved in it I felt like would be very important. I'm having clicker problems today. There we go. Currently, the current status of it is that there are 52 outstanding projects or uncompleted projects on the list. Current estimate, there's over 122 million of future projects. Two slides prior to this, I said that we have to spend 30 million. So you can see that there is a large still remaining commitment to be able to deal with future projects that are currently on the list. The one most important part of this is this third bullet, is the current list and process excluded commercial properties. The priority list was developed based on residential type of stuff, and that now with the water quality management fee in place and having 70% of that revenue derived from commercial rate payers, all the more important for us to be able to reevaluate and reprioritize our priority list. So thus the supplemental environmental project, which is found in Appendix K2 of the consent decree, is to reevaluate the priority list, including the scoring, methodology, and revise if necessary, and then spend $30 million on capital projects by January 3rd of 2021, essentially 10 years. What I wanted to report to you today is what have we been doing in this first year of the consent decree? How have we been making any progress on that? Well, there are three projects that we have been able to leverage local funds with FEMA grants to be able to attack priority projects that are currently on the list. You see three of them there with their priority number that's based on the current listing. The total expense that we can count towards our supplemental environmental project obligation is nearly $1.8 million for those projects. Additional projects that we have done that have been using the local funding, 4051, which is the water quality management fee you see listed there, And you see a total there of $2.67 million that we've been able to complete in 2011, attacking other projects that are on the priority list. For those of you who are on the Social Services Committee, there was this question about whether or not the water quality management fee is used to pay for any of those projects. No, not unless they're on the priority list. But there is one that was in the Meadows area that we had, and so we contributed to the overall CDBG project to be able to pay for the priority project that was interrelated with theirs. As I said, $2.67 million worth of water quality management fee, which includes existing bonds, were spent this year in accomplishing meeting the SEP. All total, where are we? essentially we were able to count nearly $4.7 million towards that $30 million obligation in year one. So 15% of the obligation has been met in the first year. And I was pleasantly surprised when I was preparing this presentation that we had done that well. You know, if you're right on schedule, it's 10% a year. And the fact that we're 15% makes me feel good. Now the pressure is going to be, how do we continue to keep up that? Okay, switching gears. I want to talk about some of the other water quality initiatives that we have undertaken this year. Those of you who are involved with the Water Quality Management Fee Task Force recall that there was a strong desire to have a litter collection component of that fee. And so this year we were able to budget the full amount, and we budgeted $250,000 towards that. and spent that money cleaning over 61 miles of stream and removing over 200 tons of debris from those streams. Susan Pluger gave me a note the other day. Over 1,000 shopping carts were fished out of streams in Fayette County through this initiative. We had two contractors that were involved, hand removal only, no mechanical equipment. If you get mechanical equipment into a stream, you've got a whole different regulatory permitting process. So we directed that contractor to try to minimize our costs and maximize the return on the amount of stuff that was removed. We always got property owner permission. Another one of the staff members is telling me is that we sent out a mailing for people to fill out in return. And, you know, it's like with anything, you didn't necessarily get a good response. But when the contractor showed up, everybody was interested in it. So we might have to adjust that next year and just have them fill them out on site. Switching gears again, another one of the water quality initiatives that we've undertaken in the past year has to do with the incentive grant program. And I said this to the Social Services Committee last week. This has been a wildly popular program. A lot of folks wanting to participate in this. So, you know, in addition to the supplemental environmental projects we talked about a few minutes ago, I wanted to highlight some of the other ones. That we have awarded over $300,000 in Class A grants, which are geared more towards the neighborhood associations and community organizations. And you see a list of some of the folks who have been able to secure grants through approval of a mayor-appointed board. I want to make sure that that is clear. The Division of Water Quality, all we do is kind of administer the grants and orchestrate things. The actual awards themselves are approved by a board and ultimately approved by the full council. There's another one that's on the work session agenda for today. On Class B grants that are geared more towards educational institutions from a curriculum standpoint, but also those same kind of institutions in addition to commercial facilities, the design and construction. You can see there is that we've already awarded over $1.1 million worth of capital work towards the Class B grants with another $900,000 plus that are awards that are pending. You see a similar list of award winners or grantees, I guess, on that. One of the things that is really important for me on this is that we've got a whole wide variety of partners that we're developing here. We've got neighborhood associations with Heartland. You've got educational folks with Fayette County and the U.K. Research Foundation. And you've got businesses involved as well as the train company, Lexmark, Bluegrass Stockyards, all folks who are paying into the water quality management fee but also are reaping a benefit from it because they're working with us to be able to improve their water quality, which is the real reason why we're doing it in the first place. Another byproduct of this that I would not have disanticipated is the level that people are being employed by this grant. I would like to move forward with this to be able to do some more analysis of this, but there's been a lot of landscape companies and other companies that are going out and essentially marketing some of these folks about trying to do projects. Obviously, they have a dog in the fight because then they get to do the design work that's associated with it if they're an award winner. And in a tight economy, when there's not a lot of work around, having people out being able to develop additional scopes of work is probably a good thing for all concerned. Okay, now we'll move on to the financial highlights. In page 49 through 51 of your packet, you'll see the financial information. It was ready for Council Member Lane, but maybe he'll be along shortly. I'm going to defer to the Department of Finance as far as providing the details on there, but I do want to kind of highlight a few things. One of those is that the revenues are primarily from ERUs. about $11.5 million in revenue for FY11, which equates to about $966,000 a month, or 220,000 ERUs. It hasn't really grown the way that they expected it to in 2008. I think there was a growth projection that was much higher than what we're seeing right now. It's been pretty steady. But like I said, I think Steve Mulligan with the Department of Finance is here, and if you've got any questions on that, he can come up and answer those. What I wanted to talk about in particular was the finances that I have something to do with, and that's in particular my annual budget. And so you see here on this screen is that in the FY12 budget, there was an appropriation of $12.2 million to LFUCG from the water quality management fee. And I wanted to make sure this second bullet was emphasized. I don't necessarily see all of it. I think sometimes there's this thought that Division of Water Quality is the complete stakeholder in the Fund 4051, which we're not. You can see that we're only 71% of the budget associated with that particular fund. But taking that 71% or that $8.7 million, dollars you can see in that next bullet how that is broken down between the three different areas of allocation one being personnel second operating in the third capital all right that was the budget let's go and look at see what people soft says what's to say in the people soft screen in the budget overview the kind of thing that our folks check on a regular basis this is from january the 23rd and this basically tells you where we are right now. On the personnel part of it we're at about 54% of remaining budget. Considering this is in January I felt pretty good about that. We're about halfway through. 