# Council Environmental Quality Committee - April 23, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 23, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/2962 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/2962?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-04-23 - **Last revised**: July 16, 2026 - **Length**: 19,221 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality Committee met on April 23, 2013, at 12:00 AM, with Stinnett presiding. The committee addressed six agenda items during the meeting, taking two votes and hearing one public comment. The committee approved the March 19, 2013 Committee Summary and received informational presentations on the Zero Waste Initiative and Monthly Financials. Three items were deferred for future consideration: the Distillery District Feasibility Study, Consolidate Greenspace Responsibilities, and Items Referred. ## Attendance **Present:** Stinnett, Mossotti, Gorton, Akers, Scutchfield, Myers, Clarke, Henson, Lane, Kay **Absent:** Farmer **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions **Approval of the February 12, 2013 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:05:03] A motion to approve the February 12, 2013 Committee Summary was made by Farmer and seconded by Farmer. The motion passed unanimously. All ten members voted in favor: Stinnett, Mossotti, Gorton, Akers, Farmer, Scutchfield, Myers, Clarke, Henson, and Lane. No members voted against or abstained. **Postponement of the Hard to Recycle Materials Item** [timestamp: 0:04:00] A motion to postpone the Hard to Recycle Materials item was made by Myers and seconded by Gorton. The motion passed unanimously. All ten members voted in favor: Stinnett, Mossotti, Gorton, Akers, Farmer, Scutchfield, Myers, Clarke, Henson, and Lane. No members voted against or abstained. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included consideration of the following financial items: **Appropriations** - Greenway maintenance budget request for FY14: $117,000 **Contracts** - FEMA floodplain update study: $400,000 - Utility company summit and partnership facilitation: $25,000 - Sanitary sewer service evaluation: $25,000 - Stream revitalization watershed-based plan: $175,000 The total value of contracts under consideration was $625,000, with the appropriation request bringing the total financial actions to $742,000. ## Public Comment **Katie Stites** addressed the council regarding drainage issues at 386 Waller Avenue [timestamp: 1:54:59]. Ms. Stites reported that a city-owned drainage ditch on or near her property is blocked and improperly maintained, causing ongoing drainage problems. She requested that the city intervene to resolve the issue before she proceeds with private repairs. Ms. Stites noted that she has paid $4,800 in water quality fees and stated that she is not responsible for the ditch maintenance under Ordinance 16-88. Her comments indicated that she views the drainage problem as a city responsibility requiring municipal action rather than a private matter. ## Contested Items **FEMA Floodplain Update and Development Viability** Council members engaged in a heated discussion regarding the FEMA floodplain study and its implications for development in the West District. The core disagreement centered on the critical importance of completing the floodplain study as a prerequisite for enabling private investment in the area. The debate reflected competing concerns among council members. Some emphasized the necessity of the FEMA floodplain study for attracting private investment and moving development forward in the West District. Others raised concerns about the time required to complete the study and the associated costs, questioning whether these resources could be justified given budget constraints and development timelines. A key point of contention was the need for city leadership to resolve uncertainties surrounding the floodplain study before private investors would commit to projects in the West District. Council members disagreed on how to balance the importance of obtaining accurate floodplain data against the practical need to move forward with development opportunities and attract investment to the area. The discussion highlighted tensions between ensuring proper environmental and flood risk assessment through a comprehensive FEMA study and the desire to expedite development and economic activity in the West District. No specific outcome or resolution was documented in the available meeting materials. ## March 19, 2013 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:05:03] The committee reviewed the corrected February 12, 2013 summary during this agenda item. The revised document included corrections to spelling, punctuation, and financial figures from the original version. **Key Speakers:** - Farmer - Scutchfield - Clarke **Outcome:** The committee unanimously approved the corrected February 12, 2013 summary. Farmer made the motion to approve, which was seconded by Farmer. ## Zero Waste Initiative The Leadership Lexington Zero Waste project team presented a strategic plan for achieving zero waste in Lexington [timestamp: 00:05:34]. The presentation, featuring speakers including Jennifer Cave and Cheryl Norton, outlined a comprehensive approach centered on four main components: education, expanded recycling, organics processing, and policy changes. The committee demonstrated strong support for the initiative and engaged with the presenters on several key implementation questions. Discussion focused on funding mechanisms, the practical steps for rolling out the plan, and strategies for engaging the private sector in zero waste efforts. Committee members Stinnett, Gorton, Clark, Akers, Henson, Mossotti, and Myers participated in the discussion, raising concerns and seeking clarification on various aspects of the proposal. **Outcome** The committee agreed to move forward with the Zero Waste Initiative plan. They requested that the project team prepare two additional deliverables: - A business case analysis - An administrative update on implementation progress The informational presentation resulted in clear committee support for advancing the zero waste strategy in Lexington. ## Distillery District Feasibility Study Strand Associates presented findings from a feasibility study on the Distillery District [timestamp: 0:34:32]. The presentation covered three trail alternatives for the district, along with identified challenges and recommendations for moving forward. **Key Findings and Challenges** The study identified significant constraints affecting development in the district: - Floodplain challenges that would impact project viability - Utility constraints requiring coordination with existing infrastructure **Recommendations** Strand Associates recommended several early action items to address identified obstacles: - A FEMA floodplain update to clarify flood risk designations - Utility coordination to resolve infrastructure constraints **Committee Discussion and Outcome** The committee, which included speakers Mike Woolen, Cleet Binken, Chase Wright, Andy Knight, Poulsen, Akers, Clark, Mossotti, and Van Meter Pettit, discussed the feasibility study findings. The committee voted to keep the study in committee rather than advance it immediately. The committee requested: - The full feasibility report from Strand Associates - Administrative input on budgeting and next steps for the project The matter was deferred, allowing time for additional review and administrative analysis before further action. ## Consolidate Greenspace Responsibilities [timestamp: 1:30:06] The committee discussed the consolidation of greenway maintenance responsibilities during this agenda item. **Key Discussion Points** The committee addressed the need to streamline greenway maintenance operations. A primary recommendation emerged to transfer maintenance responsibilities to the Division of Parks. Additionally, the committee considered creating a new Greenway Coordinator position that would report directly to the Planning Commissioner. **Speakers** The discussion involved multiple committee members, including Susan Bush, Chris Cooperrider, Akers, Henson, and Kaye. **Outcome** The committee agreed to defer this item and keep it in committee for further review rather than taking immediate action. This allows for additional consideration of the consolidation proposal and the proposed organizational changes before a final decision is made. ## Monthly Financials [timestamp: 0:55:00] The committee reviewed monthly financial reports for multiple funds during this agenda item. The funds discussed included: * Sanitary Sewer Operating Fund * Sanitary Sewer Capital Fund * Landfill Fund * Water Quality Fund **Key Speakers** O'Mara and Lane participated in the discussion of the monthly financials. **Discussion Points** Lane raised a suggestion to expand the scope of the financial review. Specifically, Lane proposed including the Urban Services Fund in the monthly financial reporting. Additionally, Lane recommended that the committee establish a practice of reviewing financials on a monthly basis to improve oversight of fund performance. **Outcome** This agenda item was informational in nature. The committee reviewed the presented financial information without a formal decision or action item being recorded as a result of the discussion. ## Items Referred The committee discussed several referred items during this portion of the meeting [timestamp: 2:00:02]. Key speakers included Stinnett, Gorton, and Akers. The discussion covered multiple topics requiring further committee attention: - **Capacity Analysis** — The committee reviewed capacity-related matters and determined additional research was needed. - **Waste Management Funding Options** — The committee examined various funding approaches for waste management and decided to continue deliberation. - **Drainage Maintenance Issues** — Drainage concerns, including specific issues with drainage ditches, were discussed as items requiring ongoing attention. - **Distillery District** — This referred item was also discussed, with the committee opting to maintain it in committee status. **Outcome** The committee deferred most referred items, choosing to keep them in committee for further research and updates rather than taking immediate action. This approach allowed additional time for staff analysis and committee consideration before final decisions would be made on these matters. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the February 12, 2013 Committee Summary - **Motion** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of the Hard to Recycle Materials item --- ## Full transcript Music guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Oh, my God. Thank you. had another meeting run right up against this one, so we needed a five-minute break in between, so I apologize for getting started a little late. This is the special environmental quality meeting. The reason why it's special is we're starting an hour later than we normally do due to our previous meeting. If I can have a motion for approval of summary from last meeting, March 19th. A motion by Council Member Akers, second by Council Member Myers. Any discussion, corrections, additions, additions, or subtractions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. First up on our agenda is our zero waste initiative. I know the vice mayor possibly wanted to say a couple words and she had to step out for a second. But we have Jennifer Cave who will be presenting, is that correct? You'll be taking over the control. So if you want to come up and get us started and then I'll have the vice mayor add in commentary there at the end. Welcome and thank you for bringing this to us. We're excited to hear about it. We've heard about it for a couple months now, so welcome and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us here. I do have to say I've got to be in Frankfurt to make another presentation at 1.15, so if it's okay with you, I'll introduce the presentation and then I will pass it off to Cheryl Norton, who's also a member of our project team, and she can finish the presentation and then answer any questions that the council members may have. Well, thank you for explaining that And also I'll just explain our rules in a nutshell. We have 15 minutes for any type of presentation, then we'll follow up with questions. If we need longer, the committee can address it at that time. Okay. Well, we've planned a pretty short presentation. Would you like to say a few words, Vice Mayor? Thank you. I'm so sorry. We've been in meetings for a while, and I had to make a little trip. Well, I have ever since the government announced that it was wanting to do zero waste policy, I've been a huge supporter, and I just really applaud you all for taking this on as a project because I think it's really important to the future of all of us. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for having us again. My name is Jennifer Cave. I'm a local attorney here. I live in Lexington. I work in Lexington. I'm an environmental attorney, so this project fits perfectly with my training and what I do. The Zero Waste Lexington project team is comprised of nine members of the current Leadership Lexington project class. We are nine very different personalities, and they're all sitting here. Cheryl Norton, who many of you know, who's the president of our water company, is on our team. We have a number of attorneys, bankers. We have a marketing and salesperson from a local TV news station on our team. And we also have the executive director of the Lexington Komen Foundation on our team. So we bring a diverse background and certainly zero waste is something that we've all had the opportunity to learn about. When we talk about zero waste, we are talking about changing the way the residents and businesses and institutions in our city look at waste. Right now, we look at waste as something that we just throw away, and then it goes and ends up in a different place. When we think about zero waste, our project team wants people in our community to consider waste being those items that are left over after you reduce, reuse, and recycle to the best of our abilities. So our goal today is to discuss sort of the backbone of our strategic plan for zero waste, and hopefully we can gain your support. And our goal as a Leadership Lexington project would be to present this plan to the entire council upon your recommendation. now when we started our project we initially started it as a zero or as a pay as you throw project i had the opportunity to go to law school in seattle and in seattle they have a very strict waste and recycling ordinance and you're charged based on the amount of trash that you throw away and when i moved back to lexington i thought this would be you know a great way to reduce the amount of materials going into our landfills. As we started working on our pay-as-you-throw project, we realized that the zero waste idea was a much broader idea, and it could certainly encompass a lot of different strategies other than just pay-as-you-throw. So we've outlined some of the strategies in our presentation, and I'm going to turn it over to Cheryl to walk you through all of those. Again, thank you for having us, and I apologize for having to run. I hope you'll excuse me. Thank you, Jenny. I have to say Jenny was heartbroken when the meeting got moved because this was very tight for her, and this has really been Jenny's passion. And it was her presentation at the first Leadership Lexington meeting that made this group sign on to do this project because she's very passionate about it and has really been a great driver for us. So as we looked at zero waste and what we wanted to do with this program, I have to say that we got a lot of support from Esther Moberly, Steve Feast, and Amy Soner from Bluegrass Pride. The team was really very helpful in providing us all kinds of information and support, and so we really appreciate their input and their support as we went through this project. And when we looked at the waste audit results that had been done in 2010, we realized that over 75% of what was going into the landfill could have actually been either reused, reduced, or recycled. And so that's a large amount of the waste that's going to the landfills that we could have done something else with. And right, I guess in 2012, we actually sent about 329,000 tons of material to the landfill, and we recycled about 33,000 tons in 2012. The economic benefit of that is really important because being able to recycle not only helps the environment, but it also creates jobs for people. And we believe that there are about 780 jobs that were created as a result of the recycling that was done in Lexington alone, which is about $32 million in annual wages. So that's really one of the drivers as to why we wanted to do this project and just seeing the importance of all of it and why we all became so committed to it. We also want to make Lexington a better place to live, and we believe that through recycling, protecting our environment, that's a really important factor of it. So as we started looking at what's it going to take to create a strategic plan to help this happen in Lexington, because that was the real gap. There's obviously a desire. We have survey results that show that people here want to do it because they do realize it's the right thing. And so what's it going to take to make it happen? And when we talked with Esther and Steve, they have a lot of really great ideas, but there wasn't any kind of formal plan. So our task was to create a strategic plan that would help us implement this project in Lexington. And so we know that marketing and education is going to be huge. When you start talking to people about changing their rate structure potentially to encourage recycling and just getting people to voluntarily do it and understand the importance of it, then you're going to have to do a lot of marketing and education so that people really understand the reasoning for that. And we also talked about... I'm going to try to forward this. Nope. Okay. So we talked about a focused marketing campaign and how we would do that. We've got some really great pieces of artwork and pamphlets and things that have already been put in place or that could be put in place to really help try to drive this. And so part of that strategy would be around marketing and education. And key to that is a lot of people say that they don't recycle because they don't know what they can recycle and what they can't recycle, what are the right things to put in that Blue Rosie. And so part of the issue is that not all plastics can be recycled. And by expanding our facilities to be able to recycle more of those plastics and find more markets for those, I think it would help really boost the amount of recycling that happens. Another key area is the organics processing. And to be able to process more organics, including food waste, that's one of the major components that's going to landfill right now are organics and food waste. And so our typical composting facility right now can't handle that kind of food waste at the level that we would like for it to be able to so that we could really improve that. And that's going to be a facility that would be needed in the future to be able to really boost that. And also construction, demolition, and debris recycling facility. That's another big aspect that goes to the landfill is all that construction material when a building's torn down. trying to encourage people to reuse as much as they can and take it to the reuse store, the Habitat for Humanity, or find another way to utilize that. But what can't be reused should be recycled, and right now it's not. So those are some key things. And again, the food waste and just looking at the different materials that could be recycled. There are many parts to the strategic plan, and you guys have all that detail in your packet. We gave you a ton of information. I'm sure you probably haven't been able to read all of it yet. But if you have questions later, it gives you a really good resource to go back to to find out what other communities are doing and kind of what we have in mind for making this work. One key would be rate structures and incentives, helping people to really feel a desire to recycle. They've said in the survey results that an incentive, a money incentive, would make them want to recycle. So if they can pay less on their bill, then they would be more willing to recycle. And then you go to policy enhancement. A lot of the programs that we looked at, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel, so we did try to look at the other strategic plans that were out there, and it does involve some policy enhancement, some ordinances and things like that. We had a stakeholder meeting where we brought in different people from the community, different haulers different environmental groups some neighborhood associations the home builders association and and just talk to them about what our plan was and got their feedback and overall the feedback was very positive people in the community really see the need for this so we hope that the council sees the need for this as well and we would be really very excited for us to go and present to the full council based on on the questions that you guys might have so thank you well quick and to to the point thank you we appreciate we're sorry Jennifer had to leave and thank you for for completing that Cheryl a couple things before we open up the floor to questions from council members I will let you know that we are working we have a waste management task force of which I'm chairing that is actually looking at changing our fee structure already it's actually been put on hold because the way we bill our taxes there's a couple issues as you know we We just went to a new billing system, and we don't have a year full of collections to analyze and see if it would be appropriate to put on that bill or keep on property tax, et cetera. So we're in a little bit of a limbo until we get a full year of billing under our belt. So we are looking at that. So I'm glad you're helping us reemphasize that that is a good point out there to bring forward and to really hone in on what would be appropriate there. So thank you for doing that. Council members, do we have any questions on this initiative moving forward? Let's see. Vice Mayor Gorton is up first. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for your presentation and for all the work that you all have done on this. I, as a humongous supporter of this sort of policy for our community, I do recognize it's going to take a lot of work to get each of these pieces in place. Did you all look at, not that you should have necessarily, but the budgetary impact of all of this because it certainly will be huge? That's a great question, Lynn, and we actually did discuss that, and we understand how huge that's going to be. so part of the strategy has to be that a business case would be created to look at what those costs are going to be and how those how like expanding facilities would be funded but we just didn't have time on our committee to go from you know we started in august and and um and are now at the final stages of our program and wanted to get the the plan out there so we didn't have time to do that business case but that would be one of the very next steps in the process yes well and and And that's certainly not something that we should have expected because we've been working through our committee for months. And I know that the folks in waste management have been working for a long time. And I think our goal, if I recall when this all came up within government, was waste-free by 2020, which is getting closer every day and will still be a challenge. But I appreciate that you all have taken this up because I think for our community, it will have a huge impact on everything. And maybe we can be the leaders for cities around and for Kentucky to be on top of it and lead the way. So thank you very much. Thank you. And I agree with that so much, how important it is. In fact, I recently had an opportunity to be at a press conference for the Bluegrass Youth Sustainability Group, and we talked about this program, and they're very excited about it. And Tristina's here from school, and she's excited about getting that group involved as well. So I think that as we talk about it more and get the word out, you know, like I said, Jenny brought a huge passion to this, and we all kind of said, okay, yeah, we'll join you. But then as we went through this, it got very exciting. I think I can speak for the group. We've worked very hard. We have met many, many times to get to this point, and it really is very, very important. Now, after you all graduate from Leadership Lexington, will you be serving on our committees and things like that that might move us forward? Everybody says yes, Esther. Mark them down. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am also very excited about this. This is a great project, Cheryl, and I appreciate your presentation. And I'm particularly impressed that a non-governmental group can take something like this and fit right into where we're headed as well. I think that's awfully good. It's a good sign for our community and it's a good sign for the future. One quick question. Obviously, you're dealing primarily with the waste control by the local government. Have you talked to the non-governmental agencies, companies out there? Of course, that's a huge area that's not served by Lexington. What's their response to this as well? We actually invited them to our stakeholder meeting and had, I don't know, at least two or three, I think there are two or three represented here today, private haulers that came to that meeting and actually gave us feedback. And I know that we just have to be careful in how we implement it because we're asking them to do additional things. But this plan has been written under the premise that everybody who lives in Lexington would have the same kind of services. And so how we work together with those private haulers would be very important going forward. But we have included them in the initial talks, and so they know what we're looking at. That's excellent. And I was remembering a question I had in my neighborhood when I was president of the Neighborhood Association when we were talking about waste pickup and whether we should think about going to Lexington rather than private haulers. And one of the questions, one of the concerns was, well, you know, these private holders don't recycle the same way as Lexington. But what I found out, actually, that they do. Actually, they go to basically the same place. And so I was impressed by that. Thank you very much, Cheryl. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Clark. Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, Chair. I love what you all have put together. And I think this has to be our future. I asked Tracene, who I know personally, our kids are in school together. The kids get this. You go into the element. I mean, how many schools do you have that have taken responsibility for becoming green schools? Of our 56 schools, only 50 of them are very aggressive. It's got to be our future. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Cheryl, I too applaud you guys. I'm impressed with the group who was involved in taking this on, and I have been a longtime supporter of the concept of pay-as-you-throw, being someone who recycles the majority of my trash. I know that I take my Herbie out maybe once a month compared to my Rosie maybe only twice a month. So I would definitely be in support of that. But I would also, what I didn't see that I wonder if you all addressed in your work group was businesses. And, for instance, restaurants and bars. And you mentioned composting food, and I know that bars also toss tons of bottles and cans and recyclables. So was there any attention to that or discussion of that? Yeah, particularly if you look, I believe, under the policy stuff, that we would do things to encourage those commercial businesses to participate at a much higher level than what they may now. A lot of them, you're right, throw the stuff in the trash. And I know that the Waste Management Group has recently made some changes in their capabilities. Some of the commercial businesses used to generate large bales of recycled material and then have to pay somebody else to come get it because Waste Management didn't have the ability to do that. They now have the ability to pick up those large bales of these things. And so that is a focus in here that we need to really make these businesses, help them understand. It goes partly to the education, help them understand what the real benefits are to doing this and why it's important to do it. But we may also need to get there through policies and ordinances. For example, when a place is renovated or a new place is built, to have an area dedicated for recycling bins or dumpsters so that it's not something that's very inconvenient. Because the studies show that convenience is really key. And I understand that. You know, bars, especially like downtown, there's not a lot of space. There's not room. You know, so the supply, I guess you would say, of the recyclables and trash is much higher than our pickup schedule allows for. So I understand it's certainly a work in progress, but thank you very much for your work on it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Cheryl, for your presentation and all the work the group has done. I guess I know that it's been difficult in some areas to educate people about recycling. Like you said, they think they don't know what to use or whatever. And what I have found is many times rental properties are a problem. And I didn't know if you had brought that up in your discussion, how you might tackle that. Or I guess if we change the rate and it's put on an individual rather than the property owner, that might help some. But I just was curious if that was brought up in your discussion. We did talk about that, and we realized that that's a big challenge. And, again, it's trying to make it as convenient as possible. So if we can work with the landlords, I think that's going to be key. If the landlords continue to get the bill, depending on how that rate structure comes out, for them to have those locations for people to put their recyclables and be able to move that forward. I don't know. Did we come up with anything specific in the plan to deal with landlords or rental properties? We did discuss it, but I don't think we came up with anything real specific there. Okay, thank you. Probably something. We see this plan as somewhat of a living document. We know that there are things that probably didn't get addressed, or as you go through the process and identify specific areas, that things need to be revised and changed. But we think it's a real good backbone. You know, what I've seen, that many folks are very responsible and they want to do the right thing, and that's just part of their everyday life. But other folks are not as educated on it, and I think a real strong outreach to certain areas would be helpful. Thank you. Great. And we have Councilman Clark. Do you want to come back up? Yes, thank you. A good presentation like this, and I think we all appreciate it and understand it. But what I'd like to know, and maybe we can discuss this not only from your standpoint, Cheryl, but also from the standpoint of the committee, what next? And that's my concern. We have a good presentation. Everybody says this is great, and then it kind of disappears. And so I would like to know what's next from your vantage point and maybe what's next in terms of the committee itself. Thank you, Mr. Chair. do you want to well the next thing would be to get the council to say that they that they support this strategic plan and when we put the plan together we tried to prioritize the different things that we thought needed to come first so marketing and education it's right up there in in the front as well as being able to expand what we can recycle and in our um the volume of stuff that we can recycle because if we push that 75 percent of material that's now going to the landfill that doesn't have to, then you're going to have to be able to really take an additional load of material. So those are the kinds of things that have to happen first, and that goes kind of back to the business case and generating a business case once the council says, yes, we want to go here. So then let's get a business case to say, okay, so what's it going to cost and how are we going to fund this? And if you're already looking at the rate structure, that's a key part of this because you're not going to get people to do dramatically more than what they do now for $4.50 a month, and that's what they see. That's the transparency of it is that I pay $4.50 for the landfill fee, but to me that's trash until Esther explained to me all the finer points of that. So it's really making that more transparent. I think the idea of what I'm seeing is that the committee has already made some steps. You all have made some steps, and somehow we've got to get all that together. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilman Clark. I will add that as we're working on the rate structure through the task force, it would have been nice to have reported out today, but given our new billing system, we've kind of put that on hold. But I think it would be appropriate at our next meeting to have a response from the administration and get an overview of what some of the things they have done and some of the things they agree with and are working on and maybe help us put a dollar amount as to where we can improve and let the council either fund it, change the ordinance, do what we can to assist the administration in doing their job too. So I think next meeting we're going to have a presentation on the GPS system, the new system on the garbage trucks, and maybe we can add a piece of component of this, a response from the administration. Unless they have one today, Commissioner Maloney, do you all have a response today or do you want to wait and give us a detailed presentation next meeting? And you don't have to answer that now. We have one more council member up. Just think about it. And we have one more council member up, or two more. actually now, and let's finish the questions. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Norton, for this excellent presentation, the committee task force for your excellent work. I, too, have been supportive of the pay-as-you-throw, and you guys have looked at it even more comprehensively, and I appreciate that. So my questions are along the same line as Mr. Clark, and that is, how does the Council engage this process and help move it forward? So I look forward from a response from Mr. Maloney and how he wants me to present today or at the next meeting, but then how do we take that information and merge them together and then move forward with this? Thank you very much. Council Member Mossade. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Norton, and thank you to the committee for all your hard work. What an opportunity we have today to be able to take advantage of this and go forward. I know I've grown up in other cities where they have five cents on a bottle, and I know there's different ways to be able to try to get the funds in order to provide this program. I know no one likes that idea, but that may be options that we have to look at. There's bottle bills, there's can bills, there's all different kinds of ways to get the public engaged. As you say, $4.50 is not a very huge motivating factor to do that. So that might be something we need to explore in the future when we look at this. And, again, thank you, and thank you all for your hard work. Thank you. Any other council members have any questions? I did have two follow-up questions. Okay. Cheryl, number one, you mentioned changing our name of waste management. Now, we actually just changed to that from solid waste a couple years ago. So I'm just curious, did you all discuss potential names that were grabbing attention or headlines out there? I don't recall any potential names that we threw around, but we just didn't think that waste management really drives that whole zero waste kind of thought process. We just didn't think that it did. So others may have an idea of a name, but we didn't talk about it. Okay. I mean, I think it's a worthy concept, at the very least a new campaign to address that issue. But like I said, we just changed a couple years. It's taken me that long just to get used to waste management. So I still call it salt waste. Commissioner Maloney, did you have any follow-up today? Because I know Esther and Steve and Bradstone and a lot of other people have been working really hard on some of these issues already. Commissioner Maloney, do you want to let us know where we stand? I just want to thank the leadership of Luxington for their report. One thing that we are looking, we've already met with all the folks now that do our trash away from here. We told them to start thinking out of the box. We're no longer going to be taking it. We don't want to take our trash and leave it in the ground for the next 1,000 years. And Lux, they use it for energy or something like that. and we're getting ready this summer to come back with an RFP to be sent out. We've been giving them a heads up for folks to come back to think out of the box. The public has approached us. They have two years left on the contract. They kind of want to, they're willing to go ahead and let us go ahead and send the RFPs out because whatever comes back will take two years to put a project together. We're getting a lot from Rumpke and from the public, a lot of their ideas, and some from Toscag, but we are wanting to get to zero waste or energy waste. So we're excited about it, and we have given all those companies a heads up. Do you want to respond to the presentation next meeting? Maybe give us highlights of what you all have done. We'll be glad to respond. When you all see the GPS, you're all going to be really excited to see what we're doing. There's been a lot of improvements on that, and then also we'll be glad to update some of when the RFP is going to come out, Hopefully by then we should have an idea. Okay, if you could do that and also kind of hone in on the MRF and the status of it. I know our task force, we've been updated, but I don't think my whole committee has been updated on the status of the MRF and the recycling. Just give us a brief headlines, if you could, next meeting. That would be great. No problem. Thank you. Thank you. And then I also want to thank you all for coming today. Here's the inspiring thing in conclusion before we move on to the next item is Leadership Lexington has a project each year, and it's a credit to Leadership Lexington for coming up with these sort of ideas. but it's citizens that are bringing it to us. And that's what this is all about. It's citizen engagement, and thank you all for helping us get to the public and get citizens involved, and you are taking the first step. And that's what's important, because if we don't awaken our community to understand that this is an important goal and it benefits everyone, we can't do our jobs effectively either. So thank you all. I appreciate you all coming forward today. Thank you for having us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Chair, in a lighthearted moment, We can call it no-waste management. I'll leave that to stand on its own. No-waste management. Next on our agenda, we have a presentation in regards to the Lexington Distillery District Feasibility Study. I know we have had a couple different meetings where this has been on the agenda. We finally have it here in April. So we're excited to hear from our consultant, Mike Woolum, from Stranding Associates. And I want to turn it over to you, Mike, unless anyone from the administration, Commissioner Poulsen or C.O. Hamilton, want to lead off on anything at all. We'll go ahead and just dive into the presentation. Commissioner Poulsen, do you want to tee it up for us? I will try to really quickly. So in the interest of time, as I know we have a few more presentations coming after. This is one of those, the feasibility study was started a couple years ago. This is the presentation that we've talked about a few times. I know we've had some interim presentations by myself just to kind of give us an overview on where we are, and I think this one will be very helpful for us in next steps and moving forward. Without any more, I will leave it to Mike from Strand. Thank you. Mike Willem, welcome. Good to see you again. Good to be here. Thank you for having us. And I can honestly say that we're excited. We've waited a long time to be here, but we're happy to be here to share with you our findings here today. As you said earlier, I'm Mike Woolen with Strand. I also have three other representatives of our project team here with me today. Cleet Binken, who I think many of you know from our work on the prior streetscape project with MKSK Studios. Also Chase Wright of Strand. And then Andy Knight, also of MKSK, who's actually a local resident here and a base of operation for MKSK here in Lexington. Now that wasn't the right button. Okay, this is our agenda. These are the items that we want to talk about today, a brief review of purpose, some of the redevelopment challenges, review corridor improvement opportunities, and then speak about our alternatives analysis and some of the action items that we have identified, followed by questions. Project overview. I think everybody understands some of the history related to this. The distillery district was part of a TIF application process that was proposed by Barry McNeese. The TIF district, I guess the application, that process was concluded in October of 2009 when the state agency actually approved and adopted the TIF for implementation. Shortly thereafter, the council authorized a bond issue in December of 2009, authorizing the investment of up to $2.2 million in bond funds earmarked for public infrastructure investment, most notably street, roadway, and trail improvements. And that's what we're here to talk about today. This slide illustrates the study area. You see kind of a central area there outlined in a dashed red line. That's actually the distillery district boundary. The distillery district extends from Oliver Lewis Way westward towards Forge Road. It's about a mile in length. That bright red star that you see there in the center is what we have labeled the confluence area. That's actually where the Norfolk Southern Railroad overpass crosses over top of Manchester Street, It's a very defining element within the district. And you also see certainly a very important piece, and that being the blue ribbon town branch that shows you where town branch daylights behind Rupp Arena and then crosses through the district. So then the other boundary that you see we've labeled as the area of potential effect, because this project, we're trying to position it at the request of the Urban County government for future application for federal dollars. we had to follow a process that involves the National Environmental Policy Act, the NEPA process. So there's an environmental component, and that's the area that was actually evaluated in conjunction with the alternatives from an environmental perspective. Consultant role. We contracted with the city in, I guess, August of 2011. And our contract includes provisions for feasibility study, design services, and assistance with construction. To date, we've been approved only to actually go forward with the feasibility study. So we'll be at a decision point here very shortly. The feasibility study actually included three major components, a survey, a field survey, to help us identify routing alignments and alternatives and that sort of