Oh traveler please make way. Oh traveler please make way. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We will meet again, we will meet again baby. We're going to go ahead and convene the planning committee meeting for January 22nd. And council members, we have been, as all of you know, our new council member Peggy Henson will be sworn in at 2.30. And we'll be taking a 10-minute recess on the dot at 10.30 so that we can go down to her at 2.30. 10.30 is gone. At 2.30, thank you, so that we can go down and be part of her support. We were asked if we could do that, and I said yes, I think that'll be fine. So at 2.30, we'll recess with a motion and go down to her swearing in, and then we'll come back and finish what business we can. So we'll just go ahead and start. I see Harold Tate here, who has two issues on our agenda, tax incremental financing and the Downtown Development Authority Land Bank. So if you want to go ahead and walk us through your information, and we'll just get going. And let's see, we have a quorum of committee members. Good afternoon. First thing I'd like to do is introduce a partner with me who's going to be helping me through this process, and that's Kim Bryant with Greenbaum. And Kim has been the one who did the charts that you have in front of you and compiled some of the information on both the TIF and the Land Bank. We're going to start with the Land Bank first. I believe I was here in October in which I did a presentation to both of you all. I told you I'd be coming back in January with some more detailed information for you about both programs. On the Land Bank, you have in your packet two programs, one being the blighted urban areas and one being the signature program or projects. And what we've tried to do is simplify the language, which was quite thick, down to a Cliff Notes version for all of us. And what I thought I'd do today is go over the highlights on both types of programs and then come back to you at the, if you would desire, back to the full council where we could go into more detail and understanding of both of the signature projects and the mixed-use urban blight. This information is pretty much established by the state, by the legislation that created it. So we did not go in and add anything or whatever. This is basically what the language tells us we have to do. Briefly, the main difference between the two programs, mixed-use urban blighted, is for projects that are $20 million up to $200 million. That's the first major difference. The second on signature TIF is any project that is over $200 million. The one that you've heard about in Kentucky has been the Museum Plaza in Louisville. That was considered signature TIF. Through the process on both of these programs, there is a format that we have to follow to submit the project to Frankfurt. So there would be a series of public hearings that would be held to create the districts and agree upon what the project is. That is then formatted in such a way and presented to Frankfurt after you all reviewed and hopefully approved it, sent to Frankfurt, where the commission then will review it as well, and they're the ones who make the final determination if the project is a go or not. All right. So the state does have the final say on this process. Both programs are geared toward urban areas that are mainly predominantly undeveloped parcels. A TIF is not an additional tax. Basically what a TIF is in summary is if you take a parcel of land and you're getting $100 from that land now, if it's a parking lot, whatever, state local tax is getting about $100. You continue receiving that $100, but as you build on that parcel of land, that difference from the new project is what is used to go back into the project to pay for the additional public items that you're looking at adding. If you see in the handout, this is mainly for public infrastructure such as parking garages, sanitary sewers, parks, plazas, anything that geared toward the public itself. There's many ways that this can be financed. It can be financed with a bond. It can be financed through special assessments. But it's a way to help a project in an urban blighted area to rejuvenate the area back into a profitable way of contributing back to the community. Most cities across the country have been doing this for years. Chicago has been doing TIFs or Illinois has been doing TIFs for probably about 15 years. TIFs have been a great tool that other cities have used to revitalize their downtown areas. So it's something that we're pretty excited about in terms of what can allow to happen in downtown Lexington. Louisville has four TIFs right now in the process of looking at other ones. Owensboro, Paducah, Covington are all looking at TIF projects as we speak that they will be moving forward through their local government and taken to the state for final approval. Most TIFs are 30 years, correct? Twenty. Twenty years, sorry. It's a process over 20 years that this assessment would apply to the district to help pay for the projects themselves. Mixed use development projects are, just as they say it, are mixed use. So you do have a component of more than one type of use in the area, whereas the signature project can be a variety of those. But like I said, the main difference between the two projects is that cost, the $20 million to $200 million for the mixed use redevelopment and the $200 million for the signature project. So that is a summary. I would hope that you all would take time to look at this information, let Kim and probably Darby Turner and I come back to the full council where we can do a more detailed presentation to you all. But we do want to at least try and start sharing the information with you all because we'll be honest with you, we've not done a TIF before, so we're learning as well as you as we move forward through this process. But it is something I'm very, very excited about. I've had probably about four developers who have contacted me who are very interested in this program and would like to see about using this type of program to help do some larger type projects in downtown Lexington. So this is something I know Darby and I have been going to Frankfurt for about three years to try to get this legislation passed, and we're very excited that it has finally occurred and we do have this economic development tool to help us move forward. Thank you very much. Council members, if you have a question, will you log in so I know you have a question, please? Would you remind me, Harold, the day after we met about the TIF, the newspaper article came out about the Rupp Arena possibility. What would be the value of that? Which one of these would it fall into? Well, it would depend upon probably the cost. That would be the number one thing because, like I said, if it's a $200 million project, then it goes under the signature project, which allows a little bit more back to the developer in terms of the project. Probably, I would say, just off the top of my head, that probably would be a signature TIF because of the amount of money that would be going into that. Over $200 million. There's some question as to whether our electronic system is working exactly. So are there council members with questions? Dr. Stevens? I've been pounding on this thing to no avail, but it doesn't seem to be working. I need to understand a little bit better about where all this money goes. And if you could elucidate or give us a better example. Okay. For example, if a private developer builds a $20 million project, whether it's mixed use or a big parking garage or whatever, he would be expected to pay or that property would pay taxes, property taxes, continuing to escalate as years go by depending on the economy and so forth and what the tax assessor puts on his property. Now, as I understand it, a property doesn't get assessed at increasing tax rate. Is that correct? The project is going to be assessed. It's going to be given a value of what it's worth after it's built. So where does the subsidy come into this? That additional revenue that comes in, sales tax, state sales tax, sales tax on materials, income tax. Occupational license. Occupational license. There's a whole series of taxes that will be coming in because it's a piece of land now that has people in it, working in it, so it's that additional money that comes in. And then what that can be used for is to pay for various public improvements, new sidewalks. If they wanted to do a plaza, if they wanted to do a parking garage, all those dollars could go back in over that 20-year period to help pay for those costs. So it goes back in, you say. So would sales tax, which ordinarily goes to the state, come back to the local government then to build a sidewalk? It's a joint venture between the local government and the state government in terms of how those taxes, where those taxes go. So which treasury loses then? Pardon? I say any time tax funds are diverted, that reduces some treasury someplace. It doesn't reduce. You're just not getting the additional. You're not getting the additional tax. You're still getting the tax that you were getting today, but you're not getting that additional tax that you got after the project is built for 20 years. So who forgives that tax? Is it the state treasury or is it our local treasury? I mean, if you're not getting taxes that you would ordinarily be, if you're outside of a TIF, you would be paying certain taxes. What taxes don't you pay if you're inside a TIF? It's not so much a question of forgiving the taxes, is that those, the increment, the increase in the taxes over day one, are basically captured and used to finance these public improvements, the approved public infrastructure costs for a period of time up to 20 or 30 years, depending on the program. The thought is that by doing this, you increase the economic base such that when all is said and done and everything has been paid off and developed, the increased tax base at that time will be enough to compensate you and then some for what you forwent during that period when you weren't getting the additional tax increment. That must be pretty dense because I still don't understand. When you say you get it, who is you? Well, it's both the state and, in this case, the urban county government, because in all of these programs, unless it's just a local only, which I'm not going to talk about right now, the taxes, there are components of which are urban county government taxes and there are components that are state taxes. As Harold said, there are a variety of state taxes that may or may not be included in this increment, and that is part of the application process for the state to determine which of those taxes the state will pledge as support for the project. The choices are broad, but the state need not necessarily pledge all of those taxes to the project. So maybe it will just do ad valorem property taxes or maybe it would just focus on corporate income taxes. So there is a lot of flexibility there. So the money is diverted from the state treasury, for example, to our treasury, our money for the urban county government, so we can put a sewer or some other thing that we would ordinarily put in, pay for that. The urban county government would, of course, also bear a portion of that, the loss of the increment. In