# Special Planning & Public Works Committee - April 15, 2014 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 15, 2014 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3332 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3332?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2014-04-15 - **Last revised**: July 15, 2026 - **Length**: 15,715 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning and Public Works Committee met on April 15, 2014, at 1:00 p.m., with Farmer presiding. The committee addressed five agenda items, taking three votes during the meeting. The committee heard ten public comments from members of the public. The committee approved the Affordable Housing Fund and the March 4, 2014 Committee Summary. Items Referred were also approved. A Design Excellence Update was presented for informational purposes. The committee deferred action on Residential Parking Permit District Procedures to a future meeting. ## Attendance **Present:** Farmer, Mossotti, Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Beard, Clarke, Henson **Absent:** Linda Gorton, Jennifer Mossotti, Diane Lawless **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions **Motion to Support Affordable Housing Fund and Homelessness Prevention Fund** [timestamp: 00:49:48] A motion to support the basic plan for the Affordable Housing Fund and Homelessness Prevention Fund was made by Gorton and seconded by Ford. The motion passed by voice vote with all members voting in favor: Farmer, Mossotti, Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Beard, Clarke, and Henson. There were no votes against or abstentions. **Motion to Request Redraft of Residential Parking Permit Ordinance** [timestamp: 01:35:06] A motion to request law to redraft the residential parking permit ordinance with four changes and consultant recommendations was made by Farmer and seconded by Beard. The motion passed by voice vote with all members voting in favor: Farmer, Mossotti, Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Beard, Clarke, and Henson. There were no votes against or abstentions. **Motion to Adjourn** [timestamp: 01:35:56] A motion to adjourn the meeting was made by Ellinger and seconded by Kay. The motion passed by voice vote with all members voting in favor: Farmer, Mossotti, Gorton, Ellinger, Kay, Ford, Lawless, Beard, Clarke, and Henson. There were no votes against or abstentions. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting included an appropriation of $3,500,000 allocated across two housing-related funds: * **Affordable Housing Fund**: $3,000,000 * **Homelessness Prevention Fund**: $500,000 These combined appropriations totaling $3,500,000 were designated to support affordable housing initiatives and homelessness prevention efforts. ## Public Comment Multiple councilmembers raised questions and concerns about the proposed organizational structure for homelessness and affordable housing services. **Organizational Structure and Coordination** Councilmember Beard questioned the clarity of the plan and expressed concern about the separation of two offices, noting the assumption of $3.5 million in funding and urging the need for a sustainable system before proceeding [timestamp: 00:23:07]. Councilmember Kay questioned why two separate offices and boards were created, noting that affordable housing is a key component of preventing homelessness, and sought clarification on funding mechanisms [timestamp: 00:30:00]. Councilmember Clark emphasized the importance of close coordination between the two offices and suggested they be located together to facilitate collaboration [timestamp: 00:34:23]. Councilmember Akers argued that the two offices should be integrated, with overlapping board members, to ensure better coordination and alignment [timestamp: 00:57:51]. In contrast, Councilmember Ford supported the separation of the two offices, citing different skill sets and operational needs, while emphasizing the importance of low administrative costs [timestamp: 01:03:21]. **Financial and Implementation Concerns** Councilmember Lane expressed concern about the potential for a large bureaucracy and high operating costs, questioning the long-term financial burden on taxpayers [timestamp: 00:41:31]. Vice Mayor Gorton supported the plan and asked for a recommendation on long-term funding, noting the importance of a sustainable approach [timestamp: 00:45:28]. **Geographic Distribution and Process Questions** Councilmember Henson expressed concern that affordable housing should be spread throughout the community and asked if the stakeholders group would consider location and density issues [timestamp: 00:54:36]. Councilmember Mazzotti asked whether the presentation was independently developed or based on prior consultant reports, seeking transparency on its origins [timestamp: 01:08:11]. Councilmember Kay clarified that supporting the motion does not preclude future council actions, particularly a motion to establish a sustainable fund, which he planned to reintroduce [timestamp: 01:11:20]. ## Appointments Charlie Lander was appointed to the position of Homelessness Coordinator. ## Contested Items The April 15, 2014 meeting included three significant areas of disagreement among council members. **Separation of Affordable Housing and Homelessness Offices** Council members disagreed about a proposal to separate the Affordable Housing and Homelessness offices into distinct departments. Councilmembers Kay and Akers questioned the rationale for the separation, arguing that the two offices were interdependent and should remain coordinated. In contrast, Councilmembers Ford and Gorton supported the distinction, contending that separating the offices would provide operational clarity and allow each to develop specialized skill sets tailored to their respective missions. The debate reflected differing views on whether administrative separation would improve or hinder service delivery. **Concerns about Bureaucracy and Cost** Councilmember Lane raised concerns about the financial implications of the proposed structure, warning that the program could result in a large bureaucracy with high operating costs that would become a burden on taxpayers. This concern centered on whether the administrative overhead would be justified by improved outcomes or whether resources would be better spent directly on services. **Funding Clarity and Sustainability** Council members disputed the details surrounding a $3.5 million fund referenced in the proposal. Questions were raised about the actual source of the funding and whether it had been truly allocated. Additionally, members sought clarification on how long-term funding would be secured beyond the initial allocation, expressing concern about the sustainability of the program if the funding source was temporary or uncertain. These three contested items reflected broader tensions between administrative efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and service coordination that the council had to navigate in structuring the city's approach to affordable housing and homelessness. ## Affordable Housing Fund The committee reviewed a proposal to establish an Affordable Housing Fund during this agenda item [timestamp: 00:04:33]. **Proposal Overview** The presentation, led by Paulson, outlined the creation of two separate funding mechanisms: * Affordable Housing Fund: $3 million * Homelessness Prevention Fund: $500,000 **Key Components** The proposal included plans for: * Creation of two separate offices with advisory boards * Stakeholder engagement efforts * Program development initiatives * Long-term funding strategies * Leveraging public-private partnerships * Coordination with existing programs **Outcome** The committee approved the proposal. ## Design Excellence Update The committee received a presentation on design excellence efforts and initiatives aimed at encouraging infill and redevelopment projects. **Presenters and Speakers** Kay, Fugate, and Merriman led the discussion on this agenda item. [timestamp: 01:13:27] **Key Proposals and Initiatives** The presentation outlined several proposed incentives and improvements to support design excellence: - **Financial Incentives**: Public parking garages and a revolving pre-development fund to support project development - **Land Banking**: Strategies for acquiring and holding land for future development - **Regulatory Reforms**: Changes to regulations to facilitate design excellence and development projects **Process Improvements** The committee also discussed operational enhancements to streamline project development: - Creation of a dedicated project manager position - Streamlined permitting processes to reduce timelines and administrative burden **Outcome** This agenda item was presented as informational, with no formal action or decision required from the committee at this time. ## Residential Parking Permit District Procedures The committee discussed proposed changes to the 1990 residential parking permit ordinance during this agenda item. [timestamp: 01:27:29] **Key Participants** The discussion involved committee members Farmer, Means, and Clark. **Discussion and Changes Proposed** The committee reviewed modifications to the existing ordinance that would shift several administrative responsibilities to the Lexington Parking Authority. The proposed changes would transfer the following duties from their current assignment to the Parking Authority: - Public notice procedures - Hosting meetings - Notifying traffic generators In addition to these responsibility shifts, the committee considered incorporating recommendations provided by a consultant regarding the ordinance's procedures. **Outcome** The committee approved a motion directing the law department to redraft the ordinance to reflect the proposed changes, including the shift of responsibilities to the Lexington Parking Authority and the incorporation of consultant recommendations. The agenda item was deferred, indicating that further action or discussion on this matter would occur at a future meeting. ## March 4, 2014 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:00] The committee reviewed and approved the March 4, 2014 summary without dissent. Chair Farmer presided over the discussion of this agenda item. During the review, Chair Farmer identified a typographical error in the document that required correction. Specifically, the word "inn" needed to be changed to "in" in the summary text. **Outcome:** The summary was approved following the identification and notation of the necessary correction. ## Items Referred [timestamp: 00:06:00] The committee confirmed the referral of three items for further review. The items referred were: * Affordable Housing Fund * Design Excellence Update * Residential Parking Permit procedures Farmer addressed the committee on this agenda item. The committee confirmed that these three items would proceed to further review with no changes made to the referral list. The outcome of this agenda item was approved. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed: Motion to support the basic plan for the Affordable Housing Fund and Homelessness Prevention Fund - **Motion** — passed: Motion to request law to redraft the residential parking permit ordinance with four changes and consultant recommendations - **Motion** — passed: Motion to adjourn the meeting --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to go ahead and start our meeting as much on time as we could. I was going to ask the committee, if they would, to look at their packet. Actually, the item one is our March 4th committee summary, which by virtue of our meeting style last week, the council has already approved this in our work session last Tuesday. So we don't really need to take any action on that. Next up is the Affordable Housing Fund, is how it's titled here. Originally, this issue was sent to committee by the vice mayor for us to look at, for us to consider the CBZ report that had been tendered to the council, which has given us each time, I think, to read it, to look at it, to understand about it. But in the larger sense, it has given the administration an opportunity to step up in leadership capacity, and they have a nice presentation that begins on page six. And I thank Commissioner. I appreciate your time and talent. If you would lead us off, please, sir. Absolutely. Really? All my notes just disappeared. Okay. Oh, yes, I am. Thank you. All right. So we're going to give an overview of the homelessness and affordable housing program and basically how we're going to go about the development of these two programs. Very simply, here's the general overview. We'll start off just talking about the homelessness fund, then go into the affordable housing fund, as well as some proposed organization and coordination, and then the program development for the affordable housing program. First, with homelessness, it will be the fund, so the half million dollars still will be administered by the Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. It will be managed by a homelessness coordinator, who, as we will talk about, has been hired now. They will be, and again, as this gets fleshed out, they will be doing RFPs, requests for proposals, about specific programs, the way it sounds like on a yearly basis. And then they will be managing those. There will be a board, obviously we'll be doing a lot of the decision making in concert with the director. And those funds will, again, most likely go through public-private partnerships to address the issues from that year. Again, I think a lot of it will be focused on the board. Some examples of the types of programs that I believe they are considering and how they will go about servicing homelessness. Housing First, and a lot of these come from the recommendations from the studies that have already been done. Housing First, creation of a mental health court, street outreach and intervention, employment support, and a homeless information management system. So again, these are general categories for the programs that will be done. There will be more details to come as that program gets fleshed out. But a lot of that work has already been fleshed out by the previous report, so I think there's a lot of good recommendations there already. The next steps, again, this was for last week. So we didn't update the slides, but there has been a hire, Charlie Lander. He's actually here in the room. He's going to wave. There he is. Give it a big wave, man. Come on. I told him we would not make him talk. All right. But, again, the coordinator has been hired. I believe we'll be starting around May 5th. And they will be reporting out once they get the board together and start being able to have meetings and starting to flesh out the program more. They will report out on those recommendations, reports, funding, and other topics. associated with homelessness. So those are good things to come associated with the homelessness fund. Switching over to affordable housing. So this fund, the $3 million, and there's two different parts to this, as much as there are for homelessness. We'll be talking about both how we'll go about for the $3 million as well as more program development overall for the Office of Affordable Housing. There will be a director. We're proposing the hiring of a director as well as an advisory board, very similar in model to the homelessness position. This fund will be competitive in terms of applications. Again, very similar to how we're talking about doing the homelessness, where we'll put out RFP based on board recommendations. There will be coordination with both organizations within and outside the government and then management of those funds as well. Big key to this is the words, leveraging existing affordable housing programs and public-private partnerships. I think an important thing to remember is we have $3 million for this year. This is not expected to be the amount of funding that is necessary to fund all affordable housing programs. This will be leveraged with other dollars at state level, working with public and private partnerships, working with private developers to help fund affordable housing. However, again, it comes out from, as we'll talk about in future steps, with a stakeholder group and making those decisions about how we fund those programs for this year. But, again, it's part of a funding package is where we feel these funds are going to best be able to be used to try to maximize the amount of money that we have. The director, as we envision this director, the responsibilities for the director will be to staff the Affordable Housing Advisory Board, very similar to, in many ways, an analogy would be to PDR where we have the Rural Land Management Board and the director of PDR manages that board. A lot of the decisions go through that board. Same sort of thing here. They would be the staff person for the Affordable Housing Advisory Board. They would manage the application process, and again, that application process, and a lot of that we feel will be directed by the advisory board. They would also manage the awarded projects. So, again, there's a lot of work that goes into getting those RFPs out, again, working with the board to determine those things, and then managing the awards that are, again, determined by the board. They'll also be coordinating with the Division of Special Programs and Grants. Irene Shop, dealing with home grants, home dollars, and other things, the consolidated plan, all of those things. Again, trying to maximize the existing programs we have along with this new office here and the dollars that they will have. And then also coordinating with other divisions as well within government, including planning. One of the things that we will be working on is kind of a review of what we already have in terms of planning resources that we have, but also maximizing the resources from a planning perspective in terms of maximizing affordable housing. Next steps, and we'll go through all these in more detail, is to engage stakeholders to set the goals, begin program development, finalize our board composition, create the organizational structure for management of the Affordable Housing Program, and then also start hiring the director. These are the proposed organizational charts for both the Office of Homelessness, Intervention, and Prevention, and then the Office of Affordable Housing. We'll talk about homelessness, intervention, and prevention first. It's proposed that it start to be under the CAO. I think we'll keep it there. I think that's the plan for it to stay there for as long as it needs to, at least its origination, and then we'll kind of get to there may be a review later on to see if it needs to move to better coordinate with other divisions. For Office of Affordable Housing, it will be within planning, preservation, and development, and there's also a proposal to move grants and special programs there as well in order to better coordinate the existing programs that we have along with planning and other programs, other divisions there. Again, it's more about coordination than anything. They will not actually physically move to the building. And there's a lot of other things that grants and special programs does, including work very closely with engineering on all the grants and special programs. This would put a lot of people in your shop, wouldn't it? Yes. What's the dynamic opportunity here? Can you ramp to do... I mean, I want you to be successful in all of these things. I'm just wanting to make sure that you're sure you can do them all. I feel confident we can do this. And I think importantly, because again, there's a common theme that rungs amongst these different divisions of, again, planning, preservation, development, grants and special programs. While a component of it is, you know, dealing with home dollars, CDBG and the consolidated plan, which would coordinate well with the Office of Affordable housing, the division of planning, a lot of the other stuff that grants and special programs does is also associated with the department as well. Engineering is one of their, obviously, they work very closely with them on all the funds that come in and coordinating all those dollars. So I don't think our, you know, the key for us is coordinating and making sure that we are as tight as we can be in terms of our plans moving forward so that we are maximizing, again, what we have right now, coordinating the home dollars, CDBG, and other funds with this new Office of Affordable Housing, but then also working with them from a planning perspective as well. So the Division of Planning and others. So it's, again, more than anything, it's about the coordination. I think we're all confident in your abilities, but we would also say if you need more help, just say so. Oh, we will. Don't worry. All right. Please continue. Again, these are just kind of very short org charts for these individual offices with affordable housing, both of them being basically mirror images. You've got a director and you've got advisory boards for each. Again, a lot of the work will be going through those advisory boards in terms of decisions made and funding for each program. Coordination, and this is one of those charts that tries to give you an understanding of how everything's going to work, starting with, you know, I think the top one there is interchangeable office of homelessness or formal housing, working closely with partner agencies in terms of, and that can be from a housing perspective, Kentucky Housing Corporation, working with other nonprofit and for-profit developers of affordable housing, working with grants and special programs. Again, we've talked about that already in terms of home dollars and the consolidated plan. Working with the Division of Planning, again, very closely, there's a lot of planning tools that we are going to be working with to, again, try to maximize our affordable housing. Code enforcement as well in terms of monitoring and maintenance of affordable housing products, not only our own but others. Also the Vacant Property Review Commission, one of those things that we've been working on closely in terms of some of the programs that we are proposing that will be at least discussed by the stakeholders group, looking at vacant property and how we can maximize some of those vacant properties to work closely with affordable or to provide more affordable housing options. And again, within that, federal programs, state dollars, federal dollars as well. I mean, they're trying to coordinate with the Kentucky Housing Corp and others in terms of maximizing the amount of money that we have, leveraging as much as we can to, again, produce as much affordable housing that we can. In terms of the program, the process, and we'll again come back to these with some actual dates here as the presentation goes on, is the creation of a stakeholder group first, and we will be working on program development with that stakeholders group. We will then report out, and around that same time, We'll be working on the department reorganization and the hiring of a director. We envision the approval of program ordinances to be one of those things that will be at your discretion, but we figure since we'll be reporting out right before break, it would give council a chance to digest them over the break and come back in August and take that up in terms of what needs to be approved. The stakeholder group membership, this is based on, I believe, Councilmember Kay's board. and these are just at this point we are working on the appointing of these individuals and again basically based on membership based on specific skill sets at this time it's proposed to be two council members member a homeless and emergency housing representative social and support services affordable housing management grants administration and you can read through the rest there but the key that we want to do is to try to get the local experts that we can to work on this program development. We want to get people who have experience in these various different areas so as to make sure that we are creating the best program that we can, both for the expenditure of the $3 million this year as well as the development of this program for a longer term. And we will be, hopefully, that's one of the big tasks I have