This is the Transportation Policy Committee meeting for August the 28th, 2019. I'd like to call to order. Judge West is not available today, so I'll chair if we don't have any problem there. I don't think I need a motion or anything. Okay. Let's go ahead. I think the first thing on the agenda is, let me get the agenda. Welcome everyone, and I think we've got some action item here. First there'll be a call for public comment. Is there any public comment before we get started on this meeting? Seeing none, we'll go into the action items on the agenda. Approval of the June 26th and July 31st TPC meeting minutes. So we've got two of them that were, and they were in your packet there, so I need a motion to accept those minutes. Don't everybody be shy. We have a motion. Second? Second. Got a second over here? I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes for June 26th and July 31st. Any discussion? Any questions on the minutes? Having none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. We've accepted those. The next action item there, we have Mr. Rob Brumke of Blue Grass Tomorrow. Max, do you want to introduce Rob or anything you need to come up with before we go? Not really. This is, yeah, Rob Brumke is the director of the Blue Grass Tomorrow, and he would like to get up and talk to you about the regional land use partnership. And we can, after his presentation, I can talk to you about where we want to go with maybe passing this as a resolution. It doesn't have to be done today, maybe at our October meeting, but however, Mr. Brumke will explain, and welcome. Thank you, Max. Welcome. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. Some of you folks may have heard this presentation or something similar at the LFUCG committee meeting and then the council meeting, but I'll briefly go through this. I know you have a busy agenda, and I just want to give you the overall parameters of this project. You'll see on the screen here the various partners that have been part of this planning, the American Farmland Trust, the Blue Grass Land Conservancy, Blue Grass Area Development District, Fayette Alliance, Woodford Forward. Some 170 other elected officials and stakeholders have been a part of this process. If you don't know anything or much about Blue Grass tomorrow, this is a little bit about our organization. We have two divisions. One is the Blue Grass Higher Education Consortium, and the presidents of our 12 colleges and universities are the board of that group, and we've got lots of great projects. The Blue Grass Forever Green area is our conservation, preservation, sustainability. There are a number of things at the bottom there that we've been working on. One in the future that we'd like your help, the MPO, the Blue Grass Ad, District 7, is a conversation with the region on transportation. These are some of the partners that we have with our Blue Grass Forever Green division. Just a little bit of background, this is our Blue Grass Tomorrow footprint. We're the first tier of counties around Fayette and the second tier of counties. Some research that we did, and this was going into our end of 2017 summit that we had on regional land use planning. These are the counties that have some kind of joint or county-wide planning. Obviously, Mercer, Garrett, Estopal, the others have planning, but they're individual cities and they're not joint or county-wide. Then, these are all the counties that have some kind of language in their plans about preserving agricultural lands and important land use areas. Those were defined as limiting sprawl, preserves the agricultural industry. There were legal mechanisms to preserve agricultural lands or encourages infill redevelopment. Again, going back to that slide, all of those counties had that kind of wording and verbiage in their plans. These are the counties that have urban service boundaries. Again, we haven't checked on this since the end of 2017, but we're going to continue to update this information. Again, this is the thoroughbred farm acreage, not just thoroughbred, but equine as well, but in the order over 92,000 total acres that are really important to farming and agricultural soils to the region. This is always an interesting slide, but it's the way it looks at night. You can see this MPO, Lexington down to Nicholasville. Those lights are on brightly all the way through there, but you can see where there are no lights. That's really where a lot of our prime agricultural lands are. This is the area that we're talking about when you're talking about protecting our prime bluegrass soils. This is a very unique geophysical region, but it's really the inner bluegrass counties that we're talking about here and also going down the U.S. 27 and 127 corridor down to Boyle County, Anderson County. Those counties are all part of this really important farmland as well. Obviously, Bluegrass Tomorrow and other organizations have always talked about transportation and our major transportation corridors as being the places that we should grow. When we're making choices about expansion and economic development, it's certainly along these major corridors and major interstates, Bluegrass Parkway, et cetera. The agricultural cluster is huge and unique to this region. It's why our bluegrass soils are the centerpiece of our sustainability program. The Maryland Farmland Trust, we're a good partner with this organization. Kentucky's lost 499,000 acres of farmland in the last decade to low-density housing rural development. These are five and 10-acre lots, single house being built on those kinds of properties. Here are the counties in red that there is a threat to farmland, and you see most of the inner bluegrass region as part of that. This is according to the American Farmland Trust. They're actually doing studies now that get into the individual counties. We're going to see some of that information as early as 2020. We are continuing to be on the World Monuments Watch List along with the Great Pyramids in Egypt and many other world monuments. This is since 2006, and we continue to be on that list. The Regional Land Use Partnership started back in 2017. Here's the purpose, and the resolution that you have before you is the results of 18 months of work with over 140 regional stakeholders, and many of you in this room have been involved with this process. I talked about this 2017 event and where that has led us to today. Some of the things that came out of that initial discussion, that initial summit, some principles of agreement that there is a fundamental need for responsible land use planning. The slides that I showed you before about limiting sprawl and preserving agricultural lands and all the counties that are already doing that in their comprehensive plans. That was a mutual area of agreement. This is the most important thing, too, is that there's a fundamental need for better communication in the region between cities, counties, planners, elected