thing. There was a very extensive environmental evaluation looking at the stream and some of the issues associated with the habitats, archaeology, and environmental components. And then also a detailed alternatives evaluation that we'll discuss here momentarily. As part of our effort in reconnaissance, we identified a number of issues. And what we've attempted to do here is to focus really on five of those that we think are key from the standpoint of the government and maybe what the government may be able to do to help the district move forward. And floodplain, surability, utility stream condition, and corridor characteristics. And we'll talk about each of those as we move forward here. This slide highlights existing floodplain condition within the district. In the upper right-hand corner, you see an illustration of the floodplain within the district area. And there's sort of a defined diagonal line that crosses through the site. That's actually that Norfolk Southern Railroad. And to the right of that, the blue area is essentially to the north. We call that the East District. In the blue area, the floodplain is essentially to the north of Town Branch, and it basically encompasses the majority of the R.J. Corman rail yard. The East District development area, for the most part, is fairly floodplain-free, unencumbered. As you move westward and you cross the Norfolk Southern Railroad, you begin to see the floodplain moves to the south of Manchester Street. And unfortunately, a large chunk of the distillery district property is actually encumbered by floodplain. And what we've actually shown here is an illustrated cross-section showing you at this particular location, which is just upstream of the bonded warehouse, the city's existing floodplain mapping literally shows a floodplain depth of approximately seven feet in this location. Now, I want to say right off is that having talked with a lot of the neighbors and residents and people that are familiar with floodplain issues throughout Lexington in this area, is that I think there's a strong consensus that maybe this floodplain may be somewhat overstated. So we'll talk about maybe a remedy for that as we move forward into some of the action items. Sewerability was another item of concern, I guess, as we evaluated existing conditions. Again, you see that diagonal railroad that sort of bisects the district on the right-hand side. You see some green lines illustrating existing sewer lines, trunk sewers and gravity sewers. It's important to note in the East District that there's a remedial measures project proposed for upsizing the existing UK and Chevy Chase trunk sewers that actually converge here in the district. There's also an existing 24-inch trunk sewer that runs down the center of Manchester Street, which has been evaluated at least preliminarily and found to have some, I guess, I&I issues associated with it because it's a very old trunk sewer system. And so that area may also need to be evaluated, and obviously the improvements to address those problems need to be coordinated with any kind of construction or work within the district itself. As you move into the west district area, you see an area that is shaded in kind of a reddish-pink color. I think the important takeaway there is that that area basically is unsewered at this point in time, and there are some very challenging issues that prohibit connection to existing gravity sewers. So obviously it's going to be important from a developer standpoint that a plan be developed so that a vision and understanding of what it's going to take to serve that area can be put in place and put in place with sort of a comprehensive solution in mind since obviously we want to have a very well-thought sewer plan once this area develops since the city will ultimately maintain most of that infrastructure. Utilities is certainly another consideration. This is actually a photograph of Manchester Street right near Oliver Lewis Way. That's the cloud ceiling building to the left. It's kind of hard to see, but that's the old church that's been there for quite a number of years. I think the important takeaway here is you see all the vertical utility infrastructure here. You have overhead transmission, distribution lines, a lot of telecommunications, fiber optics. So it's a very congested utility corridor. Water lines and gas lines are literally decades, I think some dating back to the early 1900s. So they're very old and aged, and certainly replacement of aging infrastructure is going to be a consideration moving forward and how that's coordinated. There's also going to be a need to upgrade existing service capacity. Another consideration is whether to bury these overhead lines. And having collaborated with a number of the existing utility providers, we understand that those costs could approach $11 million if you were to bury literally all of the utilities. So obviously consideration needs to be whether you really need to do that. If you could put the lines up high where they're out of sight, much like they've done in front of Lexmark. So obviously that's a point of consideration and discussion. And then finally, probably most critically, is coordination, scheduling, and timing for utility upgrades. From a utility company's perspective, they have to be able to budget and program infrastructure improvements on an annual basis. So there has to be someone that may lead that effort so that when the time comes to invest in roadway and trail improvements, that there's also a parallel plan in place to deal with utility issues as well. Now, we felt like stream condition was another issue. And obviously, Town Branch is a very important component to the distillery district. We think it's obviously the most important asset the district has to offer. But the condition of that stream right now is you see a number of issues that we've identified, limited access. Most of the stream is actually on private property. Some of it is on the opposite side of a railroad siding that is owned by R.J. Corman Railroad. You have a lot of erosion issues, invasive species along the stream. A lot of the stream has actually been channelized, but at the same time, there's pauses behind Pepper Distillery. That's probably one of the last remaining natural sections of the creek within the urban area. So how do we leverage that? And then certainly Town Branch is on the 303D list of impaired streams throughout the state. What do we need to do as a community to take steps to try to improve and enhance that so it can be a resource for the district and an attraction for the citizens of Lexington? We've shown at the bottom sort of a metric on what you might be able to do to improve a stream, beginning with stabilizing, which we would classify as good, enhance as better, restore would be best. And as you think about the stream, you think about cost for restoration, which could range anywhere from $100 to $150 a foot to $500 a foot, depending upon what measures you decide to put in place. I want to let Cleet speak now about corridor characteristics. This is a nice segue. Thank you, Mike. Thank you all for giving us an opportunity to speak. The corridor bears a lot of its age lines from the past, kind of like we all grow old. it's grown old, and it's suffered from a lack of investment because it's been an industrial area, and now there's pressure on it to become a place where you live, a place where you work, but maybe not using heavy machinery. What it wants to be and what it is today are different things. So to make it a place where you want to be, you want to work, you want to invest, you want to spend time, There's a lot that has to be done to improve its livability, to improve the characteristics of the corridor. One of the greatest objectives, obviously, is for it to be safe. And so when you look at the number of curb cuts along Manchester Street and you look at the amount of truck traffic along Manchester Street, there will have to be some changes to turn it into a vibrant mixed-use district over time. And as Rupp Arena and as the Arena District develop, there will be a lot of desire and demand to have new living space down along this corridor. And you're going to see a desire on the part of residents to change the characteristics of that. Certainly drainage is a huge issue, as Mike has already noted. in working through the public engagement process there were several neighborhood meetings and we had an advisory committee composed of some of the people in the room today talking about what it would take to make sure that the steps that were recommended were the right steps for the district so the advisory committee and the design and planning and engineering team developed what we called guiding principles for reinvestment. And that can be summarized, I guess, by these five bullet points. First of all, we want to utilize context-sensitive, neighborhood-sensitive design practices. The neighborhoods have suffered from the industrial uses there, and there's great potential for those neighborhoods to rebound if the infrastructure that's put in place is supportive of that. We want to leverage whatever public dollars are applied toward restoring the ecosystem that is there and restoring the neighborhoods. So we don't want to just prioritize what might be good for one particular project. We want to be thinking about all of the systems that are in place down there. Thirdly, we want to establish more sustainable ecosystems, systems that don't require regular human involvement to make them work better. So the stream is probably the classic example. If we can change the characteristics of the stream, bring it back to the type of function that it had when it was a healthy, beautiful stream quarter, and by the way, a lot of those elements are still there today, we could probably have a drainage network and a sewerage network that is much less problematic to maintain and deal with. Fourthly, and this really gets back to having safer streets, we want to be thinking about streets where the automobile isn't the only choice. And we don't want to design a street that is solely oriented to the automobile. and obviously our charge was to think about how to involve a trail network through this district. Lastly, if this is going to move forward, it's going to take years and years and years. Obviously, this isn't a solution where we're going to do it overnight. It's going to take a generation or more to put all of the pieces in place. So we're going to have to work with local stakeholders, with the neighborhoods, with local agencies, with the private sector investors in partnership with the city to build consensus for that spending of precious public dollars that will be in play in the future. This is a plan that really just establishes an expanded understanding of what the vision could be for the district. And the developer's plan that was used for the TIF to get all of this started really dealt with the properties that they had under control. So this is saying if we're going to be thinking about the neighborhoods, if we're going to be thinking about the environment, if we're going to be thinking about the ecosystems there, we need to expand our vision. And this isn't a blueprint for what will happen in the future. This is an aspirational depiction of what would happen in the future. And it focuses on the confluence area because the confluence is the confluence of several stream networks that come together and converge in that area. It's also the confluence of where the rail and the road meet the creek. It's the confluence of some of the most beloved historic buildings in all of Lexington with the pepper and tar distilleries. And so it's also, by the way, where Pyramid Park is today and where neighborhood stakeholders go for some recreation and enjoyment. So it says that the pattern of development that you have in the future should be guided by the urban county government. and that could take the form of not infrastructure dollars, but that could take the form of zoning or guidelines or the way that you work with utility companies to define utility quarters. All of those things are really becoming a roadmap in this plan that you'll be able to use over time to make decisions about what projects you help fund. any urban development that gets legs has to have a vision and I think we recognize and everybody involved recognize that this isn't Limestone Avenue, this isn't College Town this isn't Main Street, this isn't Vine Street it has a personality all of its own and we shouldn't wipe away the industrial past and the character of that area with the design of the roadway and the streetscapes and the trails that are put in place. So this is simply a vision that says that you can use the existing roadbed. It's got plenty of capacity for the traffic that it will handle in the future, but it could have a bike trail along the path, and that trail could really be an inducement and an incentive to the private sector to bring new storefront businesses down along Manchester. This is in the East District that is unaffected by the floodway and the floodplain boundaries down there. So this is something that could happen in the very near term. The view on the bottom could also have utility poles in there, but they could be cleaner, taller poles, as Mike mentioned. So it's something that's achievable. It's not a far mile to get there, and you've got businesses already moving into the district on this side where they're not constrained by sewer and floodplain issues. This is a similar depiction of what could happen in the West District. This is Thompson Street, and there's an industrial building on the right side that really confines the roadway section there. It would be difficult to work within that and provide safe pedestrian movement and safe bikeway movement. So the thought is, look, we don't want to expand the road. We actually need to expand the right-of-way in order to provide for those other forms of transportation. It could be that the grassed area that you see on the right is also part of the drainage network that helps lower and reduce the depth of the floodway and the floodway map that is a barrier to private investment in the area. I'm going to give it back to Mike to talk about some of the alternatives. Well, this is the wrap-up section. We want to talk about alternatives, the evaluation matrix, and then some action items for consideration. These are the three action alternatives that we evaluated as part of our study. And one of the things to consider here is that relative to the street improvements, all three alternatives are very similar in scope and scale in terms of what requirements there would be