42%, that gave me a little bit of a pause and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. This is one that I really focused on and it kind of goes back to those two previous slides. I mean the staff has really been focusing in and really honing in on the capital construction. and to see in January that we're essentially down with a reserve of left for one more project. I think it's going to be the Wickland-Aniston Phase C project that we're looking to bid in the next 30 to 60 days. That essentially will extinguish what's remaining in capital for FY12. Some folks might say, well, okay, you know, we've got $2.7 million in operating. Well, first of all, why do you have so much operating in the first place? One of the reasons why is that stuff from a previous fiscal year rolls into the following year if you've got an open PO. And so go back to the grants projects. Those are ongoing projects, and so those open POs are going to roll into the operating. Even though this is a grant program and there's capital projects being done out of it, it is budgeted at operating, not at capital. So that somewhat skews what you're seeing there is that you think, well, they've got a lot of stuff in operating and not as much in capital. When $1.2 million a year of that is that water quality management fee, that somewhat skews things a little bit. $2.7 million still remaining, you probably also want to know, well, what is it you plan on doing with that remaining cash? One is that we're going to continue to work on priority projects. We have to do the design for the next round of priority projects so I can report back to you next year that we're making the same kind of progress that we made this year. There are five priority projects at a value of $4.4 million in the CIP that we submitted to finance two weeks ago. So doing the engineering work and the right-of-way that's necessary to be able to launch those projects in a timely fashion is pretty important. And so for final design for future capital projects, our current budget holds about $1.1 million that will be used for design of those future projects. Likewise, on the incentive grants, right now our budget shows that we have $1.2 million remaining still for award of grants. As I mentioned before, the award of grants is an ongoing process. you saw in one of the previous slides is we've got over 900,000 that are pending award. So that money goes out steadily throughout the course of the year. And so my point is that we've got $2.7 million that are still in operating. 1.1 of that is for additional engineering for future projects, and 1.2 million of it is for grant projects. That's like 95% of the money that's left over. So we know where it's going and what we're doing with it. I'm doing all right with time. I was worried that we would get too long. Okay. I just wanted to finish up by verbally summarizing where we are right now. I wanted to make sure that since we talk so much about sanitary sewers all the time, is that the committee was recognizing that stormwater progress continues, and it continues in a very positive fashion. Personally, I feel better about where we are with the consent decree in the stormwater area, way better than I do in the sanitary area. We're meeting all those performance standards. We've got a handle on where the supplemental environmental projects are. We've still got that challenge of building $30 million worth of stuff in the next nine years. Well, something less than that in the next nine years. But I feel good about where we are right now, and I wanted you to know that we've got a handle on it. And I wanted to, I guess, appreciate my staff for the heavy lifting that they've done over the past year. They have done a marked or a significant, significant job over the last 12 to 18 months in doing that. This coming summer will be the five-year anniversary of me being placed in charge of the stormwater program and starting out with a consent decree and that we were essentially accomplishing nothing to where we are right now. It makes me feel really good. So I guess I was here just to brag on them a little bit and share that with you. And so closing that up, it's not just about me. It's about them as well. But it's about people in the community and the way that they have stepped up. I've got the one photo here of the kids that are standing here on the inlet. That's part of our inlet painting where they mark little fish and do not dump stuff down the drain. But it's also people that are walking streams. I don't know, Ms. Henson, if you recognize that. I think you're the lead person there that's carrying that bag. When we started in this and I was giving an initial speech of where we were or what's going on with the consent decree, former Vice Mayor Isabel Yates asked me, she said, how can we save ourselves money in being able to comply with this? And I said it's about us picking up after ourselves or policing ourselves. And so you see that in a lot of the stuff we do. Partners that are engaging us either through our educational programs or through the SEPs or doing the things they need to do through the performance standards, put in silt fence, clean up after yourself, I think has made a tremendous impact on what we're doing. All right, I'll shut up now. Thank you very much. To me, members, we do have our login system back, and we have folks who want to ask questions. So, Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Charlie, thank you so much. I think you have every right to brag on your employees because when I think about just five years ago and how this has been built, it's pretty incredible. So I appreciate your work and all of your employees' work. I'd like to ask a question about page 34, and you might know that I would ask this since I chaired the Water Quality Management Fee Task Force. This is the slide, which is about, I guess it's 34 in the packet, the budget and the appropriations. Okay. And this one? Yes, that's the one. And maybe I think you're probably not the person to answer my question because I think you said you don't know about this first item, the $12.2 million total appropriation to LFUCG. So I'm wondering who could tell us what that is, where it went, and how it's being spent. Since you don't get it. Yeah, I do. Well, you know, I got all this stuff from the mayor's budget or from the approved fiscal year 12 budget. And so all that information is in there. We would be able to break that down for you a little bit more to figure out who gets what. I mean, I can tell you there's the indirect allocation, which you're aware of, and that's typical of the funds. Okay, so this isn't all indirect? No, ma'am. Okay. There are some direct appropriations to LexCol. There are some direct appropriations to streets, roads, and forestry because they still do a lot of stormwater work with us. There are, it's all in the budget as far as, because I didn't pull that one out of the sky. It's in the budget. There are some debt service that's in there. We have, as you recall, that there was a lot of discussion about whether to roll old debt service into this. They did not do that based on my understanding of the appropriations. There are some debt that we incurred as part of the stimulus program. We got stimulus money to build a stormwater improvement out on Radcliffe Road. Obviously, since it was a 50% loan forgiveness, that was a good deal for us. But there are some other appropriations in there, but I think we can account for where they are. Now, how do the expenditures go? That's a different story. I can't be able to. Okay, so did you have input into this item in the budget? Yeah, I believe