The End Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. This is the Environmental Quality Meeting on October 14th. Welcome, everyone. We've got a pretty full agenda, so we'll go ahead and move right into it. The first on our agenda is our committee summary from June 24th. Do I hear any additions, corrections, or motion for approval? Move approval. Got a motion by Councilman Farmer, second by Councilman Myers. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes. Next on our agenda, we have the energy management update. We had this for the first time last year, and I think a lot of the committee members and the people watching at home found this valuable in how we're trying to save money here at the government center and reduce our energy costs. So this is our annual update. Welcome, sir. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Take it away. Slides are queued. Okay. Yes, this presentation is an annual update on the government's energy initiatives. Next month, you'll be hearing from the Empower Lexington group on the community-wide efforts to make Lexington a more sustainable community. My focus here is on what the government's doing to be more energy efficient in support of that plan. I begin with the organization, and the organizational structure is important because energy is a very cross-cutting resource across divisions. When you get separation from the folks that pay the bills versus the end users versus those responsible for its management, communication becomes very important. So the city does have a standing energy team for a CAO policy, which meets monthly. That is a venue then for discussing energy use, outliers, what's going on in different divisions that impact energy. On a monthly basis, we also receive data reports from the utility companies and meet with them as necessary. On a quarterly basis, there's budget review, and this is really a gut check to make sure the things we're managing and looking for, they show up in our PeopleSoft and accounting systems. And the day-to-day work, I put under coordination with divisions, and this is really how I spend my time, be it requests for information from different divisions on how much they're using or running an energy analysis to compare some options or provide design consultation when we are in design mode for new facilities. And the last one, of course, is briefings to committees and council as requested. The foundation for the energy initiatives really is utilities, and that's because the metrics that we're assessed by are contained in that data, whether that's your dollars we spend or the units of fuel consumed. The first major initiative we have was a rate analysis across the electric and natural gas accounts to make sure that they were sized appropriately for the amount of fuel being used. That was systematic wide across all of those accounts and completed last year. So I'm able to offer a snapshot here that the impact of that particular initiative is over $700,000 per year in savings to the city. and more importantly then that became the seed money for getting the next projects done because that's the proverbial low-hanging fruit. There's no cost other than our own labor and review of those accountings, but from here on out to make hard changes that save energy in our facilities, we're going to spend money. So a portion of those savings in the rate analysis did go to fund the Energy Improvement Fund And that was a unique structure authorized by council that provides a revolving loan program to do, you know, the next year's initiatives. But it gets harder from here on out because it requires that the savings from that project over 10 years be at least as much as the borrowed amount. What we're finding, because in our climate, price climate with utility rates, that it'll probably supplement an existing project. It takes a special case to flat out pay for it. And new then in FY15, we will bring in, bringing in under our management is water. It's not classically defined, of course, as energy, but it is a natural resource that deserves our good stewardship. The Division of Environmental Policy recognized both the value of our programs and the significance of water, reassigned an environmental inspector to support energy initiatives for this program. Here's a snapshot then of fiscal year 14 of what I call the big three now, since we brought water in. So gas, water, and electric, our total spend was around $17.2 million. dollars. What I'd like to focus on at first are the three shaded gray shaded areas. These are what I refer to as a direct service to the community. You have the 3.6 million for the fire hydrants outside of homes and businesses, 5.4 million for the rental of street lights, and 2.7 million to provide sewer services to the citizen. This would be your pump stations and your water treatment plants. Now the remaining three slices, the gas, water, and electric, that is the energy and water that is being used by our own buildings and parks. James, before you go on, the water, gas, and electric, is that for every LFUCG building? That is correct. What's not in there? Is the detention center in there? Yes. Every building we own? Every building. Okay, thank you. To give you some idea of change over time, this is a five-year history. I have removed water from this chart since I don't have the historic data. So this is gas and electric. And you can see over the last five fiscal years we've changed from about 11 million to a little under 12 and a half million total. The differences, and I've looked at this many different ways to provide you context, But the differences are largely due to rate increases during that period and weather. So the pink line above is degree day, so that's an indicator of how hot or cold a particular year was. And you can see that our spend very closely trends how hot or cold it is. what I what I really want you to take away in this the importance for this group and certainly with the Empower Lexington is that it takes time to see trends in environmental programs and that's largely what you're seeing here that in any given year an up or down will largely be due to weather effects and so you don't want to pat yourself on the back too soon until you see the cumulative impact over time. These programs, our throughput is essentially restricted. We can only affect so many buildings and operations in a given year that their change among the scale of energy we use is typically hidden. So the third takeaway, the corollary really is you have to look at an individual project to see what's happening. you're just not going to see it in our aggregate. So let's look at some of those at the micro level then. The major initiative I've been bullish on in the last year is informational awareness. We have an ongoing database now on our gas and electric consumption. We have brought in the water data. that's good at a monthly interval, the monthly bills you receive. However, to get to the next level and respond in real time, we have to better utilize building automation platforms. You see some screenshots off to the right of one of two platforms that we have, so we can ask for competitive pricing on project. But these give us remote diagnostics to monitor the health of equipment and make changes in real time to their behavior. In retrofit, some of the ones done in fiscal year 14 was a major renovation of the Phoenix cooling tower. The Dunbar Community Center windows on the second and third floors. In a partnership with Kentucky Utilities, Parks and Rec installed LED lighting at Phoenix Park outside of the library. LED lighting is a very active field at the moment. We're seeing it on the store shelves, and we are starting to see its price point become cost effective for our new projects. Lastly, the pumps and or motors at six of our pools have been upgraded, are in process of being upgraded, and an older boiler system at the Bell House is being replaced. Some photos here of that. You can notice the second and third floor windows in the after shot now look a lot like what the first floor was. So these would be double pane windows and also improvements to minimize the air infiltration around them. We did not, through the wall air conditioner units are still in place. There was not enough money to address the mechanical systems on that project. The lower right, a picture of those LED lighting in Phoenix Park. And if you've been paying attention, the chandelier in the basement lobby, that was our fifth generation test of LED light bulbs, ones which we're now satisfied with in both their performance and their coloration that we are recommending to replace all of the candelabra bulbs in the lobby chandeliers here in the coming month or two. Getting bigger now, major renovations. The Carver Community Center had a complete HVAC overhaul and windows and roofing as well. The Senior Citizen Center was designed and bid out and will break ground here this week. still in design, the Public Safety Operations Center, the Coroner's Office, and the Community Action Council in Georgetown. What's significant that I wanted to get in front of you is that design is very important. If we're going to get ahead of this curve so that the next building is not marginal, we want it to be superior in its energy performance. So during these projects, energy became part of the conversation, which is a very game changer, if you will, and I think novel for the city. But we're asking for benchmarking, energy targets, and criteria for each of these new designs. We're using cash flow, life cycle cost analysis in our decision making. We're reviewing the M, E, and P plans to instill lessons learned in our next facilities. So it's a significant change in how we approach and work with our building consultants. The detention center project, just large enough to justify its own slide, but we spent all of FY14 working on proposals. Here we've, again, trying to address aging equipment. We've come up with a cost-effective program that just the utility savings alone should be able to pay for those improvements over a 10- to 15-year period, reducing gas electric by 30% and anticipated savings over $200,000 per year if we proceed with that. At the treatment plants, they've been undergoing major work as well. The aeration blowers at West Hickman were retrofitted, adding variable speed with much more efficient motors, which happened to be a lot quieter. The new blower right now doing the work of what two did previously. The airflow actuators, they are now being computer controlled, so the dissolved oxygen content in zone two is modulated in real time. previously. That was a manual adjustment to the actuators twice per shift, as well as a SCADA upgrade. This, again, back towards informational awareness. The interface at Town Branch, but both interface and controls at West Hickman have been upgraded. Here's some visuals then. You can see the new blower there in the upper left compared to the extremely noisy one on the right. We're not getting just energy there. It would be difficult to have a conversation in that room with the old blower. So it's a work environment, work safety issue as well. Down below there is the new, gives you a feel for what these SCADA systems look for in the new generation computer controls and your ability to adjust things remotely. On the transportation side, fleet vehicles have now moved to use the Ford Focus as the standard issue for the general government vehicle, fuel economy at 33 miles per gallon, and a strong effort to avoid hand-me-downs, because until you get turnover on that fleet, you won't see this type of fuel economy reflected in your fuel use. Pickups, likewise, are they're using the Tacoma to replace the half-ton models. They found that for the majority of tasks, the Tacoma works fine and offers a 30% better fuel economy than that traditional V8. Biofuels has also increased. All new police and general government sedans are flex fuel. This means they can burn ethanol. The E85, it means you have 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. even when adjusted on a BTU basis. Ethanol, a typical ethanol setup has roughly 20% less emissions than a gas-burning engine. You're well more on alternative fuels, but you're aware of