# Council Planning and Public Works Committee - April 14, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 14, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2953 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2953?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-04-14 - **Last revised**: July 16, 2026 - **Length**: 14,181 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 Planning and Public Works Committee met on April 16, 2013, at 1:00 p.m., with Bill Farmer presiding. The committee addressed six agenda items during the meeting, taking two votes and hearing eight public comments. The committee approved two items: the Approval of Summary and Right of Entry. Three agenda items were deferred to a future meeting: the Two Way Streets Update, Exaction Fees, and B1 ZOTA. The committee also approved Items in Committee. ## Attendance **Present:** Bill Farmer, Jennifer Mossotti, Charles Ellinger, Steve Kay, Chris Ford, Julian Beard, Harry Clarke, Peggy Henson, Linda Gorton, Jennifer Scutchfield, Kevin Stinnett, Chris King, David Barberie, Scott Shapiro, Tom Creasey, Andrew Grunwald, Brad Frazier, Kevin Wente, and Stan Harvey. **Absent:** Diane Lawless. **Late:** None. ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Approve Modified Draft Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment Regarding Right of Entry** [timestamp: 00:07:05] A motion to approve the modified draft zoning ordinance text amendment regarding right of entry was made by Linda Gorton and seconded by Harry Clarke. The motion passed by voice vote with no dissenting votes. All 19 members voted in favor: Bill Farmer, Jennifer Mossotti, Charles Ellinger, Steve Kay, Chris Ford, Julian Beard, Harry Clarke, Peggy Henson, Linda Gorton, Jennifer Scutchfield, Kevin Stinnett, Chris King, David Barberie, Scott Shapiro, Tom Creasey, Andrew Grunwald, Brad Frazier, Kevin Wente, and Stan Harvey. **Motion to Remove Right of Entry from Items Referred List** [timestamp: 01:33:57] A motion to remove Right of Entry from the items referred list was made by Peggy Henson and seconded by Steve Kay. The motion passed by voice vote with no dissenting votes. All 19 members voted in favor: Bill Farmer, Jennifer Mossotti, Charles Ellinger, Steve Kay, Chris Ford, Julian Beard, Harry Clarke, Peggy Henson, Linda Gorton, Jennifer Scutchfield, Kevin Stinnett, Chris King, David Barberie, Scott Shapiro, Tom Creasey, Andrew Grunwald, Brad Frazier, Kevin Wente, and Stan Harvey. ## Public Comment Eight speakers addressed the council during the public comment period, raising questions and concerns about two-way streets conversion, parking impacts, and procedural transparency. **Two-Way Streets Study and Safety** Kevin Stinnett spoke twice during public comment. He expressed concern that the two-way streets study has been repeated multiple times without a final decision, emphasizing the need for transparency and public input given strong community division on the issue [timestamp: 00:38:53]. In a second comment, Stinnett highlighted extreme safety issues on Main and Vine Streets, including high speeds and fatalities, and stressed the importance of data-driven decisions [timestamp: 00:43:14]. Chris Ford asked whether interim recommendations from the north area study would be presented before the full report is completed, and whether the council could act on partial street conversions [timestamp: 00:46:51]. **Parking and Business Impacts** Julian Beard asked whether the study includes data on parking impacts and sought clarification on how businesses are defined in the study, specifically whether the definition includes offices and restaurants [timestamp: 00:29:54]. **Right of Entry and Constitutional Protections** Peggy Henson asked about the time frame for obtaining a search warrant and confirmed that the proposed language includes safeguards for constitutional rights [timestamp: 00:05:01]. Chris King clarified that search warrants would only be needed in rare cases, estimated at less than half a dozen per year, and confirmed that the new language includes constitutional safeguards [timestamp: 00:06:01]. **Transparency and Committee Information** Steve Kay advocated for earlier release of draft materials to the council, arguing that withholding information creates distrust and hinders consensus-building [timestamp: 01:28:22]. Linda Gorton requested that the list of committee members be shared and asked for clarification on whether 4th Street conversion would proceed before the full study is completed [timestamp: 01:05:09]. ## Contested Items **Two-way Streets Study Process** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding the two-way streets study process. The primary concern centered on transparency and information sharing, with members expressing frustration over delayed communication. Council members raised questions about the inclusivity of the public process, arguing that it was not sufficiently open to community input. A key point of contention was that decisions appeared to be moving forward without adequate council involvement in the decision-making process. **Right of Entry Ordinance** The right of entry ordinance motion passed unanimously; however, debate preceded the vote regarding the scope of the ordinance's language. Some council members questioned whether the ordinance should be expanded to cover building inspection violations. There was disagreement about whether the current language adequately addressed this category of violations or whether the scope should be broadened to include additional enforcement scenarios. ## Approval of Summary The committee approved the summary from the previous meeting without dissent [timestamp: 00:00]. Julian Beard made a motion to approve the summary, which was seconded by Charles Ellinger. The summary was approved with no objections raised. ## Right of Entry The committee considered a revised draft of the right of entry ordinance [timestamp: 00:07:05]. The updated version incorporated constitutional safeguards and language modeled after existing sewer inspection authority. **Key Participants** The discussion involved Chris King, Linda Gorton, Peggy Henson, Kevin Stinnett, and Harry Clarke. **Outcome** The committee approved the ordinance by unanimous motion. ## Two Way Streets Update Stantec presented an update on the Downtown Lexington Traffic Movement & Revitalization Study during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:15:19]. The presentation covered progress on the north area analysis, public engagement efforts, and upcoming phases of the project. **Key Speakers** The discussion involved Chris King, Tom Creasey, Scott Shapiro, and Stan Harvey. **Presentation Content** The update detailed work completed on the north area analysis as part of the broader traffic movement and revitalization study for downtown Lexington. The presentation also addressed public engagement activities undertaken to date and outlined the next phases planned for the study. **Committee Concerns** Committee members raised concerns about transparency and timing related to the project. These concerns were significant enough to influence the outcome of the discussion. **Outcome** The agenda item was deferred, indicating that further discussion or action on the Two Way Streets Update was postponed to a future meeting. ## Exaction Fees The discussion of exaction fees was placed in committee by Kevin Stinnett but was deferred to the next meeting due to time constraints. [timestamp: 01:32:54] Chris King was also involved in this agenda item. No additional details regarding specific presentations, debates, or concerns raised during this discussion were recorded in the available materials. ## B1 ZOTA [timestamp: 01:32:54] The committee discussed the B1 ZOTA amendment during this agenda item. The discussion involved changes to several zoning provisions, including yard requirements, height restrictions, parking regulations, and special provisions. Key speakers in this discussion included Chris King, Linda Gorton, and Peggy Henson. The committee did not vote on the B1 ZOTA amendment at this meeting. The item was deferred and will be addressed in a future meeting. ## Items in Committee The committee reviewed and updated its list of referred items during this discussion. [timestamp: 01:33:57] **Updates to Committee Referrals** The committee made several changes to its active items: - Emergency Preparedness was removed from the list of referred items - The referral for Doug Martin was updated to Harry Clarke - Adult Day Care Centers were added under the referral to Chris Ford **Key Participants** Bill Farmer, Steve Kay, Peggy Henson, and Harry Clarke participated in this discussion. **Outcome** The updated committee referral list was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to approve the modified draft zoning ordinance text amendment regarding right of entry - **Motion** — passed: Motion to remove Right of Entry from the items referred list --- ## Full transcript The first item is the approval of the summary, which oddly enough has already been approved by the Council in previous action. But if there are any additions or corrections, we could make such. Hearing none, I'd ask for a motion for approval. Second. And a motion by Council Member Lawless, second by Council Member Ellinger. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, like sign. Thank you all. We have now redone something that's already been done. All right, next up is a returning item to our agenda, which is the end part of the right of entry discussion, something that has been part of our committee's scope of work for a while and has achieved a fair amount of commentary. During our recent Easter and spring recess, I met with Chris King, David Barber, and committee staff, and we went over this issue, and that has occasioned pages 5 and 6 inside the packet. And I was going to ask Director King. Welcome, sir. If you'd come and give us an outline here, maybe we'll have some discussion, hopefully some motion. Good afternoon, Mr. Farmer. Again, we appreciate the opportunity to be back here today to advocate for this zoning ordinance text amendment, which the Council initiated a couple of years back or about 18 months ago. This was one of many parts. All the other parts of that text amendment, which arose from the Council's Building Inspection Task Force from a couple of years ago, have already been enacted into law. And this one last piece is one that we have continued to work on and have talked to you about for the last couple of months. So I won't go through the whole history, but only kind of pick up the story where we left it last month, which was at the podium we said we would go back and look at these questions about concerns about constitutional protections that are out there actually not being cited in the text. and we would look at that and come back to you with suggestions. So what we did, rather than try to reinvent the wheel, we took a look at similar legislation that the council may have passed at some point in the past, see if that would give us some insight into what the council has been comfortable with in the past and the community has been comfortable with. And probably the best example we found was this language that you see up here, and it is also outlined in the memorandum on page 5 of your packet. And this is a section that you enacted not too long ago when you got more aggressively into review of sewer connections inside of properties. As you know, a big issue related to the consent decree as far as illegal connections to the sanitary sewer systems and that kind of thing. And the inspectors are allowed, with proper safeguards, to actually go into property and inspect, either through invitation or, if not, you see the language here. They have to go and get a warrant. So we enacted that probably a year and a half ago, do you think? Yeah, I apologize. I don't know exactly when, but it probably was certainly in memory within the last council or two. And in this language, I've highlighted in red the text that seems to speak to the issue that had been of some concern to council members as we have talked about this. And I added the emphasis there for that language. So taking this as my cue, I took the language that the council initiated for the zoning ordinance and made a couple of changes designed to incorporate this same concept into the actual language of the law so that there could be no question that we could somehow circumvent these constitutional protections. So you'll see here in red text, I made a slight change at first by breaking one sentence into two, because when I added the second phrase in red, I had one of those sentences that I used to get bad grades in high school English, where I had a lot of and and and and and and phrases. So I just broke it up a little bit, and as you can see, tried to take a very simple approach in putting in the directive that as we develop the specific guidelines for staff actions, that all constitutional restrictions on unreasonable search and seizures are taken into account in those. And so what I would propose to you today is to take this language as a substitute for the language that the Council initiated and proceed, if you are comfortable with this, to move it on to your docket for action for amendment to the zoning ordinance. I don't believe that this is enough of a substantive change from what was reviewed by the Planning Commission that it would need to go back and be reviewed, because we certainly talked about these kinds of protections being out there when we did have our hearings at the Planning Commission. Thank you, sir. I'd be glad to answer any questions. We have several signed up. First is Council Member Peggy Henson. Council Member. Thank you, Chair. Chris, just a couple of questions. is when you go through the courts and ask for a search warrant, whatever, what kind of time frame are you talking about? You know, I think usually those can be granted fairly quickly, but I think we would have to, there would be a burden of proof on us to show why we suspect that there was a violation and that we have done other things to try to document that. and actually getting access into the structure is the only way to proceed further. We've never had to do it in the tenure that we've had. That was my next question is how many do you think it would be there? My guess is that in any given year, there may be probably less than a half a dozen cases where we would have a very uncooperative property owner that we would actually need to take the step of getting a warrant. But we'll see. One of the things that law has commented on, right now the law is not clear that you want us to have this right to go and get a warrant. So that's one of the concerns that we have that this legislation would correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next up is Vice Mayor Corden. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris, I really appreciate your bringing back to us what we asked for. And, I mean, it really looks exactly like what I was hoping for. And I think that we do need this ability, we being the government, and you've added protections in there. and so really Mr. Chair for purposes of discussion I would like to go ahead and move to approve to send on to full council the modified draft zoning ordinance text amendment regarding right of way we have a motion by the vice mayor and second by council member Clark so we're in discussion of that motion which basically encompasses what's on page six of our packet following that we have Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Sir Chair. I have a field around here. This only pertains to zoning ordinances. Well, actually, it may also allow the Director of Building Inspection a similar type of thing because the new modifications that we made to the zoning ordinance about these types of issues actually split the zoning enforcement to planning, but building code enforcement is still with building inspection. So I think this will speak to the initial concern that was brought up in the building inspection committee as well. Well, some of these, and it won't deal with the sanitary sewer lines being broken, which happens. or you know so my concern is and I don't want to hold this up but I think we need to look at including building inspection violations or potential as well as sanitary sewer issues is there a possibility of amending this adding an amendment to this to include those um again i could look i think if i recall correctly and i'm going back to a little over a year ago a year and a half ago when we made the changes that would allow zoning enforcement to go to planning yet the building ordinances to remain in building inspection. I think this section would actually apply to either one because there was a lot of language about the director, that term being either the director of the Division of Planning or the director of the Division of Building Inspection as appropriate to who has to enforce what. So I may be wrong, and I'd be glad to look at that. And if there is an issue or question, we could probably make an easy additional fix? Because the only ones that are moved to zoning are those that are city ordinances because the others are governed by state law and are criminal offenses, like building without a permit. Well, there are local ordinances that deal with that as well. But if they're governed by a state statute, then our local ordinance is also. Certainly, and I guess they will have whatever powers. Mr. Barbary may have a better view on that than I do, given his long work with building inspection on those kinds of issues. Welcome, Mr. Barbary. It would be helpful for me if I had some intent on where you're headed on this. I think that as drafted, what's in front of you is only going to apply to something that's in the zoning ordinance itself, the way it's written right now. So on the building inspection end, I guess I would need a better understanding of what you're trying to enforce, that you think that they would need a search warrant in order to enforce it. And then on the sanitary sewer ones, I thought that that's where we got the, although this may technically be stormwater on some level, I think that's where we got the language we're asking you to adopt. So I think to some extent there already exists this ability to use a search warrant to look into sanitary sewer system violations. That's the 16-112 subsection B that was the first page of your package. Okay. So it looks like that wouldn't be necessary at all on the buildings. For example, this is just one of several. There was a situation where someone was building on the first floor without a building permit, and somebody lived on the second floor. They were removing without a permit. they were removing load-bearing walls, and it was causing the tenant's space. I mean, one day, his floor dropped about six inches, and they were jackhammering and et cetera. So they were saying, well, we can't go in unless they let us. All right. Yeah, I'll look into the building inspection thing for you. I suspect it may need to at least be clarified somewhat from the language that's in front of you all right now. And maybe we need to just do that another day and put this through. I think that sounds good. Yeah, that might be the way to go. But in many of the homes or houses that I've dealt with, there have been serious violations that are real safety issues. It's been a while since I've looked at the building code itself for that. It's possible that that authority already exists within the state building code. Okay. So we'll look at it. Okay, thank you so much. If you would, just run those eventualities and just let us know back, and we'll take it up separately as needed. Good question. Thank you for the follow-up very much. Next is Council Member Clark. Yes, Chris, if you could just explain to me, in the wording there, it says corrected any violation of this zoning ordinance. What does this apply to? Could you explain to me what this zoning ordinance is referring to? That would include the zoning ordinance in its entirety. In its entirety. All the articles that are contained therein. Some 25 or 26, I believe. Okay. All right. So does it say then what it means to say? Is that clear enough, I guess, is what I'm asking. If you're comfortable with it, I'm comfortable with it. I would trust this language. The original language that I have made, just a couple of modifications, came from the Department of Law based upon the work of the billing inspection task force, so I'm assuming that's okay. I'm happy. Thank you, sir. Thank you, all. Other comments or questions on this issue? Hearing none, we've moved to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as proposed by the Vice Mayor signify by saying aye or vote online. Opposed, like, sign. Pass this. Well done. Thank you all very much. All right, next is our item number three, which is the two-way streets update, which, after looking back, this is an issue I actually placed in committee, and now maybe wish I hadn't. We can always vote to take it out, I agree. At this time, though, we have Scott Shapiro and Tom Creasy. I guess we're going to have an introduction, though, by Mr. King about the progress on this study. Definitely probably going to wear out my welcome at this podium today, but I'll be very brief as we get on to the folks that are here today. Tom Creasy from Stantec, who is the lead consultant on the project, that I'll describe to you in a second. And also we have Stan Harvey and Scott Shapiro also very involved in this project as well. So we're all here to answer any questions and move forward. In your