so. It was your input. I didn't have a real issue with it. I think that there's more and more opportunity to be able to discuss this, that we're having monthly meetings with finance now, and they're being very productive for us to be able to share some of our views on how we're able to appropriate different money. I don't have a problem with appropriating stuff to different divisions and departments. What I want to do is be able to track what they're doing with it because I need that for my quarterly and annual reports. Right. I would agree with that. And how close is this to what the consultant projected through the task force that we had? That would be a subjective answer. I can tell you on my end of things, it's almost dead on because I've tried to stay very, very true to that. As you'll recall, we put a lot of money into professional services because I was a strong advocate of developing a master plan for stormwater moving forward because it felt like we were kind of just making it up from storm to storm. Now, this year, we allocated that money, but we did a budget amendment that you all approved several weeks ago where we moved some of that out and put it into capital construction because the master planning process has not gone as quickly as I would have hoped it to. But we had projects that were ready that were short of money, and so we've done that in several cases, moved money to construction. On the stormwater maintenance, that's the only one that I'm not entirely sure of, and we've been working with streets and roads to be able to try to do a better accounting of what we're doing, and that's not to say that they're not accounting for it. Originally, I had contemplated that we were going to do more contract maintenance in storm sewer maintenance, and that hasn't happened yet. That's probably the only place that I would be thinking that we're not true to what we talked about in 2008. Okay, well, I appreciate it very much, and I think next year isn't next year the year that the Council built in an audit? Yes, and that's why we watch this pretty closely, at least in my division. I know where it's going because I'm going to be ready for that audit. Good, very good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, since this slide's up, I wanted to ask you, Thursday in our budget retreat, we showed an audit of $6 million fund balance in the water quality fee fund. Where is that reflected at on your numbers there? Because I don't see it being accounted for. Right there. Right there, but in your chart. Assets and $5.9 million. So you're just banking that. I'm not banking it. The finance folks are banking it. Right, in the fund, though. I was surprised, and when you look at 49 through 51 of your packet, I was surprised to see that we had $5.9 million in cash or cash equivalents. I was kind of surprised by that. So go back to your next chart and your operating budget. Is that part of the $6 million right there in the middle available? Not to my knowledge. So the $6 million is in addition to this. I'd have to defer to Stephen on that, whether or not that he's counting unspent budgeted numbers towards a fund balance. I don't know. Can somebody give us that answer? Because that's a very important question. It's my understanding that about $3.2 million was rolled forward from $11 to the $12 budget. Yeah, but again, Thursday, it says $6 million was rolled forward. So there's a discrepancy similar in how we're accounting for it. I'm not saying it's not there or hadn't been, but we need to figure out that. Okay. If we can dig down deeper, because I know we don't have the audit in our hands, about this was preliminary numbers. The council was shown Thursday. Okay. So can we figure out, you're saying 3.2, it said 6 in there, so that's double. I'll put something together and I'll... Yeah, and then how are those numbers related? Are those in addition to that, whatever came forward, or those included in that? I'd have to take a little closer look at what you're looking at at the retreat. Okay, I appreciate that. And then, Charlie, operating, define operating so the public understands what operating means, because a lot of people think operating is personnel and their ability to design and go out and inspect, but it's a little more, it's not personnel. It is not. It is professional services where we use engineering services to design capital projects or to facilitate this master planning, those type of things like that. it is mowing, mowing all of these properties that we end up acquiring to tear houses down or also to be able to maintain greenways, which obviously is your next presentation. There's a $150,000 a year allocation to Keith to be able to maintain the existing greenways. And it's also the $1.2 million that we budget annually for this grant program because grants per our chart of accounts is an operating account, not a capital account. Yeah, and we talked about maybe after our audit to restructure that. Are we in a position now to start doing revenue bonds? Well, I think it's where we're headed with our finance meetings because I'm an advocate of that only those such at the right time. My thing is, and you've heard me say this numerous times before, We borrowed money when we weren't ready to build the project, and we sat there with money. When Ryan and I first met, the first thing out of his mouth is arbitrage, and we've got to stay away from that as much as possible. So I'm trying to use our cash not only to build the projects that were ready, but also to get the other ones, get the right-of-way and the design in the can to where you are ready to build that project, and we go borrow the money, and the dirt flies, and it's done, and then we're just paying debt service. I think we're almost in that position to do that. We're getting very close. And then last but not least, going back to the Coldstream project, remind me why we put that one in there ahead of some of our other streams and stuff that we own. Because it seemed like to me, I vaguely remember the conversation back then. But basically, I mean, there wasn't really any magic in it. My concern was, and this is what I experienced from the stormwater, just the thing I just mentioned, is that doing other streams where we didn't own all the property, that means you're going to have to get easements, you're going to have to get right-of-way, you're going to have to get some concurrence on the part of other partners to do the work. And this one leapt off the page to me is that urban county government owned all of the property. I don't have any partners to deal with, and if I've got a deadline of doing it in five years, that eliminated one level of risk immediately. Okay, because I know there's other streams we own. You briefly mentioned one Fort Sumner that's in my district that needs some care here in the near future, but I was just curious about how we... It was a staff member that brought it up to me, and, I mean, there wasn't really any time. It's too late now. I didn't know if that was the heaviest polluted stream we had or what the logic was, besides being easy. Yeah, well, it was easy, but also we did feel like it would score points with EPA because this drains into Georgetown's water supply. And because it drains into a wellhead protection area and it's degraded in a lot of different ways, that from their viewpoint that they would see that as being mutually beneficial for a larger geographic region. Okay. Very good. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Charlie. I think considering everything your division's up against and has been for some time, I think you should be commended for your organizational skills as well as the folks that work for you within the division. I think my responses that I've received to questions or whatever are just excellent, and I'd like to thank everyone for that. I guess I just have a question. Acting Commissioner Bush, I had talked with her through email about littering. And I know we're putting a lot of emphasis on stream cleanup and restoration and so forth. But it just seems, especially in the winter months, that you see more and more litter along the roadways. And if there could be some sort of emphasis placed on trying to prevent littering. And I do know that the stream cleans and so forth help to educate, educating children in the schools. But I recently spoke with the inmates that walk our highways and pick up trash. And I cautioned them, one of the things they do to get out of the detention center for the day is to pick up the trash, but they also are allowed to smoke. So I cautioned them about throwing their cigarette butts. And believe me, they all immediately said, oh, no, because they're out there picking it up. It has made them very much aware. So I don't know. I'd just like to see some more educating on that part. I drove out Old Viley Road to Leastown Road not long ago, and both sides are just completely covered. I agree with you. First of all, thank you for the kind words. We really appreciate that. Recognize we're not necessarily perfect, but we're striving to be perfect. The litter thing, I will grow weary of continuing to pick up after people, just like we do with our kids or anything else. The initial wave of this was it really came out of conversations. I've had, and many of you have had with some of your constituents as well, is that they live next to a busy thoroughfare, and their whole drainage way is full of junk that really isn't of their doing. You know, it blows off of a car or a truck on Man of War or Lee's Town or anything else. And so this first wave of the cleanup was really to try to kind of correct some things that had gotten out of control over a period of time, not to the fault of the property owner. But I do want to do more as far as prevention and enforcement. We've talked to the state on a couple of occasions fairly loosely about maybe installing some type of monitoring facilities and all that in hot spot areas. This is something we could probably partner with David Jarvis and his group very well to try to prevent the littering or dumping that goes on in some parts of Fayette County. I tell this to commercial owners as well, and particularly if you've got multifamily or you have commercial stuff, taking care of those dumpsters and those kind of things like that to keep them from being piled up or overflowing, maintaining your parking area and stuff like that, that's a good way to be able to keep the cost of this thing low because it all comes back to water quality. Like I said with Mrs. Yates, if we don't pick up after ourselves, we're going to have problems. Well, thank you. Are there any other questions from members of the committee? Council Member Kay. Although I'm not a member of the committee, thank you, Chair. Charlie, I had a question. It happens to be about this slide that's up, and it has two parts to it. One part has to do with the kind of function. It was the cold stream. You had the right one. I'm sorry. That's the one. If you use that as an example, the functional part is when you do that kind of restoration, are people considering things like the sustainability of the work and, secondly, the impact on the cost of maintaining whatever improvements are made. So I know that there's always, not always, sometimes an issue about a project and the question of what it will cost to maintain it, whether that goes into parks responsibility or where it goes in the budget. So I'm interested in kind of the way you think about that and the budgetary implications. Well, and that's a good point. It's ironic you brought that up because I had that conversation with somebody right before I came down here, and it has to do with just about anything we do. So, you know, moving forward, I do have a maintenance component of it in the CIP that you will likely see when we get to the budget deliberations for FY13. The design consultant is just in the process of being selected, and the fact that the project manager is sitting here in the audience, I'm sure she'll be making that a point of emphasis as far as making sure that we incorporate a design that is functional but at the same time minimizes some of our long-term maintenance obligations. But there will be some with these. You've got, I don't know, 200 acres probably that drain to this. She's back there. You've got a lot that drains to this, and it's back to that litter problem. If everybody upstream is throwing all their stuff out the window or doing anything else, it's going to end up down here, and we're going to have to pick up the litter and do maintenance to it. But it's in the CIP right now. Okay, and on the budget implications, are there kind of costs that need to be picked up by other parts of government because of the work that's being done? No, not to my knowledge. I mean, parks will always have their part that it is part of parks programming, but it would be my anticipation that ongoing maintenance of the environmental component of this greenway will stay with the Division of Water Quality or its successors but be paid for out of the water quality management fee. So if I can, the flip side of that, any of these projects, do you know if they will save money for specifically parks for maintenance, mowing, that kind of thing? This one won't. it saved us probably $3 million of fine money that would have gone to Washington, D.C. to never be seen again. Likely. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, I appreciate all your all's work. You and your entire staff, you've done a great job, and we have a lot to do yet together. Just looking specifically at the big list here, line 10 is the Lexington Mall Sanitary Surer Replacement, which it says construction winter 2012. I just wondered how close are you finished or what stage do you consider that one in right now? I think that one's done. I do. It's kind of hard to tell sometimes when I drive out there because there's so much other stuff going on there, and the pipe has been in the ground for a while. We hadn't done the restoration because we didn't want to put new pavement down and have the related work tear it back up again. There were some big potholes around our part of that that you've since filled. Yeah. Now, mind you, though, that is phase one of a multi-phase project that will be involved with Lexington Mall. But as you recall from our discussions, the existing pipe went under the existing mall. And we have relocated it around the mall, but also upsized the pipe, setting ourselves up for those future projects to where we don't have to go back on the church site and disturb stuff that they have approved as well. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. If there are no more questions, I just have one for Stephen, and that is when might we get that number we were just talking about on the carryover? Oh, right. No, I'm going to speak with Jane today and to go over the roll forward and then with the 12 budget and then however much more. I don't maybe need to be kept in reserves. and I'll email you back. Okay. If you could get that. Today? Today would be wonderful. Okay. All right. And if you could just email me and I can send it to the other committee members or you can email it to all of us, that would be just fine. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you, Charlie. I see no further questions on this, and we can move on to our next agenda item, which is the Greenway responsibilities and Acting Commissioner Bush. MS. The committee had asked for some additional information on Greenway's program, and we've got that together for you today. To briefly go over it, this is what we feel the committee had asked for additional information on the budget, property that is identified as future greenways, what are the planning and acceptance policies for greenways, what's the greenway coordinating team, where are we with the manual update, and then some recommendations on various things. So that's what we're going to cover for you this morning. First of all, on budget, I'll cover some things here. You can see acreage-wise, we've got about 856 acres of greenways that we own now. There's an additional 164 acres that have been recorded and platted that we have not taken ownership of. We consider those to be in process. And then there's another 350 acres of undeveloped area that could become future greenways. So that's kind of how it breaks down. What you'll see here is that there's several agencies within city government that have a role to play with greenways. And a lot of those folks are here today. I remember that very specifically you wanted to see the funding. So the two main fund sources are the General Fund and the Water Quality Fund. And they contribute. Parks does a lot of the mowing and manages the contract for that. But the monies do come from those funds, and the budget you see there is the budget we had in this current fiscal year going forward. You'll also notice, and I'll point out, that the naturalized areas of 105 acres seems to be a bit more expensive right now than just mowing the grass green space. And that's because we are in the process now of establishing those areas, and that does appear to be more capital intensive. Once those areas become more mature and we're monitoring that, we'll see if the cost for maintenance per acre goes down. Yes? I'm sorry. Our slide says some different numbers. For example, where you have 105 naturalized, ours says 144. Talking about the paper copy you have? Yes. Yes, they revised the numbers just before we walked down here. So my paper copy says that, too, but this is the correct number. That's the latest? This is the revised number. Okay, thank you. I think there was only two revisions there. 