# Urban County Council Work Session - November 20, 2007 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · November 20, 2007 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/255 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/255?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2007-11-20 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: February 1, 2026 - **Length**: 14,382 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council convened on November 20, 2007, at 3:10 PM with Mayor Newberry presiding. The meeting focused on two informational presentations: an Intergovernmental Committee Report and a Dog Task Force Presentation. Council members took 10 votes during the session, though no public comments were heard. The meeting served primarily as an informational session to update the Council on committee work and task force findings related to dog-related issues in the community. ## Attendance The Lincoln City Council meeting on November 20, 2007 had strong attendance with 15 members present and only one absence. **Present:** • Mayor Newberry • CM Ellinger • CM DeCamp • CM Stinnett • CM Beard • CM Moloney • CM Gorton • CM McChord • CM Blevins • CM Myers • CM Blues • CM Stevens • CM James • CM Lane • CM Maloney **Absent:** • CM Crosbie **Late:** • None With 15 of 16 council members in attendance, the meeting had a quorum to conduct official city business. ## Votes and Decisions The Council conducted ten votes during the November 20, 2007 meeting, with all motions passing unanimously. **Meeting Minutes and Administrative Items** • CM Ellinger motioned to approve the summary from November 13, 2007, seconded by CM DeCamp. The motion passed with 8 ayes and 0 nays. [timestamp: 00:45] • CM DeCamp motioned to approve new business items A-F, seconded by CM Stinnett. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 02:00] **Policy and Calendar Matters** • CM Moloney motioned to recommend that the parks renaming and naming policy be amended, seconded by CM Beard. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 05:00] • CM Gorton motioned to place the proposed 2008 Council Calendar on the docket for December 6th, seconded by CM James. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 10:00] **Traffic and Infrastructure** • CM McChord motioned to place a 4-way stop at Cornwall Dr. and Cromwell Way on the docket for December 6th, seconded by CM Myers. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 15:00] • CM Moloney motioned to place on the docket a 4-way stop at Addison Ave and Unity, seconded by CM Stinnett. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 35:00] **Committee and Grant Actions** • CM Blevins motioned to approve the NDF list for November 20, 2007, seconded by CM James. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 20:00] • CM Beard motioned to place into the Services Committee the matter of the Zandale ditch, seconded by CM Gorton. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 25:00] • CM Stephens motioned to authorize forestry to apply for a grant from Home Depot for street trees, seconded by CM Myers. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 30:00] **Executive Session** • CM Stevens motioned to go into closed session, seconded by CM Lane. The motion passed unanimously. [timestamp: 40:00] ## Budget and Financial Actions The Council approved several contracts and financial agreements totaling $188,150 during the November 20, 2007 meeting. **Major Infrastructure Projects** The largest expenditure was Resolution 645-07, authorizing $66,000 for engineering services with Strand Associates, Inc. for the Appomattox Road Culvert Replacement Project. Additionally, Resolution 641-07 approved $45,700 for Nesbitt Engineering, Inc. to provide engineering services for the Whitemark Court Stormwater Improvements Project. **Public Facilities and Services** Resolution 415-07 allocated $48,000 to Brandstetter Carroll, Inc. for architectural design services for the new Senior Citizens' Center. The Council also approved Resolution 639-07, establishing a $25,000 rental agreement with Lexington Center Corporation for the 2007 Kentucky Christmas Chorus. **Property and Easement Agreements** Two property-related items were approved with minimal financial impact. Resolution 642-07 authorized an assignment of preservation and conservation easement with the Fayette County Rural Land Management Board, Inc. at no cost to the city. Resolution 644-07 approved permanent storm sewer easement and temporary construction easement agreements for $3,450, though no specific vendor was identified in the documentation. **Financial Summary** The approved contracts represent investments in critical infrastructure improvements, community facilities, and cultural programming. The stormwater and culvert projects totaling $111,700 demonstrate the city's commitment to addressing drainage and transportation infrastructure needs, while the Senior Citizens' Center design contract advances plans for expanded services to older residents. ## Contested Items The November 20, 2007 Council meeting featured one primary area of contention regarding employee benefits equity. **Health Care Benefits Disparity** Community members raised concerns about disparities in health care benefits between police and fire department employees compared to other city workers. The opposition centered on questions of fairness in the current benefit structure and whether all city employees should receive equivalent health care coverage. The discussion involved community members voicing their concerns about the inequitable treatment of different employee groups within the city's workforce. The debate touched on potential implications for collective bargaining processes and how benefit disparities might affect employee morale and recruitment across different departments. The specific outcome of this contested item was not clearly resolved during the meeting, with the issue appearing to require further consideration and potential future action by the Council. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps were not available in the provided source materials for this meeting.* ## Intergovernmental Committee Report [timestamp: 05:00] CM Moloney presented a report on recent activities and discussions from the Intergovernmental Committee during the November 20, 2007 Council meeting. The committee addressed several key topics during their deliberations. CM Moloney reported that the committee discussed the permit process for customer service operations and matters related to the county attorney's office. These discussions focused on procedural aspects of how permits are handled and processed within the customer service framework. Additionally, the committee examined policy matters concerning the naming and renaming of LFUC (Lakeland Electric) facilities. This policy review addressed the procedures and criteria used when determining names for utility infrastructure and facilities, as well as the process for changing existing facility names when circumstances warrant such changes. CM Moloney's presentation served as an informational update to keep the full Council informed of the Intergovernmental Committee's ongoing work and deliberations. The report did not require any formal action from the Council, as it was provided for informational purposes to ensure transparency and communication between the committee and the broader Council body. The committee's work on these administrative and policy matters reflects ongoing efforts to streamline operations and establish clear guidelines for utility facility management and customer service processes. ## Dog Task Force Presentation [timestamp: 10:00] Council Member Stinnett presented the findings and recommendations of the Dog Task Force during the November 20, 2007 council meeting. The task force conducted a comprehensive review of the city's dog management issues and developed several key recommendations to address ongoing concerns. The presentation outlined three primary areas for improvement: • **Staffing increases** - The task force identified the need for additional personnel to effectively manage dog-related issues throughout the city • **Ordinance reviews** - Recommendations included examining and potentially revising existing dog-related ordinances to ensure they adequately address current challenges • **Public education** - The task force emphasized the importance of educating residents about responsible dog ownership and existing regulations CM Stinnett served as the primary speaker for this agenda item, delivering the task force's comprehensive findings to the council and public. The presentation was informational in nature, providing council members with the research and analysis conducted by the task force over the course of their review period. The Dog Task Force's work represents a systematic approach to addressing dog management challenges within the city, with recommendations spanning enforcement, policy, and community engagement aspects. The task force's findings will likely inform future policy decisions and budget considerations related to animal control and public safety. This presentation concluded without requiring immediate council action, as it served to inform council members and the public of the task force's completed work and recommendations for future consideration. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (8-0): Approval of the summary from November 13, 2007 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of new business items A-F - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to recommend that parks renaming and naming policy be amended - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to place the proposed 2008 Council Calendar on the docket for December 6th - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to place a 4-way stop at Cornwall Dr. and Cromwell Way on the docket for December 6th - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to approve the NDF list for November 20, 2007 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to place into the Services Committee the matter of the Zandale ditch - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to authorize forestry to apply for a grant from Home Depot for street trees - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to place on the docket a 4-way stop at Addison Ave and Unity - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Motion to go into closed session --- ## Full transcript First item on our agenda is public comment on matters that are on the agenda today. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to any of those items? I see no comment, so we will move ahead. We do not have any rezonings or docket approvals to deal with today. We have a fairly short summary of the November 13th meeting for approval. Move to approve, Mayor. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Ellinger and a second by Council Member DeCamp to approve the summary of November 13th. Any discussion? Those in favor, please vote aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Thank you very much. If you have not yet voted, please do so. I only have seven votes. Thank you. We now have eight votes. That motion carries. We have no budget amendments. We have a short list of new business items. Move for approval. Second. I have a motion by Council Member DeCamp and a second by Council Member Stennett to approve the new business items. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. Those in favor, please vote aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Council Member DeCamp. Thank you. All right. Council Member Stephens. I don't have a vote. You yet? I vote yes. All right. That works, too. Thank you. Those items are approved. That brings us down to presentations. The first one is the Intergovernmental Committee. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. Going back to September 11th, we've got to put this on the agenda. So there were three items discussed. It discussed two of them. There were no motions made. One of them was the permit process for customer service and also the county attorney. We did forward that one over to Budget and Finance. We did talk about the policy in naming and renaming LFUC facilities. And there was a motion. I'd like to make a motion to recommend that the parks renaming and naming policy be amended to require that parks would submit any naming and renaming recommendations to the Council Planning Committee for consideration. So moved. Second. I have a motion from Council Member Maloney and a second from Council Member Beard. Is there any discussion? Those in favor, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Thank you very much. The motion carries. Last week we had a couple of things on the Intergovernment. And one of them was to review the boards and commission. That will continue to stay in for more discussion. We will have another meeting in January to talk about maybe cutting some of the boards out. That was brought up. And there was no motion made out of that. And also we had financial disclosure requirement of board and commission. We discussed that. And I believe that is going to be brought up at the same time in January for continued discussion. And we also had some cleanup items. We had a couple of motions for cleanup, but there were no motions to be brought to this. And that's it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the presentation from our dog task force, Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Everyone has a copy of the presentation, I believe. Dina, are we passing out the presentation? Just the PowerPoint. Just the PowerPoint first. I know many of you have waited for this report, as many citizens have. It's probably one of our top five issues that we deal with on a daily basis in terms of in the districts and district issues. It may not be one of the bigger issues in Lexington as a whole, but I think some people would argue from our report findings that this is a major problem in Lexington. And hopefully today will be a beginning and a start in heading our dog management issues in the right direction. I thought it would only be appropriate, because this is a serious topic, but we take a minute to enlighten ourselves, so to speak, and have a little bit of fun first. Yes, ma'am. Look at the cute dog. Now, remember that model as we're giving this presentation. Don't judge us too quickly. Back in the summer, the council voted to form a task force to look at several issues. The first issue in regards to dog was a staffing animal care and control. The second was the lease ordinance. The third was the kennel ordinance. And last but not least was the barking slash noise ordinance as it pertains to dogs. The task force itself, we had six meetings, October 2nd being the lone public hearing, and I'll go over those numbers here in a second. Task force members include myself, Andrea Weddle from the Department of Law, Rick Curtis from the Public Safety Commissioner's Office, Lieutenant Doug Pape from the Lexington Police Department, Patsy Boots from the Mayor's Office, Bert Hawkins from the Lexington Humane Society, Nathan Bowling, and Chief Bowling is here with us today of animal care and control. I didn't recognize him back here without his uniform, so the intimidation factor is not there today, but he is here in attendance, and I appreciate his support through all this. Our county attorney, Larry Roberts, he is actually traveling today but could not be here, but he played a big role in the task force, Dr. Melinda Rowe and Jessica Cobb of the Health Department. And then we also had several citizen members who also participated, Janet Cowan, who represented Friends of the Dog Park, Ralph and Peggy Harrell from the Lexington Kennel Club, and then several district representations, as you see there in front of you and also in your packets. I also want to thank my legislative aide, Dena Melvin. A lot of this couldn't have been done without her, so I really appreciate her support on all this, and we've put together a binder that we'll pass out here at the end of the presentation today, which each of you can keep at your desk. We also have one for the commissioner's and mayor's office to kind of answer guide for all your dog management issues and some of the work that we put together through our discussions on the task force, so you'll each have a binder with all that information in there as well. Next, let's start off talking about how big really is the problem. Over a two-week period, we took e-mails on the dog task force as well as had a public hearing. You can see the numbers there broken down by category. Several from e-mail formats. There were several letters. We didn't break it down to those categories, but you can see about 140 responses over a two-week period asking us to address various dog issues. Under the other category, you'll see issues such as vicious dogs, the tethering of animals in there as well under the other category. So what do citizens really want? I think that's why we're all here. That's what we're trying to address. That's what we're trying to figure out. I think the first thing that we've discovered through the task force work is we want a quicker response time as citizens in this county. That response time, if you look back in 1998, we averaged close to five minutes responding to your dog management calls or issues when you called the Animal Care and Control Office. Today, you can look there, our average response time is 30 minutes and going up, up to one day, in terms of our response and the ability to get to citizens' complaints effectively. Next, knowledge. People want to know what options they have for enforcing our current laws. It kind of was ironic earlier today that we had the housing issue in debate, and that pretty much was centered around enforcement. Well, there's a big E on this debate as well, and that's enforcement as well. Tougher laws. Increased fines, more prosecutions. That's what we got back from many citizens who had filed complaints. Their neighbors had been cited. There were some cases that had been sent to court, but they were mediated and never made it to the actual prosecution stage. Then, last but not least, people want safer neighborhoods, better quality of life. That is in the form of more dog parks, less dogs running loose. And then, I'm sorry, the last thing, and definitely not least, is end of their frustration. There was a big frustration in our community, we found out, in regards to dog management issues. Relationships. It's important to talk about relationships as we talk about how we manage our dog issues here in Fayette County. First of all, Animal Care and Control has a contractual relationship with LFUCG to perform our dog animal management functions. They are not employees of LFUCG. A lot of people have that impression that they are under the guise of our government, but they are actually a contractual body separate from us. Next, the contract with the Animal Care and Control is funded through our public safety budget, and we'll go over those numbers here in a minute. And thanks to our former commissioner of public safety, Ms. Langston, who put that into their budget a couple years ago. Rather than being an outside agency, we've taken a little bit more ownership over their budget and what kind of funding they're receiving each year. Last but not least, the Lexington Humane Society is not a government agency. They're a separate nonprofit agency. I think that confusion has often had in our community as well. So let's talk about the numbers. Most important thing here on this slide, if you look going back to 1999, we gave close to $560,000 to Animal Care and Control contractually to form our Animal Care and Control duties. If you look around 2001, that dropped down, as well as in 2004 it decreased again. But starting in 2006, it's steadily back up on the rise to where we think it should be. Part of the funding issue, starting back in 1998, when they had several Animal Care and Control officers on the budget, part of their budget was being supplemented by the Humane Society, which that funding stopped, I believe, in 2001. So there is a dip in some of the numbers that correlates to how many officers are on the streets. Next, number one problem. And this is the number one item that we discovered really needed the most attention. I know many councils before us have had task force and meetings and committees on the dog eat management issues. But overall, number one problem, we simply cannot enforce our current ordinances or any changes in ordinances, for that matter, effectively without additional Animal Care and Control staff. Just a quick chart. You can read it better in your PowerPoint package. This shows the number of officers, the number of support personnel at Animal Care and Control that's under Chief Bowling's operation. They currently have six field officers that respond to our dog calls 24-7. That's exactly what we're going to talk about next. Total number of Animal Care and Control officers in 1998, there were 12. Total number of Animal Care and Control officers in 2007, six. Can you see the problem? Past 10 years, increase in population here in Fayette County by at least 50,000 people, increase in households by an estimated 12,000 households. Again, staffing is our biggest obstacle. This is a summary year-to-date, and I thank Chief Bowling for providing this for us, of the number of complaints through the month of October here in Fayette County to Animal Care and Control. Approximately 9,296 complaints were lodged at Animal Care and Control through the month of October. That equates to about 1,550 per officer to respond to. This slide will show council members the numbers in terms of where we should be here in Fayette County. It justifies based on the National Animal Care and Control Association calculations that a city our size should require at least 11 or close to 12 officers so that you can have eight available seven days a week here in the city. So we should be employing up to 12 officers here in our community to perform adequate dog control functions. The next slide will show you basically the breakdown in budgetary items in terms of the cost for one Animal Care and Control officer here to hire one additional officer is $22,150. There is some training they do go through after 90-day in-house training, which costs us about $2,000, and that is done outside of the agency. Also, the