for improving the roadway. The roadway actually fits predominantly within the framework of the existing right-of-way that exists there today, so that's a strong positive statement. The real thing that distinguishes the difference between the alternatives, frankly, is the alignment and location of the trail, and so I want to just help illustrate that between them. And that wasn't the color shading that we had. It was supposed to be yellow. Anyway, that brown area that you see there, that highlights the route of the trail for alternate one. And we've labeled that the Town Branch Creek Trail option. And as you can see, beginning at Oliver Lewis Way on the right, the trail would basically follow the rear of the buildings that front on Manchester Street on the north side of the roadway. It would be located within an existing railroad siding that R.J. Corman Railroad Company currently operates. The trail would be routed through a potential tunnel that would go underneath the existing Norfolk Southern Railroad, where it would then cross to the south side of Manchester Street and follow the rear area along the back of Pepper Distillery to capture U-sheds with the existing Town Branch Creek where the natural section exists. And then it would circle back Thompson Road and then basically cross Manchester Street and then head west towards Forbes Road. Alternative 2 has a distinction, at least for the first piece of that, beginning at Oliver Lewis Way. For this particular section, this is more of a utilitarian alternative, and it would be more implementable, frankly, because in this area we would have a roadway that would have bike lanes on the roadway. It's probably not as desirable as having a second separated multi-use trail. So the on-road bike lanes would extend just to the east side of Pyramid Park, at which point at an intersection there, the multi-use trail portion of that would extend on the north side of Manchester Street and then basically follow Manchester Street in accordance with that illustration that Cleet showed you just a moment ago where we displaced that existing building just on the opposite side of the roadway from the Pepper Distillery. In alternate number three, the trail, for the most part, stays on the south side of Manchester Street. And again, as you see the trail initiating in Oliver Lewis Way, it would be an off-road, multi-use trail that would be separated from the roadway with a tree lawn, basically extend all the way through the confluence area where it would cross underneath that overpass. And I might mention that we were able to actually put a reverse curve in Manchester Street and actually get some additional effective widths so that we could fit the trail and the roadway underneath that overpass very comfortably. Once under that overpass area, we would extend along Town Branch Creek and then cross again back at Thompson Road to the north side where we would follow Manchester Street, passing the McConnell House on out to Forbes Road. So these are the three alternatives that we evaluated. And as we looked at each alternative, we had to find a way to evaluate each in context with the other, both in terms of cost and in other factors that we felt merited consideration as you tried to evaluate and determine maybe the best choice for implementation. And as you can see in this slide, on the left-hand margin, you see the term evaluation criteria. There are actually three major categories for that that we used with subcategories for scoring purposes. They were, you know, is the alternative implementable? And certainly cost, land acquisition, environmental impacts would be an important consideration for implementation capability. The second category would involve quality of life, quality of place, integration of creek and trail safety, and then neighborhood and cultural suitability, sustainability were other considerations for that category. And then lastly, the third criteria was catalytic impact. You know, can an alternative have the maximum impact to help the district move forward? You know, does it have public support? Does it support other ongoing initiatives? And then lastly, I can't read that. My eyes are failing me right now. Market need, that's right. Does it meet and address and support the market need? Thank you, Glenn. I mentioned cost earlier, and at the bottom of this slide you can see the cost estimates for each of the three alternatives. Alternative one, which was the town branch creek trail option, is approximately $24 million. That includes a fairly sizable contingency at this point, and obviously with a tunnel and some of the other impacts to the existing railroad facilities in the Corman Rail Yard, you can understand why that number jumps up so high and jumps out at you. Alternative two, which is the more utilitarian option with the trail having portion of the trail being incorporated within the framework of the roadway with on-road bike lanes, was at $14.8 million. And then alternative number three, which was the Manchester Pepper Trail option, came in at $16.2 million. As you look at this sheet, you see the number in the circle up there underneath each alternative. That's the actual score with the highest score being the best based on the evaluation of each of those factors. So with that said, it appeared at least for purposes of this evaluation, Alternative No. 3 came out to be the most favorable, all things considered. And obviously this is subject for review and discussion as you move forward. So where do we go from here? one of the things in considering how to move forward we thought it was going to be very important to identify action items action items that would help that would relate more to the urban county government and maybe things that they would be able to do to help stimulate investment and redevelopment in the district and there were five key infrastructure elements that we felt merited consideration and you see those in the left-hand margin development of a street and trail preliminary plan, in essence, initiating a 30 percent design, as you see there from milestone number one. As you move across that first row there, you see the objective would be to align the developers' initiatives with the Phase I improvements program, and we've got a projected duration of approximately six to nine months and an estimated investment budget of $200,000 in order to achieve that. The second consideration would be a FEMA floodplain update. And as I said earlier, we feel like this is a very important consideration, and it's one that probably will require not just a reassessment of the stream itself, but also a second look at the hydrology, the hydrologic piece of the equation that goes into defining floodplains within the urban setting. And this is a very complicated process and one that requires a very strict protocol that FEMA would have to endorse before you move forward, but one that we think has merit to evaluate. And obviously the goal here is a flood map revision to increase the redevelopment potential with the predominant focus in the West District, and we've projected that this will take approximately 18 to 24 months at a cost of approximately $400,000. The third option involves utility service. And obviously this is going to be very important as you grow the district, and it has to be an early step simply because there's so much need for investment and upgrade to existing utilities. They have to be coordinated in conjunction with any public infrastructure improvements to Manchester Street. And we think that begins by initiating a utility company summit and establishing a partnering relationship with all the utility companies at hand. And the ultimate goal here as you move through that process is to get utility company commitment to, I guess, their service improvements. What's going to be required in order for them to ultimately serve the long-term needs of the district? And we've estimated that this could be a 9- to 12-month process and at a fairly modest cost of $25,000 to facilitate that and for the government to help lead that process. the fourth item involves the evaluation of sanitary sewer service and I think I mentioned earlier that we have an issue with the West District area right now in terms of sewer ability and obviously there needs to be a look at that to help the private sector understand maybe the urban county government's perspective of how sewer service needs to occur in that area since it needs to integrate within the framework of LFUCG's existing sewer system So this process would help vet that, and the ultimate objective of this process is to help create an implementation plan for sewer service so that the private sector has a defined understanding of what it's going to take, what would be required, whether they pay for it, whether there's a cost-sharing protocol for different developers to pay for it, and also whether the city would invest due to some benefits that they may derive from this as well. Six to nine months, and again, a modest investment of $25,000. And then last but certainly not least, stream revitalization. And as I said earlier, we think the town branch is a critical component of the district and the formula for success. And the first step in that process would be to authorize a watershed-based plan to support the stream revitalization initiative. And in this process, you may not realize it, but right now your environmental quality folks are actually conducting watershed studies and several other watersheds around the city where they're doing evaluations of existing conditions of existing streams and developing sort of these broad-based plans for improving water quality to help bring the streams up to their intended use. And this would be a plan to do that. And I would say at this point we've done a lot of work already that supports completion of a watershed plan based on the work of our environmental team on this feasibility study. So at the end of this, our goal would be to outline a program of improvements, as we've noted above, to improve Town Branch, and then that would ultimately lead to commission of design for a stream restoration protocol of some magnitude. And again, here we're talking 18 to 24 months, potential investment of $175,000. I think in our opinion, each of these items represents what we think is a legitimate opportunity for the city to invest and make a statement to the private sector that there is opportunity in the district and these are compelling needs to help the private sector understand how we want to move forward as a community, and that's why we've listed them here today. So with that, I think that concludes our presentation, and we'll open it up for questions. Mike, thank you. Council members, if you have any questions for Mr. Willem, if you could please sign in. We'll start off with Council Mayor Massotti. Thank you, Mike, for your presentation. I appreciate it. It looks like something that's great conceptually. I have some questions, though, on the financing. It comes to, I think, about $825,000 with your early action items. Is that a high estimate, low estimate, or what are you basing that on? We think it's a reasonable estimate for the tasks that we've identified, And it certainly leaves additional funds available to do other types of investment, whether there's some infrastructure components or there's some other identified needs. But we think it's realistic, and that's the way we approach it, to try to create something that could be tangibly adopted. Because I know you mentioned there's some possibility of putting buildings in floodplains and so forth like that, and I know that would be down in the future, but in its initial scope of work, would that be addressing those problems that might be happening, that would be created by starting this process? I think certainly with the floodplain issue, I mean, in all of them, I mean, we're looking at trying to, we've developed an approach here with these items to help either solve a problem or at least identify confidently so that the private sector understands what the condition is and what the circumstances are going to be moving forward, to bring some certainty by eliminating unknowns. Because that's the biggest fear that we've heard from the private sector, whether you're talking about a real estate developer or bankers, is how do we eliminate these unknowns? And so that's why we've targeted these things, because these are huge unknowns for the private sector. Because I know like underground utilities and, of course, the floodplain, those are big ticket items and millions of dollars of items that would have to be addressed. And you and I have worked on projects before where we've moved railroad tracks and done things of that nature, so we know how quickly those can escalate. And so you would be asking the government to come up with the $825,000. Is that what you're suggesting that is? Well, it's an option that you have. I think we're presenting this for consideration. Certainly these things can be discussed and vetted, but at the end of the day, we think these are legitimate opportunities for the city to invest in to make a statement for the district. To say what can be done, what cannot be done, and exactly how we're going to proceed on this plan. I see. Do we have any developers that have committed to the project? I know we talked about that last time, Council Member Stenet, that we were wondering who the developer was that was going to sign off on this. Has that been told to us yet? We have no new information. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mike and Cleet. This is a project that I have been interested in for a long time, as you know, probably. So I've spent enough time just kind of walking through the area and particularly trying to walk along the stream itself. And I want to say and emphasize the comment that you made that the stream is the key to this project. I absolutely agree with that. And I think everything that we do ought to be focused on what that stream does for this project. regardless of the streetscape or the utilities or floodplain and all that, I think the concept ought to start with the stream and what it can do to make this project absolutely outstanding. And I think it can be, but I think no matter what we do to the rest of the project, if we skimp on the stream itself and our ability to move along the stream, as the public should be able to in whatever form, I think we'd be making a mistake. And so I want to encourage that in terms of your work and also what the Council would look at. We've got to keep the stream in mind as the primary project. A couple of other questions. You've looked at the buildings along Manchester Street. Have you analyzed the buildings in terms of what needs to be preserved and what could or should be demolished? Have you looked at that and made some judgments there? We've looked at the buildings. Our scope didn't necessarily include a detailed evaluation of buildings, but I think from a level of importance, we certainly think that some of those historic buildings have a great deal of importance to the vibrancy and the long-term success of the district. And I want Cleet to maybe come up and speak to that. He is our urban designer. That's an excellent question. And I think if you look at the East District, for example, there's a lot of change that has gone on through the years, and a lot of the historic infrastructure has been lost in that area. The archaeological remnants are there. But there's an opportunity, I think, to dramatically transform the East District. And that framework plan that's included in the study makes suggestion for where infill development could occur. It talks about the pattern and scale of infill development. And there could be dramatic changes there that would be, we think, very appropriate. On the West District, where the pepper distillery is, that would be really a shame to lose that infrastructure. And some of that infrastructure is going to be sitting there, and it is not going to be reusable until, to your point, some of the stream issues and the floodway issues are resolved. And so I don't want to say the clock's ticking because it's not like that. Nobody's got a gun to anybody's head to make it happen. But in that area, that is a very precious resource of building stock, historic building stock, and it's very closely tied to the stream. Good. Thank you. The reason I ask that question is I think we have to be very careful not to assume that there are buildings that we can do without there, and preserving the historical consequences of those buildings is really important as part of the project as well. Thank you both. Thank you, Mr. Chair. thank you council member clark councilman rickay thank you chair and thank you for allowing me to speak even though i'm not a member of the committee um a couple questions mike about basically status so this is an outline or a summary of the full report does that complete the work that you were contracted to do with the city it's near completion we have we're wrapping up some of the details of the final report but it's very close And the report will be available at some fairly close future date? Yeah, that would be something that we would need to discuss with Derek and others internally with timing. But from our standpoint, I think within the next couple of weeks, we would be prepared to release it. Subject to any discussions with the city, you know, as to content. Perhaps I can ask the commissioner if he would weigh in on this. the summary is useful, but the full plan might be something that would be useful for this committee, perhaps, to look at or the whole council. I think we just need to make sure we have all the details covered to see the draft and see if there's anything in the draft that we didn't feel they covered appropriately. Same thing with this. When we got the first draft of this, we sort of tweaked the presentation. So I think it's just a similar sort of issue. So our goal is to get it as quickly as possible as well. Okay. Thank you. Then about kind of the impact, what you have here for critical early action is all basically additional plans with, I guess, implementation. They're all plans. So is there anything that is implementable at this point from the work that you've done? Well, what we've done, our feasibility study was a process aimed at identifying alternatives and defining a route so that it could be selected to move on to the next phase. And as a component of that, we've identified these other issues. Now, the 30 percent design would be actually that initial street trail preliminary plan. That's actually moving towards the design phase. But just taking it to 30 percent, not necessarily to completion, because there are a lot of other issues that need to be factored into that design process. Like we have to marry up the design of storm sewer infrastructure and new sewer infrastructure and make sure it's compatible with the proposed utility infrastructure. So there's got to be dialogue with utility companies in that process. And frankly, that's why almost I would say every single one of those items up there, they need to go in lockstep with one another. because they all interrelate. Well, actually, that was my next question. I was going to ask if any one of these is really critical, and I was just looking at the floodplain. Well, I guess you already answered the question, but I'll ask it anyway. It seems to me that that aspect of it is so determinative of what's really going to be possible in terms of development that it might be, in fact, more important. Is that not the case? We think that's certainly, that's probably one of the greatest of magnitude in terms of importance, the FEMA flood study update. Okay. I think that's my question, Mr. Chair. I know there are some people in the audience who have been working on this a long time, and at some point I know you're going to make an opportunity for them to speak. Thank you. Yes. We'll have public comment here after Council finishes asking their questions. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I guess to follow on Council Member's case, questions, or comments, what do you believe or have you considered the likelihood that the FEMA study would result in a change of that status, of the floodplain status? I mean, what do you think without that, the West End is, you know, not kind of? There are certain measures you can take with existing buildings with flood proofing, But I think given the magnitude of some of the flood depths, that's still a concern. There have been some initial efforts on behalf of the developer to look at this issue, and actually they had some conversations with, I think, the Army Corps of Engineers and with FEMA, and the sense was that if the FEMA flood study were processed to the fullest of it, that it would be required in order for FEMA to adopt it, that there could be some beneficial improvement that would actually enhance the viability of the West District. Would it eliminate the floodplain? It probably wouldn't eliminate it entirely, but it would make it more manageable. I think the challenge with the FEMA flood study and the revision of the floodplain mapping, it's the process. It is a very intense process, and when I say 18 to 24 months, I mean, it will take every bit of that because you're dealing with a federal agency and they scrutinize, especially when you're dealing with hydrology. It's one thing, the private sector, in my 29 years of experience, I've never seen a private developer take on a FEMA floodplain map revision that also involved a hydrology component. In other words, restudying the watershed to look at the actual runoff from that particular watershed as a component of the map revision request. That's usually handled at a higher level, not necessarily because a developer couldn't find an engineer to do it. It's just a very comprehensive effort, and it involves the entirety of the town branch watershed, where you're looking at all the downtown central business district. And where that water flows, right? That's the hydrology. Yeah, the watershed itself. And it would basically start, the study would begin somewhere up on Midland Avenue and then extend all the way down to just to the west of New Circle Road where the study would actually conclude. And it has to be calibrated and validated with an acceptable rain event. So we have to have a fairly sizable rain event, although we've had several of those over the years. But you have to have a rain event that you can actually calibrate to that the FEMA folks will accept to validate the adequacy of your model. So it's very complex and time-consuming. Did your study at all look at the need for environmental cleanup? I know that the property has been industrial zone and has been used for a lot of different businesses that probably have polluted the ground and surrounding areas. And so was that taken into consideration in any of these initial steps in planning? That's an excellent question. And, you know, we did some reviews of inventory records that were maybe held through, I guess, the Division of Water, historical records for spills and things of that nature. So we have some information to support that. We know that there are certain sites that might be more predisposed to that concern, and certainly that would be a factor. And one of the things that probably we will list as an action item, in fact, we have listed that as an action item to investigate that, and then hopefully promote use of some of the grant dollars that the city has and that we can actually procure through other state and federal agencies for remediation. Great. Was there much community or developer or business input from the actual surrounding neighborhoods or any of that, anyone around there interviewed as part of this study? There was. Certainly we spoke with the distillery district developer, Barry McNeese, on several occasions. We've also had conversations with other real estate professionals. We had a number of meetings with neighborhoods, like one-on-one meetings with neighborhood groups. We had one meeting literally in Pyramid Park on a picnic table with some very interested citizens there. And there was passion everywhere you went, whether you're talking to a neighbor, whether you're talking to a developer. Real estate people are very intrigued by this. project, this area, but again, I think the same question marks exist. How do we do it? How can we move this forward? How do we address some of these complex issues? And somebody has to lead it. That's going to be my very last question, but how do you think that the Newtown Pike extension factors into this at all, and will that alleviate some of the traffic that you mentioned of the heavy trucks and machinery and the road problems, and how that will affect the neighborhood? That's another important consideration. And one of the things that we, if you look up there, under Milestone 3 for street trail preliminary plan, we talk about request construction funding and pursue early action items to improve corridor character. One of the critical things that we see is the heavy truck traffic that goes through that area right now. It's very detrimental to some of the longer-term objectives for the district. Now, certainly it's a vital part of the district right now because that's the industry that's there. But you look at the dust, the high speeds of the trucks, it's just not conducive to a pedestrian-friendly walkable environment. And certainly at some point there will have to be some steps made to change that to try to promote redirection. So those are conversations that have to occur at some point. And we're saying it maybe should begin to occur somewhere within that next six to nine months so that we understand what steps might be implemented. Well, as you probably know, this is in my district, and so I, for many years, have actually followed this project and been very supportive and excited about the project, but having come on council now and learning all of the barriers and challenges that are, you know, the time that it's definitely going to take to come to realization, I understand that a lot better now. And so I guess my, to still be a champion for the project as much as I can be, my last question is what will be the next steps for council and what can we do to help move this forward? And I guess what can we do, Chair, with the remaining 2.2 of the TIF or what, you know, what is allowable under that to be used? That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Here's where I think we're at today before I open up for a public comment on this issue. I think, first of all, we need the full final report delivered to this committee because the council is the one that started this process, allocated the money during a November 2009 meeting. I remember finally sitting there having this the same discussion. Yes, finally. But I think that report needs to get to council post-haste. as soon as you get your calculations done, deliver it to this committee so we can actually have the report and make a decision. Also, what I think needs to happen in working with Commissioner Pulse and the administration, we need to figure out what is feasible to include in this year's budget, or do we include anything? And if we don't include anything and keep this project moving, we need to have a serious discussion about returning the $1.7 million, which is left, to the fund balance and to another project, because we have critical needs out there, and we need to make a decision. If we're not going to spend it immediately, then I think we need to make a decision on what we can spend it on and allocate a bond in the future to get whatever piece of this we need to get done. So working with the administration, once we get the final report, we can make that decision because now is a good time that we're in budget season and we need to reallocate. Is that fair, Commissioner Paulson, assessment going forward after today? We'll get the report, the full report, and be able to meet with the administration. Yes, I think you've kind of got a good plan there. We'll get you to report as quickly as we can, and then I think we need to make those decisions about how we invest public money in these public infrastructure places. I think these are really good. They've done a really good job of pulling out the issues for moving forward and some good key areas that we can invest in, and we just need to make that decision collaboratively about how best we can make that investment. I think, Mike, you all did a great job giving us a lot to chew on today, and this is just a snapshot of the whole report. So if it's okay with council, we'll keep it in committee, and when we get the full report, we'll work with the administration and make a determination of how to move forward either with these action items or the whole thing and whatever we need to do to keep it moving. Thank you, Mike. I do have, I know one person would like to speak on this issue, Mr. Pettit. You want to come up and you have your normal three minutes, as we've explained in the past, unless you have someone to allocate additional time to you. But I know you have some comments on this particular issue. If there's anyone else, just please let me know on this issue. Thank you very much. Van Meter Pettit, Town Branch Trail. We're very thrilled