other words, the state is not going to pledge all of the state increment and let the urban county government not pledge any of its increment, if that makes sense. What would help me, and I think perhaps others who are interested in this, and it certainly sounds like a tool that can be used to improve redevelopment or development in areas that need it, if you could come up with an example of a property that one is in a tax increment district and one isn't, and what taxes they would ordinarily pay and what they wouldn't pay, compare the two. That's what I need to know. It depends, to a certain extent, on the particular program. There are three state participation tax increment programs. Well, if you just use it, I'm thinking of a hypothetical example. So are you saying you'd like for us to sit down and take the mixed-use urban blighted one and the signature one and come up with a hypothetical place in terms of putting it right and show you what could come out and what the difference would be? Is that what you're interested in? Yeah, I think I would understand it better if I could see that example. We can do that. Because that's what you're talking about. You're talking about a way to manipulate taxes so that the original owner, the property owner, has some value out of that as well as the local government and maybe not the state, maybe the state. I don't know. But if you can come up with an example. Maybe not what's done in Kentucky but someplace. Sure. If you can do it for Kentucky, that would be even better. Okay. And realize when we do this, when Louisville did their TIF program, it was under a different set of laws. So we'll have to adjust that to affect the new legislation that became effective last July. But I think we can sit down and kind of just do an example summary of what would happen to a parcel of land if it went through that process. Yeah, that would help. I'm also interested in the financial aspects. Okay. And who saves and who doesn't and who wins and who loses. No one loses. In the end, ideally, everyone wins. I'm sorry. Say again. In the end, ideally, everyone wins. There are no losses, just temporarily foregoing a certain amount of taxes that you would have. That's what I hear people saying all the time, but I like to be shown. Okay. And that's a very good point. And to that, I would say that there is a fairly detailed process at the state level in the application process with financial consultants and independent auditors who sort of go through the financial metrics to ensure themselves and everyone involved that there is going to be some ultimate benefit that outweighs the taxes you temporarily did not collect. So it's not just a we hope for the best and here we go. I mean, there is a fair amount of independent study and validation to ensure that, you know, we make a good-faith effort to do a project that gets you where you want to get. Thank you. Well, if I could just ask you to clarify something you said to David about the state determining which portions it puts in. The state would not say anything about our occupational license fees. We would have to do that, right? Or can the state do that? The state has a judgment as to whether or not the urban county government has contributed, and I think the language in the statute is something like sufficient amounts of its own tax revenues to warrant the state getting involved. But the state does not, as near as we can tell from the statute, it does not have the ability to say you, urban county government, must contribute X percent of this tax or that tax. It always starts out with some degree of local participation, whether it's the local portion of the property taxes, the occupational license taxes, whatever it is. Then if you decide to do a program that requests state participation, which of course gets you into some of those bigger taxes, then the state will decide which of those taxes it's willing to pledge because it's got a lot bigger pool to draw from, for lack of a better way of describing it. The limited liability entity tax, the corporate income taxes, some sales taxes depending on which program it is. So the state will sort of work through its own calculation about what its tax pledge is going to look like, but not yours. As long as it feels the urban county government is invested, I think, is a good way to say it in the project. I think that's their primary concern. Do other council members have questions on the TIF? Mr. Beard. While you're outlining this exception, can you, in a tabular form, tell us which taxes specifically are in play and which ones are not? You know, we have LexTran. We've got some of these dedicated taxes. Are they in the mix or are they? Are you saying when we do our example, you want to list what? Well, it could be an appendix to the example, but, you know, what is available? I'm looking for cash flow. The two primary taxes, I think, locally are the occupational license tax and the portion of property taxes, which are local. LexTran is sort of, I think, a unique tax that probably was not contemplated when these statutes were put into place. I don't know that that's to say you could not utilize a portion of those, but it really was not those sort of specialized taxes. I think there's one for the health department as well. That's what I need to know because there's a list of six or eight of those. And schools, of course, are not in play. I believe they are exempt. Yeah. They always are exempt. And let's hearken back to the payroll, occupational license fee. You issue bonds. There is an income stream that is developed by the people hiring folks who are paying occupational license fee. Do these people guarantee that those people will be there for the next 20 years or 30 years? I'm not sure I understand the question. Well, you know, in this day of downsizing, some companies decide that they're going to do away with two divisions. Well, let's talk about, if we want to, let's talk about Chase Bank. They closed their loan processing center all of a sudden. And we're counting on that revenue to retire the bonds. It's a good point. I'm not aware of any provision in the statute which provides for a guarantee, but I'm also not aware of any provision which necessarily would prohibit that. That's another issue we need to look at. Well, if it's 800 employees like Chase Bank, it would be a significant hit. I mean, it would make, it would be a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned as being able to retire the bonds, I would think. And, again, I think that that is a good point, and we will certainly look into that. I would just maybe point out, you know, this is an entirely new statutory scheme that none of us have gone through, and so we are, to a certain extent, you know, kind of feeling our way along as we go. So there are very likely to be some questions that, you know, require further study or that we'll have to look into a little bit more closely. Okay. Second question, blighted area. It's my understanding that has to be geographically larger than a specific building or two. The idea with respect to the blight is that for all of these TIF projects, you create a district first. And for this kind, I'm just going to talk about this one program, cannot exceed three square miles. Within that three square mile box, if you will, the properties must exhibit two or, depending on the program, three characteristics of blight as set forth in the statute. I don't think you would do a TIF for just a very small parcel of property. I don't think that that would be cost effective. But there are sort of global considerations of blight within that three square mile box. Okay. So what happens when you have five projects and your three square mile box starts overlapping each other? You cannot exceed three square miles. So you can have multiple projects within a district, within a TIF district, but your districts could not overlap, I don't think. So you can't have multiple blighted areas at the same time? Well, you can have multiple. The development area itself is the three square mile block. Within that block, you just need to exhibit some of these characteristics of blight. Not every single piece of property within the box necessarily has to be abandoned or environmentally contaminated. Those just need to be characteristics that apply to the box. Okay. What do you do when you have a church right in the middle of this that has no interest at all in getting torn down? You just work around it? Just because you are in the development area district does not mean that you have to be torn down. But it may be in the way. Well, I think that would be a matter for private negotiation among the parties. This is not a situation where the government comes in and sort of mows down everything in the three square miles, which, you know, it could be smaller than three square miles. But it's not a situation where I think unwilling or, you know, people who don't need to participate in the program would automatically be harmed. You would have to condemn certain properties? No. No? No. That's one reason why they require that the project have a development plan so everybody knows what the project is. And it may just occur on two or three parking lots, but next door may be a church. But because of the way the district gets laid out, it would be a part of the district, but it's not going to be affected by the project at all. So there's, you know, this is you best implement with this program when you have underutilized land, such as parking lots, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings. It doesn't make sense to go into an area where you have a vibrant neighborhood moving forward. You're trying to capture and turn that property around to make it a productive item as a part of the community. So that's why, you know, in terms of there may be some parcels that are in the district that are in good shape and you don't do anything with it. This is not intended to adversely impact people who, for whatever reasons, don't care to participate. This is not a condemnation issue. I mean, I suppose that that is a possibility to be used if the situation was appropriate, but that is not the primary focus of these programs at all. I mean, these are – I think these are very pointedly contemplated to involve developers who want to come in and do these things, property owners who want to be involved. It's not intended to be sort of the large group of people running over a small holdout who does not want to be involved for whatever reason. Okay. I'll just settle for those two or three questions and save the other 150 for later. Thank you. Could I follow up on something you said back on the – Kim, I think you said the two most common taxes that would be local would be the occupational license fee and the local property tax. That's right. So as you probably know, our local property tax, other than the dedicated fees to the services, is $0.08 per $100, and $0.05 of that goes to the library. Oh, really? Yes, really. So are you speaking about all $0.08 could be considered or only the $0.03 that goes to urban county government? You know, I would have to look into the issue with the library. I honestly did not realize that that's where those monies went, but I think my initial thought is that that would be a