# Council Environmental Quality Committee - October 8, 2013 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 8, 2013 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3133 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3133?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2013-10-08 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 11,504 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 October 8, 2013, at 11:00 AM, with Stinnett presiding. The committee addressed six agenda items during the session, including approval of the previous month's committee summary and referred items, as well as informational presentations on monthly financials, a climate adaptation resolution, and the Empower Lexington Plan's public component. The committee also heard an update on the Distillery District, which was deferred for further consideration. The committee took three motions and votes during the meeting and heard 11 public comments from members of the community. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on October 8, 2013: * Stinnett * Mossotti * Gorton * Akers * Farmer * Scutchfield * Myers * Clarke * Henson * Lane No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions **Approval of the September 17, 2013 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:05:30] Motion by Scutchfield, seconded by Clarke. This motion passed unanimously with no abstentions. **Motion to Allocate Remaining Bond Proceeds to the Distillery District East Section Streetscape Element** [timestamp: 0:04:30] Motion by Akers, seconded by Myers. This motion failed on a roll call vote with 2 ayes and 5 nays. Voting in favor: Akers, Henson Voting against: Stinnett, Mossotti, Myers, Clarke, Lane **Motion to Remove Drainage Maintenance Issue from Committee Items** [timestamp: 1:19:24] Motion by Henson, seconded by Gordon. This motion passed on a voice vote with no abstentions. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included appropriations for three major infrastructure and environmental projects: **Sanitary Sewer Projects** Capital construction funding of $15,609,629 was appropriated for sanitary sewer projects. **Water Quality Capital Projects** Funding of $2,125,401 was appropriated for water quality capital projects. **Landfill Closure and Post-Closure Costs** An appropriation of $4,172,982 was approved for landfill closure and post-closure costs. These three appropriations totaled $21,908,012 in capital funding allocations. ## Public Comment Council members raised questions and concerns across several key areas during the meeting. **Financial Transparency and Debt Management** Council Member Akers requested clearer visibility into total bond debt by fund to better understand long-term financial trends and capital planning, particularly for the sanitary sewer system [timestamp: 0:13:19]. Council Member Lane similarly asked for a breakdown of total debt by fund to clarify the city's financial obligations and cash reserves, with specific focus on the sanitary sewer fund [timestamp: 0:14:59]. **Sanitary Sewer Operations and Revenue** Council Member Willain inquired about the status of sanitary sewer bill collections and whether customers could pay annual fees in a single lump sum to streamline the billing process [timestamp: 0:18:52]. Council Member Kay expressed concern about long-term revenue adequacy and asked whether the city was modeling future expenses and revenue streams to determine when rate increases might become necessary [timestamp: 0:21:05]. **Climate Adaptation and Emergency Preparedness** Council Member Henson asked whether the city was preparing for long-term climate impacts such as heat waves and droughts that may not be covered by current emergency systems [timestamp: 0:42:06]. **Waste and Recycling Services** Council Member Massadi raised concerns about inconsistent recycling rules between public and private waste haulers, advocating for uniform service standards across all providers [timestamp: 0:59:05]. Vice Mayor Gordon confirmed that a task force is actively studying standardization of waste and recycling services, including pay-as-you-toss models and route-based data analysis [timestamp: 1:03:20]. Council Member Henson emphasized the need for broader public education to increase recycling participation among residents not currently engaged [timestamp: 1:05:24]. **Sustainability Reporting and Accountability** Council Member Kay urged that future reports be more closely tied to specific goals and objectives in the Empower Lexington plan to improve transparency and accountability [timestamp: 1:11:58]. Council Member Clark suggested making the Empower Lexington progress report public to encourage community engagement and pride in the city's environmental achievements [timestamp: 1:14:07]. Council Member Lane asked whether Kentucky Utilities had produced county-level data on per capita electricity reduction to help benchmark Fayette County's progress [timestamp: 1:16:17]. ## Contested Items The October 8, 2013 meeting included three areas of significant disagreement among council members. **Distillery District Funding Allocation** Council voted on a motion to allocate remaining bond funds to the east section streetscape project. The motion failed with a vote of 2-5, indicating substantial disagreement over how to prioritize and sequence projects in the Distillery District. The split vote reflected differing views on project prioritization and timing among council members. **Recycling Service Standardization** Council members engaged in heated discussion regarding inconsistent recycling rules between public and private haulers operating within the city. Members expressed concerns about the lack of uniform service standards across all providers and called for standardization to improve city-wide recycling participation. The discussion highlighted the need for more consistent requirements to ensure equitable service delivery. **Transparency in Empower Lexington Reporting** Council members raised concerns during heated discussion about the clarity and accountability of Empower Lexington reports. Members urged that future reports be more directly connected to specific plan goals in order to improve accountability and enhance public understanding of progress being made on the initiative. ## September 17, 2013 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:05:30] The committee approved the summary of the September 17, 2013 meeting, which had previously been presented to the full council. The approval was unanimous. Key speakers on this item included Scutchfield and Clarke. No concerns or objections were raised during the discussion. **Outcome:** The September 17, 2013 Committee Summary was approved. ## Monthly Financials Commissioner O'Meara presented financial statements for three funds as of June 30 and August 31, 2013. [timestamp: 0:06:40] **Funds Reviewed** The presentation covered financial performance for: - Sanitary Sewer Operating Fund - Landfill Fund - Water Quality Fund **Key Findings** The Sanitary Sewer Operating Fund experienced revenue overruns during the reporting period. In contrast, capital projects showed under-spending compared to budgeted amounts. Additionally, a new Water Quality Construction Fund was established during this period. **Discussion Topics** Questions from attendees focused on several areas: - Fund balance levels across the three funds - Debt obligations and management - Future revenue modeling and projections **Outcome** This agenda item was presented for informational purposes, with no formal action required. ## Climate Adaption Resolution Rick Cluett presented a proposal for the city to sign the Resilient Communities for America Agreement [timestamp: 00:26:33]. The presentation emphasized the importance of local action on climate resilience, infrastructure renewal, and emergency preparedness. The proposal focused on establishing a framework for the city to address climate adaptation challenges through a coordinated approach to building community resilience. Key themes included strengthening infrastructure systems and improving the city's capacity to respond to climate-related emergencies. The committee expressed support for the initiative. No formal vote was taken on the proposal during this meeting, as the item was presented for informational purposes. However, the committee requested a follow-up from the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) regarding next steps and implementation details. The outcome of this agenda item was informational, with the discussion serving to introduce the concept and gauge committee interest rather than to finalize a decision. ## Empower Lexington Plan: Public Component – Kay [timestamp: 0:46:25] Amy Soner presented the annual public update on the Empower Lexington plan, detailing progress across multiple sectors of the community sustainability initiative. **Achievements Presented** The presentation highlighted significant measurable progress in the plan's key areas: * Residential sector: 7.6% reduction in electricity use * Waste sector: 11.3% decrease in landfill waste * Overall emissions: 10.4% drop in per capita greenhouse gas emissions Progress was also reported in transportation and commercial sectors, though specific metrics for these areas were not detailed in the summary. **Council Concerns** Council members raised several concerns during the discussion: * **Reporting transparency**: Questions were raised about the clarity and