right now is trying to develop this group. We have reached out informally to numerous people, but we have not quite got all of them filled, and we hope to have that. I would love to have that by the end of this week so we can start meeting as soon as possible. In terms of the next steps, what the stakeholder group will do, and we'll go through each of these as well in more detail, determine an affordable housing goal, and I guess we'll just go right through these. But we'll hit each one of these in more detail, starting with the program goal. And the program goal will be, again, looking at previous reports, there have been quite a few reports done on affordable housing over the years. It's looking at those reports as well as other research to determine what we feel is a good goal for this city and a timeline to accomplish that goal. An important thing when we say, you know, a timeline to accomplish that goal, I think an important thing to remember is that we're never really going to, you know, this is not something you can just sort of win. You set a date and you kind of say, on this definitive date we'll have it beaten. I think it's a goal to move forward more about, you know, if we set the goal at the creation of X number of units, it's to create those by a certain time. It's not the lofty goal to say that we will have beaten the affordable housing problem by 2016. It's more, this is a longer term program. This affordable housing will be with us, I think, as an issue in our community for the foreseeable future. So I think that's an important thing to think about in terms of the goals and the timeline. We want this goal to be ambitious. We also recognize capacity and recommended funding are going to be an important thing in terms of both the timeline and what we're trying to accomplish as we move forward. Capacity is one of those things that we need to consider. What is our current capacity? How do we leverage it as much as we can so that we are not setting a goal for a thousand, you know, creation of a thousand units each year when the home builders could tell us that we're not producing that now, period, from multifamily units? So we need to make sure that we're setting a goal that is ambitious but not so, I don't want to make it something so lofty that it's not attainable. And, again, this is all going to be done with the stakeholders group to determine, again, an ambitious goal based on our capacity and others. In terms of the programs, and this is where how do we spend the money, this is where the stakeholder group will be very important. I think at this point we are looking at all potential programs, and I think this is where we really need their advice. And, again, this is not just for this year and the expenditure of the $3 million, but also moving forward for the program as a whole. And I think what we'd like to do is, more than anything, as we've mentioned this before, have a set of tools that we can use. I think a lot of it will be determined on a year-by-year basis as to which ones the board advises that we want to put forward for an RFP. But we want to have the right tools in place to be able to use. So it can be things such as choice rental assistance, gap financing, rehabilitation programs. I think we're open to any and all, and this is why we want the expertise of this stakeholders group to really help us determine what is it that will be best for Lexington. You can look at other cities, and we will, but not everything that other cities are currently doing may apply that well here. I've used the analogy of policing. You know, New York City, I was there over spring break. The way they handle their crime issues, while we can learn things from New York, they may not apply appropriately here in Lexington. So it's trying to figure out which programs will get us the most bang for our buck. And, again, being able to adjust those on a yearly basis using the advisory board to be able to see where do we need to maybe change our funding, put a little more in one program than the other on a year-by-year basis. But, again, I think the goal that we want from this is a good moving forward for the first $3 million as well as the programs that we think are going to be essential as we move forward longer term with some flexibility. The appropriate funding level, and this is, again, this will focus a lot for the first year, but also trying to provide some guidance for years forward. But, you know, once we decide on the programs that we, that the stakeholders feel are the best to move forward, it's how much do we need to fund for each one of those. The first year is particularly important as well. We want to maximize the funding. You know, we've got to be cognizant of deadlines for, you know, Kentucky Housing Corp and others. We may be behind in terms of some of those deadlines for applications to leverage that money for this year. And those are things we'll figure out for this year. But, again, trying to provide a roadmap for future funding, but a very specific goal of this year. And then long-term funding. Again, determining potential long-term funding sources based on funding levels identified by stakeholders. we would come back with some options, again, based on previous studies, based on research that's out there that we have seen from previous studies, and make a recommendation on as to what is a good form of a dedicated funding source or a long-term funding source. Finally, we'll wrap it up with a timeline. We hope to create this stakeholders group as soon as possible. I would love by the end of this week, but possibly more realistic, It will be early next week. We would then set meeting schedules very soon afterwards. We will be working on the program development until early July. We will report out, and I will say this too, we do not plan to report out on your last meeting before you go on break. We'd like to report out on the week before so it's not just springing on you on your last day. Thank you. As a little courtesy there. And at the same time, we would also be considering that reorganization of the department in the hiring process for the director, and again, coming back after the break for the approval of any program ordinances that need to be approved by council. With time, again, for comments by council based on what we come back with in July. And then I will now leave it to questions. There will be a couple of sign-ups here, I guess, on your last one. What sort of, so you would give us kind of the outline of a legislative pattern package, as it were, in July? I think what we would do is provide an ordinance that could be enacted. And again, yes, it would be one that we would expect some form of comments back on. So part of that would be making the positions available and then setting up the actual board operating entity, so to speak? Any other parts? I would think that would be the majority of it, but I don't want to. All right. Thank you, sir. First up is Council Member Beard. Sir? Thank you, Sheriff. I hardly know where to start. In one of three different banking schools in my career, I was always told that you don't go any further than five boxes per, as opposed to one, two, three, four, eight boxes that we have here on that. And I know your capabilities, but still, somewhere along the line, you may decide you want to jump off a bridge. You're assuming I haven't already signed? Well, wait till August, will you? I've been on the railing several times. So page 8, and so voluminous, Derek, I don't know. The same wording is there both for homeless and affordable housing. and in the same sentence is the word managed and advisory board. Assuming you're here. Yes. They don't reside, in my mind, in the same place, at least in the same sentence. Who's on first? Who's in charge? I mean, other than you. Well, the director will be the one in charge using the advisory board. That's for affordable housing. That's not necessary for homelessness. Is it? I'm going to assume that it is. It doesn't reference that here. I just wondered. How do we know definitively that we've got $3.5 million? I mean, that's in the budget, I understand. Correct. And the budget's in the council's hands. I'm not sure that it's in the budget. I believe that was already done. It was already reappropriated. It's part of the fund balance. I understand that. As a beneficial one. So do you think it's appropriate to have a system? I really feel like that we need a system in place before we go a lot further. It would be a shame to go down a path and then turn around and have to reverse ourselves because nobody wants to do so many such percentage of insurance income allocated this way or that way or whatever. And whatever it is, we need a sustainable, and we need it early rather than later. Right, and I agree that we do need something that is workable, and that's the whole goal of this stakeholders group is to create something that's not, you know, to... based off my old experience, the academic side. So we don't want to create a program that sounds great from an academic standpoint, but is not workable. That's why the people that we are putting on this stakeholders group are largely practitioners in the field. And we will be also, in addition to this, be talking to those that are currently in this. I mean, these are people that are doing this now. And we will also be talking with others that are doing this now to make sure, does this work? Can you do this? Because ultimately, that's the goal. And we don't want to just create a program and say we created a program. We want to create a program that works. Hence the reason we want to get our local experts involved, the ones that are doing this right now. Again, from a maintenance, management, financing standpoint, all those things. And, again, we're realistic that we'll be leveraging more dollars. And that's, you know, again, where we want to try to make sure that we are working with those that understand the capacity that we currently have from a home building standpoint and from a property rehabilitation standpoint and also from a financing standpoint so that we can make the best use of that money on a yearly basis? Over the last three or four years, there's been talk that it would be five-to-one rehab to build out within the affordable housing arena. I don't know whether you've heard that. I've heard a lot of stuff in the last few weeks. Well, so have we. There's been no shortage of things being brought. And, again, this is why I think the key with this group is to get people who are actually in the field doing these things. So that we're going to, you know, part of this will be from a unit creation versus unit rehabilitation. It will be capacity. It may also depend, at least in this first year as well as subsequent years, making sure that, you know, how we set this up so that we are in line with our deadlines or in line with other funding sources' deadlines so that we can maximize those funds as much as possible. So I think, you know, these are all, I mean, your comments are being heard. Those are important things for us to figure out how we do that, and that's really why we have this stakeholders group, to figure out that, at least for this first year, but also going forward, how we address those issues in terms of capacity. What is the best way for us to move forward? We can look at what other cities have done, and other cities are going to be different, but they do provide us a guide in terms of some of those types of programs. How we apply those in Lexington is why we have this stakeholders group. Okay. I'm on board. I don't want to make that clear, but they're just things that need to sequence things. Absolutely. And I think what I want people to understand as well is that we are at the point where we're, my ears are as wide open as they can be. And we're listening. Again, I've heard a lot from a lot of different people. What we want to do is make sure that we create the best program that we can. And I think the way we do that is listening to a lot of people that, again, that know what they're talking about, that are in this field and listening to them about how we can do things, not just how they do it in some other city, but how we can do it here. Again, our capacity is going to be important. Our experiences are going to be different. And that's what we want to make sure that we are taking those things into account as we build this program. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Kay. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, thanks for bringing this forward. I know it's a quite complex issue. I want to start by asking a question about the notion of two funds and two boards. The Commission on Homelessness concluded, as did the original Affordable Housing Trust Fund studies, that affordable housing is the most important component of preventing homelessness and intervening in homelessness. So can you provide some rationale for why now we have two separate offices, two separate boards, two separate funding mechanisms? Well, I wouldn't say necessarily there are two separate funding mechanisms, but I think how that money gets spent is split into two different boards and two different directors. Because ultimately, while they are, you're right, affordable housing is a key component of homelessness, how those problems are addressed are going to be very different. And I think we need to separation of those things is going to be important in terms of if we're talking about affordable housing, workforce housing, again, helping people who are currently in housing right now, but that are spending way too much of their monthly income on rent is different than those who are not housed now. A great deal of coordination will go between those two groups, but I think there are some real differences between the actual way that money is spent that will be important in terms of having those two different boards and those two different directors. I think coordination is absolutely key, and I know from the reports that there is, you know, the number one recommendation from the homelessness task force is, you know, creation of more affordable housing. And with that, there will be, again, a lot of coordination between them, but I think in terms of the actual, you know, just in terms of the complexities here, I think we look at the types of programs offered, and I don't want to make you sick and dizzy by going back and forth, but Housing First, creation of mental health court, street outreach and intervention, employment support, these types of programs that are being proposed and are going to be looked at from a homelessness are very different in many ways from, but complementary, to these types of programs for affordable housing. And I think we've got people who know a lot about both fields, but I think in terms of how we split that money up on a yearly basis and the programs moving forward, I think it is good to have two separate boards and directors so they can focus a little bit more on the uniqueness of those programs. Well, I guess I see it a little differently. But in terms of funding, the $3.5 million, $3 million was specifically earmarked to set up an affordable housing fund. The $500,000 that was to go to homelessness prevention, is that also a fund similar to the affordable housing fund? Or is that included in the one fund? I believe we're dealing with them in terms of how we actually decided about how they're spent. they're, while they come from the same source, they're split off into two different groups. So the board for homelessness will handle the $500,000 in terms of the determination of how that is spent, whereas a board for the $3 million will spend, or for affordable housing will determine the $3 million. But in terms of the way in which the government keeps its books and delineates these, this may be a question for... I think you're getting into accounting principles, and I didn't even take that class in college, So I will defer to Bill or others. I don't know if Bill needs to come up right now, but I think we can get you an answer. Well, actually, if you don't mind, I would be interested in knowing the answer to the question. I wasn't able to complete my text to have an exact answer for you. But we created, I know, a fund and put, I thought, the $3.5 million in there with the earmark that it was $3 million for affordable housing and a half a million for homeless. And I believe that's the way it stands today. However, it doesn't have to. It would be the will of the council if they wanted two different funds. Two different funds could be established. But at this point, that money, the $3.5 million, has gone into the Affordable Housing Fund. And then the question of how to allocate it was answered. The council basically said $3 million for affordable housing in this first year, half a million for homeless programs. That's my recollection. I'll confirm that, and if I have misspoken, I'll get back with you. Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. My time is up. I might come back. Thank you, Chair. Very good, sir, on both counts. Next, Council Member Clark. Thank you very much. I was absolutely delighted to see the plan last week, and I was really anxious to see the presentation. I was disappointed we didn't get it last week, but welcome, and I'm just delighted. I have a couple of questions. On page 15, or maybe I should say observations. On page 15, there are two blocks. One is affordable housing, and the other is homelessness. What I would like to see is a line drawn between the two as representative of the kind of cooperation I think we absolutely have to have. And I've been talking about this for a long time, as you know, Derek. I think that's just incredibly important. And we can't forget that those two offices have got to be coordinating, and I'd almost like to see them in the same office suite so that they can have coffee together or whatever. But I think it's important that we do coordinate that, and the fact that they're in two different areas bothers me a little bit. I would like to say, would like to ask this question. And is there some reason why the stakeholder group is in action before we actually have a director? Well, yes. In this case, the stakeholder group is not the board. Yes, I understand. And so I think the stakeholder group needs to come to help with the direction or creation of that program. That's our goal with this, is the stakeholder group. It doesn't preclude them from being on a board, on the board later. Yes. But I think it is really to help us define the program and to create, again, the boundaries of the program, how we tend to move forward in terms of spending the money and the coordination of that. I think that is our goal with this, and that will include the creation of this board as well in terms of the seats that need to be at the table for that. I was just thinking it would be good if the director was involved in the process at the beginning, although I certainly agree we need to get this started. One thing I would say is that very thing right there. in terms of creating the search that would push us back in terms of time. I understand that. I'd like to know a little more about the information management system on page 9. I've been talking about some kind of management system, and I'd like to know what the idea is here because I was glad to see that as well. I'm going to get Shay to come up and speak about this. I'm not as familiar with all the intricacies of it. Good. The Homeless Information Management System is a database that's required by HUD. So any of our service providers that receive federal funding currently use this system, and they enter information about their clients that they serve into it. However, it can be used more effectively to benefit the city to determine how to allocate resources and make decisions. But there's also an issue from the user side, from our providers, where the system needs to be improved a little bit on their end so it's not quite as cumbersome. And so there's a lot of examples across the country where communities have found ways to use their, it's called HMIS, basically. how to use the system more effectively. And so the idea here is we're probably going to need to invest some money to do this. But the database exists. The software exists. But there's some details around the edges that need to be worked out. So we can expand that database to include the efforts that we would do that were not necessarily federally funded? Absolutely. That's what I'm interested in. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And thank you, Derek. Thank you, Chair. Yes, sir. next council member Ed Lane thank you mr. chairman I was going to ask a couple questions in a little bit different vein sort of a macro overview of how we're going to find 6,000 housing sites to provide the affordable housing in Fayette County have y'all got an idea how you're going to do that would this be single family, multifamily, conversions. Do you have some ideas there? Well, again, I think we really hope to get from the stakeholders group is a little bit more information about the types of programs. But I think the assumption that it's going to be single family, I think we need to move a lot towards multifamily, but also the idea that it's just new creation or new unit creation. I think we're talking a lot about rehabilitation as well. So those are programs that will as we meet with the stakeholders group, a lot of that will come down to capacity. But I don't think the idea is is to create 6,000 brand new units. I think that would be the amount of time that might take. Just as an example, I looked through what we have created, what our average has been on a yearly basis from 2008, just of market rate apartment complexes, and it's a little less than 600 from 2008 to 2014. So in terms of this all being new unit creation, I don't think that's really what we're talking about. Again, I think a lot of other communities have done the same thing. And this is why we want to really look at the maximum number of potential, and I know I'm kind of jumping through all these really quickly, but various different programs that we could employ to get at units and putting families in affordable housing, not necessarily through new unit creation. The start to finish on that may take longer than a rehabilitation. We do have a lot of, again, a lot of these people are currently in units right now. There's a lot of different creative ways that we could reduce those costs using these funds. and that's where we're looking for the guidance of the stakeholders in terms of our current capacity and how to best do that. Well, the Lexington Housing Authority, you know, they both bill some units, but they do a lot of rental assistance. And, I mean, could you see joint venturing with them, providing them a grant or something, and they would do some of the placements for the affordable housing? I think if we were to use as one of the tools a choice rental assistance, we probably would look to partner with them. But there's also place-based rental assistance where it's based at that location. It doesn't travel with the individual but sticks with that location. So there's a lot of different ways that we can go about it. And, again, that's where our input from the stakeholders group will be key in terms of our capacity. Again, I think there will be new unit creation. Absolutely. I think there will be. But I also think there will be a lot of rehabilitation as well. You know, the biggest concern, as you know, I did vote against this funding for the initial funding on this. And my biggest concern is the fact that we're talking about building 6,000 units or finding them and making them affordable for somebody to live in. That the cost is going to be estimated, I guess, between $35 and $40 million over 10 years. But in addition to that, we're going to have to create a bureaucracy and to operate, manage, oversee. I mean, you may have to evict people. You may have to renovate. I mean, I don't know what all the issues might be. But, you know, just to start out with one person seems minimalistic at best. I mean, I see this burgeoning into a big bureaucracy, and it will be a huge financial burden for the taxpayers. That's really the concern that I have, and I'm trying to look at it. You know, I