packet on pages 13 through 22, I provided some information that goes back to a presentation that we gave to the Council last June, I believe it was, kind of bringing the history of the discussion of one- and two-way and how we ended up with the downtown street system that we have. And I'm not going to hit all of those slides because that information is there in your packet, but I'm just going to, for the benefit of the new council members and a refresher for the existing council members, remind you that the whole idea of converting the downtown one-way street pairs, which are shown on this exhibit, the one-way street pairs to two-way, has been around for some time and talked about, but really got energized around 2006 when the Downtown Development Authority conducted its downtown master planning process. There was some initial study of limited options related to this at that time. The DDA study recommended it. The Planning Commission also adopted it, included the concept in the update, 2006-2001 update of the comprehensive plan. But, as also the DDA said, this requires and necessitates a lot more study. So as the government dealt itself with a number of matters implementing that plan, this one was in the queue of things to be looked at. And it received another boost in 2009 when the Urban County Council passed a specific resolution directing the government to proceed with investigating and implementing the conversion of two ways. A copy of that resolution is in your packet. The council laid out a measured step-by-step approach looking at different pairs. Government started down that path, and very quickly it became apparent we needed a lot more information. We needed sophisticated traffic modeling. We needed a better process to totally engage the community and to answer the questions about the conversion. So we were fortunate in the 2011 and 2012 time period to be able to have the opportunity through a grant, federal-state grant, to actually do all of that at once to see how we do it. How do we get it done? what might be the issues that would have to be overcome to have a successful conversion of the one-way pairs to two-way. And that project has been going on. You're going to get an update on the status of that project. It's well underway, but you may not be aware of it because the work that has been really done to date has been what we would call back project work, analysis, getting the model that we need to look at, those kinds of things, and Mr. Creasy will highlight a lot of those things. But it's about to go back into a much more public phase of the project. So this is a good time to kind of bring you up to speed on where things are and proceed from here. And without any further words, I will turn the podium over to Tom Creasy for his presentation. Welcome, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'm Tom Creasy with Stantec and project manager for this study. Just a point of clarification, I was the project manager for the study that concluded in 2007. Back then, my company was Intran. We've since been acquired by Stantec, but we did that study for the Downtown Development Authority. That study did not make a recommendation. It provided information. The master plan is what made the recommendation for the two-way street conversion. However, that study was limited in its scope to go beyond certain analyses, particularly in evaluating the alternatives for conversion. And this study is a lot more detailed, and especially in its ability to look at different options for the conversion. Starting back with the request for proposals, the purpose of the study was to determine if converting the streets to two-way could reduce driver confusion and increase accessibility to downtown businesses. As you all know, the speeds downtown on some of these streets are of great concern and safety issue, and so that's part of this. For any impacts that might be perceived as negative associated with conversions, the study will also look at practical solutions for addressing those impacts. and as you will see there will be several levels for engaging public participation throughout the study process. We have a host of tools at our disposal that we are using for this. Chris talked about traffic simulation models and I think everyone has seen those now where you can see the cars moving through the network as you watch it from above. This is just a screen capture of the one that we've developed for this. Those allow us to do things like measures like delay and travel times and those things that we can make comparisons. They produce those metrics for us. We also are using some other tools, your Metropolitan Planning Organization's traffic forecasting model, so we can see the big picture. Particularly, would we see under conversion scenarios a diversion of traffic to other streets, either in the downtown area or to New Circle Road? We're also doing this as an urban street evaluation where we look at the different modes of travel, not just automobiles, but what happens with pedestrians and bicycles and transit on these one-way versus two-way scenarios. One of the really interesting things that's come out of this is an eclipsing analysis where we actually look at the exposure of properties, whether it be businesses or parking lots or churches or whatever. at about 56, 57 intersections in the downtown area. For those streets that are one-way, if you're traveling along that street, once you enter the intersection, some of these businesses are back over your shoulder, and you never see them. So this analysis will actually quantify that one-way versus two-way, and that percentage, the number and the percentage of businesses that are eclipsed or hidden, if you will, because of the traffic patterns currently. And we also are engaging the businesses. We currently have on our website a survey of the downtown businesses, and we'll compile the results and present the information as part of our study. One of the things that made sense is that as we went through this process is that downtown really, the downtown area itself, though it's not very large, it's really broken up into smaller areas that have common characteristics. And so we broke this up into three focus areas. Those streets shown in the green we're calling the north area. And no, Lexington's downtown is not oriented truly north-south, but that's kind of to the northeast or to the upper right-hand side. Those streets in green, which basically are short and second, and North Lyme, North Upper. Anyway, you can see the map. So we've got the north area, then we've got the core area, Main and Vine and High Street, and then the south area, the whole College Town area being Maxwell Street, South Lyme, and South Upper. So it made a lot of sense to look at these individually as areas and not just everything all at once. We're considering not only traffic as it is today, but a couple of scenarios on what traffic might be, a couple of growth scenarios. One of those being if we have a moderate or modest amount of growth, which basically would be if things just kind of continued along as a result of, particularly in the last few years, of the very modest population and employment growth overall for Lexington. One scenario would be if little or nothing happened. In other words, it would be like going there during the middle of the night and flipping the switch how traffic would operate if you had no growth, moderate growth, and then we've got another scenario where you would have a high level of growth. A lot has been talked about for the Rupp Arena Arts and Entertainment District, additional development that would go along with that, and also CenterPoint. So we have these different layers of growth, and we can look at the travel demand under each one of those scenarios so that it will help us to quantify kind of a range of what we might expect for conversion, regardless of whether this does or doesn't happen. You didn't add 21C to your list? 21C is part of that. As far as the traffic that it would generate, it's very minor. It is included, but those are the significant ones, the Rupp District and Center Point. Thank you. You're not the first person that's asked me that question. And I probably won't be the last. As I said, these are the three scenarios. Right now we are concluding the north area as far as our analysis, and each one of these will actually have a technical memorandum, a report that will summarize the conclusions of this. And when it goes through our review process, including our presentation with our steering committee and our policy committee, then we'll be making those public available. So we're finishing up the north area, then we're going to move to the core area, the middle part of downtown, and then the south area. We've actually did some readjustment to our scope of work and schedule as they were initially laid out because of the complexity of this and so many moving parts. We're right there where the red dashed line is in the middle of April. you can see that we're concluding the north area. We call these sub-area studies. And then we've got these different levels of public involvement. We actually, this meeting is one of the examples of public involvement. We have a policy committee, and that meeting, and some of you are a part of that, and we'll see you again tomorrow. We have that meeting on that. We have a meeting with, a couple of meetings with north area stakeholders, scheduled between now and early May, and ultimately we'll be having a public meeting for the north area. Then we'll do this all again with the core area and then the south area, ultimately concluding sometime around middle of October with the three of these, which will include a final report. As I said, we've been doing a whole lot behind the scenes, and as Chris said behind the scenes, this is a very detailed, complex study, and it's taken a long time just to develop those tools that we need to do our work. We have a number of things that have been completed, and this is where we are. The North Area Study, as I said, we're wrapping that up, and we'll be moving on into the core area. Ultimately, when all this is concluded and decisions are made, then we will come up with a recommended mobility plan for how to make all that fit together. We do pause then since you did. So you're saying north area study will be completed, then the core, then the south. After that, how do we put it all together plan? Yes, sir. That's the mobility plan, so wrapping it all together. We have a number of deliverables that are already available on the project website, and that's where we will make additional deliverables available. and I don't... Yeah, there's the website right there, downtownlakestudy.com. I did talk about community or public involvement at several different levels. We've got a technical advisory