# Council Economic Development Committee of the Whole - April 10, 2012 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 10, 2012 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2462 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2462?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2012-04-10 - **Last revised**: July 17, 2026 - **Length**: 15,014 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 Economic Development Committee met on April 10, 2012, at 1:00 p.m., with Chair Beard presiding. The committee addressed four agenda items during the meeting, hearing informational presentations on the Commerce Lexington Quarterly Activity Report and the Lexington Parking Authority agreement for LFUCG Parking Garages. The committee approved the Pedestrian Oriented Business District proposal and deferred action on the LexPark Ticketing Process to a future meeting. One motion was voted on during the session, and the committee heard six public comments. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on April 10, 2012: * Beard, Chair * Stinnett, Vice Chair * Gorton * Ellinger * Kay * Ford * Blues * Lawless * Farmer * Crosbie * Myers * McChord * Martin * Henson * Lane No members were absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The body voted on a motion to accept the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance with amendments [timestamp: 01:24:59]. The motion was made by Diane and seconded by Myers. **Motion:** Accept the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance with amendments to remove the word "unduly" and require 400-foot notification to surrounding residents. **Outcome:** Passed by voice vote. **Votes in Favor:** Beard (Chair), Stinnett (Vice Chair), Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Blues, Lawless, Farmer, Crosbie, Myers, McChord, Martin, Henson, and Lane. **Votes Against:** None. **Abstentions:** None. **Conditions:** The ordinance includes a requirement that notification to residents within 400 feet of a proposed district must be provided prior to establishment of the district. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed the following financial action: **Parking Garage Ownership Transfer** The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) approved the transfer of ownership of its parking garages to the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority. No specific dollar amount was identified for this transaction. This action represents a shift in the management and operational structure of the city's parking infrastructure. ## Public Comment Several council members and a community member provided comments on the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance and related parking provisions. Council Member Lawless spoke in support of the pedestrian-oriented district on South Limestone [timestamp: 01:00:49]. She shared research and community feedback on the South Limestone Corridor, emphasizing the economic hardship caused by parking costs and expressing support for the district as a means to encourage business growth. Council Member Martin raised multiple concerns about the ordinance. He expressed concern that the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance was being considered in the wrong committee and that he had not had sufficient time to review it [timestamp: 01:22:09]. He also questioned why the ordinance was limited to the infill and redevelopment area when other pedestrian-friendly zones like Chevy Chase could also benefit [timestamp: 01:23:19]. Council Member Kathleen Martin expressed concern that transferring ownership of parking garages to the Parking Authority would remove council oversight, citing precedent with library and LexTran funding [timestamp: 01:38:37]. Council Member Stinnett stated she could not support the employee parking provision due to the city remaining financially liable for bond payments, and advocated for reevaluation after five years [timestamp: 01:45:05]. Dr. Blues asked about balancing revenue generation with downtown attractiveness, specifically regarding the proposed $2 night parking rate [timestamp: 01:41:23]. In response, Dr. Blues was reassured that the rate would be competitive and paired with safety and lighting improvements. ## Contested Items Three matters generated significant disagreement during the April 10, 2012 meeting. **Parking Garage Ownership Transfer** Council Member Kathleen Martin opposed the proposed transfer of parking garage ownership to the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority. Martin's primary concern was the loss of council control over the facility and potential financial liability for the city. She cited precedent from previous experiences with library and LexTran funding as examples of how such transfers could create ongoing financial obligations for the municipality. **Employee Parking Exemption** A split vote occurred over the five-year employee parking exemption included in the garage transfer agreement. Council Member Stinnett objected to this provision, arguing that the city would remain financially liable for employee parking during the exemption period. Stinnett contended that the exemption should not extend for the full five years without reevaluation, suggesting the terms needed to be reconsidered before the agreement was finalized. **Pedestrian-Oriented Business District Ordinance** Council Member Martin raised a procedural dispute regarding the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance. Martin questioned whether the ordinance was properly before the Economic Development Committee and stated he had insufficient time to review the measure. He asserted that the ordinance should be assigned to a different committee for consideration, indicating disagreement over the proper procedural pathway for the legislation. ## Commerce Lexington Quarterly Activity Report [timestamp: 00:08:01] Jenna and her team presented the Q1 2012 economic development report to the group. The presentation highlighted significant economic activity for the first quarter, including: * 319 new jobs created * $23 million in investment * Strong activity across biotech, IT, and advanced manufacturing sectors Key speakers for this agenda item included Jenna, Tyrone, and Pamela. In addition to the primary economic metrics, the team discussed two additional topics: * Results from the Venture Club survey * The marketing calendar for upcoming initiatives The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal decisions or action items recorded. ## Pedestrian Oriented Business District — Lawless (1-2) [timestamp: 00:42:13] Chris King presented a proposed ordinance to establish Pedestrian-Oriented Business Districts, which would allow waivers of off-street parking requirements in designated areas. The ordinance aims to support pedestrian-friendly development in specific zones by reducing parking mandates that might otherwise constrain business district design and density. During discussion, the council considered amendments to the proposed language. A key modification removed the word "unduly" from the ordinance text, clarifying the standards for parking requirement waivers. Additionally, the council added a 400-foot resident notification requirement, ensuring that property owners within that radius would be informed of proposed changes to parking regulations in their area. Council Member Lawless, Dr. Blues, and Council Member Martin participated in the discussion alongside Chris King. The council members engaged with the proposal and supported the amendments made during the meeting. The motion to approve the ordinance passed with support from all members present, resulting in approval of the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance with the amendments incorporated. ## Lexington Parking Authority agreement for LFUCG Parking Garages (3-39) Gary Means and Sally presented a revised transfer agreement for LFUCG parking garages to the Lexington and Fayette County Parking Authority [timestamp: 01:26:32]. **Presentation Overview** The presenters outlined a revised agreement that included several financial components: * Revenue enhancements * Expense reductions * A five-year employee parking exemption **Concerns Raised** Council Member Stinnett and Council Member Kathleen Martin raised concerns about the proposed agreement. Their primary issues centered on: * Financial liability implications * Loss of control over parking operations **Outcome** This agenda item was presented as informational, with no formal action taken during the meeting. ## LexPark Ticketing Process (40-45) [timestamp: 01:41:23] The council discussed proposed changes to the LexPark ticketing process and parking rate structure. Key speakers included Gary Means, Dr. Blues, and Council Member Lawless. **Proposed Changes** The discussion focused on several modifications to improve revenue and the downtown parking experience: * Implementation of a $2 night and weekend rate * Adjustments to the validation program * Improvements to parking signage for better visibility **Focus Areas** The primary emphasis was on increasing revenue through automation and enhancing the overall visibility and accessibility of downtown parking options. The proposed changes aimed to modernize the ticketing system while making parking information more readily available to users. **Outcome** The agenda item was deferred, meaning the council postponed further action or decision on the LexPark ticketing process modifications at this time. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to accept the Pedestrian-Oriented Business District ordinance with amendments to remove 'unduly' and require 400-foot notification to surrounding residents --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. They're working on it. And do we hand the packets out? Okay. So you've got a copy of the presentation in front of you, and then in the folders is our letter and additional detail on the quarterly report. But this presentation is just a synopsis of what's in the packet. And I can start or we can wait until. There we go. And I'm afraid to get too close to it now after it. Is that better? Okay, I'll just lean in. So in Bob's absence, I'm pretty confident you all are aware his mother just died, so he is at the funeral services this week. So I will be starting the presentation off. And I'm going to ask Pamela and Tyrone also to pitch in this time. lots of times we just talk about the traditional side of what we do and wanted to give Pamela and Tyrone their 10 minutes of fame too this time. So we'll start off here. And from January to March 31st, the overall is there a Vanna who can turn the slides or do I need to punch something? Which one? Okay. See right here. Okay. You're right. Thanks. All right, let's go back one. Okay, the companies that we've worked with, and we'll get to them, announced 319 new jobs. The average wage of the companies was roughly $55,500, and they will invest $23 million in our community as they start to grow. Our project activity for this quarter is still pretty strong. Overall, from January to March, we are still seeing great activity. If you compare this to 2011, this year so far we've seen 39 new clients, and those are new projects that we're working on. As compared to last year, that number was 27. So I think this is a sign, again, of good things to come. Existing business projects. These are projects that we're identifying as we're out there calling on the existing businesses. And, again, Kelly Kane is our existing business coordinator, and she calls on 150 companies a year. Oftentimes she'll ask you guys to come. We hope we can convince you all to consider Council District Day again. So we have six new projects out of those visits. The startups, four new, a little bit lower than last year, but this coming quarter I anticipate that growing. And then client visits, and those are actually when a company comes to town and when we finally get them to town and take a look at Lexington. So you can see that's up dramatically. So if we can close on some of these projects at the end of the year, I think we're going to be in good shape. And finally, existing business overall, those companies that Kelly and Kevin and the team from the Economic Development Cabinet, 34 last year, 37 this year. So we're right on track, if not ahead of the game. This quarter is the quarter where we celebrate the Venture Club and we celebrate our entrepreneurial communities. And this is where the team from the Bluegrass Business Development Partnership goes out and surveys a variety of companies. It's a self-reporting survey that our team calls, e-mails, tries as hard as we can to get companies to respond. And this year we had the event. 