officials, and stakeholders. Bottom line was everybody wanted us to continue, which we have done for the last 18 months, and some great things are really happening for us right now. We've had committee meetings each month, and most of our counties are represented on that committee. We've been drafting additional principles of agreement that came out of that first discussion, and we're beginning to draft a strategic plan of action. So we have passed this resolution in Bourbon County Fiscal Court, the city of Midway in Woodford County, and, of course, LFUCG, including the Planning and Public Safety Committee, and the council have passed it, and we've passed the Scott County Planning Commission. We've got the ball rolling in Winchester and Bourbon County, the other Scott County governments. The ball is rolling. It's in the process. So we really are doing what we had intended, and that's create momentum for this resolution and for this regional land use partnership. I'm not going to go through all of these, because they're contained in the resolution, but the draft vision statement is worth repeating, the second one down there, and this is really, I think, what the whole thing is all about. The Bluegrass Regional Landscape is our defining feature and an identified world monument. Renowned for its stunning agricultural and natural resources, our prime soil should remain an agricultural through carefully considered, intentional, collaborative balance of economic development and land use planning, and where our shared boundaries are gateways to distinct counties and cities whose character should be enhanced, developed, celebrated, and preserved as part of our unique Bluegrass brand. The other one that I really wanted to point out, we talked about communication and that this is at the center of what this is all about. It's not about creating a regional planning and zoning commission. It's not about we're not for economic development or any kind of development. It's not about any of those kinds of things. It's really about creating a better system and a better system of communication between governments and agencies, and that's the first one on that page. There's also the next one, and it really applies to the MPO. Your input is going to be important on this, but there's a fundamental belief that planning for new roads, road improvement projects, and multimodal transportation services would foster greater connectivity in the Bluegrass region. Doesn't say this, but hence economic development. The same balanced, collaborative regional approach used for land use planning should be applied to transportation projects. One thing that we hope will come out of this is a regional transportation conversation with the region, and hopefully the MPO District 7, LFUCG, the Bluegrass Ad will all be a part of that. The other principles, the three things that are in here that are not really probably involved in MPO verbiage or any planning commission's plan, comprehensive plan, are one, the verbiage about communication, communicating with surrounding counties, and a major focus on that. The second is regional partnerships staying in place, and every one of these communities having representation on this regional partnership. And the last thing is related to GIS mapping and creating good mapping for the region that will allow us to understand what's going on on each other's borders. There's an issue right now going on between Woodford and Franklin counties where it's light industrial on one side and farming on the other side, and it cuts right through this property where some of these activities are taking place. So having that kind of communication is so important. So the last thing on the last page, these are the main things we're trying to accomplish. It's just the beginning of the process. We want to get everybody engaged. We're engaging professional planners in this process. I think you're seeing that there is an environment of receptivity, and our next summit is already being planned, and it's just coming up next month, September 19th at the Boone Center, and you'll all be receiving more information about that, and we hope that you'll be there. The resolution in front of you is obviously something we would like you to pass. Attached to that is some verbiage that LFUCG used in passing the resolution back in July. Bourbon County also did something similar where basically they attached their resolution to our resolution and say basically we agree with this. So questions, feedback? Max? I guess just one point there. What you've shown here, we didn't have that in our packet. I don't know if we were supposed to get it. I didn't get it in my packet. Did anybody up here have it? I can certainly get that to you. Huh? I can certainly get that to you. I'm not, I mean, there may be some information that needs to, we need to have on there for discussion, but. I have one copy of it here, and I could leave that with you, or I could get the emails of everybody and send it to you. I'll let Mr. Max figure that out, whatever he wants to do. Okay, any questions of Mr. Adkins? Rob, thanks for thinking through the regional concept. I think it's important to everybody up here. But as you talked about, you're working on a strategic plan or will be working on a strategic plan. What are your thoughts on what is this initiative going to do? And second part to that question, and maybe a driving, how do you intend to fund it? Well, the second part is more difficult than the first part. And certainly Bluegrass Tomorrow is a 501c3 organization with two employees. It's obviously going to, that's going to have to be a collaborative piece of funding as well. Going back to the first part of that question, the strategic planning process of this, we've already begun it, and we've been talking about it at our meetings as we move, and each one of these principles that you saw up on your screen becomes a goal statement for the strategic plan. And that's exactly what we're going to do at our summit on September the 19th at the Boone Center. One of the aspects of this, Mary Berry, by the way, who you may know of the Wendell Berry Berry Foundation, is going to be our keynote speaker, a little promotional plug there. But the majority of the process is going to be about discussing these principles of agreement and where do we take it from here. And that needs to be a usually collaborative process with regional stakeholders. Specifically, I think, as I pointed out, communication is the most important of those strategies. And developing a process of communication through various strategies and certainly perhaps even leadership opportunities like our Bluegrass Higher Education Consortium Academic Leadership Academy, we would do something like that for our regional elected officials so that they're up to date on what's going on in the counties right next to them. Leadership Central Kentucky is a little bit different because that's aimed at business leaders, but