The End ¶¶ Hello, everyone. Hello. Hello. Where's the... Hello, everyone. Let's call the meeting to order. And ask all the council members are here. I'll ask first for public comment for issues on the agenda. Mr. Mundy, is Mr. Mundy here? Mr. Mundy, no one signed on for issues on the agenda. All right. Before we go into the second item on the agenda, I just wanted to recognize a visitor here today, Sarah Enloe. Sarah is, Sarah, wave at everybody. There you go. Thank you so much. Sarah is marketing director for Fayette Mall here in Lexington, and Fayette Mall has generously volunteered to host an alternative community trick-or-treat event on October the 29th. And Sarah has been working with Monica and with Chief Barnard. So, Sarah, thank you. Thank you so much. Faye Amal and CBL and Associates Properties, we're very excited to work with the City of Lexington, Parks and Recreation, and the Lexington Police Department to put together a safe alternative for Trick or Treat on Thursday, October 29th, so that during an otherwise very busy weekend with Breeders' Cup and UK home football game, that we have a good place for our children and our families to come and trick-or-treat at the mall in a safe, warm, dry environment. And we really appreciate all the support, so thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Sarah. We wanted to give you a chance to speak so you don't have to stay through the full council meeting. And we appreciate it. Thanks very much. All right. That allows us to move on to our agenda. Are there any rezoning requests? All right, I didn't have any, and we have no docket approval this week required. Next is approval of the summary. Is there a motion to approve the summary of the approval? Second. A motion by Council Member Farmer, seconded by Council Member Scotchfield. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right, hearing none, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next on our agenda, budget amendments. There are no budget amendments for this session. And next is new business. Is there a motion to approve? Move approved. Second. Motion by Council Member Scotchfield, second by Council Member Farmer. Is there any discussion on the motion? Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. It's just about item H, the last item of new business, which is on page 12 and the best map to date on page 13. As a map maven, I wanted to thank you all for putting it in there. It illustrates perfectly what the study area is I look forward to this work and its outcome Thank you mayor. Thank you councilmember farmer I'm sure Commissioner Paulson Commissioner Paulson heard that Very exciting passion and passioned Generous thanks All right councilmember Hanson Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Farmer, for pointing that out. It's something that we're very excited about for that area. But I wanted to mention Item G and the fact that we have a canine who is retiring. And I think this tells a lot about our city when we do this in a very respectful manner. So kudos to Lieutenant Van Brackle for taking Elvis under his wing. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Henson. All right. Any further discussion? All right. If not, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. Next on our agenda is continuing business and presentations. Is there a motion on the NDS? Second. Motion by Council Member Scutchfield, second by Council Member Akers. Is there any discussion? All right. If not, we can vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Next is a Planning and Public Safety Committee summary. Is that by Council Member Scutchfield? Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, Mayor. I am presenting. Council Member Saadi obviously is not here today. The last planning and public safety meeting was on September 8, 2015. All council members were present. We discussed in fairly good detail the design excellence standards and guidelines and design excellence zoning ordinance text amendment. There was spirited discussion, I think, both back and forth. There were no motions made on the item. It is remaining in committee. I believe Council Member Massadi and Vice Mayor Kay worked together to put together a committee that will come back with recommendations to the committee or a subcommittee to come back. We also had discussion regarding insurance for firework displays proposed by Council Member Bledsoe. I believe we requested a return to committee for more information, which was done today. We'll talk about that next month. But a motion was made by Bledsoe to approve the administration's return to committee with a recommended policy for the best pricing of insurance for firework displays. Seconded by Henson, the motion passed without dissent. And then we had a motion to adjourn. Thank you, Councilman Scutchfield. All right. And next on our agenda is an update on the Breeders' Cup. And we have with us Kip Cornett and Bob Elliston and Vince Gabbert. Great. Well, as you all are coming to the podium, I'm sure speaking on behalf of the council, although I carefully do that, to say that in a few weeks we are going to have, we're going to experience what is perhaps in my lifetime the most visible, the highest visibility that Lexington will perhaps get. And it's great for you all to join us today. Thank you. Thanks, Vince. Thanks for all that Keeneland is doing. And Bob, thank you for representing the Breeders' Cup. And Kip, thank you for representing, I guess, all of the above and the festival. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of Council. It's actually our honor to be here. And before I say anything, please let me say thank you, thank you, thank you very much for all that this Council has done in support of the Breeders' Cup. I've said this wherever I go. The Mayor said it, and he said it with confidence the other day at the press conference. No community has stepped up and welcomed the Breeders' Cup in the 31 prior editions like Lexington, Kentucky. And it feels really special because this is our home. You know, when your hometown does that for you, it is a remarkable feeling for those of us involved. It's remarkable for the 55,000 people that work in the horse business who reside within 25 miles of where we stand right now in any direction. And what you're doing, what your investment's doing sends such a message to those folks about how important they are in this community. But it's going to tell a great message around the world. We've got folks coming in from 30 different countries that are coming into this community for not just the week of the Breeders' Cup, but they're going to stick around and buy a bunch of horses from Vince and the folks at the November sales as well. and the impression that you all are leaving and Kip and his team at the festival are leaving with those guests when they come in this community, they're going to tell everybody they possibly can about what a great experience they've had here. This council, I know, has, when it's difficult, when you have limited resources to allocate across your community and your commitment and the contributions you've made in support of beautification of this community, in support of fire and police protection as part of the festival. I know it's not easy, but I promise you we're going to do everything we can to return on your investment five, six, seven, ten times that. In past experiences we've had in California, in New York, even down the road at our friends in Louisville, it's been estimated that somewhere between $50 and $60 million of economic impact has occurred in those communities. I feel very confident in telling you I think we'll surpass that here. I think we could reach as much as $65 million in economic impact. And I say that confidently because I look at what we know already. Just what Breeders' Cup does in terms of hotel rooms, those guests that are coming to participate in the event or VIPs that are coming in from Asia and Australia and South America that are guests of ours that we're booking hotel rooms, We've got 4,200 room nights just under the Breeders' Cup banner of hotels. That doesn't count anybody that just bought a ticket that's coming into our community. So hopefully the hotels and the restaurants, and I hear both of them are very crowded that week and probably again the week after, are doing great. And that's an impact that we're very happy that we're helping with that. We've got national television for nine hours over the two days. That's going to be a huge commercial for Lexington in terms of the world watching that. The Triple Crown winner, American Pharaoh, looks like he's coming. We're going to keep our fingers crossed because he brings a new audience, and it was great what he accomplished, and that gives us another opportunity to tell the great things about Lexington and the great things about the horse industry that I know all of you all are very proud of as well. I can't say thank you enough on behalf of all 22 employees of the Breeders' Cup, whose home is right out on Harrodsburg Road. My wife thanks you because I don't have to travel to California. I can just go up north limestone every night and sleep, and I'm very happy about that. But it's really our pleasure, Mr. Mayor, to say thank you to the members of council and the entire community of Lexington for its warm, warm welcome. We're going to pay you back, we promise. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob. Vince, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Vince Gabbard, Chief Operating Officer out of Keeneland. I want to echo Bob's sentiments and let you all know how much we appreciate the support of the city, but more specifically, give you some insight into some of the operational changes that we've been doing and some of the planning that's been taking place. A special thank you to all of the city resources from fire, police, CMS, and everybody else that's been involved. We have, over the planning process over the last 18 months, have been holding what we call our Logistics Committee meeting. We're now up to just about every agency that you can think of this side of the Mississippi, including Homeland Security and the FBI. But the backbone of that has been our police and fire and EMS and helping us plan out and organize the campus, understand the traffic patterns, ensure that we've got every single detail covered as it relates to the public shuttling program. We'll have 175 buses running over the three days. We're counting the 29th of October as kind of our third day of Breeders' Cup since that's our practice day on campus. But we have everything. We've really worked through a lot of the details and trying to make sure that even though it is a little bit different day at Keeneland from a standpoint of getting to and from the place and getting on campus and getting to the races, we want it to be the best experience for every single ticket holder and also for everybody here in town so that we don't cause any confusion or cause any operational challenges for the rest of the city, but also put on the best show possible. So with all these different people that are coming from all over the world that are bringing the best horses that exist right now onto our grounds and with a chance to showcase them, we want to make sure that it's a great experience and a good opportunity for not only the area but the entire country to view this great amount of equine horse flesh. So happy to answer your question. I do want to say thank you. We've gone through a lot of – we have gone through a lot of detail, and the place is going to be a little bit different. we begin after we finish our race meet on the 24th the morning of the 25th we begin painting the place purple as we as we joke so for that entire week we'll have activities that are leading up to that on track as well as the stuff that kip's getting ready to talk about but we'll have morning workouts each morning and we'll have that open to the public so our crowds that come out on saturday mornings we anticipate those kinds of crowds and larger the entire week to be able to watch workouts in addition to the three race days so thank you all very much for all your support. And I'll turn it over to Kip and talk about the festival. Thanks, Vince. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks, Vince. And again, it all started with Keeneland, the courage I think it took for them to step up and ask for this to happen. And I know there's an old saying of beware of Greeks bearing gifts. As a small token of our appreciation, I want to leave for council and staff. They're not worth $35, Mr. Mayor, so there are no evidence violations. None whatsoever. But we're asking our hospitality industry and others to show the pride that we have in hosting this festival. And again, Keeneland and Breeders' Cup recognized early on that the city needed to really step up, and we have in so many different ways. And one of the first pieces besides creating this committee is we recruited 40 local citizens from literally every corner of town, every different occupation, to serve as advisors for the festival committee and building something that we think everybody's going to be proud of. And the second thing was right after that, we had everybody on board. We have raised over $500,000 to support programming, and that really came from the corporate community. And in one case, our second largest benefactor for the Kentucky One Health Breeders' Cup Festival is Mount Brilliant Farm. and they've actually stepped up to the plate and donated to be our second largest sponsor. And they just said, we want to send a very clear message that the farms care as much about downtown as downtown does about the farms, which was very important. And what that's allowed us to do, what you all have allowed us to do, is take that $500,000 and really turn it into tons of free programming, free appropriate programming, because without the city stepping up and you all showing your support, A lot of those dollars would have had to gone to infrastructure, but now we're able to put on a world-class festival. There's also been the media community has stepped up, and we've received over $600,000, probably between political commercials and Breeders' Cup festival commercials. You're seeing a lot out there, but they've really stepped up and supported us and Keeneland and Breeders' Cup in a big way. And we have been able to create a seven-day festival that will start on the 24th and run through the 31st. and kind of what I've been telling people is, you know, what's there, it's A to Z. It's art to zombies. We've got pretty much a little bit of everything for everybody. We've also recruited not outside just these folks that have stepped up to be our advisors on the host committee. We've recruited over 400 volunteers, and I'm proud to say that when we, from posting the opportunity to filling it up, took less than two weeks. So it showed that there are a lot of people that were out there willing really to help us. And like I said, I think one of the things that we wanted to make sure of is that we did have, you know, the much-cliched something for everybody. But I can tell you that 90% of our programming is free, open to the public, and we think that that's going to be great for the citizens as well as the folks that are traveling in for Breeders' Cup. A big focus on downtown, but I don't want you all to think that we have dependent totally on downtown. It's kind of the epicenter of what we're doing, but at the same time, we're doing things at Whitaker Bank Ballpark on the north end. We're doing things on the south end. So the whole city is being included in this. And we've been working, like Bob said, very closely. And I think that if you see your friends in the hospitality industry, I think they'll hopefully pat them on the back as well, because they've done a great job in stepping up and accommodating our guests and understanding there's going to be some challenges out there Breeders' Cup week. And at the end of the day, I think something that we can be proud of as a city is Bob has told me that once we get finished with this, and we're going to learn a lot, just like you do with any big event, that we'll see some wins, some losses, some things that will surprise us. We hope that we're actually going to be creating, thanks to your all's help and the local citizens, a transportable template that can be used in other cities that's never really happened before. So again, on behalf of the festival participants, our committee and everything else, we couldn't thank you all enough. And please visit if you have any questions about any of our events or anything about, glad to answer those questions. Or go to our festival website where you'll see everything on there. Thank you all very much for this opportunity. Thank you, Kip. Thank you all very much. All right. Kip, do you have questions? A comment? Councilmember Farmer. Thank you all. You've done a great job already putting the best foot forward. When I was driving down here for a meeting today, I noticed the public art on the side of the old Coach Craft building, which is just beautiful. It's simple. It's effective. It reminds me of some of the work that we're doing inside the Corridors Commission to do some plantings. And part of those plantings that you all will see and enjoy for years to come will be some kind of provocative public art to go along with that. So there's a lot in store over the next couple of weeks. Your gentleman's time here today is just so appreciated. Thank you very, very much. All right. Thank you all again so much for visiting with us today and giving us an update. Appreciate it. All right. Next on our agenda is the fire location study, and that's going to be presented by Commissioner Bastin and the fire consultant team. Thank you, Mayor. About a year ago, we embarked on a journey to do a fire location study. You all approved that. And I remember Ed Lane was a big champion of that effort. In June, we mailed out via e-mail a copy of the final report, which is very lengthy and chock full of details. But we certainly wanted to make the consultants available to you in the event, after you'd had a chance to look at this, that you could ask questions and have anything clarified that you felt like you might need. So I'm proud today to have with us two of the folks that worked on this project very actively from Public Safety Solutions Incorporated, Mr. Rob Brown and Bob McNally. So I'll turn it over to them, and I think they have a short 15-minute presentation, and then we can take questions. Mr. Mayor, members of council, good afternoon. My name is Rob Brown with Public Safety Solutions Incorporated. With me today is Bob McNally. He's our GIS specialist. He's our map expert, so he'll be able to answer quite a few of the questions on the data and the location studies that we did concerning your fire department. As I begin, I want to thank you all for the opportunity to do business with the city and the county. I want to commend your city staff and your fire department for the way they worked with us. They were very transparent. They gave us access to everything that we needed. And we found it a very pleasurable experience to work with your community. So thank you for that. As a University of Missouri graduate, I'm humbled to be here after you pummeled our team the other day. So thank you for that. So let's go. First, what I'd like to do is cover the scope of work. The scope of work that was given to us by the city was to continue delivering operationally efficient and high-cost effective system of emergency services. That was job one. From that, we wanted to conduct a fire station location study, look at the existing stations, where they're located, look at future station locations, and also look at some of the plans that were already on the drawing board to move some stations. We wanted to determine the proper levels