the 11 compressed natural gas trucks that were purchased along with in-house fueling infrastructure. And that becomes important because it does take longer to fuel a vehicle with compressed natural gas than a liquid pumping station. So having control over that fueling station is important. Compressed natural gas offers a cleaning, burning, fuel savings, and it, too, is much quieter as it drives through the city streets. The anticipation in a press article is savings of approximately $6,500 per year due to both the cheaper fuel and the maintenance on these vehicles. So looking ahead into the coming year, we will be investigating appropriate metrics for water as we bring that under our management, as well as the water treatment plants themselves. They're heavy users, and I would like to see more integration of energy in their operational dialogue. We will be retrocommissioning existing buildings. That's a long word for a tune-up, just to make sure the system's in there. Are they performing as you'd expect? Are the coils too clean? Are the sensors being accurate? So it's tedious, but we do need to tune these buildings up as they drift over time without that. lighting upgrades. I think you'll see significant movement on lighting change out. We would very much like to move the detention center performance contract forward. The timeline right now was set for a 2015 construction. And lastly, measurement and verification. So here again for the new buildings when that senior center cuts ribbon, I suppose that'd be in January 2016, but the public Safety Operations Center. All our effort on the design, we want to make sure we get that. So we measure and verify that those new systems are performing as we were told they would. That is all. You ready for questions? I'm ready. All right. We have a couple of council members signed up. First up, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming in today. Just a few questions. CAO Policy 39, could you just briefly give us an overview of that? Is that just the policy that sets up the committees and things? It is unique to the energy team. And so the policy establishes the formation, I guess, of an energy team, but it's not very specific in terms of who's to sit or who's to chair. We have used that latitude to form. It's a voluntary group. There's probably 12 to 15 members on my distribution list with regular attendance of about six. We maintain an intranet page with all the meeting minutes posted going back a number of years. But it is an informal, very candid conversation with groups, you know, them to explain both lessons learned, what they're trying out, what they like, what didn't work, but also any of their projects that might impact energy. And it's hard to get ahead of the curve because otherwise they know I'll be calling eventually when I start seeing it in utility data. So it's our feedback loop for the city. Okay. Thank you. Do you have an individual plan for each building? You said every building is involved at least in that utility usage. No. No, our approach, it's tended to be more effective as I follow where interest is. And largely the euphemism would be to follow the money. When divisions have a budget in place to make a change in a building, I work with them to make sure that change is as efficient as possible or what we can afford. And here again, how the Energy Improvement Fund can be complementary to those efforts by subsidizing the upgrade to a more efficient appliance or equipment. But we have taken a broad look in terms of where our building stands against benchmarks, but I found those plans largely sit unused if there's no resources to affect that building. So I do tend to intersect at identified projects, you know, where there's interest in action going on. Okay. Okay. Why wouldn't we, from a government perspective, look at all of our buildings and do the ESCO around the whole entire government and make this mandatory instead of waiting for people to get on board so that if you're going to do lighting, you can do lighting across, you know, say if you're doing fluorescent, then you can do across the whole board, or if you're doing LEDs, that kind of thing. So instead of doing it because the cost savings would be better if you did 10 buildings as opposed to just one or doing one at a time. It's a true statement. The limitation is financial. Early in my time here with the city, we did take a broad look. And when I was reviewing the capital improvement plans, asking people, how much money are you requesting for different facilities? and you'd see a very large gap between the amount requested is on the order of $20 million and the amount available or appropriated was closer to one. And so when you get a delta that large, again, the plans become less effective. So we're trying to focus on where there were capital dollars available. And I think if you look back historically on these capital improvement plans, You'll see the building improvement and maintenance funds tend to be in that million-dollar range. Respectfully, can I say that as a policymaker, I think it would help us if we worked in the reverse. And I'll give you a couple examples. We just did a GTV report with Council Member Ford about the smaller area plan that we're doing in the HSU. And one of the things that I like about what they did in the east end smaller area plan is the fact that since they have a plan, now they have people that are attracted to the fact that they have a plan and they want to invest. When I first got on the council, we had a parkmaster plan that we were trying to implement in Gainesway, and we needed about $2 million to get it done. And there was that time when we joked about Mayor Isaac's finding the $11 million in the sofa we all joked about, and the council paid some bills, and then we had a chance to spend some of that money. And I requested $1.7 million, and people laughed at me and said, there's only $7 million to split up, why would you ask for $1.7 million? But out of that, somebody was watching at home, and a few months later, I got a phone call, and they asked me if I had some kind of a plan around what we were talking about in Gainesway Park, and I said yes. And I emailed them the plan, and the result of that was $750,000 in the state line item, and that's how we built that community center over in Gainesway. And so if we have a plan first, then you come to the government, to the council, and say, instead of giving us a million dollars for this building, if you give us $3 million for this building, this is what we can do in terms of energy efficiency, and that will help you down the road. So that's just a thought. No, I appreciate the suggestion. It does make me think about the performance contract project we have, the detention center, which we've always described somewhat as a pilot test because the city hasn't done one before. We want to be comfortable with it, but we needed scale to pull it off, which the detention center offered. But it's always been in the back of our head of whether or not we would open our broader portfolio to an energy service company to perform something like that. and they need kind of the highs and lows of buildings to make a package like that work. So those two are very compatible, both your plan as well as our ongoing efforts with a performance contract. Okay, my time's up. If I could ask one more question, then I'll get out and come back later. You said all the buildings were in that one pie chart, and you're doing a boiler in another building. Is the boiler in the old courthouse, has it been looked at? Has it been figured into this at all? The boiler in the old courthouse was decommissioned at least a year ago. We've been using electric resistance heaters for probably 18 months or so in the old courthouse. So is there an opportunity to look at what we do moving forward? If we're going to redo that building, what system makes sense, and is this an opportunity to do it? Yes. There is a group looking at what they're going to do to that building, including the mechanical systems. Personally, I don't know the condition assessment on the piping, and that hydronic network becomes very important as to whether you'd want to invest in an advanced boiler. But it's on the radar. Okay, thank you. My time's up. Thank you. Councilman Relain. Thanks, Chairman. Could you go to that pie chart? Well, you've got it right there. I had a question on the $2.7 million, and I guess that's the either division or department of water quality. What is included in that amount? That is the electricity for lift stations, the pump stations to get the sewage to the treatment plants. There are some small natural gas accounts at some facilities, as well as the electricity used at the West Hickman and Town Branch treatment plants. All right. Well, I thought maybe it might have included some stormwater or sanitary sewers. There's no sanitary sewer fees that are included in this summary here. No fees. All right. Thank you for your answer. That's it. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Bush, good report. I appreciate this. I've always enjoyed your reports. They're very thorough. Several quick questions. have we this really doesn't have anything to do with the use of power but energy but do we mark our trucks when we're using gas gas powered trucks do we mark them any way that says this truck is gas powered or just promote the idea of our economy you're referring to the waste trucks yes yes they do have this truck is powered by natural gas on the sign. I didn't see it and I thought it doesn't jump out but it is across I think it ought to jump out. I don't know if it's on this one yeah I can't see it from there but there is some verbiage on that billboard placard on the side. I think we ought to think about really publicizing that I think that would be real good for our citizens to know that we're doing this because I suspect most don't but it's a great advertisement to have that truck running through our neighborhoods But a couple of other quick questions. Has there been a thought, and I think I asked John Sheed this, has there been a thought of retrofitting some of our vehicles to go to gas? I would have to defer that one to fleet or general service. Is there anyone here who can speak to that? I think we... Not this morning. I can... That's okay. It's something I've been thinking about. What do you mean by a hand-me-down vehicle? In the past, some divisions would receive a, I'm not sure the correct word, but like a surplus police vehicle. They'd unmarket and allow the division then to use that. In fact, my own division used one for a number of years. They don't get the greatest gas mileage. They're somewhat of a performance vehicle, not a fuel economy. But at the time, it was a means of avoiding the purchase. So it hasn't used its useful life, but it's overqualified, so to speak. Correct. Yeah, okay. Then finally, what efforts are being made to encourage LFUCG employees, like us, to use less power? That is a difficult one in that oftentimes we're passive users. We float in and out of the buildings, but we have limited control. Some are fortunate to have a light switch or direct adjustment of their unitary controls, but not everyone. I do this indirectly. I tend not to preach. It's really just not my style. So you don't see a lot of flyer-type campaigns. I like to work directly with people to educate them on, you know, what I'm seeing maybe in data, that this building I refer to as a little hotter than its brother or sister. And, you know, I have some reasons why based on an audit I'll do. And that personal relationships seems to work well, that people respond to it versus coming in and forcing a turndown or locking thermostats. And we do have situations where we need to do that in rooms that are unsecure. Community centers are always difficult, so you'll see the cages over those thermostats to prevent people from manipulating them. But we want to give people enough resources so that they're comfortable, and certainly in our own employees that they're productive. Saving a little bit on a degree or two, to me, is less important than them getting their job done without worrying about their own comfort. But just a sign that says don't forget