this would be aimed at elected officials. That's one such concept that's being kicked around. I would like to see the 100,000 foot overview is where different pods of counties within our region. It's a big, expansive region. Not everybody's going to agree to everything that everyone else is doing. But if Lexington and Clark and Scott, for example, would work together on an agreement relating to economic development and it benefits all three, that'd be a great thing that would be happening 20 years down the road because we're all sitting at the table and communicating about these issues. So I see this as a bigger thing than just land use planning. It's more about collaboration and communication and sort of getting out of our silos. Does that answer your question? Sort of? It does sort of, but a follow-up based on everything you said, I guess the issue I'm struggling with, just to understand, because I do like the concept, how is what you're proposing different than what the Blue Grass ad is already established to do and is supposed to be doing? Well, that's why the Blue Grass ad has to be an integral partner in this. And I've had those discussions with David Dutliner and the other Blue Grass ad representatives that have been involved. They fully endorse this because this goes beyond what they do with their regional planning council, which is really the planners of the region get together and discuss these issues and they are educated in new federal legislation or state ordinances or legislation, that sort of thing. But it doesn't go so far as to include the rest of the stakeholders in the region. There is, from a legal standpoint, if something formal is formed in the future, it would likely be at the Blue Grass ad because that's where the legal entity lies. And I think we've discussed that. Okay. Anybody else? I'd like to make a couple of comments. First of all, I want to emphasize that the role of the MPO is transportation planning and not land use planning. But certainly, you know, the link between transportation and land use becomes more important every day. And it is, you know, it's certainly recognized. I also want to mention that much of what the MPO does is prescribed by federal law and associated federal transportation planning regulations. But I don't see, having said that, I don't see anything in this resolution that is contrary to the federal regulations. You know, the resolution speaks to regional cooperation and communication, multimodal transportation. So there's nothing here that is contrary to the prescribed mission of the MPO. Anybody else got any comment or question? I've got a question myself. This MPO is only two counties of this, and I'm not sure what our jurisdiction is here. And probably, maybe Max needs to explain why we are being presented with the resolution for the MPO where we've already, has this already been passed at council level? LFUCG it has, yes. We've already passed it as a government entity. So are you asking for the MPO, for this body here, to also pass this resolution? Yes, we are, and it's the importance, and it was just really alluded to, the importance of the tie between transportation and land use planning. And we needed to make an important point of transportation in these documents, in this documentation. I mean, that's, and Parker Sherwood and Max have been involved in our discussions, too. I think Max was at the summit, and we just feel like transportation is an important focal point of what we're doing here, and that's why it's a principle of agreement. So who better to start with than the MPO? I don't think this is any different than going to Jessamine County individually or Bourbon County individually or LFUCG individually. They don't represent the whole either, but together we're going to be better, all together better. Any other questions, comments? Max, if you could maybe, you know, give us a little bit more background about this resolution on what we can do and what our obligation is, if any. Yes, I see this as similar to us working with the district office. It's more federally prescribed, as Barry said. Also with the Blue Grass Ad, you know, we participate, even though we're just two counties and a little portion of Scott County, we participate with the Blue Grass Ad in their ongoing planning discussions and so forth, just so we can be together, you know, collaboration. And that's what this is about, I think. And the transportation aspects are right on when, you know, and as Barry described that well. That's the way I see it. So they wanted to, you know, it's being passed when counties all around us and for Fayette County and Jessamine and so forth. So we figured this would be good for us to pass, too, just to kind of stamp it as agreed upon principles and goals. That's how we see this, but, and Mr. Rumke wanted to come and tell you all about this as a transportation body that makes policy, right? We don't have to make any action today on this? No, what we were thinking, because we did not get the attached, I didn't have the LFUCG resolution, but what we can do as a staff is tailor that to the MPO language, bring that forward to you in our October meeting, and if you so choose, you can vote. Anybody have any objection to that? We'll be going forward in the next meeting and getting all the information. Okay. Thank you. We're good? Thank you, Mr. Rumke. All right. Thank you, Rob. So we'll get everything we need from Rob to move forward on that, and I just wanted to say good afternoon to you and thank you for making your way here today on your busy schedules. I know how busy you all are, and I just appreciate you all being here. We've got several, trying to, yeah, my mic's on now. We've got several information discussion items. Are you going to discuss each one of these, or you've got? Yes, we will move through, like you said, we have plenty of these, and these are just outcomes, basically, of your previous actions, and we just want to describe, make you aware and where we're going really quickly for the items that we have covered in previous meetings, and we do have a couple of other business that I wanted to add in there very quick and brief items I wanted to add in there. But we will move through these efficiently and quickly as we can. If anybody has any questions, just pop up, and we'll, while you're, or after. That'll be perfect. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. So the first item, I'm going to turn back over to Jimmy Emmons, who's our senior planner and our team leader on the shift process, and to let you know the outcome. You gave the staff authority to move forward in the boosting phase, and we had really good discussion, and we leveraged and worked with the ADD and District 7 to maximize our boosting scores for the regional projects in our area. And, Jimmy, we'll cover that for you. Mr. Chairman, I know that we're in a hurry, so I actually want to be very quick. You can see the list is presented for you in your packet. And we did have our 12 boosts, and we were able to do all 12 boosts. And from a score perspective, I think that we did very well. Most of our projects, all of our projects were double boosted as we coordinated with District 7. Most of them ended up in the mid-70s to the mid-80s range. I think that will help make them very competitive as the next phase of the shift program and completing the proposed draft highway plan goes forward. One of the things that I did want to say, as far as official input from the MPO, this is really kind of that, our last stop in the shift process. Where it will go from here is District 7 will negotiate with other people in the north region, and then ultimately it's working its way to a draft plan that the governor will submit to our legislators. But it's also one of the things that we had learned from our last go-around in shift. One of the areas that the Lexington MPO was a little bit soft on last time is that we didn't communicate well enough whenever we got down to our politicians talking to our state legislators and everything like that. So this time we also, the scores are good, and that helps make the case for the projects. But I think also we will probably be looking at and might be calling on you all to make a phone call and just let our legislators know, hey, this is in here. This is a project that was important to us. Just wanted to make sure you were aware of that, those kinds of things. So kind of as we're moving through the process, don't be surprised if that comes up. If you have any questions about any of the specific items on our list, I'd be happy to try and answer those. The last thing that I wanted to say from a personal level is that I had to take off about a month's worth of time whenever I had a family emergency. And I really wanted to thank my staff members for jumping in and carrying the weight for us, especially in our last meeting whenever they had to pull together and do that for me. I very much appreciated my coworkers for that and you all as a body. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Jimmy, for your hard work and for your staff kicking in when you weren't available. We don't have any authority to change any of the boosting orders to this current list, correct? Not so much. We had a deadline that we had to push the button on. And so that's, as far as pushing the button, all of those scores are done and submitted to the state. The last time that we submitted this list, did we have 12 items, and did 12 items get some sort of funding? No, they didn't, and we should not expect this time that all of the projects on the list will make it into the draft plan. But that's where one of those last kind of pushes and things like that, that's where the scores, which are really data driven and the boosting is really, you know, that qualitative adding those qualitative boost points to the quantitative scores. So there's not a magic number of which plans will make it into the draft plan or not, but obviously higher scores help make the case to get them in there. Okay. Yeah, and I've been an advocate as well as Judge Larson for the replacement of the L&N Railroad project, and I see that it's just a few points below to extend the Citation Boulevard project, which I would rather see them replace the L&N Railroad above that because it does have some state funding, and that project has more mobility than I think the extended Citation Boulevard at the current moment. And that is exactly the type of communications that I was talking about whenever you talk to our legislators and things like that, kind of get those nuances across that don't necessarily come across in the numbers. Okay. You're right on point. Okay. All right, that's all I have, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Could I comment on that? Judge Larson. Again, the River Bridge over North Broadway has been put off for so many years now that that's a really important issue that is going to come back and should be more important than some of these issues that seem to have come up because that's a transportation safety issue and it's a connectivity issue. Pardon me. The North Broadway issue is more important than some of these others because it's been put off for such a long time. It's a transportation safety issue and it's a connectivity issue, and I don't think that we should allow this particular situation to go on any further without some serious emphasis. And you might notice that the Bluegrass Ad has some additional boost. I don't know. Well, there are no remaining boosts left, and the way the system works, Bluegrass Ad and Lexington MPO, our boundaries touch, so we don't overlap our boost. We do overlap and we can double boost with District 7. And working with District 7 and Bluegrass Ad, we're in coordination the whole time, we ensure that all 12 of our boosts were double boosted with District 7 to get the most bang for our buck in the process. Okay. Any other questions on this particular issue? Okay. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. Thank you, and I want to thank District 7 and Bluegrass Ad and Districts Casey for making that such an organized and well-efficient process. So the next item is kind of reporting to you on our PL or actually SLX, which is our allocation of federal funding for surface transportation, swap with CMAQ funding that the state was in control of. And the reason in doing that was to secure that state funding that was in danger of rescissions. And we wanted to secure that money, make sure it's used in the state of Kentucky and most particularly in our MPO area. So you can see on page 11, right after the boosting illustration, you can see that's a good illustration in yellow, the initial and the final. And in yellow represents the changes that were made. And basically what we ended up doing is a dollar-for-dollar trade between CMAQ and SLX funding. That's the way the state wanted to end the proposal, and that's the way we ended up. You see our bike projects that were in the original really was never in consideration. This is not going to slow those down. We can proceed with those. Kenzie will talk more to you about the bike project. But we did get Brannon Road in there. We did get Town Branch Commons, which were very important to our region. And then also we got the Georgetown to Leestown utility phase put in there for $3 million, and that's significant. So we wanted to report to you on that. Kenzie will get into that a little bit further, but we wanted to report to you. So it was dollar-for-dollar. But we did come out ahead when you consider the fact that all these projects except for the Town Branch Commons and our bike projects will be matched with toll credits from the state toll credit bank. So we will not have to put that in our budget with MAP funding or anything like that. That is going to be taken care of with toll credits. So just wanted you to be aware of this and that that New Circle Road