accessibility of how progress is being reported to the public * **Recycling standardization**: Concerns were expressed about inconsistent recycling practices and the need for standardized approaches * **Public education**: Members questioned the adequacy of public education efforts related to the Empower Lexington plan **Outcome** The agenda item was informational in nature, serving as an annual progress update rather than a decision point requiring council action or vote. ## Distillery District Update – Gorton [timestamp: 1:18:22] The committee deferred discussion on the Distillery District update pending the outcome of a council vote on a $1.7 million bond allocation. **Background** At the previous meeting, a motion to fund the east section streetscape had failed. The committee agreed to postpone further discussion of the Distillery District update until after the council made its decision on the bond allocation. **Outcome** The item was deferred, with the committee planning to revisit the topic once the council vote on the $1.7 million bond allocation was completed. **Key Participants** The discussion involved Paulsen, Leverage, Angelucci, and McNeese. ## Items Referred During this agenda item, the committee reviewed and adjusted its list of referred matters for ongoing consideration. **Actions Taken** The committee removed the drainage maintenance issue from its list of items to be carried forward. In contrast, two items were retained for future discussion: the Empower Lexington plan and the waste management expenditure audit. **Future Items Noted** The committee also acknowledged upcoming items that would require attention, specifically energy reinvestment and CAO policy 15R. **Key Participants** Henson and Gordon were the primary speakers during this discussion. **Outcome** The committee approved the adjustments to its referred items list. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Approval of the September 17, 2013 Committee Summary - **Motion** — failed (2-5): Motion to allocate remaining bond proceeds to the Distillery District east section streetscape element - **Motion** — passed: Motion to remove drainage maintenance issue from committee items --- ## Full transcript Thank you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. It's five after 11 on October 8th. This is the Environmental Quality Committee meeting. First up on our agenda is a summary of our September 17th committee meeting that has actually already been presented to council. So at this point, it's a formality for approval since it's already been read out. Moving second. Any changes or additions or modifications from last Tuesday's report out? All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. That passes. Next on our agenda is an update on our monthly financials, and we have Commissioner O'Meara who's going to briefly go through the sanitary sewer, the waste management, and the water quality fund. I'm sorry, the landfill fund and the water quality fund. Commissioner, and if we have any questions, please log in, Council Members. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Chair. On page five of this meeting's packet begins the financial statements for reference. We start off with the June 30, 2013 presentation, and then after that is year-to-date as of August. So just real quick, starting at page five, I can go through them, and if you have any questions, I'd be glad to address them. But the June 30, 2013 Sanitary Sewer Operating Fund, this is Fund 4002, is presented on a cash-used basis. If you look at the third column, that would be the year-to-date or the June 30 activity. And we see the $48.2 million in charges for services. Those are both sewer tap-on as well as the user fees as well as some of the other revenues. It shows that we exceeded budget, $3.6 million. And then when you go down through the expenses, we were under budget, $30.5 versus $40.3. So that generates $14.1 million revenues over expenses. If you look at the bottom, one of the requests that you wanted on a regular basis is unrestricted fund balance. And this is an interim statement. so we're reporting the fund balance as of last June 30. Fund balance and the CAFR presentation, the consolidated annual financial statements for enterprise funds, is fully accrual with depreciation accruals, changes in liabilities. The presentation for the interim statements is a cash flow before all those accrual entries. but you will see that we basically budgeted less revenue than we took in and that was in anticipation of an impact of us converting into different billing. We did pick up some money for a purge billing that Kentucky American Water did before we converted over, which was kind of a bump up. We did see an increase in receivables and a decrease in collections and I don't think this $48 million is replicable for this coming year, but we'll see. Is there any questions on that fund before we jump to the next one? I just have one follow-up. So the difference in the operating, the additional $3.4 million in savings on expenses was the budgeted billing when we went through the Lexer bill. We were $3.4 million under on operating expenses. Well, I think that's a combination I would have to get back to you to give you the total amount. Fair enough. All right. You want me to follow up on that? 4003. This is the capital construction fund, which is financed from the revenues generated in the 4002 account. The way the ordinance reads and the bond covenants is operating expenses are covered, and then any remaining fund balance comes over to fund construction. And so you can see that we were budgeted to spend $15.5 million in capital. We spent $15.6 million, and that's going to come out of that fund balance that's built up over the course of time. The fund reserves at the end of 2012 were 56.2, and when we go forward I'll show you that we're predicting fund balance reserves for capital for 2013 is a little over $60 million. Questions for that? There are none. Okay. Next page. We get out of the sewer and get into water quality, which is account fund 4051. Again, you see where revenues exceeded budget, where we expected some impact of the billing. And then revenues were below total expenditures, so we wound up cash flowing about $3 million taken more than we spent. Unrestricted fund balance was $7.2 million at the end of 2012. It's $6.1 million at the end of June 30, 2013. Page 8 is giving you June 30 landfill operating. Revenues are slightly below, and that is really a function of how payments are being applied in the unified bill differently, as well as throwback on how much gets applied to landfill. We did pick up more billable accounts when we went through our review to convert over from Kentucky American water to our own billing with Cincinnati water. So all of those are going to where the revenues this year have anomalies in it and are hard to use as a prediction for future years. total expenses were below budget but you know that this has an expense related to landfill closure and this is where we actually spent the money to close the Haley landfill and this is a major difference between a cash flow statement which is an interim statement and full accrual we accrued for all those expenses in the CAFR last year This is showing where we actually spent them, so that $4.1 million in post-closure cost is where we actually spent those dollars. Unrestricted fund balance for June 30 of 2012 was $11.1, and for 6-30 2013 is $14.5. All right. Do we have a question? Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Bill, just to clarify, I'm pretty sure that I understand this, but the fund balances in each of these accounts are not part of the fund balance that will be our discussion on Thursday, correct? That is correct. And they are dedicated to each of these funds for future capital expenses that we will incur in the coming decade for sewer improvements. Well, there's different definitions. The sewer is definitely for about a half a billion dollars or more that we're going to spend over the next 10 years. Some of that is going to be cash funded through the fees. When you go to water quality, the ordinance that established water quality came up with some projects that are water quality related, so that fund balance is to be used for those. When you get to landfill, it was originally created because of closing of landfills and maintaining that closure over 20 years, as well as operationally the disposal of our garbage for Fayette County. So when there's a balance at the end of the year of $11 million, for instance, in the landfill fund, that just continues into next year? Is it part of the next year's budget? Is it just in the future if we have a large expense in the landfill fee? It is saving for the future. Okay. And so can you tell me why it's called unrestricted? It seems like it's restricted. Well, that's within the fund because we have restricted fund balances due to bond covenants over in the sewer fund. We actually have more money in the bank than unrestricted, but we're required by the bond covenants to keep the amount of the highest bond payment in the life of any bond over. and so if we miss a bond payment for whatever reason, we have enough cash to make that. We're required to do that through the bond covenants. It becomes restricted money. What I'm reporting is what doesn't have those type of restrictions on it. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Next we have Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, my question, do you have the, I'm sure you have the information, but I would be interested in seeing how much debt we have, bond debt we have by fund, just to see what our total debt in that area is. Sure. It's part of the CAFR, and I can take a moment to look it up in last year, but we'll have that when we issue the CAFR for 2013 as well. Okay. Well, the data you just provided for June 30, 2013, we don't have the CAFR for that yet. No, you do not. I would have to get that. Okay. So if you could use that information, I think it would be very helpful, particularly in the sanitary stewards because we're going to be bonding a lot and spending a lot of money there. We could sort of see a trend line of how much debt we're building, plus how much cash we have. Okay. That would be helpful. Thank you very much. Anyone else have any questions to this point on the financials? Bill, what was the total unrestricted fund balance on the landfill? Landfill for 2013, $14.5 million. $14.5 million, okay. And you said that the four-point or the difference, most of that expenditure was for closing that landfill? Correct. And we actually accrued those expenses in the CAFR last year. We had to accrue for them because they were known and predictable. We actually spent them this year. So in presentation, they're coming through it in this cash uses statement. Okay. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick question about that and the landfill. So what is our – so all the Fayette County landfills eventually are going to be closed, and actually right now are they? They are, aren't they? Operationally – Or in the process? I don't know the answer to that. Is there anybody in the House now who understands and could tell us what the annual operating expense of keeping them closed will be going forward? So we know whether this fund balance is all going to be used or what the situation is. Good morning, Commissioner. Since we closed the one in Haley, we'll finalize everything with the state. There will be a fee every year that we have to keep the landfill up. That's going to be about 30 years. So right now, once we get the letter from the state on how much that's going to be, we should have an idea. And George is working on that right now. Okay. Is it a possibility that it might be, where I'm going with this is, is it a possibility that we might be able to lower that fee because our costs then would be fixed and not as much? Right now we want to finalize everything with the state. They came in a couple of weeks ago and we reported additional documents, and once we get that finalized we should have an idea. Do we know when that will be? Well, you know, probably sometime next year, early next year, I would say. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Councilman Willain. Yes, Mr. Mayor, just a quick follow-up question. I may have missed this, but how are our collections doing on sanitary sewers? Do we have much on storm sewers? Do we have any collection issues that are serious, or do we seem to be doing okay there? We have collection issues with all of the LexServe bill, and we're going through a process of addressing those. The council actually extended the payment date just, I think, the last council meeting due to some delays in the postal delivery that all the utilities are experiencing. And we're also implementing penalties and fees starting on next month's bill. After that, we will be coordinating the most severe delinquencies with possible water shutoff in coordination with the water company. So we're going through progressive collections. We sent out a postcard to everyone in Fayette County talking about future steps and how we asked them to treat this as a utility just like any of the other utility companies to pay monthly. We also did phone calls to customers who were more than 60 days delinquent and more than $50 delinquent. And so they got a personal phone call saying that they did have a delinquency and please work with us on getting current. We're trying to work and get as much information out to the public as possible that these fees do need to be paid, like any other utility, before we start the water shutoff as the final implementation of our collection process. The water quality fee, was it $4.38 a month, if I remember that number correctly? Somewhere around that number. Something like that. Is there any way that a person that owns that bill could pay the total bill for a year, lemonade, having to send out 12 checks or 12 transfers or 12 bills to streamline the charge? Or is it because there are some people that don't have sanitary sewer, and that might be one of the few bills they get from us? They can pay. They can pay for 12 months. They can pay for six months. They would be running a credit, and they would get a bill each month showing what their credit balance was. Okay. And my last question, if I were interpreting your numbers here correctly, we actually exceeded our budgeted revenues for sanitary sewers for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013. I guess that's a preliminary number. But do we have any kind of indication of what our expenses are going to be for the next 10 years and what our revenue stream is going to be for the next 10 years? because we did stipulate, and I think in the legislation, that the fees would be raised by the cost of living. Of course, the cost of living has been extremely low, and I think maybe even negative one of the last recent years. That's correct. So we may not have adequate long-term revenue coming in. Do you think we should address that issue at this time, or what do you see there? Well, we're analyzing that right now. We have a very involved model that goes out 10 years. It could go out 20, but your assumptions start to really become questionable the further you go out. We're concentrating on the next three years to make sure we've got as accurate an estimate as possible. And we're modeling by project what is supposed to be in the pipeline, not to overuse that term as far as the sewer projects, not just the EPA, but also the water quality and the INI and all of those. And we have to track the possible funding source because we have a very large Kentucky Infrastructure Authority grants that we can pull down depending on if that is an approved project. We have $50 million, which we're trying to see how long that that will support our capital. And then once we model that, it will tell us when we have to go to the bond market in order to borrow money and then what pressure that would have on the operating expenses. So we have to do all those assumptions to answer your question of when is the appropriate time to raise rates in order to support that additional bonding. Well, I know that we're probably doing better than Louisville and how we're doing our sanitary sewers, But they've had trouble over there, and I believe that the council in Louisville approved a rate increase of up to 6% annually that would be determined by the management of the sanitary service system for the city. And I think they've been electing to go 5% a year increase. So I hope we don't have to do anything like that here, but I think we need to be looking a little bit into the future and see what the future holds. Well, two and a half years ago, we presented a model based on the information that we had then that said 5% to 10% increases would be necessary to support the $500, $600 million of capital outlay. Since then, we have almost $90 million of Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. they're not grants, they're loans, but at a very favorable 1.75% interest. And the beauty of these are it's like a construction loan. I think Charlie addressed this maybe last week. But you only pay interest until the project is finished, and then it's kind of like refinancing. You make principal and interest payments. You draw down as you need it. So we pay the bill, turn it in, be reimbursed, and then only pay interest. So that has been very, very favorable financing for this project, and we're trying to overlay that into these projections as well as updates as to what projects are going to happen when. Do you plan to bring your numbers to the committee here sometime in the near future? We're working with Charlie and trying to finish it up in the next 30, 60 days. Sounds very good. Thank you very much for your report. Anyone else? Okay. Any more? You want to keep going? Well, I have for reference only, but I don't know that we want to spend much time on it. But pages 9, 10, 11, and 12 are just two months into the year. The one thing I would like to point out is on page 11 and 12, we, for the first time, created a water quality construction fund. This is following the same approach that we've been using with sanitary sewer. You have your operating expenses in an operating fund, and then the excess goes over to the capital fund for those water quality capital projects. So July 1, we created that separate construction fund for the water quality activity, and we'll be reporting it in two funds starting this point forward. and that would end my report unless there are other questions. Very good. Anybody else have any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Next on our agenda is a presentation on climate adaptation resolution. Mr. Rick Kluet is here once again. I know you've been a guest of this committee several times in the past. Welcome back. Thank you. And thank you very much for