Music All right. Welcome, everybody. I will call the meeting to order. This is a meeting of the work session of the council. and first on our agenda is a public comment for issues on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, is anybody? Mr. Mundy, I don't have anyone signed up for issues on the agenda, so that allows us to move on to requested rezonings or docket approval. There's no council meeting this week, so there's no docket approval required. That allows us to move on to the approval of the summary. Is there a motion? Move for approval. Second. All right. Motion by Council Member Stennett. A quick second by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is budget amendments. There are no budget amendments today, so that allows us to move on to new business. Is there a new business? Second. Motion to approve. That was a... See, I'm going to give that one to Council Member Beard. Council Member Ellinger. That was a rush to the finish line there. Motion to approve by Council Member Beard, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. on business item letter C in regards to the U.K. Opera Theater and the Family Care Center. I move to remove this from the new business items. I've talked with Commissioner Beth Mills. Craig Benz is here to provide clarification. But I move to remove. All right. Councilman Ford, can you say that one more time, please? I'm sorry, Mayor. Business item number C, authorization to execute agreement with the U.K. Opera Theater for a performance at the Family Care Center. I make a motion to remove that from new business items. Second. There's a motion to remove item C. There's a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Any further discussion? on the motion. All right. Then if there is none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Moving right along. We have in continuing business and presentations, the first NDFs. There's a motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Massadi. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on the agenda is a summary of the Committee of the Whole meeting on August 29th by Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. The Committee of the Whole met on August 27th. We had four items in the agenda. The first item was the blue sheet process. Meredith Nelson, our Council Clerk, provided an overview of the administrative blue sheet process and types of legislative items for Councilmembers in attendance. The next item was the job description work group recommendations. I provided an overview of the work group discussions. We recommended to the council that we create a budget analyst senior position for the council office. I made a motion, and I'll move this forward with recommendation one and move the position budget analyst senior to the full council, so moved. Second. It's a motion by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Henson. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. The work group discussed several options for the front desk position, ultimately decided to fund a security officer position to serve as a council representative. I made a motion, and I'll move this forward for recommendation two and to hire a security officer position with which security will hire and manage. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Ellinger. Second by Council Member Henson. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? No, no. All right, let's do an electronic vote then. All in favor, please indicate by voting electronically. All right. All right. The vote reflects the passage of the motion. Thank you, Mayor. The third item was the Council calendar. Councilman Myers commented on the requested calendar changes. a motion by Councilman Reyers that the annual council calendar be distributed to all council members by the third week in October, so moved. Motion by Councilman Ellinger, is there a second? Second by Councilman Massadi. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right, Councilman Beard. I guess I didn't bring this up when we were actually discussing this at the Cal, but why Why so early? Why not November? I'd like Council Member Myers, who brought this, to give the rationale behind this if you'd like to. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We actually discussed that in the meeting, and the council administrator had looked at the last couple years when she put the council calendar together, and when the last date was that she got information, and we settled on that date, she said that would work for her. So the purpose is just to get it out. It seems like every year there's different iterations of the council calendar once we get the draft. And it stretches out to the end. It just gives us an opportunity to get it done and get it out of the way. What if some of the various and sundry organizations that we grace at dinners and things of that sort haven't made their decisions yet as to timing and such? That's what I was saying when we went through that discussion in the meeting. she made it clear that that's not the case, that this date will work. Okay, that's fine. Thank you. All right, is there any further discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. There was discussion about adding a quarterly public hearing to the Council of Vice Mayor Gordon to state that the legal opinion was that if Council wanted to do this, they should add one per month or one every other month due to the timing issues with notices from the Planning Commission. A motion by Council Member Akers to add a public hearing in full meeting months at 4 p.m. So moved. Motion by Council Member Ellinger and second by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Hearing none, we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. There was discussion about the switching standing committee start times annually. Council decided to leave the Budget and Finance Committee and the Economic Development Committee at 1. There was a motion to switch this, and it actually failed 7-7. Then there was a motion to reconsider, and then that passed. And then they did not have here in the summary, but there should have been also a motion that did pass to switch standing committee start times annually except for budget and finance and the economic development, and I will move that forward. So moved. Second. Motion by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Myers. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, then we can take a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. And the fourth item, there is agreement to ask Connie Underwood to prepare a preliminary fiscal year 2013 to fund balance estimate for council as soon as possible. And there's a motion by Council Member Stendham to adjourn. And this passed without dissent. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. All right. That allows us to move on to council reports. Please sign up for council reports. Council Member. All right, Council Member Ford. Thank you, Mayor. Council Members, I sent an e-mail. Hopefully you guys got it last night. I'm going to yield my council report time and bring forth a constituent of mine, Mr. Danny Meyer, who will utilize these moments to introduce you to Community Engagement Initiative, if the council will so welcome him. All right. Mr. Danny Meyer. Did I just push the button for the push button so I can go forward? Right, Danny. Thanks, Chris, for allowing me the time to speak in front of council today. and to apologize in advance for taking 30 to 45 seconds too long. Council Mayor, I am Danny Mayer, a 10-year resident of the Northside, residing for the past six years in the 1st District. I am also a faculty member at Bluegrass Community Technical College, an urban walker, a paddler, a Lex Tran user, and publisher of free monthly print community newspaper, North of Center. In March of this year, acting as editor of that paper, I issued a Mayor's Challenge design competition. Okay, I'll just count back to you. For a portion of roughly half-acre city-owned surface parking lot that sits across from the downtown Lex Tran Station and behind the main street facing City Hall, downtown library, Kentucky Theater, and licensed registration buildings. The competition asked specifically for local class design plans for transforming the space and staying within a budget of $70,000. The idea for the challenge grew from the city's new interest in reclaiming underused urban space and for its appeal to create a commons to be utilized by the public. The challenge literally chooses its design site as the cartographic overlay of the clean and carved scape revising town branch development blocks. This Mayor's Challenge did stimulate a significant change from the ORF design. The MLK Viaduct had to stay and be incorporated. Our perspective was local. One, tearing down and rebuilding a bridge is terribly expensive. Two, the MLK Viaduct is an important north side connector to UK where MLK dead ends. Closing it will force north-south bikers and cars onto heavier traffic and narrower rows and limestone streets. The mayor's challenge design stakes out four design spaces with $9,000 in supplemental money to entice city workers with LexTran passes and or to stimulate city leader residents to take LexTran. The most important, cheapest, and possibly easiest thing to do is to free LexTran. Currently, those getting on or off the bus at our downtown station, People like me, who lovingly lug a two-year-old a half mile to be there, have our exits to Maine woefully aborted. To cross heavily trafficked and fast-moving vine, I must either cross at Limestone or in a street I forget its name before Rose. The man crossing the street in the picture made you what the city's bike and ped committee had in mind this past summer when they observed the viaduct needed city attention. Phase 1 of the mayor plan calls for cutting a 5-foot opening in the concrete barricades, painting a crosswalk, and allowing pedestrians to cross Vine there, under the shelter provided by the viaduct. I've asked a couple of engineers who claim it to be a simple $5,000 job. I've doubled that number just in case. If the city were really interested, though I haven't budgeted it, a pedestrian stoplight to slow traffic at the point of Vine would help ensure our public transit users' safety, but also slow traffic. And where will these LexTran users travel with their newfound freedom? A food truck pavilion located away from residential, out of view from brick-and-mortar restaurants, nearby large buildings filled with workers, and across from a station that sees 35,000 people bored and alight weekly. When I contacted him, Sean Tibbetts of the Food Truck Association said he'd definitely be interested. The $8,000 would go to provide basic seating and event money for public gatherings held on-site in warmer weather, most likely music, but other things too. Leaving the food truck pavilion, the design calls for the muraling of the small path that runs alongside the viaduct. The money would go to 8 to 10 artists to redo this walkway in the food truck pavilion. Some will collaborate on a regionally focused mural detailing the area's history in four to five separate individual artist panels. You can see those. They're sort of the dark shapes on the right-hand side. They're big, long concrete blocks. Non-thematic panels, as viewed in the picture on your left, might also appear lower on the path walls. I already have agreements to work from the following artists. To ensure that NOC interests don't crowd out other artists' possibilities, the idea is to open this up to other artists if the City Hall takes it seriously. This would mean $2,500 to $5,000 per artist for supplies and payment, depending on how many more artists come on board. All right, and this part will be quick. I apologize. Those involved currently, ArtistWise, who have said that they would be interested and are supportive of the project include Blake Eames and Claudia Michler, who have been featured actually also in North of Santa and a number of other places, for their watershed designs. Next, Denise Brown, who I came across through a wonderful Lexington Herald Leader article, who would be, I think, a much-needed voice in the city for Native and African American artistic perspectives. I would love her to have her do a mural of early Lexington history. Ken Minter and Christopher Epling are both ones, I guess, no longer up and coming, but has been a mainstay. Ken Minter and his Lexington Graphic Landscapes, and also Christopher Epling. His work has appeared in not just Northwest Center, but also places like the Kentucky Colonel. And just yesterday I found out that, or Joel Pett informed me that he would be interested in designing a frame, and by the advice of Kermena Todorov and Kurt Goethe, they've suggested trying to pair him up with an anonymous graffiti artist. and last things, I'm sorry, to connect the plan back into the common grid, the last phase calls for a heavy green screening of Vine Street in place of the two-wide sidewalk there and the reclamation of the northwest side of the surface lot to be turned into a permaculture path. The idea is to extend the pedestrian activity away from Vine Street and inward to Water Street where it might extend naturally to Phoenix Park. Rebecca Glasscock, along with watershed advocate Ken Cook and watershed crew owner Chris Sullivan will be joining me for a more extended hour-long session at Al's Bar tonight at 7. You are all invited. At the talk, Rebecca can tell you about her work getting certified in permaculture or her work with DCTC's Piecemeal Gardens, a several-acre patch of land she oversees at my college's Lee's Town Campus. Thanks for letting me talk. How far over did I go? Thanks, Danny. Thanks very much. And Chris? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Counselor. I just appreciate Danny engaging our council office to bring this forward. As you guys can relate, there's a lot of energy across our city, and when they have the opportunity to let us know their activity, it's always good. Thank you, Mayor. Shout out to North of Center. Always creative and often provocative as well. Appreciate it. And a great legacy and history of gazettes in our country. All right, anybody else? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say I was downstairs in your office with a conversation down there. I was a little bit late getting into this meeting, but I just wanted to say to our staff that I'm sorry that I missed the vote on bringing a security guard to our floor. I think it's very important that we do that. And I think in light of what we see happen yesterday at the Naval Yard, it just brings it home that when those kinds of things happen, it's not going to be the 15 of us sitting around here that's on the floor most likely. It's going to be our staff that's up there and the rest of the employees in this building. So all we can do to improve the security in this building, I'm all for. And that's why our employees know that I support them. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Myers. Any other council members? Councilman Beard. I believe there is a meeting tomorrow at Kentucky Theater concerning Rupp Arena and some of the area he was discussing on town branch. What is it? That's what I was going to ask you. What is the time? I believe it's 4.30 or 5. I'm not sure, but we'll find out. 4.30 to 5? 4.30 or 5. Or 5. Yeah. Beginning. Yeah. I'm not sure. It's 4.30. Starting at 4.30. Okay. Yes, sir. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Councilman Beard. All right. There's no mayor's report today. Oh, all right. Council Member Lawless, I didn't see you on there. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to ask a question about your proposal, if you don't mind. I think I'd like to know more about it, but it seems real exciting. I'm curious about the 45 parking spots. Where would those be? Those would come from, if you were to look at the way I'm imagining it would be the northwest part of that parking area. So the actual entire site, as I understood it from the city's maps, that viaduct bisects that parking lot. And so the parts that would be taken away would be a strip on one side of that parking lot that would be, if you were on MLK, looking towards Limestone Street. Does that make sense? it probably makes a lot of sense but i'm direction here if you look on the mayor's challenge the big picture if you were to imagine that brooke you would look at the strip on the right hand side on the upper right picture you see that the it's a shot underneath the the viaduct and there is a strip of parking areas on the left and parking spots on the right-hand side okay and so why would there be a loss of parking that strip on the on the right-hand side leaving the mlk viaduct going towards say phoenix park if you would follow that strip this this picture here isn't a good example of if you go to the second picture all the way back in the beginning yeah so that picture in the upper right if you were to sort of take the um right hand side sort of there's a small little cut through street that goes towards phoenix park well the directing traffic the idea being to direct traffic that way so that what we're going to be taking away are the parking spots from directly underneath the viaduct on the back right hand side of that parking lot as that whole strip would go down towards that Phoenix Park let out, if you will. So those spots, including underneath the parking viaduct, I think I counted 45. I've also kind of been checking out on the city usually around 9, 9.15, 9.30 when I'm back in that area for the bus routes. And there's routinely about 7 to 10 spots that are open there, plus the new parking deck. I've never seen it with less than 80 in the couple of times that I've seen it in the new lights where they shine and tell you how many spots are there. Usually it's been around 90 to 105. So I feel like there's places they could go, and I also feel like maybe if the city could get behind public transit and try to encourage city workers by subsidizing it in some sense and having that be part of the plan to increase ridership. And to make it more appealing, I think that Colt Trolley's been really successful, and people have realized that public transportation is a good thing. Okay, thank you. All right, thanks again, Danny. All right, Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out this weekend. On Sunday, I participated in the Town Branch Creek cleanup that was sponsored by the Fade Alliance and the Bourbon Review. We had probably 20, 25 volunteers. We cleaned out a ton of honeysuckle grapevines along the banks of the creek on both sides. before we started on Sunday, you could barely see the creek from behind the pepper distillery. When we finished, you could see the creek, you could cross the bridge, and you could walk on the other side of it. So there were chainsaws and clippers, a few injuries. But all in all, it was a great day. We had lots of, again, volunteers, people who care about our creeks and our trails and the distillery district itself. And then Alltech, I want to thank them also. So they sponsored a cookout for all of the volunteers afterwards. So thank you to everybody involved. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Rekers. All right. I already mentioned that there is no mayor's report. Is anyone here to speak to issues not on the agenda? Mr. Mundy, nobody signed up. All right, then. That allows us to move to a motion. to adjourn. Council Member Scutchfield, motion by Council Member Scutchfield to adjourn, second by Council Member Akers. Unless there's any discussion, we will stand adjourned.