utility phase for $3 million was added into there. And before we went ahead and programmed this with an administrative modification, and we can do that in the future. But that's reporting to you on that. And if you have any questions, I'd be glad to try to clarify before moving into the next item. Go ahead. Okay, great. So the next item is I'm going to let Kenzie Gleason, our administrative officer, get up and talk about. And the same thing is going on with transportation alternative program funds as well as our planning funds. So she's going to cover that with our TAP funds and show you one other project that is kind of hanging out there that we wanted to ask your approval to move forward with. So, Kenzie. Good afternoon. I think we may have actually skipped over administration or administrative modification number 20. Essentially what that action was, was to program the funds for these projects that were discussed with you at your last meeting. We processed all of the projects that were discussed at the last meeting, with the exception of the $3 million for the utility phase for the New Circle Road project, because that was not something that was discussed in July. But with your blessing, we'll go ahead and move forward with that administrative modification, which will be number 21 or 22. That administrative modification is in your packet, too. We always share those with you at each meeting to just kind of keep you up to speed with the different changes that we've made to the TIP. Moving on to the TAP discussion, I think you were only able to be briefly introduced to this at your July meeting due to time limitations. But we received word that the transportation alternative program was also subject to possible federal rescissions. So the Cabinet encouraged us to obligate any funding that was remaining in our balance of funds towards projects. For the Lexington area, we have discretion over the local TAP funds. It's really only about $400,000 per year. But we had a balance of about $1.1 million that we could obligate towards projects. That list of projects is in your packet. We've actually handed out a revision to your seats earlier. We identified a small error. So if you would look at the new sheet that was passed out to you, the first list of projects at the top, there you can see our fund balance and the projects which we intend to program funds for to obligate those monies. The school zone enhancement project was actually awarded full funding in 2015, but they are just now ready to request construction funds, which will draw our balance down by $272,000. The next three projects, the West High project in Jessamine County, the Citation Trail, and Todd's Road sidewalks, those projects were awarded design money through TAP in 2016, but not full funding for completion. But those projects are ready to move forward, and they can do so before October 1st, which is the deadline for federal obligations. So we have proposed that they be programmed with these funds. The last section of projects are ones that the Cabinet awarded with statewide TAP monies that we will also program in our TIP, and those projects are under the same October 1 obligation deadline. We just wanted to make you aware of these proposals and make sure that you were comfortable with them. Any questions on these items? Go ahead. Oh, and lastly, so we had a total of 11 projects that were awarded design monies through our local TAP program in 2016. All of those projects have either received additional TAP, congestion mitigation and air quality funds, or local funding to see them through completion, with the exception of Rosemont Garden. That project we would like to propose for SLX funding so that that can move forward in this fiscal year has already programmed the local match for that project. The total in SLX dollars would be $312,000. We can also do that administratively, but wanted to make sure that you were comfortable with that before we proceeded. I'm not sure. Any action that we need to take on that? I think we would just like to make sure that there's consensus and support for us programming those funds. There is more than adequate funding in the SLX balance in order to accommodate that. The Rosemont? I'm sorry? About the Rosemont? Yes. Is that the sidewalks? Correct. It would complete the sidewalks between Nicholasville Road and Harrodsburg Road. There's some illustrations in your package. Yeah. I saw that information there. Anybody got any questions on that? I would think, because they take a quick vote on that, I think would probably be appropriate. Okay. Yeah. We do have a quorum. Is there a question? I guess we need a motion first to accept. Is that a funding request that we're accepting? I think it would be a motion to allocate $312,000 in SLX funding to the Rosemont Garden Project. And that $312,000 is coming from where? In our balance? In our SLX balance, yes. I need a motion then. I got a question first about will that deplete the funding out of that fund? For the SLX? No. Our annual allocation for SLX is somewhere between $6 million to $8 million, depending on the year. How much of that have we already allocated? It's sort of a moving target, depending on phasing. But we will receive a new allocation on October 1st for approximately $7 million. Our balance is at least in the $7 million range, I would say, right now, in addition to the ones that we'll receive in October. All right. I'll make a motion to approve the funding of SLX dollars for the Rosemont Garden Project. $312,000? Is that the number? $312,000 in federal funds, yes. I got a motion. I need a second. Second. Mr. Larkin. We have a motion on the floor. Is there any discussion on this? I've got a question, I guess. When we're looking at this SLX, where is the priority list of what that SLX money is going to be used for? This Rosemont has been on there, I assume, for some time. To some degree. I mean, it has been a project in our TIP that was originally funded with transportation alternative dollars. So, you know, a lot of times we look at different funds to try and advance projects. This is TAP money that we're talking about. Right. So your SLX priorities would be identified first in your TIP for any ongoing projects. We're actually getting to the point where we're going to be wrapping up a number of those projects that were on the list. So we're going to be looking at what new SLX projects we may want to initiate in the next several years. That would be derived from our long-range plan and then at your direction. Do we have a list of that out there somewhere, or have we been supplied that list, this committee? Yeah, well, I mean, it would be those projects that are identified in the near term of our long-range plan. So if you'll look in the 2045 MTP that we've identified a certain number of those. Okay, 2045 plan, our booklet. And we actually hope to discuss with you in more detail in both October and January, have a discussion about what's next