144 went to 105, and that is correct. But the reason for that is establishing naturalized areas is a little more capital intensive. We are monitoring because the maintenance cost per acre should go down, but we need the data to support that. Current maintenance generally involves right now for the budget you saw involves mowing, basically, and maintenance of the natural riparian areas. That's the work that we are able to do with the budgets we have now. What is not included in current budgets is any type of infrastructure improvement or repairs, any establishment of new naturalized greenways. There is no resources currently for an enforcement or inspection program or a public education and outreach program. So these are enhancements to the program that currently are not within the budget scenario. Just to show you greenway status, and this is not showing up that well on this slide, but as you can see here, we are keeping track, and there is mapping of all the greenways, including what we own, where future greenways are, what's been recorded, and then what's in private hands. And we have that for the entire county. Now planning and moving forward. One of the things that's become very evident is that one of the questions that we're asked is how do you decide what greenways to acquire? Right now, most of the greenways are voluntary dedication through new development, basically. We're not going out and buying them necessarily, with the exception of very few. Purchase, easements, park reservation, those are the other types. And I'm going to take you back. If you all recall, there is a greenway master plan, and that became part of the 2001 comp plan. The Greenway Master Plan envisioned having this type of matrix where you would go through and score the Greenways for acquisition. We have that. I can tell you this has not been implemented yet. What we have is we have a program that is partially implemented. So the scoring system and the criterias have been developed, and now they need to be employed. But we need resources to do that. Also, every greenway needs to have a management plan, obviously. And so that's something we need to work towards is creating management plans, which include the things you see there on the right-hand side of the slide, for all of the greenways we own. And to be very upfront with you, we do not have those for all the greenways right now. And this will be a very valuable feature going forward, as well as setting budgets for greenways. These are funding sources that several people worked on putting this together that we have used or could use in the future, but this is basically for enhancement and amenities. Trails as well. We have trails and greenways and some of these. So there is some additional funding sources that we can avail ourselves of, but generally speaking, you're not using those for the routine maintenance. and that's where we're challenged. The Greenway Coordinating Team, many of who are here today, this is an ad hoc committee composed of people from planning and engineering and parks and environmental quality that have really kind of taken this program forward. What we have is we have a Greenway program that has not been fully implemented because of resources and budgeting. So hats off to these folks that have brought it as far as it is. But I think we're at a crossroads, frankly, with this program where we need more parameters and more structure. The Greenway Master Plan recommended these things, adoption of a Greenway Manual. We have a draft manual, but that needs to be finalized. It also needs to be enhanced. It will define the roles of key participants. When it was originally drafted, there were agencies listed that had responsibilities that no longer exist within government. So there are some refinements that need to be made there, and setting forth the procedures for acquisition and funding. The manual was drafted in 2006. It had some minor revisions in 2009. So one of the recommendations, and I think this is a key, is that manual needs to be updated, also in light of the economic climate we find ourselves in, and we need to solicit stakeholder input in that. Current course that we're on is we're not accepting new greenways until we can determine how we're going to pay for additional maintenance of them. We need to look at the Greenways Master Plan and reevaluate it in light of the economic situation we find ourselves in. It was written 11 years ago. A lot has changed in 11 years, and we've learned a lot in 11 years, and we need to take advantage of that. We need to look for ways to lower the cost of maintenance per acre, and we also need to work on community involvement and getting people, volunteers and stakeholders involved in helping maintain our Greenways. So recommendations going forward is we need to formalize a structure for our greenways and have a central committee, not an ad hoc committee, where we have the stakeholders that are represented. We've got appoint or hire, but I think right now we're talking about appointing a greenways coordinator that can kind of be the hub of all this activity. we need to formalize the Green Waste Committee so that we can have a body that has ownership of this issue going forward and produce a consistent management structure and establish an enforcement program. All these things will flow out of the manual. And obviously we need to look going forward at our management plans on what our budget is going to be. And that needs to be proactive, not reactive. And so these are all, this is the second part of implementing the plan, and I think we're at a point where that needs to go forward in order to make this program grow. And with that, I'll conclude my comments and take questions. Thank you very much. We do have some questions from committee members, starting with Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. Susan, thank you for bringing this to us today. I've had a lot of interest in this, obviously, and working with all the parties. I think you listed up there on various projects, whether it be acquiring a house for stormwater or building a trail, et cetera, or in a park. So I think it is time that we formalize the way we're going to maintain these areas, whether it be in a park or just a natural space that we acquire. You said, you know, you had mentioned that a lot of these we acquire pro bono, basically, or free, but they're never free, obviously, with the maintenance dollars. So I'm curious, did you all look at assigning a factor or some matrix that said if we acquire an acre, this is how much maintenance dollars we need to plug in in the future so we know what the real cost of acquiring that land is? Have we got to that point yet and dug down? We're not to that point yet, but what we would be looking at and what we can do now is we can tell you what it's costing to mow an acre. Okay. But until you have management plans developed and you know what you really want to do with that greenway, that is also a way to know programmatically going forward what your maintenance costs. That needs to be, I agree with you, a consideration from day one. And that's an easy way to measure is the moaning costs, but there's other hidden costs. I know we require streams that were polluted, and we've got to go in there and clean them up. So that's another cost that could be added in the future. Well, now the litter in the naturalized areas, the maintenance of the naturalized areas, litter pickup is a component of