But they all disappear from you Cause I only have eyes for you Thank you. I don't know if we're in a garden Or on a crowded avenue You're here, so am I Maybe millions of people go by But they all disappear From you Cause I only have eyes For you I'm sorry. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ The End All right, welcome everyone. We'll go ahead and get started. This is the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. I am Vice Chair, Council Member Stennett, filling in for Council Member Farmer, who is out today. First item on our agenda is approval of summary. Do I hear a motion from Council? A motion by Vice Mayor Kay, seconded by Council Member Maloney. Are there any suggestions, deletions, changes? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes. Number two on our agenda, Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission. This is our annual report. Councilman Henson, would you like the pleasure of introducing this, or do you want to comment afterwards? Hopefully. Okay, we'll wait. Welcome. Thank you. If you'll introduce yourself to the new members, and we'll move forward here. I'm Jim Pendergast. I'm chair of Keep Lexington Beautiful. We were originally scheduled to be here on February 17th, but we got snowed out, So we just wanted to thank you for giving us a few minutes today to be back here. Keep Lexington Beautiful is an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, and our mission is to engage individuals, businesses, and organizations in Fayette County to take personal responsibility for our environment. Keep Lexington Beautiful is composed of a 14-seat commission. Right now we have 13 seats filled, and those include David Elson, Connie Miller, George Ely, Blake Ames, Peggy Henson, Louise Caldwell-Edmonds, Lieutenant Chris Snell, Thad Scott, myself. Our food and beverage seat is vacant. Patricia Knight, Amy Soner, and Angela Poe. And the purpose from the ordinance that created Keep Lexington Beautiful is for us to focus on litter prevention, beautification and community involvement, and waste reduction. One of the things that we do to meet those priorities is the Community Appearance Index, and that's required by Keep America Beautiful. We conduct that annually in March, and we'll choose about 50 sites around Lexington. survey a half a mile to a mile of the area and record the litter on a scale of one to four. And you can see the trend that we've had over the years. This survey gives us an idea of areas we need to concentrate on in Lexington. Here's a map of a portion of the areas that we've surveyed this year. Cigarette litter prevention is another area that's a big priority for us. 38% of all roadway litter is cigarette litter. In 2014, we received a $2,000 grant from Keep America Beautiful, and what we did with that money was target the Lex Tran bus shelters. We chose 12 of those, and we put up ash urn canisters at those, and we saw a reduction over a period of time of 68% in the cigarette litter. So we were really pleased with the process of getting that grant and getting that established with the urns. This is a list of events that different commissioners have worked during the past year. There were a total of 52 events, but this is just a portion of what the members were working. And then beautification of the community. If you compare 2013 with 2014, we've made some progress over the last year. We participated in 52 events. We had 2,375 volunteers. They collected 17,000 pounds of litter, cleaned up 25.5 miles of streets and roads, and 158 acres of our public parks. Here's a picture of the Eastland Parkway Neighborhood Association cleanup. and then in in 2012 we received a twenty thousand dollar grant from Lowe's and we did a project on Richmond Road to clean up the stream there and you can see the progress that we've made there but by 2014 we still were having 42 volunteers participate in cleanup of that area we have reduced the trash from one and a half tons in the initial year to a quarter of a ton this past year We do maintenance of the trees and shrubs in that area, and we put down mulch around those trees. Here's a picture of that event from this year. We also, under the priority of waste reduction, were co-sponsor of America's Recycles Day. And again, we got a comparison of 2013 and 2014. You can see that this year we had 800 cars come through. We collected 50,000 pounds of paper that were shredded. That's almost double the amount from last year. And this year we collected 516 pounds of canned food from the participants, people that dropped off things that we donated to God's Pantry. The community value for Lexington, for Keep Lexington Beautiful, is the 52 cleanup events. The value of the volunteers that participated is 108,000. The in-kind donations for Keep Lexington Beautiful this year were $4,500, private donations $8,200, and the government cost of Keep Lexington Beautiful was $11,800. So the cost-to-benefit ratio is $9.74 for every dollar that's spent by the city. For 2015, we have received our largest donation in the history of Keep Lexington Beautiful. for Republic Services has donated $25,000 for us to have a campaign for the Great American Cleanup. Great American Cleanup runs from March 1st through the summer, and our ad campaign has started with the help of WKYT, who's donated some time, and Group CJ and Connie Miller have put together the campaign. We're getting that out there to encourage more cleanups this year. So it's going to be the biggest campaign that we've had in the history of KLB. We're also involved in Breeders' Cup beautification. It's called Green Up for Breeders' Cup. And, again, Republic Services donated $5,000 to us, and we used that to start our campaign, a fundraising campaign. We had our first event for that, and we have commitments for $57,500 to use in different areas around Lexington for beautification, particularly the entryways as people are coming in for Breeders' Cup. We also received, so far in 2015, a $5,000 cigarette litter grant, and we're going to use that at the Fifth Third Pavilion for Thursday night live events. We're going to put out more cigarette urns, and we're doing surveys before the urns go out, after the urns go out, and we'll do surveys after we do some education and outreach to make sure that people are using those. And we've also applied for three different grants from Lowe's. we've applied for a $5,000 grant a $10,000 grant and a $20,000 grant and we should hear about those within the next few weeks so that'll be a great opportunity for us to continue cleaning up Lexington so I'd be happy to try to answer any questions if you have any thank you for the presentation council members anyone have any follow up questions first up we have council member Lane thank you for coming in and giving a presentation to us today. What is your annual budget from all sources of funding, grants, and what have you? We budget $18,000 for this year. $18,000? Yes. So does that give you enough money or you need more money? Well, we can always use more. There's always things that we can do, but we've exceeded that with the Republic Services grant. We have exceeded that this year. Well, you said, I think you said 25,000 was the republic. Was that just a one-time? Yes, it's a one-time donation that they did for the Great American Cleanup Campaign. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I had. Let me just say, though, that we can't be too beautiful. And there is a lot of butts on the road out there, particularly under some of the overpasses for, like, New Circle where people are stopped. and they empty their ashtrays out there. So I would encourage people that if they see things like a lot of cigarette butts somewhere, to contact Urban County Gove. We have a special machine, for example, that comes up, and we'll suck all that stuff up and clean up the area. So if our citizens let us know where there's a problem, then we can respond to it. Thank you again. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. I don't have a question, but I do want to comment that I really appreciate the work of this group, and what's especially visible to anybody that goes up and down Richmond Road is the work that was done on Richmond Road. For a very minor investment from this government, we got a huge impact on the way in which our city looks to people who are coming and going, our own residents, but also people who visit. And so I would follow up with what Councilmember Lane said and encourage council to think about providing a little more funds because we get a big bang for the buck for it. So thank you, and thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Brown. Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Let me ask a question. Is this a nonprofit organization, or is this a quasi-government organization, or what? It's a government organization. we are not a nonprofit. Okay. So we're actually through the Department of Environmental Services. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Maloney. I, too, want to thank the great work that you guys and public works for what you all do. I mean, y'all do it. I followed you when I was on the commissioner, and y'all did a heck of a job. And I also want to commend Peggy Henson. She really speaks highly to you guys out there when she's out there. So I want to also thank Peggy for all the work. I noticed a lot of this is done in the 11th District, and I'm proud of you doing that. Thanks, Peggy, because I live over there, too. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Yeah, I just want to echo the thanks for the work that you do. I know our neighborhood participates in the program every year. As far as the Breeder Cup focus on the entryways, what entryways are you targeting to focus the cleanup efforts? We're looking at Newtown Pike and Versailles Road primarily, and then there's some more to be determined yet. So we don't have a complete list of where the plantings will go. Okay. Any other council members have any other questions or comments? If you like. Ms. Plugard, do you want to add in? Susan might be able to add more on the entryways. It's a good bridge anyway because you're up next, so you can. Worked out. Anything you want to add? Let me just add about the Beard's Cup beautification. That's a joint venture really with Key Blex and Beautiful and also with Council and the administration as well, providing funding in the past for that project. we're looking at for sales at man of war Newtown at I-75 Newtown at Main Street Iron Works Pike maybe Georgetown at Citation we're looking at that and also Oliver Lewis way Maxwell Pine Street areas those are our main focus areas the designs are underway we'll be rolling out landscaping plans here very shortly for people to review. Thank you. We have one additional question. Council Member Henson. Thank you. Or comment. I have to say that I really enjoy working on this commission. Litter and environmental issues, I should say, are a real pet peeve of mine. So you're after my heart. But And the work that everyone does is excellent. So, you know, when we're out there working these shred events in sub-zero temperatures or whatever, I still enjoy it. I enjoy even the getting to know the city employees that are there and working right alongside all the other commission members. I did want to bring up one thing, Jim, about when we do our community index. I always found it very interesting if we could somehow get that out to the council members per their district and so they would know what areas need attention. I just think that would be very helpful. And I know we have done, Councilmember Maloney, quite a bit of work in the 11th District. But a lot of that is due to my neighborhood associations who organize these events. Has nothing really to do. The commission is, of course, you know, handles the Great American Cleanup events. But this is something we, the stream, Wolf Run Creek, Vons Branch, Cardinal Run run all through my district. And so a lot of the stream cleans take place in the 11th district. And Richmond Road is not in my district. I just thought I would throw that out there. But it is wonderful. The thing, I really hope that our appearance will improve for the Breeders' Cup, particularly for Shells Road, because it's a gateway to Keeneland. And I don't want to be ashamed when those folks show up. But thank you, Jim, for the presentation. And thank all the commission members for the work that they do. You're welcome. And I believe Louise will be able to send the results of the survey out to all of the commission members. so we can get that out if you'd like to see it. And Brasales Road is one of the Lowe's grant applications. We have a project out there, so if we get the $20,000 Lowe's grant, we can make the same impact that we did on Richmond Road. And we'll get Richard Maloney to help us. Does that sound good? Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. We have a couple more questions. Councilmember Evans. Thank you, Chair. This kind of piggybacks off of what Councilmember Henson was talking about, and I would also agree that this is a great program. I did get to participate with Eastland for the first time last year. But for people that are watching, for those neighborhood associations that might not be familiar or as familiar with the project, What information can you give them to help them get connected with you, or what is the process so they can participate more in the program? The best way is to go to our website. If they go to the website, they can log on there, and they can get a telephone number as well and call Louise, and she'll help them organize a Great American Cleanup. And we can provide gloves and trash bags, and we've got an assortment of tools that we loan out to groups that are having a cleanup. We've got a weed eater and a blower and rakes and shovels so we can help groups with those Thank you good question. That's good information. Thank you and last but not least comes from Maloney once again Just follow up on a British cup How much did the administration set aside for you all for the cleanup? Is that all about the question for you? Is that probably for you guys? there was a hundred thousand dollars was in fiscal year our current fiscal year and then there's some additional I think there's an additional request coming to council shortly that you will see in addition to that and then what would be in fiscal year 16 budget as well plus donations we're looking plus some input from the corridors commission we're looking at a budget of somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000 for this initial rollout of work that would be completed by Breeders' Cup. When do we start? I mean, I know Keeneland's going on, and I know it's more than just for Sales Road because you're talking 50,000 people coming into this town. They're going to be downtown. They're going to be out wherever those hotels, and they're going to be not just, I mean, New Sucker Road's going to have to be clean. When is all this hopefully going to start happening? Well, we've been working on it since December, and we have a landscape architect that's currently doing the designs. We're purchasing plants. We're getting suppliers. A lot of the planting part of it will have to occur as those are available. We don't want to do it right in the middle of summer. That could be somewhat dangerous for plant mortality. So it may be that most of the big plantings go in in September. But the cleanup part of it has been going on for four months heavily, and we will continue that. Have you all started a relationship with the University of Kentucky because you're going to have two football games that week, the week before, and I think it comes on a Thursday night, which is Auburn, and then the following week it's going to be home against Tennessee. As you know, we always have the cleanup. Have you all had a relationship with, I guess, with Bill Inspect and David Jarvis and all them trying to get them on board? Yes, there is a Breeders' Cup coordination committee that is like a community-wide committee that includes a lot of LFUCG staff as well. And so all those types of issues are being addressed to those coordination committees. Good job. Thank you. Anything else on this topic, council members? All right. Thank you, Mr. Pentecost. We appreciate you coming back and seeing us. Next on our agenda is the Consolidated Greenway Responsibilities. This is coming from the Environmental Quality Link from last year. Ms. Pluger, welcome once again. Thank you. I mean, you might be wondering why I'm the one doing this presentation, so I'm going to explain that up front. And I think that this topic has been on your all's list for a long time. So Greenways is really making an emergence back into a focus for what we need to do there. And the reason that I'm here is it really ties into the restructuring of government that occurred late last year related to vegetation and natural resource management. And in that reorganization, my division was expanded and given additional roles related to vegetation management, which ties heavily to greenways. So I'm going to explain how we've consolidated the changes that we've made in the last four months, how we relate to greenways, and where we're going to go going forward. The things I'm going to cover, this is going to be a very brief presentation. I want to talk about currently how we function with greenway program responsibilities. What are the changes that we have already internally made from a consolidation standpoint and some of the greenway coordination tasks that we are looking to do? First off, I'd like to also mention, too, greenways are two basic types of greenways, trail greenways and conservation greenways. A lot of the greenways that we own are trail greenways, but there is no current trail. So basically we're looking at vacant property that needs to be maintained from a natural resource management standpoint. In addition to that, well, conservation greenways are more your naturalized greenways on stream buffers. A lot of times these greenways also overlap. So you will see trails in addition to streams. So we have to manage all of those different uses. Here's a couple of things that are not going to be covered with this presentation. I want to let you know that Derek Paulson is going to be giving a presentation in May at the Planning and Public Safety Committee. He's going to talk about the greenway manuals, the Greenway acceptance process. So that's where those items will be discussed. But from a program responsibility perspective, where do we currently sit? We have several divisions that have main involvement with Greenways. First obviously being the Division of Planning. From the very beginning determining where our Greenways are going to go through the development plan process, the record plats. They take the lead on the manuals. They do some grant writing. The whole planning perspective, GIS data management and also the Green Space Commission and Green Space Trust, all is pretty much run out of the Division of Planning. We have the Division of Engineering. Of course, they're involved when things are constructed. And also they do trail design, like the Town Branch Trail and the CIP design and construction management for those types of projects that we do internally. And then we have Greenway Maintenance. We have really three divisions. I'm going to go through this in a little bit of detail. Three divisions involve greenway maintenance. We're talking about greenway maintenance. There can be structural repairs, and a lot of these greenways, especially in the expansion area, they serve a dual role as a water quality control or a detention basin control. So you can have structural repairs, obviously mowing, naturalized, restorations, honeysuckle litter, et cetera. And these are the three divisions that do