125 people attended. The breakdown on the results, we had, I think, let me look here, 69 companies. The breakdown on those companies, you can see the area that the companies that responded were in. The biggest one, of course, is biotech and health care. A lot of that has to do with the University of Kentucky and the companies that are spinning out of it. Second highest would be IT and software, and the third highest would be advanced manufacturing, which is good. The results of the funding that these companies received, they received almost $70 million in funding. In 2010, it was just slightly under that. And then regarding the jobs, and there's one little point I'd like to point out here, which I think is kind of important. In 2011, they employed 605 full-time people and 175 part-time people. But if you look at that bar, the second from the last bar, the green is the part-time, the purple is the full-time. And you'll kind of notice that the full-time jobs has increased and the part-time jobs decreased, which is a good thing. So we're seeing people translate those part-time jobs into full-time jobs. And in 2011, 182 people were hired. So when you're looking at that 605 full-time, 182 of those were new hires. Project announcements. Katie Analytical, and you should be getting bombarded by Kimberly in our office when we have a project announcement. We send these out as we participate with the mayor and Governor Beshear. Fifteen new jobs from KD Analytical at an average wage of $52,000 and a $900,000 capital investment. KD Analytical is a support service and training to emergency first responder community, and they specialize in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear training and support. And they received a KBI incentive. And in the coming weeks, and you guys should be familiar with the KBI incentive, and we bring the companies down here to receive their 1% approval, we will be coming to you guys with the companies in a couple weeks. So KD Analytical, Sirius Mio. Sirius Mio provides cloud-based software solution for the public sector, which is interesting. Ten new jobs, $69,500 average wage, and a $200,000 investment. and they were approved for $100,000 in incentives. And then in terms of economic indicators, I think last time we did this, we're just kind of keeping an eye on the trends, and I know you guys are well ahead of us on this too, in terms of unemployment numbers and how the rate is dropping. But we did again see a drop from this time last year in February. The new numbers should be out for us soon. And then this, again, is the new and expanding report. So, again, we went through Venture Club. We did not report SMC in the previous slides. SMC actually located into Jesmond County in Nicholasville. But SMC does have impact on Fayette County through indirect and induced jobs, and it was a project that we worked on. Triton Container, they're a company located in downtown. 18 new jobs, and take a look at that average wage. $94,000 a year. It's pretty significant, and they're right across the street in the space above Natasha's. Lexmark did an R&D investment, so that's a good sign, seeing Lexmark continuously improve. Again, KD Analytical and Cirrus Mio. And this is our marketing calendar for the first six months. So I just want to show you where we've been. In January, Kimberly attended the Site Selectors Guild in Florida. It was a good time for her to be there, but also a good time to get to spend time with roughly 30 individual consultants. Medical Device and Manufacturing Trade Show in Anaheim in February. I participated in that one. Medical Device is one of our strategic targets, so that would be falling under the advanced manufacturing. We've got next week the Kentucky Association for Economic Development. I'm on the board of that economic development group. They're bringing in 150 of the state's best professional economic developers, and five to six, we know for sure we have five of them confirmed, but five site selection consultants will be here in Lexington presenting to this group of economic developers. But I'm just proud that they're here in Lexington. We're going to spend quite a bit of time with them on Tuesday and Wednesday privately. And then Thursday is the conference all day. If anybody has an interest, it's a great conference to attend on that Thursday, and you can get to hear from these consultants. Julian, you've probably met with a couple of them when you were up there in Chicago with us a while back. But they'll talk about their industries that they represent and the trends that they're seeing. And then we've got other things scheduled between now and our next report. So these are the places where we're going. I'm trying to work with consultants and companies. And just kind of a pictorial update on some of the projects that we've talked about. You can see Tempur-Pedic. You'll remember the groundbreaking back last, I can't remember if it was last spring, but you can see it's under steel now in Coldstream. They've already got all their parking done. I'm hoping to see Tempur-Pedic open in the next 12 months. A&W, they finally did locate their new home, so A&W, again, which was spun out of Yum Brands, A&W will be moving into the building out in Coldstream. And just as an update there, A&W has actually already hired almost 25 of the 30 employees that they announced, so they're on it. So I'm going to bring up, if you all have questions, I'll stop here, and then we're going to bring up Tyrone to talk about our new minority business accelerator, which was another recommendation from the strategic plan that we have been, and we took a deep look at it, visited the accelerator in Cincinnati, and accepted that recommendation or taking steps to move forward. But I'll let Tyrone do the detail on it. But if you have questions about the first few slides, I'm happy to answer them now, we can wait till the end whatever's best sounds like the end mr chairman if it's appropriate to ask questions about the first set first that'd be fine uh councilman mckay i just had a couple questions mainly about the average wage I was wondering if it's also possible to get a breakdown of the actual distribution of wages for those employers. I can try. Some of the application is private, but we'll see what we can do. They all have to be above a certain minimum or they wouldn't be eligible for the incentives, but we'll see what we can do to get the breakdown for you. Okay. And then on one of the new businesses, Triton Container. Triton Container. An average wage of $94,000? What do they do? They do, well, the company's called Triton Container, and Dell actually used to do the work for them. And they are tracking these giant cargo containers. So it's a tracking system, a computer tracking system. So they have, I can't remember the number, frankly, but let's just say a million of those giant containers. They're either on boats, on ships, on trains, on rail. So you'll see them piggybacked, and they're transporting goods. And so this is what tracks where those containers are. So these are all people who have high-level professional skills? Professional and computer skills. So they're programming. They're programmers. Thank you. You're welcome, Chair. Dr. Bluse? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one follow-up question on average wage. Is that the actual wage, or is the benefits package figured into that calculation? That's just the wage. Just the wage. If they have applied for incentives, and these two companies have, They also have to have a minimum benefits package, so they can't just have a high wage and no benefits. They also have to have benefit packages as well. Okay, and that's separate from the wage calculation. It is. They have a benefits section also. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Some of us are impaired. Our computers are in trouble, to say the least. Mine being one of them. So stand up and holler or wave your arms or whatever you wish to speak. Council Member Martin. Thank you, Chair. Jenna, are you all going to be updating us on Angelou? I can't hear you very well, so I apologize if you address that. But I realize we pulled out our half, but we still provide a lot of your funding, so I guess we'd like to know what's going on. Well, we have taken their recommendations, whittled them down significantly because we can't do it all, and a lot of their recommendations were for everybody. So we took the recommendations that they made that we knew that we could have an effect upon, and a lot of them are the marketing. So when you all look at our budget requests, you'll see that we have a big request in terms of travel. We have to go. They want us out on the road, not sitting in the office. So you'll see in our budget requests an increase in the travel. But if you looked again at that marketing schedule, some of those recommendations were, here's where we recommend that you go, where you should be going and connecting either with consultants or with company CEOs that are at their professional development. So our schedule, and again, that was only six months of the schedule. So if you saw it all in our marketing schedules online on our located in Lexington site, we're happy to tell you where we're going and when. But you all are supervising the implementation. Do you feel good about where you guys have been? We feel good about what we're doing, yeah. I mean, we're following along with the strategic targets. They made great sense. The data that they provided us has been invaluable. We have taken the data, translated it for us into a variety of white papers. White papers is kind of a university term. But for us, we wrote papers on each of the strategic targets so that as we have a client that we're working on, we're all reminding ourselves, here's how you talk to somebody about green and clean and renewable energy. They're all online. And if anybody wants to take a look at them, it's very educational. And we're seeing a lot of our new projects are within those strategic targets. So we're happy with the part that we're doing right now. Some of the recommendations required maybe some action items for the council. Are you guys going to be bringing proposals to the council at some point? Well, there are some things that aren't necessarily for council. There's some land use and planning and changing some of the restrictions. And we have met with the Division of Planning and told them and tried to work through some things. We've met with a group of architects and engineers and had them meet to just kind of discuss, here are some of the things that the Angelou Plan identified that would really help Lexington