of resources for the fire department to deploy over the next 10 years, balance safety expectations of the citizens, the risk factors, and the city's financial position. We wanted to provide an analysis, recommendations, and cost to implement those recommendations. Our recommendations were to be based on service demands, future development, and the high quality of public safety services that are expected by the council and the citizens in the community. Identify and provide cost benefit of regionalization and privatization, if there's any opportunities there, and assess fire station locations, fire prevention, and specialty services response, such as hazmat and other types of special operations. The intent of the study was to make recommendations, and I want to tell you a little bit about the way our firm works. What we want to give you is a tool. When we give you this study, it has recommendations, but these are recommendations that we come in and use data so that we can give you options. As you move forward, we hope that this will serve as a tool moving forward to help you plan for the future, but everything that's in that study is not absolute, and we're going to talk about that as we get into the presentation a little bit more. How many fire stations should the city operate, and where should they be? We're going to talk about that, and we've located both in the urban and the rural areas where we think current stations are that are well-placed and where we think there's some opportunity for improvement. How should the city prioritize its investments in the fire and emergency services over the next 10 years and take no exception to the scope of services, which we did not? We wanted to work with the city and the Lexington Fire Department to customize this report during the process. As I said at the onset, they were fantastic. Anything that we needed, we were able to get. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to my colleague, Bob McNally, to talk about the response-related recommendations. Okay, so in addition to the other recommendations that are contained in that rather bulky study that you have, these are the response-related recommendations. And number one is to complete a standard of cover analysis and document, implement a policy to tailor the use of lights and sirens based upon a criticality protocol. Not everything that the fire department responds to or transports to the hospital needs to have that kind of a level of response, and they should be able to decide which ones do and which ones do not. A responding from data point from the incident record, that will give future analysis a better handle on response time performance. Creating new incident records for EMS units already dispatched. What happens there is that a new incident record is created once, like on an automobile accident, the patient is transported to the hospital. a new incident record is created for the spill and the cleanup, and that creates a difficulty in getting an accurate count of what the workload is. Review the unit response configuration and urgency related to false alarms. False alarms for every fire department are prevalent, and each fire department takes different approaches to that, and we recommend that Lexington do the same. Relocate Station 2 as planned. We agree with the fire department's assessment of its future location. Consolidate station three and four. The next two relocate seven and station ten. For lack of space on the PowerPoint slide, this is a, we know that they're very close, our recommended location versus the current location. So this is one of those things to consider forward when in our recommendations we say, look at the building themselves and decide whether or not it's cost-effective to relocate in place or not. And then if you decide it's not, or in the future, you can look forward toward these other areas that are very nearby. This is an immediate recommendation that we have. This is a map that shows the current geographic extent or response time capability based upon four and eight minutes. This is a distance coverage from the insurance services office. They do ratings based upon distance from fire stations. The blue area, the green areas are the distance recommendations that they have for fire engines. You can see that there is some overlap. The blue lines in there is the overlap between the stations. not necessarily a bad thing because during a fire more than one apparatus responds from more than one station to create a effective response force to fight the fire this is discussed in detail in the study as well the same insurance services office looks at fire trucks the aerial trucks as far as how close they are these are especially important when you look at the coverage for tall buildings and buildings with large square footage. Statistics of coverage is also included in the report as well. You can see that in the center area there is some overlap with that, but when you have a high rise or a skyscraper incident, you're going to need more than one ladder track to respond as well. So at the end of the day in the report, we selected, we started off looking at the urban service area because that is where the greatest amount of population is the greatest amount of risk is and as well as the fire stations themselves and the greatest amount of demand that is that is placed upon the fire department so at the end of our analysis we we look at maintaining 11 stations three planned stations two relocated stations and one new station down along the south side for a total of 17 in the urban service area in the rural service area there's not existing stations two planned stations and one relocated station for a total of 12. i'll turn it back over to rob for this portion as we close out what we just talked about it's very important for you to understand that when we run the data and we place a station a quarter mile from an existing location that's because that's where the data places that station even if we were coming in with a greenfield study where we were looking at places to put stations the data mark may be in a certain point but land availability may be a quarter mile away so it's important when you look at those to understand that's where the data point is but if there is a station a quarter mile away it's more cost effective to continue to operate that station until such time that that station needs to be replaced and then you may want to look at the data point when you go out and search for new locations When we looked at the facilities, the first thing that I want to mention is that your folks take incredible care of the facilities. They do a lot of work on their own time. It's something I've never seen. It was exciting to go into these stations and talk to these people. A lot of the stations, as you know, are very old and are getting tired. When we looked at fire headquarters, there's immediate issues there, such as the heating, ventilation, air conditioning system. we did recommend relocation of the administration functions to a new facility they're very cramped they're using closets for offices and things such as that and it's just not a good working environment for the fire administration for investigation same thing immediate needs heating ventilation air conditioning system they have roof and wall damage in the building that they're in the structural integrity is and somewhat in question and needs to be looked at and we recommended replacement of that as well Facilities maintenance conduct a structural integrity assessment to assure serviceability moving forward we found some damage And some issues in that building the immediate issues again the HVAC system roof repair End area damage we did find some some mildew and mold and we'll tell your people are on top of that A lot of the studies we do we go in and we find that radon hasn't been considered Mold hasn't been mitigated and we found that that was already being addressed by your folks here in the city So we didn't find any problems there. Fleet maintenance, replace, relocate to a larger, safer, more adequate facility. The immediate issues there, also the roof and gutter repair and related interior damage. Dispatch building has an opportunity there with the consolidation of dispatch to remodel that facility to accommodate additional office space after the 911 center is completely transferred. We know they're going to maintain some of the 9-1-1 equipment in that building But there's also some space that should be freed up that will allow for some some expansion their training facility Replaced with a more with a more modern multi-purpose facility to meet the functional safety needs The immediate needs in that building alone Structural shower locker facilities are needed ventilation and floor drainage if I could show you a picture on the day We were there there was they had to run a a court outside to power a command unit so that they could use that as part of the facility. So they're making do with a facility that is tired and needs some attention. In general, if you look at the report, all the facilities, we recommended numerous times that structural feasibility studies be done and to take a look at the environmental aspects of the facility. A lot of these facilities are older. you really need to have an architect take a look and say are these remodelable so that we can reuse this facility or these facilities to the point where they need to be torn down and reconstructed and that's throughout the report so we know that that what we've given you is extremely costly and what we've recommended I guess what I like to say is is I'd like to have a million dollar life insurance policy but I can't afford it doesn't mean I love my family any less but I'd like to have it and we understand that what we're asking you to do here is very costly but we understand we also want to want you to know that again this is a report that we hope that you'll use into the future not everything