to turn off your lights or turn down the heat when you're not here or whatever might be helpful. And I do appreciate that. It is an area I could improve on. I'm preaching to myself as well. You understand. I'm smiling because of the new control platform that I just showed you. I'm just now reviewing it. And sadly, it's probably going to be my peers on the ninth floor where I work that are going to be my beta site for taking over control of some of their individual units. We want to roll this out cautiously and see how it works. Also, our ability to just monitor, get the feedback from the system. If we just turn this whole building into automation mode, I think it would be too much. All right. Well, having worked at UK, Big Brother was telling us how hot or cold we needed to be and turning off half the lights in the hallways. And I'm kind of used to that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Massadi. Well, thank you, James. You've always had a real passion for this, and I certainly appreciate it. It's a lifestyle change for all of us, for sure. One quick question. We used to have hybrids. I remember when way back we decided to go with the hybrid vehicles. Were they just not cost effective anymore? Is that why we're? Yes. I take it John Sheet's not behind me at the moment. He's coming. Is he coming? Okay. But not fast enough. I am loosely aware of his analysis of that program, and it's my understanding that when the hybrids were initially rolled out, they were cost effective at that time. but what we've seen is a faster increase in the standards of the vehicle, the fuel economy through federal standards. That increase has risen enough to close the gap where they are now the more economical choice than the hybrid. I'm not only thinking about the fuel savings, but just the environment itself. That's why I know that we initially started with hybrids. I'm just curious why we switched over. Okay. That's at least the best I can do at the moment, But I do think the gap between a standard gasoline vehicle and a hybrid, it used to be wider. And now we're seeing these smaller sedans like the Ford Focus have tightened that up so that the additional cost of the battery on the hybrid vehicle is not necessarily cost effective. But you're touching on a distinction of what would the – does the council want dollars to decide that or emissions? and that becomes a very specific analysis. Jump sheet, I don't know if you had anything to add in regard to that. I didn't mean to have a rundown and get you here, jump sheet. I just asked a question. We used hybrids in the past when we first purchased them, and now we're moving to the Ford Focus. The hybrids we've owned probably for longer than anyone else in the state in terms of the age and the size of the fleet. We've been keeping a very close eye on their performance, and we've done life cycle cost analysis, looking at the difference between the first generation that we've owned, which are a few Hondas, and also in the second generation were the Toyotas. You gain fuel efficiency. Unfortunately, the battery life is of an issue and concern. Now, things have gotten much better. The first generation, when we started changing the batteries, you were looking at approximately $6,000, some of them up to $7,500 per battery, which at that point, when you've got a vehicle that's 8 years old, 9 years old, that was not going to be an option. Now, the technology has gotten much better with the batteries. Is it where it needs to be? I doubt it. But based on the first two generations that we've done life cycle costs, at the end, you do not offset the cost, the additional cost, the cost differential between a regular unit and a hybrid, simply by better gas mileage. You're still probably about $5,000 to $6,000 in whole. Now, that said, you've got intangibles that probably might be a little bit more challenging to quantify, and those are air quality reduction of your carbon footprint. So those are the things that, as we go on, we're continuously monitoring the use of hybrids, but we also are taking a very close look at the electric ones. Electric ones are at this point where hybrids were about 10, 15 years ago. So just to give you a point of reference, we purchased one electric unit, and the cost differential between the electric unit and a non-electric one is close to about $25,000. Now, that's quite a bit of cost. So we're looking at that and how it's over the life of the unit, how it's going to perform. if we have any issues. We only have it for about a year and a half now. So we got just about 12 months of data to really be looking at. When you look at these type of technology and units, you really need at least 36 months, preferably 60 months of data that you can really take a close look and see if it's a viable one. But we're looking at CNGs right now for the mid-sized units, F-150, F-250s, F-350s, and so forth. Obviously, there is a decision that's been made to move toward CNG with compactor units. When we looked at all of these different applications, those were the units that made the most sense. Because, number one, their mile per gallon is extremely low. They do a lot of stop and go. The cost of diesel, extremely high compared to the other ones. Just give you an example. Right now, the diesel is probably running about right under $4 to $4.15 a gallon, depending on what day of the week you're getting it. Compared to that with a CNG, what we call a diesel equivalent gallon, that way you're comparing apples with apples, it's about a 225 to 235 per gallon. So that makes sense. We looked at the retrofitting, and we talked to quite a few other municipalities that have been involved with that much longer than we have been. And time and time, that came up to be not such a good option in terms of off-front cost, the loss of capacity, and so forth. So we're still examining the retrofitting. It's just like anything else with the technology that's probably going to evolve and maybe make it a little bit more, you know, viable. The other issue is a lot of our units up to two, three years ago, they're all pretty much at the end of the life cycle. So trying to invest into retrofitting any of those units, especially the light ones, it's going to be cost prohibitive, would not make any sense. Thank you very much. Sure. Thank you, Josh. Sure. Next up is Peggy Hinson, Council Member Hinson. Thank you, Chair. John Sheed. Yes, ma'am. And when you're talking about retrofitting, you're talking about our waste management? Any units, waste management in specific. The biggest issue with the current fleet with the waste management is if you try to retrofit them, your biggest challenge would be locating your tanks. for fuel. And right now, I know even with the regular units, we have certain streets in all the neighborhoods, we have some issues in terms of the height and hidden trees and so forth. At that point, we decided that was not going to be the best option. And with the performance also. And you found that it is cost effective to purchase natural gas operated vehicle as opposed Yes. You're paying probably on average, you're paying probably about $30,000, $35,000 more for a unit that is a CNG-designed and manufactured unit. These units, usually we can hold on to them about 8 to 10 years. And at that age, looking at the average cost of fuel and the savings and mile per gallon, you usually pay that amount within the first three to four years of the unit. I really got most excited, I think, about the natural gas-operated vehicles. And I know Council Member Clark asked earlier about our smaller fleets, police, and if it would be more difficult to use natural gas in those vehicles. The biggest challenge we looked at, and that doesn't mean we're not considering it as we move forward, The biggest challenge with the lighter units, let's use police, for example, is availability of fueling areas. At this point, we are the only place in Fayette County that provides CNG fueling. And so you've got a few cruisers that leave the county. Police officers leave outside the county and so forth. So you don't have any option in terms of fueling. and we couldn't really expect all of these units to come back to one single location for fueling. Now, as the commercial market gets more and more interested into bringing in some CNG fast fueling stations, I would say that might open the door. With the police, just because of the nature of the units and what kind of activities they're involved with, we're going to have to kind of have some discussions with police to make sure that that would be a right fit. But we're looking at anything from our very small units all the way up to the compactors here. Okay. And what about our other heavy equipment vehicles? We're in the process of evaluating some dump trucks for streets and roads. There are some higher-end construction equipment ones, such as dozers and mowers and so forth. So those are all the options we're looking at right now. Again, all of it goes back to your fueling capacity and where you have fueling stations and so forth. Thank you very much. James, I want to thank you for your presentation. I think it's very thorough. Very, very good presentation. Have you looked at through your analysis where we get the most bang for our bucks? Or is it just the overall energy savings throughout government with LED lighting and any type of waste? Or do we look at, for instance, do we get more cost savings through using the natural gas vehicles? I can only directly speak to the energy use in the buildings, but in the commercial environment, the mechanical systems, what heat and cool our buildings tend to be the largest energy users. Lighting comes in a close second, followed by hot water typically. From a dollar standpoint, though, your biggest impact usually comes in a lighting retrofit just because they cost less than mechanical systems. And I guess I was just thinking about a comparison, building to building, and really analyzing, you know, is there one building that uses much more energy than another and things like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. A slide I had a year ago in that presentation gave, it showed the buildings with, it was a bubble chart, so the size of the bubble was proportionate to its energy use. I pulled that out thinking it's kind of a rehash because those bubbles really don't change that much year to year, and I didn't want to recycle it. But we have all that information in an online database that our operational staff can access. And it provides a trend. Actually, let me just show you this real quick. The detail you can't appreciate. But that chart is the bar graph is the summation of the natural gas in the yellow and the electric. Yes, the electric in orange. But it's that dotted line that floats above it. That's actually the energy intensity of the building. So it's the BTUs per square foot of that building trended over time. And it's a 12-month average, so it's a rolling chart. But that's what I keep an eye on. And I could show you individual graphs where we've done a retrofit at this building and you see the decrease. That's what we want. That's the confirmation that our project's doing what we expected. So those are the trend lines I keep an eye on. And when they start trending upward after we have a few consecutive months, I need to be interacting with that owner of the building to figure out what's happening over there. Do we have an expansion of programs, which does happen, either expansion of programs or some system might be out of whack. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Hanson. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I don't have a question, but I want to thank you, James. You always do a terrific job with your presentations and informing us. I kind of want to say, in response to Councilmember Massadi and the hybrids, we've come a long way, baby. Some of us remember the first hybrid that the government bought, and Councilmember Farmer and I were remembering. They pulled it up to the second floor in the garage where we always came and went from the second floor when the garage was good. And we each got to test drive it. And it was the weirdest new car I'd ever seen. And, you know, we remember test driving it and stopping at the light and nothing. It was like it was dead, you know. So that must have been in 99 or 2000. I don't remember what year it was, but we have come a long way. And all of the improvements, not only with the fleet that way, but with buildings and things and the work that we're doing are so important. So I don't know if we still have that hybrid or not. Originally, it went to either, do we? It was either a code enforcement or a building inspection vehicle. I don't remember which. But anyway, thank you for your presentation. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Akers, since you haven't spoken yet. Thank you, Chair. Yes, thank you. This is a great presentation and very thorough, lots of good information, and I'm glad to see the savings that we are experiencing. Can you go to slide or page 10? It's the slide with the photos of the Dunbar Center. Can you tell me what's going on in the middle of those windows? Are those windows awesome? I'm not sure if they were originally windows and covered up or if that's always been part of the architecture. It looks like it's boarded up, and I'm hoping that's not. It looks that way. It is what the original windows were. It was before my time, so I can't tell you about the reasoning behind it, but what happened was they blocked it, and it has a cementous type of material on the outside. So that building is managed and operated by parks and recs, and I believe they're looking into some other options associated with that. The only thing I can say is probably was part of it was to keep the cost down in terms of window replacement as well as gaining some efficiencies in terms of heating and cooling. Okay. It doesn't, I agree with you, it looks out of place. Yeah, it doesn't look good. I wonder if we could, I don't know, paint it or something to match the brick or, I don't know. They're looking at, I know, CM Ford has been looking at some options there, and we've been in discussions with the maintenance group at Parks and Recreation about what might be available to do to kind of at least have it blend in a little bit more with the facade. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I just had a couple of things. there are other things we could do like occupancy sensors and there are power strips out now that sort of do the same thing as an occupancy sensor does. Are we doing those kinds of things as part of this plan as well? Occupancy sensors are installed and we see them more prevalent in the new design. Again, the DDC controls has just come a long way so the costs have come down. They're easy to install at that point. We do retrofit, again, as we're addressing certain spaces. The power strips, less so. There has been the industry itself has policed itself well in terms of the consumption of your typical computer monitor and the processor itself, that they have such on-board energy managements that their idle states are quite low. and to justify the power strip and the unknown if a user is using it relative to that small advantage, you're really getting at your de minimis returns. Okay. I'll send you a couple studies that show that that's not the case. The other thing I'd say is that sheet that Elizabeth gave you, and I know this isn't the best time for the conversation, but we were talking about water earlier, And one of the things that we noticed when we were talking about swimming pools earlier this year is that we can't get accurate information about how they're building the sewers. And so I know you were in on those emails. We take this offline. But if we could get a conversation around how the utility companies are, how Kentucky American Water is building for sewer, whether it's sanitary or storm sewer. The question about the pools is, if you look at the numbers here, they just don't make sense. And nobody in the government has the answer to that. We're going to have to get it from them. But the second question I have is, instead of draining the pools out into the sanitary sewer, can't fire pump that water out into the storm sewer and save us on the sanitary sewer bill? Can we look into that? And I thought maybe we did that in some pools or we did that at one time and we don't do that anymore. I don't think Charlie's group really wants. Mr. Martin? The chlorine that's typically in pool water would be a violation of water quality standards, so you can't just pump it into a storm sewer. Okay. We used to do that, though, right? Yeah, we used to be able to do a lot of things. Okay. That takes care of that one. Thank you. It looks like all the council members are signed up to speak, have spoken. I just have two questions left for you, James. Back on your pie chart, the hydrants, they make up about 20% of our energy costs on your chart. What are we going to do to address that cost? Is there anything we can do? Are you going to be involved trying to address that? The preliminary review I'm doing, because the water information is all very fresh just in the last couple months, was we're taking a look at the hydrants from a geographic perspective, so GIS mapping, and making sure first that what we're billed for is an accurate count of what we think we own. Then the next step after that, I do anticipate there's some small true-ups, but nothing significant. After that, it becomes negotiations between the water company, what is their true cost of service, and then the regulatory environment at the Public Service Commission. Right, so we'll use that information as we negotiate the next year. Okay. Then on streetlights, we have recently put this into committee. A question was asked about LED lights. Will you be involved in that as well when we bring that discussion? Because I think there could be opportunity for savings if we want to invest the money on the front end. Correct. Yes, I will be part of those conversations. Good. And then last but not least, you said $6,500 per year on the natural gas savings on the trucks? Per truck? That was per truck. Yes, the press release indicated they anticipate $6,500 in fuel and maintenance savings per truck per year. Okay, very good. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Next up on our agenda is the natural resource management reorganization proposal. And I apologize, most of you have known this as our consolidated greenway responsibilities, which has been a committee for a number of years. I know we've looked at it since I've been on council. I know the budget link had recommended us taking a look at that. We do have a new commissioner and a new director that has tackled the problem, and I'm pleased to say hopefully they have a solution. So you all want to come on up and get us going. Would it be our CAO going to start the conversation? And the reason the urgency of putting it on today is one of the biggest things that happened to Lexington a couple months ago was the announcement of the Breeders' Cup and what do we want our city to look like when we have a large event coming to our city. So this, Councilman, is in the back of your mind if you can think about that. And if you know anything about landscaping preparation, this is the time of year we've got to get things moving. And that's the reason why we have it on the agenda today so we can beat the winter frost and get things we need to do this fall ready for the spring. So, Cael, welcome. Thank you. And we appreciate the opportunity. Through the last three months or so, we've mainly been having internal meetings about who does what as far as landscaping and maintenance. And what we found is everybody is doing something, and they're doing that well, but there is no coordination. And you all have the same issues that I get a lot, and that is somebody calls and they say, you haven't cut so-and-so or so-and-so looks horrible. Well, it takes about three emails and four calls to find out who is really responsible for so-and-so. So what we are going to propose today is a different way of doing this, is a consolidated way of doing this that we think will be more effective and will help with communications and will certainly enable you, LexCall, and all of us to handle our constituent complaints or questions more effectively. I do want to note before Susan Bluger starts that this is not an indication of parks is not doing something well or streets and roads are not doing something well. this is an attempt to try to bring all of this together and the equipment to the right spot and the people to the right spot. So Susan has a proposal that we would like for you all to consider, and I'll let her come on up. Thank you, CAO Hamilton. Welcome, Susan. This is a hot topic that we've had on our agenda for quite some time, so. Okay. I'm going to cover about five things. First, we want to talk about what is natural resource management. Then I want to discuss where we currently have that responsibility, then how we currently do it, and then how we would do it under this proposal, and then what actions Council would need to take in order to move this forward. So first off, what are we talking about when we say natural resource management? In this case, we are talking primarily about vegetative management. That includes forestry, mowing, landscape maintenance, which can include your honeysuckle removal, your shrubs, your pruning, your string trimming, your detail work, your planter beds. Then green infrastructure maintenance. Green infrastructure is stormwater management facilities that include vegetation as a part of them. I'm going to show you some pictures of that as well. And then the last bullet is the landscaping and civic beautification is what I like to call it. That's where we're going to add additional plants, not just maintain what we have, but also add in addition to that. So where does LFECG perform this function? There's a lot of different locations. We have right-of-way medians. We've been doing GIS locating of all of our medians. We've done over 600 of them so far that we've identified. We have our corridors. We have 15 transecting corridors in Fayette County. These are all the roads that go to another county. So you're starting at Russell Cave, and you went all the way back around again to Georgetown. All of those roads are your corridors, in addition to Man of War and New Circle Road. Now, the state maintains New Circle Road, but the city maintains Man of War. And we typically mow on the corridors. Most of them are state roads, but we typically mow from New Circle into town. And then the state mows outside of New Circle. Then we have county roads. We have 234 linear miles of local county roads that are not state roads. Obviously city facilities, parks, trails, greenways is part of it. The vacant lots, the water quality buyouts, and we have these green infrastructure locations as well. So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of what we're talking about. On the left side, we have corridors and right-of-way. The top picture is on Versailles Road, that slope in front of Hillcrest Cemetery. The bottom picture is Newtown. That's the median right there going from Main Street. And some corridors and right-of-ways are easier to maintain than others. Some are actually concrete medians that have to still be string-trimmed because of the vegetation that grows up between the joints, between the curb joint and the rest of the concrete pavement. And then others have actual landscaping that has to be maintained. On the right side, we have water quality facilities, green infrastructure. The top one is Gainesway Park. That is our water quality pond retrofit that was done through a state grant several years ago, and that's looking upstream, looking at the constructed wetland portion of that. Those plants that you see there are specialty water aquatics, aquatic plants, and they have to be maintained a certain way. There's also a buffer around the pond with native plants, and we have to do work related to invasive species control, litter removal inside of the pond and replantings. The bottom picture, Lyric Theater. We have a vegetative. Yes. Before you move on, Councilor Myers has a comment to add on the pond. Yes. I'm glad you showed that picture because it doesn't look that way anymore. And the reason is we spent $60,000 planting