look and be in a better place, according to the developers, to make it easier for when your companies are coming to town. You've got to speed the process up. You've got to make it easier for a company to get through the permitting process. And so far, so good. And we need to readdress that. But right now we're going through comp plans, so that's probably Trump's. That would have been goal four, actually. Well, even though the city pulled its half of the money out, the university doesn't have any money. We're all partners in it, and I just want to make sure that the city is doing its part. The city is. The city staff has been actively engaged when we engage them, so pretty much so. Thanks, Jenna. Thank you, Chair. I need to turn this on. Anybody else have any questions for Jenna? Thank you, Jenna, very much. We'll pull up Tyrone. Tyrone, step up. I'm coming. Good afternoon, everyone. For a few years now, we've been trying to look at our minority business development programs. You know, most of you probably know this program started in 2001, so we consider ourselves a mature entity at this point. And after looking around the country, the minority business accelerator, something that really stands out, I'll give you a little bit of a quick history on it. In 2009, Commerce Lexington and the Urban League funded a study that looked at minority business development compared to where we had been in the last five years on our leadership trips with the chamber. And it just really said that we really needed to concentrate on the higher-end businesses, not leaving anybody else aside, but concentrate on the higher, more ready those businesses are operating. that just need a little leg up. So the accelerator, there are a few around the country, seem to be a great push for us. And we also had this, that our report studied by Angelou, and they came out with the exact same idea, so you really ought to implement an accelerator. And you ask yourself, well, what is an accelerator? And Accelerator's complete mission is to take sizable minority businesses and assist them with direct attention to help them create jobs and grow so that they can be more assets to the community with a concentrated effort. The good news is that we were able earlier, well, actually in the middle of last year, to go up to Cincinnati because one of the more successful ones is in Cincinnati within their chamber. And last year alone they reported some $439 million directly to minority businesses, and that allowed them to grow, create new jobs within their community, and really become assets. So we plan at a little bit different scale to run that same program. here in Lexington. We've already gotten direct approval, as Jenna mentioned earlier, from the Commerce Lexington Board of Directors. Not only did we get their approval, we got their buy-in to assist us. Because an accelerator, it works on a symbol of supply and demand. When you look at the supply, you've got to have the businesses that are ready, ready to operate, ready to move, and you've got to have the companies that are willing to commit and work with those minority businesses. What we looked at at Commerce Lexington is that we think we have a very perfect scenario because we already had the Bluegrass Business Development Partnership. Part of working with these sizable minority companies that are ready to move is getting companies that are ready and giving them the human resources, the SWOT analysis, the one-on-one technical assistance that they need that they can grow. And it's an individual model that we have basically patterned from what they do in Cincinnati. And we think that with the help of the Small Business Development Center and myself in the department that we'll really be able to show some sizable results over a short period of time because of the size of businesses that we're dealing with. Now, looking around Fayette County and to some of our immediate counties, the minority businesses that we'll be looking at will have a gross volume of about $250,000, and they will have been in business three to five years, and we will work directly with three to five of those businesses a year. And again, I said, you know, when you're creating jobs, it will be a sizable result. based on past history with other accelerators. The one thing I will tell you is that we will not stop anybody at the door. We're still, even though we're moving about 70%, 80% of our time dealing with these businesses, there's still going to be plenty of room for those startups and those people that need business plans, financials. We're not going to be turning anybody away. But this is a great way for mature programs to really look at where they are and how they can grow companies and create jobs in the community. The biggest thing is the way you measure. And finally, what we will do is that we'll measure simply by revenue, by the company's stated profit, their growth of employees. Believe it or not, in Cincinnati, one of the biggest surprises that they saw was that the philanthropic activity of those minority businesses that grew really fast, they were giving back to the community to the point where after the third year they started to track that. And it became very, very sizable. Educational programs, working with kids in schools and churches in other areas. We think that the other way to measure this is going to give us a more diverse plane of businesses. And when I say diverse, areas that have had minority business accelerators have also seen an increase in the recruitment of companies that are already ready, that want to come to that area because they know that there is a path to working with the companies. So we think that we might have some announcements of our own that will allow us to grow here in the area. We think that one of the successful tools will be a stronger vendors. By working directly with these companies that are already operating, we think the larger companies are going to reduce their risk. And then the biggest thing that we are doing simultaneously right now as we're recruiting the minority businesses is that we're involving the corporate community. And I think each year as we look at these measurements, We'll see that, as we've already got some commitments, we'll see that we're growing the minority business community. They're adding jobs, and it'll give us an opportunity to really move on as a mature program. I'll take any questions if you have them. Yes, Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I'm way over here today. Tyler, thank you for being here. I just have one question because minority portion, that diversity is very important to me. And I would like to know how you define it. Because is it inclusion of women, individuals with disabilities, other ethnic groups? Now I can tell you that at the chamber, the term minority has always been ethnic minority, if you're a specific ethnic minority. What we do at our events is we invite women and minorities across the board so that we bring in a bigger swath of folks. Initially, this program, working with three to five businesses, we've identified about 61 ethnic minority companies. And what that does is that allows you to immediately become successful, and then most companies have basically gone out and grown those other areas as they become more successful. I guess I was just curious. Oh, sure. If you're recruiting, then that would include, to me, minority would include Hispanic or Latino. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. All I have to think minorities. That would be the initial push and then move down the line to cover all the citizenry as we go. And remember, we'll still be serving the rest of the citizenry. This is just those higher-level businesses that have a way to grow quickly. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation, Tyrone. I have a question about the measures of success. Are you going to be putting real numbers in there, benchmark baseline information about things like revenue, profit, et cetera, and then a goal for achievement, and will that information be available to us as well? Yes, sir. I only wanted to put things up there that we are going to be reporting, and I think that that was a generous goal also. So, you know, those things that we think that those are what other accelerators report, and we think we can pull those numbers in. You're looking at companies, the corporate community, what they are going to be, one thing they have to do is when they sign on, they have to agree to state what they're going to do with minority businesses, and then they report that out, only on a yearly basis, but still, and we will be reporting actual numbers. So there will be first a report on goals that are set for the overall program and then how much of that has been achieved. Right. And the way the goals were developed with each program that started was that once we got the complete swath of companies, which we think that we'll have by early June after a couple of receptions, then we'll be able to set a number into goals after each company. We'll be compiling information from each company. Great. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Anything else from the council? Don, thank you. All right. Thank you, folks. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Welcome. Thank you for the time to present today. But just quickly, the Business and Education Network, we used to be called the Partnership for Workforce Development, But a lot of times people thought that we did workforce development. We don't do training. We facilitate interaction between training providers and companies that are being recruited. But mainly what we focus on is truly trying to impact business and education partnerships and basically connecting teachers and students to real-life situations and experiences. And we do that through a variety of programs, the Lexmark Teacher Institute, the Entrepreneur Leadership Institute, and the Best in the Bluegrass Scholarship Internship Initiative. Again, we highlight available workforce resources. I mean, we are so blessed here in Lexington and Fayette County to have, you know, UK and Transie and Bluegrass Community and Technical College and the College for Technical Education and many other resources. So we are able to use and access those. And again, we just really try to coordinate the business interaction with business, making sure that, again, students and teachers really know what it is that companies need and how students and employees need to be prepared to succeed in the 21st century. And our key focus of, you can, oh, I'm sorry, that's me. and our key focus areas are again we are trying to build those innovative business and education partnerships one of the or what's exciting is for the teacher institute this year we are working with very closely with the uk college of education and the past foundation which is a foundation out of columbus ohio that has been working with teachers and businesses on project-based learning which is one of the new, not new, but it's trying to really bring entrepreneurship and problem-based or project-based learning into the classroom instead of just somebody up there teaching from a textbook. So we are bringing the PASS Foundation in to work with teachers this summer, and we think that that will be an excellent resource to help in that training. And again, we try to incubate and challenge ideas in education and workforce training. One of the things that we have talked about with the new superintendent, Tom Shelton, is possibly trying to introduce something called the work ethics seal. And, again, this is to really demonstrate and to show students how they need to be prepared. And it's