# Planning and Public Safety Committee - May 12, 2015 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 12, 2015 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/3654 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/3654?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2015-05-12 - **Last revised**: May 12, 2015 - **Length**: 19,391 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning & Public Safety Committee convened on May 12, 2015, at 1:00 PM with Committee Chair Jennifer Mossotti presiding. The committee addressed five agenda items during the session, including one approval item and four informational presentations. The meeting featured three motions and votes, with one public comment received from attendees. The committee's primary business included approving the April 14, 2015 Committee Summary and receiving status updates on several key municipal initiatives. Members heard informational presentations on the status of Fire Station #2, an update on the Design Excellence program, the current status of Small Area Plans, and findings from the Downtown Traffic Study. These presentations provided committee members with updates on ongoing city planning and public safety initiatives without requiring formal action. ## Attendance All members were present at the meeting on May 12, 2015. **Present:** • Shevawn Akers • Amanda Bledsoe • Bill Farmer, Jr. • Jake Gibbs • Peggy Henson • Steve Kay • Susan Lamb • Jennifer Mossotti • Jennifer Scutchfield • Kevin Stinnett **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Votes and Decisions The committee took three formal votes during the May 12, 2015 meeting. **Approval of April 14, 2015 Committee Summary** Amanda Bledsoe moved to approve the April 14, 2015 Committee Summary, with Jennifer Scutchfield providing the second. The motion passed unanimously with all 10 members voting in favor: Shevawn Akers, Amanda Bledsoe, Bill Farmer Jr., Jake Gibbs, Peggy Henson, Steve Kay, Susan Lamb, Jennifer Mossotti, Jennifer Scutchfield, and Kevin Stinnett. **Change Order for Downtown Traffic Study** Bill Farmer Jr. made a motion to approve a change order to hear the Downtown Traffic Study next on the agenda, seconded by Jennifer Scutchfield. This motion passed by roll call vote with 9 members in favor and 1 opposed. Those voting in favor were: Shevawn Akers, Amanda Bledsoe, Bill Farmer Jr., Jake Gibbs, Peggy Henson, Steve Kay, Susan Lamb, Jennifer Mossotti, and Jennifer Scutchfield. Kevin Stinnett cast the sole dissenting vote. **Adjournment of Small Area Plans Discussion** Amanda Bledsoe moved to adjourn agenda item IV regarding the Status of Small Area Plans, with Susan Lamb seconding the motion. The motion to adjourn this agenda item passed unanimously with all 10 committee members voting in favor: Shevawn Akers, Amanda Bledsoe, Bill Farmer Jr., Jake Gibbs, Peggy Henson, Steve Kay, Susan Lamb, Jennifer Mossotti, Jennifer Scutchfield, and Kevin Stinnett. All three motions were successful, with the change order motion being the only non-unanimous vote of the meeting. No transcript timestamps were available for these voting actions. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed one significant financial matter involving transportation infrastructure planning. **Grant Funding** • The council discussed a $490,000 grant for a Downtown Traffic Study. No specific vendor or recipient was identified in the available materials, and no resolution number was provided for this grant funding item. *Note: Transcript timestamps are not available for this meeting's financial discussions.* ## Public Comment During the May 12, 2015 meeting, members of the public provided comments regarding the Downtown Traffic Study. • **Downtown Traffic Study** - Public comments were made addressing the Downtown Traffic Study, though specific details about the speakers and their particular concerns were not recorded in the available meeting materials. The public comment period focused on traffic-related issues in the downtown area, indicating community interest and engagement with the ongoing traffic study. However, the meeting records do not include specific information about individual speakers, the number of commenters, or detailed summaries of their remarks regarding the traffic study. *Note: Transcript timestamps were not available for the public comment portion of this meeting.* ## Contested Items The meeting featured one contested item that resulted in a split vote among committee members. **Downtown Traffic Study Change Order** The primary point of contention involved a motion to approve a change order regarding the Downtown Traffic Study. The disagreement centered on procedural timing, specifically whether to move forward with hearing the study at the next meeting. The motion ultimately passed with a 9-1 vote, demonstrating that while there was some opposition, the majority of committee members supported proceeding with the change order. The nature of the single dissenting vote and the specific concerns raised by the opposing member were not detailed in the available materials. This split vote indicates that at least one committee member had reservations about either the timing, scope, or procedural aspects of moving forward with the Downtown Traffic Study hearing, though the overwhelming majority felt it was appropriate to approve the change order as presented. ## April 14, 2015 Committee Summary The committee reviewed the summary of their April 14, 2015 meeting during this agenda item. Amanda Bledsoe and Jennifer Scutchfield served as the key speakers for this discussion. The committee examined the previously prepared summary document from their April 14, 2015 meeting to ensure accuracy and completeness of the record. This routine procedural item allows committee members to review, discuss, and formally approve the official record of their prior meeting's proceedings. Following their review and discussion, the committee approved the April 14, 2015 meeting summary without noted objections or required amendments. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Status of Fire Station #2 Chief Jackson presented an update on Fire Station #2 during the May 12, 2015 meeting. The discussion centered on the future use of the existing station and associated budget concerns. Chief Jackson introduced the item and led the presentation, with Eric Chambers also participating as a key speaker in the discussion. The presentation addressed operational considerations for the current Fire Station #2 facility and explored options for its continued use. Budget concerns were a significant focus of the discussion, with speakers examining the financial implications of various operational scenarios for the station. The presentation covered both the immediate and long-term fiscal considerations related to maintaining and utilizing the existing facility. The item was presented for informational purposes, providing the meeting participants with an update on the station's status rather than requiring any immediate decision or action. The discussion allowed for an examination of the current situation and potential future directions for Fire Station #2. No specific outcome or action items were recorded from this presentation, as it served primarily to inform attendees about the ongoing status and considerations surrounding the fire station facility. ## Design Excellence Update Vice Mayor Steve Kay provided an update on the Design Excellence initiative, presenting a timeline of proposed incentives for the program. The discussion covered both the implementation timeline and the current status of related applications and staffing. Key components of the update included: • Timeline presentation of proposed incentives by Vice Mayor Kay • Review of TIFF (Tax Increment Financing) applications currently in the pipeline • Discussion of the Design Excellence position and its role in the program The conversation involved input from Paulson, who participated in the discussion alongside Vice Mayor Kay. The agenda item served as an informational briefing to keep the council updated on the progress of the Design Excellence initiative. The Design Excellence program appears to be part of the city's broader economic development strategy, with the proposed incentives timeline being a central focus of the presentation. The connection between TIFF applications and the Design Excellence position suggests coordination between different development tools and staffing resources. This was classified as a discussion item with an informational outcome, indicating that no formal action was required but that the council received important updates on the program's status and future direction. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* ## Status of Small Area Plans Chris King presented an update on the status of Small Area Plans during this informational agenda item. The presentation focused on tracking progress and the role of community development corporations in implementing these neighborhood-level planning initiatives. Kevin Stinnett also participated in the discussion, though specific details of his contributions were not captured in the available materials. The presentation covered the current state of various small area planning efforts throughout the jurisdiction, with particular attention to how these plans are being monitored and evaluated for effectiveness. King discussed the involvement of community development corporations as key partners in advancing the goals outlined in these localized planning documents. Small area plans typically focus on specific neighborhoods or districts and provide detailed guidance for development, infrastructure improvements, and community services at a more granular level than citywide comprehensive plans. The tracking component of King's presentation likely addressed metrics for measuring implementation progress and identifying areas where additional resources or attention may be needed. This was an informational presentation with no formal action taken by the governing body. The update provided members with current status information on these important neighborhood-level planning tools and their ongoing implementation through partnerships with community development organizations. The discussion served to keep officials informed about the progress of these localized planning efforts and the collaborative approach being used with community development corporations to achieve plan objectives. ## Downtown Traffic Study Tom Creasy presented findings from the downtown traffic study during this informational agenda item. The presentation covered potential street conversions and included discussion of public participation in the study process. Chris King also participated in the discussion alongside Creasy during this presentation. The agenda item was designated as informational, meaning no formal action was taken by the governing body. The presentation appears to have focused on sharing the results and findings from the traffic study with officials and the public. The study examined downtown traffic patterns and explored potential changes to street configurations. Public input was noted as a component of the study process, though specific details about the level or nature of community participation were not detailed in the available materials. No specific concerns, debate points, or follow-up actions were identified in the extracted information for this agenda item. The presentation served to inform attendees about the traffic study's conclusions and recommendations for downtown street improvements or modifications. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps are not available for this agenda item.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Approve April 14, 2015 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (9-1): Approve Change Order to hear Downtown Traffic Study next - **Motion** — passed (10-0): Adjourn IV. Status of Small Area Plans --- ## Full transcript . Ladies and gentlemen, are we ready to start our planning in public? works meeting okay i don't do the summary here you ask for a motion to approve the summary someone would put forth a motion to approve the summary the motion council members such field all those in favor any opposed thank you jackson Good afternoon to. Give you our overview of where we are in reference to number 2 will be real quick in the introduction from branch that are in Carol. We have the architect, Mr. chambers and the engineer Mr. Charlie. Snyder who will come and walk us through the presentation. Thank you, Chief Jackson. Appreciate the committee allowing us to come and present today on behalf of the fire department. We wanted to walk you through the concept plans. Can I stop you there? Just I apologize. Can you just give us your name? Oh, I'm sorry. And who are you with, please? Thank you. My name is Eric Chambers. I'm an architect with Brandstetter Carroll Architects, and again, just want to walk the committee through the plans and elevations of the new replacement fire station number two for the Lexington Fire Department. This building currently is located on New Circle Road, close to the Kroger's on Bryan Station. and this building has served the community for a long time. As the fire station has grown and the community has grown, a large percentage of the population that this fire station currently serves is along the Winchester Road corridor. So response times have grown over the course of time, and the building has obviously over the course of time has worn down. And the city has looked at moving this facility closer to the Winchester Road corridor. It has been moved to the project site is located on Eastland and Murray at the corner of Murray and Eastland Drive, which is Eastland Drive is located here. Here's Murray. New Circle Road is down the hill here. This fire station will allow the fire department to have closer proximity to the Winchester Road corridor for response times. Some of the site features with respect to the new fire station. New entry apron out onto Eastland Drive for quick access when a call comes in. We do have a few public spaces for if someone's having a heart attack or having an issue, they have the ability to come to the fire station and do have a public entry that they can come in and be checked out or talk with a fireman. If they want to have car seats put in their car or van, they can very easily do that. We have the ability to have some spaces for the public to have access to this facility for those purposes. The building here located on this location is approximately 14,500 square feet. And it does, and we'll get into the floor plans here a little bit in a second, but it does have three double bays that are 80 foot long, allow for multiple vehicle stacking within the bays for the