or steering committee that we meet with monthly. As I said, we've got a policy committee. Third meeting with that committee is tomorrow. And then for each of these core areas, there will be probably one to two stakeholder meetings on average, and each one of these core areas will have a public meeting associated with that. That's just kind of a high-level view at where we are. I'd be happy to entertain any questions from you. Would you like to ask a question at this point, Council Member Beard? I would. the list of various and sundry things that could impact the two-way streets. I don't see anything about parking, whether it be parking or parking garages. And is there data that's going to come out of this that will give us some idea about where we might need to put our next parking structure? We aren't doing an assessment of parking needs. We are including parking in our study, including we actually did traffic count at the major parking garages. One of our basic principles is if there's on-street parking right now, we want to keep it wherever it is. If we need to look at eliminating some of that associated with an alternative for two-way conversion, then we would make that known and give an estimate of what would be lost. We will have parking data. We are including it, but it won't go so far as to, you know, you have a parking deficiency downtown. That's a detailed study in itself, and so we're not going to that extent, but we are including parking in the study. And second question, you were talking about businesses being involved. Define businesses for me, if you would. I mean, is it attorneys? It's an office, restaurant. Anything that we would typically consider as a business establishment that has, whether it's retail, whether it's office, whether it's commercial, restaurant. Can that be delineated into various and sundry groups, I assume? Probably. Okay. Yeah. We will have the ability. As part of our survey that we're doing, it's one of the questions that we're answering. So there are some different types of things. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Next is Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for your presentation. A few questions, and some of these are maybe within government, but maybe you'll know the answer. first of all who serves on the policy committee that's driving this well three of the fellow council members are on that committee council members ford and lawless and k are on it and then we have officials from transportation cabinet some local business leaders i i don't have that list in front of me but we could produce it could you email that to council members chris that would be helpful and then maybe mr. King is the person who could answer the next question there are two resolutions included in our packet one is the resolution which in the event we convert a street from one way to two way it will have this process. That's one of the resolutions. The other resolution is approving the feasibility study for Short Street and Second Street. Are there any other resolutions that the Council has passed in relation to the two-way street conversion, or is this it? Well, I would only offer you did those before we had the opportunity to have the big pot of money to look at the study. So we came back to Council and talked extensively about this, reviewed what the Council in 2009 thought would be the limitations in terms of proceeding in one direction, which we did start, but found that data was just lacking and resources were lacking. So we did come back and when Council agreed to seek the grant money and to craft this project, I think that is what set the new direction for this approach. Okay, so that's all the legislation that's been passed. To my knowledge, yes. Okay. And Vice Mayor, excuse me, if I may add to that, I believe by adopting the downtown master plan, which that was a recommendation in the master plan, then... Well, the council adopted it in concept. It did not adopt individual items. It was in concept only. And the reason I'm asking these questions is a lot of the public watch these replays, and I know there are different opinions on both sides of this question, and there are still lots of answers that we need, and I don't want people in the public to think this is a done deal because I don't believe it is. It's going to require a lot of money, a lot of study. Some of us were here for the first MTRAN study, which showed some major problems, particularly with Maine and Vine. And I look forward to seeing the new information on those conversions. And I think it's important for people to understand the context of where we are. and you know as I look through here and I know there's a lot of opinion on the side of business and opinion on the side of other folks and so I think we need to keep an open mind to look at what comes back from you in terms of what are the difficult situations to fix to make it happen where does all the money come from and those kinds of things. And so my final question is, you know, the short and second streets were viewed as kind of easy, if you will. Those of us who were here for conversion of third and fourth street, it seemed to go very well. And so I wonder if that piece can move forward without the rest of it, the short and second. or are we waiting for the whole study? The short and second street issue is being part, it's incorporated as part of this north area analysis. So we're waiting for the whole study. Right, and we have a draft document that's working its way through the steering committee and then the policy committee, so we're close to having that information to be able to present. Okay. Well, a lot of us were really interested in doing the pieces that were easier, you know, and kind of getting them rolling. And so I just wondered where that was in the context of the whole study. As we, just as a refresher, when I showed the map of the north area, it was not only short and second, but also north limestone and north upper, north of Main Street. So as you know, Limestone in particular is a point up at 7th Street where it goes from one-way to two-way. So we are including the concept of just kind of moving that southward at Main to where North Lyme and North Upper would also be two-way, and that was part of the analysis. Characteristically, those sections of Lyme and Upper are considerably different than, say, south of Vine Street. So that was part of that whole North Area analysis. And so remind me on your, and this is, and then I'm finished, on your time frame when the full study will be finished. Sometime around middle of October. Mid-October of this year. Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate your work. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Next is Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Creasy, thank you for coming today and giving us a quick update. I appreciate the work that you're doing once again for a second time for us. Just a couple questions. One, you mentioned another committee. A steering committee? Right. So there's two committees that are guiding your work? Yeah, we have a technical steering or advisory committee. And who's on there? That's made up by Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Harvey here, along with Mr. King, representatives from traffic engineering, from engineering, from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. There are a couple of others. But these are the ones that we kind of go over and get the direction on the detailed technical day-to-day stuff. And then we've got a policy committee, which is more of a decision-making body than it is an advisory body. A lot of committees. Okay. Yes, sir. I follow the logic. You know, and before I ask my question, when this came back to council last year and we had a grant money that could be used almost on any traffic situation downtown, the council decided to use it on studying two-way streets once again. And I voted against it, just to be fair, so everyone knows, because we've done it. This is the third time since I've been on council we've done this. And I feel like the more we keep doing it, the more we're going to get the answer we want, or whoever it wants out there in the public. And I think it's time we either, once and for all, make the decision one way or another and move on. And my question is, having said that, what's different from when I was here in 07 when I heard the same information being presented. What's different between then and now? There are a couple of significant differences. The one in 2007, the ultimate scenario was the full implementation of the master plan. So all of the planned growth that was part of that, we were able to quantify and put that into our traffic models. This is something in terms of a level of demand. There's three different levels, starting with where we are today. Even at that high growth level, as far as numbers, it's not as much traffic as what we were tasked to do in 2007. It also was constrained in basically just taking the four one-way pairs and just making a conversion. And what are the differences? What are the impacts? In this, we are exploring other options for ways to make those conversions. And one of those was North Lyme and North Upper as part of this north area and looking only at those. So we have fewer constraints in terms of our ability to look at different ways to do it. And as far as how much traffic we would expect at some point in the future, that is different. So those are probably the two biggest differences. So the scope is a lot bigger than basically what you're saying? Yeah, we've gone into a lot more detail. We've collected a lot more data, including previously we didn't go quite to the level of detail of estimating costs for conversion that we will be with this one. As I talked about previously, we collected traffic ingress and egress movements at the parking garages during the rush hour. So that's something that we didn't do before. So we just have a lot more detail in our tools. Well, I appreciate your work. You all do an excellent job, as you did in 07, and I feel you'll give us a good product for the public to consider. Let me add this, since I have a couple people on the steering committee here too. Public involvement is going to be critical to this issue, and this will have to be done overkill more so than any other issue we've had because when you sit around this horseshoe and poll the council members at our neighborhood meetings, and I know the mayor came to me with one of them specifically, that is adamantly against this. They don't want us spending tax dollars on studying this once again. They don't want us to change it. And I think you're at a 50-50 in this community issue, and 50% will be upset if we do it. 50% will be upset if we don't do it. So I think we need to be very sensitive to knowing where that issue is on the public's minds and making sure that we don't pull any surprises and the public has the full vetting of this. They have every study that's ever been done. They have the downtown master plan. They have the management consultants master plan that called for two-way streets that the previous administration hired. So there's a lot of information out there that says we should do it, but there's a lot of people who feel like still in their minds that we shouldn't. So this will be an interesting outcome, so to speak. But I want you to be aware that the council members here are firsthand at our neighborhood meetings. And we ask this issue. It's a 50-50 issue, to be quite honest with you, and a lot of neighborhood associations. So I appreciate your work. We look forward to some good numbers this time, some better numbers than we had last time, and being able to make a final decision. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Next is Council Member Lawless. Yes. One of the things, and this speaks to your question, Council Member Stennett, the difference in downtown today versus when the first study was done several years ago is tremendous. Short Street and Main Street both have been developed enormously since then. So that's one issue. And the other issue is not only is it important to look at the impact on traffic and business, but also the extreme safety issues involved with Main Street and Vine Street are like speedways, especially in the evenings. I mean, people have been killed, and I'm surprised more haven't. But there is a huge change in the landscape since the first study was done, and many more businesses, et cetera. Are these the only pairs you're still looking at? Because we haven't had a policy meeting in quite some time, and other things were brought up at that time looking. We're going to look at all the pairs, but we're doing these logical three. I mean, we've got four pairs basically downtown. Because 2nd Street and Short present a great deal of problems. On one level, it may look like it's easy, but it's really not because of the lack of residential parking on 2nd and the development of Short Street. and so that issue was brought up in the policy meeting we had whenever that was and it seemed to be a strong agreement that we ought to kind of look at some other ways to do that. Have you all done that or is that part of the study or are you sticking to Maine and Vine? No, we'll be addressing that. In fact, we'll talk about it at the policy committee meeting tomorrow, specifically 2nd Street, but as part of the 2nd and short. So, no, we have addressed that. And also, I cannot stress enough how important I, too, believe that this be a very public process and a very open process with lots of this isn't something that's a done deal. It's not something that's going to happen. You wake up one day and all of a sudden the streets are two ways, et cetera. But as far as, I mean, there are severe safety problems involved here too. And as I recall, and I may be wrong, Vice Mayor Gordon, because I'm sure your information is correct, that this grant was a federal grant that we accepted to do this study. But thank you very much for your work. I look forward to meeting tomorrow. And, again, I think transparency and public input is critical. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next is Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just one question to kind of follow up on Vice Mayor Gordon's earlier question. It's in regards to the process. You guys have divided the pairs in a north core and a south fashion. You're concluding the north fashion, and the total report will be completed hopefully by mid-October. The question that I have, which is similar to what she asked, was, are we waiting for all the recommendations in totality in mid-October, or will there be interim recommendations, if appropriate, to make? For example, if you guys have a conclusion on the north section that you're wrapping up right now, will that be brought back to council for consideration, or should we wait until? How will that pan out? How will that play out? We will be making some recommendations of if a decision was made to convert, what would need to be done as part of that conversion to make it operational. the mobility plan that is at the end is really bringing everything together so it's a good idea to see the whole picture but there was the belief that especially on the north area that we could get through that part of it maybe with less challenges or obstacles in terms of the complexities of it sooner and at least get some information to the council and to other decision makers. So there are some recommendations. As I said, if a conversion were to be made, recommendations on how to do it would be part of the recommendations. And each one of these three separate area studies will have something that goes along with that. However, the mobility plan at the end is really seeing the big picture and for each of these and putting it all together. So there will be an opportunity to see the whole picture that won't come until the end, but it just made sense to focus on these three areas one at a time at a high level of detail. From a planning standpoint, and I don't think this question is premature, from a planning standpoint, how will we be able to or will we have the opportunity to? I'm not promoting all or nothing. I'm not promoting that we adopt either way. But I would assume that if we chose to, if the study recommends that it's easier, simpler to convert two pairs, and it's more difficult to convert another two pairs, how will we be able to examine? I'm assuming that it will have impacts. if we convert upper and north line, but we don't convert second and short. We did look at, for that north area, we looked at a two-stage phasing of that. So the first phase was looking only at Lyme and upper, and then North Lyme and North Upper, and then North Lyme, North Upper plus second and short. So we did look at those kind of individually in a phasing scheme in terms of the analysis and identifying the differences compared to the way they are as one way. We didn't look at every single thing that we did, we didn't look in that two-phase, but the detailed traffic simulation work that we did, we did it that way, including tabulating our results. Well, I look forward to participating in the policy committee forthcoming. Just being patient to allow you guys to do your work, I won't assume and speculate. We'll just wait until the data is available for us to examine it. I will say this one thing about parking, and I guess this would be a policy question. Parking is one of my concerns. It's one of my major concerns in regards to the residential areas. And your study will definitely take into account the impacts on parking. Your study, however, probably will not, I guess it's a policy decision of this council in how we deal with parking. That would be somewhat outside of the primary scope of your report. Is that your report will give us what you believe the impact of parking, but we will have to decide how to address it. Is that right? Is that correct to say? Right, and I will also tell you that we are, and what we're doing, our objective is to wherever there is currently on-street parking, to leave it there. There may be isolated locations if you went from one-way to two-way, and if you needed a center turn lane that you might lose a few spaces close to the corner that might be there today, but that would be on a case-by-case basis, but for the most part, if there's a block that has curb parking on it, we're assuming that it will stay there under conversion to two-way. And we realize how sensitive an issue on-street parking is, and especially for both businesses and residential areas, but especially in some of the residential areas. And then a few, there aren't any other options than on-street parking. So absolutely, we would be sensitive to that. And it's being included in what we're doing. Okay. The jury's still out. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Next is Council Member Steve Gay. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. I have kind of a specific question first, and that is there's already work being done on 4th Street, and the state is moving forward because of the work on VCTC. Can you comment on how that will impact the thinking about the one-way, two-way, four-fourth and third, those legs that are out to Newtown Pike? Those are included in our north area analysis, including making those. Because it's already committed, we had 4th Street as a two-way. I believe that little piece of 3rd Street from Jefferson to Newtown Pike, in our models, it's still modeled as a one-way for that piece. I'm not totally sure on that. But I know that we have the 4th Street conversion already in our analysis. it is a committed project and so we've incorporated that including also anticipated traffic that would come from bctc and relocating it to that location so we've got some additional traffic in our model that's not there today associated with it Okay, so my understanding is that 4th Street will be two-wayed at least to the railroad tracks in order to accommodate access to ECTC. That's already simply going to happen. Is that correct? It's my understanding. It's in the state's highway plan. I expect that to start. I think maybe it's to an extent that project has started already, but that's been our understanding. And then that leaves on 4th Street a leg between the railroad tracks and Jefferson. So just like... Good afternoon, Council. I'm Stan Harvey. I'm serving as a consultant to the Downtown Development Authority, as Tom mentioned, as part of the Technical Steering Committee. But just to answer your question, just in the larger picture, the Bluegrass Community and Technical College and Transylvania University have been working with Kentucky Transportation Cabinet on interim improvements on Newtown Pike and on 4th Street. Out of that discussion have been the interest of both institutions of two-way and fourth street. Tom is right. There wasn't so much concern, at least at this present point, on third street. The transportation cabinet is making modifications to fourth street from the railroad to Newtown Pike that would accommodate two-way traffic, including the main entry, the historic entry into Eastern State, and the new BCTC. It's my understanding that the Transportation Cabinet is working with LFUCG to look at from the railroad to Jefferson as a city project that I understand Commissioner Paulson and others in engineering are looking at what would be the implications and cost. I don't think unless the entire thing was converted, you wouldn't convert half of a street. So it would be my expectation that Commissioner Paulson and Chris and others may bring a