agree there are people that need help, and there's no question about that, but I think that there are only so many things the government can do, and if we bite this off, I mean, we're looking at the EPA consent agreement and the storm sewer renovations, a new senior citizen, a new city hall, the Rupp Arena deal. I mean, we've got a lot of money going out that's being projected for the future. And, you know, I just worry, do we have any study that shows what the ongoing operating expenses for the bureaucracy would be, what would it cost us over 10 years? No, but I'm also not sure the bureaucracy that you envision is one that we envision. I think, again, if we're, if we'll take an example of one of these here rehabilitation programs, we would not, you know, we'd be working with public and private partnerships. So that we would be working with builders to rehabilitate and to build those. It may not be anywhere near as bureaucracy-intensive as I think you may be thinking in terms of we're managing a rental assistance program that we have thousands of inspectors, a lot of inspectors going out there and working with them. I think our goal would be, if we're looking at a choice rental program, would be to work with our existing partners here in the community that do these programs right now as much as we can so that we're not creating that bureaucracy, but we are providing those affordable housing needs or meeting those needs as best we can. I don't think our goal here, and I don't think anyone will disagree with me, is to work on creating a new bureaucracy. It's to spend that money as efficiently and effectively to address those affordable housing needs, working with our private partners and our other nonprofits that are currently here. I think we have a lot of good groups that are out there. It's a matter of us teaming with them in the best way possible. And I think that's where we are right now, is how do we decide how we're going to go about the first year, the $3 million, but then also building those programs and making those connections, working with those. Let me see if I can pull that. Our partner agencies as much as possible. Yeah, my time has run down. I would just like to say the last thought I had is sometimes if you have a cluster of multifamily units with people that are getting affordable housing, Some of those people may have some type of a past history that would be denigrating to the neighborhood or whatever. And I think that's another issue you have to look at, too, that will the affordable housing developments in any way denigrate the neighborhood they're in. And I've got a subsidized housing unit in my district, and, you know, we've had a lot of problems out there with crime and over too many people living in the units. Once the people get in, they bring in their friends and, you know, overpopulate a unit. So there are a lot of issues. It's a big project. I mean, many things can go wrong and very complex. So that's why I'm saying we need to be cautious, take our time. and evaluate this carefully before we get 100% into the plan. Thank you. I'm sorry I ran a little along, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, sir. Next is Vice Mayor Gorton. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, Commissioner, for your presentation. I have just a couple comments and then a couple questions. Back when we had the vote on Mr. K's motion some time ago, Many citizens after that vote were critical of the council members who asked for a plan and more detail. And so I appreciate that you have brought us a beginning of a plan because I personally think it's the duty of elected officials to pay attention to the detail of how tax dollars are spent. If we don't pay attention, there's not a lot of people paying attention. And so I really appreciate that you brought us this, we need a sustainable plan. Many of us who voted no in the beginning understand there's a problem, and it needs fixed through a plan. With that said, I think that I understand why we're looking at splitting the homeless office and the affordable housing office. And I'm so excited about Charlie Lanter being our homeless coordinator. And thank you very much. Those of us who know you are really pumped that you're going to be doing this. I guess what I would ask is with your stakeholder recommendations, you have recommended that the stakeholder group deliverables include a long-term funding source recommendation. I think what we'll do is to come back with some recommendations for the council to make those decisions. A menu of choices, maybe. Not necessarily a particular recommendation. Okay. Okay. And so if this chart is representative, it would seem you would have that back to us by before we go on break in July. Is that the hope? That is our goal, is to get it back to you before you go on break so it gives you time to digest, read through comments. And I think really that starts more the comments and feedback time. Okay. That is before you guys go on break and give us time over the break, although that's not always sounds like a lot of fun for y'all, but to provide us back with feedback so that we can then have some more feedback, have some alterations if necessary to you when you guys come back in August. Okay, so we've established the Affordable Housing Fund with $3 million. So we would have your recommendations for funding source coming back to us. How do you see, do you, I know in the beginning you said you didn't need any motions. I think you did. Do you want a motion of support for the basic plan or does that? I always would love a motion. You always want a motion. Anyone who would love to support us on the basic plan would be great. I mean, I like this very much. It gives us a really much better framework than we had. And I guess I wonder how it's related. you know, we've got this motion that the council tabled until after the mayor's budget. Do you, and today is the day for that, if it's going to come back up, how are these related? Or you're just going to let the council do its thing and see how it plays out? I would love to let the council do its thing. Okay. Well, with that, you're very, very savvy. I want to go ahead just for purposes of discussion and make a motion of support, not a motion of implementation but of support, to say that we like this and we want you to go ahead with this plan. So I so move. Second. We have a motion and a second. We're in discussion on that, and I will keep them. The list will be up here. If others want to speak to this, we'll just take you by hand. Are there any? Yes, sir. Please. Well, it's the same list. It's the same. Well, I just figure we had a motion and a second, and we're in discussion on that, which I don't think is the same as the list that's before us. Mr. Chair, if I may? Please. I have no objection, although I'd like to speak to the motion to have the order, and people ask if they want to speak to it. People sign in. It's a little easier. And I think people probably are ready to speak to the motion as well as the general issue, if that makes sense. All right. Then Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Derek, in the $3 million and the $500,000 that we have given the green light to, when will those budget amendments come so that they're officially moved? Because right now the funds aren't created. Let me get your answer. Well, accounting-wise, we've already created the fund to put the money. For both? Well, I confirmed it's one fund. We were doing two department IDs to separate the $3 million from the $500,000, just an accounting way to keep track of both dollar amounts. The budget amendment I will check with the budgeting department, but we were hoping to present next Tuesday the entire $10 million, and that would be part of that total budget amendment process. And those funds that you created, are they part of the F-515 budget we got last week? Are they in that budget packet? They would not be reflected in that because it's assumed to have been taken care of in 2014. Right, but the budget for that fund and the list should be in there. It's not in the 500 pages. Okay. But upon passage in June, it will be considered in there, so it has a permanent placeholder in our budget. That's correct. Okay, good. And then, Derek, give me your thoughts. I know you list a lot of stakeholders. I did not see if they're a Kentucky Housing Corporation. Are we not going to make them part of it? We are. Because I think there's a lot of opportunity there to make them part of our conversation. And I will tell you, we want to work as close with them as we can. And I think just to talk a little bit about it, we realize that Kentucky Housing Corp. is one of, if not the main source for leveraging dollars for us. I don't know what other would be. But we want to make sure, I think, as we start talking about the creationist program, that our applications for competitive applications would be as consistent with Kentucky Housing Corp. So that as we make decisions at the board level, that anything that we would approve would also be able to easily go forward to Kentucky Housing Corp. So we are going to be working very closely with them. And will they be part of the stakeholder group? Yes. Okay. And then as we move forward, if we agree to support this plan, separating out the affordable housing and homeless, will we also separate out the HUD money and put it under different spots that we administer? Because, you know, we get, what, $4 million roughly broken out into emergency housing. How will we break that out? Will we break it out under the apartments? I think it will function under that consolidated plan in terms of how we go forward with that. So I think we still have to keep the consolidated plan, so we will still do it that way. And I think it will just be coordination between the Office of Homelessness and the Office of Affordable Housing and grants and special programs on that creation of the consolidated plan. Because right now, some of that money we give to outside agencies. Is there a discussion on keeping that money in-house and distributing? Well, I think this is a lot of the coordination that we need to talk about, about how we do that. I think what our goal is is not necessarily to not keep giving it to those agencies. It's just to make sure that we are considering that as we are moving forward the plans for both homelessness and affordable housing so that we are maximizing the dollars that we currently get along with the money that we will be putting in these funds. Okay. And then to the vice mayor's point on the long-term financing or funding solution, I anticipate that would be part of FY16 budget delivery to the council and discussion about how we permanently fund this, whether it be a department in the budget, which is how most of the things are funded from the general fund or a dedicated whatever. Yes, sir. So FY2016. Yes, sir. We're talking about 2015 now. So we're talking about 2015 starting in July would be for the following year. Very good. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you for the plan. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Next up is Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Derek, how will you find the members for the stakeholders? Is it by invitation or do you apply? We have been working to try to create that group right now. So we have just been trying to make sure that we are making as representative as we can in terms of experience and knowledge. We'd be happy to have people apply as well. I know we've received a lot of recommendations from a lot of different people. And that's what we are currently in that stage is just talking to different people and listening to recommendations. So will this stakeholders group be considering the, I guess, the nuts and bolts of the, because, you know, it's like I've voiced my concerns to you. I don't think that affordable housing should be all in one area. I think it should be spread throughout our community. I think that we should put programs in place that would reduce the need for affordable housing by empowering people or whatever. So is that something the stakeholders group would be doing? As we go forward with it, I think a lot of what we'll talk about are some of those issues. I mean, there are a lot of issues about density of affordable housing and other concerns that people have. and we want to try to address those as much as we can in the creation of the program, but also realistically there's going to be alterations to these programs, just as there are with every department moving forward. So I think we will try to give some really good recommendations about how we implement those things with these funding programs in terms of our specifics that we want to consider, in terms of also housing, the energy efficiency, also looking at things such as location near transportation. I think a lot of those things are things that we locally want to hear, want to have included. Kentucky Housing Corp. and others consider some of those. We want to make sure that we're getting, you know, we're not getting cross purposes with Kentucky Housing Corp. and other funding sources, but that a lot of the local touches that we want to add are also included in there. I think there are big concerns among many residents, you know, whether legitimate concerns or not. There are concerns that need to be looked at. I personally think a voucher program would be a good program if the person was given a certain amount of money toward their rent, and they could live anywhere in the city they wanted. But I think I share that concern that it would all be in one particular area. and same but I think that that was all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Next is Council Member Akers, then I'm going to go to Council Member Ford and then come back to Council Member Kay. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for recognizing me. Derek, I appreciate this first attempt at a plan. I know that it's certainly not easy. I have to agree with Council Member Kay. As someone who's worked in the field of social work now for more than 15 years and in the field of homelessness for probably a decade of that, I don't see how the Office of Affordable Housing and the Office of Homelessness can be separate. I agree that there might be different programs, but it seems to me that the Office of Homelessness would be maybe on top, and then Affordable Housing would be a division or something within that office. as his studies and every study prior has shown, that without affordable housing, then we get homelessness as a result of that. And so I really think that we need to rethink that organization. I also think it's okay to have perhaps two different advisory boards, but I think that we definitely need to have members overlapping on the two boards. so that, again, you have that communication, shared communication between the two offices. In the circle graph that you have, under partner agencies is a, I don't know, the next step from the Office of Homelessness. And so I assume that that means that the Office of Homelessness would work in coordination with the partner agencies that are serving the homeless. Is that right? And both divisions would work with, you know, affordable housing and homelessness would both work with their closest constituent partner agencies. So I guess my question is, and even grants and special programs is under here. So maybe it's just the graphic is just misleading to me. But so what about grants or programs or partner agencies that do not address homelessness? Are they still? Right. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons for moving the grants and special programs in terms of that coordination. There are programs that are under grants and special programs that deal with affordable housing that we currently have. Sure. And there are those that deal with homelessness. Again, these are all kind of tied up in that consolidated plan. And this is going back to the comments to Councilmember Stinnett, is that we want to make sure these are all coordinated together and that those monies, they may still go. Those are the decisions that we will make in the future. They may still go to the same organizations they're going to right now. We just want to make sure that those decisions are being made in concert with how we spend the money for the Office of Homelessness and the Office of Affordable Housing so that we maximize that money as much as possible. You can, I mean, you're right, you can kind of interchange this either way you want to do it. You could just take, you know, for Office of Homelessness, they're going to work with partner agencies, grants and special programs, planning, code enforcement, vacant property review commission. Same thing with the Office of Affordable Housing. And there's going to be, as Councilmember Clark mentioned, there's going to be a very close, direct relationship between Office of Affordable Housing and the Office of Homelessness, because they are. Again, there are two problems along a spectrum that we're dealing with. And we know that, again, as study for study has shown, the best prevention for homelessness is more affordable housing. So we do want to make sure they're closely coordinated in a lot of their decisions. And I think overlapping board members, if we can get board members to be happy to be on, too, I think it's a good idea. And I know that you said it's not a long-term plan that you can't necessarily look and see that in a year we will have solved it, or in 10 years we're at ground zero or success. But what are some of the measurables that you see with the $3.5 million or from the $3 million for affordable housing, for instance? Do you have an idea of, like right now, we have numbers of how many people are homeless in Lexington, how many people are sleeping in shelters or living on the streets. Do you have an idea of at the end of 2015 or the end of 2016, we will have reduced that number by X or by this percentage? You know, I think at this time, I can't say that. I wouldn't want to venture a guess to say we'd produce how many units or how many people we're going to be helping, just because I think we need to talk about those different programs and what's the best use of that $3 million. I think an important thing to remember is it may be that in the first year we spend it a little differently than the second year, and the second year we spend it differently than the third year. I think those are one of those things that in looking at how we address those priorities on a year-to-year basis, having that flexibility is important just from the simple fact that if we want to do unit creation this year and leverage those dollars, we may not be able to. as easily. It may be more rehabilitation the first year. It may be more housing choice. So I think there's, and in that sense, I mean, I can say that I would, I want in terms of those deliverables, in terms of those measurables, I think the key ones are how many, you know, units have been created, how many have been rehabilitated, how many people are in, you know, are receiving affordable housing that were not before. I think those are some basic ones, but I think we would get a lot more input from that on our stakeholders in terms of what is important to measure and how we go about measuring that and producing that on a yearly basis in terms of a report. I think it's going to drive one year's report or two year's report is going to drive how we go about our funding on our RFPs on a yearly basis. I think it has to. We've got to make sure that we're addressing things appropriately. And again, having the flexibility to adjust those funding, the programs that we fund each year. Okay, my time is up. Thank you, Chair. I'll come back. Thank you very much. I was going to go now to Council Member Ford, then to Council Member Mazzotti, then back to Council Member Kay. Sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioner Paulson. Thank you for your report. Speaking to the motion, I will gladly support Vice Mayor Gordon's motion in support of the plan that you brought forward. I'm really excited for several reasons about this opportunity at this time. As most of the council members know, I've spent some time in my career in affordable housing, So I'm still learning, of course, but I'm more versed perhaps than other of my colleagues are on this issue. So this plan will give us an opportunity to learn more about how we can operationally put this Affordable Housing Trust Fund into action. I'm particularly excited with Commissioner Paulson's leadership because I think this trust fund will allow us to actually put some things that we've created in this government to use. The Vacant Property Review Commission, something we created years ago, and it's never actually lifted off the ground. I think we're going to be able to explore this. Hopefully, the stakeholder group will explore that. Also, with the land bank, I want to speak to the issue of the separation, the distinction, rather. Distinction is a much better word than separation. With homelessness and affordable housing, there are two specialties. There are two different things. They have close similarities and alignments, but in practice, and I'm speaking from experience, they are two different things. They need two different skill sets, and I'm excited that Charlie's going to come on in regards to the homelessness, and we'll search for the housing director. And that's not just my opinion. Commissioner, you've done a great job on page 9, talking about program examples as it applies to homelessness. Those are specific to homelessness. Correct. And then you go to page 21, program examples as it applies to housing. And I'm more personally more familiar with that, because that is truly affordable housing. And so I see great merit in wisdom. Hopefully it will be the final choice of the council and its administration to keep these two distinct areas closely aligned, but distinct in operation. There's one other thing that I want to say as it pertains to, Council Member Lane did mention, and it's a valid point in regards to bureaucracy. is that ideally we should keep a focus to have low administrative and overhead costs associated with this program. Most of the dollars that we want to generate for the benefit of affordable housing, we should invest those to the production and creation and conversion of affordable housing and to limit the administrative costs in between 5% and 10%. I believe that is somewhere referenced in the original report, and we should stand true to that. There's one last point that I want to leave the council with, because also in this packet is the report from CZB, I guess, that talked about the $36 million need. I was absent last week, council members, all week long up in Cincinnati at an affordable housing training. And a lot of things that were discussed, it's on page 21 of your slide. we will not solve affordable housing solely with this fund. This fund is not the machine. It's a tool that's going to help us. In all the scenarios that we studied all week long, in projects, multifamily and home ownership, on average, the projects were five, six, seven million dollar projects. In each scenario, the local contribution was small. a half a million dollar grant from a trust fund, a few hundred thousand dollars here and there. Most of the financing for affordable housing comes from private sources, the banks that we will need to help support this, and the equity that we hopefully will be able to attract through tax credits working with Kentucky Housing. So I want to make that clear acknowledgement that these funds will play a small part, but a very critical part. I look forward to supporting your work, Commissioner. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Council Member Mazzotti. Thank you, Chair. Excellent presentation, Derek. It really gave me a good sense of what we were doing within this department. And I guess what I want to ask you about this presentation is, was this an independent presentation that you all put together from your shop, or was it not based on any of the consultants? We looked at the consults, but in terms of, really I look at this a lot as a roadmap of moving forward. We did look at some of the things that other studies have recommended. Did you integrate it? In terms of program types to consider, in terms of recommendations about reorganization, there are pieces and parts that we've taken from multiple studies, not just the most recent, but those in the past. I've tried to read through every study that we've had, and trying to find them all, too. It's one of those things. Every time I think I've seen every study, I hear about another study. So this was like a collaboration then. Correct. That's what I was wondering. It just wasn't strictly independent. This was not just out of our heads. We looked at a lot of the other studies that have been out there. And we will continue to, you know, I think one of the first things we'll do when we get this group together is making sure that every member on the stakeholders group has a copy of the key programs that have been, the key studies that have been done and being able to see those results and see some of the recommendations to move forward so that they'll all know, again, as much as we know about what's been said about Lexington and those different choices, those different programs, those different recommendations. Well, great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Now, Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I've been listening to the conversation about the two offices and et cetera, and it seems to me what I hear consistently, although it's not, maybe it's not, it doesn't seem to me it's been articulated this way, is that there's an interest in having, at the planning level, complete integration so that nothing happens on the affordable housing side that does not take into account programmatic efforts on the homelessness side and the other way around. But at the implementation level, they clearly have different kinds of responsibilities, different kinds of capacities. So I would like to see that reflected in the structure and in the description of the function of these various entities. We will flesh that out better. I think we could have said that much better in this presentation. I'll completely agree with you. We'll make that a lot more concrete when we report out in terms of how they will integrate in terms of those planning stages, but implementation being whatever. Again, just to reiterate, from my perspective, the important thing is at the planning level, there'd be complete integration. There could be complete collaboration, information, decision-making about allocation of resources within each of those two pods. Secondly, to speak specifically to the motion on the floor, I'm perfectly happy supporting it, so long as I think I understand it does not preclude this council from taking any action that may not be completely consistent with what the outline suggests. And I make that caveat because, as I think council has already said, there was a motion that I made that got tabled. The motion was about creating a sustainable fund over time. it was tabled, as I understand it, to await information about the budget, which we now have. So I will be bringing forward a motion in the work session that has to do with establishing that fund. And so long as this motion does not preclude that, I'm perfectly in support. And I guess I need to ask the vice mayor who made the motion if that's a reasonable interpretation. I think it is reasonable, although I will say I will look forward to the stakeholder's recommendation, which is in the plan. If I may, just in reflection of the minutes from our meeting of that day, the motion was to table the issue until April 15, 2014. It doesn't really say with specificity, just the issue. I believe the actual verbatim text will show that it was about the budget and not about any other issue. The notes may not reflect that. Yeah, these are the notes from the meeting, and I think either way we're still fine. It's fine. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any other discussion on the motion as tender? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Thank you very much. then Vice Mayor I am going to come back to you because the next thing in the packet is the so called CZB report which was tendered to us that was actually what you had tendered to us was for review. Is there anything after review here that we'll ask to see if others Thank you for asking you will all recall that the report was given to us right at the meeting where it was discussed, and I felt that in order to give full vetting of the report, we should have it on our agenda here so that if there were any questions, people had had a chance then to read it and ask their questions. Very good. Having that background, does anyone have questions or comments on that part of our packet? Thank you. then we will move on to the next item of business, which is the update of our design excellence efforts. Placed in committee by Council Member Kay, but I think to be reported on today. Do you want to start off commentary? If I may. Yes, sir, please. Thank you, Chair. Yes, I believe both Jeff Fugate and Brandy Merriman are here today to answer questions if people have them, But it might be helpful for Council to understand the context, and that is that the Design Excellence Task Force has essentially been moving on parallel tracks to related pieces of this overall proposal. One of them is a text amendment which we sent to the Planning Commission, which will be coming back on the Council's agenda, I believe, at the next Council meet not tonight um i mean not thursday night but a week from whatever the next one is what the date is and um the intention in moving that forward was to get it as complete as possible from the planning commission perspective yes they have approved that and given it back to us i expect that when it comes back onto our agenda that we will ask to have it placed in this committee all All right. For further discussion. The second part of that parallel two-part system is the incentives. And that is what we would like to present to the council today for information. Okay. So people understand kind of where we are with that. If there are questions, we will obviously take them. All right. But not today asking for any specific action. It is placed in as an update. Yes. Very good, sir. Yes. So I don't know if Jeff or Brandy wants to kick it off. You're welcome. Thank you. Less is more. Less is more. And knowing what else you have discussed today, I will try to keep it brief. But thank you for having me. And so the – do we have some slides? Yes, no, maybe? So you want our packet up? Would that be most helpful? Yeah, that would be the, so starting at page 45. He may need a packet to turn on Elmo and get that rigged. Sorry, I may not have done the homework here. Thank you for continuing your work in this area for us. I know that you, like Commissioner Paulson, remain busy in multiple places. I am less practiced than the commissioner. All right, we're up. Are we up? Okay. Yes, and I'll tell you, and we will keep this simple. So what I wanted to frame up today for you, as Council Member Kay pointed out, it's not for action, more for information purposes, but just so you understand how we're thinking about this. I just want to start with the fundamentals. So why are we even talking about incentives to start with? And basically, if you think of every real estate deal as a small business, which is kind of what it is, then it's really how much does it cost to start it, so your capital expense, how much does it cost to operate it, your operating expense, and then how much revenue do you bring in. And it all has to add up, and it has to give some reward for the risk that people take for doing it. Added to that though are the physical and regulatory constraints as well that we sometimes place on properties. The next few pages in your packet, you'll probably outline some examples of what those expenses are, why it's more expensive to work in the infill and redevelopment district, what some of the limits on revenue are. But actually I'm going to go sort of straight to the solutions. So flip over to page 50. We're just going to go straight to page 50. All right, there we go. So yeah, if we just go straight to page 50 and get sort into the solutions that are being explored. Now, we're, we've yet to put numbers on this. Currently working with a real estate consulting firm to help us work our way through that, though I do have preliminary ideas. At the very top of the list, you will see build public garages. And anybody who went to Greenville, South Carolina on the Chamber trip saw the power of this, which is, is that when you, when you look at the economics of any office building downtown, any apartment building downtown, what you will quickly find is that if you take out the cost of building the parking, you now have an economical project. If you leave the cost of building parking in, you do not have an economical project. And so at the very top of the list is building parking garages. Towards implementing this solution, the Lexington Parking Authority, who I don't presume to speak for, but I've been talking to them about this, is undertaking a 10-year capital plan as part of this year's budgeting for them. So they're going to take a look at what can they do in the next 10 years in terms of putting together those garages. There will be what they can handle sort of internally with their own capacity, and then there will probably be plan B, which is what do they need the help of the LFUCG for. So they will be undertaking that, and that plan should be created by the end of, probably by the end of the calendar year, and we'll be supporting them on that. Give you an idea of some of the other types of programs that we could explore over the next six to 12 months. One is a revolving pre-development fund. So just like affordable housing, the most powerful incentives actually tend to come from the state level. So the use of TIF, industrial revenue bonds, other types of programs. However, it takes a certain amount of wherewithal to, and walking around money to get those applications together. So one notion is if you create a pre-development fund, small loans to a project, they get paid back if the project goes. But they're also higher risk because the project doesn't go, there's not necessarily a way to get the funds back. So that's a type of program you might consider. Land banking, and this is something else that's been talked about often in terms of housing, but it could also be done for commercial. And so the acquisition and prep of development parcels that are held until a build the suit situation comes along. The big one would be a redevelopment fund, just like we've done a jobs fund, just as we're looking at an affordable housing fund is a redevelopment fund that would competitively provide gap financing, last money in for projects that don't pencil out otherwise. And then I'd like to point out that there's an opportunity to leverage publicly owned properties, which could be made available for redevelopment. And then in some very specific situations, suggesting the fee structure for sewer has been brought up as well as to be considered. And Public Works, I understand, is looking at that. Those are economic solutions. But there's also, so if we turn the page. Oh, they're up now. Great. Thank you. Whoops. Okay. We turned the page. There are also process solutions, and then I'll touch on regulatory solutions briefly. So process solutions. And what I like about these, these are ones that can be dealt with now, whereas any economic solutions will really need to be dealt with in the coming budget cycles, not immediately. So one that has been introduced before we've talked about is the creation of a project, infill project manager position, probably within planning, we refer to this person as the Sherpa. So someone who's a specialist on planning and permitting processes and that will help streamline the process. Should the council see fit to create and adopt the design excellence guidelines, then the position of design excellence officer will administer and manage those guidelines but also be available to support small urban design projects and the planning division on work like that. And then finally, just