that this is moving forward. We want the largest picture to be in mind for everyone as we discuss this. It was recently reported that, you know, we have a lot of trails, but there's a lack of continuity. and this is a building block of that citywide continuity. I like to say that we are the capital of the bluegrass and we need to live the brand. This creek is the center watershed of our city. We've got 200 years of history that's informing that floodplain. And the lack of flood study has really held us up. and by whatever means all the very, very smart people that work in the government and with the government can find, whether it's state water resources or I don't know where a grant might come from, but it's really, really hard to expect private investment in a place where we haven't even defined the floodplain. And that floodplain has been created by 200 years of development, which is basically the history of our city. So I think that it's kind of, that's been a real impediment to moving forward. I just hope that everybody can get out their creativity genes and make this happen because we're not going to see private investment until that floodplain is done. And the other thing is TIF districts imply that they are so neglected and so short of investment that there is a need for public outlay that can be recouped, by the way. That's the other special thing about TIFs is that we're not just putting good money into our city. We're putting in good money that over time can be recouped. That's a big distinction. that I think sometimes gets lost. And the other thing about the TIF district is that, you know, it is also where it is because the future of downtown Lexington essentially is to this west. I mean, there's a lot of infill we can still do in our center business district, but this is where we can go. So we're not just improving a nice neighborhood and a nice district. we're actually plotting out the next 50 to 100 years of development for the city. And if we're too stingy on the front end here, we're really just hurting our long-term growth prospects. That's all I've got. Thank you. Very good. Anyone else on this issue? Okay. We'll keep it. Thank you all for the report. And we'll keep this in committee and work with the administration to move forward on the best action plan. Next on our agenda today is the Greenway Maintenance Program update. Who's going to take the lead on this one? Okay, Susan Bush, welcome. Thank you, Chairman Stennett, Council members. Last year, the committee requested and received an overview of the Greenway Program, and as a result of that presentation, the committee asked us to go back and formulate some recommendations to the committee on some of the important aspects of the Greenway program. To do that, we formed a Greenway committee. We involved all the divisions that have any involvement with Greenways in that, and we've been working over the past several months to come up with these recommendations that Chris Cooperrider and I will be sharing with the committee today. Steve, if you can start our countdown for us. Not that I'm rushing you. Yeah, no pressure there. I can see. Okay, just to give you a quick snapshot of where we are with the current Greenway program, We're currently managing 870 acres, which contains 24.5 miles of Greenway Trail. Significantly, there is 164 acres of Greenway which are recorded on plats, which are pending our acquisition. However, as you all may remember, we have delayed that acquisition until we could come up with a solid maintenance plan for these and budgetary issues issues so that we could address that. There's another 370 acres that are out there that are part of the floodplain, will be part of the stormwater management system, and that will come into the system at future developments over time. The total greenway acreage we could be managing under this program is 1,400 acres, so that's quite sizable and we're a little over halfway there. Just to give you an idea of what the committee worked on, we We looked at the three critical areas that would promote an effective Greenway program, and those are listed there. And this is also what I'm going to go over with the recommendation in each of these areas for the committee so that we can improve and streamline our program. First of all, policies and procedures. The first recommendation is that we adopt a Greenway manual. That manual embodies all the policies and procedures for Greenways, from acquisition through development and long-term maintenance. You all may recall we have a 2006 draft of this manual. The committee worked to do necessary revisions and updates to this manual. I would expect the committee will see that manual this July for your consideration and adoption. The second recommendation is to create a Greenway coordinator role. this will be a central role for an individual that will have overall management responsibilities for the greenway program. And I've listed there some of the significant duties that this position would have. Significantly is the development greenway management plans for the greenways. Also, I want to point out that the committee is recommending that this position report to the planning commissioner and Commissioner Paulson has been advised and does concur with this recommendation. And the last and significant recommendation is on maintenance, and I suspect as Council members this is the subject of a lot of the citizens' calls you receive is question about our maintenance program. Clearly we want a maintenance program that can achieve the goals that you see here so we can have consistent maintenance of our greenway program and a basis to project budgets going forward. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to Chris Cooperrider because the recommendation here is to consolidate all the maintenance for greenways under our Division of Parks. And we do have a budget request for greenway maintenance this year, and so Chris is going to give you some more information on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members for receiving this information today. As Susan mentioned, what we're looking at is... Let me get this wrong button. What we're looking at in terms of maintenance is three different types of activities that occurs in greenways. And to understand greenway maintenance, I'd like to provide you just a quick overview of those three different types. The first type is conservation greenways, and that type is intended mainly to improve wildlife habitat, water quality, and create travel corridors for wildlife species. Besides conservation maintenance, we have trail maintenance, and one trail that we know and love dearly is Legacy Trail. Not all trails occur in greenways. However, we have several within the community that interconnect the community and provide alternative transportation such as bicycling, rollerblades, or walking, and they're very popular. The third type of maintenance is actually within parks and can be a multitude of managed spaces. It can be green field spaces used for pickup play. It can be wooded settings, and it can be naturalized areas with little maintenance. What I want to talk about first is conservation maintenance and what we are currently doing in this area of conservation maintenance on greenways. There's $125,000 from the Water Quality Fund that is managed by the Division of Engineering. Currently, we are working with a little over 60 acres. We're actively managing for invasive species removal, native plants installation, and also managing grass trails. This is done through a contract service. In the Division of Parks, we have management over the turf maintenance mowing contract. As part of that contract, we assist in this endeavor by mowing some of the conservation greenways, primarily where the greenways would intersect roadways. Current trail maintenance on greenways is illustrated as an example in 2012. We have $30,000 within our budget dedicated towards greenway trails. That came from the Division of Engineering a couple years ago. Besides the $30,000 that we have dedicated in our general fund budget, in 2012 we spent a little over 800 man hours on greenway trails and a little over $1,500 from our general funds, repairs and maintenance accounts. We have used volunteer efforts and support. As an example, in 2012, we have over 15 groups maintaining natural gardens along Legacy Trail, and we managed over seven project cleanup groups or bush honeysuckle cutback groups in 2012. So we're really looking for all types of resources to make this possible. The third type of maintenance occurs within parks. And what came to our attention in the past several months of conversation is actually of the 870 acres, 500 of that 870 is within parks. And we manage it as part of our park system. As you can see on the slide here, one of the loved areas or known areas is over at Veterans Park, known affectionately as the Salgue Bottom. And many practice games, lacrosse, football, baseball, would do pick-up practice, pick-up play. Those areas are subject to flooding, so we have to maintain it just in a turf state that is resistant to erosion. in approaching the maintenance request this year what we looked at was to develop unit price unit prices on typical maintenance activities and then you can see on the slide there many of these activities are listed and several of them are a good estimate based upon this past year's contracts such as mowing bush brush haul cutbacks and honeysuckle removal those are from actual contracts some other cost unit cost estimates are from contractors that provided us general estimates such as honeysuckle removal other items are for tree care and fence repair and those are sites unique to each site that we would manage and what I want to try to illustrate about the unit cost is the fact that many of these items have legitimate real reasonable numbers to support them but what we really need and what I want to suggest to carry this program to full completion is we really need to have a management plan on each site realizing that we need to have a management plan on each site we decided to approach the budget request in an incremental fashion what we looked at in this upcoming fiscal year is a request as susan said already for 117 000 the majority of the request is for contract professional services we'd use for mowing brush hog mowing honeysuckle removal and naturalizing. The other items are for everyday expendables, such as mutt mitts and trash bags and trail sweeping. We currently, as I mentioned earlier, within our trail maintenance aspect, have over 800 man hours that we expended in 2012. And what we anticipate is that we need some additional seasonal labor to augment that activity to take on all greenways. So as mentioned already in the 2014 budget request, we are looking at $117,000. We think this is a good start, an incremental start, a reasonable start to take on maintenance of greenways. With that, I conclude and ask for any comments or questions that Susan and I may be able to answer. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it, Chris. Councilor Massati, you're first up. Thank you, Chris. Real quick question. You said that one field at Veterans Park was called Soggy Bottoms. Yes. The reason it is is because is it in a floodplain? Correct. It is in a floodplain. Do you guys maintain it by having the kids not play on it, or do you pull the surface up, put like a rock underneath of it, and maybe some kind of a sand or drainage, and then regrade it? Is that what you do? We maintain that particular area just by mowing it, turf mowing. It's big, flat field space. So it doesn't get in that bad of shape where they can't play on that. It does flood from time to time, and we'd have to wait for it to dry out to mow it again. But as long as we keep it at a mowed turf setting, it's heavily used. And that's a premium here in Lexington is to have flat field space. What we can't do, and that's why I wanted to mention that, it does flood from time to time. What we can do in that particular setting is put in a skin baseball field because that would erode away. So we need something that can resist. I just wondered if you could do something on a more permanent basis, like I was suggesting. Maybe underneath of it, pull that grass up, that side, put some rock for drainage, and then... Yeah, that's just a local name I picked up from working around the park. It's really on the flood plain. And as in the last presentation, part of the flood zone actually to stop that flooding issue is much more intense than what it's really worth. Right. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Chair. Chris, I'm interested in the cooperation between environmental quality and parks and recreation. You all obviously are working together on that. Yes. And what is that partnership? If you could explain that. Really in the ad hoc group, we have the Division of Engineering, Division of Planning, Environmental Quality, Parks and Recreation, and Streets and Roads. And it really was an offshoot that Susan, as an acting commissioner, agreed to lead several months ago. And we came together. And it makes sense to have these different entities together because planning, obviously, there's a component that's important to the program. and that's why we recommend the Greenways Coordinator. On the maintenance side, it seemed, as we went forward, that Parks and Recreation has most of the skill sets to make this a reality, to manage the maintenance of the Greenways. So what we did was to sit down and look at these unit costs with Division of Engineering, Division of Planning, and tried, again, without the maintenance plan, and tried to come up with a reasonable approach to ask for additional funding in FY14. I see. So how has the work been paid for to date, and who has been paying that, Chris? Of the three, and that's what I wanted to break up, and that's a good question. That's why I wanted to ask you. Of the three different types of maintenance, conservation maintenance is done only with the Division of, or I'm sorry, Water Quality Fund, and it's managed with Keith Levin through engineering for the contract source for naturalization, and then we, as mentioned, do the turf mowing with the Division of Water Quality Fund. That said, there's no other maintenance done on the conservation. On parks, and that's why I wanted to clarify, on the parks, greenways, acres, that is part of our operating budget, and that is not considered in this budget request, the greenways that are within parks. What's really considered are the greenways for conservation and the greenways that's associated with trails. Okay, good. I have a question for Susan, if she's available. Susan, I'd like to ask the idea of a Greenway coordinator. It sounds good to me. Can this position be absorbed somehow in the organization as it exists now? Reassignment or whatever it would take. It's a budget question. That is the plan right now, is that we did, as a committee, come up with a list of, a robust list of duties for this position. But for the time being, Commissioner Paulson has agreed to reach out to existing staff and assign this responsibility, at least in part, to get the ball rolling. Okay. That's what I was interested in. Thank you both. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Good question. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Susan. I know this is growing every year. We seem to be accumulating more and more property. I just have one quick question, though. Well, I wanted to clarify. You said 800 man hours. That's total, correct? That's total. Yes, that is total. And then the acreage that Susan mentioned is total also miles plus the acreage, right? Correct. That's currently what we own. Now, because we know bush honeysuckle is a problem everywhere. And I know we've worked on projects before in parks. But that's why I wanted to ask, if it's a longer greenway, how do you identify when to remove it it would be on public property correct the bush honeysuckle removal would be on public property and what we anticipate doing with that particular aspect of management is the first year is to just as example let's say we would cut 25 acres of bush honeysuckle to really eradicate it and keep it out we feel it's going to be a three-year process with each year for that same acre would have less intensity, less cost, so we would just continue to expand our bush honeysuckle removal program over the course of time, and ultimately, I will say get rid of it all because there's seed source on private land, which we can't touch, but we greatly impact it and convert it into a natural state. How do you remove it so it won't come back? Do you treat it or pull it? There's two different methods we could use. Obviously cut it on both methods, but one method is to use equipment, whether it's manual equipment, which is more difficult or mechanical to remove the roots. And the other method is to use a post-emergent herbicide spray on the stump to kill the stump. And that's what we use most often. It's effective, it's lower cost, and we tend to get better results. Right. And most of the work would be done by contractors? The budget request, most of the work would be done by contractors. We would do some in-house as well, and we have done some in the past year. So a combination? Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Hanson. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. Chris, I've had a specific issue that I've been interested in for a while, We've had some conversations about the mowing and the impact that it has on the trees that already exist. I think we've made some progress on that, but I would like you to comment if you would. The issue has been that when the people who mow are not sufficiently careful, when grass grows really near trees, they tend to start scalping those trees, and there's a lot of damage. That happens more, I think, in the medias and so on. But I'm curious if you have some policies or some way to ensure that when there is mowing in these greenways around trees, bushes, et cetera, that it's done with the appropriate care. That's a very good question. And as you mentioned, it came to our attention very much so the past several months. And we've taken several steps to focus on tree care. What we're looking at doing is to mulch around trees with some of our internal crews. and we've identified some existing funding to help us along those efforts. It is a relative drop in the bucket overall, but at least we're making the steps forward. In addition to that, we want to roll out a new program that's very similar to what we do with bush honeysuckle removal where we engage neighborhood associations on volunteer efforts to remove the bush honeysuckle. We want to use that model with mulching around neighborhood park trees to engage neighborhoods, use that volunteer labor along with the buy-in that they have in their part. We would supply a couple personnel with expertise of proper mulching because you have to be careful with that as well, and to start, again, using volunteers. We have been in conversation with the gentleman who brought that to our attention, Dr. Kimmerer, on several different regards to advise us on different practices that we can do. And I do want to share that this past month, for the third time in a year, we had a meeting with our contract mowers to go over the issue, not just of tree damage, but just lawn care in general and doing a good job for us. So our contractors are very aware of it, our employees are very aware of it, and we are taking steps forward. Okay, and I know that this is not about medians, it's more about greenways, but I'm encouraged that you're paying attention to the medians as well. Without going into detail, I'll just tell you that it's still an issue that I can see visually when I travel in my own neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman McKay. Councilman Acres. Hi, Chris. Thanks, Chair. A quick question. Why would the proposed Greenway Coordinator position not report to Parks and Rec instead of planning? We went over all the duties to the Greenway Coordinator, and I'm going by memory. There's about 12 different duties, and the bulk of the duties were oriented towards planning. In other words, what we want to avoid is when the developers build out a subdivision, usually there's greenways, not usually. Often there's greenways included, and that greenway, prior to acceptance for us, often becomes their dump site. So part of that planning stage is it's critical for us that the coordinator would be working with the developer to make sure that when we did receive that piece of property, that greenway acreage, it's in good condition. That makes actually perfect sense. And then leads me to my next thought, was that this seems to marry itself well to the position that manages our PDR program and how those seem like similar job duties. And so I just think maybe we might be able to merge those instead of creating an entirely new position. Just a suggestion. Thank you. Thank you. Councilors, anyone else have any questions for Chris? I just want to say thank you, Jerry, Chris, Susan, for all sticking around. I know we're at the end of our meeting here, but thank you all for bringing this forward. I know I've been one of the ones asking for this for quite some time. It seems like we would build a trail and then call Parks up the next day and say, hey, you've got to start mowing it. Go find some money. So to that issue, how are we budgeting this going forward? When we build a new trail, and you all may not be able to answer it, are we budgeting in the future maintenance costs in that capital project? Or who's accounting for that rather than just getting a phone call one day to Jerry and saying, hey, you've got to start mowing it? Because that's part of this issue. That's a very good question, and hopefully part of this budget request will address that because that's what we're looking at is existing trails. And that was the critical element of developing a unit cost so we can understand as we build new for every X mile trail or greenway, acreage, it would be X number of costs. That's why we approached it in that fashion. Because we need to start budgeting if we're going to take over these new things and add to them. The other issue is, like Kennewood Park, for instance, we have half the park is a retention basin that can't be used for anything but water retention. Who is paying for that cost to mow that? Is parks beating that, or is engine stormwater fee paying for that? That particular one, I believe, is ours. I would have to look to find them. I mean, those are things we need to start. Pleasant Ridge Park is the same problem. We have a retention basin, but Parks is paying for the mowing. But maybe the stormwater fee in the future should start paying for some of those things. I can tell you this. There are many acres that we manage the mowing for and is paid by the Water Quality Fund. Specifically in those two examples, I don't know. But being in a park, I suspect we are probably paying for it all. because we generally go by property, you know, designate by property lines, who pays for it. We tend not to break apart existing parcels. Well, thank you. We look forward to changes going forward. All right. Thank you. Council members, the next item on our agenda is our monthly financials. We won't go through those unless anyone has a question. They're more for information only. We'll try to hit those quarterly a little more in depth, but they're just more for record keeping and for information only in there. The last item on our agenda before we get the items referred, we do have, let's see, yeah, we do have the floors open for any public comment for items not on the agenda. And I have one person signed up that would like to address the council. Ms. Stites, welcome. If you'll give us your name and address, then you have three minutes. My name is Katie Stites. The address I'm speaking of is 386 Waller Avenue. My personal address is 215 McDowell Road. I have put together some packets with photos of the problem of the drainage ditch at 386 Waller Avenue. I have been working with the city since 2011, asking for their help. The water backflows over the sidewalk onto my property, number one. Number two, ATS Construction added a middle turn lane on Waller Avenue some years ago, and when they widened that, they disturbed the dirt, et cetera. So now the dirt goes up and down in the ditch, and the water cannot flow into the stormwater pipe. The situation has become urgent because the city has dinged me and asked me to repair 600 feet of sidewalk that borders this ditch. The sidewalk is on my private property. The ditch is 100% owned by the city. I had a survey done just for this reason with the markers there so anyone from the city could come and see the markers, which shows that the ditch is entirely owned by the city. The city has already dug out the ditch of my neighbors at 330 and 342 Waller Avenue, but they stopped short of doing mine. In this package, you'll see the photos of how they dealt with my neighbor's problem, drainage problem, but mine wasn't. And honestly, I have work I want to do on my property. I have repairs I want to do. I want to replace the apron, a 32-foot wide apron that allows people to come onto my property to drive onto the parking lot. Also, there is a handicap bridge that the city has named me to replace by June the 23rd. And I can't do all this concrete work and then the city come later and do the ditch work because it's going to, it'll crack and cause trouble with the concrete, number one. Number two, I need the city to tell me where's the ditch supposed to be so that when I tear out the apron, then we know at what elevation to place that stormwater pipe back because the apron lies over the stormwater pipe. So I really need the city to make a decision on this. According to the Ordinance 16-88 that was referred to me, it states that the landlord is responsible for the ditch if the ditch is wholly or partially on the landlord's property. That means that this ordinance doesn't apply to me and I'm not responsible for doing the repairs because the ditch in no way lies on my property. And I'm here today to ask to see if the city could address this issue. Also, it would just take a small amount of money to correct the problem so I can go on and get my repairs done. And I have paid $1,200 a year since May 2009. So that would total $4,800 I have paid for the water quality drainage fee. So if you could please consider using that money that I've already paid to correct the ditch problem. Or number two, is there another funds, et cetera, that the city might have that they could come and get the backhoe over there and so we can get started on this so I can then do my work. I have forgiven my name and telephone number to a number of you. If there's anything that I can do or any information that I can provide that will assist you in making this decision and moving it along, I would be more than happy to provide you with that. Thank you, Ms. Stites. We appreciate it. You want to leave the packets for us? You can start down here. And just so my colleagues, just so you know, one, the drainage ditch ordinance will be on our next month's agenda to review that ordinance from the city as a whole, as well as the administration is meeting tomorrow on this particular specific issue. So we'll hear more back before the committee next month. Any other public comment for items not on our agenda today? Before we adjourn, I just want to go through quickly on the committee referrals. The capacity analysis, that will stay in committee, and those ordinances actually will be coming to the full council sometime soon because we have to pass those before July 1, if you remember. Waste management funding options, we put that on hold until we get an update on our billing system for Lelixer bills. Consolidated Greenway responsibility we heard today. UK game day. Does anyone wish to keep that in committee at this time? If not, I need a motion to remove that. We don't have any other background information on that item. Does anyone wish to keep it, or do we want to dig up more information and see why it's in here in the first place? Vice Mayor Gordon? Just if I could offer, this apparently came from the environmental quality link from the last budget cycle, so perhaps someone could research from the link what the question is. It looks like it's a revenue-related question, and keep it in here. Okay. That works because the Waste Management Task Force is not addressing that issue. The second, the bulky item collection, will be in a future committee meeting. Division of Water Quality Construction Process will actually have in May on the May agenda. And Power Lexington will stay in here for updates, as well as the public education effectiveness will stay in here as well. We just heard the distillery district today will keep that in here. And then drainage maintenance issues will also be on next month's agenda. and the final item will be the solid waste GPS system will also be on the May agenda. Is there any other business to come before the council or changes to the items in committee? Do I have a motion to adjourn? I have a motion to adjourn. Motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. We're adjourned until 201. Thank you. I'm out.