not necessarily that it's you need to make good grades, which that's very important, but it's the soft skills. No matter what industry sector that we talk to people in, the needs are the same. It's students need to or people, employees need to be able to communicate. They need to be able to work in teams. They need to be able to problem solve and think critically. So those are what we call necessary skills and technical skills, but not necessarily the book learning. But those are things that aren't tested on the test. So this is a program that helps facilitate some of that knowledge transfer. And then, again, we research, identify, communicate, you know, trends. Obviously, unemployment rate is one. But, again, what are needs of the companies in the Lexington area? And then what are the opportunities? A lot of students don't understand the opportunities that are right here in Lexington, that they can do international marketing here, they can do international finance, they can do aerospace engineering. So it's really trying to communicate those types of opportunities. And again, this is just a listing of some of the programs that we do. Sometimes I say workforce development or these partnerships, it's kind of like working in gray matter. But gray matter is very important. but it is through some of our programs and initiatives that we can kind of get our arms around some of that. And then on the horizon for this year and into 2013 is that we are really trying to communicate to this community and to parents and students and educators alike that, again, the opportunities that are here. And, you know, advanced manufacturing is a very strong and viable industry here. Again, you can do engineering here. You can practice medicine. But a lot of times I think people are very ingrained in that they're going to a four-year college, which that is absolutely very important. But education past high school is important, so it doesn't necessarily just have to be that four-year degree. Plumbers and electricians are very technically skilled, and they're most of the time entrepreneurs in and of themselves, and you want those people to be highly trained if they're going to be working in your home. Again, another initiative that we have been talking about is possibly trying to go for certification for a work-ready community or some variation thereof. But again, it's the soft skills. It's making sure that students coming out of school, whether it's college or high school, that they are ready to transition from school to career or college to career. And the National Career Readiness Certificate is one way to help measure the workforce and assess their readiness. And then another thing that we're trying to focus on more is really connecting with the college students. I mean, we have a lot of college students coming out right here in Fayette County in addition to our surrounding counties. But, again, they've been focused on their education. They don't know that some of these new entrepreneurial companies are here, some of the high-tech, very highly technical jobs, and that you can actually make a very good wage. So those are things that we're working on this year and next. Thank you. Any questions for Pamela? Thank you. Thank you. Does that conclude Commerce Lexington's offering for today? Thank you all very much. Very enlightening and glowing. Come back at 3. We'll be back. I'll bet. Now, Chris, are you going to do this presentation, or is Diane, or? Thank you, Chair. Chris was going to present on this. We've been working together on it with Law. I assume our computers got fixed not long after you left. Yeah. This computer did not like an original flash drive, which it's always liked in the past. We've overcome technology. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Beard and Council Members. Appreciate the opportunity to be here today, present an idea to you which we think will help further infill and redevelopment in our community. Just as a little bit of background, this came out of conversations that we have had with Council Member Lawless. regarding a specific matter to some businesses in her district relating to providing required parking and some challenges and problems that she can relay that they are having in that regard. When we were contemplating that issue, it became apparent to me and others that perhaps we had a situation that there were other areas in the community that might be in a similar situation where we could maybe create a tool that would be portable to other areas. And after working with Jeff Fugate from the DDA, Rochelle Boland in law, Dewey Crow in building inspection, we crafted this concept to propose to you to see if this is something you think would be a good way to approach those situations. And we're calling it a pedestrian-oriented business district legislation. get the right button here here we go again just as a little bit of background i think most of you are aware that the zoning ordinance does require a minimum number of off-street parking spaces for virtually every use, be that residential business or other types of uses. And those can be either located on the site itself or, depending on the zone and the nature of the use, off-site within a certain distance. And in some areas where you have very tight, small lots, particularly in the older area of the community, businesses must lease spaces from other folks who have access or enter into other types of arrangements in order to meet their off-street parking requirements. This is, like I said, particularly a situation you encounter in the older areas of the community, such as the regulatory infill and redevelopment area, where we also have maximum number of spaces because we're not looking for the destruction of that urban fabric in order to make surface parking lots, not necessarily the kind of thing we hope to see in the older areas of the community. And within this area, I do want to point out that the Board of Adjustment, on an individual case-by-case basis, depending on an application, can reduce the minimum number of parking spaces required up to 50 percent. And that's a fairly recent tool that we've put in to deal with infill and redevelopment issues. But we think there are other areas that still are a little more challenged than that power that the Board of Adjustment has. Now, I'm going to give you some examples, because these are basically business areas that were developed before the preponderance of the automobile. And again, that's what makes these kinds of challenges. Start off with the South Limestone Corridor near the university. Again, I'm going to go through this very quickly. But this is the one that Council Member Lawless had particular interest in, being in her district, that she wanted us to take a look at. And you all are generally familiar with this area, perhaps in recent weeks a little too familiar. But this is an area that is a largely pedestrian type of businesses. The businesses take up virtually the entire lot, the buildings, and historically you have had that kind of thing. Although in a few locations you have had redevelopment occur, like a McDonald's and things like that that do have parking spaces. But again, it's not typically characteristic of that particular area. As we were looking at this, we started to look at other areas that might be similar, and we looked at the Third Street corridor and the East End, where we have aspirations for redevelopment of the commercial area in that area. Jeffers Street area, which is really undergoing a renaissance in the last few years, has many of this type of businesses. There are very few parking lots and businesses close to the street, and we know from working with some of these folks the difficulty in achieving the off-street parking requirements. North Limestone and Loudoun, that general area of the community, again, typified as a lot of different buildings and businesses, again, without much surface parking. So, again, what we, after putting our heads together, thought that we could put forth on the table is to allow the council to create a district called a pedestrian-oriented business district, and by you passing an ordinance designating those areas, there would be a built-in reduction of the parking required for the businesses in that area. So the legislation that we've put before you, basically, first of all, I want to emphasize, and please listen very closely. This is enabling legislation. The legislation that is before you does not create any specific district. We have only given you some examples of the types of areas that we think this may become applicable, and it would be, if this legislation is passed, it would take a follow-up action by any group of businesses, the administration, any department or council member, to propose a specific area and to go through the process of getting council to create such a district. So what it does is allows you to grant full relief or partial relief to the otherwise granted parking requirements, again, not necessarily on a property-by-property basis like the Board of Adjustment can do, but in a larger business district and help then facilitate redevelopment and renovation in those areas. The legislation is in two parts. One is a code of ordinances section. The actual creation of the district would be a code of ordinances type of action, not a rezoning action. But there's one part of this legislation that does basically involve you initiating a text amendment to the zoning ordinance, which must go through the planning commission process and back to you. But that is a very minor part of the legislation, merely designed to make sure that in any area where the Board of Adjustment might have authority and the business district might have authority, the pedestrian-oriented business district would take precedence. Again, just a couple highlights. We tried the keep-it-simple approach on this. Basically, as I've said, it would be council's authority solely. And again, we'd be looking at a district, not individual properties. We have specified that it should be a minimum of a 600-foot continuous frontage along the street. We do know that many of these areas are mixed-use areas where you have residential and commercial together, and that's okay. But what we are saying is that the council should and could only grant the waiver for the commercial areas and not for the residential, because we don't want this to be a way to inadvertently bump up residential density in a way that may be threatening to neighborhoods. So, again, this is geared towards commercial activity, which, again, we think are very important in these older areas to support the residential as well. And also we have put in there that council should and must, in fact, consider the impact on surrounding residential areas. and I'm sure before any such district would be created, the neighborhood associations, if any, would be contacted and would be given a chance to weigh in on the proposal and what extent of relief the council might give for that particular area. And that's basically it. Glad to answer any questions that you might have or entertain any comments. Since I pushed the button first, maybe I get the first question. The audience is in relationship to the determinations here. Are we talking about the customer or are we talking about the provider? We're talking about the – well, what it would do is let's say I'm trying to expand a business and that expansion would require me to have additional parking spaces. Let's say I was adding tables to a restaurant in addition. If the council has granted relief through this district, I would not have to go try to lease those spaces for someone else, buy a vacant property, tear down something and put in a parking lot or something like that. It would give, again, some built-in relief to those parking requirements It's an acknowledgment that in this particular area, you're not looking to necessarily have the preponderance of the traffic coming up as drive-through, but there would be a large part anticipated to be walk-to type of customer. So the businesses could shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak, in eating up all the parking spaces so that none of the customers can have any place to park. That is true, but usually a business that does not at least cater to its customers will have some issues. That's a balancing act that I'm not sure I would ever want to get in. There's nothing in here that would prohibit, other than the maximum parking rules that are in place now, that would prohibit someone from going and providing more parking. we're only talking again about those cases where somebody has virtually no parking I can think of one or two establishments along Limestone because I've talked to their owners that are having to lease spaces maybe a block away and their customers don't even really know that those spaces are available so they look for on street parking or they walk to or come from other locations and that's the type of area that we're talking about here This would not work in suburbia. Okay. Dr. Blues? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chris. I think this is an intriguing idea. I do have a question about one part of the proposed ordinance, and that's 18187. the council shall consider the impact of the creation of such a district on nearby residential areas, which, as you mentioned, would be critical, and shall be required to find that the creation of the district in conjunction with any restriction applied under 1611D below will not unduly harm the character of nearby residential areas. I'm wondering what the difference is between harm and harm that is not so bad. That's what we're saying. How do you come to some kind of determination that, well, we're harming it, yeah, but not unduly? You know, that's going to be the art in the application of any of these, to be honest with you. And I think the experiences that the residences are having, the nature of the businesses that are involved, all would weigh into that. again i think it's very important that the council take that in consideration but there are some areas in urban environments you expect to have a sharing of the on-street spaces by residential and commercial uses in some areas that may be problematic because there may not be very many on-street spaces available in others it may not be such an issue it may be the nature and type of the businesses, ones that let out at 2.30 in the morning with folks in a maybe altered state of consciousness. It may not be as compatible in the neighborhood as some other types of uses. And again, my only answer is that I think that will be the art, and that will be the discussion whether it's better in that area to not help encourage the businesses to expand, grow or renovate or put more obstacles in their way versus giving them some relief from the normal requirements above and beyond what the Board of Adjustment would or could on a case-by-case. I think we'd be on safer ground here if there is forthcoming a motion to move this forward to remove the adjective. Unduly? Either that or change the term. I mean, you might consider whether a term might compromise the character of a neighborhood. I think the assumption here is that the neighborhood would have to have a distinct involvement and voice in this proposal in any given area before Council would approve it. I think that because we are talking about probably most areas where there is residential, So in my district, for example, that's the case in the western suburb, and you did mention the Jefferson Street neighborhood. I consulted with the president of the Neighborhood Association on this, and he was basically favorable because clearly it would certainly clear one roadblock, so to speak, because parking is at such a premium on Jefferson. It's very difficult to find a spot now, and that will continue on. So this might very much make sense because it is pedestrian-oriented to a certain extent. On the other hand, if you do have the parking restrictions, who do compel the proposed business to be creative, as was pointed out to me. So I think this would be a delicate business. And what I'd like to at least to have us be assured of if we go forward with this is that the residents would indeed be able to weigh in, and I don't want us to be caught up in something like unduly harming. Very good point, Dr. Bluth. I do want to say we did not put in any conditions that neighborhoods be notified or anything like that, But we just did that because we assumed you would tell us if you wanted anything like that included inherently in the legislation. Okay? My assumption would be that if any of these proposals came forward, the council would be very attuned to what the neighborhoods nearby thought. But we did not put anything formally in here requiring them to be notified. But you could certainly do that. Yeah, I wouldn't. either by the ordinance itself or by just practice? Well, you know, something like the 400-foot rule that would extend for the length of the street where this provision would be implemented, that might work. Well, I think they need to be consulted, and I think that on the one hand, The neighborhood has to know and to be able to weigh in, and council has to have a good guideline here. There's no word that's going to make that precise, but it does have to be indicated. So those are relatively small points, but I'm hoping we can clear them up as we go forward. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I may make just not a response to that, but you were pointing out this section has made me see a typo in the translation of this. Actually, that 16-11D language in the third line under 18-187 left over from another iteration of this, that should actually be 18-188 in correct context, and I apologize for that. Thank you. Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Chair. I first approached Mr. King maybe October or November of last year, and my concern was actually the block between Avenue of Champions and Maxwell Street. those businesses face limestone. They have metered parking, and they have metered parking on Jersey Street. So I met with neighborhood associations. I talked with almost every business, if not every business on that street, as well as the businesses between Maxwell and High and some other surrounding business and property owners. And all of them were extremely favorable and said it needed to be done and were supportive. The residential areas in that area do have residential parking permits, so they would not be negatively impacted. I can't speak to the other neighborhoods Mr. King addressed and et cetera, but what's happening now, even with the businesses that have been there for a long time are grandfathered in, The new businesses, even with a 50% decrease in 50% variance, are paying some of them. One business is leasing, I think it's either 16 or 18 spots at $100 apiece from UK every month. So that's $1,600, $1,800 off the top where we're missing out on the revenue taxes or they could be hiring more people. Some of the smaller ones, $600 a month even with the variance, and there are empty parking meters in front of their business all the time. So their employees wouldn't be able to take up those parking meters because they're two-hour time frames. And most of their parking, I mean, most of their business is walk-up business. So one of the things that's happening is it's an economic hardship on those businesses, which creates less tax revenue for us and fewer people being hired. And the other issue is new businesses aren't going in there because of that, because they can't afford that kind of overhead. So my interest was that one block between Maxwell and Avenue of Champions. Most of it is, on the other side, RUK dorms. I think there's only one business on the east side of South Lyme. The rest of them are on the west side of South Lyme. And again, there are, I mean, you can drive by there just about any time and see empty metered spots. None of the existing businesses had an objection that I talked with. A lot of them do have some parking somewhere, but they're excited about having also other businesses want to come in there and make it look nice. So I've done a lot of homework with communicating with business owners, not just in this area, but business owners like Bill Lear, who has businesses a block over, residences that live nearby. Mr. Kaufman, who owns a lot of property in the area, but none there. So I would like to make sure that if we do it, the 600 feet, I'm not sure how many feet it is from Maxwell to Avenue of Champions, but it's more than 600 feet. So Mr. King suggested other places that may or may not be applicable. They weren't in my district. So that I guess if you all had people in your district that were interested, they could apply for this also. But they're losing a tremendous amount of money renting parking spaces from UK at $100 a space. And people don't even know that the parking is there and available. And their businesses primarily walk up. Those are dorms across the street, and it's a pedestrian area. So thank you. I would very much appreciate your support on this because I do think it is an economic development issue. And it's business. These are all locally owned small businesses. And it is business friendly. And it's also customer friendly. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member K. Thank you, Chair. A couple things. Chris, could you explain again if a business now wants to get relief from the parking regulation, what the procedure is? The procedure is to seek a variance from the Board of Adjustment, but the Board is limited up to 50 percent of the requirements. So if the requirement is 25 spaces, the Board could reduce. I should have picked an even number. Let's make that 26. Then the Board could give relief down to 13. And does the ordinance that they operate under stipulate notification within an area or not? It is the standard Board of Adjustment notification, yes. So similar language could be used for this ordinance, or is that not applicable? It could, but again, I think that would be up to the Council. It seems to me in all cases that expense would be a government expense, unlike the Board of Adjustment application where the applicant has that expense. So whether the government wanted to self-impose that burden on itself, that's why I didn't put that in there. I thought it would come up in discussion, but, again, that's Council's judgment. Okay. And is it fair to characterize this proposal as essentially a way to do for an area what you can now do for an individual business? And as you said, it's enabling. It does not require anything. Yes, we find that many businesses will just find some other way rather than they're intimidated by the process or they just figure, okay, I'll find a way around it, things like that. Again, this just seemed like a way that where you had a group of properties together, you could address it as a district rather than this one gets the relief, If that one doesn't get the relief, again, we just thought it might be a good tool to have in the infill and redevelopment toolbox. Well, I favor the flexibility that it adds. I think it's a good idea. And as drafted, as I understand it, we would have still a lot to say about the conditions under which the actual applications are made, avenues for public input, and final decision about whether it's appropriate or not. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Anything else from the council? Chris, thank you very much. Thank you. Diane? May I make a motion? If you wish. I move that we accept this ordinance with the number change and the unduly stricken from the language that Council Member Blues pointed out and I guess put on the docket for Thursday evening. This coming Thursday. or it goes to the cow we are the cow it goes to full council it doesn't go anywhere unless we have a second okay we do have a second yeah all in favor Mr. Chairman, I think there's some discussion. There is some discussion. All right. And who's discussing? I indicated that I would like to speak to the motion. I'm sorry? I indicated that I would like to speak to the motion. Okay, fine. Fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the striking of the unduly, which I think was not necessary and gives a better guideline regarding the characters of nearby residential areas. But I would also like to see a requirement that surrounding residential areas, or any area for that matter, be informed. So I'm not sure exactly what the wording of this, but I would move that residents or property owners within 400 feet of the affected area be informed of the proposed ordinance. Yes, that's good. Second. We have a second? Okay. I've got a question right now, and that is, is this polished enough to take to, or do we need to do a little bit more working with it? It seems we've been working on it for months, and... No, but we're finding out that there are issues. There may be minor issues, but we are finding out that there are issues that need to be. Well, I mean, I agree with the motion Dr. Blues made. It can be a friendly amendment, and if there are other issues as we discuss it. Yes. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you. So, Council Member Blues, you made the amendment to the motion, and I guess my question is whether this carries the ZODA with it or whether we have to do a second zoning ordinance text amendment initiation when it gets to the council. So if this passes as amended, then the Council would initiate the text amendment? Is that correct? That's what I understood. This is not a motion to include initiating the text amendment? This is the enabling, as I understood it, this is the enabling legislation that would go to the full council, and the full council then would vote and initiate a ZOTA if it passes. So with the amendment, including the 400-foot notification, I guess, Mr. Myers, Don't you have a piece of legislation coming forward changing the notification area? Would that apply to this? That's me. That involves the Board of Adjustment. Okay, so that wouldn't apply here. Not necessarily, unless we wish for it to be. I mean, I guess I'm wondering, do we need to put the 400 feet in, or should we put according to current legislation for notification in case it changes? Specifically, we moved, or it's actually in here for second reading. Right. Yeah, number 25 to 800 feet and to any involved within that 800 feet, any involved neighborhood associations to be mandatorily to notify. On this? On the Board of Adjustment issues. Okay. Chris, do you? might i make a suggestion because the legislation that council member beard is mentioning is also a planning commission you know initiation to the text zoning ordinance text and i i suspect since i think your motion that initiation only speaks to board of adjustment notice i suspect when it gets to the planning commission we will try to put zone change notice in sync with that as well So I would suggest to you to, if I may make a specific suggestion, to replace the current Section 18-189 as proposed and renumber that as 18-190 and place in a new 18-189 that would say, prior to the establishment of a district, notification will be given by first-class mail as for a zone change. And that would leave it flexible. I guess, Mr. Chair, that would need a motion to amend the... Yes. Okay. Maybe it would be a little simpler if I can just revise the wording of my motion to amend. That would be fine. According to Chris's much clearer, simpler, and more efficient phrasing. If that's okay with the seconder. That's fine. Okay, back to voting on. I'm not getting the reason is the voting is in process. Can we remove the voting? Chris, in the zone change that you were referring to, that process, the neighborhood association representatives are notified, correct? Correct. Okay. So that would be included plus a certain feat of ram? I would just say for clarification, I don't think if we do the mailed notification, then that would keep us from having to put an ad in the Herald-Leader. No offense to the Herald-Leader, but those are expensive. So it would be the area neighborhood representatives plus? It would be the individual property owners within a certain radius, whatever the law is, and also what is ever required for a registered neighborhood association notice. I just wanted to make sure. Thanks. Other Doug Martin, Councilman Martin? Mr. King. Yes, Mr. Martin. This seems vaguely similar to like an H-1 overlay. So how does this ordinance compare? Because I haven't had a chance to look and see how this compares to like an H-1. And this is like an overlay. And so I would think that those two should be similar. I can speak to that because that's one of the options we considered when Council Member Lawless raised this question. And our determination was this is a single-issue matter. Why do you need everything that would be inherent in an overlay zone in order to deal with just one aspect? And so law was very comfortable with us just doing this like we do for the Richmond Road Traffic and Safety Ordinance, like the Newtown Pike Extension District and special requirements there. Since those are very specific things and they don't cover the full range of things that you would typically have in an overlay zone, law was very comfortable with saying this is perfectly acceptable and a good, more flexible way to deal with this. Thank you. For myself, I need more time. And for the life of me, I don't know why this is not in. Mr. Chairman, point of order. I think the subject of discussion is the amendment that's on the floor. And I'm, are you doing a friendly amendment or unfriendly amendment? I don't think of it as. So I'm not allowed to speak about whether or not I support your amendment? It is antagonistic, but it is an amendment to Councilmember Lawless's motion. I think I would have been done by now, but we can debate this. We can debate. I certainly would accept it as a friendly amendment. Well, that's fine with me if we can get this moving along here. Where's our parliamentarian when we need him? Am I on or off, Mr. Chair? I guess, Councilman Martin, you're off for the time being. All right. I'll punch back whenever I can. But at some point, I'd like to say that I don't support this because it's not in the right committee. We haven't had time to look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You don't need to say that twice then, do you? Okay, may we vote on the amendment? Would you like to restate the amendment? I can't restate the amendment. I think Chris has to restate it. Point of order, Chair. Can I just clarify? Maybe it was my understanding, because I'm at this point in the room, that the council member who made the motion accepted it as a friendly amendment, so I'm not sure we shouldn't have to vote on it, should we? Which then means we could talk to the motion. As I said, I'd be happy to make this as a friendly amendment if we can move things along the path. That'll be fine. Let's go ahead and vote on the issue itself. Right. All in favor. Now, does everybody have their screen up for voting? Is it just me for some reason? I just want to speak to the motion. Yeah, okay. I'm sorry. Go right ahead, Council Member Martin. It's your turn again. I think this is in the wrong committee, and I haven't had a chance to look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Wrong or right committee, we're going to go ahead and vote on it. I'll wait and speak to the motion. This is the motion. I've waited long enough. Yes. See, I can't sit in. I did. Mr. King, in explaining this legislation to us, you said this was to help, I guess, areas with a lot of pedestrian traffic or business areas that are frequented more often by pedestrian traffic. Am I right in that or close? So we're built during a time where pedestrian orientation took precedence over automobile orientation. And I guess that's what led you to the boundary of using the infill and redevelopment area as the basis for the ordinance. I guess I, having reviewed it and thought about it, wonder about other applications that might be also pedestrian-friendly but not inside the infill and redevelopment boundary, so to speak, per se, Chevy Chase, or other shopping areas that are located in pedestrian-friendly areas that have to survive within the constraints that we're trying to change just in one part of the city. And I need more of your alchemy about why just in the overlay area and not other parts of the city. Well, again, we were trying to prepare something, directly speaking, to the issue that was placed before us. Yes, sir. We expanded that somewhat beyond what Council Member Lawless had initially put before us because we thought it was portable. But we also felt that without having to get into another whole level of analysis and review, that the infill and redevelopment regulatory boundary gave us a good, logical working area to apply this in as an initial proposal. I understand why you did it that way. I just may have other thoughts, or I may fall into the category with Council Member Martin, for which this forum may be somewhat incorrect at this time, but nonetheless it's where we are. Thank you. Since I can't pick anything up on the screen, if anybody else wishes to speak. Okay, let's vote at this point. All in favor? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I don't have a screen. Okay. It's rebooting. By the way, we have seven to four according to this, and we have some people whose computers have died on, at least temporarily. So the motion passes. Any other business before we go to our next presenter? We have some minor things to discuss, I think. Gary, are you going to be the presenter on this, or Sally? Co-presenter. Okay. Whoever's going to kick it off. We are a little pressed on that. We could call the mayor and tell them to wait till 4, but that'll work. Thank you very much for allowing us to talk about the parking garages again today. When we were here in February, our purpose was to discuss the transfer of the city-owned garages to the parking authority. The reason for that was that the garages are very expensive, but they're very necessary to a vibrant downtown, and we must keep them safe and well managed. We have the same purpose and the same reason today. But last time, you all asked some questions that we promised that we would come back with and discuss with you. And your questions had two primary focuses. The first one was, how can the parking authority cash flow the operations, the maintenance, and the repair of these garages, and LFUCG can't seem to do that? The second question focused on employee parking. What is an appropriate cost and charge for employee parking? Well, we're here today to hopefully answer those questions for you. We feel that the issues you raised that day have prompted us to do a better transfer agreement than we had when we were here the last time. Gary Means will begin, and then I'll rejoin at the issue of employee parking and quickly just go over the transfer agreement. Thank you. Good afternoon. So I believe one of you all used the word, what's the magic wand? And I think I'm going to take three slides to sort of explain what we're going to do. First slide will be revenue enhancements, second one expenses, and then we'll show you the numbers. So on this first slide, the current base revenue of the four garages that we're talking about is about $1.3 million. With the revenue enhancements that are listed below, we feel we can generate an additional $300,000. And those are made up of things like a small monthly parking rate at all the facilities. And we have a large group of monthly parkers in all the facilities. So you can make a slight adjustment there, and it really translates into a lot of money. The validation program, there's a lot of free validation going on. We propose taking validations to half of what the market rate. So if it's $2 an hour to park in a garage, we would offer a validation program where someone could get 50% off and only have to pay $1 to park there for an hour. Night and weekend revenues can be gained, and this is a new opportunity, as we add automation to the garages. And that's something that it's never made sense to keep cashiers in the booth late at night or later in the evenings. And with automation, we can capture some of the night and weekend revenues that are not being collected now. Also, the same thing with that, raising the gates at the end of the afternoon. currently allows people to park all day in some of the garages and get out at the end of the day just because the gate's up. And an all-day ticket is worth about $8 currently in the garages, so there's some missing revenue there. When I talk about night and weekends, we're not talking about something incredibly expensive. Just implement something like a $2 rate, a flat rate. If you enter after 5 p.m., you're going to go to dinner or go to a movie or whatever downtown. After 5 and weekends, we would implement that rate. That's our plan. at this point. And then there's a lot of event revenue generated at one of the garages, the Victorian Square Garage. Currently, the major event rate, and when we say major event, it's a sold-out Rupp Arena event, concerts, or basketball games. It's $10. Across the street right now, they're filling a lot up at $18. So we're just proposing taking it from $10 to $13, and over the course of a season, you can generate a lot of additional revenue that way. On the expense side, So generally speaking, about $150,000 in expense reduction we would forecast, and we would do that in three different ways, mainly in the maintenance reduction. There's LFUCG and your contractor parking spend a lot of expenses maintaining the facilities because of their condition. Also, the gate equipment is in really bad condition, and there's a lot of money spent there as well. And then tying into the next topic, there's a lot of money still spent on lighting repairs. And so also with upgrading the lighting, we anticipate a 50% reduction in electricity. And I think I mentioned this before, garages, lighting's on 24-7. So it's the one facility that you can really see a major enhancement when you upgrade your lighting. And then at the end, less personnel expense with the equipment automation. So we roll expenses and revenues together. This sheet shows sort of a before and after with that vertical bar down the middle. LFUCG current past year and projected this fiscal year to the left of the bar. To the right of the bar would be sort of a transitional year that we would reject in 2013 and then after we fully implemented some of these changes in 2014. If you'll jump down to below the horizontal bar at the bottom, that's kind of where it starts making sense. You see, your all surplus currently is in the neighborhood of $240,000 to $290,000, just right above the bar there. And we would project about $790,000 first year. And then we really have to talk about the expense of the structural repairs. Somewhere in the estimated amount of $5 million to $6 million. So we did a conservative spread of a 20-year payment with bonds at about 5%. That payment would be about $480,000. So you can see currently you all wouldn't be able to make that type of payment to get that repair work done. But not only would we have that expense, we'd have these operational upgrades, the new lighting, new equipment, new signage, things that we would do to upgrade, and we expect about $140,000 a year payment on that. And then the other ingredient that we have that we can bring to the table is the on-street surplus, which is hovering around $400,000 a year. So we mix that in. We're still projecting over a $500,000 a year surplus. So we hope that this kind of walks you through and answers the question, how are we going to do it and can we do it? And I think we're being conservative and still have some additional money to help with future revenues or maybe future economic development and not put ourselves in too much of a financial constraint in making these payments. Sally will come up now and talk about employee partners. To address employee parking in the garages, we have reviewed quite a bit of data on current employee parking and the average number of new hires that we have each year, especially in the government center and in the Phoenix buildings. Over the past five years, we've had an average of 34 new employees hired each year in the Phoenix and in the Government Center buildings. We looked at multiple scenarios on employee parking, and some of you were subjected to my multiple scenarios that didn't make much sense. So now we've come down to one that we think is the most viable. We are suggesting that LFUCG will not be charged for employee parking for all current employees for a period of five years, and that's beginning this July 1st until June 30th, 2017. Thank you. I'm sorry. I forgot that. And LFUCG will pay for new employees hired after the executed agreement at 50% of the current market rate. And right now, that's about $50, and 50% would be $25 a month. Prior to July 1, 2017, LFUCG will evaluate its long-term strategy for its parking needs and its budgetary impact. So at this point, we have incorporated into this year's budget the dollars to pay for approximately 50 new employees. It averages 34, but to be on the safe side, we incorporated 50. The proposed transfer of ownership of the garages. You, of course, saw these slides last time. We're dealing with these garages that range in ages and have approximately 2,055 spaces attached to them. The transfer agreement is very similar to what you saw the last time. We've named it now not a management agreement, but a transfer agreement. We are transferring the ownership, the maintenance, all over to the parking authority as is. The transit, the annex, and the Victorian, they transfer when we sign the agreement. The courthouse does not. It can't transfer to 2032 because we have an outstanding debt on that. But we will be transferring a management of that courthouse. The real property, or those Broadway shops which we call them, also go with the Victorian garage. The transit garage transfers with a deed restriction for LexTran. Because the garage was acquired and constructed with certain federal funds, the LexTran operations remain within its current space allocation until no longer wishes to operate at that location. The transfers include leases, subleases, management agreements, and they're all attached to the transfer agreement in your packet as Exhibit B. Repairs are planned in the following order. I'm going to do the annex first because everybody knows that that is the one that we really need to approach. The Victorian, the transit, the courthouse, and finally the government center. Again, we have that right of first refusal on the sale or transfer, and we can reacquire each parking facility at any point upon payment of any outstanding debt on that particular facility or the assumption of payment of improvements on a depreciated value basis. We shall retain the air rights. And prior to closing, the Lexington Parking Authority will provide a detailed financial plan. And lastly, the Parking Authority will report annually to the urban county government. We do feel that many of the questions you asked helped us go back and refine, and we appreciate those requests and we'll be glad to take more. Kathleen Martin, any questions? Yes. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for bringing this to us. We've talked before in this venue or a different committee, and I appreciate you and Gary coming to talk to me. about this. One of the issues I brought up in both places is long-term leases on these facilities and whether there will be some provision in the contracts for requiring a market rate to be charged to tenants of those garages. And I've looked at the contract. I don't see anything about that in here. In fact, different from what we were all discussing earlier, that there was going to be a management arrangement, now we're being brought that you guys are going to actually deed this stuff over to the parking authority. And that, to me, is a substantial and important change from what we have discussed in the past. Let me finish. So I have seen in my now four years on the council what happens when things get transferred beyond the control of the council. The library has its own funding, and that means we have no control over the library funding now. LexTran has its own funding, and now we have no control over our LexTran funding. And so what's going to happen here is the Lexington Parking Authority is going to become its own little kingdom, and it will be on the scope and control of the council. For much of the park, I understand we can buy it back. So I am concerned, and I still am concerned, about long-term leases to tenants or accounting firms, law firms, whomever, in these parking garages. And I had asked for a requirement that any lease longer than a year receive approval by the council. and I'd also ask for provision that the leases for these parking spaces to entities like companies or law firms or accountants or whatever be at a market rate. And so I no longer have an adequate amount of concern, I guess, comfort level with the arrangement to be able to support it. So you guys have been terrific to deal with. You've been very, very helpful. But the deal has changed, and I'm not comfortable with the deal. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Dr. Blues? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had a concern, and this is on page three of the slides, about the $2 charge for parking downtown after 5 o'clock and on weekends. And I'm just wondering what the calculation was here when you balance the need for revenue from parking and the desirability of providing as many parking spaces as possible and making it attractive to come downtown and park in the evening for entertainment purposes. It's our experience that if people understand it's going to be safe and clean and well-lit, that a $2 rate is really not going to be a detriment to that. A lot of the other downtown parking lots and garages are $3 and $6 and much higher rates. So we're proposing this $2 rate would be a very light rate compared to what's going on. And again, be able to market the garages, have them well lit, make them attractive. I think some people are even confused if you can park in the garages now, even though some of them are free. The gates are up, but they're not aware that you can even park there. So it's something that we would work with the public to make sure they understood how many spaces are available downtown and at what rate. So you would come downtown, if you find a spot on the street, you park free. But you pay $2 if you park in the garage. I think most of our nighttime folks who come downtown find that most of those metered spaces are filled right at 5 p.m., and so finding that free space sometimes is a little bit difficult. We'd be able to direct you into a garage where it would be clean and safe, and it would only be a $2 rate. So the parking in the garage would be looked at as a kind of an amenity. I mean, would it definitely assist with economic development and nightlife in that we make that available and we make it clean and safe and well lit with good signage directing people there? So this ties in with the improvements that are planned and the repairs, I guess, to make the garage something other than, what shall I say, somewhat risky venues at the I shouldn't say risky, but they're less desirable. The streets seem safer than a garage at night. And there are folks who will never be comfortable parking in garages, and we know that, and there are surface lots available. And if you drive around the block a few times, you might find one on the street at night. But we really feel like making these available, and like I said before, clean and safe, is going to be a real win for downtown. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Stunett. Thank you, Chair. Gary, welcome. I know we've had many conversations on this topic over the last several weeks. Just curious, what are our current revenues? You list the revenue base, but what's the current revenues? I know you're going to generate additional. That's the current revenue base, the 1.3, from the three garages under LSU. But what's our net? I guess I'm looking for our net. Oh, the $279,000, I think, at the bottom of that. $279,000? That's what's projected for this year. You did about $240 last year. Okay, and then you generate an additional $347 on top of that? So you'll be looking at a half-man a year approximately? With revenue enhancements and expense savings. Okay, that's what I was trying to get into. So I see a lot of benefit in switching to management because obviously we haven't been a good manager of our garages over the years. And I think you all, we created the parking authority to be our management arm of all parking, including the garages. I appreciate the language in here about the LFUCG will not issue GO bonds. I think that is a big sticking point for me early on on this discussion. And one sticking point I still have some issue with is the employee parking spaces. I can't support the way it's written because I think you should take out the five-year rule and let us reevaluate in five years and see how this relationship is going. And if there's a need in five years to start charging LFUCG, then let's do it. But as long as we're on the hook financially, which we are under the clause on bonding, that if you, for some reason, don't have enough revenues, then LFUCG will have to come up with that bond payment. As long as we're still on the hook financially in some capacity, I don't support us being charged with our employees to park. So that's a deal killer for me. I appreciate all the revisions and the changes, and this is getting closer to it. But I would call it a five-year period, and then we reevaluate in five years and say, do we need to start paying? where's this relationship prospered, is it what we want, and then we can do it in five years, and whoever's on council can make that decision. But I would take out 8B of this before I can support that one piece. But I appreciate all the work you've done, Gary, in getting us to this point. But that's still a stickler. If we're still on the hook financially for what happens, then I don't think we should be paying for our employees to park in our own garages. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lawless? I think the reevaluation in five years is certainly reasonable. My question is the modify Victorian Square major event rate. Can you, like, would Thursday Night Live or something like that be a major event? or are you talking about a concert in Rupp Arena? Right, and that's a great point. Somebody's coming down to Thursday Night Live or something small like that. They're sure not expecting to get hit with that type of event rate. But no, we're talking about major events at Rupp Arena. Okay, and so the rate would be how much at Victorian Square for Thursday Night Live? At this point, we're projecting that $2 after 5 rate would be in place on most given nights that don't have anything major going on at Rope. And the private lots are exorbitant, even for like Thursday night live. I mean, it's highway robbery or parking robbery, whichever. One of the things that I was curious about also is will the businesses who validate parking, say in Victorian Square, does that rate change dramatically? No, we would not do any dramatic changes in any validation programs. And what we were talking about when I talked about going from free, there are some free validations that are going on. Some of the garages, we would take that to 50% of the market rate. Any validation programs, if the rate changed, it wouldn't be jumping up in large increments. It would just be an adjustment that could be phased in or budgeted for. And another issue is signage. People don't know where to park. So does your plan include visible signage for people coming downtown about where parking is available? Yes, we have a plan. Actually, I've got a picture that I can lay on that. And we've talked about that, but I didn't know if it was in this plan. Part of our plan will be to utilize the website better and enabling people to find out where and how much parking is available downtown and the rate. But, yes, signage, we project adding lit perpendicular signage that is now you're able to do that with the change in the signage ordinance that's happened over the past year or two. and not only a lit sign so people can see from a block or two away that that's a parking lot, but something that we're looking at doing is having the number of spaces available right there on the sign. So they would click off as cars come in or go out, and you would actually be able to see if there's parking available in that garage. Terrific, terrific, because that is a huge issue for people. And I suppose just on the comment about employee parking reexamining after five years, Council Member Stennett, I think is certainly a good idea. and also there's nothing to say that the government can't rent those spaces for the individual employee would not have to bear the cost, in other words. Right, and the way that the agreement is being written right now is that the parking authority at the end of that five-year period would no longer offer it free, so it allows future councils to decide, is it the employee, is it the city, is there a shared cost in that. So at this point, the agreement is just saying that we would no longer allow that. And just to comment on it a little bit further is even though I'm showing in our projections that we can cover the cost of this initial repair work that should take us out 20 years, the way all garages are constantly in a state of deterioration. And so we're going to fix these garages up, but where these areas are that the engineers have found that need to be repaired, just a foot or two over is some concrete that's deteriorating. So we will have a budget and continue to do repair work. It will always occur. And so what our concern is being strapped with this number of spaces that are free to all-day-long parking, not enabling us to do future repairs or even future economic development, possibly another parking garage when needed. Well, the state of our financial situation and the state of our garages is if we don't do something, And I firmly believe you all are the people to do it because you have the revenue from the street parking. There aren't going to be garages for employees or anybody else to park in. So I strongly support this. Thank you very much for your work. That's Mary Kay. Thank you, Chair. Gary, I want to follow up on Council Member Blue's comment about the night parking after 5 o'clock. And your response was that if people came to a nicely maintained, well-lit garage, they would understand the need for other, they would be willing to pay the $2. Are you planning to do the repairs first before implementing the $2 charge, or is that going to be implemented immediately? Everything will be phased in. That's a great question, and we certainly don't want to impact people financially when we haven't given them a reason to enjoy that opportunity to park there. So there are some garages that need a lot of structural work, like the annex. We wouldn't be putting new lighting in there or anything while a lot of jackhammering and all that's going on. Other garages, we may be able to put the equipment in and the new lighting in right away, and then we would implement rate changes at that point. But the goal would really be to be a branded program where when you see that logo on that garage, you know what you're going to get. You know how the equipment works. You know it's going to be well lit and clean. I mean, that's kind of the goal is to have a nice branded downtown parking program. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. If I might, I'm going to hand the gavel over here to Council Member Alan Gerstle so I can ask you a couple of questions and see if we can't get this done in the next 45 seconds. the footprint for the Phoenix garage that's sitting out there now empty. Is there any plans for that at this point? I'll have to let the city. Yes, sir. We're very close to starting the final on the parking lot, on paving and getting that parking lot ready. And hopefully we'll start that in the next two weeks. Okay. You know, we could build a parking garage there at some point. And the second thing, which I think I made pretty much of a definite, is that you don't have enough money to fix the annex garage, and dynamite's a lot cheaper. I don't know how anybody can trust that place. It bothers me considerably. And as you just mentioned, you can pour concrete in one spot and then five feet away is deteriorating concrete. This is way ahead of us. You can't pour enough concrete to keep up on that place, in my opinion, anyway. Those are all I have. Does anybody else have anything? I'm afraid we aren't going to have time, actually, for the second part of your, if that's okay, Gary. Okay. Because we do have people coming in, and we're going to have to shuffle and get squared away ourselves. Would there be time for one comment on the next, Raj? Just so, because this is something I've learned, what the engineers are proposing in a repair is at some point during the time of repairs there, the helical exit would be completely closed down, and they'll actually jackhammer the whole thing out and replace that whole flooring there. That would be great. So it will be all new concrete, and that's part of why it's over a $3 million repair. Just be sure to tell me so that I don't have to walk over to the Phoenix building during that operation. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Anything else to come in front of the group? If not, I will entertain them both. Second. All in favor of getting that. I'm sorry? What's the motion for? The motion is for us to terminate this. To adjourn the meeting? To adjourn the meeting. There's one more issue on the docket for today. There's one more issue on the docket for today. Okay, so are we just going to take it up at the next meeting? Yes. Do you have another meeting scheduled? July 10. July 10, yeah. Okay, maybe we can hear this in work session. We can do it in work session. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you.