giving me time to present. I appreciate it very much. You'll set the clock up to 15 minutes, and we're ready to go. Right. I've set mine. I want to thank you very much, and I want to suggest why I'm here, how I come here. I come here as an individual this time. I have been in leadership positions in three state environmental organizations in recent years, but I set them all aside towards the end of last year to focus on climate adaptation. And I've been talking to various level state officials and some of the people in LFUCG government. This is awfully important, and it's the side of the coin that doesn't get looked at. People talk about mitigation. You've got Empowered Lexington, which you're going to be hearing about. which is emphasizing a 1% decrease in energy use in the county. It's very important. But we've created enough, or the weather is trending in disturbing enough directions towards more extreme and frequent extreme weather and increased temperatures that we have to start thinking rationally about how to deal with that. And the sooner we start planning and doing the appropriate risk assessment and analysis and vulnerability assessment, and not just using the same FEMA template that we've been using for some decades, FEMA's in the process of changing, but it will be slowly, cities, states have to start looking at each other for help and modeling on what to do themselves. So this is really the next logical step to empower Lexington. I want to thank Councilman Kay and acknowledge him, along with Dick Shore and Nina McCormick, as people who were there at the beginning with LexCool Cities. I made the presentation that got us to the city to buy into the ICLE program and start the audit. But those three people have stayed with this for five or six years, and I think that's really admirable. Very quickly, I want to, well, I'll save that. I want to start from the introduction to the Empower Lexington. In keeping with this tradition of preserving Lexington, Lexington, we are now encouraging the community to embark on what may very well become one of our signature accomplishments, becoming more sustainable and resilient community by becoming more energy efficient. At the bottom of the page is a definition of sustainable. And my point here is that becoming sustainable or resilient includes energy efficiency, but it's a much larger category. Sustainable communities are defined as towns and cities that have taken steps to remain healthy over the long term. Sustainable communities have a strong sense of place. They have a vision that is embraced and actively promoted by all sectors of the society, including businesses, disadvantaged groups, environmentalist civic associations, government agencies, and religious organizations. They are places that are built on their assets and dare to innovate. These communities value healthy ecosystems, use resources efficiently, and actively seek to retain and enhance a locally based economy. So this is the next step, logically, I think, for the city. It should be their resilient communities, not sustainable. But this is a flexible sign-on that I'm asking of you. It doesn't require any specific thing except to sign on and to annual reports on what you're doing. This is much less specific or onerous in ways than the ask to do the carbon audit was. and should be much more an opportunity to do what we need to do here going forward. So to get to the agreement itself, we, the mayor's local leaders, recognize the need to deal with extreme weather, energy, and economic challenges. Communities across the country are on the front line of three related changes, record-breaking extreme weather fueled by climate change, unreliable and costly energy, and ongoing economic uncertainty. The space of change quicken cities and county governments must work to make communities more resilient, able to bounce back from disruptions in a sustainable way and maintain a good quality of life for all. Part of resilience is not just being able to bounce back well. It's having done things beforehand which make you not have to do some of the bouncing back to avoid unnecessary suffering. So, as local elected officials, we do three things. We urge state and federal leaders to support our local resilience initiatives and to take meaningful steps to build resilience and security throughout the nation. We commit to building community resilience through our own actions, such as the path to resilience described below. We commit to sharing our solutions to test stories, annual progress with other local governments through the Resilient Communities for America online platform. We'll get to why that's such as is in a different color in a second. So the first path to resilience deals with climate preparedness, evaluating local vulnerabilities to extreme weather and a changing climate, from heat and waves, air pollution, to droughts and floods. The record-breaking and destructive extreme weather fueled by changing climate cost us $110 billion in 2012, with 11 disasters that brought $1 billion or more in damages, following the record of 14 major disasters in 2011. So, adopting and implementing preparedness policies to protect vulnerable populations and natural resources from extreme weather and other climate impacts. This matter of protecting the most vulnerable is something which is emphasized in all the things I've been reading. And it's the old, the young, the poor, the homeless, the people you would think of. But their problems are going to be exacerbated, as are all our social problems, by unpredictable things that we face. So reducing the community's carbon footprint to help reverse climate change and avoid costs of adapting to more severe climate impacts. We've started to do this with the Empower Lexington. There's certainly much more that we'll be doing, hopefully before too long. The second, energy security. Transitioning to a renewable energy future to achieve greater energy independence, protect communities from price spikes, and ensure more reliable power during heating waves and other disruptions. This is where I want to signal the such as. I'm perfectly aware of the politics of this state and this community, and there's an emphasis there on the renewable energy future, but there's no commitment to emphasize that. and I, in the parenthesis, point out that another way of working on the same goal is to try to jumpstart the elements of the smart grid, which help the electric grid become more cost-effective but also more reliable, less prone to disruption from hazards, no matter what the source of electricity is. So you're not being forced to do, again, any specific thing except join and report. Implementing energy efficiency programs that help residents, businesses, and municipal governments save money and energy, lower carbon emissions, and reduce demand on grid during superior weather. We've begun to work on this and could do more. Okay, the infrastructure renewal is the path to resistance. Well, you can read it. We started working, there's a consent decree, of course, with the wastewater. I note that I understand that we're building the wastewater, I think it's the wastewater to a two-year flood level. It's one of the water systems. But just take that as an example. As you get increased frequency and severity of flooding, that two-year flood is not going to be a two-year flood anymore. It's going to be more frequent than that. And this is something we just have to come to terms with and reckon with. The prognosis for this part of the country is we may not end up getting more rain as the decades go on, and not much more, but it will come in more downpours. There will be more flooding and more drought and maybe a little move towards rain in the fall as opposed to the summer. so these are things that we have to be dealing with economic prosperity part of the value of this resilient communities plan is the way it integrates a wide variety of things and among them it certainly gives due to economic prosperity economic development we've started working on the kind of diversified local economies with high-quality jobs front, in part, as I understand it, through our coordination with Louisville and the Lexington-Louisville Advanced Manufacturing Quarter. Obviously, this is an area for future emphasis. So there are four main sponsors, local governments for sustainability, National League of Cities, U.S. Green Building Council, and the World Wildlife Fund. in a structure to help move the organization along. Now, this you probably want to listen to. This is what they're after. To secure a leadership commitment to address community resilience from 200 locally elected officials in the first 12 months and 1,000 by 2015, to secure greater state and federal funding, support, and collaboration with local governments to support local initiatives on resilience and preparedness, infrastructure, renewal, and energy security, and measurable improvement in the resilience of all the communities participating in the campaign. So again, you're agreeing to do two things. To commit the city to take action to improve resilience, but not in any specific way. and to share your progress, solutions, success stories with other local governments. What you're likely to get out of it? Publicity, leadership recognition, the exchange of best practices and technical assistance, media attention. technical systems of various sorts which will be unfolding over the coming months. So, in summing up, I think this is really a very logical next step and it's one that's not hard. I really have trouble seeing reasons why not to do it. And it's crucial that we start focusing our attention increasingly on these problems. to be able to be smart rather than unnecessarily sorry, and to group together with the other people who have similar needs and motives. If for some reason you decide not to sign on to this, I really ask you to look for other ways to accomplish the same goals, because they're very important. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cluett. With two minutes to spare. Committee members, do we have any questions for Mr. Cluett? why he's here. And then, yeah, I don't see, I think Commissioner Maloney left the room, but several things you identified in your presentation, we're already doing a lot of those things, especially in our public safety sector and DEAM for emergency preparedness for those populations that are vulnerable during disasters, and our EPA consent decree, we're working on infrastructure, which obviously falls in this committee. I do have, Council Member Kay, you want to jump in? Thank you, Chair. And I'm not officially a member of the committee, so thank you for allowing me to speak. Rick, first, thank you for the presentation, and thank you for all the work that you've done over the years to help make the community more aware of the opportunities that we have to reduce our climate impact, reduce our carbon footprint, improve our economic development of the city. I look at the proposal you have before us, and I believe it's something that we ought to take on. As you said, it does not require specific action, but it does focus our attention on the need to make these changes. The chair has already mentioned a few things that we're currently doing. This would be a way to look at those in more detail and to see if they can be enhanced and see what other kinds of things we ought to be thinking about taking on. So I just want to, I have no specific questions, but I want to provide my support and say that I do believe it is a logical next step that would supplement what's being done in the Our Lexington Plan. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member K. Any other committee members have questions or comments for Mr. Kluet? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. and I do think that this is probably a concern. I know that the city currently has many things in place in the case of a natural disaster or whatever, and we're actually going to be having a presentation soon in the public safety committee about what our city, what should we expect in that case. But I think I wanted to ask you, you're saying that there are things that we could do to prepare to lessen the impact. Is that correct? In the case of a big tornado outbreak or an earthquake or any type of weather event. Is that what you're saying? Yes, although I would emphasize, actually, I think the preparedness system is better, and the emergency management system I think is better at handling the possibility of a tornado than some of the other possible scenarios that we may encounter. The flooding and particularly the heat waves and droughts, things which are less, you know, sudden and more insidious in ways and long-lasting, and have health impacts. I think the health impacts of various things along those lines are among the things that we don't have covered as well as, you know, some of the emergency responder, you know, things for a tornado or whatever. But one of the things that all the climate adaptation literature emphasizes is how interwoven everything is. and some of our thinking is sort of in silos now and I've looked at the FEMA grid that the state and the city use for emergency management and it's to some extent a system for distributing monies to local projects in certain areas. It's not a unified look at things and that's what different states on the cutting edge of this are doing now and cities, taking a 360-degree scan, taking the concentration and as much money as they can manage to get the right people at the table to say, what are we here likely to face, and how are we most vulnerable, how can we be most heard, and then start to work with your resources and prioritize and work in a rational, systematic. Now is the time to be working in a rational, systematic manner of assessment. Okay. And have you taken this to the state level? Have you taken this to the state level? Yes, I've talked with Len Peters, the Secretary of Energy and Environment, and Bruce Scott, the Head of Environmental Protection, and Craig Humbaw, the Assistant Commissioner in Health and Family Services of Epidemiology and Health Planning, health planning, and a couple of people in the agriculture department. I was set up to meet with General Hetzel of emergency management, but he's not there anymore. So I'm in the process of meeting with the next in command there. Okay. Thank you again. Uh-huh. Thank you all. Thank you, sir. And Mr. Cluett, I did have one question. Have you presented this to the mayor yet in his office? And has the CIA ever seen it? I've talked with Scott Shapiro, and they expressed some interest. I just want to make sure that they're aware of, I know you've met with several council members individually. Yes, I met with him right after I met with you. Okay, very good. Thank you. Council Member Kaye. Just kind of a final comment. If it's acceptable, I would like to suggest that we get something back from the administration to this committee so that we know what they're thinking about this is and whether they want to pursue it or whether or not so that we can see if formally this is something we want to adopt. I will follow up with our CAO and bring an update back to the committee. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on this issue? Okay. Next, we have the Empower Lexington presentation. And welcome. We know we've missed the last couple of months. And thank you for sticking with us and coming back to us. and maybe the third time's the charm I was getting ready to say that Amy you want to take it away thank you I'm bad at keeping on track so I'm going to have my little counter thank you very much for letting me come and present to you I again apologize for last month I would have been able to speak but you wouldn't have been able to hear me so this is a little bit better hopefully I'm Amy Soner I'm the director of Bluegrass Green Source we were formerly Bluegrass Pride and I'm also one of the co-chairs of the Empower Lexington team. Today I want to give you the annual update that you all requested. If you remember, those of you that were here last year in May of 2012, this committee and the council supported a resolution to support the Empower Lexington plan with the goal of reducing energy use in Fayette County by 1% a year. You also asked us to report annually on the results, and so this is the community part of that update. I believe you got the city update earlier. Okay, so 1%. That caused a lot of discussion when we first presented this to you, and so I wanted to remind you that the 1% is a voluntary percentage. We track it both on per capita basis and an absolute basis. And it's also something that at the same time the state was doing their climate action plan, and they decided on 1% at the same time as well. So the way that we have designed the plan is to separate it into different areas and different sub-teams worked on designing it. The first one that I'm going to talk about is the residential team. And this team decided that we are going to have a goal to provide residents with resources and knowledge so that they can save energy and therefore save money. Other teams, which I'll talk about too, were transportation, industrial, commercial, land use, and agriculture and waste as well. So these are, I'm going to tell you a little bit, a few of the things that have gone on recently in the residential world, some of which were directly a result of the Empower Lexington plan, and some just happened at the same time. So last year there was a first ever energy tour, and this was done, we had about 50 attendees, and we toured various places, both commercial and residential in Fayette County. The Midwest Energy Conference has been hosted here in Lexington for the last few years. Home energy audit kits were checked out of local libraries 111 times, and infrared cameras were checked out 38 times. These are so homeowners can do audits of their house. One of the exciting things is the Home Builders Association of Lexington has signed an MOU with ResNet to encourage all of their builders to do HERS rating on their homes. And this is sort of a miles per gallon rating system for homes, so you can see how energy efficient your home is going to be. Kentucky Utilities has also jumped on board and if you guys are customers of theirs, you've probably seen this this is a way that Kentucky Utilities is helping homeowners understand how their house compares to their neighbors new homes and energy efficient homes transportation section this team came up with a goal to provide efficient interconnected transportation system And one of the neat things with the transportation system is that a lot of their recommendations can be seen in the comprehensive plan as well. Some examples of things that have happened, the Tates Creek sidewalks, I realize I think are done or close to it, Loudoun sidewalks, Southland Drive bike lanes, bike detectors