consideration for the council. Really? Did you hear that, Doc? Is that why you asked the question? Well, I think we're bound to that by state law, are we not? That's state law. I think that then that would answer the question, if that's correct. If there is a limit to what you can do, then there's a limit to what you can do. But I don't think the state could then say you haven't given us enough. I mean, that would seem to be a little bit contradictory. But I was trying to separate out if you knew whether, you know, whether that pot could be dipped into for this. I don't know that. We would be happy to look into that question, if that would be helpful. Well, I think as we progress down this road, if there's a specific project that does come up, that's an important thing to know. Because actually, in the big scheme of things, urban county government gets relatively low property tax amount. Right. And I think that's what makes the super TIF program, which is what the state-involved programs are usually referred to, that's what makes them so much more attractive is because that's where, you know, the bigger pool of money obviously is. And at what point in the process does any zoning question get answered? Fairly early in the process. And I believe on the chart, not perhaps for the signature program, but the mixed use, sorry, the planning commission must certify during the process that the proposed project is in compliance with the comprehensive plan, doesn't violate any zoning regulations, et cetera. So there's a lot of legwork in the beginning, a lot of, I think, partnering between the developer, the planning commission, and everyone else who's going to be involved with this to make sure that by the time, you know, it kind of gets in front of you, we've worked out a lot of those questions. And let me state on that. I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt her hands. Well, that's okay. Go ahead. One thing that we've talked about from the very beginning is we had meetings with Commissioner of Law, Commissioner of Finance, Division of Planning, other ones as well, so that as we all work together in terms of understanding this process, because there are a lot of questions that we just don't, you know, know the answers to right now. So that's why we came up with this chart to kind of let everybody in the government plus the council and the public understand what that process is. And that's why I say we're still in the process of learning ourselves. Well, Harold, your chart on the blighted urban areas includes the planning commission piece. Where is it on the signature projects? We'll get you an updated chart for the signature program. This, if you'll notice at the top, it refers to a pre-2008 initiative. When the statute came out originally, the signature project program had two prongs, if you will, one for projects that were sort of in the pipeline already, which did not have to comply with some of the other statutory provisions, such as the development plan and, you know, being signed off by the planning commission, because presumably that had already happened. So that's what your chart is. But now that 2008 is here, what we need to do is sort of jettison this one and update it to reflect the post-January 1, 2008 prong, which is very similar procedurally to the one for the blighted and mixed-use urban area. Okay. So it does, the updated one does include a planning commission component. I think that's important. That's a statutory requirement that the planning commission certify that it's not in compliance with the comprehensive plan. Okay. Okay. Are there any other questions by Councilmembers? Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for coming in today. I just have a couple of quick questions. As far as the development area, is there a set number of development areas that you can have? Not so much by number, but I believe there is a limitation that within the urban county, no more than 20% is that right, of the taxable property is within a development district. So you can't have the entire county in a development district, basically. Okay. And while your focus is downtown, this project would work outside of New Circle Road as well? I believe that's correct. You might have a little bit more difficulty with perhaps the blighted and urban mixed-use program just because that does seem to fit more with downtown. But there is no prohibition on going outside of the urban area. This is available to counties that don't have an urban area. Okay. Thank you. On page 5, it says no more than 20% of the assessed value of all taxable real property. That's what I was trying to answer. So as the value of our taxable real property increases over the years, more can go into these TIFs. Is that a logical assumption? I think that's probably right. I mean, it makes kind of a simple. Okay. Other questions, council members? Do you have a specific TIF on the drawing board? We'll just ask that public question here. Since we've read in the paper that there might be, are we close to having a TIF come forward or not? Or do we know? There could be a possible project coming up. Soon? If it's soon, we need to get these things fleshed out. I would like to keep this moving simply because you all are asking the exact same questions we've been asking. And as we learn more, we want to share that with you because we do want everybody to understand how this program does work. So I would like to keep moving forward with you all in terms of these two projects. Is it close enough that we need to? Should we ask you back for another planning committee meeting to see the fleshed-out new charts, et cetera, or next month? Or do we need to do something different? What would suit you? We can do that. We've also talked about maybe, do you all still do those lunch presentations? We haven't done any recently, the workshops. Yeah, the workshops. But we can do them. We thought the workshop might be a good idea as well to kind of get more information to you. Our difficulty with it, Harold, is that on most Tuesdays now we have an 1130 oversight committee or in other corridors or other meetings. So council members? Yes, council members. We could have it before a council meeting, like a dinner workshop. On a Thursday? Oh, yeah. Council members, what suits your pleasure? Do you have a recommendation for a date? How soon can you be ready with your next to final draft for presentation? As soon as we need it. As soon as we need you to be. Okay. Yes, Council Member Beard. I tuck it away and then I can't find it. This would take it out of the eye of the camera, though, would it not? It would. Well, we could have it in here, I suppose, but it would be awkward eating dinner. And just a matter of clarification, this is not a tax abatement situation. It's a tax diversion, is it not? That's a very good description. Right. Okay. The people are still paying the taxes, in other words, in all their various forms. I think one thing that would help you all a lot is Kim has gone through and done these checklists. I know Council Member Myers was asking about blighted. Those are defined in those checklists, so that would kind of help to see if it could work in other districts as well, what you're going to need. You don't have to meet all the criteria, but you have to do meet part of them. And we know that this is quite a bit of material to digest, and so that's why we thought you might find a workshop-type setting more helpful. We know you're going to need some time to wade through some of this material and any others that we can provide to you with your examples and whatnot. So we would certainly like to be available to answer your questions. Well, and if I understood your checklists, there is a whole list of ordinances, implementing ordinances that would have to be- There are at least- Yes. There is some work to do before Council can get to the point where we even can accept one. Well, if I could hear, how about this, if I could hear a motion from the committee that we hold a workshop before a Thursday night meeting, perhaps we can work the details out of when that is when you're ready. How does that sound? So moved. Second. I have a motion by Council Member Beard and a second by Council Member Bluth to have a workshop for the Council prior to the 7 o'clock Thursday meeting. And should I continue working through you, then? Yes. And we can set up a date. I'll get some input from Council Members, and then you can see when you're ready with your more revised information. How does that sound? Okay. Is there any discussion from Council Members? How much time do we need, do you think? I'm saying 30 days, but that may not be realistic. How much time, what did you say? How much time will you need to put this together, Harold? We don't need 30 days. Oh, you don't? Okay. I would think a couple of weeks. I'm going to be out most of next week for surgery. Yeah, we could have something in two to three weeks. And if questions occur to you before this meeting that you can funnel through Harold, we can try to have materials prepared to tailor to those questions, if that would be helpful. Okay. I'm thinking that today is the 22nd. We have a Council meeting on February 7th, and we have one on the 21st. So we could maybe look at one of those just to put that out there. You could see which one would suit better. How does that sound to Council Members? That would be better for me. I'm leaving. Okay. Probably the 7th. The 7th? Is that too soon for you? That's great. Do we have a zoning hearing yet? No. Well, we could, if that gave you enough time, that's two and a half weeks. We could look at the 7th at 5 o'clock. Okay. All right. We have the motion on the floor to set a workshop to hear your updated draft. All those in favor, please. I guess can we vote electronically? Please vote electronically. Or say aye. Let's say aye. Aye. That's quicker. Anyone opposed? All right. So that motion passes. And we will look forward to doing that at 5 o'clock on the 7th. Now, Kim, will you be with us for the land bank? Yes. Okay. So the land bank information, I believe, starts on page 15 of the packet. And so if you will please proceed with your land bank information, and then we'll have questions. We were here once again in October to discuss the land bank program. And at that time, you all asked that myself, Chris King, Paula King, and David Jarvis get together to continue the development of this land bank program. What we've done is try to address the concerns of the council members as they have been talking to us in regard of what this program can do. So we're hoping that through what we're proposing to you is something that will assist nonprofits to be able to get land so they can build residential units within neighborhoods. We're hoping that we can also create a program that will allow for-profit developers to work with the land bank to obtain property as well to continue on with their development. And thirdly, a program that will allow, such as the urban county government, if they see necessary to acquire a piece of parcel that is going to assist in developing gateways or points of interest to the city, that this could occur through this program as well. So we took those three considerations, placed them within the proposal for the project, and we