our greenway maintenance. We have water quality. they do basin inspections every six months. They do pond inspections once a month. So they do those inspections. They're also involved with the structural maintenance if we had an issue on a stormwater related facility. Then we have Parks and Recreation who manage the greenways in parks. A lot of green a lot of our greenways are actually in our park properties and then on hard surface trails such as the Legacy Trail, Brighton Rail Trail. And then my division we're maintaining the greenways that are not in these park-maintained areas. And we also have some select water quality capital projects that are actually located in parks that we manage. For example, the Gainesway water quality pond retrofit. When the Coldstream Park Stream Restoration Consent Decree project is completed, we will manage the maintenance of that section of it. And all of this falls within that reorganization that occurred last year. It's all consistent with that. And then we have a Greenway Coordinating Committee, which you can see all the divisions that are related, that are involved with that there. And we always have need for various inputs from different groups. And then I want to talk about the changes that have occurred since 2014. And these are significant for my division. Firstly, we have the specialty maintenance contracts, which are really our naturalized areas where we planted native vegetation, and then we had to do invasive species maintenance. Engineering Keith Levin was managing these contracts. These contracts are currently transferring to my division for management. Then we have tree management, which Streets and Roads is still obviously involved with trees, but we are, with the Urban Forestry Program being within environmental services, we're taking the lead on determining what the tree management needs are. Then we have greenway maintenance, as I've already mentioned, outside of parks and hard surface trails. Those have transferred from parks and recreation since December of 2014. And then my division is going to be taking on some of the greenway coordination tasks. Some of these tasks are things that really engineering has tried to do, planning has tried to do, different groups have tried to, parks has tried to do, and we're trying to consolidate some of that. And I want to explain, I only have a few slides left, I want to explain, how it is that my division can do this. And when I came to what was in environmental policy, I saw that we had some availability within the division. But we also had capability within the division. And with our expanded role, it just fit that we felt that we could take on some of these roles that we had not had in the past. And we have been working with Commissioner Paulson on doing these things, beginning to work on these things. So we have a natural resource protection section. It used to be called Enforcement and Compliance, but now we call it Natural Resource Protection. Demetria Melhorn is here. She is the manager for that section, so you might be working with her in the future. But within that section, we have the capability to lead the coordinating committee, become the greenway contact for LexCalls and for the public, and so we've already done that. At LexCalls, if you call about a greenway, it's going to come to us. Develop site-specific management plans for our existing greenways that we currently own. Manage our naturalized greenway contracts, deal with enforcement and violations because we already deal with environmental enforcement issues within that section, and then assist planning and all the coordinating committee with the manuals and estimates for cost. When we look at acquiring future greenways, how much would it cost on an annual basis to maintain them? We'll be able to provide input into that process. Then when it comes to Greenway Maintenance, we have the Natural Resource Operations Section. It's a brand new section for me taking on this new role. And I think in fiscal year 16 budget, I think there will be some discussion about this section. But we have gotten some additional resources and significant financial resources to assist with all of the mowing and the landscape maintenance. So this just falls under that division. So you can see there all the natural resource items that we would take care of. And we are currently mowing the greenways now that fall under our purview. And then we have our media and outreach section that already exists. They used to mark your work was the manager of this section that's currently vacant. We're in the process of filling it. So we already do public education and outreach related to environmental issues. So it fit very well within that section to go ahead and coordinate the volunteer projects. such as community gardens is a great example. Sometimes there's a lot of involvement with citizens related to these vacant areas in their neighborhoods. So we want to get as much out of it as we can with those properties. So it all fit very well with what we currently do. And that is what we, this is the current place that we currently sit with Greenways. We wanted to move forward with that and see where it goes from there. Thank you. Appreciate the concise presentation. We have three council members signed up. First up, we have Councilor Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Susan. I appreciate the information, and I know you'll do a great job at the head of this. Let me ask you a quick question. You talked about all our beautiful esoteric trails, our conservation and our other type of trails. What about those areas that are in new subdivisions that look like the Grand Canyon, that have the big rocks that are just kind of left, either the developer still owns them and is trying to turn them over to the government or no one's sure who actually has the maintenance responsibility of those. What do we do about those areas? Or is that your shop or someone else's? Well, I think that's what Derek Paulson's going to be talking about, is how do we determine, number one, there has to be a condition. They have to be a certain condition before the government would accept them to turn them over to our ownership so that we would maintain them. In most cases, yes, they are not in our areas. These are in areas that are privately owned and have not been transferred to the government for maintenance. So there would have to be some level of service for those issues to be addressed, I think, before they could be recommended for being brought into the government's ownership. I think that's part of what his discussion is going to be about, is we're