that native grass, those native species, and it's all been mowed down. They've been mowing down to the bank. We actually have a contract with a contractor to do maintenance of the native plants. We go in and do invasives removal, and they have to do cuts. They've cut it down to the ground all the way down to the pond. It doesn't look like that anymore. Well, we cut the buffer two times a year, and I think they just did their fall cut. It's been like that all summer. Well, maybe our new plan will help us get a maintenance schedule that we're all agreeing with. Yeah, I mean, it's part of its mode. That's part of the SORI organization. Okay. The last time we have somebody, you know those plants that are out there in the middle that are growing? We had a group that came out, and they're doing an experiment out there in the pond right now. Right, the floating wetlands. They mow that, too? No, it's out in the middle of the pond. And that was one of the things that they raised concern about back then is that, and we were trying to find out who does the mowing around there, but we can talk offline, but we have some serious issues out there. Okay. And the way it works right now and the way it would work is the parks does the mowing up to the buffer, and then my division does the buffer work. And I do know that we just did a cut on it, but I will talk to my contractor on that as well to make sure. But hopefully this can get it in one spot so everybody's commuting. The bottom picture is the Lyric Theater, vegetative roof, and that has to be inspected and maintained as well. And that was taken in August of this year, and it looks really good. On the county roads, like I said, we've got 234 miles of county roads. Parks right now mows a strip along the county roads. two times a year, and they also do a cutback on trees and honeysuckle that are encroaching. We have about 50 linear miles of encroaching honeysuckle in our county roads. They use a very large machine right now that goes and just shears it off. They come back the next time, they do it again. Then at the top of our greenways, we do a lot of invasive species removal and plant management in those areas. Those are really naturalized areas. Most of the greenways are. We do some mowing. And then we have the water quality lots and detention basins that need to be mowed. And then we have our trails and our parks. And I should have also had on this picture downtown as well. All of those areas obviously have a lot of mowing, a lot of landscape maintenance associated with them. Now currently, that was what and where. Now we're going to talk about how. Currently we have six divisions with significant vegetation management responsibilities. And you You can see them listed there. And I'm going to show you another picture that kind of shows that as a visual, but you also have in your handout this handout, which is a more detailed description of who does what, where. There's a current one and then a proposed one that you might want to refer to. But this is a visual description of that. And the size of the circle relates to the amount of responsibility currently have in this area. So Parks and Recreation by far is the largest. Right-of-ways, medians, downtown, corridors, parks. That includes Raven Run and McConnell Springs, which are specialty conservation parks, naturalized parks, county roads, vacant lots. They do the water quality lots, greenways, trails, facilities. They do almost all mowing within that is part of our responsibility. Then we have code enforcement, which does the nuisance ordinance. So there's going to be some mowing associated with that. They do a lot of alley cutbacks, for example. And in my division, which we do green infrastructure, we have the administrative function of urban forestry within my division. And we do a little bit on corridors right now. You have engineering, which oversees the management of the conservation greenways. Streets and Roads, which has our tree crew and our equipment related to all tree work. And then Building Inspection, which does the commercial landscape compliance component. And then the other divisions are primarily water quality and fire, who do their own mowing and landscape maintenance on their properties. This kind of shows how everybody interacts with one another. And it's somewhat complicated when you have that many divisions working together. and I put this in here because this is an important point and I think one of the drivers for a lot of the calls that come in this is what I call no man's land there's a section out there that no one has responsibility for right now I'm going to show you some pictures of that so here's some no man's lands areas this is uh top left is Versailles Road or a honeysuckle, which is actually in the right-of-way and is maybe on private property, encroaches through a fence into the sidewalk and completely blocks the sidewalk. So that's more of a landscape maintenance issue on a corridor. Then your bottom left is at Oliver Lewis Way as you're entering for sales. This is actually a state-owned parcel. There's a bus stop right there, and the state doesn't mow it. top right is safety city it's just an example of a facility that has encroaching honeysuckle that's really a hazard particularly when you have a lot of kids around and it's just encroaching right onto the building and then we have the bottom right is new town this was a corridors project dead trees associated with corridors projects are kind of a no man's land area So the goals that we're looking for in this proposed reorganization are three. We want to create clear points of contact and responsibility for all of these areas that LFUCG has responsibility for. And we'd also want to match the responsibilities of the division to what that division's focus and mission and subject matter expertise are. and then to fill these gaps in resources and assignments related to how we currently do things to how we should be doing things. So we looked at several alternatives to meet these goals and then agreed upon a plan that has the following elements. And these are in no particular order. Really, the first one probably ought to be the last one. But the first one is to change the name of my division from environmental policy to environmental services. and I would probably request this even if this wasn't a discussion that we were having because to be honest, the people who work in my division, we aren't sitting up there writing policy all day long. We are providing services to the public and services to the divisions within government related to all things environmental. So we would like to make that change to better reflect what we really do. And then the second plan component is to consolidate the forestry program back together. In 2011, I think it was, the administrative part and the enforcement part was moved into environmental policy. The operations part remained in streets and roads, all the equipment, et cetera. So that's one of the components. The third one is to take the mowing and landscape maintenance responsibilities that parks currently has outside, not including parks, greenways that are in parks. About 70% of all greenways lie inside of a park. the downtown area and hard surface trails, take all the other areas, and move that responsibility into environmental services, making my division much more operational than it is. And then the fourth thing would be to maintain us as the lead division related to green infrastructure and stream restoration. So there's no change there. That's just noting the fact that we currently have that responsibility. Now, what would this look like? This would be a better reflection of what this plan would propose. So Parks and Rec has still a large responsibility related to this. They have a huge amount of acreage. But then environmental services would then grow and have these greater responsibilities. We're not proposing that water quality or fire change how they do their operations, but this would be how people would interact more frequently, and it would provide a much better point of contact. People will know who to call. If you're standing on a hard surface trail, it's parks. If you're standing in a park, it's parks. If you're standing downtown, it's parks. If you're standing somewhere else, it's environmental services. Now, on streets and roads, I mentioned that the 24-7 crew for trees is very important that we keep that operation going. And so that would remain with streets and roads. and the tree crew would also remain with streets and roads. They do a lot of tree work, but they don't do tree work all summer long. They have other responsibilities, particularly once you get past October. All the way from October through April, they have the snow responsibilities, potholes, all types of things that they're doing within their division. So I kind of call it the summer tree crew because that's pretty much how they function. one other thing related to that all work orders related to trees would come through environmental services and then those work orders within if we needed to utilize the tree crew as streets and roads we would we would work with them on that but it would be a chain of command at one point of contact and that would be environmental services the fifth part of the plan is to assign some of these no man's lands duties to environmental services number one corridors beautification. There is no executing division right now in this government for corridors beautification or maintenance of landscape. That's no man's land. So we would assign that duty to our division. Greenway maintenance point of contact, and this ties into your referred items that you have on your agenda. This does relate to the greenway coordinator position. We're not proposing to create that position per se, but we are proposing to make environmental services the point of contact for all greenway questions. And then we would work with parks as we needed to on the parks, greenways, et cetera. We also would want to do natural resource management planning, develop maintenance plans for all of our greenways, and provide the information that council needs to make decisions on when you would accept a greenway, a proposed greenway. So we would be that main point of contact in government for that. And then the third is commercial landscape compliance, which is currently done through building inspection. And they don't really have a dedicated staff to this task. I think that was also a LINCS-referred item on a different committee. And we have enforcement people within environmental policy. We already have that set up. We do enforcement for trees and other environmental issues. So it made sense to consider putting that responsibility within this division. And last but definitely not least is within this plan to improve our level of service and, again, to provide the clear points of contact. For tree maintenance, civic beautification, right-of-ways, vacant properties, the picture on the left is significant mower damage. That tree's not going to survive. You know, we pay public money to put in an asset. We need to be maintaining that asset and protecting it. The second picture is a median at Charles and Georgetown. It had landscaping in it put in by the Corridors Commission, but now it's mainly weeds. We want to turn that on its head. So we want to be maintaining our trees, protecting our trees, and then providing for beautification as well. So as far as actions that would need to occur, simple administrative change to the name. We're proposing to transfer three civil service positions to public service worker seniors from parks, which are the right-of-way mowers. Currently, parks mows Man of War, and they mow some of their parks. But beyond that, everything else is contracted. So those two people that currently mow Man of War would transfer, plus their equipment as well would transfer. And then one equipment operator senior, which would come from somewhere within the Department of Environmental Quality and Public Works. Yet to be determined. And budget amendments, obviously we need budget amendments to move the seasonal money. There are some seasonal money from parks, mowing, and some of the greenway maintenance money would