for SLX in the hopes of doing that sooner than later so that the local governments can work on securing match for any projects that might advance. So we're talking about then maybe looking at priority? Correct. And this committee could make that injection as to the priority with your all's help? Yes. Any other questions on this topic? Since this is on my street, do I have to recuse myself or not? I mean, I'm awfully for it. I just wish it wouldn't be 2021 that we started. No, I don't think you'd have any problem. Okay, good. All right. I think they intend to bid the project as soon as funds are available. So I think you'll see it sooner than that. All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, motion passed. Go ahead. All right. Just very briefly, we updated you on the Nicholasville Road Land Use and Transportation Study that we are about to initiate at your, I suppose, two meetings ago. This is just an outline of the basic parameters that that study will address. We did issue an RFP and have made a recommendation for a selected consultant. We did that in cooperation with Lextran, the MPO, and LFUCG. We're about to enter into negotiations with that consultant to hammer out the scope and fee and whatnot. That will go through council in September, and then we'll begin the study in earnest shortly thereafter. And, of course, we'll be engaging you in that process along the way. I can answer any questions about the study. I didn't want to go into too much depth because I did that a couple of meetings ago. Oh, and Max reminded me, one thing that our team did with our partners in this study was we went just recently, a couple weeks ago, to Louisville and talked with their transit planners and city government and state officials about the Dixie Highway Bus Rapid Transit project that is about to be launched to just sort of exchange information and ideas and lessons learned through that process. Since one of the primary goals of our study is to get to a BRT, bus rapid transit line along Nicholasville Road in the future. Can you move over? I'm sorry. At our last meeting, the special meeting, there was a question by Councilperson Bledsoe about how far this study would extend on each side of Nicholasville Road and the possibility that this might extend to Branage Crossing where there is not only Nicholasville Road, but there is an additional access road from South Lexington. Is this too early to discuss how far this plan would affect this corridor would extend beyond Nicholasville to east and west sides? So, no, it's not. And we actually did make that adjustment based on that feedback that we heard at the last meeting. So the project limits are half a mile off of the corridor east and west, and they will extend to Branage Crossing as well for the transportation-related recommendations. The land use and any regulatory guidelines or standards will be limited to land use in Fayette County. What I was asking about was this corridor. There's an access road from Branage Crossing into South Point Subdivision. I think it's Greyhawk or something like that. Is that included in this study? I'm not familiar with that exact location. They will be looking, again, within a half a mile off of the corridor, and one thing they will be looking at is connectivity to the corridor. So if that falls within or close to that range, yes, then I think it would be addressed in the study. It's about a mile, I think. It's about a mile away from there, and that would probably be out of that area. I think what you're saying is that that will not be considered as part of this study at this point. If there's a certain connectivity issue that we need to address, whether with the study or outside of the study, we can also have a conversation about how we can advance that discussion regardless. We'll make a note of, I think you said Greyhawk Lane? Grey Oak. Grey Oak, okay. Grey Oak, yeah. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that, and thank you very much for even considering it. Go ahead. I'm going to turn it back over to Max here. Hey, can I step back? I'm sorry, we've got Council Member Brown. Sorry, I'd just like to step back to the SLX discussion. I know we just voted and passed the Clay's Mill, but I'm looking at the graph. It looks like the New Circle Road, Georgetown to Leestown project, and I might have stepped out. Have we shifted funding to SLX funding for that project? It's the third one down on the list. That's what was proposed by the Cabinet. So if you look at the first column that lists initial, that was what was originally discussed with you and with them. We had proposed $15 million in CMAQ projects to help them secure that money, and we could do that with the Town Branch Commons project and the Clay's Mill Road project because they were so close to going to bid they could be obligated before October 1st. In response to that, the Cabinet said, well, we would like you to swap that funding with us. We want an equal amount of SLX dollars to go towards what were currently sort of Cabinet-sponsored projects, whether they were STP funds or NHS or SPP funds, which are state funds. So that's kind of what the initial proposal was, but we were $2 million in our favor, where we were only putting $13 million on the table for SLX that would free up other state dollars for other projects. So their argument was you're using SLX dollars to both advance projects in your area that otherwise wouldn't advance more quickly because the years that they were programmed were much further out. With the SLX dollars, they can get started on those phases as soon as they're ready, which should be soon. So what's the plan for these other projects is to take a look at them next year and see if we can get additional funding to go with them before we? Right. So Liberty Road, New Circle, and Brannon, those are not fully funded through construction. Those are still projects that are on our shift list that are being proposed and advocated for full funding through construction as part of the highway plan. Okay. So we will need additional funds to move forward with those. And there were already funds programmed for these phases in here, just not as soon and with different dollars. Okay. All right. I'm fine. Thanks for the clarification. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. This next item is very similar to the CMAQ and the TAP exercises, but it involves PL or planning funds that we are allocated. The state had a total of 3.2 million that is unobligated and in, you know, danger of being rescinded. And they wanted to obligate that money quickly. And they have been in contact with all the MPOs through the Kentucky MPO Council about studies, really good, impactful, quick planning studies, that will lead to what needs to be done in very, you know, probably controversial and problematic transportation areas. But we don't really have an idea what we want to do. But these studies will kind of answer and guide our resources and efforts to keep, you know, improve our transportation system. So for Fayette County, we propose two. And one thing that's real important here to remember is we don't have time to go back and rework our matching budget, you know, from LFBCG and get, you know, approval through council readings. And that's the problem with all MPOs. They just do not have the time. These monies are going to be rescinded very quickly. And this has to be done very quickly, probably before, in a couple of weeks, you know, before mid-September. So each MPO put forward studies that the state would be on. It would benefit both of us. The state would match those with toll credits and administer most of them. But we propose two. And one, on page 17, you'll see the northeast Jessamine County and southeast Lexington area connectivity study. This is an area that is growing in traffic volume, a lot of rural roads involved. If you built the I-75 connector, which is very, you know, far off, it would probably solve all this. However, that would be $150 million, $200 million of our funds. It's not practical at this time to do that. So why not improve the existing roads there, the bottlenecks, make them safer, make them more up to standards and so forth, and get them over to old U.S. 25 and down to the interstate. And then Lexington, southeast Lexington, experiencing such congestion and safety issues on DeLong and areas like Richmond Road and so forth, right there at E.J. Hayes Boulevard and so forth. A lot of congestion, a lot of problems. So this study would look at that area. The state would administer this, select consultants, and we would be involved. And there's a graphic there on page 17. You can see how those volumes are increasing. The other is a Lexington MPO area-wide congestion management slash bottleneck study. We've done three of these in the past. They've led to very good projects along Man o' War and other areas out in Hamburg and so forth that's really dealt with our congestion points and so forth. So that would be another iteration of that. And we are asking for, that study would be $225,000, and the other one would be $250,000 for the southeast Lexington and northeast Jessamine. And that would be our portion of the 3.2 that we're proposing. I think the state, with the 3.2, they want to use all of it. I think we're pretty close to $3 million statewide with all the MPOs doing various studies. But that's our two. And we just wanted to inform you of that and get a nod of approval to move forward with those. We do have Thomas Witt here that has been leading this exercise from the state, and he can answer any questions from their perspective. But that was the last funding proposal. So we went to CMAQ, TAP, and now we're at PL. So any questions on this? I know this is, we have to move so quick and so fast on these major funding decisions that I know it's a lot and it's complicated. Any questions on this? Mr. Larson. Max, thank you for finally pointing out that the lack of the I-75 Nicholasville bypass road is going to cause considerable problems, and these problems you're trying to resolve these about the completion of this project, which has cost so much and has run into so much opposition and right now has been put off. But this is such an important issue because, you know, for South Lexington and Jessamine County, this transportation, lack of transportation to the interstates is a significant problem now and going to increase. That's what I want to say right now. I have, you know, this idea of bottleneck study. I think this is getting into land use planning as well, isn't it? Because there's currently we don't have an expansion plan for another four years, but five years from now that's going to be affected whatever expansion is going to go into some of these areas, perhaps the I-60, U.S. 60 interstate area is an area where it's potentially having expansion and there is area for expansion. So I think that, you know, the traffic study is really important in those areas, and I want to thank you for at least pointing those out at this time. Yeah, we had to work quickly, but I think these identify low cost, high impact, congestion management safety projects that we have done in the past very successfully and we can do going forward working with engineering and traffic engineering here. Okay, good. Go ahead. Okay. The next two items, real quick reports, one on the shared mobility program and then our second will be on our marketing campaign. Both are in high gear and a lot of good things happening there. I'm going to let Scott Thompson, our bike team leader, to give you a report on the shared mobility. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the policy committee. So as you know, we passed an ordinance allowing shared mobility companies, also known as dockless vehicle companies that do electric scooters, electric bikes, and pedal bikes to operate in our public right-of-way. We opened the license application process for them about a week and a half ago. At this point in time, we have three companies that are in that process with us, and I've begun the review of one that has actually completed the application. There's two phases to the application process. One is the actual license, which kind of keeps them in line and gets them in line with the ordinance. The other piece is the parking locations. Our ordinance requires that these vehicles be rebalanced every day at 7 a.m. at particular locations. Each location that these companies request for parking is an individual permit. So we're starting that process with them now, and as that continues, we will keep you informed, both as a policy committee and for the folks that are on the urban county council as well, as to where we are with that process and when we expect these companies to actually be on the ground and launching the vehicles. It has ended up being a slower process than we thought it would be, and that is kind of on their side of things. They seem to be taking a slower approach to it than we thought that they would, based on their rhetoric prior to having the license application open. But we are finding out that the policy that we put forth and the ordinance that was passed is a good one because it is requiring them to do a lot of legwork on the ground in our town and develop an understanding of who we are and how these vehicles will serve our community. So I think, all in all, we're in a pretty good place, and I'm excited for these companies to get to bring the product here and for our community to be able to use them. Council Member Maloney. I appreciate the update. I know we were in a hurry because we wanted to get it done before U.K., but what about U.K. by themselves? Are they going to be able to do their own? So that's tricky. You know, transportation knows no boundaries. And so the way we set that up is the university will have a preferred provider. So they'll have an individual agreement with one provider that allows that company to