other big item that we're looking at in terms of their cost is vehicles. Obviously, they all can't ride in the same car, so we're looking at providing a more efficient vehicle than we have today so they can be on the road and obviously save fuel costs, which we're all concerned about now. Those vehicles, many of them, and Chief Boland, correct me if I'm wrong, are probably averaging around 10 years old. So, you know, a 10-year-old vehicle versus today's standards is probably a big difference on fuel economy. So, you've heard a little bit about the Animal Care and Control staffing, what their current call volume is, what their current levels are, how much it costs to add an officer. So here are the recommendations from the task force. One, hire six additional ACC officers to return staffing levels to 1998. Hire up to three auxiliary personnel to support the officers, and these are your dispatchers, your intake officers, and your kennel staff personnel. And last but not least, purchase three additional vehicles so that those six new hires can obviously have a vehicle to be on the streets in. Cost. I know we all want to talk about the dollars and cents. So here's how it breaks down. If you look at six officers, that's about $132,000 additional money they will need in their budget. Three auxiliary personnel at $16,000, $640,000 on average. And then training expenses, insurance, and fuel, because with additional officers and vehicles, there will be additional insurances and expenses. So you look at a total budget request, about $212,000. And then I separated the three vehicles out because obviously we do bond vehicles, and that could be part of a bonding package perhaps with our other public safety vehicles that we buy each year going forward. Points to consider, and these are the key points in summation of what we just covered on the animal care and control side. One, this is a starting point, as I said in the beginning of my presentation. It's not going to be a silver bullet. It's not going to change things overnight, but I think the additional personnel will add to our enforcement efforts. This is very important, and I appreciate Burt Hawkins for continuously making this during our task force work, and that's anything we do today, whether it be changing staffing or changing the way our ordinances are written, will not make any violations go away. They'll only allow a quicker, more efficient response time. After 11.30 p.m. here in Fayette County, they are on a on-call service only, so that means we're not 24-7 on duty there at ACC. One of the things we did talk about and could perhaps add to further discussion would be to talk with our police department to see if they possibly could pick up the slack after the 11.30 p.m. hour, but I'll talk about that a little bit more later. And then last but not least, they still have to see the violations in order to write a citation, and we're still heavily relying upon citizens to come and testify when they see a violation occur. We still need that to happen, no matter if we add six officers or keep it to current six. Leash ordinance. A lot of people talk about the leash ordinance and ask, what is it? What exactly is it? Well, for our purposes, we focus on, well, let's see. Let me skip to the next slide. We focus on two parts of the dogs running that large ordinance. Part B, which basically says that any dog that's off the owner's property or harbor's property has to be on a leash. However, if a dog is on an owner's property, they may be off the leash in the presence of the dog owner. And then number E, or numeral E, the owner or harbor of any dog found running is in violation of this section, and the penalties are $10 but not more than $50. So those are the two big areas that we focused on throughout our discussions as we looked into the dogs running at large and the leash ordinance. The other ordinance we looked at a little bit is dogs that are unleashed in parks. I know that's a hobby for many people or an avenue that many people choose to do and take their dogs to a park, but it is illegal to take your dog to a park and take it off a leash. And the fines probably in this ordinance, we didn't get to talk about the fines in this ordinance specifically, but probably need to match any changes to the leash law ordinance. We also looked at, in comparing our different ordinances that we have on the books to other cities around Lexington, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Knoxville are listed there. The big thing we looked at was the summary of ordinances, who enforces it, the penalties and fines, and then confiscation of dogs. I know that has been a very sore subject for a lot of people when we start talking about dog management issues, but as you can look there, no one advocates confiscation of any animal on our task force through this comparison on the slide. I think the big thing that stands out is some other cities actually do have jail time for leash law violations in their ordinances. You'll see that as a common thing as we look at the other two ordinances we were charged to look at. The other big difference is you can see Animal Care and Control is our primary enforcement agency at this point in Lexington as well as Louisville, but Cincinnati and Knoxville does look at police officers as enforcing some of their laws as well. It's also important to note that our police officers are also sworn dog wardens here in the county, so it would not be anything that would be added to their sworn duties. It is part of their job description here in Fayette County. So not that we're advocating they need to enforce it, but just to make a comparison sake. Leash ordinance recommend changes. The biggest and only recommended change we looked at on the leash ordinance was changing the Section 1, Subsection E, and that's regard to the fines. We looked at capping the offenses over a 36-month period. So that means you can commit up to this many offenses over that 36-month period, and then it resets. Because, again, it's important to know the offenses are tied to the owner, not to the dog. So the first offense would start at $50 in lieu of the current $25, but not more than $500. That would be at the discretion of the prosecuting attorney in the courts. Second, $100. Third, $250. And fourth offense in each subsequent offense would be $500. Points to consider once again. There's no evidence on record that anyone in Lexington has more than two convictions on a dog-related offense on the books. So we're not even getting to the third and fourth offenses in Fayette County. The video cameras that this council approved about a year ago are helping control some of this. More ACC staffing will obviously help the enforcement of our leash laws. And then this was a topic that we debated extensively on the Dog Task Force, and there are still concerns about allowing a dog unrestrained on an owner's property, and that specifically goes if you're walking down the street with your dog or pet or running, for that matter, well, how many dogs that are off a leash, even with their owner there, are going to stop and not run off the property at you and your dog or if there's a squirrel or something else? Some people on the task force did feel like we should have a mandatory leash off for everybody, whether they're on their property. If they're not behind a fence, they should be on a leash. So that's something the council can still consider. But as far as the task force, did not vote to recommend that the council, because we felt like the current law was sufficient in enforcing what it says it enforces, and that's as long as the dog is in the owner's care, they can be in the front yard off a leash. But once that owner goes inside and leaves their dog out there by itself, they are indeed in violation of our leash ordinance, or if that dog leaves the property and chases another dog or a person, they are in violation of the leash ordinance. And at that point, it would be a matter of enforcement. Kennel ordinances. We looked at the kennel ordinance in perhaps a way to look at the number of dogs or limiting the number of dogs on a property. It's important to note, and I'll reiterate this here in a second, but our current kennel law has no limit on how many dogs a person can have on the property. I'll repeat that. Our current kennel law does not set any type of limit on how many dogs an owner can have on the property. As long as they're housed properly and cared for properly, you can have an unlimited number of dogs on your property. What the kennel ordinance does say, though, is once you reach the level of eight dogs, you must then apply for a kennel license. Then upon approval and inspection by several agencies, NLFUCG, and I'll get there in a second, then you are issued a kennel license. That is renewable every year, every 12 months. And let's see. Let me go to the next slide. The fee for a kennel license here in Frank County is currently $25. Again, we looked at other cities. There are four cities we looked at the same for. The biggest difference here is obviously the fees they charge. That's in 25. Louisville has developed a class system ranging from $100 on up to $150, depending on the class of property in your area. Knoxville, $10. And then last but not least, I'm sorry, Knoxville is $25 and Cincinnati is $10. We also looked at other cities, and I think Paul Schoeniger of the council staff were giving us some excellent data to look at. We looked at what other governments are doing across the country and in Kentucky in terms of how many animals they are limiting. You can see there other cities in Kentucky have put limits on dogs and cats, Jefferson Town being eight and the lowest being six in many other cities. And then across the country, other municipalities have looked at limiting the number of dogs that an owner can have on their property. Here are the recommendations from the task force. Let me say, first of all, in trying to limit the number of dogs a person can have on their property is very hard to do for one big reason. One dog on a street can cause just as much trouble as five dogs. And trying to put a limit, you start looking at breed size, you start looking at several factors that make that limit hard to determine. And we on the task force just couldn't come to a good way, I guess, or a good process to get to where do we draw the line and sand at. But we'll give you a recommendation on that here in a second. One thing we did look at is the kennel licensing fee, because we discovered that the $25 current fee is not even coming close to covering the cost that we incur here in the government to go out and administer that fee. Because it requires inspections by our code enforcement, as you can see, building inspection. The health department and animal care and control provide ongoing support to make sure there are no violations on that kennel operation. So if you look there, our true cost, and these are averages, is about $135. So therefore, the committee or task force did recommend adopting what our true cost is, which would be the new set fee here in Fayette County, if council approves it, to obtain a kennel license here in Fayette County. Points to consider. Current kennel