be a proposed transfer. And then we do have some new funding requests in fiscal year 15. And here we are three months in to the new fiscal year, and I wanted to explain why we would be requesting money in this fiscal year. And we are very thankful for the $90,000 in tree money that we received in this year. And we have currently allocated 63% of that already, and we are soon to run short on that. But my first point is public safety. The emerald ash borer is a problem for us. Our ash trees are dying. They are going to die. We have 5,000 street trees that are ash trees. We've found 1,000. We estimate 1,000 dead trees on the county roads that we are responsible for. So winter is the time to do tree work. And so we would like to get a head start on moving forward with that. And the second thing is just having good stewardship of what we've put in in the past and then doing civic beautification. I think it's already been mentioned a good milestone to look at is probably the Breeders' Cup. We're looking at October. And for us to have our corridors looking in such a way that we're all proud of what we're driving by, we need to start now related to this. And it's not just for the Breeders' Cup. It's for all the citizens of Fayette County and everyone who drives in to work here. We have a beautiful city, and we want to make it even more beautiful. So with that, this first request relates to equipment, and this relates primarily to having a year-round tree crew. We need a full year-round tree crew. Like I said, a lot of tree work is done in the winter, and so this equipment would allow us to do that. We have an absolutely great tree crew in streets and roads, and some of them are here today. They do a fabulous job, but they also do a lot of other things. They do snow removal, they do potholes in the winter, and emergency services. So what this request would do is provide us that full year-round tree crew. In addition, there's a few additional items like string trimmers, things like that. What we want to do is look at how we do mowing, how we do tree maintenance, and see if we can make it more efficient and do some of the detail work in-house so that we not have damaged trees and that we take care of some of this detail work in an easier way. Litter removal, things like that on our corridors as well. And then there's three other parts to it, which are professional services requests. I'm going to go through each of these separately. As I've already mentioned, we've allocated 63% of our $90,000 tree budget to date. We expect we will be fully allocated. We still have to hold some back. Every year we have to hold it back, but we will be completely allocated here within a month to two months. We've had 55 participants in the Street Tree Cost Share Program, but we had 175 priority trees identified. So there's much more work there to be done. And once the money runs out, we will just go straight to enforcement. The cost share program provides a 50-50 cost share. That will go away. We will continue to go in enforcement with hazardous street trees. And like I mentioned before, the middle picture is really a county road type of picture. We have 50 linear miles of honeysuckle that encroaches constantly. And the way that we've been doing that is by shearing it off and shearing it off. we'd like to go in and do some eradication, which would prevent us from having to do major operations every year, two times a year. On our corridors, the picture on the left is Newtown Pike. That's a fallen over tree and shrubs that are not being maintained. And then the picture on the right is Versailles Road. That was where the honeysuckle was encroaching through the fence. but also one of my pet peeves is the weeds that grow two feet tall between the joint on the curb and the sidewalk. With some additional funding, we can clean them up and get every single one of those 15 corridors and Man-of-War. Man-of-War looks good, but these other 15 corridors really look at every single one of them for cleanup and maintenance. and last but not least is the idea of extending that with additional beautification so we have a proposal in here of a hundred thousand that could be higher or lower it just depends on what we would propose we're working with the corridors commission we're actually going to be providing maps on thursday that show some locations where we think we could do some some of this type of work. But even where New Circle Road has the interchanges, there's a lot of potential there as well. We'd have to work with the state on all of these things, but we can do that. And then for 16, realizing that we need some additional positions, we're proposing an additional arborist, an environmental inspector with a horticultural emphasis, and a program manager senior to run the natural resource operations section. And as we increase funding to work to maintain those at a level that gets us to where we really want to be. This is my last slide, but I call it my opportunity slide. On the right is Tate's Creek Road a couple years ago when all the trees were planted there in the median. Those trees need to be maintained. They had to be properly mulched. They had to be properly pruned. In this case, they were being watered. But this has to continue. And for all of the trees that we are responsible for, we should be on a five-year maintenance cycle for our trees. So my opportunity slide is this. That was Tate's Creek. That's Tate's Creek now. The slide on the left is what we want Tate's Creek to be 30, 40, 50 years from now. And we can do it. It just takes focus. Are you asking me where that is? I don't think it's in Lexington. But it could be. But I don't think that slide is from here. It's not here. yet. That's right. I know our CAO wants to wrap up. If you want to talk about a couple things, then we'll go to questions. We got a significant amount of counselors signed up, so we need to go ahead, Sally. Okay. Yeah, right there. I'm in preparation for this presentation, and I know how everybody hates for me to come with these fund balance lists before you get your fund balance list. So I tried to stay away from that. I asked Bill O'Meara to look at any bond issues that had money still in them and we were finished with the particular project. We have a senior citizen bond issue that was roofs we're not going to need that's like $126,000 left in that bond issue. He went through the rest of them, too, and came up with enough money. It's almost on the nose of what was left in bond issues where the projects are finished. It was $208,000 in some other bond issues. So if the council would think about it, if the committee would think about it, and then if we could come with a budget amendment that would allow this equipment here to be funded with the residuals from that bond issue, and then we would tell you exactly what all those bond issues are. Our bill knows all that. I think we could get this part just as a suggestion for the council to think about. Thank you, CO. I'm sure someone will bring that at the end of our discussion and we can get that moving forward. First up, Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Susan, you know I've been involved in this for quite some time, and I just can't tell you how pleased I am at the work you've done. I've been fortunate to have a briefing both in the tree board and also in corridors. So this has come to my attention. This is my third time now. And I'm equally impressed each time, and I don't know very many people who would say, okay, I want more work to do. And I think that's what's happened. But I started in this process by questioning why some of these things were happening, why there was no coordination, why there wasn't any center focus to what we're doing. And so those questions have been answered. And I think this is remarkable progress, and I would certainly support this. and there's probably some tweaking that needs to go on, and you know that. You can't just say, okay, this is the way we're going to do it. It will take some trials and some pilots perhaps. But I just want to be on the record of saying this is an outstanding step in solving some of the problems that we've seen in terms of focus and who does what and the fact that in some cases nobody's doing anything because of that lack of focus. And so I think this is a wonderful first step, and I admire the work that you've done here. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilman Clark. Councilman Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Susan, it looks like we're moving in the right direction. I have something else to put in your no-man's land. Retention ponds. I'm, Charlie and I have been working with some retention ponds that we have no enforcement authority about. Ponds that have silt, ponds that have algae. I understand that code enforcement really doesn't have anything to do with aquatics, so to speak. And so I'm wondering, maybe Charlie's coming up to the podium here a little bit. Maybe if we can put that in there as well, because those are things that eventually, sometimes homeowners associations can't take care of, so they get turned over to the government. and we have no enforcement ability when the homeowners association or a developer has these to make sure when we receive these ponds that they're in good shape and we end up having these ponds turned over to us with a huge, huge cost. I mean, you're talking a half a million dollars in some cases to get these that are basically back to being viable and so we can at least maintain them. and I would like you to just be aware that that's an issue that's pretty significant. So maybe you can put that in your no man's land. And I don't know, Charlie, if you want to talk about that real quickly, but it's a big issue. I'm aware of the one that you're speaking of, and I would just make the point, too, that whether it's a greenway or whether it's a stormwater management facility that's on an individual parcel and people would be considering LFUCG taking those over or owning them, You know, there's two issues to ask, and that is how much does it cost on a yearly basis as well as if it needed to be retrofitted immediately? And who is the executing division to take that forward forever? And that's what this plan would at least provide is a mechanism to determine what those costs are, and you would know where that division would be. But we also don't have any enforcement ability at all on some of these that have been on either private property, typically on private property, and that's difficult as well. Charlie, maybe you can speak to it real quickly. Yeah, I think you pretty much both of you have covered it already. You're right, is that a lot of these ponds are built as amenities as far as the development. And then when the development is over with, the homeowners are oftentimes expected to somehow maintain this pond. It's a difficult situation, but as you and I have talked about, we need to work on trying to at least tighten up that part of it so we don't create these things moving forward. If it was decided that at some point in time that the government was going to step in and take a larger role in the long-term operation and maintenance of those ponds, I mean, Susan and I have worked together for several years right now, and there's no reason to think that that wouldn't happen in the future. I think that water quality would still need to take care of the aquatic part of it, and we would be working very closely with environmental services as far as the whatever maintenance that needed to be going on around it, kind of as we've done in previous projects. But I am correct in that we don't have any enforcement ability. We do not. At this point. We do not. And would that be something you advocate? Yes, I think so. I mean, you know, otherwise we've just got a no man's land, as we've used here several times. Right. All right. Thank you. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for allowing me to speak, even though I'm not a member of the committee. And thank you, Susan. This is, I think, a very solid plan and a big step forward. Like Council Member Clark, I've heard it at least once before, not twice. I've been impressed both times. I do have one area of concern, and we've talked about this in the Corridors Commission, and we've talked about it in other contexts, and that is the whole question of mowing and the way in which the present system essentially is killing the trees that we plant. And I have come to the conclusion, and perhaps you have also, but I don't know, or other council people, that the only way we can get the kind of mowing that we need that will not damage the work that we're doing is to bring the mowing in-house. I've heard many people speak about the ways in which contracting simply does not work. We've tried to focus on this a number of times. I was just in Belcourt over the weekend with a few people interested in tree preservation, some people from the city, and what we know is that even today as we speak, there are mowing practices going on that are harming the trees that we've planted. and Council Member Myers raised a question about a particular area. So first let me give you an opportunity to speak to that issue, and then I'd like to comment about, or maybe I'll make my comment first. I think we need to bring it in-house. It's a, it'll be initial cost, but it will definitely be a long-term savings for the city. We're costing ourselves money the way it works now, but can you comment? Yes. Yes. Whenever we use contractors, there's two things that are so very important. Number one, that we have tight specifications. Number two, that we have on-site inspection, really good inspection, when we need to use contractors. There is so much acreage out there. Probably the use of contractors is cost-effective for these larger acreage amounts that we have. the amount of number of people and equipment that we would need to do all of it would be very significant. Let me make this point, too. On the trees, we need to be doing tree maintenance and mulching. If we had proper tree mulching, that would minimize the risk. Of course, you can always have a guy on a mower having a bad day, and that's not a good thing. And so we want to try to prevent that with proper training and having the proper people doing the proper things. when we reorganize, if this goes through and I have this responsibility, one of the things we're going to be looking at is where we should be using in-house people. Where can we use contractors effectively, and where do we need to be using in-house people effectively? So we're going to be looking at doing a lot of the detail work, the string trimming, the work around the trees through in-house staff, and then doing some of the larger area mowing with contractors. And it's going to take us several years to figure out the right way to organize it. But through seasonal and part-time staff, we can increase that. Okay. One of the notions about the way to think about this is that unless the people who are doing that work do it routinely over time, they don't have ownership of that particular area or piece of property. and with contractors, their turnover is such that getting the consistency we need is very difficult. So I guess I'll reiterate. It seems to me that absent a good rationale for not doing this, and there may be some. There may be some big areas that need to be mowed by contractors. There may be some ways we can do a better job of mulching. But absent, I think, good evidence that we're providing the protection, The default position ought to be bring it in-house, take the upfront cost, because over time it will save us money. So I look forward to seeing more information about that. However it were to be organized, we would be willing to move it forward in that direction. But I do agree that ownership is so important to getting quality work. And so we want to set up our in-house crews where they've got specific areas, and they always do those, and they're responsible for them, and they feel that they own them. Okay. So I definitely agree with that. Just one, maybe two final comments. One is that I said even as we speak, I know that people have seen things over the weekend and over the last week where present contracting practices are not mulching properly and they're not mowing properly. We actually had an incident where one person saw a person with a weed whacker or a mower knock off the protective ring around a tree and then whack it. So right now, it's not working, and there are some things we need to do immediately. But long term, those are the kinds of things we need to address. And then finally, I want to end by saying again how much I appreciate the work you've already done. This is a really big step forward. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Susan, thank you so much. I really appreciate your work. And I wanted to go back and ask you about, you showed a picture and you said this is state property. I know over the years we've had lots of conversations with the state in terms of bike lanes and things like that. And what kind of conversation can we have to ramp up the state's awareness of this picture at the bottom left? I mean, that's pretty bad. And how do they operate, and what is our contact and communication with them on this? We need to outreach to them to have our contacts in place to talk about these types of areas as well as how they do the roads, the state roads when they go in and they shear off the trees and they shear off the honeysuckle. We need to be in the room before those things happen. I agree. So that would be part of this, is that we would begin an outreach with them and hopefully become part of their team so that they know what we're doing and we know what they're doing. And we're going to really need to do that anyway because of the Breeders' Cup. They're already in those discussions. So that's going to be a perfect end for us to start dealing with this. That's what I was going to ask you is if you can link it with the Breeders' Cup and getting ready. It's kind of like when we got ready for the WAG, the World Equestrian Games. We really ramped up our conversations with many other entities, and so I think that would be really good if that connection can be made, and it'll be to their benefit, too, you know. Right. So I appreciate that, and CAO Hamilton, thank you for your forward thinking on the financial needs. and just in an effort to help us move a few things along, I want to make one motion, and that is to go back to your page 15, which is the FY 2015 request, and you said you thought that Commissioner O'Mara had some pieces of bonds that were left, and I'd like to go ahead and move to request that you bring this forward in a budget amendment. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes, and we'll report that out on the committee report out. I can do it today if you think we need to. Just to know when you need the equipment. As soon as possible. The sooner the better. Let's do it today. I'm excited to do it today. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It will be on the road the day we get it. Just be prepared to do a presentation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Susan, it is a pleasure to work with you and to watch your leadership blossom in the work that you're doing. It's excellent in so many ways, and your diligence and your report today show that. So I just can't be more complimentary. Having laid that little bit of groundwork, I would be like the vice mayor and back up to page 14 of the packet, which is the future council request. This would be a motion to change the name of the Division of Environmental Policy to Environmental Services, transfer three civil service positions to environmental services, and budget amendments to transfer funding for seasonals, mowing, and et cetera for the spring season. I would make that all as one motion. So moved. A motion and a second on page 14. Any discussion or questions? Okay. CNN, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That passes. My only other thought, Mr. Chair, would have to do with the three requests that she has here for professional services. For tree removal and county road maintenance, corridors landscaping cleanup and maintenance, and most importantly, the corridors beautification and breeder's cup preparation. I don't think we've identified funds for those things at this time. It might be one of those things, and I'm hesitant to bring a motion without talking to my colleagues, that we might want to attach or add to the budget list we had for discussion when we were preparing the budget where we were looking at things to fund later. This might be something to add to that list, which we might do individually or through a separate motion or comment, but that's where I would go next because in the Quarters Commission, which many here have attended and played excellent roles in, we'll be talking and we have been talking about how important it is for us to look good for Breeders' Cups So especially that number three for the $100,000 is something I would look forward to is finding a way to fund for the better of all Lexington. I assume you're referencing the fund balance discussion coming up. Yes, sir. Exactly. I mean, you could make a motion in relationship to that, and if the committee agrees, we can maybe add it to the list. Then I would so move to add items one, two, and three under future council requests to the list we've already populated for fund balance requests. So move. Second. A motion in a second. And basically it's on page 16, the three items there, the tree removal, corridors, landscaping, and edification. Any discussion? In favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, we'll make that motion to add that to the fund balance discussion. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to my colleagues for those motions. I think this has been a very frustrating two years, actually. And do you remember the song Angel in Disguise? You probably don't, but I think you and Sally fit that bill. This has just been so frustrating trying to, you know, and a lot of these pictures are along the For Sale's Road corridor that are going to be. And that corridor needs so much attention, so I really appreciate everybody bringing up the Breeders' Cup. And it is the gateway into our city from Keeneland, Bluegrass Airport. And, you know, I don't know how many times you all have probably heard that, but Susan, I can't thank you enough for your efforts. and the only thing I would ask is that as you move forward, if you would keep us, like, who will be the go-to person if we do get complaints? And I agree with Council Member Steve Kay about our contract work, not necessarily bringing it in-house because I know it's very seasonal work, and that would be costly, but finding the right quality folks to do those jobs. You know, I'm constantly, I've got all these streams that run through the district and I'm constantly getting complaints. You know, they've blown grass into the creek and, you know, on Lafayette Parkway it's a concrete stream and there's grass and they send me pictures and grass in the streets and trees being hit like you and I when we did the tree tour and the trees that are damaged or not watered and all of this is so important. So I appreciate someone just, you know, taking this on to organize it and get something going in the right direction. Lexington is beautiful and we deserve it. Thank you very much. Council Member Masati. Chair, I don't think Council Member Sutchfield has had the opportunity. Thank you. Sorry, Council Member Sutchfield. You jumped in there. Thank you, Council Member Masati and Chair. Susan, I think you're doing a phenomenal job. We've seen a major turnover in the way things are being handled. And I think your process of trying to make it less confusing for our constituents is going to be heaven sent. We have so many, I know in my district, we have so many areas that are shared that we have confusion on whether it's a homeowner's responsibility, whether it's the homeowner's association responsibility, or whether it's the city's responsibility. So I think in a lot of situations, we'll be able to have quicker services to those constituents. I did want to touch, so many of the pictures that you showed was honeysuckle, invasive honeysuckle. And I'm on the Ravens Run board, and we have plenty of issues out there with the trail maintenance with the honeysuckle. I know we spend countless dollars cutting it back. I would like to see us move forward with trying to remove the honeysuckle when we can. And I know that's a lot harder than a typical bush, but I'll support you in trying to have that money-saving option. Thank you. There is some specialty equipment that will do it on smaller ones. Now, the larger ones, you have to treat them, but yes. Thank you, Council Member Scotchfield. Councilor Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Excuse me. Thank you, Chair. Maybe, Susan, you can help, and maybe Charlie, but I'd like to circle back on that retention pond issue so we don't have it kind of fall in that no man's land with nothing being done. I don't know if maybe you can propose some language and we can send it to the law department, so hopefully we can have some enforcement. Unless you don't think it needs to go to a law department in ordinance form, is there something that we can provide you or, Mr. Chair, maybe you can help me at this point determine which direction we can go so we do have some ability to take care of these retention ponds that are on private property and have issues that we need to have taken care of before we accept them at the LFUCG. I guess we can. Sure. We'll just do that then. Yeah, if we can, at the day of work session, have an item placed into committee. That'd be fine. We can research, because I know Councilman McCord tried this a couple years ago, so there's probably some background on it. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak on this topic? Okay, before we close it out, what we'll try to do is next Tuesday, a week from today, a work session, if we could have this presentation again but consolidate it a little bit and just get to the point on the money and what we're asking. That way the whole council and everyone can hear what we're trying to do in the reorg as well, but if we can consolidate a little bit and then we'll report out, that will give the administration time to get the budget amendments ready. And that way we don't have a council meeting this Thursday, so it'd be still in time to get to a council meeting next the 23rd. So if we can, next Tuesday at work session, I know the vice mayor has spoken to the administrator, we can put it on our agenda for next Tuesday. Okay. All right. Thank you. Last up, or next up, I'm sorry, is our project review. We haven't had this in a couple months, so Charlie, if you can take it away in the next 10, 15 minutes and wrap us, bring us to the end of the meeting, just kind of go over the highlights. Okay. I think all of you should have front and back the 11 by 17 multicolored sheet. I usually try to highlight some specific projects. So looking at the numbers in the far left-hand column, numbers 33 and 34, blue sky. Vice Mayor, you were taking us down memory lane here a little bit ago about the hybrid vehicles. Blue Sky is somewhat of a memory lane as well because some 13 years ago, the government was asked to step in and take over a bankrupt wastewater treatment plant. There were 900 jobs or so estimated hanging in the balance, and we did that. And as of last Wednesday, we were able to eliminate that discharge, and that treatment plant is no longer in service. Wow. And so it was a good day at water quality. But I think it's a good day for government as a whole, you know, preceding councils, preceding administrations, staff, everybody. I mean, we stepped in and did what needed to be done, and we got it taken care of. And so I knew you'd be very pleased to see that. We're still working on some other things with it, though. One that will be coming back to the council is that we're working on the elimination of the building permit restrictions. Some of you may recall that there are some previous resolutions that were made regarding the sewer sanctions that were placed by the Division of Water, Kentucky Division of Water. I've already had some preliminary discussion with them and also sent them a letter asking them to rescind those sewer sanctions. Then I'll be coming back to the full council with a resolution to do away with those previous resolutions. And that will put future projects, as far as for the property owners out there, on the same level playing field that anybody else in Fayette County would be. And so that's the last thing I think that you folks will have to deal with. We're also working on the demolition and the final closure. And I have a report that I have to give to the state within 60 days. But like I said, good news. Numbers 35 and 36, Wolf Run. We've kind of had some problems with that over the summer. We had some issues with the contractor and all that, but we finally have got that behind us. I've been assured that that project will be finally finished at the end of November. That will eliminate, I think, our second largest sanitary sewer overflow in terms of duration and frequency. It was a 1962 vintage pump station that we're finally going to take out of service. number 38 expansion area 2a that's the new pump station there it's on winchester road across from polo club estates that project involved five existing pump stations that we were able to eliminate four of them upgrade one and replace those four with a brand new state-of-the-art facility the really good news on that is that two of those four that were eliminated were in the consent decree listed as recurring SSOs. We can check those off of our list, off of that 111. Kind of just boiling that down, I think I made a real quick count this morning, is that of the 111 recurring sanitary sewer overflows that are in the consent decree, we'll be able to check off 18 of them as by the end of this year. Number 50, that's the lower Cane Run wet weather storage facility. Some of you may have heard bits and pieces about this. Essentially, we have hired a facilitator to help us try to develop concepts for the storage tank that would be located out along I-75 in the Coldstream area. Where we're at right now is that we are actually trying to have a 3D model done by the consultant. That will allow us to then put it out for architectural firms to give us some ideas. Basically, we're going to try to select based on qualifications as far as what it is that we're going to do with that tank. About the time that I get the 3D model, I'll be back with you folks, because I figured that would give you something to be able to react to. Number 104, which is on the following page, the Town Branch Wet Weather Storage Tank. That was first reading last Thursday night. I was here. I was expecting somebody to ask me about it, but they didn't. but that's okay. That is the first phase of the storage tanks at Town Branch Treatment Plant. Taking you back into the overall master plan for the remedial measures plan, basically the tanks at Town Branch were projected to cost $2.32 a gallon for 44 million gallons. Vernon and his team had worked really hard on the value engineering part of it, and the consultant's engineering's estimate was reduced down to about $1.18 a gallon. Bids were open, 87 cents a gallon, from $2.32 to 87 cents a gallon. It was a good day at water quality last week. I figured that would be really, really good news. And with that, I'll end on that and have whatever questions that you may have. Vice Mayor Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know I'm going to miss these, Charlie. Charlie. You know, Charlie Martin and I have been through a lot of, we've traveled through a lot of water together, haven't we, and a lot of sewage. We came to government the same year. I came in January of 99, and I think you came in August of 99, and have worked very closely on a lot of this. And I am so, I just can't say how proud I am of you and your staff. because this right here represents an incredible amount of good management, good follow-through, attention to detail, any number of qualities that could either make or break our compliance with the EPA. And if we aren't compliant, we're in trouble. And so, first of all, I just want to thank you very much for these continuing, good, solid reports on our progress and all the good news. It's not been easy getting here, has it? No, and it's hard every day, but, yeah, I appreciate the recognition. And one day before December 31st, Charlie and I have talked. We're going to look at all my documents. Be sure there isn't anything that he would like. But today, I thought it might be appropriate. You know, in 1999 and 2000, we did not get any documents by email. I've kind of forgotten, Council Member Massadi, when we started receiving documents by email. Everything was hard copy. Nothing was on email. So I want to give Charlie something. and it may end up in his recital. This is my 1999 sanitary sewer calls binder that I've saved especially for you, Charlie. These are nowhere on email. And I thought it just might be fun to pass that on to you because I've got to get rid of everything in my office. So you remember those days when nothing came by email And we've really come a long way, and I just thank you for all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, real quick, I know the Pepsi-Cola has received or will be receiving the incentive water quality grant. so remember the trafting plan the water quality plan would will this replace that because i know that was due to some issues with not being able to move forward with that there were a lot of issues the the the water quality management fee grant that they have been awarded involves them converting about 7,200 square feet of asphalt parking lot into pervious pavement. So that would definitely be a help. Will that solve everything? I kind of doubt it, because I think there was also flow coming from across Versailles Road that was coming down Trafton. Just for everyone else's benefit, the reason why the Trafton project didn't go was because of easement acquisition problems. You're kind of pinched up against the railroad track there along Forbes Road that crosses Forbes Road, and you're trying to snake between the tobacco warehouses and McConnell Springs. And it tried to go somewhere. I think that was 06, maybe 07, and it just didn't go anyplace. We're entertaining some requests from them regarding traft, and it was my intention to bring that back up again to see whether or not we can revisit that because I think Pepsi does have some broader plans there that involves the dead end of draft, and we've got some existing infrastructure there as well. And so we'd like to be able to continue to try to solve that problem at work with them and be able to meet their needs as well. I know that they had a planning meeting, and I wasn't able to attend. So I was under the impression that they were going to do an underground detention or something along that. At one time there was some discussion about that too, But there is a, at the dead end of Trafton, that was a former Superfund site, I believe. It did go through remediation, but to build underground retention might be a problem on that site. Okay. There's, you know, you'd think it was an easy thing to solve, but it's not. But we think that the water quality management fee grant that we gave them is sound. You know, any water that they're able to infiltrate into the ground and it not sheet flow across the surface is a good thing. and that the board reviewed that. It scored high on the scoring matrix that's for the water quality management fee. We think that's a sound project while we work through these other problems. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Anyone else? Charlie, thank you, sir. Thank you. We appreciate the update. Next on our agenda items is the monthly financials. Do we have any questions or comments on the monthly financials? I'm sure CAO Hamilton can answer them for us. All right. Seeing none. next meeting items referred to committee will have the distillery district update another vice mayor recently just sent everyone an email with a brief update but we'll have that at the next meeting anything else that we need to have on the next means agenda all right seeing that take a motion to adjourn so moving second all in favor say aye we're adjourning thank you all great meeting ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.