comprehensive solution sometime in the upcoming months, as my understanding, from Newtown to Jefferson with the Transportation Cabinet doing basically half and LFUCG probably doing the other piece. Okay, if I can, just a slight follow-up. So I want to be sure I understand. the leg from Newtown Pike to the railroad track is a state highway, and the state has already determined that they will two-way that, or they're only making improvements that would allow two-way? The Transportation Cabinet has approved, has given their conceptual approval to two-way and four-street and is making improvements as part of the Newtown Pike improvements and the Georgetown Street realignment at that intersection to accommodate two-way. It just mostly has to do with how the lanes line up there at Newtown and Georgetown. Thank you for asking. But as part of the state project, funded project, they're only going from the railroad to Newtown. And so there would also have to be striping and signal changes done at Jefferson mainly. And then as most of you all know, 4th Street is already two-way east of Jefferson, so it would complete that system. But the state has the capacity to make a decision to two-way that leg if that's what they determine? The Transportation Cabinet has already given their approval for 2 Wayne. We asked for their approval as part of actually BCTC to do 2 Wayne on 4th Street. The Transportation Cabinet has indicated their approval. Their issues are mostly with 3rd and with the adjacency of the railroad line to that intersection at Newtown and 3rd. That has been their bigger concern, not the 4th Street. Thank you. Just a couple of comments to follow up on what other council members have already said. But the issue of transparency and the public process is really going to be paramount. It may be at this point that it's a 50-50 proposition for most folks, but I believe that's if you just ask the bald question, should we do it or not? And I presume what this study will do is give us more information about how it might be done so that the basis that people have for making that decision about whether they're supported or not might be influenced, pro or con, by that information. And I had one other very, if I can ask a question, you can answer it. And that is, I'm still not clear in terms of interim plans. You're doing 4th Street. Are you going to be bringing anything for public comment or process or anything to this council on a specific section before you have all the sections completed. I guess that's up to the direction of the project. It's up to him as a member of the policy committee. Right. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So you just asked yourself a question. That would be the role of the policy committee would be to make a decision. So far as I know, a member and not the dictator of that. I don't know. Question. Want to elevate my status? I'll be happy to have that. But we recognize the importance of transparency in the whole public process at the different levels, and we will be doing that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Next is Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate this report and the work that goes into it. I have several questions, and I think I'll make them short, and you can make your answers short if you would. The first thing I would like to start with the core. It is my assumption, and I may be wrong, correct me if I am, but one of the principal reasons for this study is to study the effect on retail because of the impact of two-way streets on retail sales. Is that correct, and do you feel like that's a major part of the study and one of the major reasons for the study itself? Aside from the eclipsing analysis that I talked about before, which addresses the exposure issue, we're not doing an economic study on the impact of retail. It's just outside the scope of this project. I recognize that it's important, but it's just not part of this study. All right, good. Thank you. I was going to ask about the eclipsing analysis, but I think you answered that. Have you considered, going back to Council Member Beard's question about parking, have you considered changing parallel parking to oblique parking in any of the downtown core? I know a lot of cities that have changed the core of their business district have changed parking to oblique parking rather than parallel parking. Have you studied that as a possibility in terms of the space that's available? We haven't studied it at this point. We've done some preliminary analysis in the core area. We did not study it as part of the north area. A big reason for that is simply the curb-to-curb space that you have. If you change to the oblique parking, you need a lot more real estate to do that. And our issue is trying to use that space as efficiently as we can. And so we recognize that it's an option for something out there. We really haven't given it a detailed consideration at this point, but we still have a lot to go. Yeah, even if you put parking on only one side of the street, it might actually give you more parking spaces if you did a big parking. One other question. And in the thinking about the core part of the city, have you put Town Branch Commons in your study? That's a good question. We will. In fact, coordination with landscape architecture has been part of this. And we've had one meeting with them already. and, of course, through Stan Harvey, that coordination is built into what we're doing. So the timing of the Town Branch Master Plan is really good right now because we're moving into that portion of the project, and definitely there will be coordination with that effort. Exactly. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Council members, in looking at this list, everyone else has spoken first except for Council Member Mazzotti. I was going to go to her next. Council Member. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Tom. I'm just following up on Council Member Clark's question about the retail component. I thought the basic reason we were doing this was to enhance the amount of retail that would come downtown, to promote retail. And so you're saying that was not a part of the study at all? Not in terms of the detailed economic analysis. We do have, as I said before, the eclipsing analysis gives us something quantitative. We do recognize the importance of businesses, but when you're looking at economic impacts to businesses that are part of a one-way versus two-way, that's not part of our charge. I think going back to the first or second slide that we had with the scope of work, it really was about safety and efficiency and mobility. More about traffic flow. You're talking something like that. And we understand the importance of that to retail. We really do. But that's really another dimension to it. And I'm not saying that it's not important, but it's just not part of our study. Can I say something? Sure. Just to help answer that question, there seems to be general agreement in many of the cities that have made the conversion and that it does help downtown businesses. One of the things that Tom is doing is aggregating some of these studies to the extent that they exist and putting them up on the website so that folks can have access to them. One of the case studies, just to add to what Scott said, one of the case studies that we cited on the website, I think it was Fargo, North Dakota. They actually did an economic analysis. and I think that's the only one that I've seen. And the results, I'm just curious. I think the results were that it was a positive economic impact for that conversion for the pair in Fargo, North Dakota that was converted. But it is on the project website under the case studies. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next would be Vice Mayor Gorton. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just as a follow-up, a couple things. Mr. King, when you send us the list of the different committees, can you let us know who's representing neighborhoods in particular? And then the discussion with Mr. Harvey and Mr. Creasy about Councilmember Kay, about Fourth Street sort of spurred a follow-up for me. Earlier in this discussion, you said that everything would come at once in October. However, I think I heard Mr. Harvey say that 4th Street might proceed before that. I want to be clear about whether it will proceed before that or whether it's also coming in October. Are there pieces that are going to be split off and come early? Can you just go back and clarify that for me, please? The 4th Street plans are underway. I mean, that construction should have started. That was in the state's highway plan. I believe it has been let for construction. Maybe some work has been done already. So it's not part of this study, is that correct? Other than incorporating that change into it, it is. But no, the decision-making has already happened on that, and so that's already in the works. Okay. Well, that's just what I wanted to clarify. Is there any other street that is part of another plan that will go forward before October? Not to my knowledge, unless the state does something on that remaining portion of 3rd Street between Jefferson and Newtown. Okay. And how would we know? it'll just happen. We'll find out when we read the paper. If it's state money, it's going to have to go into the state's highway plan. So that'll be a first step. Do we know if it's in the state's highway plan? I don't believe it is. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you very much for clarifying that. And Council Member Ford. Thank you, Chair. Yes, sir. To follow up on 4th Street is my question. And so, Tom, I'll ask for your help, and I'll ask Chris and Stan to chime in as well. This is my understanding of what's going on on 4th Street. And, Mr. Chair, I think it may be timely for the council to officially opine or consent to 4th Street going one way, and this is the reason I say this. I think it is exactly correct that Transportation Cabinet has already given its design blessing, if you will, to take it 4th way. They've also committed the funding to prepare the street to go for a fourth street that is to go two-way. But that's a major difference between it actually going two-way. They're going to put the infrastructure in place to allow it to go two-way if and when we give consent for it to go. So now I think we had, you guys recall when we had Dr. Julian in the community college in here about six to eight weeks ago talking about the partnership with the police academy. And even at that time, I didn't want to confuse or complicate this whole two-way conversion. All the pairs were for Street property. But I think it's important because, if I'm correct, I think council has to officially designate any section of street to go from one-way to two-way. And then Councilman McKay is correct is that I think what we have here is we have partial funding and grateful forward from the state to convert it two-way from Newtown to the railroad track. but it may or may not be on our dime to convert the infrastructure needed from the railroad track to Jefferson. Let's talk for a minute then. Yes, sir. Because you brought up a good point and it's been echoed at a couple of different parts of the council here. I think that in entering into this whole group of discussions, there was kind of a predetermined mindset that some would be easier than others. And I think that outside counsel or help has been directed in that area first. And I think in somewhat of a summation, if after the presentation tomorrow, I think any action by us would be premature today because we will all wait for this preliminary draft of the north part tomorrow. If we want to enter that, I guess let's back another step up. In looking at this schedule, everything is on here except council involvement and or action, which is where we are right now. So if we look at this draft and we decide as the people who actually will make the decision that we want to do something sooner than October, or we want to enter this in committee and have a discussion and go ahead and do it, we can do so. But I think it's important to do so in concert with the professionals we've hired from the outside and that we allow for public input on this, because I think it's even in some of the areas that would be deemed less controversial. Not all of this is going to be greeted with a unanimous consent, but I think if we want to look into the possibilities after this draft are out and come back to this committee, I think it will be well-founded, well-placed, and we could take action as we see fit on a time frame sooner than October, if we would like. Was that kind of where you were going? Somewhat, Mr. Chair, but this is my concern. My position would be for the council to go ahead and authorize the section of 4th Street to convert from one-way to two-way between Newtown and Jefferson. And the reason I say that, aside from the overall scope, because we have an exception over there. We have the community college and even more so, Transley soccer field, their athletic field going there. And then also it's because of the timing. Because as we speak, transportation cabinet is on site at Newtown, 4th Street, and also Georgetown Street. That portion of Georgetown as it goes, as it filters into Newtown, is closed as we speak. So the reason I think that our endorsement or authorization of it is imminent is because I also understand that the Transportation Cabinet is prepared to reconfigure the traffic signal at the intersection of Newtown, 4th, and Georgetown, with the assumption that 4th will go two-way that will allow Georgetown Street to come straight across the street. So there's going to be a major need for traffic improvement signal-wise at that intersection. And I hate to complicate it, but in my opinion to the entire council, I do think it is timely for us to address simply 4th Street. I concede to Transportation Cabinet that 3rd Street is not doable. I think they've even said that because of the awkwardness of the alignment of the railroad track. but I think that's what I would recommend, not today, but I think in short order, in the next week or two in consultation of planning and commissioning the policy, that we take advantage of this opportunity. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Thank you. Next is Council Member Lawless. Thank you, Chair. And I agree with Council Member Ford that also deals, again, with an extremely dangerous intersection. And I'm anxiously awaiting the presentation tomorrow because there was one specific idea thrown out that everybody on the policy committee was enthusiastic about, and that was, you know, do we have to use these specific pairs, and can we switch that up, and also looking at how that would impact public safety. And currently, on Main Street, originally when the streetscape was designed, The parking was supposed to be on the north side of Maine, and it wasn't until they put the stripes down that we started getting calls that they had put it on the south side of Maine, where all the parking garages are, and all the retails on the north side. So there are a lot of problems with that, as well as extreme safety issues. It's like stand out there at night and watch the drag races down Main and Vine. So thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am. Back to Council Member Peard. Thank you, Chair. This is a question I don't know whether it's for you, Mr. Gracie, or whether it's maybe Scott or Stan, but I'm going to revisit this thing about retail a bit. is there a body of knowledge that retail is totally elastic? And if we invite them to come downtown, they will either start a new enterprise or they will move from where they may be in the suburban area. Of course, if they do that, there's going to be some period of time, ramp-up time, after the move. And a lot of people, if they're successful, they are going to move. And if they're not successful, we don't want them. So, Scott, do you want to field that one? Welcome, sir. Thank you for having me. This is, I think, for the administration, this is one of the most important parts of the study. We want downtown to be a place to drive to, not a place to drive through. We want it to be a destination, and a big part of that is creating an environment where retail thrives. Tom's right, there's not a huge body of knowledge in terms of cities that have done these conversions and gone back to do the study. But there is evidence. There are newspaper articles. There are experts that have written, if not academic, analyses, study papers on cities that have done this kind of analysis. There's a terrific piece I can give you about Vancouver in Governing magazine. When Rick Day was here, Rick Day is the principal in charge at Stantec of this project. He gave a slide that listed, I don't know, maybe a dozen cities that have done two-way conversions and the impacts on them. And just going down some of the lists of cities, there's West Palm Beach, decreased commercial vacancies. We've got Minneapolis that spurred economic development. Vancouver increased retail activity. Milwaukee increased the viability of area businesses. So there's sort of city after city where retail has started to thrive after a two-way conversion. And we're not the first to do this, but I think we've all taken the experience that other cities have had and hope to apply that here. Well, with Milwaukee, they would be glad to get anything downtown because it's somewhat of a problem city. But the ones that you mentioned are 3X, 4X, 5X the size of Lexington. And that has to be taken into consideration also. We can't copy what is happening in Vancouver, for instance. The prime example that Rick Day used, he actually lives in Charleston and was in charge of the conversion of their one-way streets to two-way in Charleston. Maybe that's another city that's more our size. It would be, yes. and he's available and maybe he can come to the next update that we give to this body to talk about his experience in Charleston and what he understands is the impact of conversion on two-way streets and other cities. I think we could all benefit from hearing his thoughts on that. Well, at the time I was working downtown, we went from two-way to one-way. And all of the downtown businesses were failing. Now, that's for a lot of reasons. a couple of which are Turfland Mall and Fayette Mall. But nobody seemed to worry too much. Wolf Wild, where Gray Construction is located, you could go in there and shoot a shotgun off and not hurt a soul in there multiple times. they just were well enough funded that they just decided they were just going to stay there until they fell over. I think if this is a reason to do this, I think we need a lot more data and maybe some on-site visiting to see how it has worked elsewhere. That's what I would suggest anyway. Thank you, Scott. This is among the reasons. There are other sort of stated reasons for doing conversions, including safety, ease of navigation, and in some instances traffic calming and the creation of more complete streets. Thank you, sir. I'm finished. Yes, thank you. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. I just want to follow up. You may mention, Mr. Creasy, earlier that there's a presentation for tomorrow. How is it different from what you've done today before this committee? The presentation to the policy committee tomorrow will give the results from our north area analysis. They're preliminary results, but that first major milestone in terms of those three different core areas, We're just to the completion of the first one. So how come we're not hearing it in this committee? Because this is the council committee that will make the decision. That's been just the, in terms of process, that's the way that we've established it, starting with our advisory steering committee and then the policy committee, then the council. Chair, the intention of putting this issue in committee, was it to hear the consultant's report out, or was this just to get a timeline update today? because, well, I'll let you answer and then I'll make a comment. I may not have a good answer for you. I had to have staff look back to see who had placed this in committee. And it turns out, I mean, as best we could tell, that I placed this in committee. And I think I would, you know, speaking from my mind at that time, I would have assumed a process a little bit differently than what has been used thus far that might be potentially a little bit more council-centric than this one is. So I would assume we would have had updates along about what's going on. And the steering committee, the policy committee, and the stakeholder meetings are all things that I think we'd be interested in knowing more about, as well as the time, date, and place of this meeting tomorrow or when we have our next update. I just think there's a lot of room for transparency here that hasn't been left out, but it hasn't been added in either. So that may not answer your question, but I think you and I and those sitting around here know how important some of this sequence of decisions are for a lot of folks in downtown and throughout Lexington, and there's a lot of interest. So I think council has an interest along the way rather than just at the end. So that's rambling. And I would tend to agree. So, Chair, are you going to put this in next month's agenda so we can hear the presentation from tomorrow? Is that the thoughts of keeping this in, or are you going to keep it in committee just to hear the last report? I mean, I'd even just thought of just take it out of committee. I mean, we haven't been a part of this. I