going to work internally to develop a decision matrix on how we prioritize these 165 or so properties that are out there for acquiring by the government. And that's one of the big issues, is they have significant issues and they're privately owned. Those issues would need to be addressed before they would be transferred, if that makes sense. No, that makes sense because that's a big concern, and I think that's one of the reasons why we have it in planning next month is just because of that. But I wasn't just sure of who was going to facilitate that. i knew it was going to be under planning but i didn't know if uncertain now that you're saying that you all have discussed this and they're going to go for it and we want to hear when i according to many will be a bob will be heavily involved in looking not only are existing greenways and making sure we're managing those correctly but evaluating the ones that are on the list for being acquired and make sure we know exactly what those conditions are in before any recommendations are made how many properties do you have on that list i think they're around i've heard a hundred sixty five or so And that would equate to either how many acres or how many miles? I don't have that number. I'm just curious. You know, are we talking 100 acres, are we talking 200 acres, or are we talking beyond that? I don't want to make an educated guess, but I can get that information to you. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. A lot of these are larger, somewhat larger, with stormwater maintenance facilities, stormwater facilities inside of them. A lot of them are. Okay. Thank you. Vice-Marcay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Susan, for the presentation. As a member of the Corridors Commission, I've heard about some of these things kind of as they've been rolling out, but I think it would be useful for council and for the public to hear a little more about the specific questions about the way in which the resources are managed, because that's been previously streets and roads had the equipment. they had people available in the summertime who weren't doing road repair, whatever. Anyway, can you speak about how structurally now we're taking advantage of the separate divisions and what they're responsible for and the way in which they integrate the use of the workforce? Well, from a greenway maintenance perspective, now that we've changed it, the greenways that we maintain, we maintain everything holistically. So we maintain the trees, the shrubs, the naturalized areas. I say the trees, the shrubs, the grass, the trash. Basically, everything that's happening in that area, we are going to manage it like a property manager. So that's how we are, that's how it's changed. And is most of that done by contract or by using the internal workforce? We have some contractors. We are doing some greenway mowing with contractors. The tree work, some of it is contractors. Once we get all of our equipment in place, we'll probably do a lot of that in-house. In the honeysuckle removal, for example, we will be able to do a lot of that in-house as we get our equipment. So I would say it will be somewhat split, but a lot of the greenway areas, particularly around people's homes, we want to make sure looking nice as we beef up our group, a lot of that will be done in-house. And in terms of the workforce, are you able to, in your management capacity, are you able to use personnel from Streets and Roads, engineering, and so on? Oh, Streets and Roads has a tree crew, and we work very closely with them. So they assist with all types of tree work. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you, Chair. I do want to thank all of you for what, because this was a problem for years. when property maintenance went away, nobody was doing any of these work. Other than there was a lot of things fell through the crack. Even streets and roads were doing what they were supposed to do. Water quality did some, but there were a lot of things falling through the crack. And I want to commend you and your staff and Commissioner Jeffrey. And we all had those conversations to make this thing happen. And I've come on board and I was commissioner. and CAO was a big help too. My question is coming to funding. And as you all know, I'm big on making sure we have the money always there. For example, I don't like to go out and when we build these bike trails, after five years, ten years down the road, we have to replace these bike trails and we don't have the money to maintain them. The question I have for you is we're getting ready to do this town branch, the project that the mayor wants to push for, which I assume you're going to have to be dealing with because that is going to be water with green space and all that. Have you all looked in on what the maintenance is going to cost to maintain that facility when it's being built? Well, I'm probably not the right person to ask that question. I think that question probably goes to engineering because they're managing the design of that. So I think that maintenance and operation would be part of that. So I would need to ask someone else that and get back with you on it. So are you all going to maintain that probably after you get finished? Well, it's a hard surface trail. It's primarily hard surface trail. So actually Parks and Recreation would be maintaining the area along the trail. There are some naturalized areas that come off of the trail that we maintain, but mostly that will be Parks and Recreation. And the town branch, the mayor wants to build all the way from behind Rock Arena, all the way to Midland. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about town branch. That property, I would assume that's going to be your responsibility to maintain that, won't it? It's possible. I have not had that conversation yet. The reason why I ask is because if we do something like this, what is it going to cost you and your budget? because right now I know how hard it was to get you what you do in a bunch of acres and acres now. So something like that I would like, if you can, I'll ask the commissioner and also the CAO that you all put some numbers together. If we're going to start voting on things like this, we've got to be sure we're able to maintain something like this because the last thing I want to do is do something and we're not maintaining it and we'll never budget it. And so if you can help out on that, I would really appreciate that. I'll find out for the people who know. I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about Town Branch Trail. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. Yes, a couple questions. This is new to me. We didn't have this particular breakdown or departmentalization when I was on the council before. But the greenway maintenance is on page 32 there. it's broke down to three sections water quality parks and rec and environmental services now you're the director or you're involved in the environmental services part is that correct yes i'm the director for environmental services okay uh up to parks and rec could you explain when you talk about hard surface trails and maybe you're not the one to explain it what do we what do you mean by hard surface trails? Well, the areas that such as legacy trail, it's an asphalt or concrete trail. So the areas that are grass trails or mulched trails wouldn't be included in this. They would fall under our purview. We had to come up with some way to separate the duties when we were looking at this vegetation management split. In some cases, it gets a little difficult because we have naturalized areas next to a hard surface trail. So we work with parks. So parks would take care of like any walking paths, any trails that are concreted or asphalt. Asphalt. They would take care of the maintenance beside that or involved in that. Okay. The greenways not in park areas would be like passive parks. You know, we've got, I have in the 8th District, I have several areas that are passive. And I'm not sure if that would fall under your jurisdiction or parks. It would most likely be us. A lot of them were areas that had houses that were purchased because of flooding issues. Exactly. I'm thinking of exactly that for stormwater maintenance. Yes. And so they don't have any trails in them, but they could have uses for public access. Could you get me a list of greenways in the 8th District? Yes, I can. So that I know who to call for cleanup or cutting the grass? Yes. Because I've got several areas out there that I'm just not sure who the administrative work would be. Okay. Thank you. Yes, I'll get it. Anyone else have any questions on this issue? Any other council members? If not, I have a couple for you, Susan. On tree enforcement, you mentioned it briefly in your slide, enforcement. Who's going to enforce tree trees as we enter this busy season and trees start blooming? and who enforces the height of them? Because I know that USPS are complaining about hitting them when they make deliveries and homeowners are complaining about when they walk down the sidewalks. So who is going to enforce that? That is my division. So why would we move that from, why wouldn't we just like code enforcement? They're enforcing tall grass and other things and they're out there. They moved that under Section 17B many years ago, I'm not sure how many years, when they created that section. And they moved the enforcement related to street trees to the urban forester. And so we do some of the tree work are things that are going to be our trees that we're going to take care of. Some of them we're going to do enforcement with the property owner, but we handle all of those issues. So do you have enough staff to handle the tree enforcement? Oh, I believe that yes. Well, let's monitor it this summer and see what happens with the number of complaints. And we're looking at ways of handling that because sometimes it takes more staff time to do enforcement than it would be to lop off a branch. So we're looking at efficiencies in that area, and that's something I'll probably be coming back to you all with. The other question I had was the policy for maintenance. The vice mayor touched on it briefly, but I know in some parts of our city we maintain greenways differently than other parts. Some homeowners are used to being able to mow down to the inch of the creek bed, while others are said you had to leave it four feet tall and let vegetation grow to prevent erosion. Do we have a consistent policy amongst all greenways on how we're going to maintain them, or are we still going to have the spotty policy changes? Because it's hard to be consistent if you're a homeowner to know what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do. And being from a district, and Councilman Evans can appreciate this probably already, is we've told the people in Eastland, you can't mow to the creek yet. You have to leave a certain buffer and a certain height. And to be honest, it doesn't look good. So what's our policy? Well, I think that plays into the Greenway Manual discussion because that's where those things are codified. So I think when we get to May and discuss the timing of how we're going to get the Greenway Manual through, that's where that's going to get resolved. So how do you all know how to maintain them then, if you're maintaining them? What's your policy? Well, what we're doing is we're developing a management plan for each area. We have a draft operational handbook that we're going by, but we're new to the party, I guess you would say. Okay, so you're developing it. So we're going to look at that and see what we think we need to do and work with the coordinating committee on it. Okay, we just need to be consistent. Yes. Across government. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your time on this. Next on our agenda was brought to us by Council Member Gibbs. It's the changing signalized intersections to four-way stops at Woodland and Central Avenue and Kentucky and Central Avenue. Council Member Gage, would you like to introduce it? Yeah, thank you, Chair. As the Chair said, this is about decommissioning two traffic signals at Central and Woodland and Central and Kentucky and replacing those with four-way stops. The proposal was initiated by Traffic Engineering. I support the proposal, but Steve Cummins of Traffic Engineering is here to tell us about it. Mr. Cummins, welcome. And before you begin, Ms. Clark, I assume you are here on this issue. Did I assume correctly? Good. Okay, I'll call you here shortly if you'd like to speak. Mr. Cummins, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Steve Cummins. I'm traffic signal manager for the city of Lexington. For those of you who don't know me, new council members, I apologize if I've not had the opportunity to meet you or not yet. I have been a public servant in traffic engineering for well over 20 years now, so kind of not new to the game, but I appreciate you all coming in today and listening to me speak about engineering because that's something that most people don't like to listen to too much, and I'll try not to take too much of your time. This intersection, or these two intersections actually hit our radar simply because over time, the life