fire department and the variety of vehicles that they do have and apparatus for the fire department. The location here off of Murray is essentially the staff parking for the facility and also access as the fire department comes back from a call or lunch or dinner. They have the ability to come in and be able to access the apparatus bays on the backside as well. So it does give them the ability to have double access. And we've talked about through the process of design, if there's an emergency, if we have an ice storm, if we have any issues like that in the city, if one of these entry points are cut off due to a variety of reasons, we do have an option for them to be able to still get out and maintain their service to the community without being essentially locked down or having to move things out of the way. The parking area here accommodates approximately 20 spaces and some vehicle trailer storage, things like that, for the fire department and their variety of vehicles. moving on to the floor plans a little bit hard to see here but the blue area that you see here those are the support space for the fire department essentially those are the bunk rooms locker rooms, the kitchen, dining, and day rooms for the fire department and the EMTs to utilize. It is set up to be a multi-gender facility so that females who are serving on the fire department have accommodations as well as the males. The yellow area that you see here, these are the three apparatus bays. Again, those are double-stacked, approximately 80-foot long. The current station has three bays, but they are only approximately 60 feet long, so the ability for them to double-stack apparatus in that facility is much more difficult than it would be if they were truly a double-stacked arrangement. Some of the other features that we have off of the bays that you can see are the gear room, where the fire department's gear would be located, a tool room for a variety of tools and equipment that they utilize. And then we also have a decon room off of the bay, which allows them when they come back from a run and they have soil equipment or gear, they can go in there and wash it off and not have to transport it. Currently, they have to walk through the entire fire department at the current Station 2 in order to take care of those items. So this allows them that opportunity to not have to do that it can come right off the bay when they get back from a run There's also a hose tower which allows them to dry the hoses and also allows them to do some in-house training with their New cadets and those as they as they come onto the force and they want to do various trainings They can do that inside of the hose tower as well this is the front elevation that faces eastland drive it is very important a fire station is very iconic if you look at the history of architecture and fire stations the fire station is very recognizable if you go into any city anywhere around the country when you go into that city you recognize the fire station it stands out It's a prominent piece, but it also blends in with the surrounding environment that it's within. And this station sits, again, over on Eastland Drive around the Eastland Shopping Center, the Me Mexico restaurant down at the corner of New Circle in Eastland, and then you also have the bowling alley across Eastland from it and a variety of other industrial buildings. So we wanted to bring a feel that worked in the context for which the building was situated, but also made an iconic visual image for the public to know this is the fire station. Again, it's very recognizable. Kids all the time want to know where the fire station is. I love driving by it, seeing the trucks. I know my son does. He's always pointing them out wherever we are. So it's an important piece to the design of a fire station to make sure that it is easily recognizable. So some of the features that we have here are these three bay doors or four-fold doors. Essentially, they hinge and open side to side. These actually are a very unique element to a fire station. Typically, you see overhead doors or sectional doors like you have at home with glass in them. These actually open about 100% to 200% faster than a standard overhead door, which allows for response times to be improved. It also cuts down on maintenance that the fire station will continually have with these doors obviously being open multiple times throughout the day. So throughout the design of this, one of the goals of the fire department and the city, as well as our firm, was to make sure that we designed maintenance-free, as close to maintenance-free materials and operational systems that we could throughout the building, just to benefit the fire department. They're not worried about maintenance. They're worried about saving lives, responding to the community as they need them. So those are a lot of things that we've done with this facility. Some of the key features, geothermal HVAC system is what we have designed for this facility right now. That utilizes the earth to basically heat the building and utilizes the earth to remove the heat from the building during the cooling seasons of the year. It's a very highly efficient system. and we believe that it will be very successful here at this facility. Already mentioned the bifold bay doors and what that does for the facility. We also have a bioretention pond that's on the site to collect stormwater. We have to have that to meet the city ordinances and the storm drainage coming from our property, but this is one additional layer that allows for sedimentation, filtration for the stormwater to kind of collect that and keep it from getting into the main storm system of the city we also have a white roof which helps in minimizing heat gain on the building to help with the mechanical system make it more efficient and then we also have concrete pavement which also helps with reducing heat gain on the on the building site itself With respect to budget, we currently are, our current budget shows us we are within the total project budget for the city. Schedule, currently we're looking at an anticipated bid date of June of 2015. The anticipated construction start date would be late September of this year. with anticipated construction period September through October of 2016 approximately 13 months to have the facility started and completed to own or move in anticipated move in date would be late October of 2016 any questions thank you mr. chambers council members you have any questions I have one quick one. Do you have a vicinity map? I mean, I know you're talking about by Me Mexico, and I think it's Collins Bowling Lanes, or maybe it's not Collins, but I'm not sure who owns that facility, but exactly where? I mean, I'm not sure where Murray Drive is. Okay. I do not have a vicinity map in this. It'd be helpful if we had that. Just, I mean, that's... Yeah. I see that, but I was just trying to get an idea where exactly it was in conjunction with everything else. Can we get a map? Can someone provide that for us? Yeah, we can send it to you. Today? Now? Okay. Oh, now I don't have one now. Thank you very much, Mr. Chambers. I'll turn it over to Council Members for questions. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for your presentation. I was just wondering if you'd consider pervious surface for the parking lots that would cut down on the stormwater. We do look at pervious pavements. The biggest issue we have for this project specifically is the vehicle weights that are the apparatus that come in and out of the facility. The weights of these trucks range from anywhere from 50,000 pounds to 96,000 pounds. And so our concrete, to use pervious pavement, it wouldn't stand the test of these apparatus running on them constantly. So that's the main reason we haven't done it, but we have utilized concrete to help with the heat island effect and try to keep that down. Okay. Thank you. Are we all set, Councilmember Gibbs? Thank you. Councilmember Farmer. Thank you. I think in this picture, along the left-hand side, is the Bank 1, or Chase Bank, as it is now. It's in, well, there it went. It just disappeared. There it is again. They're obtaining a map for me, Councilmember Farmer. I'm a proponent of maps. I love maps. Everyone knows I love maps. I'm just saying that that's the bank. It's at the very end of the Eastland Shopping Center on the left-hand side there. So it's the inside new circle close to Winchester right on Eastland Drive, not Eastland Parkway. So I appreciate the update. I know that we've gone through several iterations to get just to this point. So I appreciate the fact that there's a timeline, and I look forward to a lot of photo ops along the way here because this is a new fire station that is sorely needed. I appreciate y'all's work. Thank you very much. Have you all been able to, I thank you, Council Member Farmer, to get us a vicinity map yet? Okay, if you can orient us at that, that would be helpful. There's New Circle Road right here. There's Eastland Drive. This is Murray. And this is our project site. And then this is Eastland Shopping Center. go back to eastland shopping center if you don't mind thank you winchester road it'd be great next time if we had a vicinity map or we could so we could have a real good idea of exactly where this is going to be placed any any other questions for mr chambers council member lamb i guess i would just like to know and i don't it seems like that we were told this before but uh what's going to happen to the existing fire station i don't know if and that might be a question of the chief right right now as it stands with the issues they made reference to the storage right now that would be utilized for storage for some of the vehicles that we have stored outside so that's the that's the goal of maintaining the current station two so we are going to continue to we're going to keep that property in and continue using it for storage yes ma'am okay all right cool thanks thank you thank you councilmember lamb councilmember henson thank you chair i just a quick question can you remind us of what the budget is for this Total project budget is $4 million. Thank you. If that's all from Council Members, we'll move to the next item. I appreciate it, Mr. Chambers, and thank you, whoever provided the map. It's always helpful to know where we're going to put fire stations and other properties that the government purchases. Thank you. Thank you. Looks like Vice Mayor Kay, you're up for the design excellence update. Thank you, Chair. Last meeting of this committee, we were asked to come back with a timeline for the proposed incentives that were still live, and I've put that in the packet. I want to walk through it briefly, see if people have questions. and then see what the next steps need to be. The first item is the parking garages and the meeting of the parking authorities today to review that plan. We won't know exactly what's in it until we see it. So hopefully that'll be available to us and we'll know basically what their intention is. On the fund for TIF application that was not included in the mayor's budget, but at the appropriate time, I will move to add that to the budget, and then council can dispose of it as council chooses. On the Deploy Redevelopment Fund, we heard about the $1 million in the budget that's for incentives and essentially funds to defray the costs of infrastructure for job development. some of that would apply to the downtown area we were told some of it would not and the specifics would not be necessarily addressed to the design excellence standards so i will again at the appropriate time move to add either a half a million dollars to that fund specifically allocated for the downtown area or as a couple of council members have suggested a full million that's separated from it, and it could be administered in the same way as that economic development fund. Going down to process incentives, the infill facilitated position is in the mayor's budget, waiting approval. The design excellence officer, I'm sorry, infill facilitated position is not in the mayor's proposed budget, and I will move to add that at the appropriate time. The design excellence officer is in the proposed budget already. streamlined process. There's a lot that's already been done, and there's more to come, and it's basically being worked on as we speak. The regulatory incentives, all three of which have to do with various aspects of waste removal, we are currently in litigation, and so the Design Excellence Task Force basically put that aside. And we may know more about what's going to happen with that when we hear from the task force that was set up to look at that set of issues. And that's basically it. The long list that I presented to the council last time included every single thing that had been considered in a major or minor way. These are the ones that I really, I think, need to be focused on. I wanted to bring them forward today. I wanted to see if there were questions about these particular incentives. or any other aspect of the proposal with the intention, unless there's a move today, which I will not make, to bring it back next month with the, including in the packet the standards and guidelines, the actual zone text that would have to be approved with the intention of asking this committee at that time to place it on the docket. That's all I have to start. i'll be happy to take questions thank you vice mayor kay looks like councilmember farmer has some questions thank you ma'am uh vice mayor thank you for this i appreciate it very much just questions on a couple of three spots here um let's put some meat on the bones and get this thing done okay tiff app fund tiff application how much how much dollar wise are you thinking that is generally it's been suggested that a a fund to be held if and when applications people come forward with applications that forty thousand dollars ought to be adequate okay and then you mentioned in the next one the deploying the redevelopment fund between half a million and a million which i think is a very important part of getting this done when you said you just would bring this forward at the proper time when is that um when we get to the point of council members being able to add in items to the budget would a motion or or action on this group not be i think it would be in order if we wanted to add something that's certainly appropriate um because it would either bounce off or bounce in or come in after the late items or somewhere i mean right you've got to show interest in it, I think. All right. And then how much for the infill facilitator position, generally speaking? I expect that fully loaded, that would be some, well, in the coming fiscal year, because it's only funded at 50 percent, would have to do the math. My guess is if We're talking in the coming fiscal year of somewhere between half of $65,000, $75,000, maybe somewhere in that range. I think I've got the real numbers somewhere, but I don't have it here. I see another council member or others are up. I'll wait and come back and potentially make a motion after that. I think it's important for us to show some real interest in this and get something done here. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. Councilmember Akers. Thank you, Chair. I had a question about the design excellence officer position. I thought this was in our budget link, and I thought that it's not actually a design excellence officer position anymore requested. It's more of a neighborhood support position, slash if we fund. My understanding is that it would be that position, but that initially that officer would be able to help with other kinds of design issues in other parts of the city. But if it's appropriate, can we ask Commissioner Paulson? Because, I mean, we haven't even created the, you know, established these incentives. So to fund a position seems... It's actually designed to be a bit of both. It is when and if design excellence gets off the ground, it will be that design officer position. But we always vision this position would also be able to help with design issues throughout the community. The one we've talked about a lot is Southland Drive, but there are other things where it's not really a small area plan that we need. It's more design assistance. And Southland Drive has been one that we've often stated. It's not necessarily a small area plan that it needs, which is often focused on land use issues, but it's more of a design. How do we get things moving there, which is what we've put in the budget at this time for sidewalk issues to help with Southland Drive. So I think we view this as a position that can help on both. Obviously, it's funded right now. I think it would be more of a focus in terms of on those neighborhood and design issues at this point. But if design excellence does go through, we'll do both. So this, I mean, that sounds like it's more of a position to help the planning office than it is to help people comply with design excellence requirements. No, I would say it's actually for both. And again, the skill set for this person will be design focused. that's a skill set we do not have right now. So if design excellence were to take off, we would need that skill set to be higher. But it's also one that we get a lot of requests for within the planning division that we just don't have right now. So, I mean, I don't believe they're mutually exclusive, which is the way that we view that position. Then can you talk a little bit about the difference then in the infill facilitator? The facilitator would be that. It's a facilitation position. So it's one that will assist with, you know, projects big and small within the downtown area, but probably also realistically throughout the community as well. So rather than providing design assistance, it would be one that would be assisting and coordinating things that are not only within the city, but also sometimes we need to coordinate with the DDA. We need to coordinate with other entities, utilities, and others. That's a position that's in some ways I do that right now. We've done that with 21C. We're coordinating. We had a meeting a couple weeks ago coordinating utilities issues where I set up a meeting with divisions within the city but also utilities, trying to coordinate how we can minimize the amount of time that the road is closed on upper and get the utilities in at the best time. So it's those kinds of things that it would assist with, but also possibly working with the DDA on just recruitment, working with the Commerce Lex even in terms of recruiting businesses down here and being able to provide that point of contact for what's available and how do we move things forward and what are the assistance that you need in terms of just doing development in the downtown area. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay, one more thing that seems to be missing or incentive that I have heard a lot about in my district is tap on fees, sewer fees, cap, issues with capacity. And I don't see that addressed at all. Was it part of previous discussions? Did it not make this list? Or where does any of that stand? It was part of previous discussions, and essentially we dropped that as a proposal because we were advised that it would be extremely difficult to implement because of the nature of tap-on fees. And again, I don't know, Commissioner. Sorry, Derek. I thought this would be someone else. But before you speak, if I may. Yeah, please. But there were a number of things that are still in the list of incentives that were considered that I think could come back up in a different form. But given what we wanted to accomplish, that seemed to entail an incredible amount of complexity, a separate issue that was going to be very difficult to address. And so at this time, we didn't include it. Yeah. And I can speak about my conversations with Charlie Martin about tap-on fees. And, again, I don't think Charlie's here, so I'll just speak on his behalf now, which is we've discussed that. And I think at this point, Charlie is very open to finding a way to do it, but not necessarily in a waiver standpoint. This is not like a – we've had a lot of discussions in this committee and in previous versions of this committee where we've talked about building permit fees and that they do not pay for the cost of building – for the BI, building inspection division. That's different with tap-on fees. I mean, that's a real fee. And in terms of Charlie's standpoint, waiving that, we have to find the money from someplace else. I think in Charlie's perspective, what he would like to do is, again, continue that conversation of can we find another way to kind of help people coming in with those costs, but not necessarily waiving them, but maybe paying off over time or something else. That's something that we have to bring forward. It would have to be some sort of ordinance change, but it's something that we are discussing. We just haven't gotten to that point so far. And I think it, again, cannot be design excellence focused. That's going to be something that's community-wide, and I think there's a lot of discussion within that. How do we want to do that? Is it for, is it jobs-related, where you would have to be providing a significant amount of jobs in return for this? You know, again, not necessarily a waiver, but for something, or is it just there's a hardship? I think there's a lot of discussion. There's a lot more in there than a simple discussion of just can we waver or can we not, and how do we go about that? There's a lot tied up with that because if you allow it for one group, why do you allow it and how would that work? So, again, Charlie's open to it, but I think it's a much bigger discussion that would necessitate kind of a very long and quite a bit of public discussion as well. Yeah, I just think it goes back to, you know, we talk often and regularly about infill and redevelopment. And when we have blighted areas within our urban services boundary that are lacking in development and have barriers like sewer fees and tap-on fees, and that's preventing that development, then we need to do all that we can to facilitate that and make it as easy as possible. And I think Charlie is very open to that. I mean, again, I know he is cognizant of the barrier that a tap-on fee can provide, but it doesn't just provide a tap. It's not a barrier just in those blighted areas. It's a barrier throughout the entire community. And it's something we get when you get into greenfield development where you have people come in and they see that tap-on fee. It's a very real cost. So, I mean, again, to the idea of the blighted areas such as Distillery District or others, I think that's where our infrastructure fund will be able to provide that assistance. Again, if there are jobs to come in, if they're paying above that $1740 or $1750 threshold, and they're bringing in enough, we can assist in that infrastructure that needs to go in. And again, that's going to be community-wide as well, but would be applicable to the distillery district as well as quite a few other jobs category zones that we have. My time is up, but I would just say that I don't think it should be limited to jobs. I mean, we can have other, you know, we should encourage development not just based on jobs. But I'll let Council Member Lamb, and we'll come back to that. I'll be happy to respond to that at some time. Thank you, Commissioner, and thank you, Council Member Akers. Council Member Lamb. Thank you. Vice Mayor, as far as regards to funding the TIF applications, the $40,000, how many applications will that, do you anticipate that actually funding? I don't know how much it costs. It depends on the scale of the project, but I've been told that a TIF application might run as much as $20,000, so there could be two in the coming fiscal year that would be covered by that $40,000. Right now, so far as I know, there is no new TIF application pending. There's nobody who's talking to the city about a TIF application. And typically, they are in conversation with the city about their interest in doing that. So our sense is that that would be perfectly adequate. And obviously, if we don't have the people coming forward, that money would just stay in the fund balance. side conversation the last last part was if it's not used it stays in the fund balance thank you council member lamb council member gibbs thank you chair i'd like to make a motion that we approve this this committee approve this proposal and move it to the full council for discussion you might want to repeat that i'm not sure everyone's heard that i would like to make a motion for this committee to approve this proposal and move it to the full council for discussion we have a motion from council member gibbs to approve the downtown design excellence task force proposed incentives and recommendations do we have a second I'm going to second it just because I want to say something about it and explain my position on this. Go ahead, Vice Mayor Kay, while you're on the floor. Go ahead. And I appreciate the interest in moving it forward. Anybody who was here last month know that I've had an interest. My sense at this point is that it would be good to get the information from the garage study, and it would be good to get a sense of what council is willing to fund or not fund so that we can bring them all together. So next month, if we can get back on the agenda, which... I'm not sure we can do it next month, but we'll do my best before we go on break. It would have to be next month. Then it is next month. Let me get back with you on that one. Okay. But in any event, it seems to me there have been enough questions raised about the relationship between incentives and the proposal itself that it would be good to have as much answered as possible. So I would... Yes? Absolutely. Go ahead. I don't want to rush, but it would seem like if we sent this to full council, I mean, by the time it got to the council, we'd have most of it taken care of. I'm worried about it. It's been on the shelf for a very long time. But if you're the guy behind us, if you prefer to go slower with it, that's okay with me. I'll withdraw my motion. Vice Mayor Kay, we've got a motion on the floor. Do you in a second? I'll withdraw the second. The second has been withdrawn. And the motion now has been withdrawn. So do we have any council members that want to add anything to this discussion today? We'll just leave this in committee. Hopefully we'll see. We may be able to hear it next month. I just can't tell you at this point. I think that Council Member Farmer may have a motion. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Or at least a comment. And it was just going to be a comment, if I may. Absolutely. It was going to be a comment because you have laid out a good path for us to follow. And I think let's stick to it. I think that will get it done. I'd rather not try to jump ahead. You've got a time and a place for this. I'll be supportive. And let's just do it then. But thank you. Thank you. We'll move on if no one has any objections. Because we're talking about downtown to the downtown traffic study. Because I believe we probably have some folks here that have signed up. Mr. Mundy, do we have some people from downtown in reference to this downtown traffic study that we don't have to hold you captive here all afternoon? Thank you. Mr. Farmer, I'll go ahead and let you start with this downtown traffic study update, please. Madam Chair, I was going to make a motion to change the order to take this item next rather than what was already on the published agenda, which I think is proper. Do I have a second? I have a motion to move this in the order. Would you repeat? Yeah, just to move this up to next. That's what I was doing. So I think we're on the same page here. So Council Member Farmer, if you want to go ahead and start with this, this is your item, and then we'll have the... Let's take a vote on the motion, though, I think is important. a motion to change the order of the meeting. We have a motion on the floor to change the order of the meeting from number 6 to follow number 3 here of the downtown traffic study. We have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? No. Motion passes. So, Mr. Farmer. Thank you, ma'am. Go ahead and start this, please. I think that in the absence of Mr. Shapiro that may be Director King and Tom, Mr. Preece. If you all would like to come forward and make comment, this is an issue that's been in committee like the previous issue for quite some time as this study took place. I think you've got some specific recommendations in here, and we look forward to your comments and guidance today at this time. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I hope to beg your indulgence. I'll be very quick. The bulk of the presentation today will be by Tom Creasy from Stantec, who are consultants on this project. But I am standing in for Scott Shapiro, who unfortunately had to leave town for a family emergency. But I wanted to just put a little bit of context on what we were talking about, both the history of this project and the history of the discussion of changing downtown streets. The first thing I'd like to say is it's not about traffic primarily. The reasons that communities look at doing things like changing traffic patterns is to look to how reducing the focus on the automobile can make our urban environment much better and much more responsive to both the demographics and the economic realities that we see changing in our country now and over the foreseeable future. And those of you who happened to come to our public meeting last week at the downtown library heard one of the most dynamic and informative presentations of these trends that we've all known have been coming and have been talking about in a long time when Chris Lineberger spoke. Be that as it may, the most recent discussion of conversion of our downtown street pairs that we have that are currently one way, go back to the DDA's downtown development plan that was done back almost 10 years ago now, the 2005, 2006, 2007 time frame, when one of the principles that was recommended in that plan was to consider conversion of the downtown streets. Immediately after that, the Planning Commission in the adoption of the 2007 Comprehensive Plan endorsed that as a concept to be studied further. And for some time, we began in little fits and starts to study that. In fact, in 2009, the Urban County Council passed a resolution directing that the government proceed in an orderly fashion to look at those pairs and consider conversion. And along in around 2012, we finally got the opportunity through grant funding to put together a large-scale project to, for once and for all, look at this whole issue very comprehensively so that we would know if decisions were made to convert. What would be the impacts of that? So that is the genesis of this. For the last two to three years, this has been studied extensively. Stantec was engaged as a consultant. And again, what this looks at is that piece of what would the traffic impacts be and what would be the downsides from a traffic standpoint to consider conversion. And again, with the ultimate goal that that is one part of taming dependence on the automobile or having an auto-centric view of the streets. And again, I think those of you that have been following these things and discussions in traffic field and in the urban planning field for many years now have talked about how taming and putting the automobile in its proper perspective can help improve the overall climate of the economy and the character of our urban area. with that in mind now i'd like to turn the podium over to tom creasy who was representative of our lead consultant stantec and he will give you the results of this part of the study thank you mr king mr creasy i know you know some of us very well you've been up here with this plan for maybe four times already uh probably uh three times that i can recall yes yes and um so it's uh Chairwoman Masati and the rest of the committee, it's a pleasure to be back in front of you today. Some of you have been involved with this study from the beginning and along the way. And so my purpose for being here today is just to try to touch the tops of the clouds. This is a very complicated, complex, detailed study, and certainly we cannot get into that today. But we are coming down, excuse me, down the home stretch. And so I will do within the allotted and small time that I have today to try to fill you in best I can on this. The question about why should the downtown one-way streets return to two-way is something, as Mr. King discussed, has been going around for a good 10 years. And there's been a lot of discussion just on the need to do it alone. reasons being to lower the vehicular speed certainly on streets like vine Street we have a big issue with auto speeds slower speeds meaning crashes would be less severe the another common complaint that we have is it's with one way streets it's difficult for visitors to find their way around town so this wayfinding this driving around the block if you will circuitous travel is a big issue at least for some visibility of businesses particularly that are located on the corners of intersections where one-way streets and if you happen to be on one of those corners where you're behind the the motorists as they pass through then your business doesn't get seen as much something a climate more inviting for bicycles bicyclists and pedestrians is another reason an improved sense of place there are a number of reasons why this idea has been been studied and discussed as mr. King alluded this is a multifaceted issue and the traffic study was just one piece of the puzzle there were many others some of those pieces touch the the traffic part of it directly some indirectly but a very complex issue in taking the 30,000 foot view of this there's a couple of things that we need to be mindful of that affect what goes on in the downtown area number one is that lexington has a very compact small downtown core and all of our major arterials lead into downtown that radial system that our city was has developed around we also have new circle road that provides this travel this circumferential circumferential travel around the town but it's either for the most part either into and out of downtown or around the outside those opportunities to go between those arterials are really quite limited and those are typically collector type streets whose function is not necessarily primarily to carry traffic so in terms of travel patterns then what we are all familiar with is that downtown commute oriented in the morning toward downtown and in the afternoon out away from downtown. Certainly New Circle Road facilitates that travel between those radials, but ultimately the bulk of our travel during our morning and afternoon rush hour occurs in those patterns. One of the things that we learn as we gather data for this study is that about 35 to 40 percent, our estimate, of travel in the downtown area is traffic passing through the downtown so that makes Lexington pretty unique because everything kind of points to the center of the bullseye if you will and a lot of that traffic goes on through downtown there have been some misconceptions about what this study was supposed to do and what it wasn't supposed to do so it's helpful to clarify that and what we did was we quantified this and the anticipated traffic impacts of converting the one-way streets to two-way and also identified issues that were associated with that conversion along with anticipated problem areas and some suggested mitigation measures. I'm going to talk about a couple of those specific problem areas in just a moment. Ultimately, our purpose was to provide information for those people that will be involved in making decisions. The consultant was not hired to provide a recommendation on to convert or not to convert. It was hired to provide this information. And along the way at different levels, we have engaged the public, both at the large scale, like the public meeting last week, individually, and also with numerous stakeholder groups. What we did not do, as I said, is provide specific recommendations on streets to convert. There were also plans on how to do that. Or we also, because this was really primarily a traffic study, it was focused on traffic and not on other potential impacts such as what does this do with property values or some of those less structured or some of those more fuzzy things like the sense of place and that kind of thing. We didn't really get into that. It was more about the tangible metrics that we could assess related to traffic primarily we looked at the downtown and realized that there are really within the downtown area are really three different areas of it so well even though Lexington is skewed and not doesn't line up directly north and south we we refer to north south and core the north area being basically Main Street and on to the north the core area primarily main environment in the south area high street and Maxwell Street limestone and upper street go through all three of those so we looked at and South Lyme and South Upper are a lot different than North Lyme and North Upper so we also looked at North Limestone and North Upper as part of that north area South Lyme and South Upper they're breaking at Main Street as part of the south area but a lot of these impacts we really looked at the overall downtown area so even though we had these smaller focus areas that we call them we still look at the impacts in that overall downtown area and if you try to draw a shape around that it would be primarily 4th Street down to Avenue of Champions Newtown Pike to say Ashland Avenue so that really described our and defined our downtown area we actually concluded the north area part of the project two years ago and in June of 2013 we had a public meeting But I thought that I would just briefly touch on the results of those again. One of the things that has happened is that 4th Street, that remaining piece of 4th between Jefferson and Newtown Pike Extension, has been converted back to 2-way concurrent with the completion of the BCTC campus on 4th Street. So that conversion was made already. But we looked at the potential conversion of North Lyme and North Upper from Main on to where they end or convert back to two-way. They're around 6th and 7th Street. Also, Short Street, and we looked at 2nd Street. And one of the conclusions that we – 2nd Street is really two different streets, West 2nd and East 2nd, and they don't line up. In fact, there's a disconnect right now, so we treated those two separately. And one of the conclusions that we did come to is that East 2nd Street, there were some real issues in considering it further for potential conversion. There were some concerns from Sayre School about the block of it that's known as Constitution Street. And then the section from Ray Street over to Midland Avenue is very narrow. and a lot of the residents that live along that piece rely on that part of on-street parking of 2nd Street just to be able to park in front of their residents. So converting that part to two-way would eliminate that on-street parking and it just seemed like it was not a very good idea to go any further with East 2nd. So that was dropped out. But just briefly the findings on that is that we do not foresee major traffic related impacts in converting north limestone north upper short street and west second street to two-way there are some special areas of concern like in front of the opera house or the two schools on north limestone sarah school and ltms that would require some very specific traffic circulation plans on how to mitigate the impacts of conversion there. Aside from and also on Short Street there between Broadway and Limestone with delivery trucks there's a lot of restaurants there and and right now those trucks if they're making deliveries one of those lanes is blocked so if that were two-way then those impacts would be more significant. So coming up with a plan on how to do that all those pieces of the puzzle would need to be in place before those conversions could be made. We had some extensive conversations with other stakeholders like police and fire, Lex Tran, and within the north side of downtown with narrower streets and, say, fire trucks making turns or buses making turns at some of these intersections, all those things would have to be addressed, including Lex Tran and change to potential bus routes. So there would still be a lot of things that would have to be worked out. But when you look at that part of downtown overall, traffic is not the biggest issue. And the street system there, converting those streets would make a more complete grid. And capacity is not the issue. There's some additional capacity for traffic there. So we didn't foresee any really significant operational impacts in converting those streets, assuming that those other questions could be answered first. And there's a... Mr. Creasy, before you go to the next slide, you've got 45 seconds. How long do you anticipate this would, before you're finished? It's going to take more than 45 seconds. Oh, I understand that. Another five minutes will be all right? I will try to rush through it quickly. You see an estimate of cost there. Jumping on to the south area where we considered Limestone and Upper, Maxwell and High, and also that little piece of Avenue of Champions that we call Winslow, we also included that. More significant impact in the south area. In fact, longer travel times, more congestion, higher delays. a lack of interest by the University of Kentucky to make that conversion along with the businesses in the Woodland Triangle, and some extensive backups that we were seeing in our models, particularly in the morning on South Limestone, backing up to Virginia Avenue and even beyond. So the impacts of converting the South Area streets are much more significant. The core area was Main and Vine Street. getting right to that we actually looked at several alternatives for converting main and vine there were two that that we advanced to detailed analysis when we call it a three-lane when we call it a four-lane the three-lane as you see is basically one lane in each direction with a center left turn lane if there's on-street parking there today it would stay there after the conversion same with the bike lane the four-lane different two lanes in each direction with And a number of intersections during rush hour, not allowing left turns. At some other intersections where you had to have left turns, actual widening to accommodate those. Anywhere from five to seven intersections where there would need to be additional widening done to allow those left turns. Loss of on-street parking, particularly on Main Street, of about half of the 90-plus spaces that are there now. and again the the impacts fairly significant most significant for the three lane the one lane in each direction because the focus there is not on carrying traffic it's on really providing mobility for all modes different from the four lane and so there you can see the differences some of the other attributes desirable like slower speed yes but to go along with that more traffic congestion. We did look at a few other things. We'll be making some recommendations on things not related to traffic like pedestrian safety, transit. I won't get into the details of those. There were some positions by the Irving County government that will be advanced to council and I guess the Director of Traffic Engineering Dallas Squire or Chris would just review those for you. Are you finished Mr. Creasy with your presentation? All right, thank you. And Mr. King or Squires, are you going to finish up on this? Sure, I can, and I'll make it really brief. Great, thank you. I think that Chris and Scott and I have spoken with each one of you individually, so I think you know what the recommendations are moving forward, except for Councilmember Stenet, who we didn't get a chance to speak with. But for, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to advance the slides, but I'll just go through the south area, the core area, and the north area. Ultimately, the south area at this point, as you're all aware, we are not making a recommendation to move forward with conversion of those streets. The core area, Main and Vine, feel that we need to hold off on making a decision on Main and Vine for some time to look at the impact of the Newtown Pike extension on downtown traffic volumes as well as the Town Branch Commons project. And then the north area, we think that in the north area, the benefits outweigh the costs associated with conversion of those streets, and we would like to make the recommendation to move forward with design. Thank you. Any council members have any questions or concerns about what's been brought forth to us today? Council Member Farmer. How much would that be to move forward with design? to move what came out of the study was an estimate for um construction cost which is approximately a million dollars that does not include design if we went with a with a standard 10 of construction you would be looking at about a hundred thousand dollars for design i can't say that that's a firm estimate that's all right but it's and that would be for the part that you all are recommending on the north area correct all right very good thank you Thank you, Councilmember Farmer. Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I enjoyed our conversation as well on looking at, I'm glad we're separating these three issues. So we're only voting on really the north side. And I was, at the very beginning you talked about the public participation side of it. I know we did the public meeting. Can you try maybe to talk a little bit more about what was your public participation and your feedback from that meeting? I know there was about 60 people at that open one, and quite a few of those are probably, well, to be insiders based on my little count. well again on this issue we've had the whole range as you can imagine we have people that are very supportive we have people that are concerned about it and a lot of people and i'd say most people say you know they're they're okay they trust that we will be able to manage the issues that go along with it i think we had some of both at our public meetings both the big one we had for the north side a couple of years ago as well as the public meeting we had this last week I think what we found is that by putting the summary recommendations that you just saw out there early, you know, the core recommendations from the project team members, I think that satisfied a whole lot of people about just really knowing where are we going. And I do think that primarily the most concern has probably been about Main Street and Vine Street, since so many people that aren't even downtown people, as you heard, think of that as their way through from getting from one part of town to the other. And again, that's what's so important about actually knowing and observing what the completion of Oliver Lewis Way will mean in terms of that traffic that's just using downtown to cut through. I think one thing that we all agreed, and I think everybody, is that probably Vine Street is the most un-downtown type of street we have in our community. It is, you can travel to a whole lot of downtowns and you don't find many Vine Streets. It's actually in the core and it's just traffic moves too fast. It's just very hostile. And that's what the importance of the Town Branch Commons project. Will that help to calm that? Will that help that urban environment, or do we need to look at things like converting the traffic? The other thing that's important to remember about Maine and Vine as well is that ultimately they are under the control of the transportation cabin and not the urban county government. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Bledsoe. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Chair. As we move forward with the design, will there be an opportunity for further public input? Inevitably, because we will have to come to the Urban County Council for final approval and budgeted funding and things of that nature. So we assume the public that is interested. There are some folks here today, I think, that want to comment. and ultimately it will be this council. You will certainly be hearing from your constituents. And I heard comments about particularly, I think it was North Upper, where there's the residential parking. They have no other place to park, so that area wouldn't be included. Well, one of the things that we have talked about, and again, this gets down to that very specific design, that Ms. Hoskins-Squire was talking about, is one of the things that we were most sensitive to, and we found this when we were talking about Second Short a few years ago, and we had very specific conversations, is that everywhere where we could, where we just, unless traffic just absolutely demanded that you needed a dedicated turn lane and you needed to take some on-street parking off, that we would make every attempt to maintain the on-street parking, because we do think that's a big part of the environment. And particularly, as you noted, on many of these areas, we have a lot of homes that don't even have driveways, and they count on on-street parking as being their residential parking. So that's something that had been talked about a lot. And I think, again, in any case, unless it's just absolutely mandated otherwise, we would try to always maintain that on-street parking that's there now. Is the cost for the design in our budget? The design is not in budget currently. Okay. But that would be worked on if you give the green light to move to the next stage. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair. And Mr. Creasy, thank you for bringing us this report today. I appreciate all your work over the last several years on this project. I know this is the third time I've seen a study on two-way streets since I've been on council, and it's the third time that has said no to Vine and Main and the south part, as you identified in your slides. The north part is intriguing, but my question is for the administration. Ms. Dow Hoskins-Squire back there, did you hide from me? Okay, there you are. You recommended design, so about $100,000. When will we get a real cost of what design will cost to this council? And is it in the budget? Is the administration going to bring on a late item, or are they waiting for next budget, FY17, to put it in there? You know, to be honest, I mean, short of doing a man hour estimate for design, which really, when we put out an RFP and hire a consultant, that's when we would determine what the firm number is. I mean, it would be a qualifications-based selection. So until we select a consultant, we really won't know and negotiate the fee. We really won't know what the fee is for design. I was just using a ballpark 10% of construction. So is your next step, are you going to do that and come back to the council with a real number of what we need to budget in the fall? What's the administration's? No money has been budgeted in fiscal year 16 for design or construction. Right. I understand that. But I'm asking, are you going to bring in a delayed item request to this council? Because we're getting ready to pass the budget in 30 days. So if it's not in there, then the next opportunity would be fund balance. So I'm trying to understand the administration's approach. council member i think our plan was to see how the council reacted to the recommendation that was have been made and then sort of gauge where we're at after this conversation today to see where we can go in the future whether that be fyi 16 or 17 but um i think we prefer not to put it off until fyi 17 if possible well i'm just trying to get real numbers and a real recommendation because the recommendation on the slide was here's the capital costs and didn't say anything about design and the timing of it and that's what i'm asking what's the timing is administration prepared to bring us a real recommendation that we can consider how about i get back to you i'm not sure how long this might take to get a country number that's fine that's a good answer because i just want something that we can actually say yes or no and move on okay so we can get this moving thank you that is council member senate thank you council or i'm sorry vice mayor kay thank you chair um my my question really backs up from the question of funding to the i think what is the prior question or the threshold question which is is this something we think we want to do I think too often we proceed with a study when we're not convinced that the outcome, no matter what it is, is actually going to result in a positive action by this council. And I've been interested in and supportive of the two-way street issue, but not in and of itself. We're not doing two-way streets to do two-way streets. We're doing two-way streets to improve the quality of life, the walkability, the bike applicability, the sense of place, and so on. This study, appropriately, this is what it was about. If you go back to that second slide, it shows you a jigsaw puzzle. It's got the traffic study right in the middle, and it's got a lot of other things around it. So what we've seen is the result of the traffic study. But I have a concern about a couple things, and that is on the north side. There are two or three items that are identified as potentially problematic. And I've been told in meetings, and I think this has been said publicly, we can address those. I would like to see those addressed before we authorize any significant amount of funding for the actual conversion of those streets. They are the Opera House block and the loading issues there, the limestone, not limestone schools, and the loading issues there, the Short Street loading zones. And Short Street, just kind of a quick comment, most of Short Street seems to be doing just fine in terms of quality of place, quality of life, walkability, and so on. I would like to see more focus on public meetings from the community that talk not just about the traffic, but about these other issues. And if there's more information that came out in the last meeting, I guess I have not seen it. I attended that meeting, but I left before you got to public comment. So those are my concerns. I'm not necessarily opposed, but I think there are issues that have been raised that haven't been addressed, and I would like to see them addressed before we commit money to any further study. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Akers. Thank you, Chair. I agree that we should address, I think, some of the special areas first, but my thought was that if council supported this overall, that the consultant then would address maybe the special areas in working with those schools or working with the Opera House or whomever was affected. One of my questions, I guess, for traffic for Dowell is, did everyone that would be affected on these core streets, the northern streets, did every household receive a card, letter, notification of some sort that this is under consideration? That's a question for you. From the planning office or from your office? You know, anytime we plan to put in someone who wants to do traffic speed tables or change a speed limit sign or install a new stop sign, generally we send notifications. I would think for anybody living along any of these streets that's going to lose on-street parking or it's going to have traffic going a different direction in front of their house or businesses that might be affected, that every single person shouldn't have to rely on me or you or the Herald leader to tell them that their street might be changing. So I think that's one thing that we should do first and get real public feedback and real input and hear from those who would be affected before. We have. I think that was the purpose of the multiple public meetings that we've had over the course of the past three years. I mean, some of which obviously preceded me being here. So since I've been here, we've had at least two stakeholder meetings and a public meeting. Well, I asked if the neighborhood associations in the north side had been met with, and you all said no. a western suburb if they had been, if you all met with them and you said no. So I just. Individually, but via a public meeting, via a public forum, they've had the opportunity to learn about the project and provide public comment. And that's, I mean, that's okay. I just think that it's just not enough. I mean, I think it's a bigger issue that should be addressed directly. I just want to let you know the registered neighborhood associations were notified about these opportunities to comment and were represented on stakeholder groups. So there was a lot of conversation. But short of sending thousands of letters to the people who live along these streets, we made just numerous attempts to engage the public on this. And I appreciate that. I'm just certain that no matter how much we advertise it on TV or in the paper or here at these meetings, that there are still people who have no idea that we're discussing this, and that we'll be upset or have opinions. Either way, I'm just saying that I would just like for every household to receive some sort of notice if we move forward. I think that's good feedback, and I think we should try to actually do that in this next phase on the design, because that's actually the reality of the situation if we move forward with the design. Yeah, I mean, the people that are here today are really engaged citizens who pay attention all the time and follow everything we do. But that isn't to be said for everyone along second or short or north upper or north line. So that is that. And then as far as capital costs, is that money, do we expect to get any grant money, federal money, state money? Would it just come from bonding locally? Or who wants to address that? And these are city streets. They're city streets, first off, so I suspect it will be our project. That's nice. Like CMAQ or, you know, all of these special map monies or? Obviously, we've got a long way to go until we get there. Right. Just as we talked about. We have to do the design. But we would certainly explore every possible opportunity. Now, it's been said, and Dal could speak to this as well, that about half of that cost is just paving. Right. grinding off the current markings and putting a quality surface down and remarking so you don't have the ghosts of the old lane markings and things like that. So that's virtually half. And then I think most of the other half is probably actual signals and looping the signals into the computerized linkage system. So if there are grant opportunities available for those, we will certainly explore that. And do you think, Chris, do you see or Dowell that the consultant would be the one to address these special concerned areas, or