mean, three council members have been, and that's fine. If the administration wants to report to us at the end, that's good, too. I think logistically, just from looking at dots on a page here, our next update would probably be in June at the time of their next policy committee meeting. Or we could have a follow-up next month potentially for decisions or conversation based on what will be debuted to the public tomorrow that has not been given to us today. So we could hear it or speak to it again next month if we so desire, certainly. I mean, it's in committee. We'd have to vote to take it out. It's how we decide to deal with it while it's here, I guess, is what's at hand. Fair enough. I, too, am somewhat disappointed in the current process. I think because it is in a council committee, council will have the final say on it. I'd like to have been a little more up to speed. So I do appreciate the attempt today to update us. But when you reference a report that most of us won't get to see tomorrow, I have a little bit of angst about hearing that and then not seeing that report today here at this meeting. So I know that's not your decision and your call. There is a steering committee and policy committee. I would just say to my colleagues who are on that, please keep us in the loop and keep us up to date. I think if you were on the other side and not on that policy committee, I think you'd feel the same way. Because I think, as Councilman O'Keefe said, who's on the committee as well, transparency is the utmost importance to this. And getting as much information to this body as soon as possible, rather than has been done in the past all at once at the very end and we have to make a decision within a week, that doesn't work very well with this council. It never has worked very well. We all want information as we go to build consensus as we go versus waiting to that last minute. So I appreciate everything you're giving today, but if somehow we could get a copy of that preliminary, that would be good, too, I think, for the council offline. I understand you don't want to make it public because it's all preliminary, but offline I think the council would benefit us to have some discussion on that offline. Sure. A couple things. First of all, it is not our intent at any point to be opaque about it, so I want to be very clear. There's a stepwise, you know, sequential public process that we have outlined, and we're just following that. I'll do whatever I'm directed to do. So, you know, if it's necessary to modify that, you know, that's fine. The other thing is we won't be delivering a report to the policy committee tomorrow. We will be presenting the conclusions of that study. That report will be forthcoming. We've still got some internal review going on. so I don't want to have any expectations that aren't met about that. We won't have a document until toward the end of the month, but we're going to meet with the policy committee tomorrow to say, here's where we are near the end of this north area analysis, and this is what we have concluded. Well, in all reason, I accent the importance of it. Some suggestions were made that we need to act upon some of that immediately, but yet we don't have a report to look at today. So that's where my concern is. And if we're to act on the 4th Street connector immediately, then I'd like to hear that information. And that 4th Street project, we're assuming that it's going to be done because we were told that it would be done and that it was in process already through the state letting the contract and everything. So we just assume that is the given. Okay. Very good. Thank you, Chair. By way of specific follow-up, I know that members of the media have been invited to this meeting tomorrow with the idea that news will be made there. And I think that's where in lies one of the problems here. And I'll just leave it at that. Council Member Lawless. I would just like to clarify for the council members and the public that the first, we've had two policy meetings. The first one was rather short notice. I wasn't able to attend that one, and Andrea went in my stead. And the second one was, when was that? It was August. August. So I don't want you all to think we've been meeting and keeping information away from you. So we haven't, the policy committee has not heard any of this since August. So for those who are interested, the meeting tomorrow is at 1.30 on the seventh floor of the conference room in the Phoenix building. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I have a comment that really is a little bit broader. I think this is a good example, but I want to amplify it just a little bit. It seems to me that we often get stuck on the question of when information can be released, when it's in draft or preliminary form or whatever, and there's a concern that anything that is written down, it doesn't matter if it has drafts stamped on it nine different ways, people assume that whatever comes out in written form is something that's going to happen. And so I believe, frankly, that we as a government are too cautious in that regard. I'm much more willing to err on the side of getting information out and having people draw an incorrect conclusion than holding information and having people feel that they haven't been kept up to speed. The second part of my comment really has to do with, in general, the feeling that at times we in Council get a presentation that does not speak to the concerns that we have raised. And I believe there is room there on both sides for better coordination prior to presentation. We really, as a committee or as a Council of the whole, should not be surprised by what is or is not in a particular report that's presented to us. We should not sit here thinking this is information we don't need and the information we do need isn't coming forward. So I don't know exactly where that goes except to say that it's an area that we ought to be paying, I think, better attention to and a little more coordination between the council and the administration on these kinds of things I think would be very helpful. Thank you, Chair. Good, sir. I appreciate it. All right. There are no other sign-ups. Let me just make a couple of comments here and a couple of asks. I think we're very interested in the complexion of the steering and policy committees, when they have met, what they've talked about. I think that we'll look forward to what is revealed tomorrow, and we may take it up here next month or at our next update time. I have a question as it relates to the April 28, 2009 process outline for two-way street conversion, and specifically on page 20 in terms of talking about Main and Vine Street. About the third or fourth square point down is for us to apply for with the Transportation Cabinet and the Highway Administration a permit for a road swap agreement from the Miller Administration era, which I remember this conversation, could be revised and executed. Note that the federal government must be at the table to be successful in any road swap agreements. This could be a fatal error. It was a fatal error the last time. My only question here is, have we had any preliminary conversations? What preliminary conversations have we had with the Transpiration Cabinet as pursuant to either Main and Vine or any of the other potential swap? No, I want to know about the swap. Have we all talked about the swap yet? We haven't talked about the swap, but just to fill in a little bit more information. Have not. Part of Main and Vine are on the federal highway system, their state routes, as are a portion of Maxwell and High Street and a portion of Lyman Upper. So the state has the ownership and responsibility for those. And back in the 2007 study, we talked about that issue in terms of swapping the ownership of those sections. It's a big discussion. It's as big as the whole rest of the group of changes potentially. All right, then going back, this is a consistent theme through all of these sets, is initiate policy discussions with the Transportation Cabinet and the Highway Administration. Have we had those for any of the payers at any level so far? We have not. In the north area, I don't believe that there's anything that's on the state system. All right. I appreciate that. Anyone else? Anything else? It's been very illuminating. We appreciate it. It took so much time, and there's a lot of public conversation to go along with it. All right. Let me ask the committee its preference. We have two more items. I don't believe we'll have time to take them both up. I would just take the next one up unless there's something to be moved on. Yes, ma'am. Vice Mayor. Do we have time to finish the next one? I'll look at Chris King, the exactions. Is it simply for reporting to us? This was placed in committee by Council Member Stenet. I would defer to him. Council Member Stenet, I did get some information as to what was being sought, but again, we have had no direct conversation. I have a general presentation because it is a system that needs a little context in explaining. My presentation will be about 15 minutes. Okay. Thank you. and we can save it for next month, I'm fine. Yeah, that would be fine for that because I think we can dispose of the ZODA. No. You don't think so? We may not be able to. I think the ZODA is a long discussion. So is the exactions. We may just adjourn. I just don't want to cut either one of them short. I agree. I think, you know, they're both very important, and I think we need to give ample time to both of them. Well, then I would just say to the committee, if it is your all's will, we will just save both those discussions for our next meeting. unless there's anything on the committee referral list we wanted to take other action on, which I didn't think we'd get down to that, so I hadn't really looked at it with that in mind. And we're trying to work on things in a timely manner. Tell me. Yes, ma'am. I was just simply going to say, skipping almost to the bottom of your list, the Article 5.1 right of entry, we've moved to move that forward to the full council. So I would move to remove that. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed like signed. Well done. Any others from anyone else? Yes, ma'am. Chris, you need to ask him about the adult daycares because it's ready for May, I believe. Council Member Ford, adult daycares, would we bring that for May? Would that be all right? That would be fine. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will look forward to that. Thank you. So we already have three items on our agenda and the potential for a fourth based on outcomes that we will look for in the media tomorrow. Anything else? Hearing none, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Those like sign, we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you.