that maintenance. Of the mowing? So the mowing contractors? Or the naturalization. The naturalized area, the maintenance of the naturalized areas, litter removal is a part of that right now. But it would be part of the maintenance cost? Yes. So, again, I think we need to be able to assign a factor and be able to plug it in before we accept it so the council knows how much it's really going to cost us to accept free land, so to speak. That would be part of the scoring criteria is what are the projected maintenance costs and identify where that budget will be, as well as designing what agency is responsible for what. As you can see, there's a lot of moving parts here, and so we need to bring more of a structure to it. The other thing is that you all talk about, and the thing I'd like to say I didn't see up there is, creating one budget for mowing or maintenance for these areas, a greenways maintenance budget, and allow each department, you know, instead of each department having their own little money and they're on their contract, or, you know, I know stormwater shifts, or engineering does, to parks to utilize, but let's just have one budget so we know exactly what our countywide maintenance cost is for greenways. I mean, it seems logical just to be able to do that and everyone put their dollars in that pool and then someone manage it. And that's what I was focusing. We need to have an agency that has the lead responsibility. and that budget could become the de facto budget, even though the funding would come from different fund sources. And that's fine. Just as it does here. But we can't track it. We honestly couldn't. I mean, we probably couldn't get close, but it tells exactly what our maintenance cost is for all these greenways. But I will tell you, Parks does most of the maintenance on the greenways. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I see a lot of heads shaking. Well, but the reason I want that budget is for Parks, to be honest with you. I mean, they're the ones that have taken a $200,000 hit on maintenance cost in their budget. And their budget's been reduced, but yet we've asked them to do a lot more than they used to do. And that's why they have the water, I think the water quality management fee. I see Charlie here. You want to do it? Parks, they essentially use their uniprice contract to cut all of our grass, and we give them the accounting and they use it. Now, moving it to a centralized thing, that's fine, as long as we can account for it in the back end when the audit for Fund 4051 comes about. Yeah, but you would just transfer instead of the parks budget, you'd transfer into the greenways budget, and that way we all know what it's costing them. Parks even would even transfer their dollars. You're right. I understand what you're saying. If you look, and the lights are up, if you look, the last recommendation, and I apologize for skipping over, is create greenway maintenance line item in the budget. So we don't disagree with that. That's clearly not. I've created a whole section. No, I mean, this is a lot more complicated than one line item, so I've created a whole budget for it because all those individuals up there, they've been doing great over the years, scrounging money, finding money just to keep it afloat. I think we're at the time where we need to really put some money behind this effort because citizens don't want once a month in some of these areas, and it's very difficult to explain to someone when the grass is above 12 inches tall that we're not going to mow it for another week or two. And that's something that was identified is we do need public education and outreach, particularly on naturalized areas. Yeah, that too. So people are prepared and understand what the function of the greenway is. You're absolutely right. Right. We haven't been consistent. Some areas we leave natural and the other areas we mow and look like a golf course. So we do need a better, you're right. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. So committee members, we have lost our quorum, and technically we probably should not go forward, but we have everybody here, and I think this is an important discussion, so we will go ahead, although we won't. If there were motions, we cannot take any action. But for informational purposes, I think this is an important discussion. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Susan, for your presentation. Do you know, I know that your slide on page 44, where you talked about the management plan, and you said we don't have all the information yet for all the greenways we own, but do you have a sense or does anyone have a sense of how many of our greenways are actually proposed to be trails or a percentage or some sense of? Can you answer that? I'm just curious about a guesstimate. even is it low like one percent is it high like fifty percent is it the estimate is fifty percent but it seems like you know clearly that inventory needs to be done well yes i i know you said that you don't have all of that and i understand that just to go back to what the big the large plan is is there's nine conservation quarters established those are basically the nine streams that drain fayette county and then there's 20 primary trail corridors proposed so the non-conservation quarters though are very large and the 20 trail corridors are basically parallel that radiate from the city center to significant destinations and then then there's secondary and tertiary trails. So there are a lot of trails proposed, and not all trails are in greenways, obviously. Some actually are on the road. And just to understand the finer points, do we, those that you just referred to, do we actually own them already, or is that still to be determined which ones we own and which ones we want to own. That is part of the master plan as to where we want it to go. We do not own all of those, not even close yet. The reason I'm asking these questions is that I've been asked, some time ago I was asked to form a task force to look at trails in the rural area, and it occurred to me, and one of the reasons I've not done that yet, is that part of that is our Greenway Master plan. I think in some respects it's already done, part of it at least. And I didn't want to duplicate effort that's already been done. And that's a good part of the public education and outreach, so people see what the big picture is and what's planned. Because when you look at the individual pieces that have been acquired, it gets terribly confusing and overwhelming. Yes. But they're small pieces of a larger whole. Well, do you, I mean, I can see from the presentation there's a whole lot of work to do. And I wondered on your current course of action where you talk about reviewing the costs to execute the Greenways Master Plan, Have you been able to even begin that yet? We have not begun in earnest because we need to put a formal committee together to do that. And we wanted to get this committee's input before we began that process and also include stakeholders in that as well. and that would be the group, I think, that would have these discussions in putting this manual together going forward. Okay. Well, I appreciate your information that you've brought us, and we'll look forward to future updates. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Chair. This is a really great update, And it builds off the work we had started in our link last budget year to kind of bring all these under a more conclusive grouping. And you have worked hard on a lot of very specific things and some policy things. And, you know, it's not easy to get all this under one umbrella. It seems like it, but it's just so many places and so many parcels. At the top of page 47, you refer to specifically deferring and accepting new greenways. Have we done that before and said no to people? What's our previous policy? That is my understanding. That is the policy today, is that we're not taking on any more until we get the maintenance monies nailed down. So how long have we had that soft policy? Just enough. A couple years? Two years. And have we, just so I don't know, have we missed much? Has much been offered to us we didn't get? What do you mean it's just? And it may not be much. I'm just, I'm interested. I'm going to defer to Keith because he does. Mr. Levin, how are you, sir? Welcome. The notes on the plat say that this land is to be dedicated to the LFUCG when we're ready. and in some cases it's been dedicated to the HOA. In some cases it's being held by the developer. So really the land is just sitting there. It's being maintained by either the developer or the HOA. So we haven't lost it. That's exactly what I was after. Thank you very much. We'll follow the vice mayor's comments. I look forward to some follow-throughs on this and for us hopefully to be of help to you in getting it done. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. If I can ask a question, where, let me put it this way, what should be our next step? I mean, do we need, should we start with the Greenway coordinator to begin to recommend how to pull things together? I think we do need to appoint a Greenway coordinator to kind of be the hub, the go-to person. That's the first step. We have some folks in mind for that. That would obviously be an existing person within government. And then to get the Greenways Committee together, this group that is going to work together to update the manual and decide what the policies are going to be and make recommendations and discuss that going forward, seems to be the next logical step to me. And is it your intention to go forward with those two things? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, environmental policy, who didn't exist when this master plan was developed, were more than willing to play a role in helping coordinate all this and bring the people together to accomplish it. That doesn't mean they would be the lead agency in the policy, but they can play, or I shouldn't say they, we, can play the role of getting everybody together and coordinating this to move it forward because there are a lot of folks involved in this. Well, I think I can probably speak for the committee that we hope that this moves forward as soon as possible and that not only update us but tell us how we can help and support this effort because it's unquestionably something that we very much need to do. We've got, what, over 800, almost 1,000 acres we're talking about. That we're currently managing, yes. and more that could be there if we had the capacity to cope with them. I agree with you. It's time to complete the plan as it was envisioned because we haven't had a formal process, and it's time to put that structure in place to move it forward. I think we've hit critical mass, so I agree with you. Yes, yes, indeed. So I'm happy to say that we are legal again. We do have our quorum, thanks to Council Member Lane. And Vice Mayor Gorton has another question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's not really a question. It's more of a support of your policy in not accepting more land and being certain that it is still available. And I see Jerry Hancock, our director of Parks and Rec, and I think of our wonderful new Heisel farm, which was donated, which we accepted. and of course we don't have money to do anything with it. And I think so often it is the case that good-meaning folks give us things and don't realize that it costs us, in many cases, a terrific amount of money to either develop them or maintain them. So I think this soft policy, if you will, is sort of new and different for urban county government. And I'm glad to know that the folks who want to give these pieces of greenway and spaces are maintaining them. I think that's wonderful. And just am very supportive of that policy right now when we don't have funds to take care of them. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And with no further questions, thank you again for this report. Very helpful, and we look forward to moving forward together. Thank you. Next on the agenda, the financial support for your information. I don't know if there's anybody here from Finance Now to answer questions, if you have them. Council Member Lane? Yes, sir. I did have a couple of questions on the financial report. But if there's no one here, I guess we'll have to defer that to the next meeting. We did have somebody here earlier, but he has left. So, Bill. The question I have is, does it have to do with the back of what we went over here a little while ago on the finance or on them pages? Yes, sir, the enterprise funds. I think that's something Charlie already went over a little bit on that. I apologize. I was at another meeting, and I missed your presentation on that, I suppose. I can try and answer it because Stephen Mulligan from finance was here because he can get into the details of what these various things are. I had a couple of slides. But anyway, I'll try it and answer your questions. Okay. Perhaps it's not really so much a question, but it is a question from the standpoint that under the operating expenses for the statement of revenues, expenses and changes in net assets, I would like to see more detail in there. And maybe you could just do a supplemental memo out on that. You don't have to bring it back necessarily to the committee. But as long as you give all the committee members a copy. But the point being is that it says that personnel was $2.5 million, operating expenses was $1.8 million, and capital expenditures was $1.8 million, which to me seems like we spent a lot of money on personnel and administration and not enough money on investing the money and making improvements. Now, having said that, because the detail here is a little bit sketchy, very possible that a lot of that personnel cost was repairs and maintenance or upgrades to the system. That's just not detailed there that much. So if you could maybe give us a little input on that with the memorandum, that would be perfect. I'll point you to slide 15 that's in my presentation that's in your packet, where it's the financials for the Division of Water Quality, because I had the same concerns that you did. And we have monthly meetings with finance because I was going to bring that same issue up. Because if you go on PeopleSoft, you find somewhat of a different story. And so I had a little bit of a question about that myself because it seemed skewed compared to what I get from commitment control on PeopleSoft. It's a slide that's titled Financials for the Division of Water Quality. Here we go. She's got it back up here for me. Because I got this off of PeopleSoft and did the computations myself. Okay. And what I found was that based on a reconciled budget for FY12, is that personnel was 2.6, operating 6.4, and capital 2.7. And you see the breakdown as far as expenditure, well, what's available as of January 13, 2012 off of PeopleSoft. And what I was explaining during my presentation is operating is somewhat of a misnomer because within that operating is all of these grant funds, the ones that do the water quality management fee, that build rain gardens at Coca-Cola or replace impervious pavement at Ross-Toron. also within operating is also the professional services money that leads to the developing of the master planning and leads towards these capital projects. So I can get you more detail because obviously there was a lot of questions among your committee members as well wanting me to explode this a little bit and get down to greater detail. But I saw the same thing you did when I was reviewing the packet, is that that doesn't seem to match what I was finding on PeopleSoft, and we need to get to the bottom of that. Well, coincidentally today in our budget and finance meeting, the CAO is going to speak with us about cost, accounting for the activities that are done in the different parts of government. And I think this maybe is a good example of how we have very limited detail. It sounds like the water quality department is not that involved in the budgeting process so it wasn't broken down more finitely about what the activities and the functions were going to be done. So we're going to touch on that today, hopefully that we can do better budgeting for the next fiscal year, which will be helpful in the management of the operations, as well as informing the public and the council about how the money is being spent. I would agree that we need to be more involved in the financial part of it, And like I said, I think that's the goal that Commissioner Driscoll has as far as involving us on a monthly basis. Because as you know, the division of water quality between the Sanitary Sewer Fund and this fund, there's a lot going on there. We're very involved in our annual budget. I do want to make sure that's clear on that. That's how I'm able. We go over this on a regular basis, and I'm tracking those costs to make sure that if we're appropriated, as we are in FY12, this money, that we're spending it on the things that we're supposed to be spending it on. And so I want to make sure that's clear. We're very involved with the actual administration of our budget. It's how it gets rolled back into these financial things, and sometimes that's part of it. It's a little bit of a mystery to us. Yeah, I think that in your case you all manage your money as well as anybody, if not better than most. The issue here is just raising the awareness of the importance of trying to run the government more efficiently and managing the cost on line items so if we're over-expending or there's some calamity that's happened that we can address it before it goes on for months and months until we recognize there's a problem. That's all I've got. Thank you very much, Mr. Martin. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Lane. I think that completes our agenda except for public comment. And I believe we do have one person from the public who wishes to speak. Mr. Pucci. Welcome, sir. Thank you. My good afternoon. My name is Edward Cushy. I'm from 2089 Bursells Road. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Here is a copy of last Sunday's Herald Leader. On the front page is an article about a local horse farm, which is located next to an LFUCG pumping station and that it spilled countless gallons of raw sewage into the South Elkhorn Creek. The article explains that some of the clients of this farm are some of the wealthiest people in the world. The color photo on the front shows horses standing in the field. These horses continually produce tons of uncollected manure that lie in the fields and soak in the rain. Lee of Green Lexington says that even the tiniest amount of uncollected manure causes bacteria, parasites, and pollutes streams. Here is a photo of a stream on the farm, which is in the South Elkhorn watershed that flows for miles through Fayette County. The top photo on this page shows a long road, which is this road right here. This horse farm must have miles and miles of paved and gravel roads and parking lots, which are all impervious surfaces and thus many ERUs. This photo shows a barn. This farm has many barns, houses, and buildings which are also impervious surfaces and thus many ERUs. I am not an expert, but I beg to say that this huge farm has hundreds or even thousands of ERUs. In the interest of clean water and environmental quality, can anyone in this room explain or direct me to who can explain while this horse farm is exempted except for only one ERU from the water quality management fee. Perhaps the chairperson of the water quality management fee task force can explain. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cushy. Thank you very much. and our agenda is complete. Do I hear a motion? Second. Well, we do not have a quorum at the moment, so we can declare adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Timber, Timber, Timber, Timber, Timber. Saying goodbye Is never an easy thing But you never said you'd stay forever So if you must go, darling I'll set you free But I know in time, we'll be together I will try to stop you not believing Within my heart I know Love will lead you back Someday I'll just know that Love will lead you back In my arms Where you belong I'm sure Sure as I'm standing One day you will find me again It won't be long One of these days Our love will need you to pray One of these nights Well, I'll hear your voice again And you're gonna say How much you miss me You'll walk out the store But someday you'll walk back in Darling, I know I know this will be Sometimes it takes Some time I'll have your own eyes To find your way back I'll never lead you back Someday I'll just know that Love will lead you back to my arms Where you belong I'm sure, sure as stars are shining One day you will find me again It won't be long One of these days My love will be human Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh I will try to stop you now, believe me Cause in my heart, I know I will lead you back someday I just know that love will lead you back From my heart, where you belong Love will shine, sure will start a shining One day you will find me again It won't be long, one of these days A lovely new man A lovely new man Someday I just know that love will lead you back to my heart It won't be long But one of these days I will lead you back There's something wrong with the world today, I don't know what it is Something's wrong with our eyes We're seeing things in a different way God knows that it is It sure ain't no surprise We're living on an edge We're living on an edge We're living on an edge Believe it all again There's something wrong with the world today The light bulb is getting dim There's meltdown in the sky Believe you judge a wise man By the color of his skin Mr. You're a better man than I Believe it all again You can't help yourself from falling You can't help yourself at all You can't stop yourself from falling Tell me what you think about your situation Complications, aggravation is getting to you Cheeky little does you think the sky is falling Even if it wasn't, you'd still come crawling back again I bet you were my friend Again, again, again, again, again Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Complication and religious kids It's in your little dungeon and the sky is falling Even if there was, would you still come falling back again? I bet you would, I swear Again and again and again and again There's something right for the world today And everybody knows it's wrong But you can tell them now Or you can let it go Well now we're ready for the hang of You can't help yourself from fire You can't help yourself at all You can't help yourself from fire We're leaving a witch We're leaving a witch We're leaving a witch We're leaving a witch We're leaving a witch Take a look at me Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Take a look at me Can't help yourself apart Take a look at me Can't help yourself at all Take a look at me You can't stop yourself from all alone You can't stop yourself from all alone You can't help yourself You can't help yourself You can't help yourself at all You can't help yourself You can't help yourself So I'm going to make you get out of yourself I'm going to make you get out of yourself I'm going to make you get out of yourself I'm going to make you get out of yourself I'm going to make you get out of yourself Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Thank you. I Was Born A Ramblin' Man Looked down in Georgia And he wound up On the wrong end of guns And I was born In the backseat of a Greyhound bus Rolling down Highway 41 Lord, I was born A rampant man Trying to make a living And doing the best I can When it's time to leave in I hope you'll understand That I was born a rambling man All right I'm on my way to New Orleans this morning Leaving out all night to Tennessee They're always having a good time down on the bio call And they'll take when you think the world of me Lord, I was born a man with man Trying to make a living and doing the best I can When it's time for leaving I hope you'll understand That I was born a man with man Lord, I was born a man with man All I want for a random man All I want for a random man All I want for a random man Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. She She grew up in an Indiana town, had a good-looking mama who never was around. But she grew up tall and she grew up right with them Indiana boys on an Indiana night. Well, she moved down here at the age of 18. She blew the boys away, was more than they'd seen. I was introduced and we both started grooving Instead of take it back, but I got to keep moving Keep moving on Last dance with Mary Jane One more time to kill the pain I feel summer creeping in And I'm tired of this town again I don't know, but I've been told You never slow down, you never grow old I'm tired of screwing up, tired of going down Tired of myself, tired of this town Oh my, my, oh hell yes Honey, put on that party dress Buy me a drink, sing me a song Take me as a cup, cause I can't stay long Last dance with Mary Jane One more time to kill the pain I feel summer creeping in I'm tired of this town again guitar solo Thank you. I feel so creepy