has to be done immediately one of the things that was asked for us to take a look at was the EMS system we were very impressed with the EMS system we did have some recommendations to implement enhanced EMS public education for 911 calls CPR and AED training for the public much of this was already being done takes act take action to enhance utilization of 80s in Lexington there's some new technology out such as applications that can be put on iPhones and such that can get the public more involved so we recommended that they explore more opportunities there encourage the emergency care crews unit crews to determine need for license or in use for hospital transports we understand they're already looking at that and we're looking at that when we and made that recommendation. Implement medical dispatch priority system for EMS dispatch assignments in the new center. That will help you better use your resources. Conduct an assessment of the efficiency of the fire department EMS services, more of an overall study of EMS. Implement a comprehensive EMS deployment performance and outcomes data system. We've talked a lot about the data systems, and the data systems are old and tired. We had some difficulty being able to get some of the data because the systems need to be upgraded. It's not that they're not putting the data in, as Bob talked about earlier. When they add the data for the spill cleanup, it's because that's the way the system has to be done. So it's not that they're doing it incorrectly. It's just that the system doesn't work the way it needs to. So in the future, we're going to need to look at replacing some of the data systems, and I know some of that's already underway with the new 911 center. Lastly, the medical director and the fire chief should explore implementing community paramedicine. And that's one of the hot topics today, especially with the Affordable Care Act, is how can we embrace some of what they call treat and refer instead of transporting everybody to the hospital. In the past, we weren't allowed to do that. It's becoming more prevalent, but laws are going to have to change in the Commonwealth before that can be done. So although this is a recommendation, it's not low-hanging fruit by any stretch of the imagination. So with that, I'll open it up for questions. All right, sir. Thanks. Councilor Gibbs. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like you to elaborate a little bit on the closing of Station 3 on Marino Street. That's in the 3rd District, which I represent. So if you could tell us about maybe the condition of the building and other reasons why that decision was made or that recommendation was made. Thank you. What we looked at for Stations 3 and 4 was an opportunity to consolidate two stations. You have several stations in the downtown area. that's not uncommon for a community with a heavily used downtown district. The department that I retired from, we had stations that surrounded the downtown area because of the high incidents that would occur, especially during business hours and special events. With those two stations, we found that with one station where it was housing the heavy rescue and a medic unit, not an engine company, that there was the opportunity to bring those two stations together in the future if need be. Again, you have to assess whether or not the fact that the station is already there and operating, if it's serviceable, you may not want to do it at this time. It's something to look at in the future as you move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. Maybe you did say it. I didn't hear it, but the question I had, did you all look at having two on a buggy to compare to three on a buggy? We did not do a staffing study, no, sir. So y'all didn't look at that? No, no, the scope didn't include staffing. We focused more on the facilities and the system. Okay, thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I just had a couple of questions. I know in the past when I have toured the facility, there are a lot of apparatuses that set out in the weather. Did you look or did you have a recommendation for that? I know fleet was looked at, correct? Yeah, what we captured there was that in several of the stations we would point out where apparatus were sitting outside, recommended that they be placed inside. Some of these could be placed in other facilities. If other facilities such as the training academy and fleet maintenance were expanded, that would give additional space for indoor storage. Even at the headquarters facility, as you know, a lot of the apparatus sits outside because there's just no space. Okay. Thank you. I didn't see that in the report. And I guess then I would have a question maybe for the commissioner. as far as I know that many of the stations have maintenance needs, and if there's a plan that will be put in place to like an inventory with a timeline of when that would be corrected. Chief Jackson and his team are already working on that, already probably have a pretty good start on having a plan to move forward as funding is available. We realize this isn't going to happen overnight. It didn't get to this level. It took some years to do that. So it's going to take us a while as we can afford to based on priorities we'll address those maintenance needs. Yeah, and I think some of them are more critical than others. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Of course, this information I think that we have here is probably not new to most of us, especially if you've visited the main fire station, which is on, I believe, 2nd Street. Is that 3rd Street? And when you're looking at these facility recommendations, I believe most of those are at 3rd Street. Is that correct? Several of them are, yes, sir. and I don't know what our plans are, but it seems like it's like a piecemeal operation, and I saw when I visited it with Chief Jackson, I saw a lot of problems existing, some things that were just kind of taped together, so to speak, and when you looked at this, I didn't see any costs here involved. I guess you're not, you're not, you didn't do the cost analysis or anything of that nature. And I guess my question is maybe to the mayor, what's our process going forward? Because we really, I mean, we've got property up there on 3rd Street, plus we've got the Jordan Building, which has been condemned across the street. And we've got land there also. So do we have anything where we're proceeding forward to maybe do a complex, a fire complex, pretty much like a lot of other communities would do? If you're asking me, I don't have that information. You know, that's something we can look at, look at needs in comparison to the recommendations in the study and how we can best address those. So we just put stuff together up there from what I could gather. And just as a layman walking through and and observing things, I was disappointed. And I really feel like that we can do better. The city of Lexington, because we've got I mean, we've got fire stations out there. A lot of them are new and they work well. And of course, we've got maintenance problems there. But I know the third third street also operates as a fire station. and then has all the other amenities and the other things that we need to do as a fire prevention and to be on top of everything in a community our size. So, you know, I advocate that we do, we've got to look at this. This is, and I don't know that it's a long-range project when you're talking 10 to 15 years. I think we need to look at it pretty close. We've got the land, and we could move, and if we had a plan, and, you know, I would just hope that we'd get a plan out there that would be comprehensive into all these facilities and cost-effective also. So I just wanted to bring that out. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for this report. I think it's very thorough and enlightening. I really appreciate some of the recommendations that you made in the beginning of the presentation and hope that we can look at those further. I wanted to ask, looking at the map of the current station coverage, within the urban service boundary there's multiple gray sections that shows that the response time is eight minutes, I assume, or give or take. And so I just wondered what, I didn't see any recommendations in your report, or at least in this presentation, that address the lack of coverage in those areas? Those gray areas are between four and eight, not necessarily eight themselves. And also, we provided statistical coverage for the demand, the population, and the risks involved, as well as that. So you don't recommend, like in this list of recommendations, you have relocating stations and consolidating stations, but you don't recommend any new stations? There's one new station recommended down the south side, Station 25. We also do recommend the relocation of Station 2 that will move southeast, which will take care of some of that. also Station 17 back in toward Manowar and Polo Club Road, where that will move that back westward and cover into the urban service boundary even more. In addition, we also concur with the fire department's plan to build the station in Masterson Development. So that too will take care of some of those areas that are great. That's what I was hoping to hear. So thank you very much. That is where I live and the area that I represent. And so I just wanted to make sure that we had coverage in those areas. And I'm glad to hear the south side, too, because I was talking with my colleague here. I think that's her district. And so I just, you know, I don't want to see anybody in the gray, if possible. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Thank you, Council Member Akers. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. I was going to follow up on Council Member Akers. That same is a goal to move it. Do you have a recommendation from your committee of saying we think it should be within four, within five? Is there best practice? I'm just curious of getting those response times. There are industry guidelines from the National Fire Protection Association, and they are concurred with the Center for Public Safety Excellence for a benchmark of four-minute travel times. So, you know, if you have all the money in the world, every street corner, every inch is covered in the four minutes. it just depends on your situation, your coffers, that you can handle that. Also, the first recommendation that we had was to develop what's called a standards of cover. That standards of cover will take those statistics, the fire department will use those, and they will develop a standards of cover that will show them where they can get in the 48-minute response time and where they can't so that they can make more informed decisions moving forward on these other facilities. Okay, great. I do represent Station 20, and I'm glad you recognize the pride in our firefighters. Every Christmas holiday season, they put on a huge light show. And I remember asking them what time to ride along, you know, who pays for this? Well, we do. We collect the money. We pay for it as a community service. And there's a great deal of pride and honor in doing that. It's just huge. I mean, every evening you drive by Harrisburg Road and people are pulled off. My son loves it, but we consider our holiday party. So I'm grateful for that. know our community is and i'm glad you recognize um how much pride we have so thank you very much thank you mayor thank you council member bledsoe councilman maloney well wait a minute councilman maloney you have you already spoken okay If they mentioned the two or the three on a buck, I didn't hear that conversation. But if you're welcome, go ahead. I don't think they, I think they said that they didn't examine. Okay. Right. Council Member Hensley. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a couple of comments. One, I think the recommendations that you guys have given about the encouragement of the crews to kind of restrict their lights and sirens for transports versus emergent responses is progressive. And some of the liability the city might take in trying to run through traffic lights to get someone to the hospital with a broken thumb. So I hope the fire department and the MS takes that in a positive recommendation because I think it's not anything negative to the service, but I think it's a great risk to the city run through traffic lights for issues that aren't emergent, so to speak. and then on the seventh item as you've got for the medical director and fire chief to explore implementing community paramedicine i don't know as a city council if there's anything we can do to send a resolution or something to the state saying hey embrace this idea to cut down some of the responses that we've got i don't know what our actions could be to kind of encourage them along in that understanding that is a state law issue not something that we can take care of here any recommendations you guys have please share with me later the other question i had is on consolidation of stations three and four you know my understanding is that station four is a an older maybe the oldest station in this city and the equipment being what it is did you all explore an opportunity to build a new facility between those two so that there's something that's optimized between those versus what we consistently heard was to try and hang on to the traditional structure for the historical value one of the things we've seen architects do nationwide is convert and reuse buildings so we looked at the opportunity for the land next door to incorporate the station possibly moving the apparatus band using the existing structure in a different means, but still be part of the fire station so that you can hang on to that historical structure. Okay. So keep the historical piece where it's usable, but then build a state-of-the-art attachment to it more or less? Correct. Okay. All right. And then in the projections you've got for the urban service area, did you all do any kind of projections in the rural service area for response rates? I mean, I live out there. Yeah, once again, industry guidelines indicate that in more rural sections, a longer response time is reasonable. How much longer? And up to 25 minutes. It depends on the level of population that's there. Okay. The way the standards of cover works is it will give you in some rural areas up to 25 minutes. But that's a policy decision. Again, what they're looking at, they're putting a blanket standard that will work nationwide. So when you get out in the frontier states, 25 minutes is a godsend if something shows up. So it's really a local policy decision is how you want to look at your area. And when you look at this, when this standards of cover document is developed by the department, But that would be brought to the council for action so that that becomes a policy of the council so that they know how to plan for the services not only in the urban but the rural area as well. And that's an issue that, you know, even though it's in a rural service area, I mean, we have Westmoreland and Greenbrier, which are highly dense subdivisions, that you're projecting a 25-minute response time without any calculations to support that? I don't think you have any. The 25 is what's in the state. I don't think you have any of those issues currently. You're much better than that. But when you look at the standard, it's going to give you some wide latitude, and then that's where the policy decision comes in. Could you all run those projections in the rural service area? Certainly can. I'd be interested in seeing those. I can tell you what it is. That's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. If I might follow up to one of your – about the transports. One of the things that the reason a lot of departments have hesitated to go away from emergency response transports is because of recovering resources. So when you have limited paramedic units, if they're caught in traffic just trying to get to the hospital, then you start running out of resources. So one of the things that we've recommended is to do it when you can, but there's going to be times when they're going to have to continue emergency transports because they're going to have to recover their resources. Something that's as needed, I wouldn't expect it to be a carte blanche policy, but if you've got to go, you've got to go. Council Member Evans. Thank you, Mayor. You mentioned that the focus was on the facilities and something else. I didn't catch what the other part of it was, but what was the focus? The scope of services? Yes. The focus on the facilities and the placement of the stations, and then we also focused on EMS as well. Okay. And my other question, I think, is probably to the commissioner. Approximately how long, realizing that this is just one tool, But how long would you expect a comprehensive plan of some sort, like Councilmember Brown was talking about, to take? Because this, I feel like it's kind of deja vu when we're talking about the street paving kind of thing. I feel like we've kind of gotten that same type of information here. so how are you going to use it or what's the time frame of bringing something full back to council or just having a time frame for the fire department in general? It depends on how much depth that you'd like. If you want some cost projections, then certainly that's going to extend the time frame out to go along with some of the recommendations. I know Chief Jackson and his team have been looking at this since they first laid eyes on it and they have a very good sense of priorities on what they believe needs to be addressed first as money is available. If we wanted to look at it comprehensively, that would take some more time for us to get together and for their team to actually figure out, to try to get estimates and those kind of things. It would be several months, I would say, Council Member Evans, before we could be ready to have that discussion. yes i would just think um yeah regardless of money just saying what what do what what needs to be fixed i mean again kind of mirroring council member brown's surprise when i i went to visit fire station too you know there were just you know some things about the facility that i was just rather surprised about um and you know there are no complaints you know generally from from the firefighters but it was just well i would want something better and i do want something better for for our firefighters so um yeah i was just curious money aside what what is the big picture and what what will it cost a big comprehensive plan for i guess the best fire department that that we could could achieve it's kind of really what I'm in the in the study the original study the large book there was a projected recommended time frame for looking at some of the recommendations it protracted out over it protracted out over a five-year period so you know that's there's a lot of recommendations that are in the study so it'll take some some time for us to get together and prioritize and then look at some potential cost information so that we can give you a product that you can actually work with. Thank you, Council Member Evans. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. As far as the implementation policy to tailor the use of lights and sirens, did y'all give any specific recommendations on ways to address that? For transport? Yeah, for transport. That would be up to their medical director. We recommended that they have that discussion with their physician, with the medical director, and determine what those were, what they would be comfortable with in transporting non-emergency. Well, I guess, you know, to take it a step further, maybe just responding to calls as well, and has the, I guess this is probably a question for Commissioner Baston. Is that something that the fire department has already started to look at, you know, when to flip the switch to turn the sirens and the lights on? In terms of responding to a call for an EMS run? Yes, sir. Or a fire run as well? Not with EMS right now. I'm not aware of any discussion about the fire run. And a discussion that we had with the medical director, until you actually lay eyes on the patient and do an assessment, sometimes you don't know what you're going to encounter when you get there. So the thought was that we continue to respond in an emergency manner when someone calls for an ambulance, but then once the patient assessment is done by the EMS staff, then they would make the decision then as to whether or not the condition of the patient actually justified use of lights and siren, whether they really needed to travel in an emergency. So this is a step to look at managing risk and still maintaining a very high level of care. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. Commissioner, before you sit down, we brought up a number of new locations and consolidations, et cetera, today. But can you give us an update on Station 2 relocation and where we're at on that? Because I think we approved the money about a year ago to get it going. We, you know, John Sheed probably can do a little bit better job of where we are today with that. I know it went out to bid. We received some information. I don't know if he's here. Yeah, there he is. He knows a lot more about the building procedure than I do. I've been involved in some of the meetings. Okay. He's been following. I think some of us thought we'd already be underground, broken ground by now. We had the bed opening a couple of weeks ago. We had three successful bedders that turned in proposals. Unfortunately, the lowest bed is still above what our self-imposed cap for the project is. We've done quite a few value engineering with that project, and we continue to do so. So currently we're in discussions with the consultants and taking a second look and see if there are any opportunities to maybe, if we can justify a rebid and be able to make some adjustments to see if we can recognize some additional savings. And when you say above, above the additional money council gave? I believe council. Four million. Four million was, and they already had $100,000 for the initial study. The beds came in, the construction beds came in. The lowest one was $4 million, right under $4,600,000. So by the time you add your soft costs to the project, then that you're talking about in excess of $1 million. Okay, so what's our time frame to get an answer back? We're trying to see if we can find. The idea is trying to still, if we even have to do a rebid, if you feel there is an advantage to be gained before council leave for the Christmas break is to have it reviewed by the council and approved so we can go ahead and officially award the project. Okay, because we're running out of construction season obviously now. Yes. So we're pushing us into March. And as Councilman Evans alluded to, Station 2 is not in any way a place anyone would want to stay any length of time. That is correct. We need to get this project moving as fast as we can. And so if we can help, let us know. I guess this asks me a question for the consultants then. Do you recommend, as we look at new stations and as we relocate stations, a process or a roadmap to follow in doing so? Because, you know, if we keep running into a situation like we're overbidding or bids come in higher than what we've budgeted or under budgeting, I should have said, is there a process or best practices out there on building fire stations and the cost per foot that we can get a better accurate assessment? Because it seems like we're going to be doing this a couple more times coming down the road. Traditionally, communities will hire an architectural firm to work with them to project those costs. As the gentleman mentioned, value engineering is very popular these days to try and whittle down from the must-haves to the need-to-have versus the want-to-haves. So I would say that as you move forward, as you see in the report, we've recommended that an architectural firm do an analysis of the current structures to see if they're able to be refurbed. And quite frankly, one of the things, especially in this day and age of trying to reuse things, you'll find architects used to just want to tear things down and build new. You'll find a lot of architects now that will come in and try and use the existing structure, modernize it, enlarge it. So I would recommend that would be your next step. Okay, very good. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Akers, if you haven't spoken, you have? All right, then we're going to go back to Council Member Maloney, then Henson, then Akers. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank you all for this presentation. And this isn't the first time I've heard this for years about all these stations that we've had problems with. So, everywhere from three and four to problems with one and all that, but I do think it's an eye-opener that we see these kind of things. Now, the concern I have is the conditions we have in right now with these older buildings, and you guys went out there. You consider them a high priority that they are in pretty bad shape, that they're not up to standard for what our fire department should be right now? Several of the buildings would be a high priority to look at immediate remediation of some of the issues and make sure that they're structurally sound. I think moving forward, you have some time once you do that to catch up. As the commissioner said, it didn't happen overnight. You're not going to be able to fix it overnight. So this gives you a good plan to start down that road. Your fire department and your city staff have a pretty good handle on what the immediate issues are, and they're working to address those. They were working to address those before we came in to look at them. And I have to say that in doing reports like this, oftentimes we find that fire station locations that have been selected are usually in the wrong place. And in this case, the locations that you all selected for Station 2 and the new station in the Masters Station area were right on the money with what we found when we ran the GIS study. So you've already got people working on that. I think it's just continuing. Well, and what I'm, this council here, this has been going on for years. We've been kicking the can down the road, and nobody has fixed these problems. And as they continue to get older, the more serious the problems become. And I'm not going to, but when we built this jail, it's state of the art. And I hate to tell you it, but I think the jail may be in a lot better shape than what we have a lot of these fire stations when these guys are living in there over 24 hours a day. I just don't want to – and that's what brings to the point now. We have some funding. We are going around seeing where we can increase our bond capacity and things like that. And I just don't know what the administration or what we are planning to do. But to me, this is something that should be high on our priority list. We've been kicking this can down for years and years and years. And we all know that those stations are in bad shape. And I commend Council Member Stenet for getting the second station finally getting on, which, as you all know, four years ago I thought it was supposed to have been done a year later. But that's a different time, a different story. But I think this administration and this council, we need to put our priorities list together and see what is most important. Now, we have each thing, but also what we're doing across this city right now. Now, this is a lot of money, but there's a little window of money that we have. It is small. But I think we all need to sit back and put a list of what is the most important thing that we're here to make this a better city, what the mayor is pushing for. And to me, to have a good fire department, a good police department, is one example of making a great city. And leave these people in the condition they're living in right now. and to make sure that our constituents are getting the service, especially in the rural areas and places like that, we've got to put our priorities for public safety number one. And before we start, I know we're going to be busy for the next few months looking at these certain projects coming here, but we've got a budget coming next year, and I'd like to see that we back off and start putting our priorities. What's number one, number two, number three, number four, or number five? I don't want to sit there and throw all these ideas out here, and we don't have a priority for each one of these. So there's a lot of money out there. So hopefully, if we go through, and I want to thank you guys. I've heard this a bunch, but finally opened up a lot of people's eyes to how important this is. So thank you. Councilmember Henson. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to clarify, I don't know, Commissioner or Chief Hoskins, Assistant Chief Hoskins is back there, but I know that our fire department maintains records for runs, the time on our runs. and at one point we were saying we wanted to keep it at four minutes or below. Is that correct? I'll let Chief Hoskins address that. He's much more familiar with those. Because I didn't want people watching that live out in a rural land think they're doomed. Yes, the National Fire Protection Standard that Chief Brown quoted, first company should be on the scene within four minutes and the balance of your response within eight. And, you know, quite frankly, in a very rural area, that's difficult to manage. But we strive to at least get there within eight. And, you know, the data you saw is data from our historical run volume and our activity. So, but do you already have the data available of the run times for the entire city, right? Yes. So have we ever taken 25 minutes to get? The only time I can ever think of a 25-minute response would be in the ice storms, some of those where we have to prioritize calls, and obviously a report of a fire falls way below, I think I smell something. And those are very unusual circumstances. And the EM, I think they're both critical, especially if you have a person in a burning structure. But with EMS and you get a call that someone's not breathing, it's very critical to meet those times. So I was just, I know that you already have those numbers. Yes, I don't think a 25-minute response would be acceptable for the Lexington Fire Department. I can promise you it won't be. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to ask, thank you all for bringing this presentation forward, and I wanted to ask if you would expand on the reasons for your recommendation to relocate station number 7. I'm just curious. That data point, the analysis kept coming up with about a quarter mile north of where it's currently located. It just kept coming up that way. And so I have to report it because, after all, I am an analyst. But as you read through the report, you can see that it's a consideration, not something that needs to be done right now. Obviously, throughout the report, there's other things that are a higher priority. But that is a point of concern so that when you look at 7 and you say, can we do a review of the facility, is it something that we should tear down? Is it something we should build up? And if we could just rehab it, well, we could leave it where it is. But if in the future we want to look at a new location, that's the point you want us to start looking toward. But it's not much like some of those other relocations that we did talk about, like 2 and 17. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. All right. That's all the council members who've signed up to comment or ask questions. So thank you all very much for joining us today. Thank you. That allows us to move on to council reports. If council members will please sign up, I'll call on you. Council Member Loney. Thank you, Mayor. I know that this Thursday is going to be a fun time, and I appreciate sheep on our getting everything ready. My question is, there's a lot of people that are letting off work early. What is the government planning on doing that day? Are we going to let people off, or are we going to continue to work the full day? Do you have any idea yet? I don't know. What was the question again? There's a lot of places that are letting people off Thursday because of the traffic problem. We've got Keeneland. We've got the football stadium going on. A lot of people get there. We plan to let employees off early. No, sir, we were not planning on letting employees off early. And, of course, if anybody wishes to take a couple hours of vacation or so, or their comp time, we'll certainly allow them. But, no, we are not letting employees off early. Thank you. All right. Any other council members sign up for council reports? Council Member Fred Brown, then Council Member Farmer. Yes. I'd like to, I think, maybe it was Monday's paper, but there was an article in there about Mill Creek Elementary School. that is coming forward. And I've had an opportunity to meet with Dr. Greg Ross out there and very pleased with what he's doing and what the students are accomplishing out there. And I think we need to recognize and appreciate what that elementary school is doing. And I've been pleased with the success. And I think he's got things going in the right direction. There's an area on it. It's on Appian right off Appian Way. So there's a lot of low income students out there or families. And he is doing a fine job. And referring to that, Milk Creek Elementary is going to have a fall family fund this Thursday at 6 to 8 p.m. at the school. So I want to announce that. And then one other announcement, Gainesway Neighborhood Association will be meeting this evening at 7 p.m. at Tate's Creek Golf Course. Thank you. All right, sir. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, Mayor. Just two things. I'll be meeting with the Lansdowne Merrick Neighborhood Association this evening. Look forward to being with them at their annual meeting. and then on Tuesday before we have a regular set of meetings here we the administration has arranged for us to take a tour of the senior center senior citizen center construction site I look forward to meeting all of the council members out there for that thank you mayor thank you sir council member Evans thank you mayor I would like to let let the other council members know and and those watching as well, that Council Member Brown is bragging on Mill Creek, I'll brag on Bryan Station, Bryan Station High School, that I, along with Council Member James Brown and Council Member Akers, attended the breakfast for the Academy of Informational Technology. And those were just an impressive group of kids. They were very excited about stuff I had absolutely no idea about, But they were explaining it and just really excited about what they've been able to do in the program. And all of them are college ready. They all have plans to go to college. Trying to convince them to not forget Lexington when they go away and often into the world. But I would like to also let you know that there were three students who have, and let the council know as well, that there were three students who won a state competition, and they are actually going to Microsoft. So we are very excited about that and hopefully the city, the council in particular, can help with that as well as be a participant in the future. These are students that do internships throughout the city and I'd like to see that hopefully maybe we can be incorporated in that as well. So again, great things going on at Bryan Station High School as well. Thank you. and council member hensley thank you mayor um this may not i just had a thought you know with this football game with thursday night with the students at uk um i know they're being asked to leave campus along with the staff to make room for game day parking or have we done anything to coordinate with the vacant parking that's downtown that we own to offload some of that as a relief I mean, I just end up, who would know the answer to that? I'm sorry, do that again, Russ. Have we done anything to? So UK is asking their staff and students to leave campus for the game. So there's like 10,000 people without parking is the number. Right. So all the hospital staff and the students are being asked to leave Commonwealth Stadium's parking. and we have parking. Can we? UK has been planning this for over a year, and they've got all the parking organized, as far as I know. I don't know whether we offer to contribute any vacant parking or not. My wife is faculty at UK, and she does not think they have this taken care of. I put her on the hot seat, but it's just saying. All I can say is starting last August, they started meetings to coordinate this Thursday night football game. And I can't speak to where everyone's parking, but I'm assuming they have it. So we have not worked with UK to offer any of our coordinated parking that we have downtown to relieve that. Mayor and Council Member Hensley, not to speak to the downtown, but as it pertains to the football game, we've worked with the administration in the Senior Center, which is located at the corner of Alumni and Nicholasville Road. It will be closed to participants on that day. We have about 100-plus parking spaces. that on a traditional football game, we rent out to patrons that come in park, and we're going to have that available that morning. But the participants will be closed that Thursday and reopened that Friday morning. That's the senior center. All right. Thank you, Chris. We can look into that. I mean, there's just a general sense, I think, on campus that they don't know what to do. I mean. Council Member Gibbs. On this issue, I'm a faculty member at BCTC Cooper, and we don't have classes that day. We scheduled our fall break to Cohen, so we were sort of coerced. My understanding is to have our fall break at that time. So the BCTC parking is all available as well. So they have been working on this for a long time. Could still screw up, but they have been working on it. Council Member Stenton. Council Member Hensley, they have, UK has already told their students, they're parking actually at Whitaker Bank Ballpark and shuttling them and at Southland Christian Church on Richmond Road. So they've already made that announcement. I know a number of students are already going to want to move there. All right. All right. Council Member Akers. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Mayor. Was that? Sorry. Sorry about that. First, let me make a couple of announcements. Tonight, I will be attending the Metathorpe Neighborhood Association meeting that begins at 6.30 with social time, and at 7 o'clock will be the meeting at the community center there in Metathorpe. And tonight, Senator Reggie Thomas will be joined by Josh Samples from the Department of Transportation to discuss the sound barrier that is proposed along the New Circle Road expansion behind the neighborhood. So I know that there are lots of people in Metathorpe interested in that sound barrier, so please join us tonight at 7. Also, for those of you not attending Metathorpe, the McConnell Springs is hosting their final History to Chew On series tonight at 6.15 at the McConnell Springs Park. The speaker is Gwen Thompson, who will be discussing the life of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. So come learn about the controversy she faced during the American Civil War from both sides. You can bring a snack, and the park will provide soft drinks and water. and then um i have i brought this up last week and no one was here to respond so i'm going to try again today and hope maybe someone can answer i think it's going to be dowel but because i don't see anybody here from dda or anyone else that might be involved so this is about the short street lane closure and um the use of the street by private businesses and so I have questions about that if somebody could come and try to answer some for me. I'll do my best. Okay. So this was presented to us a few months ago, I guess, by the DDA and just as a sort of announcement to us that this is happening and not really something that was permissioned by council, granted. So I know that it's a pilot project, but I guess since it has been implemented, there are questions about why was it done on that section of the street? Why only the north side, not the south side? Why not a block down by Village Idiot and Table 310? Why not a block up in front of Shorty's? So I'm just curious if anybody can respond to those first questions, or if you can. The design of the temporary streetscape was coordinated. We looked at a whole bunch of options. To keep parking all on one side we thought was the best solution. And why the north side was selected over the south side, I mean, I can't give you specific reasons for that. But that was coordinated, you know, over many months, how the layout and striping would be implemented. And were you involved then? Was the city involved? Who paid for the striping, the painting, the planters, all of that? The planters were repurposed from, they were in storage and parks. The striping was paid out of Commissioner Holmes, Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works budget. I think it was streetscape money that was reallocated to Short Street. But yes, we did a lot of coordination in advance, and we have done coordination since. I met with Brandy Berryman and Jeff Fugate and Commissioner Bastin this morning to talk about continuing loading zone issues and beer trucks, double parking and blocking traffic. And, you know, there's a lot of things that we've learned throughout this process. And I think that's what we wanted. We wanted to get to, you know, it's a temporary project. We wanted to understand how, what are the problems, what went great and what has gone wrong and learn from those. And if we were to ever make this project a permanent streetscape project, we've certainly learned a lot of things along the way to inform that permanent installation. Yeah, so almost, I don't know, maybe not daily, but weekly, I hear complaints of just the congestion downtown, Short Street specifically. And with Upper Street closed, businesses around that Upper Street, Short Street area are impacted. And so when we're blocking traffic on the other end leading up to that, it just doesn't seem to make good sense, particularly given that we're expecting a large influx of people to come into town for the Breeders' Cup. A lot of them will be downtown, and I just see it as being a cog in the wheel of downtown traffic flow. So, and I don't understand who came up with it, why it benefits two businesses and no others, why those businesses are allowed to have seating. What happens if someone wrecks and kills someone, God forbid, but sitting in the street? Who's liable? Are we liable? Do the businesses have to get insurance policies to cover the city? All of those questions. I don't think it doesn't seem to be very well thought out. All right. So I don't know if Dowell's going to be able to answer these questions. Probably need the DDA representatives here. And five minutes is gone. So if you want to continue with that inquiry, I would suggest maybe getting them here or going into committee. I think he knew it was going to be on the agenda and just that's why he's coming out here. And I'm not going to suggest that. So you can suggest that if you wish, of course. Thank you. I think Jeff does have plans to address council with the lessons learned sometime in November. All right. Thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief. But I just wanted to say thank you to you for responding to the request that I made for asking about a commission, a Douglas Park Centennial Commission. I know we had the press conference in the park yesterday. It was myself, the mayor, Council Member Akers, Ms. Director Conrad from Parks, the Neighborhood Association, and other partners. I'm excited about the naming of this commission. You know, they're going to do more than just plan the Centennial event for Douglas Park next year. They're going to plan year-long activities. I think this is going to be a good effort. And I think it's going to be a good opportunity for the community to heal from the tragedy that occurred in the park this summer. And I think by you agreeing to appoint this commission kind of shows that the city has a desire to see this community rebound and rebuild. All right. Thank you. All right. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to get a clarification. the presentation we just had on the fire station location studies. Council Member Lane, as you all remember, he pushed for this study. He also asked a question about the buggy, and I asked that same question to see if they did the presentation. I went back into the manual that they did the study. They came back and said that the two to a buggy is not as accurate as good as three. They have more serious injuries and all that, and they said three is a lot more efficient and is a lot better to do as a three-person staff. So there was a study done on this, so I just want to let everybody know that the two did not get a good rating and the three did get an estimate rating, so I want to let everybody know that. Thank you. All right, Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to go back to Short Street for a minute, and I'd like to share some of Council Member Aker's concerns. But I think there's a couple of things going on there, and I think we need to make sure we keep them sorted out There's the redesign which I haven't had too many complaints about it is in my district Except for the back-end parking I've had just a handful of complaints about that but a lot of the complaints have surrounded the construction over there And so I think some people are thinking okay There's a problem with the design and there may well be but I want to make sure we keep these separate the problems with the design and and the utility projects going on over there. And I've spoken to CO Hamilton about this, and she's coordinated with Commissioner Paulson and Commissioner David Holmes. And Sally, would you want to say anything about what you guys have done over there to try to, or anybody about you've been trying to minimize the impact for the merchants over there? Is that correct? Derek, thank you. If we're talking about utilities work, I will be honest with you, We have done what we can, but in terms of utilities work, there is not a great deal we can do except for try to get them to get it done as quickly as possible. What we do is we do put out, in terms of right-of-way cuts and things like that, every week we put out a report. We try to work with them. It's not always the easiest to get information about when utilities work is actually going to start. We get a window sometimes, and I know this particular work, in terms of Kentucky American Water, they've started, they had to stop, and they've started again. So there's been a little bit of start and stop, and I'll be honest with you, It's because of some 106, some historical issues, so making sure they get everything done. Again, the thing that we often do with utilities is try to help them get it done as quickly as possible because, as we know, as many of you know right now with utilities work, I know in my own neighborhood we're having work done, it's not the most convenient, but it just sort of has to get done. So that's where we have attempted to work with them at this point. There is a lot of utilities work going on, and from what we understand, it should be finished fairly soon. Like soon enough for the Breeders' Cup? We hope. You know, this is one of those things. Honestly, when you're working downtown in utilities, the issue that you run into is there's so much old utilities work, and you're never really sure what you're going to get until you open things up, and that's often what they find. And with the amount of utilities work, again, we're dealing with pipes that are in some cases 100 years old. So some of the work is significant. And, again, what they often tell you is you just don't know until you start getting in there. We hope it will be done. And we'll do what we can. A lot of it has to do with the contractors and making sure that they have what they need and getting everything as completely finished as quickly as possible. Okay. Thanks very much. We have passed it on that we would love to have it done quickly, well before the Breeders' Cup. And I will tell you this, they tell us the same thing. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Council Member Hensley. Just going back to the Schwartz Street thing, it's a great project, I think. And I think some of the issues that Jake may not be hearing from constituents may be that it's a two-cycled kind of problem. Like there's the business users during the day and then the nighttime. And just I drive through there every day. And one comment I would have is like I almost need a beer truck holding area to get them off the street. Because that is a huge congestion issue just to get those large vehicles or the delivery vehicles, FedEx trucks, whatever. out of some of those locations would be a huge improvement to that problem. And so it's too, like when I'm down there in the evenings, it's not the same problem as when you're driving through there at 10 o'clock a day. And just to make sure everybody's also looking at it, there's two problems there to be solved. All right. There is no mayor's report today, and that allows us to move to public comment. No one for public comment, so that allows us to move to adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion by Council Member Stenet, seconded by Council Member Farmer. Unless there's objection, we are adjourned.