streamline the process in general that covers a permit review with a shared tracking and computer project management system. And I know the commissioner has worked on that and has some ideas about how that can happen as well. Regulatory. So the two key ones on regulatory that will impact at the margins of the cost of building downtown is to explore more waste options. So currently are the options for waste removal are limited and some assessment analysis of that has been conducted by staff once you have a new director hired. That person would have this on their desk to start looking into administratively how they can check, how they can expand the waste management options. And then finally, reviewing parking requirements. And this is in very specific situations, but if you look at commercial areas outside of the B2, there's a lot, most businesses are required to have dedicated parking for their business. And what that does is create awkward situations where you're actually hurting the business situation in those areas because you can't park and go to four stores. You have to park, go to one store, get back in your car, or go over to the other store, and it doesn't encourage browsing, which actually turns out to separate people from their money. So it's important that we encourage browsing. So that is the overview of sort of where the thinking is at the moment. You'll notice I didn't put numbers on any of these, and that's partially because that number will have to be worked through and thought about and hashed over by this committee in the coming months. But the general thinking here is the example that was put forward to me was this, is that you are also considering the guidelines, right? And that the example to look at is the rural land management plan, where the goal was out there to preserve the farmland. And so in addition to placing the, raising it from 10 to 40 acres for lot size, that was the regulatory side. there was also the creation of the PDR program, which incentivized setting aside larger swaths. So, regulatorily, you got to here, and then you incentivize here. And so, that is the, that's sort of the spirit in which we're studying this issue before us today. Excellent. Thank you. Are there questions or comments this time? When do you, so, Council Member Kay, you're thinking that we'd have another update. after the item is referred to us? We are going to, did not mention this and should have, DDA has commissioned research on the most of the, Jeff, why don't you provide the details here. We're currently in final draft stage of a small little report, but I think a very informative one that is looking at, Basically looking at six development scenarios. So low to mid-rise residential and office, low to mid-rise or high-rise residential office, and then historic rehab residential office. So six different conceptual scenarios and basically looking at what is the cost of building those projects and then what is the supportable amount based on current market conditions of rent. And so each one of those projects, we can now sort of see an apples-to-apples number in terms of what the gap is per square foot for those types of projects. So that report will be available within the month. We'd be happy to come back and give a more formal presentation on that. I think it's extremely informative to understanding the type of challenge we have in front of us in terms of infill and redevelopment economics. I'm comfortable to have you know this has been going on for a while and it's getting close and any updates that we need or want I think would be well placed so if you'd like to come back to one or more times I think we're in really good shape I think it would be helpful Jeff you think that will be available by the May meeting of this committee we could be ready in May or if it is we can be ready as soon as you need us to be or as late as you need us to be so we can certainly be ready in May or we can I think there's just a sense of thoroughness as much as anything. So does a June time frame work? I mean. June works as fine as well. We'll work towards that end. Great. Staff sign. Thank you. Very good, sir. Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate your work. That brings us to our last item on the agenda, which is the residential parking permit program, so to speak. and I think all that we've included in the packet are where kind of they are and the actual initial enabling legislation from 1990. I think the most interesting part of this was a memo that Council Member Clark put out today, and could you put that up on the overhead, if you would, please? And I know that Mr. Means is here from the parking authority. Welcome. Glad to have you here. so who is uh is our liaison with law mr sander all right very good because i think you're the two people i think we have the most may have the most commentary for if you can make that legible and i since i gave you my copy i can't refer to one here but basically the that first section is called updating ordinance, or pardon me, the second, the first one was weekly progress. The second was updating ordinance. Along with Paul Schoeniger, Jamie, and I, on behalf of Council Member Farmer, met with David Barber and Mike Sander in the Department of Law on March 20th to rewrite the original ordinance to reflect the following changes. One, Lexington Park and Authority would be responsible for posting notices on a particular street or area indicating that the area, that the area to indicate the details of a public meeting to discuss the findings of the study. Maybe a little wording opportunity there. Second, Lexington Park Authority would host the public meeting at a site yet to be determined, or a site, I guess, to be determined. And third, remove the requirements of the ordinance regarding advertising the public meeting in local paper, etc. And then fourth, Lexington Parking Authority would be required to notify the quote-unquote traffic generator of the public meeting. First, I want to thank Council Member Clark for taking this up and spending some time on it. I guess first I wanted to ask Mr. Means if you have seen this and what your thoughts are about these four, unless there's other comment from the committee in any form or fashion. Please, sir. And if this is unfamiliar to you, I'm sorry. It's just it's dated from 1047 this morning. But I think it goes to the heart of what I think were the issues involved in this referral. Sure. Good afternoon. Yes, sir. Yes, I've been involved with these conversations. I was looking for some clarification on these items to then put on our next board meeting agenda to have our board take a look at it. Personal feelings. there's a lot of labor involved with some of the requests and coordination of setting up a site. These are things that were traditionally done in council, council aides, and I think it's not a practice that we've yet adopted, not that we couldn't. But that's probably my only initial, I don't want to use the word pushback, but concern is that there's some, I would say, fairly intensive labor requests there that we haven't been doing. Those are not the kind of functions you have performed previously. Thank you very much. All right. That's really the kind of commentary I was looking for. Any thoughts on any of the others there? I mean, to me, the most important one is the fourth one. That's the one that kind of, I think, led us to the conversation. And also to sort of reference where this conversation sort of fits in the original document on page 65 of what you're looking at, it's kind of the item number three designation, and under item A in that is kind of what we're looking at dissecting and rearranging a little bit there in this conversation. So it's really that from 1990 and then again in 91, for the most part, about 80 percent of this, what council rolled out, has been followed to the T. But this section right here is what council got away from at some point in around 93. It's a little long. Thank you. It is. All right. Very good. Any other points or thoughts? Well, and we would also entertain the idea of any sort of text amendment along with some of these changes to be discussed. We had a consultant in about three years ago, and they gave us some advisory comments, and I just felt like at some point there would probably be a time that this would come about, that there would need to be some amendments. It were minor things that they suggested, but I do have a list of things from a consultant that said, if you want to revisit this ordinance, here's some things, best practices from other cities, so to speak. How many things? Give me a feel. Six or seven. I think we'd benefit from, if we're going to delve into this, which I believe we are, I think if you have some, if you could forward them on, we could look at them the next time we would take this up. Because I think if it's proper, we would add them. We'd be glad to. All right. Councilmember. Let me also mention, and Gary, I think you know this, we thought about how labor-intensive it might be for you all. somebody has to do it if we're going to provide information for people who are concerned about this. And the waiver that we have instigated since 1993, obviously, was the problem in the particular case that we had on Stratford. We also did a little study to see how many of these requests went per year, and we're talking between two and three of these a year. So I don't think it would be that terribly labor-intensive because there are not that many instances. And, of course, most of these have been U.K.-related, and this is one of the first ones we have had that a high school has been involved, which presented the problem. And, of course, my intent was to mitigate that so that we don't have that problem again. And I think the main thing that I was concerned about, and I want to say this publicly, that the council did exactly what we'd been doing for 20 years. And so we ran into the situation where the people were not informed. And that's where we've got to change the ordinance. That's the main thing. And the other thing was obviously Lex Park was not involved in the ordinance. It didn't exist at that time. So those things need to happen. And so I think the fact that it doesn't happen very often makes it probably a little more simpler than we would recommend. But I think we have to change it somehow so that the parties that are creating the problem are informed about our intention to make a street a residential parking situation. So thanks for your help. And I think it's something that we'll continue to talk about. but I think it's something we have to solve so that we don't have the situation arise again. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. I think that for purposes of us moving this issue, it would be, I guess, my thought that we might ask law to redraft a version of the ordinance to include these four changes as well as the seven or however many from your other iteration look at this. And that way it could reappear on our upcoming meeting agenda with all those changes to the ordinance, and we could debate them individually and make the changes or not and move the legislation. Does that sound all right, generally speaking, to members of the committee? Because I'm not really asking for a motion. I'm just trying to keep the wheels turning. I'll make that motion, Chair. Very good, sir. Motion and a second. any discussion and that doesn't have to actually be for the next meeting but whenever it's ready I think we'll be glad to take it all right all those in favor aye opposed like sign thank you all very much on that then we do have time to go over our list but we also have a long day ahead of us so I was going to unless there's issues that someone wanted specific updates or movement on I was going to ask for a motion to adjourn at this time of a motion and a second all those in favor Next time excellent meeting. Thank you very much Thank you. I'll never be your beast of burden My back is broken But it's a burden All I want is for you to make love me I'll never be your beast to burn I've worked for miles and my grief and hurt All I want is for you to make love me