ordinance, once again, does not put a limit on the number of dogs you can have here in Fayette County. It's actually unlimited. There are only currently 12 kennel licenses in Lexington. That may shock a few of you. As I said earlier, one dog can be just as much a problem in a neighborhood as five dogs, as we found out. And then enforcement of this ordinance falls under the code enforcement, health department, ACC, and building inspection. And then last but not least, there is an area we thought, if council does want to consider putting a limit on the number of dogs on a property, it may be best done through the ZOTA process via zoning and look at residential-type zones and get into that discussion. That's not a discussion that we had on the task force, because we do believe it. It is a separate discussion that needs to be taken. If we choose to go that route, that would be something that's in your packet, that whole process. We have put under a tab in the packet. So if there are council members wanting to do that, we can definitely do that. Barking dog ordinance. So I think this is the big one that we got the most e-mails, phone calls, and public debate about. We looked at two general ordinances, 14-71, which is the general noise disturbance ordinance, and then the specific acts which relate to animals. Again, we looked at other cities. The fines are the biggest difference amongst the other cities. Once again, who enforces it is on there as well. And even though this was the main ordinance that we had the most complaints about, there are several things that we tried to come up with, changes in the ordinance, different levels of enforcement. But we all kept coming back to the same reasoning, that there really isn't any recommended changes. We can tell council today that they may want to pursue on this ordinance, because the ordinance itself, the noise ordinance, is currently being reviewed in the services committee. So we're already undertaking that. Thanks to Council Member Blues. Barking law itself is legally okay. Working with Andrea Weddle of our law department and county attorney Larry Roberts, there wasn't a lot of things we could do legally with changing that ordinance to make it more enforceable. We just need to enforce our current ordinance that's on the books. One thing that's very different from about a year ago, is that now the county attorney's office is now prosecuting violators. They are actively going out and prosecuting cases as we speak on the barking dog ordinance. I do think this was different from about a year ago under different leadership. And I give a lot of credit to him and Larry Roberts and his staff for the willingness to do so. Because some people in the community do feel there are more important issues, while if you're kept up at 2 a.m. and you've got a 6 a.m. job, it is an important issue to you. He also came up with an idea that going forward with offenders is issue a warning letter from his office, that he is planning on prosecuting you upon the next violation or phone call complaint, and having it come from his office may serve as a little better deterrent. And then last, citizens obviously must be willing to testify and document offenses. We had one lady who spoke to us, actually tape recorded the barking in her neighborhood and documented the time and days of the barking. And it has been successfully moved forward in court. So these are things that we must tell citizens that they can do in order to prosecute the barking dog offenses. And then obviously additional ACC staffing will and can improve the response. And I also talked a little bit earlier about the police department's response. You know, our police department does on a priority basis respond to our current noise ordinance. And we could have those discussions with our police department that after 11.30 p.m., when our animal care control staff is not on active duty, only on call duty, there may be an opportunity to have our police respond to some of that. I'm not sure how we would do it in terms of the priority list. It would fall wherever the noise ordinance falls on their priority, they may or may not be able to get there even after hours. Other recommendations other than the three or four that we just mentioned. Council should review other ordinances that we have or don't have for that matter in regards to tethering of animals. We had a lot of discussion and requests to review cats. Catteries seem to be a big issue in a lot of other states, and we did have some input on that. And then the vicious dog ordinance. This is another one that is already in the services committee, and hopefully this council can move forward with addressing some of the vicious dog issues. Review status of service yearly, and this could probably be done in the budget, at the budget hearings. We need to hear more about what their budget requests are, and we need to hear more about what's currently the call volumes, et cetera, so that we can address our dog issues properly. The county attorney established a diversion program for offenders that offer behavioral and obedience training. This is kind of a new concept. It's similar to the alcohol diversion programs in courts, where instead of going and pleading guilty, you're entered into a diversion program. In this case, it would be possibly for a second or third offender, and have them go to really figure out what the root cause of why they're in violation consistently, and look at the behavior of their dog. And they pay for the obedience training in lieu of the current fine or conviction. Also, better public education through public service announcements, DTV3, and then possibly sponsor behavior training seminars through the Election Humane Society or other organizations in town, such as the Kennel Club, that do want us to take a look at that. And then last but not least on this slide, animal care and control board as an oversight body. I know the mayor has recently appointed several new people, including Rick Curtis, to the ACC board. We think that may be the best avenue to start using that board to address several of these issues going forward and give oversight to our dog management issues. Other recommendations, establish more dog parks. I know Councilmember Gordon is a big fan of dog parks, and you did a great thing in helping us establish these from the beginning. But I think people want more of them, and the task force did agree to that. We need to look at other sites, both north and south of Lexington. I know now we have them in east and west primarily of the city, but there is an opportunity for more of those to allow people to get their dogs more active, and more activity means less barking, hopefully, at night. Last but not least, an education booklet produced by LFUCG that contains the following information. This is probably one of the bigger things as well in terms of recommendations, because quite honestly, people just don't know where to call, don't know what to do, don't know who to call, don't know what the process is when they do file or lodge a complaint regarding a dog activity. And in this booklet, we have probably thought it would be best published by LFUCG so we can gather all the outside information. Obviously, tips on being a good dog owner, where the dog park locations are. Again, this is talked about earlier, communication, getting better communication out to the public. This would kind of look like our citizen's answer guide that we currently have now, be similar to that, and hopefully we could produce it cost-effectively here in the government and be able to distribute that. I know I said a lot today, but I wanted to obviously take several questions from my colleagues and offer anybody who is in attendance to answer any questions as well today. Council Member Gordon. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Stennett. I had a few questions. If we could look at page 18, and this may be one for Mr. Hawkins. It's nice to see you here. I'm flabbergasted, gobsmacked, as our Irish friends would say, that an officer makes $22,150. Is that correct? Well, benefits are not included. No, that includes benefits. That includes benefits. Yes, ma'am. I just want to say I'm very surprised about that. The kind of work they have to do, I think that's very low. They probably would agree with you. Well, that's just an opinion, so I would hope we might look at that number. I have a question about your – you mentioned several times about dogs being off-leash on owner's property, and you specifically mentioned front yards, and I know a lot of people have invisible fencing. Did you discuss that? We did, and that's actually in the ordinance. Is that a harborer? Is a harborer – can it be invisible fencing? Well, it's other restraint devices, and it's currently addressed in the ordinance already. So it's all included in there. Yes, ma'am. We did have discussion on that, though. Okay. And then did you talk about whether it would be appropriate – I think, and Andrea Weddle might know better, these ordinances were put into place before we had dog parks. So in the text where it mentions dogs in public parks, do we need to have an update in there that says except in dog parks or specific off-leash? There's a separate ordinance. 4-23 of the Code of Ordinances provides an exception for all of our enlisted dog parks. So it's not a part of, like, taking unleashed dogs into parks. There is a specific provision that allows for dogs to be running at large within the dog parks as they are listed. Okay. So we don't need another one. And then just a comment about – I like your recommendation about more dog parks. Most dog owners know that when dogs can get good exercise and socialize with other dogs, they're better dogs. And I guess I would just point out, and I know your committee understands this and Mr. Hawkins understands it, that every time we make a dog park, and we're about to make our fourth one out at Wellington and Clay's Mill, it costs many thousands of dollars. And all of that has been private money except for the initial seed money. So if we really intend to, as a government, make more dog parks, it doesn't come free, and it involves funds. And Friends of the Dog Park have done a lot of work over the years to raise well over $60,000 now to put into dog parks. So that's just something that we would need to keep in mind if we're going to, you know, propose that and support that as the cost. So thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. First off, I want to thank you, Council Member Stennett, for taking on something that is maybe not the most sexy project out there, but it's certainly something that I hear a lot about in our district. And there are a couple of folks from the district on the task force. And I really appreciate your thoroughness in just a couple of things. One is that the dog park that Council Member Gorton mentioned is in my district, is in Wellington Park. That park is due to be opened in the spring of next year. Parks has laid in the parking lot, the five to eight acres worth of dog park is going in, and then soon we'll be announcing a mile and a half worth of trail that will go into that 32-acre park, and we're going to bring in a substantial park into the inventory of parks here. But I agree with Council Member Gorton that we need to, as part of your all's recommendation, we need to be setting up some means whereby we can funnel a lot more private funds to create dog parks and create more recreational opportunities for dogs, because I think we've got them stacked up way too much in neighborhoods. My question to you is, after our questions here today, what is the next step for this body? Given all the work you've done, one of the things that we've talked about is moving past, here it is, that's great, now we'll move on to the next presentation. What do you see us doing? Well, I think it's important to note that there's still some public input that can be had and should be had on some of these issues. But I would see forth coming forward probably next Tuesday with the resolutions themselves to support the recommendations that's been presented today and then open up for discussion and debate publicly and to see where those recommendations go. And I'd be happy to second those, because I really do think this is something that Council Member Myers spent an entire year on, and there's just been a ton of work done on this. And, again, I appreciate what you've done and looking forward to just moving forward. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. I, too, want to follow up, Council Member Stenner, on the great job that you did in putting this together. I think just one piece of the puzzle. We have a few more, and I think you discussed the veteran's dog that I think in the last couple of days we've seen a lot of information on television where some dogs attacked, especially lucky they haven't been in this area but in Pulaski County and I believe somewhere else where a little child got bit by a German shepherd and then an elderly lady who's been in intensive care. I think she's in fair condition now at the university hospital. But also in my district in the last, I've gotten more calls than I had in a long time, where dogs are attacking other animals and killing them, especially dogs, other dogs and cats. So I think this is a big part of the puzzle, but we still have a lot more to go. My question is on the kennel. And as I see now, if you have eight or more, you've got to go back and get it. Is it eight or more to get a kennel? And does that also have to go to the Board of Adjustment for zoning or anything? No. So how does that work? I mean, I've got, I know the two of them that are getting ready to go in my neighborhood, they were questioned. And I've had some phone calls from some neighborhoods that are concerned about this and what can they do or what can prevent this from happening. I assume you mean prevent them from getting a kennel license? Yeah. Well, Chief Bowen, do you want to address that? Chief Bowen is probably the best person to give you that explanation. There's nothing at this time that would prevent somebody from getting or applying for a kennel license with the city. Once the application has been received by our division, then the inspection begins. And that is where the four different divisions comes in. They have to meet the standards of the ordinance before they're granted their permit. Well, let me ask you this. Do you all look at the zoning and the location? I mean, to me, a kennel, and I don't mean to be, but I don't think it should be in the interstate, is what I personally feel. And I hope you all have recommendations. That's part of the zoning's operation. They're named in there. That's part of the zoning's operation. As I said earlier, there's four different divisions that look at it. We have different parts of the standards that is broken down for the standards that we look at, zoning the health department and building inspections and AC&C. Now, what would zoning be considered in a residential subdivision? Would that be a, do you know, to your knowledge, are there any kennels out there that are in neighborhoods like a residential area? Yes. They are? Yes. Now, to me, that's something that I think is a big concern. And I really am not trying to penalize, but if somebody's going to be in that kind of business, I really think they should be out in the country or somewhere, because to me that becomes a nuisance with dog barking and I really think it becomes, that's why we have certain businesses are not allowed to be in a residential area. And I really feel that there's something maybe, I don't know if this is the place to look at, or maybe law can answer that. But where these kennels that they're trying to put in my district, I have some serious concerns because the residents, it is a subdivised area, and I just feel that it's going to be more of a nuisance, because it's already a nuisance as it is, because neighbors are complaining big time about how many dogs are there now. And if they're going to lay out a kennel there in a residential area, it's just going to be more problems. And I just want to figure out how these neighbors have a right to fight them. You may be able to answer some of that. Just a point of clarification for you. The Division of Building Inspection does review the applications to make certain that the zoning is appropriate for the location of the kennel. But the zoning ordinance only triggers exclusions for commercial operations versus most of these applications are just your regular citizen who has eight or more dogs. They're not selling or breeding, things of that nature. So it's not a commercial operation, which means the zoning doesn't become a barrier to them if they're appropriately zoned, and in most cases they are. But the Division of Building Inspection does verify that they do meet the zoning requirements as part of the application process. Okay. And then the last, and I noticed that there are cities where you have how many dogs are allowed, anywhere from some counties, cities of four all the way up to eight to five to six. Are you all, I noticed that you all can come up with a recommendation on how many dogs, and are you guys, did you all feel that there needs to be more study on that, that there is a problem with that many dogs, or did you see that there was an issue that eight was too many, or did you all feel that maybe the five might be right, six might be right? Was there a number that you all felt that was comfortable more than eight or whatever, or less than eight that you felt? And where does that go to? I mean, do we have to put that in another committee for discussion? Yeah, I think the overall recommendation was through the zoning process, the ZOTA amendment process. That was one of our recommendations. That's probably the best way to limit the number of dogs. For instance, Louisville does have a zoning ordinance that says up to a half acre, you can have three dogs. Between a half acre and two acres, you can have seven dogs. Above two acres, you can have as many as you want. So they've done it that way. Other cities have just put a flat number and said that's it, you can't have more than that. We could not come to a consensus on the exact number or the best way to get there. Probably the average homeowner, I think Chief Bowling said around five dogs they have here in the city, five to six dogs. Who oversees that? That they get complaints on the numbers. Who oversees that planning? Is that the planning commission that would be overseeing that? We could initiate that and then the planning commission. Did the city initiate that? The council. The council would initiate and then make the recommendation, the planning, and the planning will? Planning commission would make the recommendation. Right. Okay. Same as any other zone amendment. Well, I appreciate. I know that's part of the puzzle. We've still got some more to go, but I appreciate everything. And one point, and I appreciate you bringing it up, and why the task force couldn't really come up with a good language for a zone amendment is because of the mixed use zones. How do you address residential versus commercial in that zone? So that's something that we probably do need to continue to take a look at going forward. And also to your point of, you know, more dogs may mean more barking, more nuisance. We already have laws on the books to address all that. And that's the whole issue of going back to we talked about housing. Let's enforce what we currently have. If they have one dog or ten dogs, barking is still a violation if it's excessive. One other question. Why did they go from 12 to 6 back in 98? Well, one was funding what was withdrawn from the Humane Society at the time. And I can give you a detailed explanation is in your packet, your binder. But the short explanation is due to lack of funding. But this year. We never did pick up the slack from a government end and allow them to maintain their current levels. So your recommendation next Tuesday is that we increase this and put it in the mayor's budget for next year to allow these numbers. And I go back to what Linda says, that the income that these folks are making is, I don't know, anybody can make it on that amount. So hopefully we can come up with some better numbers on it. Well, there's no question they do a great job for what they're paid. And our staff is excellent. Chief Bowen is a great operation. But to your point, we are recommending this funding happen as soon as possible, not necessarily wait until next budget cycle. I know the dollars are tight. But, you know, by the time we get people on board and trained, we're back in the April, May, and the busy season again. And if we wait until next July, August, we're looking at next September, October, almost a year from now. And we really don't have that luxury to wait. Again, I thank you. Council Member Beard. Just a couple of questions, Kevin. Thank you. Explain to me, it was a little fuzzy when you went through this, I guess, just exactly what is the reporting structure and where does animal care and control fit? If you were to put it on a chart somewhere. Yeah, we did put charts in your binder there at the reporting structure. And, Chief Bowen, do you want to explain? You provided us excellent charts about dispatch, et cetera. Do you want to explain some of that? I assume you're talking about when a call is received, how they're dispatched, et cetera. Well, that's part of it. You made a point of saying they are not employees of LFUCG. And that just takes me somewhere, but I'm not sure. I'm trying to find out where it takes me, I guess. Well, you mean? Who are they employed by? Who does Chief Bowen report to on a day-to-day basis? Right. So that hasn't changed from when I was on the board. Okay. No. My question really, Chief, involves the more exotic animals that you run into and, you know, there's increasing deer pressure that we find in Fayette County. Do you all deal with that or try to deal with that? We deal with wildlife on the issue, whether it's sick, injured, or a public threat. And that's the only time we have any involvement with wildlife issues. Public property, a threat to the public. Okay. Because I know at one time, for instance, on Walden, where essentially where Ball Homes Operation sits right now, there used to be deer grazing there every afternoon. And, you know, a hop, skip, and a jump for a deer is the middle of Tate's Creek Road. Right. And do you attempt to try to move populations? No, we don't. Is that something to look at? Well, I think that's better addressed as far as fish and wildlife goes because they have regulations on handling their wildlife permits and things like that that we have had to obtain in the past. We don't obtain anymore because actually the state started charging for their permits for us to handle their endangered species and things like that. Okay. Thank you all very much. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thanks, Kevin, for your work on this task force. Just a couple of questions about the kennel law. I think in the past, before the law was changed, I think they allowed 11 dogs. Is that correct? Before you had to apply for a kennel license? Andrea. The number previously was 10. It was reduced to 8. Okay. Does the building inspection have to go out and do a site visit as part of that application process? I don't think building inspection does a site visit. I think they do a review for whether or not it's in compliance with the zoning code, but I couldn't speak for exactly what they do out on the site. I know, obviously, the animal care and control folks do go out and do a site visit. The health department does a site visit. I don't know specifically what code enforcement or building inspection do in their review. Okay. Those two groups that do the site visit, is there an objective criteria that they use to make their evaluation or assessment? The ordinance is fairly detailed in what is required. It talks about spacing and shelter and habitation, all encompassing. So they know what they're supposed to be looking for and hopefully are looking at those issues. Okay. I know when we looked at this issue before, there was a lot of conversation about that criteria not really being objective enough. When, Kevin, you spoke about Louisville's law, when they had specific space requirements for the number of dogs, did you guys look at making adjustments to our amendments to our code to include that type of objective look? No, we really didn't look at the kennel standards, I think is what you're referring to. There are five pages of ordinance just to those standards. Right. We focus more on can a kennel ordinance be used to limit the number of dogs, per se, in terms of what can be had in a residential property that Councilman Maloney was discussing. We didn't get into the standards. And it's also important to note that the Louisville ordinance is currently in litigation. So there's a lot of good things in their 49-page ordinance. They have big ones there. But it's currently being challenged in court now. So we really didn't try to stay away from their ordinance as much as possible. Did you look at the history of it changing from 10 dogs to 8 dogs? We didn't get into going back into why they changed it from 10 to 8 currently. We were more focused on can we limit a number. Well, if they changed it from 10 to 8, that would suggest we can limit the number, doesn't it? Not really, because, again, it doesn't say that you can – it just says once you hit a number, and we can pick 8, 10, 14, then you just pay a small fee and get a license. It doesn't say you've got to stop having a certain number. That's the problem. That's why we didn't really look at it or rationalize why they dropped it from 10 to 8. The point is it's unlimited no matter what number it was. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gray. Council Member Stanton, I'm just going to jump on the commendation train. I know this was not an issue that had any contentiousness whatsoever to it. It was real easy for you to manage it through. You did a good job. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. It was very well done, and I know it's important to a lot of people. Anything further? Well, a couple of things, Mayor, in summation. I want to thank Bert Hawkins. He's with us today, and he is actually – are you officially retired now? December 1st is his last day at our Humane Society director. I think we owe him an ovation and a round of applause. Thank you. Any departing words? Your last time before council as the Humane Society director? You folks will meet the new executive director soon, as I did. She'll come around from office to office. After she begins, it's Ms. Susan Malcolm, who is a local resident of Fayette County and has a 20-year history as a volunteer with the Humane Society, and she's a very passionate lady. She may not have started in government as I did in 1974 here, so she won't know some of you old-timers the way that I did. I do appreciate this council has done some innovative things. You passed a couple of really innovative ordinances that other communities have called and asked us about. The ordinance that has to do with adoptions and controlling adoptions in Fayette County in 2001. A couple of years ago, the one that had to do with spay and neutering ordinance that provides for low-income and no-income people a fund through the government to get their animals spayed. That's up to over 2,000 people that have taken 2,000 families and animals and taken advantage of that now. I do appreciate the support that you've given, although we finally had to draw a line in the sand and say the Humane Society is not going to pay for government service anymore. You saw that when it was back to $764,000 a year and that the city gets what they pay for, and that's what's coming before you now. Mr. Stennis has been working on this for over two years that I know of and gathering it. But the one point I do want to make, first, thank you, government, for a lot of opportunities I've had here. But the number of eight officers on the street and a total of 12 officers is an absolute minimum, folks. That should have happened years ago. You're not talking about funding a well-staffed society. We can give you statistics that shows that we should have 16 to 18 officers. It just depends on what you want to pick from. This is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure we could include six more quickly and do it well, so I'm not asking for an increase in that, but you do need to know as you move forward that that's just a minimum size animal care and control operation. Thank you very much. Council Member Gorton. Mr. Burt Hawkins, while you're still in the room, I just want to add my own personal thanks because I did have the opportunity to work with you on the spay and neuter program. And I think when you came to the Humane Society, you really from that time forward have brought it along very well and have served our community well. And I think you were already retired maybe when you were asked to come back. And so, yes. And so thank you very much. You've done a great job out there. Thank you. If there's no further comments, we will move on to council reports. And it looks like Council Member Gorton is first again. Thank you, Mayor. I have three items. The first is that, Council Members, today you should have received a Stormwater Oversight Committee packet. And we wanted to get it to you today because we're all going on break and the meeting is next week on the 27th of November at 1130. It's at this stormwater meeting that we discuss with our engineers the annual stormwater report and projects will get added or deleted from the list. And so I would encourage all Council Members to attend on the 27th. Secondly, you have each received a copy of the council calendar for 2008. And first I want to thank Rebecca Langston, our council administrator, who put a lot of effort into this calendar and who solicited information from Council Members to put it together. Lots of folks in the community pay attention to our calendar and schedule annual meetings and such so that they won't be on council meeting nights. The reason it was important to have all of our meetings on this calendar is that we officially will adopt the calendar and then it will get advertised. And so anything that's on this calendar can go ahead and be advertised. And I want to thank the Mayor because we now know that the Mayor's State of the Merge Government address will be at 6 p.m. on January 29th and that will be on the calendar. Dinner will not be provided. Dinner will not be provided. Eat at 5.30 before you come. I understand it's going to be at the Opera House, a great venue. And then so with that said, I'd like to go ahead and move the Council 2008 calendar onto the docket for approval. I have a motion and a second to approve the 2008 calendar. Any discussion? Council Member Blanton. I think the motion was to put on the docket. I'm sorry. You're correct. Stand corrected. Any discussion on that? Council Member Blevins. Thank you, Mayor. Just real quick, the calendar calls for four stormwater oversight committee meetings and six sanitary sewer oversight committee meetings. I think both of those committees feel like that may not be enough. I don't want to derail this process. I think it's a great calendar. But I would ask that both of those committees take on the task of considering how best to organize and move forward next year. That's all. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. On August, on page 9, on the August meeting, is there a reason why on the 14th and 21st we have it back-to-back Council meetings and then go three weeks? Would it not be better if we have it the 14th and 28th? That was, there was some input from Council Members about not having a meeting on the 28th. We did not have a meeting last year, the Thursday before Labor Day. And so there are a couple places in this calendar where we go three weeks. There's another one in October because of the Kentucky League of Cities Conference. Basically, this was based on last year's calendar. I just know usually when we have three weeks in between meetings, there's a greater urgency to do all the second readings and forego our normal process. So just trying to combat some of that. But I understand with Labor Day. Vice Mayor Gray. Just as a point of information, there's been some conversation, we've been having some conversation about perhaps lunch and work sessions, and that's not on the calendar yet. We had this conversation at the workshops, right, restoring that. That had been a protocol, I think, earlier. So there's been some conversation about that. Not on the calendar yet, but I think we need to be flexible to continuing and reintroducing that. And that's a really good point. Workshops and some committee of the whole budget meetings, those can all be added as the year progresses and the Council sees what we need to put on there. Anything further? Seeing nothing, those in favor of adding the calendar to the docket, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed vote nay electronically. Motion carries. Thank you. One more item. And also just to mention, when the Council votes on the calendar, we'll ask our Council Administrator to put it out on the, whichever drive it is that all of government can see, and we'll want to put it on the website so that the public can also see it. Finally, I wanted to make some comments. Council members have received a lot of, well, some of us have received several e-mails about the Veterans Day Parade. And there have been some letters to the editor about the fact that there were no elected officials at the Veterans Day Parade. And I just wanted to mention, this is a personal comment, that, you know, the Veterans Parade was not an official activity, and some of us, myself included, were out of state. I, in particular, was helping my daughter celebrate her 30th birthday. And Council members, because we're part-time, we do look ahead at the schedule, and we see blocks of time when we can do those family things or outside things that we need to do. And I just wanted to say to the public, I think it's very difficult to look at an event and make an assumption about what Council members are doing or not doing and where their hearts are, because many of us up here care very deeply for our veterans and work in many ways for our veterans on an ongoing basis. So I just felt the need to make those comments, because I know it's difficult for Council members sometimes to juggle public and family activities. I appreciate your raising that point. I would add, I don't know about you all, but I didn't receive an invitation to participate. And, you know, it's one of these situations where if you're not invited and you try to get invited, you're criticized for turning it into a political event. If you don't get invited and you don't go, you get criticized for not going. So I regret that anybody might be offended by that, and to the extent, at least from my standpoint, my presence is wanted in the future, I'll be glad to participate. But thanks for raising that point. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One is the Kentucky Recs and Park Society had their annual meeting this past week, and a number of folks from the Lexington-Fayette-Urban County Government received honors and awards. And I just wanted to point out a few of those publicly. Ms. Evelyn Bologna received the Fellow Award and a Presidential Citation. The Lexington Adult Therapeutic Fitness Program received the Outstanding Program Award. Phyllis Arnold received the Support Award. Outgoing President and former Director of Parks Chuck Ellis awarded Debbie Hollerin a Presidential Citation for her support for this particular event. The Toyota America League, which is in the 9th District in Shillitoe Park, received the Facilities Award. And Ms. Diane Bonnefer received a Special Award for over 20 years of service to Parks and Rec, and we're certainly grateful to have her around still down at the DDA. And so I wanted just to certainly let those folks be known and recognized publicly. Also, I'd like to – we had a traffic study done in the 9th District for the intersection or the multi-way stop analysis at Cornwall and Cromwell Drive, and Traffic Engineering came back with this meets criteria. Ms. Ashley Sells is in the audience if there's any questions, but I'd like to go ahead and make a motion that a multi-way stop be placed at the corner of Cornwall Drive and Cromwell Way, so moved. Second. And add it to the docket. All right. Now I'm with you. The motion is to add to the docket the establishment of a four-way stop at Cromwell and – Cornwall, please. Hey, Cornwall – Cornwall and Cromwell. Okay, Cornwell and Cromwell. I apologize. Any discussion? And those in favor, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Thank you. That motion carries. Thank you. And just lastly, I want to wish the Dunbar Band – I want to wish them well in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is not only a phenomenal band, but the parents and the supporters of this group have worked very tirelessly to get them to this event, and we just wish them well, safe travels, and just thank them for all that they do for our community. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Council Member Blevins. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to move approval of this week's Neighborhood Development Fund list. So moved. Second. Any discussion? And those in favor, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay. Thank you. That's all I had. Motion carries. Thank you, Council Member Blevins. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. The Tatesbrook Neighborhood Association will be hosting, as you know, the Mayor's Night Out. It's been changed to this coming Monday, November 26th. It will be held from 5 o'clock p.m. to 7 o'clock p.m. at Tatesbrook Church on the corner of Trent Boulevard and Appian Way. We appreciate you coming out for that. I know you're going to bring a host. You may want to speak about that. You're going to bring some other folks with you from government to be able to answer questions. We will. We'll bring some of the key folks from the administration that can answer the public safety, the public works, and the parks questions that are the ones that normally come up in those settings. I'll be there as well as some folks from the office to address all matters and hope everybody can turn out. Thank you. I know that the leadership of the Tatesbrook Neighborhood Association has been doing a lot to advertise this across the whole 8th District. I think we're going to have a great turnout. I just want to say also I appreciate Lou and all the leadership at Tatesbrook Neighborhood Association for putting this together. Secondly, Park Place Neighborhood Association met recently and elected a new president, and I would like to welcome and congratulate Jeremy Brand and his wife and family and look forward to working with him as he leads that neighborhood. I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's fine. I thought you were through. I'm not through yet. In addition, I'll be hosting two meetings of neighborhoods next Thursday, November 29th. Residents in the Mount McKinley neighborhood outside of Man o' War will meet at 6 o'clock p.m., and then residents in the Carriage Lane area will meet at 7 o'clock p.m. Both meetings will be held at the H-Ball offices at 3146 Custer Drive. And then last but certainly not least, I want to say that today is a very special day for me. It is Beth and I's third wedding anniversary, and I just wanted to thank my beautiful bride, Beth, for, one, answering yes and being the answer to the prayer, and also for being my best friend and for giving me our bundle of joy, Aubrey, and for serving with me as the First Lady of the 8th District. And I love you very much, and I can't wait to see you tonight. That concludes my report. I think we ought to adjourn on that. Council Member Blues. Oh, there you are. I'm sorry. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. I don't think I can follow that. I'll bring us down to earth here. I want to announce a public meeting on north and northwest Lexington transportation issues. That's going to be held at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 27th, at Wesley United Methodist Church, 1825 Russell Cave Road. That Wesley Church is located out Russell Cave Road, going out of Lexington, left-hand side, almost to Windburn Drive. I want to invite the public in our side of town to join a conversation with neighbors and state and local officials about traffic and transportation issues. We'll discuss that night what it is that will make getting around north and northwest Lexington safer, more efficient, less congested. And this is a great opportunity for members of the public and northside neighborhoods to express their concerns about transportation issues, traffic control, congestion, safety, public transportation, road conditions, needed projects, you name it. If you've got something to say, please join this meeting. We'll have a large group of people there to respond to questions, listen to what you have to say. We'll have LFUCG Transportation Planning and Engineering staff, Traffic Engineering, Streets and Roads Division will be represented, Division of Police, State Department of Highways Planning and Engineering staff, representative from Lextran, and the council members from the 1st, Andrea James, District 6, Kevin Stinnett, and myself from the 2nd. So please, please plan to attend. This is going to be an important event, Tuesday, November 27th, 7 o'clock at Wesley United Methodist Church. Two Neighborhood Association meetings coming up, Monday, November 26th, 7 o'clock. Oakwood Neighborhood Association will meet in the community center in Oakwood Park. And at that same time, the Radcliffe-Marlboro Neighborhood Association meeting will be held at the Northside Library on Russell Cave Road. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. First, maybe on a lighter note anyway, I would like to wish my colleagues, the council staff, the administration, all of the employees of LFUCG, as well as all of our constituents, a happy and safe Thanksgiving. And secondly, back to business, I would like to make a motion to place into the Services Committee the subject of commissioning a study of the Zandale Ditch, affectionately known as the Zandale Ditch, for the enhancement of its safety, appearance, and its ability to adequately function as originally intended. Second. Council Member Beard has moved and Council Member Gordon has seconded a motion to refer to the Services Committee the matter of the Zandale Ditch. Any discussion? Those in favor of referring that item to the Services Committee, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed vote nay. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. That's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Stephens. I'm sorry you won't have dinner at your January 29th report, but there may be something to chew over anyhow. I appreciate being invited to ALTEC, as was the council and administrative staff this morning. It's quite an impressive place, and I can see that Mr. Lyons knows what he's doing. The Corridors Committee met at 1130 this morning, and we approved an RFP for Newtown Pike from Maine out and for Harrisburg Road from Maine down to Military Pike, which means we'll do a study, corridor study, on both those areas. The one on Newtown Pike, we've received a grant from Transportation Enhancement to do that project, but will be compromised somewhat, I think, by the plans of the Highway Department to take over Newtown Pike from the interchange at New Circle Road out to this interstate, because they plan to pretty well strip away both sides of that road and take away five feet on each side, according to the report we had. So we're going to have to figure out what we want to do with Newtown Pike in preparation for the World Equestrian Games, which Mr. Lyons told us we had to do this morning. I also learned at the Corridors Committee that it's up to us to approve applications for awards and grants, and I would like the forbearance of the Council to approve forestry applying to Home Depot for a $75,000 award regarding urban trees, and I'm doing it this way because if we go through the usual process, it might be past the deadline to apply before it could be done. Second. So I move that we approve forestry applying to the Home Depot for its urban forest award. Council Member Stephens has moved, and Council Member Myers has seconded a motion that we authorize forestry to apply for a grant from Home Depot for street trees. I know my point was that if we approve them today, it won't go on the docket because they can then apply for the grant. If we wait until it goes through the docket process, it will be too late. I don't know whether or not we can take that action at this particular meeting. Can we parliamentarian do that? At the Carter's Committee meeting this morning, we learned that there is a grant available from Home Depot and that there are time constraints on it, so I'm introducing a motion to approve their application for that grant or award, and if we go through the usual process of blue sheeting it next week and do the process, it will be too late. Board of Order, could we not just authorize them to send in their request or proposal but not really technically approve it until we bring it back before the council? How about if we just do it? Yeah, that's what I mean. And then we'll come back around for ratification of it here in 10 days, two weeks. That suits me as long as we give permission to Mr. Query to go ahead and submit the proposal. Commissioner Kelly, if you can move forward with that, we'd appreciate it. I think that will work. Anything else? No, that's it. Great. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. You know, there's a lot of good things that always happen for holiday seasons, but I want to thank Commissioner Kelly and Leo McMillan for the hard work they did Friday, and they were out there getting Bryant Road and Hamburg paved, and I really appreciate that. For those of you who don't know, it's a new traffic flow pattern that we came up with back in the summer that put a lot of heavy use on the Bryant Road and was still the old farm road, so to speak, in terms of its configuration. And it got paved, and people can now safely travel through Hamburg a lot better. Thank you all for doing that. We really appreciate doing it all in one day, too. Pretty impressive. We have a meeting on Monday night. It's called the Stakeholders of Bryant Station High School Meeting. Everyone knows that we've had a new high school built, $43 million high school, and there's a group of parents, alumni, elected officials, and people in the community that care about Bryant Station a great deal. And because of that, they're having their first stakeholders meeting on Monday night, the 26th of November, this upcoming Monday, at 7 p.m. from 7 to 9 in the auditorium there at the high school. So anyone that wants to take ownership and pride and come support what's happening at Bryant Station High School, we welcome you to come Monday night and listen to what's going on and listen to the people that are really trying to make a difference there at the high school. And I also want to announce the Eastland Parkway neighborhood meeting next Tuesday night, the 27th at 630 at Christ Center Church at their normal meeting venue. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member James. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to let everyone remind the residents of the Meadows-Loudon area that there's the regular Meadows-Loudon Neighborhood Association meeting tonight. That's at 7 o'clock, and that's located at 634 East Loudon Avenue. I believe the name of the church is Grace Baptist Church there. I also wanted to talk about the meeting, the last council meeting I talked about, and Neighborhood Association is going to be meeting for the first time. It's not association, it's just the neighbors. It's at James Court, Brown Avenue. We had our meeting last night at the Central Kentucky Job Center. I wanted to thank security. They went above and beyond of getting us in the building and out of the building, and I wanted to thank our security and also the adult services that's meeting over there to open that space up to us. It was a great meeting. Neighbors that had never met one another living on the same street were able to talk with one another last night. If you missed that meeting, you're a resident of that area, feel free to contact my office at 258-3216, and we'll be sure to update you on the progress of the meeting and get you connected for future meetings. I also wanted to reiterate to my constituents to attend the meeting that Council Member Blues talked about. We get a lot of comments about traffic, transportation, Northside Lexington. Here's your opportunity to come and voice those concerns to those folks that are making those decisions that are part of that process. So don't fail us, 1st, 2nd, and 6th districts. This is your time to come and be involved and show that we too on the Northside care about traffic issues and transportation issues, so we've got to show up in large number. For more information about that, feel free to contact my office, Council Member Blues' office, or Council Member Stennant's office. We need you to show up. Also, I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year, and I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to my constituents, all of Lexington, and I'm looking for a really good corn pudding recipe. If anybody's got one, be sure to shoot me an email. I may have to make several different versions and let you know which one's best. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. I move to put on the dock the finding, to accept the finding of the Division of Traffic Engineering and install a multi-way stop sign at the intersection of Addison Avenue and Unity Drive. So moved. Did you say Addison Avenue and? Addison and Unity. Addison, I'm sorry, and what? Addison and Unity. Unity, all right. I have a second by Council Member Gordon. All those in favor of adding that item to the docket, if there's no discussion, please indicate by voting aye electronically. All those opposed, vote nay. Motion carries. I want to go back to this. It's why do we have to put these on the docket after the traffic engineer is checking it's a safety reason and they support it, the neighborhood support it, and we've got to wait another month to get this thing put up when it should have been put up a year ago, and how come we have to bring everything to the council when the traffic engineer and everybody is on the same page to go ahead and do this? To be honest with you, I don't have a clue. Well, it's wasting time is what I'm trying to say. I don't know. But, I mean, if it comes to safety and everybody is agreeing on this, I don't see why. I mean, all they're doing is putting a sign up there. It's just going to be another stop sign. They already have a stop sign in the back somewhere that they can put another one up. Council Member Stennett and Council Member Gordon, I think, have correctly identified the problem, and that is it does require an expenditure of funds to get it done, and that's the process. I just think it's a waste, but that's fine. The other thing is. I have several other examples like that I'd be glad to discuss with you if you care to take them up. But I understand your frustration. It's been brought to my attention by a lot of employees about the health care benefit, which I think is great, but they have some concerns about the police and fire where they're making $175 more to their benefit than the I know the collective bargaining and all that is part of it, but it concerns me. I know that some of the employees are talking about going to collective bargaining now for these kinds of reasons, and I don't think, Mary, I don't know what you can do or whatever, but it's just to me, to be fair across the board for these employees, maybe we ought to look and make sure there's some way we can answer their concerns and why the police and fire are getting more money because of collective bargaining. But, I mean, if I was an employee and I saw what's going on, I guess I'd be wanting to be a collective bargain, too, to know that I'm going to get additional benefits. And it's just hopefully next year when the budget comes around that we do work with the employees, all employees, to make sure it's fair across the board, that, I mean, health benefits is probably a big, huge amount of money that affect every one of these employees' lives. And to see something like that, it just, I mean, it really adds on to the fire, and it really gets the morale of the employees sitting back, are we that important or not? And I just, hopefully when the budget comes around, we do treat everybody fairly. I think we are subsidizing the health insurance costs this year to the tune of about $2 million, a little more than $2 million, as I recall, in order to avoid the necessity of increasing everybody's health insurance. I'm not sure we've made that point adequately enough. I think we should be. It was no small effort to try to keep health insurance costs in line this time around. But, Commissioner Coe, if you would get together with Council Member Maloney and try to address it. Maybe you might want to present that to employees and let them know that we did save them money another way and increase. I hope they will just visit with their friends who have other employers and find out what's going on in the health insurance market right now. And the fact we're able to keep our health insurance rates where they are is nothing short of a miracle. Thank you. And I appreciate that. Well, if you all will get together, we'll see if we can't get you a response. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to discuss an issue of high importance to the Council at Saron Drive. And I was going to ask the Commissioner of Public Works, Don Kelly, just to come down and give us a one-minute update on the construction process out there, because I've had a lot of people inquiring about the status of construction. Putting me on the spot. I have not checked on it this week. I have to apologize for that. But there was some conflict with Kentucky American needing to relocate some water lines, which delayed our folks. And they've decided to go ahead and do the work without letting Kentucky American do their work later. And I'm not sure where we are today. I apologize for not knowing. Well, one of the questions has been whether we'll be able to complete it before the weather gets too bad. Do we look like we're going to be okay there? The intent is to do that, yes, sir. In fact, originally they said they'd be able to do the work within a week if the water lines were relocated. And so we think we can get it done next week. Of course, we're getting into the weather issue right now pretty far. Mike, that was just 60 seconds. Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Stephens. I was just ready to make a motion, but I don't know if it's appropriate for going to closed session. All right. I think that concludes the council reports, unless another member has something to add. I have no mayor's report. The only agenda item left is public comment on any issues not on the agenda. Does anyone wish to comment? Seeing none, Council Member Stephens. I move, pursuant to KRS 61.810 parentheses 1C, to go into closed session for the purpose of discussing pending litigation matters involving the Lexington-Fayette-Urban County Government. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Those in favor, please indicate by voting aye electronically. Those opposed, vote nay electronically. Motion carries. We will stand in recess until the chambers are cleared and the doors are closed. Thank you. Thank you.