started looking at what is out there currently and what other cities have done to accomplish the same thing. We found that in Louisville they have a very successful land bank program that's been in existence since 1988, and in a minute Kim will go over the details of how that was created. So we have met with the people in Louisville, talked to them about how the program works, and there's even an attachment in here that is the city of Louisville's guidelines and policies for development procedures, and it kind of gives an analysis of how Louisville uses their program to assist non-profits and for-profits both in terms of getting land back into development. Louisville has been very successful with their program. They've brought in over 3,000 parcels of land since 1988, and Kim will in a minute tell you how some of that has been done, but it's also been done by donations. It's also been done by acquisitions with public funds as well. It's been a successful program in terms of helping revitalize urban neighborhoods and lightened neighborhoods, and has also encouraged developers to come into those neighborhoods to help on the revitalization process. Also, during that review period and talking to Louisville, we found out about a vacant property review commission, which has been created here in Lexington, and once again, Kim will talk a little bit in terms of the details on that, but it was approved by the council, but membership was never enacted, so it is not an active commission at this time. We would like to recommend that this be a consideration that we reactivate that commission, but we would have to make some changes to the ordinance because when the ordinance was created, there were some codes that were referenced to that no longer are used here in Lexington. So I think, if you don't mind, I'd like for Kim to talk a little bit about the Kentucky statute, about the land bank program, and how that was created. Thank you. First, just let me say I'm pretty excited, actually, about this program because, for once, it's a state statute that's pretty flexible and not overbearing in its requirements, and so I think it gives you a real opportunity here to do some good stuff downtown, so we're pretty excited about that. As Harold mentioned, the statute, for anyone who cares, it starts at KRS 65.350. This statute allows the urban county government, the state, and the Fayette County School District to create a land bank that will exist as a separate legal entity, much like a nonprofit corporation. That entity can then go out and acquire properties through gift, purchase. It also has a pretty nifty ability to acquire tax-foreclosed properties through no payment, which I'll get to in a minute. But this goes to the flexibility aspect of the program in that this is really what you want to make of it, what limits you want to put on it, what you want it to accomplish. It's pretty broad. The parties to the land bank would be the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, the Fayette County School District, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. That requires that all three of those parties enter into what is called an interlocal cooperation agreement under the statute, and that agreement will basically set forth what the land bank is intended to do, any limitations on its operation, who the representatives will be for each of those parties. The land bank is governed by a three-member board of directors, each of the aforementioned parties appointing one member. All members must be residents of Fayette County. They may be employees of, for instance, the Fayette Urban County Government, but they need not be, so they can be completely removed or not, as you see fit. The land bank can have its own staff if you feel that's appropriate, or it can utilize staff from other departments in LFUCG. The statute has a mechanism where properties that are tax delinquent to the extent that they've come up for foreclosure and they're being sold at a master commissioner sale, if no one bids the required minimum on those properties, then the land bank has the authority to automatically acquire them without paying the taxes, which is a pretty nifty function, I think. One question we will have to look into, because this was really not contemplated by the statute, is the impact, again, of the Lex-Tran tax, which is a tax that's sort of a peculiarly local tax statute that's not really contemplated under this particular scheme, so we'll have to figure out how that gets addressed in that process. But the automatic acquisition basically wipes out any delinquent property taxes, school taxes, et cetera, through no payment from the land bank. So unless there were something wrong with the property and the land bank did not wish to acquire it, that's a really easy and cost-effective way of getting some property. As Harold mentioned, it's not the only way. The land bank has the ability to purchase property. It can receive donations of property, perhaps from property owners who just want to throw up their hands and be done with properties that have code violations or that sort of thing. I think there have been some questions, perhaps, about the transparency of how this might work, and those are good questions. All properties that come into the land bank have to be appraised and sort of inventoried, and all that information remains open as a public record, so this is not a situation where someone would be able to hide property or what is intended to be done with the property. Public hearings would be held prior to any disposition of property by the land bank, so everyone would always know where it's going and for what purpose. And the statute expressly prohibits anyone from acquiring a land bank property for the sole purpose of speculation. So, for instance, someone could not come in and get a piece of property for $300 or whatever fee, sit on it until it's worth a lot more than that, and flip it. So the statute is designed to make sure that this is used appropriately. It's not limited to residential property. It could be used for commercial. As Harold mentioned, it could also be used to acquire parks, recreation areas, the gateway properties that he mentioned earlier. So that's just sort of a basic summary of how the statute intends to be utilized. I'd be happy to answer any questions about that. We do have some Councilmember questions. Councilmember Beard. Thank you, Claire. In assembling, Harold, in assembling meaningful parcels of land, this does not necessarily address that, does it? It could. If you're lucky, it could. But it could. And parcels that are in an area that are not going to be developed, how do you generate income from that? I'm hearkening back to the courthouse steps situation. This is not really a program designed, first and foremost, to generate income, first of all. I should just maybe have mentioned that earlier. It is a great opportunity for nonprofits and similar organizations in town to acquire maybe smaller parcels that perhaps are not suitable for the sort of massing development that you were talking about to be used as affordable housing. So that is, I think, one of its primary purposes, frankly. But there is nothing that would prohibit it from being used to acquire and assemble larger parcels of property. We're not under any illusion that that would happen instantaneously. The land bank can hold property until it acquires a sufficient mass to assemble it into a larger parcel. I'm just trying to see how that's going to work in the real world here. If you'll pardon me while I grind a little bit. The land bank can set policies for purchase price. For instance, I believe Louisville has a much discounted purchase price for nonprofits and similar community organizations to purchase properties for affordable housing. But there is nothing to prohibit you from, say, having a much higher purchase price for something to be used for commercial development. It's very flexible in terms of what policies and procedures you would want to establish for that. But, again, its primary purpose is not as a revenue-generating entity. The purchase price, I assume, has got to be somewhere underneath, I think it's the two-thirds of the assessed value before it's a sale at the Courthouse Steps. I'm sorry? I believe that you have to, if you're selling property at the Courthouse Steps, it's got to bring at least two-thirds of its assessed value. Not for us to acquire it in the land bank. If no one bid the statutorily required minimum, which I think is what you're talking about, plus the costs and fees, then we would automatically get it by paying nothing. So the question is, if no one comes to the courthouse to bid what is required, then the land bank could automatically own that property. Whomsoever might want to subsequently utilize that property would pay something below the assessed value. Otherwise, they'd buy it at the Courthouse Steps. I think that's true. However, I think that there is an opportunity for nonprofits, et cetera, to catch a break, basically, on assembling property for affordable housing, whereas you could ask for a higher price for commercial development or for a for-profit developer, for instance. In Louisville, they were talking about how they had obtained property, and within a year's time period, the neighborhood started turning around, and they had developers coming to them because they were interested in acquiring the land so that they could develop upon it as well. So they sold it at a higher cost than what the value was a year ago. What we have to remember, this is one of many tools that could help in terms of redevelopment. It's not the only tool, but it's one tool that we have the option to look at in terms of redevelopment, not just in the downtown area but throughout Fayette County. So what we've been hoping to do is that, as we proceed, we're collecting many tools that developers can use, the TIF, the land bank, the downtown housing fund. We're trying to create as many tools and options as we can to help and assist in for-profits and nonprofits to develop land. That's all. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Stenner. Thank you, Chair. Harold, has any work been done in looking at parcels or anything along those lines? A number of parcels available, possibly. How many areas we have. We haven't done any of that preliminary work. Okay. So I guess that would be the function of the land bank program. If we set it up, they would immediately, that would be one of their first jobs would be to go look at. And I assume we're talking about all of Lexington. Because I think in the presentation here, it was said downtown, but we're not talking about just downtown. We're talking about everything within the urban surface boundary would be a possible land bank acquisition. That's correct. Okay. So going back to our title of our DDA land bank, is that still the appropriate title? I don't know if the Chair wants to address it, but I think that may or may not be. I know Harold has been gracious enough to get the ball rolling. But unless we want to give Harold a new title, we can give you some more opportunity to work with us. I think we may just need to call it the land bank program going forward. So there's no confusion in the public that we're not just talking about downtown. We're talking about all of Lexington. Thank you. I think that's right. I think you would call it the land bank authority of Lexington, Fayette County. Louisville is something similar to that. And it is a nonprofit corporation that exists as its own entity. So it would not be the DDA, whatever. And what is your all's recommended timeline? Are you asking for us today a recommendation to move forward with this format? Because we have $2 million we put aside in the budget that's quickly coming to an end. I think the first thing we need to do is create this agreement that I talked to Kim about developing that we can pass on to the Department of Law and other for their review. So I think that would be the next thing that we need to do is draft up that agreement for law department review and then to forward on to the three entities as well. And I would agree with that, Harold. I should mention, you know, obviously we are dealing with municipal entities as the parties to this agreement, so each will need to approve it in its own way. The urban county government will need to adopt it by ordinance. The school board presumably will pass it by resolution. The state's involvement, we need to submit it to the Kentucky Attorney General, who will make sure that it meets all of the requirements. It's not a discretionary thing. He can't say, well, I don't think you need this. But they will go through and make sure that we've met all of the required components of the agreement. So I would imagine that that's a somewhat time-intensive process, and the sooner we can get to that, that's probably better. And I guess Commissioner Coates here, have we bonded the $2 million yet? So it's still not bonded, so we're not encumbering any debt service. What about the $150,000, Harold? I know we originally put it about two years ago. Do you still need it? Does that money still need to be used to open this up? Or where are we at on that in terms of your budget? I don't think it's in my budget. I don't think we've approved the agreement to go in your budget, but it's still out there. Do you still need those dollars for the land bank program, or is that $2 million going to serve as the opening fund? I will say that there will, and where that money comes from I don't know, but there will need some funds to help in terms of title search, title insurance, other things like that. I don't know, and Commissioner Coates could answer that better if that can come in. Have you all looked at that budget and what that would look like dollars-wise? No. Okay. So that would be something we'd need to do as well going forward. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stevens. I thought you said at the end of your presentation that this would be for commercial property and not residential. No. Did I misunderstand you? I'm sorry. I think I said that it is not limited to residential. It can be used for commercial, industrial, or public property such as parks and recreation areas. So there's no limit on what the land bank itself. It need not focus solely on residential. Oh, so you said not just residential. I hope that's what I said. That's what you meant to say. It could be residential or commercial, either one. Yes. Well, that's good. And it could apply to different programs we might have in our jurisdiction as far as it's not geographically limited to the urban service boundary necessarily. It could be at Athens or someplace like that. Sure. Madam Chairman, are we ready for a motion to? We have more questions. Okay. If we could hold off on the motion. Happy to. Would you mind? Until we hear from all Councilmembers. Did that finish your questions, Dr. Shields? Yes, ma'am. Councilmember James. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to thank Harold for meeting with me. You all know that I have tons of questions all the time. I'm new here, so I ask lots of questions to get up to speed. And Harold and I met last week, and he was patient with me and explained a lot of the details of the land bank program that Louisville is using. We talked about how that could be utilized here in Lexington. I appreciate that time. One thing that I did want to address is this, what we have in our packet, pages 21 through 23, are actually Louisville's kind of their categories and their purchase price and things like that. I guess this is a brief of what their program is about, their guidelines and policies. And you and I did talk about that maybe from the time that this has gone into effect, that maybe Louisville needs to ‑‑ there may be a need for Louisville to critique, review their current process to see if there's anything they could do better. And I'd be interested to either hear from Louisville or to get a report back from you of what did they feel like they could do better so that we are modeling after their best product or the best product that we can see and that will benefit our city as well. So you know what I mean. But somebody's already gone through it. Let's try to get the better product. So I'd be interested in getting that feedback. And then you asked something about, someone asked about the vacant property, vacant or underutilized property. I think somebody from back there said that there wasn't an evaluation of that. And I thought maybe there was, or at least in process. Can you, Chris King, maybe tell me a little bit about that? After I gave my initial nod of no, I thought about that a little further. We have not done anything specifically looking at a land bank program and what land would be available, which is what I understood the gist of the question to be. What we do have, that a land bank could be one of the tools we can use, is that we have recently conducted a vacant and underutilized property survey in the Division of Planning and categorized numerous properties. And the next step is to develop various strategies to turn that land into productive land and a land bank could be one of the many tools that we could use to do that. It sounds perfect. Yeah, it actually sounds perfect timing and a good fit, especially with the Vacant Property Review Commission. So that would actually be their product that they would use and their reason for getting together. Correct. Okay. So I'd be interested in getting those, whenever this happens and however we utilize that commission, but getting that formal, that survey in a format that we could hand to that commission for their review and utilization. We are on the very last stages of having that and having all that information out in the public. We expect within the next week or two to have that done. That's great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And let's see if I have another question. And, Harold, you said something regarding the Downtown Housing Fund. Did you say something about that? I just said it's another tool that we use that we've helped developers in the downtown area. So, excuse me, by the time you had the land bank, the Downtown Housing Fund, the TIF, we're starting to create a series of tools that a developer could come in and look to see how it's best to assist them and to do their project. Okay. So this is an example. So there's a defined area for that Downtown Housing Fund? It's pretty much limited to the DDA boundary in terms of, and that's about 900 acres. Okay. Thank you so much for your time and your information. Thank you, Madam Chair. I might ask you, Harold, and maybe Chris King wants to comment. So is it your feeling that this would be housed in planning? Is that what we're thinking? Or, no, Chris doesn't want any more. Well, that was one reason why the four of us wanted to get together because, you know, we talked about community development. We talked about code and forth. We talked about planning. You all talked about it in our office. And we felt it was best that all four of us work together among ourselves in terms of staffing this because, you know, Paul is going to look at it one way, I'm going to look at it one way, Chris is going to look at it another way, and David is going to look at it another way, and the four of us talk among ourselves anyway. So we felt that it was best that the four of us work together to assist on this program. And you would come up with some sort of, you know, guideline as to where it would be housed and how it would be operating and all that. Let me ask you, I think other council members have finished with their questions. On page 15, Harold, are these two pages something that you wrote or who do I need to direct my questions to? This was something that the four of us kind of drafted up together. Okay. In the third paragraph down is the largest paragraph on page 15. About halfway through, there's a sentence that says this program could also act as a tool for planning long-term community development, such as acquiring key corners for the development of projects that would enhance our downtown and neighborhoods. Have you gotten specific input from neighborhoods about that? And if not, when would you be doing that? Or would we be doing that? No, we have not done that. When we would start doing that, we would start that process. One is through our streetscape plan that we're underway right now where we're identifying gateways, and we'll be meeting with neighborhoods, and neighborhoods can kind of give us input at that point. We'll be starting the East End study. Through that process, we'd start identifying key parcels that we might want to look at in terms of making a gateway or an entrance into the neighborhood or whatever. So that's going to be an ongoing process as we develop these various plans that we're working on. So you'd actually be – I want to be sure I understand what you just said. You would actually be looking at land other than blighted property? You would be looking at land that you wanted to acquire for a gateway? Or am I missing something? What I try to do is keep the language, and I think the four of us agree, we want to keep the language as flexible as possible. We didn't want to narrow ourselves down because I don't know where, but there may be an opportunity where there may be a great entrance to Lexington, and we might want to acquire that property to make sure that it enhances the entranceway the way we want to. So this might not only apply to blighted properties? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, but I'm not talking about where you would go in and condemn the property or whatever. I'm just saying if that option is there, I think we need to keep that option open, that if a parcel of land comes up that could be a great entrance to our city, that could add pride to that entrance. Maybe that's something we might want to consider. It seems to me it would be critical to discuss these components with neighborhoods, and I don't mean when a neighborhood coroner comes available. I mean before we adopt this because having been here a while, I know that coroners in neighborhoods can be viewed in different ways, and it might not always be something that a neighborhood necessarily wants is for the coroner to be acquired. And I guess given that, my question would be when in this process does the zoning piece of it come up? If there's a different zoning that's needed for a property that's being viewed for a different development, when would that be part of the process? Or do we know yet? Do you know? I don't think. I mean these are important questions to citizens who live in neighborhoods, I believe. Certainly. And there's no way, as we said earlier, to work. This has to be a fairly transparent process. Yes. The answer really is it depends on the nature of the project. If it ends up being a government project, per se, which won't be the typical case, I don't think, the intent, like a park or something like that. As you know, you are not bound by zoning. But, however, if this entity is merely holding the land, then to transfer it to someone else to develop or utilize for housing or others, all zoning requirements will have to be met. There will be no exemption from zoning requirements to my knowledge. So it would just depend. Is the property zoned for the use that the entity wants to put it to? If not, they will have to go through a zoning process. So it would be as it comes forward. It depends on site by site. Okay. But there is no inherent exemption of zoning requirements, just because the land bank had the property for a time and brokered it. Okay. I appreciate that. So on page 16, where it talks about the Kentucky General Assembly and the legislation that allows this, it does say the purpose is to acquire, manage, and sell blighted, nonproductive real properties. So going back to what we were just discussing, I'm still unclear about whether there could be work done outside of that phrase, blighted, nonproductive real properties. Given, you know, the statement about identifying gateways and that sort of thing, if they were not blighted or nonproductive, are we saying then under this sort of authority the city could go in and acquire the property anyway? When you say acquire, I assume we're not talking about eminent domain. I'm not. The land bank would have. Are you? No. I just wanted to make that clear. The land bank has no power of eminent domain in and of itself. The land bank statute does not limit its scope to properties that are blighted. So if a piece of property just came up for sale, the land bank could purchase it just like I could or you could. The Vacant Property Review Commission, which is another of the tools that Harold was talking about, its focus is more limited to properties that suffer from blight and deterioration, and we can talk about that in a little bit if you like. But the land bank statute itself does not refer to blight. There's no requirement that any determination of blight be made. Well, in a way then, and I'm just going to say this out, in a way then it's the urban county government, the school board, and the governor, sort of, becoming developers of properties if it's not limited to blighted properties, going out and identifying where we want things and trying to get them there. The land bank itself would not develop the properties. The land bank would just acquire them. Broker them. That's sort of a good way to think about it. Then whomever could apply to purchase that property doesn't mean you have to sell it to them. But it could be private developers. It could be nonprofits. It could be for, as Harold said, a park or a recreation area, something with a more municipal-type purpose. Okay. And those decisions would be made by the three-person group? Decisions to sell must be approved by the board. And I believe there is a requirement in the statute that would effectively always require the representative from the LFUCG to consent. Because there is a provision, I think, in the statute that for any property sold within that jurisdiction, which, of course, in our case is the whole shebang, that member must approve. So LFUCG would always have to sign off on that. I guess where I'm trying to go, if I'm trying to understand this, is then would there be any oversight other than the three people on the commission? Oversight for the decision to sell or? Yes, the decision to go, okay, we think this is a good project here. Let's acquire this land. Who has the final say? Is it the three commissioners? For questions about purchase and disposition, yes, it's the board. It's the three-member board. Now, for disposition questions, there is a requirement in the statute, and I can't remember if it's a public hearing or if it's just public notice, but there is sort of a 30-day publication requirement where you have to let everyone in the county know, here's what we're getting ready to do with this particular piece of property. And I assume that the reason for that is so that people can come and express their opinion about the worth or value of that particular project. And I presume, okay, then funding issues. Harold. Harold. If there were funding issues, would that come before the council or the school board or a combination of the three, or do we know? I would say probably I don't know right now. We don't know. That would be a question I could ask Louisville in terms of what they've done. I think that would be good. And then what sort of, are there any implementing ordinances that would need to be addressed? You would need to, the council, excuse me, would need to pass an ordinance adopting the interlocal cooperation agreement with LFUCG, the Commonwealth, and the school district. The school district would need to approve that same agreement via resolution or whatever their procedures are. And then the state, presumably its approval mechanism, is submission to the Attorney General, as I mentioned earlier. So that is the only sort of formal action on your part. This is a lot less process heavy than the TIF, obviously. So once that's complete, that memorandum of understanding, then we're done. We start the process and it gets going. But I think you could have input as to, presumably through your representative on the board, as to what the bylaws are going to say, what the written policies and procedures are going to say. So it's not a case where once you sign off on it, you know, you're kind of out of the mix. I mean, you do have a representative on the board, and that board will presumably represent your concerns about policies and procedures and disposition and things of that nature. And how you've talked a couple times about transparency in the process. And one of the, as I read through this, one of my questions is we have fairly stringent rules about our code enforcement officers and our building inspection officers and ownership of land and, you know, that sort of thing that we put into place a few years ago. So how, if the decisions are made by this three-person commission, tell me a little more about keeping transparency. Well, with respect to code enforcement and that sort of thing, the statute prohibits any of those kinds of people from having an interest in these properties. Right. So I think it's designed to accomplish, I think, some of what you're expressing concern for. So that would help with that. Yes. But could that person sit as the representative of LFUCG? I think not, but I would need to confirm that. Are there? That's not to say that those folks can't be involved in some of these staffing issues, especially, you know, identifying problem properties and that sort of thing. I just don't think that they are permitted to sit on the board. Okay. But we'd need to confirm that. So we'd need to find out, because, of course, they're the experts in lighted properties. Sure. Okay. There are a couple more council members with questions. Council Member Beard. Thank you again. A relatively quick one. Can you restrict utilization of a piece of property once you acquire it and then turn it over to a developer for affordable housing, for instance? Can you make that a requirement, a deed restriction? How do you make sure that that's what actually is going to happen? Well, one of the requirements is that before somebody acquires the land, they have to submit to tell, in Louisville, they have to submit what they're going to do with the land. Because as Kim was saying earlier, you don't want somebody to buy the land and sit on it. So they have to show what they're going to do with it and put it back into productivity that, you know, reflects in terms of what their original intent is. My point is, is that across my heart I want to do it, or is that going to be some legal way to tie them down? I seem to recall that when the spokesperson from Louisville came to talk to us, that she mentioned an agreement the developer had to sign. I think that's right. But, again, we can certainly confirm that for you. And there's, I think, no reason we could not require that ourselves. Next question, somewhat allied, and that is, can the land bank lease the land to a developer for like on a 99-year lease? Yes. Okay. So that might be some way to have some element of control also. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Stephens, then Council Member Myers. I was going to offer a motion to recommend that this process proceed to the law department, as Harold stated, suggested would be necessary as the next step to prepare a document so you can negotiate with the other two parties, the state and the school. And I think that would be preliminary to any ordinance we would adopt, because if you can't get the agreement of the others, there's no ordinance that we can pass. So that was, in long words, my motion was to encourage them to proceed with the next step, which would be negotiations with the partners. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. There's a motion on the floor to proceed with the memorandum. Is it a memorandum of understanding? Potentially. It's called an interlocal cooperation agreement, but that is the concept. Okay. Now, Council Member Myers. My question was off of the subject, but still had to do with something that Harold had said earlier. So I can wait. Okay. I think before you can, it's more than just the interlocal agreement. You'll have to draft language that would be adequate to explain to everybody what's involved, I would think. So would this, would your motion, David, I'm thinking about what Council Member James requested for the Louisville update and what has worked and what hasn't. Do you, is your motion to bring this back, to start working on this and bring it back at another planning meeting? Well, I think this is going to be on our docket many times in the future as we work through this thing. So I think we could go ahead with this step, and we could also do the work that Council Member James requested. Any discussion about the motion on the floor? No? All right. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Now, that motion passes, and we have Council Member Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a question for Harold. Did you speak earlier about the downtown housing fund? Could you explain to us what that is? I'm sorry, did you? Could you explain a little bit about what that is? The downtown housing fund was something that was created two or three years ago, I forgot. And what it was, we were able to work with the Kentucky League of Cities, and they came and talked to me about the interests of downtown, what was going on. They have the ability to use some of their discretionary funds for creative-type projects. And they said that they would be willing to work with us to create on some program that would help housing downtown. So I was able to go through nine banks. Nine banks contributed half a million dollars apiece. That was a loan, but interest-free. And then we took the money from the Kentucky League of Cities, combined it, and we were able to create a pot of money in which a developer would go to a bank, get his 80% loan, and then they would come to us and we'd give them another 10% loan. So they had 90% financing. Their other 10% could be the land they had or cash or whatever. It was a very successful program. Five loans have gone through. We've closed on two, recirculated one pot of money, and it's resulted in probably about $70 million worth of housing downtown. It can be mixed-use. 20% can be other than residential, but at least 80% has to be residential. Okay, and again, my questions are always going to be, is this available outside of New Circle Road? When we set this up, it was set up only for the downtown development authority boundary, so just at 900 acres. With the success of the program, are there any plans to look at expanding it, maybe a separate program so that that one still stays downtown? The banks have expressed interest in doing something else. Probably right now with the economy the way it is, they're not going to be as excited, but they have expressed interest in doing something else. What that is, we have not discussed, though. Okay. Thank you. Are there other questions? I have just one final one. In here where you talked about on page 20, this was the KRS, the overview of the land bank under the KRS. On page 20, item B, the abandoned urban property tax, which is a related tool. Yes. It says that the statute allows communities to impose a higher tax rate on abandoned urban property. I don't think we do that, do we? We do not at this time. If council was interested in looking at that, would that be something through this whole process? I think it could be used related to the land bank. It's obviously not the same program, but it is another tool that I think not so much is helpful in acquiring properties as it is in prodding people who have sort of let their properties deteriorate into either giving them up, say, to the land bank or into fixing them. At least that's how it has been used successfully in Louisville is to sort of get people's attention. So that the property doesn't stay blighted on and on and on. Exactly. Because the fines are bigger. Exactly. Or the tax is bigger. Right. Okay. Council members, if you have no more questions about that, thank you very much. Thank you. And so the motion was to start the process of the interlocal agreement, and then to bring us at our February meeting work for you to bring back Louisville updates on how their system is working. Good, the bad, and the ugly. Thank you very much. Thank you. We really appreciate it. And then what I thought we would do is in about a couple minutes we'll need to recess and go downstairs for the swearing in. But Council Member James, would you want to give us a very brief overview of what you brought, you know, why the issue is coming to us on the trailer parks, and then maybe you'd like to make the motion to recess. I'll do that. Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. The issue of the quality of life in trailer parks came up as far as a concern to me and expressed by Council Member Maloney when he was here as well with the selling of Ingleside Trailer Park, which is in Council Member Maloney's district. And knowing that many of these properties that are in trailer parks, if you've had the experience of riding through a trailer park, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't had the experience, please call my office and schedule a time to tour, because it's very important that you see what happens in these areas. And it's not just here. It's all over America. Trailer parks have become an area of potential blight. But what it is, it's an area that you don't really drive into a trailer park unless you live there. You're not passing when you're going to Kroger. You don't drive through the trailer park to get to Kroger. So it's kind of a sight unseen sort of situation. And it's just interesting to see what things look like in certain trailer parks. Not all are the same. So Council Member Maloney and I had talked briefly about the situation with Ingleside. And one of the situations that we found in many of the trailer parks in Lexington is that there are situations that they're going through that we don't know that they're experiencing until code enforcement goes out and cites a trailer park for not having two methods of egress. So two exits out of a trailer park where we have front and back doors in our houses. There's supposed to be a front and a back door on a trailer, a mobile home, a manufactured home. Many people don't like it called trailers. So I've got to readjust my language to mobile home. And so there's different things that kind of signaled there's a situation here. We need to look at what's happening, who's overseeing, who's responsible. When code enforcement goes out, who's supposed to repair them, who's helping the residents that live there that may have language barriers, that sort of thing. So what my office and Paul started doing was just researching the trailer parks in my district and one in the second district as well. So we'll talk about that. And it's not going to – the packet is really long. I think there's, like, 40 pages of trailer park stuff in here. But the presentation should not be that long. Out of all this, we've pulled some things out that we can address as council. And let's – if we could go ahead with a motion to recess, and we'll come back in ten minutes. Do you want to offer that? I make a motion to recess for ten minutes or so. Okay. Thank you. All those in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Thank you. This is the planning committee meeting. I think we have a quorum in the house. So, council members, if you will join us for 15 more minutes of our meeting. For the public, we recessed in order to give support to our new council member, Peggy Henson, while she was being sworn in. So, Council Member James, do you have people who want to lead us through the information? There are some representatives from different divisions of government to respond to some particular issues. I'd like to start with code enforcement. If I believe – well, he's not here yet. Okay. We'll go to – if someone from the law department – I know this was probably unexpected, but David Barbary, I see him here. If someone could come forward. I'm going to just ask a quick question, because as I was talking about how the issue got brought forward, my assistant reminded me of the initial concern, and that was relocation. When it came to someone, say, a developer purchases a property and it's a trailer park, and those residents that live there, since this is a trailer that they own, so it's like having a home. It's like someone coming into a neighborhood and buying a whole neighborhood of property they don't own. Do we have any way to assist with a relocation package or to mandate, encourage, or what's our feel from urban county government on relocating or making a relocation of those residents mandatory? Because the situation is they have a trailer. Where do they take their trailer if there's no other place for them to move it? Let me answer that the best I can. I'm sorry, mobile home. I'm not aware that we have such a program. I'm not aware that we've ever been tasked with looking at one. Normally what happens on something like that is it's generally a policy decision on whether to do something like that, and then we would be asked to review whether there's anything inherently legally wrong in doing something like that. I don't believe there would probably be anything wrong with a government offering some sort of program along the lines of what you're talking about, but at the same time I don't believe that there's any part of the law that mandates that the government do something like that either. I think it would be much like a lot of our other relocation programs that we have in the government. There are relocation programs. I'm not aware of one that specifically assists with respect to relocating a mobile home to another piece of land in Fayette County where they could place their mobile home. What are the requirements for the relocation now? You'd have to ask somebody that actually runs the relocation assistance program. Social services, is that who? That would probably be the best. Okay, okay. Well, thank you for that. I figured that question would go that way because as we talked with the residents from Ingleside regarding the purchasing of that, the zone change there, that's what they were saying, that they had come to government. There were some individual assistance maybe that was afforded to them on an as-needed basis and as people came forward, but nothing holistic, nothing that was just you come pick up this package, you now live in a mobile home park, your property's now been sold, you need to go somewhere else. So it was kind of on a case-by-case basis. So I knew that question would head that way. That is something that I would like to see pursued. That's something I'd like to see investigated is to see if we can, in the fill and redevelopment occurring, I see this happening in the other, we have nine trailer parks in Lexington. I could see that this could occur in the other trailer parks. So that would be something I'd like to see come out of this committee or for this committee to continue to work towards. I saw David Jarvis come in. Code enforcement, if you don't mind stepping forward, please. You were very kind to respond to the questions that are within the packet. On page 36, I had a list of questions, committee members, and David Jarvis responded directly to me. I'm not sure if he responded to everyone on those. But a couple that I'd like to ask you directly about, not all will be relevant today, and today we wouldn't have time to address all of them. The first bullet point was what are the city and state regulations for mobile homes and lots? I wondered if you could go over that with us. Sure. In code enforcement, we enforce the International Property Maintenance Code, and that's what we apply to mobile homes. We treat them as regular dwelling units. Now, overall, the mobile homes are governed under the state fire marshal's office. And with requests from the state fire marshal's office, local code enforcement can be given jurisdiction to enforce smoke detectors, secondary exits, the things that you touched on earlier. That's some of the things that we can enforce through our division at the request of the state fire marshal. Now, code enforcement still has jurisdiction over the exterior of the park as far as trash and debris, weeds, junk vehicles, that sort of thing. So if that helps any. Are the current regulations from the code enforcement standpoint effective for a quality of life that's acceptable in the trailer parks from what you see? Do you have any problem enforcing the regulations, or are you having any struggles with enforcing the regulations and why in the trailer parks? As far as the violations of the code, no, it's sufficient. The problems we're coming into that we face are the parties to hold responsible. If you have a