expectancy of traffic signals somewhat diminishes after 20 or so years. These two intersections are in great need of either being rebuilt or possibly being decommissioned, And it's something that we haven't discussed in quite a long number of years as far as decommissioning traffic signals, but it's something certainly not unheard of. We have done this at Deweese and Short Street. We've done this at Fifth and Chestnut. So over the years, we have decommissioned traffic signals. When we started looking at the cost of actually reconstructing these two traffic signals, it became really apparent that we should do a fairly decent amount of analysis on the decommissioning possibilities because it is going to take somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $120,000 to rebuild these two intersections. Whereas if the warrants are simply not there any longer, then we can decommission this over the next 12 months, make sure there's no problems with safety or any other congestion problems, and then fully take the intersection out, and the costs are very minimal, less than a couple thousand dollars. So when we did the warrant analysis, what we found was that the volumes actually were nowhere close to meeting warrants. They were very insignificant outside of the p.m. peak hour. So if you can imagine in your own districts, what is the busiest multiway stop that you possibly can think of? And then if you think of what is the least busiest multiway stop that you can think of in your district? And if you have those in mind, we're very much closer to the latter of the two. We're nowhere near the busiest multiway stop. So in the busiest time of the day, we have about 360 cars coming into this intersection from Old Vine Street going out of town. And we have about 300 cars coming northbound on Woodland Avenue at that same time. So we are not just putting in a road hump, if you will, putting in multiway stops here. There is going to be a demand on an angle, which means people are going to have to take notice of this multiway stop and take turns going through it, which is basically the best thing that can happen in a multi-way stop condition. With that type of volume, again, the PM peak, we are looking at about a 10-second to 15-second delay at the very most for any one car coming through there. On a traffic signal, we have about a 15-second delay right now. So you can see, actually, this is going to get better if we introduce the multi-way stop during the busiest times of the day. So I've got a lot of other information I could talk about. collisions are non-existent at either one of these two intersections currently. Within the last three years, we've had about two to three collisions in these intersections each. So really, we don't anticipate any types of problems with this. For those of you who don't understand or haven't heard of decommissioning traffic signals, what we will do is the process of notifying the public through all media sources. We'll take three months to flash red all around in the traffic signal, and then we will take the traffic signal heads down. All other components will remain in place for 12 months. So if there were any types of problems that developed, we could easily put those signals back up and in place and reactivate them. So I'd be happy to entertain any other questions if anyone has those. Thank you, Mr. Cummins. Anyone on the committee have questions? Councilor Massadi. Hi, Steve. Just real quick, what are we going to do with those old signals? We'll certainly cannibalize any types of materials that we can like we always do. the signal cabinet, any type of controller, the signal heads, things like that, when we have all the equipment back in-house. So we'll not just throw it away. I know they're so expensive. Absolutely. When we want to put one up, I didn't know if they were also obsolete. No, the actual components inside the cabinets we can reuse. It's the cabling and everything outside that is in just such a degrading situation that we had to go look at it to rebuild it. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Next up we have Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I think this is a good idea. And my question really has to do with if there are other places in the city that people have a sense that this could also be done, what's the simplest thing to do, contact your office? Absolutely. It takes a little bit of time to collect the data relative to these studies, but certainly we can put that on the radar. We actually have four or five other intersections that we're evaluating right now, and that's not to say that they're going to meet that warrant criteria that we would recommend to decommissioning, but we certainly do look at certain pockets in the community to see if they're feasible or not. So if council members have places in mind, they would just contact you? Absolutely. Either you would proceed or indicate that it's not likely to be a good change in that intersection? Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Any other council members have any questions or comments? Councilman Maloney. Why did they put them in the first place? That predates Steve Cummins. I couldn't find anything in the history, but certainly when these signals went in many decades ago, the traffic demand patterns were much different than they are currently. And the only thing I could think of is you had the park area, you had a lot of other intermixing things, and really Old Vine Street was a pretty quick and easy way to get out of town. And now, through better traffic signal timing, through better roads, things of that nature, people have jumped back over to the main roads, which was what we really intended for them to do in the first place. And we have seen that to a large degree on Vine Street versus the old Vine connection. Well, I just, I mean, I'm fine. I'm glad we're going to test some of that. It's just hard. Councilmember Brown and I talked. We've been here a long time. This is the first time we've ever seen anybody take traffic lights out. I can't think in any time in the history, unless you know something. Actually, we did when Council Member George Brown was back on council. Who? George Brown. In the 1st District, we took out 5th and Chestnut, and we took out Short and Dewey Street. Okay. So we have done it. All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you. I think this is an innovative, although you say it's not new, but it's new to me because I don't remember going through this process. But I'm like Vice Mayor Kay. I would like to see us look across the city where we can take lights out because they're not only an eyesore at times. they probably create more traffic noise than four-way stops, or at least the lighting and going on and off and that type of thing. And a lot of people come to these, you know, midnight after dark, you know, in the early morning hours, and you've got to wait on a red light, and you can't go through it. You've got to wait for a minute, a minute and a half or whatever. The four-way stop sign seems to appear to work in this particular area, but I think we've got a lot of areas across the city that we might want to look at. We would certainly welcome any and all intersections you'd like to rest around here. I might look a little bit more in my district since you're bringing this forward because I think we're looking at some ways to improve traffic management, and I think this might be one way. Thank you. Customer Gibbs. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to point out that we did seek feedback from people in the areas. The Ailes for Neighborhood Association sent out an email to all their people on their email list. I got maybe a dozen responses about that. The responses were mixed, but only one was adamantly opposed. Several people were kind of like it, didn't like parts, and the majority of people were in favor of it. But the issue was also discussed at the last Ellsford Association neighborhood meeting, and there was no objection. It's a report I got from a friend on the committee. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. And we have someone with public comment. Ms. Clark, do you want to come up and state your name and address for the record? I'm Amy Clark, and I'm at 628 Castle Road, and I do appreciate getting notice of this and having the opportunity to talk it over before council. This is the way to do it. I also think it's a great idea to remove traffic signals where we can, and I'm very much aware that they're costly because whenever we ask to put one in, they say, gosh, how much will it cost? Apparently refurbishing this one to keep it in use is $100,000, $120,000. I'd like to know what it costs to put one in. I think it's much, much more than that. My concern is, if you look at the yellow line there, Woodland Avenue, and I simply have concerns and questions. Mr. Cummins and I have been conversing about it, and he's trying to convince me, and I hope he can do that, that none of my concerns will be a problem. The issue is this. There's a lot going on to the south of those intersections in the Woodland area. rows and woodland and hilltop have been and some are still blocked for uk construction i think they were blocked at the time the traffic count was made they did the smart thing they did the traffic count on a day that uk was in session and the fairfax county public schools are in session but if major roads are blocked how much traffic is not getting to those points that might or will eventually get there. So roads that may have been blocked at the time of the count. Also right around the time of the count, the Chevy Chase redesign was implemented. It's really taken away a southbound lane from traffic going home at night along Tates Creek Road just for those first few blocks where it's very congested by the Chevy Chase intersection. there's been a lot of development on Euclid people say that the Euclid-Kroger has had a real impact on congestion along Euclid that backs all the way up to people trying to turn from Woodland onto Euclid and I think really it's kind of you have to look at the larger picture the Chevy Chase intersection redesign the Euclid-Kroger also bear in mind that Euclid-Kroger is leading a whole redevelopment here. There's already further intensity of traffic to be expected. Finally, you can see that looping road, the Cooperstown Loop, which is headed out to Alumni Drive. That's intended by UK to be a major traffic bypass that looks as though it will connect directly with woodland. So the issue here is that far north will changing what we can just as well think of as a green light, not a red light, impede the traffic flow once the traffic flow in the next six months, in the next year, is what it will become. The Cooperstown loop is scheduled to be finished this summer, so that traffic I guess we can expect to see shortly. Mr. Cummins is telling me they're aware of issues and things to address both at the Cooperstown Loop and at Euclid, the intersection of Woodland with Euclid, and I guess along Euclid and the, I shouldn't put words in his mouth, but in the Chevy Chase intersection area as well. so with all that in mind the thing I like best about the proposal for the Woodland Central Avenue intersection is the blinking red light that's how it starts for three months, that's great I do think that stop signs will be ample for everything but peak hour traffic but I would question whether it isn't too soon, whether we really have enough data to measure the traffic volume that Woodland at Central may see in the fairly near future. So it's encouraging that there's a year's trial period. I hate to see an expensive street light begin to go away if we may need it, because I know it would be very hard to get it back. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Clark. I appreciate it. Council Member Gibbs. I was going to make a motion if no one else wanted to speak. No. That's it. Okay, well, I move that we approve the two resolutions. They're on page 42 and 43 of our packet for those to decommission those two signals and put in four-way stops. So moved. Second. Okay, there's a motion by Council Member Gibbs, second by Council Member Massadi to decommission the two streetlights. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes on to the full council. Thank you, Council Member Gibbs. Next on our agenda is the monthly financials for information only. Is there any questions from committee members on the monthly financials? We're nearing the end of the fiscal year. Okay, seeing none. The last item on our agenda is items referred to committee. We won't go through each one of these, but we'll point out the three big ones that will be on next month's committee meeting. There will be an update on the distillery district. there'll be the pre-review and update of our snow and ice control plan which is our annual update as well which will take a majority of our meeting and then our traffic signal system speaking of traffic signals will also be on our may agenda is there any other items that we need to take off of our items for committee lists or adjustments to okay seeing none do i have a motion to adjourn motion second all in favor say aye we're adjourned thank you all you