at intersections, Brighton Trail section, Gainesway Trail. So those are some examples of things that are happening in the transportation sector. Also increasing transit service is something that the transportation team was working on. They've seen an 11% increase in ridership. There's a Lexchan study of Nicholasville Road Corridor, new bus stop signs, bus pass vending machine, looking at natural gas hybrid bus replacements. Ride sharing, everything from van pools to the Kentucky River Foothills commuter buses. The next team was the Land Use Food Agriculture Team and their industrial commercial and institutional team. And they came up with the goal of promoting energy efficiency to businesses and to giving them tools on how to save money. Some of the initiatives were the Go Green Save Green workshop that's been happening for four years four years and has had over 500 attendees. Over 1,000 LED exit signs were distributed to nonprofits to help them save money. The Live Green Lexington Energy Partners, there's 173 businesses now, and actually this slide was done for the two months ago thing, so we've had more since then. And 32 apartment complexes, this is where businesses and apartments sign up and encourage energy efficiency, whether it's behavioral or actual structural in their buildings. And then the Live Green Lexington Games. Last year there were 40 participants. This year we expect to have a lot more. This is where businesses compete against each other for energy efficiency as well as waste and water and things like that. All right, the fourth team was the land-used food and agriculture, and their goal was to just preserve and enhance land in our precious bluegrass soils. A lot of the items that the team came up with for the Empire of Lexington plan are mirrored in the comprehensive plan. Some of the things that are happening are a tree canopy survey. Reforest of bluegrass has been going on for, I'm going to guess, 12-plus years. The PDR program. Local foods coordinator pilot program. I think that you all or the council just approved that moving forward, so that's exciting. Waste. The waste goal for the Empowered Lexington Plan is to pursue a zero-waste vision. Let's see. Some of the ways to do that is waste management is developing a strategic plan. You heard from the leadership Lexington group last April that talked a little bit about their interest in this as well. But some of the things in the waste management's plan are to deal with household hazardous waste, increasing the amount and types of materials that are recyclable, food waste collection through the yard waste program, increasing markets for compost, recycling of construction and demolition material, and then increasing education about waste reduction. There's also a design that is complete for the Household Hazardous Waste Facility and a new drop box for unwanted pharmaceuticals at the police headquarters as well as a med toss that we do periodically. So with all of that that has been happening, how have we done? And this is our report to you on how the community has done towards that 1% goal. I want to point out at the bottom, we have increased our population. So when we started with the Empower Lexington Plan, we used 2007 as a base year. Now the data that I'm going to talk about is going to be from 2011. That's the last year that we could get full data from. So within that time period, Lexington's population has grown 8.4%, but our electricity usage in that same time period has decreased over 7%. We've increased in gas. We'll go into details about all of these soon. Transportation has decreased in those four years by 1.4%, and landfill has decreased by 11.3% in those four years. So electricity. This is, again, overall a reduction of 7.6% in those years. The residential electricity use is down. The commercial electricity use is down 17% pretty significantly. Industrial electricity use is up. And then overall, the community savings is about $16 million just from those electricity savings. Now, I do want to say that one of the, because I anticipate one of your questions being why is the industrial use up so much, and our thought is that the way that it was calculated changed slightly, the way that we got the information from Kentucky Utilities, and so the designations of who was an industry and who was commercial changed slightly. So that's why those numbers are so drastically different. Natural gas is up. That's the only one of the metrics that we are using that actually increased. And we believe that that's probably because the cost of natural gas has gone down so significantly. And so that's why people are using more natural gas. Transportation is down. And this actually mirrors national data as well for vehicle miles traveled. We have a 40 million mile decrease, and that equals, if you use $350 a gallon, that equals about $8.8 million savings in fuel that we've realized over this time period. Waste management. Landfill waste has decreased by 11%, and then recycling has increased, composting has increased, which leaves a total of waste that we've produced still decreased by 1.5%. I want to point out the total because one of the things that I know that the Division of Waste Management here is really interested in, increasing recycling is important, but most importantly, just decreasing waste generally is important. Even decreasing the amount we recycle is important because we want the general waste stream to be decreased, so a lot more reusing than just recycling. But anyway, that's an aside. But still totally, we have still totally decreased by 1.5%. Greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007, we had a per capita greenhouse gas emission of 24.3 tons per person. In 2011, that decreased to 21.8 tons per capita, per person. I'm sorry, well, same thing. And so the population went up 8.4 percent. I just want to remind you of that. Our greenhouse gas emissions went down 10.4 percent per person and then down 3 percent for the total emissions. So, again, remember our goal of 1%. So we're doing pretty well on energy and then doing pretty well on greenhouse gas emissions, especially for per capita. So where does all of the energy come from? What sectors is it mostly used in? And so residential, commercial, and transportation are the three highest uses of our energy. And so that gives you the breakdown there of where they come from. So just as a couple closing thoughts, we're becoming more energy efficient. This is good news. We're almost 2% annually since 2007 for electricity, so we've decreased a lot of our electricity usage. The trends is moving in the right direction. Even with our population increasing, we're still moving in the right direction. And then we're saving money. Remember, $16 million in electricity alone is what our community saved recently. The Empower Lexington efforts complement the recommendations in the comprehensive plan. I think this is important because it shows that the comprehensive plan looked to see what Empower Lexington, well, I assume that they looked to see what Empower Lexington had done in creating their plan, or our plan. So how do we move forward? We are going to continue all of the efforts to become a more energy-efficient community. Again, two months ago, we were going to have a meeting in October. That may be moved to November. We will keep you apprised of that. But the steering committee, or now the co-chairs and I have been meeting, and we've decided that we're going to adjust the steering committee role a little bit and have the teams sort of re-energize to now that we have the plan, how do we implement the plan? So that's the new direction is we have the plan. These great people worked for three years. Lots and lots of people worked for a long time to create the plan, and now how do we implement it? We're going to continue to track our energy use annually, and we'll report to you every year for that. And I think that's it. Thank you so much. It was well worth the wait over the last 30 months. But this is good news and a positive step for all of us. We have Council Member Massadi up first. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Amy, for the report. It was very informative. I guess some of the questions I have is a lot of this as far as your energy and your transportation. We all use either KU or our ECC transportation. We use cars or buses or whatever. But when it comes to waste management and recycling, there's public pickup and there's private pickup. And I have private pickup, so I don't have the opportunity to have the Rosie and the Lenny. And I do have the trash pickup. So I guess my concern would be is why can we not have this across the board? I know that I believe that with public pickup they do recycle glass. Is that correct or not correct? See, we can't. And so my thinking is if we want to work in totality and try to reach this goal of more recycling and not so much in our landfill, we still have two different entities that are actually not following the same rules. So what would your thought process be on that? I mean, how can we help you in that respect? I believe you have the power, both as a citizen and as council, to change that. As a citizen, and I'm not sure if it's all. Because when do they all go to the same, eventually all the same landfill, is that correct? Maybe you can help us out here, Richard. Yeah, let me turn it over to people who. We have a partnership with a lot of counties and also private sectors where they take their recycling to our plants. So we have a relationship with public M&Ms and all the surrounding counties for taking the recycling. So that is an ongoing base. Now, to get better, your question is, are we doing it? We are doing it. Oh, I understand you're doing it, but they're all bringing it to the same center, the same recycling center, but you're not getting the glass from my trash because we can't recycle it. They won't accept it. So in order for us to improve that particular, you know, I can't give you my glass because I'm not accepting it. Well, that I have to find out. I thought we were taking. Not privately. No glass. I need to find out on that. I mean, I'd like to have it. You know, why not be consistent? You know, why not be able to recycle if I'm paying for recycling or whatever? Why can't we have it so it's, again, consistent? I'm glad you brought that up because we have a partnership up in Cincinnati where they want all the glass we can, and they don't have enough. So this might be an opportunity to partnership with the private sector. It just seems like it's inconsistent, you know what I mean? Okay. Let me work with Steve, and then I'll also work with Barry Prather. I think if we can have all the private carriers do the same thing as the public carriers, we all have the same common goal. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Can I add one thing to that? Is that okay? I do know that in the Leadership Lexington plan that they presented to you all, that standardization of service was included in their plan that they presented. I'm not sure if that's in the Division of Waste Management's plan or not. I assume it is, but I don't know that. And I also, I hate to talk for the city, but I do know that you can get the people on your street, and if you have a certain percentage of people on your street that want to have city service, then you can get city service in some way. And I would talk with someone else. Well, I understand that, but it has to do with basically the bottom line is the payment for the services. You know, there's a certain cutoff point. I think it's around $180,000 where it's cheaper to have private collection above that than it is public. And you probably won't get that from a lot of the neighborhoods that have homes that are assessed value that are higher than that because they don't want to pay a higher rate for their garbage and their recycling pickup. So all I'm asking for is a standardization. So I think that would be important. Thank you. Okay, next up we have Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of comments and then one question. Amy, first of all, I want to congratulate you for many, many, many years. You have been doing a great job. Thank you very much. And you've been partnering with the city to do it, our folks in waste management, and I just appreciate all that you've done. And then I wanted to also say, in relation to Councilmember Massadi's comments, the Waste Management Task Force, the Council Task Force, that's looking at all of this, including standardization of what we do, recycling, garbage, et cetera, is currently looking at all of this, and Councilmember Stennett chairs it, and we're waiting for some numbers. to let us move forward on plans to standardize. So it is definitely in the works. And we just want to do it right and do it based on the numbers that we have. So I'm not sure when all that will come, I guess, after the audit. The only question I have, which may not be for you, but does anyone know when our tree canopy survey is going to be finished? I don't know that. Commissioner, do you know or Tom? I believe that's in progress right now, but I can't give you a date. Who is doing it? The folks in our division are working with the private consultant to do that, but I'm not sure of the name. I don't really work with the forestry issues very much. Okay. Do you know when it started? Does anybody know when it started? Do you know, Richard? I don't. Susan Bush got it started right before she left, so she had one of her projects. She wanted to make sure it got done, and Mark York is on it, so he will know. Okay. He's out. He's in another meeting, but we'll be glad to follow up with you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Amy, for your presentation. And I agree with the Vice Mayor. You go above and beyond, I think, what you need to do. I know that there are still a lot of people that are not recycling, and maybe this is something for the Waste Management Task Force to look at, but how we could get those folks on board and help them to understand the importance. And I know you mentioned not generating the recycling material to begin with. But, you know, so to me it's about education, education. And I just wanted to see if you had any comment or if you know of any initiative that's taken place to address that. I can speak for Bluegrass Green Source, and for eight years we've worked with schools and businesses and apartment complexes to increase recycling. We have not been tasked with residential very much because I think the initial thought was that the city had that pretty well eight years ago when we started. And so we have not dealt with residential specifically very much, but we sure do get a lot of kids, and the kids then take it home. So we work with every school in Fayette County, public and private, and do everything from waste audits to just education about waste reduction. Again, waste reduction as a whole, including composting and just not producing it, but definitely recycling. So I can't speak to what is being done for the residential community, but for businesses, apartments, and schools, bring it on, I guess. Well, I definitely think we're doing good, but we could do better. Sure, absolutely. And I do appreciate your efforts, and I think if we educate our children, that is a key component. Also, I would be curious to see as far as the fuel, transportation, if we move to the natural gas for our large city trucks, I think there's a plan in place to do that and possibly Lex Tran buses. I would be curious to see in the future what reductions you'll see from that. But thank you again. Thank you. And just as a brief follow-up to Council Member Henson's question about what are we doing to encourage more people to recycle, part of the Waste Management Task Force that the Vice Mayor mentioned earlier, we have come up with an idea on how to do that, and it's a pay-as-you-toss system of recycling, whereas you would pay lower rates if you recycle. and higher rates if you don't. And that's all part of what we're working on. We'll meet again once we get the audit back, the CAFR, that we all just learned about last week from Mr. O'Meara, the preliminary numbers. We're waiting on the audited landfill fund that we reviewed today. Those are unaudited numbers. So as soon as we get the audit back, we can see what revenues were collected, what expenditures were made, and we can have our process and start compiling a rate model based on accurate data and audited data. Thank you. That sounds like a good plan. And I also think, just like anything else, we could probably determine target areas if there's a certain area in Lexington with less recycling and if we could target those areas. Well, I can tell you, our waste management has been very active in some of those ideas during our task force. They've talked about that. But until you get in people's pocketbooks and help people understand it, education only goes so far. And we've done a great job of educating. Our waste management folks have been out educating as well as the nonprofit communities have been out. That's a great idea. But pay-as-you-call systems are popping up around the country until we get a rate model that's fair to all and encourage it through that method with the larger containers or smaller containers. I have one other question about I've been told that, like, it's difficult for businesses to use the recycling because there's no room for a recycling bin, and if that maybe was addressed in the task force. Thank you. We have not addressed that specifically, but when we designed our community 50 years ago, we only designed it for a single dumpster. We didn't design it for that recycling container. So that's something we'll need to address, and Commissioner Maloney's. I think a follow-up on, you asked a question about the trucks. They will be ready sometime in either February or March. We will have our first 13 trucks, 11 trucks in for the CNG, which will be cut in half on the cost for fuel. So we're excited about that. The other question you asked about how can we tell whether certain people are recycling or not recycling, the route wear is showing that. And that's one thing Steve is putting together, a program that we will educate those areas that we're not getting enough pickup on the recycling. and so we're going to continue the education part. And the last part, you asked about businesses with the help of the vice mayor and some of the – we were able to do a little pilot program with the downtown to encourage the recycling. So that's the pilot program we're looking at, and if that works, we'll look at other areas too. So we are on all three of those. Thank you. Sounds great. Thank you. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. I want to add my thanks first to Amy for the work that she's done, but also to point out that a significant number of people have invested their time and energy in this over the years, some strictly as volunteers, some as representatives of their businesses or their utility or the university. I don't want to run down the whole list, but a lot of people have put a lot of energy into this, and it's good to see that it's bearing some results. I think the examples that you've given us in the report are very strong, and they help us understand kind of the progress that's being made in a general way. I guess I also want to kind of add that the movement towards greater energy efficiency and towards the reduction of carbon footprint is also encouraging. And having said all those things, I want to add that one of my concerns, and I have had informal conversations with Empower Lexington folks about this, and one of my concerns is that we have a plan, the Empower Lexington plan, and it makes pretty clear what the set of goals and objectives are. And from the perspective of both kind of transparency and accountability, I would be interested in, as we go forward, having both parts of the report to the committee, that is the report from the city on what's happening internally and the report from the general community about what's going on, tied a little more closely to the specific goals and objectives in the plan. The reason that I'm interested in this is that I believe that allows both the people who are involved in Empower Lexington and the Council to look at the ways in which those goals are appropriate or not to modify them if needed, to maybe focus a little more. The plan is somewhat general in the goals that it has. There's a lot of them. So I have an interest, and I hope that the people who are working on this will take this into account, that when we get additional reports in succeeding years, that they'd be tied more closely to the specifics in the plan so that we can understand whether the plan is working. So having said that, again, I appreciate all the work that's gone into it. It's encouraging that we're making the progress that we're making. Thank you for that, and thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman McKay. And to piggyback off your comments about our internal plan, at our next committee meeting, I'm going to ask that we have an update on the energy reinvestment monies and how they're being spent and how we're generating those energy savings because as we've all done the fund balance, we keep seeing that line item in our fund balance discussion, the half a million dollars approximately going to energy reinvestment balance. I don't think a lot of people know exactly where it's going and how we're generating that money. So if we can have that at our next meeting, that would be a good time for that update and piggyback on some of the goals that Council Member Kay mentioned. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. I agree with Council Member Kay. That's a very worthy goal. I think we should pursue that post-haste. I would also like to thank you, Amy, for the report. I think it shows that Lexington is doing some things right. And I think having said that, it seems like to me that this is the kind of information that ought to be made public if we could somehow. This is good information, not only that we can pat ourselves on the back, but encourage our efforts because if the public could see this, And I just wonder if there's any effort to have it in a report like this in the paper or something like that. Not right now, but I don't see why that wouldn't be a problem at all. I think it would be wonderful if we could get this information out to the public. If there's something we could do to make that happen, I'd be happy to help if there's some way I could help. And so I think we ought to pursue that. I think it would be really good for the public to know that we're being somewhat successful here. I'd also like to ask Richard a question. Richard, if you don't mind, I had a conversation with a group of people I meet with on a monthly basis last night, and one of the questions as we were talking about trucks and replacing trucks and so forth is, when we go to natural gas, what have we done in terms of filling stations? Right now we have an RFP out. We're looking at either we have the location on our property. We're looking at either having somebody come in and build one for us, or we're going to do it in-house ourselves. So we have two RFPs out to look at. Okay. Where is that side, Richard? It'll be out there. We're out on Old Frankfort Pike right there where we go in with our fleet service. There's a pipeline. We can do a slow fill, which we are in a fast fill. Okay. We're looking at both of those. And is Lex Tran involved in this? Let Tran, we asked them. They are now looking at the property over there on Loudon, and they are working with a private company to come in and do it for them. Okay. But we have everything set up over there already for our property. Thank you, Richard. We do want to work with the school buses since, you know, the school buses are across the street, so hopefully we may work with them down the road. But we want to make it public. We'd like to use the fast fill, possibly being public, but the slow fill will be ours. Okay, good. I appreciate that. Thank you, Richard. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Lane. Thank you, Chair. You mentioned that we had reduced our utility or increased our utility efficiency. We reduced our utility usage, I think, in the electric area. and Kentucky Utilities probably services most of the homes in Fayette County. And I wondered, because I get their bill and I see they're promoting energy efficiency and they send you incentives to do this or do that. Is there a report for Fayette County that Kentucky Utilities has produced that has any information about maybe the trend over the last three or four years for the per capita reduction in electric utilities. Have you seen anything like that at all? I don't know. I know that the Division of Environmental Quality gets that information from Kentucky Utilities to create this report, and I don't know, or environmental policy. Anyway, it gets that information, and I don't know if you want to add anything. Yeah, I can speak to that. Good morning. Council member, we've asked for that data, but the utility companies have a problematic time presenting it on the county-by-county level at this point in time. I think we will be able to obtain that at some point in the future, but as of this date, we have not. We have asked for that, though. But it's just a matter of internal tracking for the utility companies to produce that. Okay. Well, if some information were available at a later date, I think the council would be interested in seeing that information. I think it would be real interesting to see how much we've been able to reduce consumption, because that gives you an idea of what we might be able to do in the future. Thank you very much. Anyone else on this agenda item? All right, Amy, thank you so much. We'll see you in a year, but hopefully sooner in the community. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is a distillery district update. We had a rather lengthy discussion at our last Tuesday work session. We don't have any particular items because we have a docketed item for the council meeting Thursday night that plans on spending part of the $1.7 million bond that's remaining. I thought we'd wait until we see if that passes or not through the council before we continue our discussions because obviously if it passes, it'll change the amount of money available, and then we'll have an update. There is the two-page handout that was handed out last Tuesday in the packet. Unless any councilman has objection, we'll just keep it on our agenda for a future meeting, unless there's something you want to discuss about now until that ordinance passes or fails at the full council. Anything? Okay. Last, our items referred to committee. Are there any changes to our list that we need to make, take in, take out? We'll keep the Empower of Lexington on here for our report next year. Anything else on here that we need to change? Council Member Henson? If I'm not mistaken, and you can correct me, Chair, if you're wrong, the drainage maintenance issue can be removed. What issue is that? Is that a motion? Yeah, I'll motion to remove from the committee items. Okay. There's a motion to remove drainage maintenance issues. And a second by Vice Mayor Gordon. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that's removed. Anything else? We'll also have an update on the waste management expenditure audit in December, so we'll keep that in here. If there's nothing else, for our next meeting, we'll have the energy reinvestment discussion on how those funds are generated and expensed. We'll also have a discussion on CAO policy 15R having to do with change orders and our consent decree projects. There's a new idea that I'd like to be presented to the committee about modifications to that CAO policy and helping speed up some of the work moving forward in regards to change orders on those consent decree projects. So we'll hear about that idea, and we can discuss it at the next meeting. And I also have a follow-up from the mayor and CAO on the climate adaptation resolution. Anything else for next meeting that council members would like to request? All right, motion to adjourn. Move adjourned. Move in second. All in favor say aye. Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.