do you think that's something internally we would do in advance of hiring a consultant? Well, I think it's both. In fact, we had this conversation this morning, and I know that Dowell feels that her divisional capacity is not sufficient to do this entirely in-house, although they would be very much involved. Sure. that's she should probably speak to that rather than me but while I have the opportunity I just wanted to also comment that I think the statements that you are making and the statements that Councilmember Kay made are very consistent with what our recommendation is to get the kind of answers that people and other stakeholders need we need to go to this next level of design and engage that and we've had you know we've had support this is something that Scott Shapiro would have spoken since he's done most of this contact we do have folks representing business associations along these streets here today and he has spoken to the short street business group and they are supportive you know so um again some of these folks may be here today and get to the comment but i just wanted to say that what we're really talking about is getting the green light to go to that next step okay thank you thank you thank you mr king councilmember scotchfield Thank you, Chair. I just have a comment. I agree. Public input, Siobhan, is one of the biggest things, or Council Member, is one of the biggest things that we need and make sure that we contact the neighborhoods and businesses. But on top of that, looking at making this transition, and I'm just speaking about the north side because we're not even in the discussion for the core. We've got a bustling business community, especially on Short Street. We've had numerous restaurants open up in the last 10 years that are doing very, very well. They have tried to do outside dining and things like that. I think we need to make sure that in any plans we protect this pedestrian ability to get back and forth. And in doing two-way streets, make sure that we don't take away any of that valuable real estate from their businesses. but you know that's i'm not an architect i'm not an engineer so that's not in my wheelhouse but you know that that's my biggest concern going forward thank you thank you chair thank you council member uh vice mayor kay thank you chair so if i can come back to the my own comments what i'm interested in is not a full-fledged study what i'm interested in is at least an outline of how those particular problem areas could be addressed, some options. What are the possibilities? Not a detailed study. And then share that with the public and say, here's the ways in which we could address the issues that have been raised. But right now, I've seen this recommendation, and I've raised these questions, and I don't know what the possibilities are for addressing them. And I think at the very least, I would like to see that, And I'd like the public to see what the possibilities are for fixing things that we know will be difficult if we go to two-way in the north side. Thank you. If I may address your comment, Vice Mayor Kaye, we provided a technical document summarizing that north area study. And it addressed those issues specifically, the Opera House block on Short Street, the schools, the loading and unloading zones. didn't give it a full plan on how to address that but it certainly went into a lot of detail including graphics on what the issues were that would be a good starting point so it's not like these haven't been addressed but it stopped short of having a full plan on how you would do that recognizing that more would be needed but certainly the groundwork for doing that was begun and documented in this this technical report that summarizes the North Area findings. So if I may follow up, so is it fair to say that what you've done so far identifies the nature and extent of the problems that could be encountered if you go to two-way, but that it does not include any options that might be put on the table to address those issues? It includes some, but it's certainly not all of them for example if Short Street were made two-way one of the findings is that currently school buses come in from the West and drop off children they follow the flow of Short Street so one of those recommendations is if it were two-way because you have a lot of events going on at the Opera House at the Children's Theatre not to allow school buses to come in off Broadway and turn left because that could back up traffic out into Broadway so a conclusion or a finding a recommendation but not a complete traffic circulation plan that would also integrate what goes on with Saints Peter and Paul school with the everyday parent drop-off and pickup that you have along with everything so it went into a lot of detail to describe what the issues are with some recommendations but it's not a complete plan same thing with LTMS and Sayre School and the traffic patterns. Again goes into great detail about identifying what the issues are with some recommendations but not a full plan on addressing that. Okay and would it would it be possible I know that we may have all have seen that at one point. Do you send that particular part of the your documents to council so that we can see what's in it and what's not in it. We'll appreciate it. It's contained within their technical report we'll make sure that you get it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Creasy. Councilmember Lamb. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Stenet actually referred to this being the third time that he's heard this, and I know I remember these conversations before. I'm just curious how much money was spent for this study just to get us to this point. I'm just kind of curious as to the amount of money that we've spent so far, please. The grant initially I believe was $465,000 out of the $490,000 that was available, and please recall that the Urban County Council authorized, scrutinized, and authorized that expenditure for this study, and there was a modification made in order to be able to go into deeper depth of the studies, particularly of the three-lane versus four-lane alternatives and that very detailed drilling down where the Transportation Cabinet actually agreed to a holdback that they had to be added back into the study. So in the end, it was $490,000. And you said that was grant money? Is that any, that's just no matching grant? It's just pure grant? It was all entirely federal grant money that became available. And, again, the Urban County Council, back some years ago, reviewed different alternatives on how to utilize that transportation grant money, and the council chose to spend it on this project. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. King. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Lamb. We have, I believe, three people from the public that would like to speak, Mr. Young, Ms. Ganacchio, and Mr. Pettit. Are you prepared to come up to the podium? And please do so, if you wouldn't mind. Mr. Young, Ms. Ganacchio, and Mr. Pettit. Name and address, please, and you have three minutes. We have three minutes each? Yes. Hi. I won't do that to you. I could probably do it in a minute. I'm Richard Young with the North Limestone Community Development Corporation. I know some of you, but to the rest, hi. I want to say a couple things that sort of address how, at least we, in our conversations with people in the neighborhood, the reception that we've heard about two-way street conversion specifically for North Lyme and Upper, we haven't really talked about the rest because that's sort of out of our purview. And I also want to preface this by saying this is by no means how everyone in the neighborhood feels. I think that's a very difficult thing to get down to, but this is just information that we've gleaned. and also some small anecdotes. So I personally walk and bike up North Limestone every day. I live in Castlewood Park on Castlewood, and my office is at 7th and Lime. And I sit at my desk every day and look at the intersection at 7th and Lime and see people driving up at least two or three times a day the wrong way up Lime. I've seen several families pushing strollers, almost get hit by cars going up there. I've seen one bike that ran right off the road to avoid a car and ended up on some stairs there at the corner of 7th and Lyme. And so I have a particular interest in seeing North Lyme specifically be converted to two ways. We have a standing meeting just about once a month with the three neighborhood associations that we impact, MLK, North Lyme, and Castlewood. And in those conversations, I've been talking with neighborhood association leaders who have then in turn talked with people in the neighborhood associations. And generally, people seem to be in favor of that. And again, those are the people that come to neighborhood association meetings. So I think that does leave out a certain population whose input does need to be gathered. But the general consensus that we have gleaned is that people in the neighborhood want it to be a two-way street as long as parking, as long as people retain their parking, as long as there's some investment in bike infrastructure. I don't know if any of you have ever biked up North Lyme, but it's seriously, seriously dangerous, incredibly dangerous. And then thirdly, I think people are also interested in a traffic speed reduction down about as low as it can go. We co-run a program with Central Kentucky Thircestras, or we collaborated on a program with them called North Limestone Music Works. And it pulls kids from Arlington Elementary every day for two and a half hours for music lessons five days a week. And the program recently moved to STEAM Academy on 6th Street. And six or seven parents pulled their kids out of the program because they were too scared for their children to walk down North Lyme for risk of being hit by a car. So I think that it's, I know my time's just ended, but I would really implore you to seriously consider this. it actually caused the program to move back up to Arlington, and those kids were lost in the program. And so I think that there is definitely a need for a new look at the way traffic is in the north side, and I think that two-way streets can be a part of that. I really hope it is. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. I probably didn't pronounce it right. It's kind of like Masati. so Mary Ginocchio Ginocchio and I am a longtime resident my parents moved us in in 1968 to the corner of North Limestone and Constitution or then East 2nd I have my place of business for 14 years Mulberry and Lime at that location and I now live there with my children I want to just also you know it's right on the heels of Richard we really do need two-way traffic on North Lime it will slow down people I still have clients that come in the new clients that come in the store telling me that oh I drive by here all the time I drive by and this is the first time I've come in that's 14 years down the road I think it will include increase to improve the vitality of our our neighborhood our network there there's more engagement I talked to the pasta guy this morning Les May I said lesmay you still have your he still has property there that he's leasing and he's going to be opening back up he said mary tell him i want two ways i said okay that's done i also would like to see constitution street turned into two ways i emailed steven manella of sayer school yesterday he was the board was facing their decision on some city information and i think they would be more interested in two-way traffic because of the safety and van will speak about the safety of constitution street i'm trying to think if there's anything else i need to mention oh local first lexington the local businesses contribute 40 percent more of their revenue to the city and state that they reside in that's really important for everyone to know so small businesses that thrive on traffic patterns need to be heard and i think it is important to make sure we're polling and getting that public input so i've got a minute left good grief i was rushing that mulberry and lime is a home furnishings and gift shop located at the corner and in order to get to our parking lot which has six spaces in the back if you travel north lime to third street take a a right on 3rd, then take another right onto MLK, and you're going to take another right onto Constitution Street, and we are the last parking lot on your left. Thank you, ma'am. Appreciate that. Mr. Pettit. Thank you. Hello, my name is Van Meter Pettit. I live at 155 Constitution Street, and I commend the city for continuing to pursue two-way street conversion. One-way streets are an anomaly that we introduced in the 1950s. I would suggest, especially with a lot of data nationally, that it's an experiment that has failed the downtown. If we are a world-famous community with a growth ring that protects our World Heritage landscape, and we have remarkable historic districts that preserve our historic building stock, and we need a couple of billion dollars invested in our city. It's like squeezing a balloon not once, but twice, and saying we want our economy to grow, we want business to develop, but you can't do it here, you can't do it there, or you're constrained. And that's why every acre of our small central business district is unbelievably precious. We've got to get it right. And 2006, Ayer St. Gros, 2008, KKG, now three years of this study. The opportunity cost is very high. I mean, Vine Street, Limestone, back to Convergent to Main is never going to grow a business. If we don't change it, it will never grow a business. and downtown has got to grow business or our community simply won't prosper economically. So I'm very, very supportive of public input. That's why I'm here. However, a decade has gone by, and the opportunity cost of business redevelopment is really high. And so I really encourage us to get a little bit of a sense of imperative to this because our core has got to change because we know from the last 40 years that business has atrophied downtown. It's starting to come back, but especially places like Vine Street and Main Street are simply not accommodating. The one thing I'll say about Constitution is there are streets on the east side of Limestone, like Constitution, that get so little traffic that they're actually less safe because there are no eyewitnesses. And so I would strongly encourage even the narrowest streets to have two-way traffic, if it's at all possible, because pedestrians simply won't feel safe walking through parts of downtown with no traffic, that it's actually less safe. And that Constitution Street, with a primary school right there, would be made safer if there is slower periodic traffic and not occasional speeders cutting through, which is what we have. So, sometimes if we design ourselves around traffic exclusively, it's like architecture that's designed for plumbing and airflow. That's not really how we design buildings. I would strongly suggest that we don't design our cities that way. Thank you. Thanks, sir. And Ms. Benagel-Pister. That's right. Hey, everybody. I'm here on behalf of Fayette Alliance. and first of all we would like to commend our division of planning staff our division of engineering everybody here involved at LFECG to get this instrumental study off the ground for obvious reasons I won't echo what others have said so well here but we feel that this is a critically important component to a sustainable growth strategy for the entire community. The stronger we can make downtown and our urban core from an economic development, quality of life, and frankly, even an infrastructural standpoint that has broad countywide impacts from neighborhoods on the fringe of downtown all the way to the county line. So for that reason, we are most definitely in support of the recommendations as stated in the study. And we ask that you move the study now forward and its recommendations forward and start on the design phase of North Line. Obviously, there are a lot of challenges that need to be addressed. We feel confident that those can be addressed for the benefit of not only the residents there, but downtown and frankly, the entire county. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Johnson, I have you down for the small area plan. Did you want to speak on this as well? I didn't have anything down for the small area plan. I didn't realize that was what I was signing up for. That's okay. Go ahead, please. Okay, thank you. My name is Bill Johnson, and I live at 645 West Short Street. And I'm currently president of the Historic Western Suburb Neighborhood Association. and that's the area that includes short street from newtown to broadway and from second to main i am personally for two-way traffic as much as we can have it i realize there are some places that it would not make as much sense as there are in other places i cannot say i've talked to everybody in the neighborhood in great detail but i've been talking to people about it for several years so I think I have a pretty good feel for what the general feeling is probably it's kind of like they're interested in seeing how it would work they're wait and see they don't have a lot of strong feelings the ones that have voiced some strong opinions my wife and the next-door neighbors who moved away were concerned about looking both ways before they backed out into the street or across the street I got to tell you if you don't look both ways on a one-way you're endangering your life because there have been more times than once that I have been about I would have been killed if I had not looked both ways on short and on second. So you always have to look both ways whether it's a one way or a two way street. I think it really is important to keep the parking as, not to reduce the parking that's there now because a lot of people, and this has been stated, don't have any place else to park. And we've got a lot of restaurants and everything that have developed along Jefferson Street, which I think is great. But we still don't want to reduce the parking either for them or for the residents. I believe traffic slowing would be really substantial. Actually, the 700 block of West Short, I was told today, used to be one way. And when Newtown Pike was put in in the 60s, it became two way. And that's the block between Newtown Pike and Old Georgetown. And I know that I drive a lot slower on that block than I do on the 600 block. I am prone to take advantage of any traffic situation at all that will allow me to get from A to B faster. That's just a defect on my part. But when I'm driving on a two way street more closely to the curb or to parked cars, I drive a lot more slowly. And when I see a car coming toward me, I drive a lot more slowly. So I think there is a lot to be said for two-way streets slowing traffic. And after 43 years downtown, I still get confused planning my routes because of the one-way streets. So I can only imagine what it's like for other people. So that's pretty much all I have, and I hope that you all decide to go forth with two-way streets as much as you can. Thanks. Thank you, sir, and thank you to the members of the public who came down and addressed this issue today. There's no other council member questions. We'll move on to the next item. Council Member Stinnett. You want to tell the public what the next one is? Just so, because we got off agenda. I'm sorry. Small area plan. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Stinnett. I put this into committee because we've done a lot of small area plans over the years, and I think it's a good opportunity for the planning staff to kind of give us a history lesson about how many we've done. But this council has also been asked to fund small area plans and we haven't in the last several budgets I think we're at an opportunity now. There are some neighborhoods in our city that may need a small area plan. I think mr. King While he's still here and been around a long time and has a lot of history to tell us I think there's an opportunity here today to see how they have benefited our community and see how we can improve on them. So Mr. King thank you for coming and helping us relive a little bit of history but help us understand what we can do with these thank you very much council members senate and council members we greatly appreciate the opportunity to have the spotlight shine a little bit on one of these activities that we have in our planning division which is primarily small area plans but one of the things that i have learned over the years is there's a lot of confusion about what a small area plan is what a small area plan isn't versus the other types of studies and white papers and things that we do so I want to start a little bit about one of the other things that we do as well as small area plans which are planning studies and reports those are very wide-ranging and as you saw the list that's in your packet those can address special geographic areas or just special topical issues that could advance the planning program and activities in our city. It can provide additional data to make decisions by council, planning commission, others on those things. And unlike a small area plan, they are not necessarily quote unquote adopted by anyone, but are there to inform and enlighten. And they don't need to follow state law procedures. And that's something that's very important to note, that a small area plan, when we get into what it is, it virtually always deals with a certain geographic area of our community. And state law says it's an amendment to the comprehensive plan. And state law in Kentucky says if you're amending your comprehensive plan, you have to do A, B, C, D, E, and F. and these highlight some of those things. It becomes a part of the comprehensive plan when it is adopted and they are not adopted by the council. They are adopted by the planning commission but quite often as we will see and discuss a little bit it relies on the council to implement a lot of the things that might be recommended in that small area plan. So usually we identify the need for a small area plan when we do the every five year mandated by state law overall comprehensive plan review of the entire community. What we typically find that there are specific areas or specific issues, specific problems and specific opportunities that we recommend in the comprehensive plan that a detailed small area plan or study be done to shed light on those things. Now here are some examples of small area plans, actual adopted small area plans. Our two most recent that we are very proud of within the last couple of weeks are the Armstrong Mill West small area plan and the Cardinal Valley small area plan. And the council members who are sitting here and some who sat before you were very involved in the processes that takes approximately 10 months, maybe a little longer sometimes, to do those small area plans, drill down into the issues, meet with representatives of the community, and develop recommendations. recommendations. Those are the two that we have most recently done, really as an offshoot of the recommendations of the 2012 comprehensive plan, 2013 comprehensive plan update. In the previous cycle, the major ones that we accomplished were the east end and central sector, areas basically north of downtown in the area between Winchester Road and Georgetown Road, but inside the circle which were seen as very complex urban areas with a lot of issues again a lot of opportunities and we had small area plans with very wide-ranging recommendations approved and adopted for the planning commission for those likewise in the last cycle we identified the south nicholasville road area the fritz farm the uk property is an area that for decades had been problematic. You had lands with great opportunity to develop and provide for growth and economic opportunities, residential opportunities. But for instance, in the case of the Fritz Farm, we had been through two extremely contentious zone changes and two lawsuits following those zone changes with the result that nothing was done. Well, that small area plan looked at those areas and looked at how could those areas develop that there was a consensus that would meet the desires of the neighborhoods around address some of the problems provide economic return to the landowners and best serve the land use of the overall community and you'd have to say that that was very successful one of the major recommendations were some specific more performance-based recommendations for the fritz farm and not too long after the plan was adopted we actually had a zone change it was approved sure there was interest and there was some controversy but that small area plan laid a groundwork now for a project that's about to begin to finally after decades of battle over that property we will see it develop likewise we've had similar reports and sometimes people think of these as small area plans but they really weren't they looked at special things like the fourth street area zoning study that we recently engaged stakeholders and that was really an offshoot recommendation of the central sector plan to look at what the opportunities are around the bctc development there on 4th street and new town pike and how we can maximize and plan for what the impacts of that will be and propose new products actually for development that we can hopefully even implement in advance some of them to to fit the character and the needs of that area as it changes the red mile development study one that was brought to us by the red mile itself looking at ways of opportunity to develop acres and acres of surface parking near downtown and near the university and creating a vision for how they could do that and these were much shorter than a small area planning study very intense very focused not officially adopted but again providing good guidance to the planning commission and the council as redevelopment proposals come forward the lexington housing market study was one that came out of the last discussion of the need to understand our housing market and the changes coming to that in terms of how that would impact long-range planning and eventually potentially even what type of housing we should use for the suburban greenfield areas that we still have available to us to best utilize our urban service area and the non-residential infill and redevelopment study as an example as a sister to the earlier infill and redevelopment residential which was so successful and created a lot of new opportunities the same thing for the non-residential lands that we have that are underperforming so as you pretty much can tell from the comments that i just made the kinds of recommendations from the small area plan can go from very low-hanging fruit or things to help facilitate private development to things that may be very capital intensive projects road improvements a lot of the things even having a community development agency and funding that to help facilitate infill and redevelopment in certain areas so it can be the wide range of again any number of things anything from ordinances zoning to specific projects i thought you might be interested we went back through our budget and looked at what funding we have as you know no surprise we have less staff capacity than we used to have we have lost a number of staff during the recession years i was going to mention earlier we even had an infill and redevelopment facilitator dedicated position that we lost during the post 2008 local economy and the budget freezes but you can see that at different times the level of support that we get to expand our capacity by hiring consultants to work in these areas or bring a special expertise to an issue that we don't have in-house has varied and but again we see the greatest time of opportunity usually for these is in those two and a half to three years maybe usually three fiscal years that we have between those major comprehensive plan when And our staff is so tied up in executing that overall community plan mandated by state statute. So, again, thank you for the opportunity to highlight some of these. We also provided a lot of specific information in discussions with Council Member Stinnett, the kinds of things he was looking for and highlighting some of the details of plans done in the last five years, what some of the outcomes are to date. And I want to say that, to date. Because a good small area plan, usually you deal with a lot of the low-hanging fruit type issues, but some of the more visionary, more expensive types of recommendations of those plans take longer sometimes to come to fruition. Thank you, Chris. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you, Chair, and Mr. King, thank you for being here today. A couple follow-up questions briefly. your department do you track after the plan has been completed and monitor everything that has been that will be achieved and is achieved and you mentioned um cdc's and do you advocate for funding within our budget to help fund some of those get those off the ground how do you what do you do with the plans afterwards um and again um maybe not as systematically as we would really like to if we had full staffing as we actually had a whole section that was dedicated on working on that kind of things for a very brief time. Basically something between the day-to-day Sony development and, you know, feeding and working with the development community and those applications, and versus the longer-range visionary things, we had a strategic planning section that we were able to do that along with some urban design things. But we do. As you can see, on the east end and central sector, we actually had a committee of a lot of the stakeholders that were developed, and we continued to meet, usually under the leadership of a council member who was involved in that plan's development. And to be honest with you, once you get past the low-hanging fruit, you really need that council member advocacy to help sustain the implementation effort. Well, I would just hate to do plans and have them sit on the shelf. That's why I asked that question. There needs to be a systematic, maybe so we can develop something that engages the council members. Council members change, too, but, you know, help the community stay involved, help them keep touching base with the council and city government so that these plans don't just sit on shelves as we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. I appreciate that more. And that's the one thing. I actually come up through the implementation end of planning in my background and experience before I became director. And I think we have always attempted, at least in my tenure, to end up every plan document with a, even if it's very aspirational, action plan of items to try to get funded, try to get done, so that we really have a much more strategic approach than we used to, where it was just pretty much you'd set the vision and hope for the best. We try to set the vision and then try to set some very specific things to work. So are there any plans that you all would like to see done from the administration side that we haven't done or funded? Any specific areas on the radar? Absolutely. Particularly the one this year, and I think as those in our budget links know, we in particular are looking for two studies this year, at least as it's gone through. We certainly asked for more, but we understand. Two things in particular that we hope to do this year. One would be the Windburn small area plan, which was the major, other than the two that we did this time, the Armstrong Mill West and the Cardinal Valley was the third major area that we felt should be studied because of the criteria that we looked at when we did the overall community comprehensive plan. We also like that area because we think there are many neighborhoods of the same era with the similar opportunities and challenges. so we think that by studying that area we will learn lessons that are portable to other similar type development areas where a lot of poverty and other issues have moved out from the central city out to those areas we think again that that will be very informative we are also looking for this time a study not a small area plan which would be a follow-up as an implementation item to the cardinal valley small area plan one of the major recommendations to study the feasibility of a major multi-use community center to help kick start you know economic redevelopment of areas like the oxford circle area in our community okay that's what i want to know so far so thank you for coming today i appreciate your your history lesson and the small airplane update and there's a lot of of other things I think that can come out of this discussion today. And those two plans you mentioned, are they funded in the budget? They are recommended in the mayor's proposed budget. I thought they were. Okay. And then on the multi-use facility, how do you study that? Do you go look at our other facilities and see if, you know, because in recent memory, I look at Charles Young Center. You know, we put a lot of money into that, but it seems to be underutilized. So do we learn from those things that we've done in the past to help? Well, one of the things that we looked at particularly in that is the opportunities of social services and the library and others. And again, until we get a little farther on the feasibility of many of those people sharing a single community center and to make those improvements, that's what the feasibility study really wants to address. But whatever you can do to keep the institutional knowledge with all these plans, regardless of who's sitting around this horseshoe or sitting in your department, we need to keep these moving forward if we're going to invest in them and make sure they're successful and it's worth the outcome. Well, I appreciate that and couldn't agree more, Councilman. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. And I realize how tight we are on time, so I'm going to ask this question knowing that you're probably going to have to get back to me. But I'd like to know how many community development corporations we've funded and how much. And I'm just kind of curious, as a new council member, what that looks like the last, you know, however many years. We can check, but I think certainly since the adoption plan, the answer is zero. Zero. We've helped form zero, and we've funded zero. There are partner agencies that do some of the things ACDC do that you do fund through community development block grant and through the budget process. But we can work with Irene Gooding and get you a list of those kinds of things. I think it would just be helpful for the conversation. That's all. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Brown, we recognize you as part of this committee now for a question. Thank you, Chair. Having just gone through the Armstrong-Mill West plan, it started last year prior to when I came into office, but I got involved last fall and all the way through the completion, and it was adopted by the Planning Commission April the 30th. I guess the question, the involvement here, and this is a pretty thick document, there is a lot of things in there that not only are related to particular areas within the plan, but this plan, I have to put it high on my list of preferences. is this Armstrong Mill West plan and the area basically is completely my 8th district, if you can vision that. And what I want to know from what we brought up is how do we move forward here? Obviously, I need some funding. I've got projects in here, and I'm already trying to adopt some priorities. and I know some monies that I need. And rather than just something like this to sit on a shelf, I think it needs to go forward as soon as possible. And my next direction would be, should I present the Armstrong Mill Road plan as far as a council member, what my needs and responses are and priorities are to this committee or to the council as a whole? because I want to move forward on this plan for my district. I'd say bring it back to committee. I can't put it in committee. I'm not a committee member. Yeah. Work session. At work session, you can. Okay. That'd be fine. And I would also offer, you know, hearing the tenor of this conversation, we would be more than glad to once, twice a year, however this group might feel fit, to have a standing item in terms of reporting on implementation activities associated with the small area plans. I think that would be a real good idea. We would love that opportunity to do that. Bi-annually, maybe? That would be great. Help us keep the spotlight on those things. Thank you. Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Chair. Chris, thank you for the presentation. And I, too, I just want to echo what Council Member Stinnett and Council Member Fred Brown. I think these studies are very important to specific areas. I was glad to hear that wind burns on your list, even though that's not in my district, but I'm familiar with the area and know that it has similar character of Cardinal Valley. So I just think they're very valuable to our community, and working with your staff on the Cardinal Valley Small Area Plan, along with the consultant, it was an experience that I absolutely loved. And I've already begun work with the help of the staff to possibly implement some of the recommendations. So I could bring a report back to this committee or whatever, but it is in the budget. It has support of the mayor. It's in the planning. But anyway, thanks very much. Well, I would defer a lot of that thanks, as you well know, to Jim Duncan, the manager of our— Mr. Duncan and Chris Taylor are fabulous. So thank you all. We feel that we have many fabulous, dedicated— Yes, you do. thank you councilmember henson councilmember acres thank you chair i'll try to be quick as well um i just want to follow i guess what councilmember senate was his concerns and i shared those same ones um looking through this list there are several um from that affect my district that i haven't seen a whole lot of follow-up or follow through with um coldstream research campus for instance with mixed use and residential and that hasn't come and i know that it's not that we can always you know mandate that or go build the stuff ourselves but I just would like to see the city be more active in the follow-through and once a plan is completed we also received a memo recently from Councilmember Henson requesting Versailles Road corridor study and I see that that was number 31 on this list that was completed in 2001 I'm sure that the corridor has changed in the last 14 years but again I mean are we I hope that we will pull that study and use it for reference and not you know replicate that or and she said that was from before she was on the council and and again we do change and you know so i just there's a whole lot on here that i think you know could be real really useful and making progress in planning and development and of our neighborhoods and communities so i'll help in that however i can but you know and i welcome the opportunity to sit down on any that you have questions about and what the recommendations and what has been done for instance cold stream anytime great thank you thank you council member miss mallory would you like to address the council members committee my name is billy mallory i live at 549 mustang crossing and i can give you a different perspective of small area plans because we actually have two small area plans in the first district central sector and east end small area plan and then the fourth street zoning is in the first district i was involved with the task force that did the central sector plan because i lived in central sector at that time then i moved to the east end and became intimately involved with the east end small area plan. Both of those plans are the grandfathers and both of them celebrated their six-year anniversary this past April. But the one that I know best because I slept with it under my pillow for the past six years and I know every goal, I know just about everything that's in that small area plan. And both central sector and east end small area plan called for community development corporations to help drive those plans. But there was no money provided, and there was no technical assistance provided. So most of what has been accomplished with the East End plan has been kind of in jolts and stalls, and there have been city things that have happened. There's been grassroots things that have happened because the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association took a tremendous ownership of this plan. But we had no money. And so my concern is having small area plans that call for CDCs, but then there's no money, there's no technical assistance. The first three years of the small area plan, because Andrea James had been such an intricate part of developing that, there was a lot of tracking, a lot of monitoring, there was a lot of meetings. and then there was the economic stall across the nation. And for the last three years, it's been much more difficult. There's been less coordination. We've called for annual reviews, but those have been very general and broad. But now that we're looking at the third and midland revitalization, we're looking at a TIF proposal, I think it's very imperative that there are regular meetings, again, that with the planning division, perhaps someone from this committee, people from the Neighborhood Association. We've developed many community partners over the last six years. And I think it's very essential, if this is going to go forward, that it needs to go forward in a very coordinated way. And it also ties into the street conversion because those streets run through central sector. And we're also looking at the legacy trail that will cross those streets. And so all of this really needs to be coordinated. And I have sent you all memos because I have some particular concerns about things that are listed in here as accomplishments that I think we'd probably disagree that these are really, some of these things have been completed to our satisfaction, such as the Charles Young Center being programmed. It definitely is not programmed to our satisfaction or to meet our needs. And for the third summer, there's no summer youth programming. And there's a couple of other things that I won't take up your time because I know you want to take a break. Ms. Nelt, we've got one minute. Well, I think it's really, I think my concern is that when things, when misinformation gets put out into the public domain, it's very difficult to write that information. And I don't know who did this, but I think it's real important to talk with the residents and ask them, because it also says banners were installed along 3rd Street, and there are no banners on 3rd Street. There are banners along Elm Street. So I just think it's important that there's ongoing communication and coordination of these plans. And I am extremely grateful that we have these plans but i think it's very important as we move forward that now there is starting to be some economic development that it needs to be coordinated and we're very grateful that just very recently um mr stennett and mr maloney gave us 500 each to develop to start a community development corporation but that has been strictly grassroots and uh we're basically um building something that we have really very little idea of what we're doing, except that we do have no lie to look at, and we've consulted with them. But, you know, we don't really have the money or the technical assistance, but we're doing the best that we can, and we're hoping that by July 1st, we will have a board of directors, and we'll figure it out as we go. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mallory, and maybe Mr. King, and you can get with Commissioner Paulson. Sounds like there's some unresolved issues that we're going to have to go forward with, So come back perhaps in the fall, and we can go over some of the issues that have been raised by the public and the council members. If there are no other questions, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Is there a second? Motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you.