trailer that's owned by an owner-occupant, and then we hold the park owner responsible for any fines, civil penalties, that sort of thing, that's really where we're coming into some of the problems we're facing is once we issue a civil penalty, where do we put that lien on that property? Because right now, currently, I think the way the law is written here locally, the park itself is responsible for every trailer in the park. Okay. So right now your process is how do you verify who the owner of the trailer park is? Through the PVA records. Okay. And then you mail a citation. Are you hand or mail a citation to the trailer park? Mail. First class mail. And then when that citation is where they're trying to appeal it? Right. Who comes forward? Normally the park owner. And when they're coming forward, what are they saying? That they don't own it, that it's a privately owned trailer. And, again, you know, we review the law with them that we hold them responsible for that. They're the park owner. They're responsible for what goes on in the park. Just as you're a property owner, it's your property. If you bring in a travel trailer or you bring a mobile home onto your property, then you're going to be responsible for that. If we issue a citation or a civil penalty, we're going to issue it to you as the property owner. Okay. And so they're appealing it because they're saying they're not responsible. And then what's happening? The two appeals we've had so far have been upheld as far as they're responsible for the violations and the civil penalties. Okay. And their wording, is it correct that they are saying if someone that owns within a contract, a contract they have made up, that the person living in the trailer, the person that they say owns the trailer is responsible for the upkeep of the trailer? Right. The contracts I've seen that they brought to the appeals pretty much transferred the responsibility to this, to the owner of the trailer, individual occupant, and we don't recognize that. We still hold the park owner responsible. Okay. Have you heard where the trailer park owners are saying things like, we'll just evict the people that live in the trailers if they're not going to upkeep their trailers? I've heard that. Okay. But it doesn't matter as far as we're concerned because we just want, we just need the situation abated. That's right. And once no one lives in that trailer anymore, does that trailer still, does that trailer still can be cited for code violations? Right. Even if no one lives in it? We can condemn the trailer and then with the help through the state fire marshal's office, order that trailer to be removed from that site. Okay. And they can't reoccupy a condemned trailer unless they are inspected by the state fire marshal's office and receive a certification from them that says that it's been brought up to standard and they can reoccupy it. In other words, once a trailer is condemned, that's pretty much the end of it, unless they can bring it up to modern day standard. Okay. Who keeps record of those state fire marshal inspections? They do, state fire marshal. The state fire marshal does. And how do you know whether something's been updated or not? They will send us a copy. If so far I haven't seen any of the ones that have been condemned, all the ones that we've condemned have been removed from the site. They've been demolished. They have not been reoccupied. Okay. Right. Excuse me for interrupting. Mr. Lane, would you be so kind as to serve as a member of the committee temporarily so we can have our quorum? Thank you. Go ahead. You mentioned demolishing the trailers. Are they demolished on site? Yes, normally. Is there a time period for which that trailer should be totally cleared out? Once we cite them, we'll give them so much time to comply with the ordinance or the notice we sent them, the notice of violation, whether we've condemned it or we've already demolished or we've cited them for a number of violations. At the end of that time frame, if they don't comply, then we issue civil penalties. Normally what they do is they bring in a rollback container, and they'll start dismantling the trailer and dispose of them that way, because a lot of times they're not roadworthy. They can't be pulled out of the park. Right. Right. How long should that process be? How long do we allow for that process to take? Normally about 60 days, 30 days to comply and then 30 for a final. Okay. Yes, 60. There is a security issue, a safety issue that the trailer park residents have raised, and that say you take off the vinyl on the outside of the trailer and then you've got that exposed fiberglass insulation on the inside. Is that not something that we see as a safety or security issue? When you demolish one, you have to get a permit, and that's controlled by building inspection. Any demolition of a structure is controlled by building inspection. Okay. You have to get a permit for that. Okay. I believe that's all that I have for code enforcement at this time. Thank you very much. We also have two other council members regarding that issue. Okay. Was it on the previous question? The mobile home question. Right. Go ahead. Okay. If I have it, I just have Kena Coe to come forward, and then I'll open it up for questions for other council members. Thank you, Commissioner Coe. Committee members, if you can refer to page 38 of your packet, and this is from our Code of Ordinances, Section 13. Commissioner, when we discovered this ordinance, I emailed Commissioner Coe and asked her if she was aware of it, and she was not. But I've wondered since that if you've become aware of it and if you can give us any feedback on the existence of this ordinance. I ran it by the Department of Law, and my understanding is that it either predates or is right at the time of merger. And it seems that I couldn't find anyone in Urban County Government who knew anything about the existence of this ordinance, and no one was aware of any reports ever having been collected. So I have not done anything. I think the recommendation from the Department of Law at that time was that we either probably need to start collecting the reports or we need to do away with the ordinance. And I assume that the discussion today would center around exactly what you think needs to happen there. If we collect the reports, I would encourage us to give some considerable thought to what we're going to do with them when we collect them. And if they are going to actually add value to the decision-making process about this particular issue. So I'm willing to do whatever the council would like on this particular issue, but I have not done anything in terms of making an attempt to collect reports once I became aware of the ordinance. Okay. Thank you very much. And committee members, if you haven't had a chance to review this, I would really appreciate your advice and for us to come together on what do we think we need to do. What was the – I try to get back in the minds of whoever put this together and thought, what were they trying to accomplish from having this reporting out on a yearly basis to the Commissioner of Finance for the Urban County Government? How would this help the residents of the mobile homes? Or how would this help for tax assessment purposes? And maybe this was before PVA was set up the way that it is. So if any council members have any guidance about that, please let me know. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dr. Stephens? This is a big problem in our community, in any community. And to pursue this issue, I would recommend that a move that a subcommittee of this planning committee be appointed with Council Member James, if willing, as chairman of the subcommittee, to pursue this issue and bring back the appropriate information for us to take action. So we have a motion and a second to form a subcommittee to study this and bring back recommendations to the planning committee. Would you be willing to chair that? Yeah, I think my legislative aid is going to kill me, but yes, I will. And then we'll need one or two. A couple of Council Member Beard will serve. Is there any other council member on the committee who would like to serve? And Council Member Blues, thank you very much. Madam Chair, I would like to recommend that any council members who have mobile home parks in their district, so Council Member Blues and Council Member Hinson, it would be appropriate. It would be appropriate, I believe, for her to serve as well. Actually, a subcommittee of this committee can only be made up of members of the committee, but anyone could attend and give input. Thank you. So the motion on the floor is to form the subcommittee. Andrea James would chair. Council Members Blues and Beard would serve. And Council Member Stennett. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. We'll bring that recommendation forward. And then Council Member Beard. Very quickly, David. At one time mobile homes were considered vehicles, not dwellings, and then double-wides and the manufactured homes that were never put on wheels except maybe to get them to where they were going to be placed. I don't know how the differentiation between one and the other is, but obviously if you're targeting a mobile home, let's say prior to 1960 or 65, it would be a vehicle, it wouldn't be a dwelling, even though you're living in it. You can live in a car also or in a tent, but that doesn't necessarily make it a. . . Sure. I think those are distinguished at the state level. I think they're under the State Fire Marshal's Office. They distinguish the ones that have wheels, the ones that don't have wheels, permanent foundations, and their requirements for each one of those. And I think the ones that are movable, that actually have, say, a fifth wheel, those have to be inspected every year under the Department of Highways more or less than what we, you know, our focus and the target are the more permanent ones. Okay. I kind of think that's what I was. . . Right. In fact, I like the idea that that is happening. Chairman, we're over time here. Yes, it's 3 o'clock. Thank you, David, very much. Appreciate it. Council members, thank you very much. The only other thing I wanted to. . . Did you have another question? Just real quick, one comment. Richard Maloney is in the Office of Housing, Building, and Construction. And that would be the state department that would deal with the issues of the manufactured homes. So we have an ally, hopefully, in the state to work with us on those state issues. So I just wanted to add that in. Very good. All right. Council members, your list of issues outstanding in the committee, I've talked with various ones of you. And I would like to, as the chair, go ahead and follow in Dr. Stephen's steps last January, since we're starting a new year, and strike off of the list everything before 2007, except for our Loudoun, Newtown Pike, and Liberty Road updates, so that we can start afresh with our 2007 issues. And then if a council member has an issue in that top tier from years ago, you're welcome to put it back in committee. So we'll strike those, and we'll start with the new list next month. Thank you very much. Mayor, thank you for your patience. Meeting adjourned. I just declared it in the way. Can I do that? Sure. Thank you.