rebalance their vehicles within the campus boundaries. All other companies will be allowed to cross over onto U.K. property, but they will not be allowed to rebalance there. Basically what that means is that one company will have stations or parking locations on the university campus. All other companies will have parking station locations outside of campus, but can be ridden onto campus and rechecked out on campus. But at the end of the day, they have to be pulled and put back to those locations by 7 a.m. the next morning. Does that make sense? So when do you hope to have this? I mean, winter's coming up. I don't know if that's going to be a busy time for these scooters. Yeah, so we have. We're so close to the winter months. Because I thought we would hurry to get to the U.K. to get them done before school started. We are. But it sounds like to me it's going to be a little bit longer. It is. You know, we could see something on the ground in three weeks. It could be longer than that. You know, this is not totally driven by us. You know, we had the application open for a week and not one company had put any effort in. And then when they put the effort in, they didn't really put a lot of effort in. And so I've had to communicate back to them what they need to do in order to achieve, in order to get a license. So it's new to us. And so we're working through the process. But our goal is protecting the public safety and the public right of way. And I think that's what we're doing. And so while I'd love to see them on the ground next week, I don't think that's going to be the case. And it's primarily because we're requiring them to do some things that they're not used to doing in cities. But we're also not going to end up like Nashville. So, you know, we've put things in place to try to mitigate that, and I think that's what we're doing. Well, if it continues to go longer, and you get into October, November, and the kids get ready to go on break, I assume you want to wait until spring because, I mean, I just saw the future of what the winter is supposed to be. It's supposed to be one of the wettest, I mean, coldest and heaviest snow. Sure. I just don't want to see you sit there in the middle of November, put these things out, and nobody's using them, and then it seems like to me, I don't want to see it's waste. It may be wetting out. That's your decision, but I'd be more realistic to do it in the spring when things are a little bit more. And to your point, just so you know, there are thresholds for number of rides when they have to pull the fleet back. So if they fall under those thresholds, if people aren't using them, they have to pull the fleets back. And that's part of the winter arrangement. So we'll see those in the guidelines. Thank you. Good point, though. Mr. Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Scott, I was driving yesterday. I saw one of the orange SPIN bikes go by me the other way. I was thinking that that was something we were going to end in. Is that program still going on? So SPIN was a part of that one-year pilot program. We did not tell them they had to pull the bikes. We didn't know if they would or would not pull the bikes at the end of the pilot program. They were the first company to actually complete an application, but I have since sent them back a laundry list of edits that they need to make. But regardless, they are interested in bringing scooters and bikes and maintaining that fleet in our community. So I think they're going to leave the ones that they have on the ground, which I think there's only like 70 of them right now, but they'd like to up that bike fleet to 200 when they bring the scooters. For some reason I was thinking they weren't going to be here, and I saw one go whipping down the road yesterday. There was the possibility of that. Okay, thanks. Okay, move on, Max. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Guys, I really love the way Lexington is getting ahead of all the problems. We've learned from all the problems in other areas and being very proactive and prescribed about how we proceed. So this next item is I just want to give you a quick update on our marketing campaign, which is really kicking off and seeming very successful. And Kinsey will give you an update on that. My apologies. We were hoping to sneak this in under new business. I didn't see it on our agenda. So you can be quick. We were going to request that of Judge West, but things kind of got mixed up at the beginning of the meeting. I'll be two minutes or less, I promise. I just wanted to let you know that we kicked off with a very successful luncheon earlier this week on Monday with Mayor Gorton and Council Member Ellinger participated with about 60 local business leaders. And the topic of that luncheon was embracing and promoting alternative transportation throughout our region's business culture. We discussed about how at one point in the future it's not going to be sustainable for driving alone to be the main means of transportation to work as our population grows and as our employment sector grows. And we talked a lot about how we feel businesses could benefit from embracing and promoting other modes of travel to work, whether walking, by bike, carpooling, local transit, telecommuting policies, so forth. We asked them to join our movement and to use a toolkit that we're providing to them so that they can provide information to their employees and encourage them to get to work in other ways and to incentivize that within their business culture. We're asking them to do that throughout the month of October. We ended with an invite for some friendly competition among the businesses. Our plan is to feature the most successful businesses in our spring campaign as a thank you for a job well done and to provide success stories and models that we hope other businesses can emulate within their structure. Our homepage will look a little bit like this later today. We're launching that. I encourage you, if you wouldn't mind, to share it with your business contacts and talk it up around town, participate. The city of Lexington will also be participating in the initiative and just try and pass the word along and let people know what we're trying to accomplish here. And that is all. Okay. Thank you. Max, close it out. Thank you, Council Member Brown. The last item, do you want to announce other business before, because it would come in on other business? Well, there's other TPC items on your agenda there. Has anybody got any questions or comments about any old or new business, I guess? Go ahead. Okay. I just wanted to take a moment and recognize Barry House, who has been such a hardworking advocate for us for many, many years. And he just works so hard. And this is his last TPC meeting. So I'm really embarrassing him right now. Is that retirement? Well, I've been semi-retired for 17 years, actually. More fully retired. I'm still going to be around working with some of the smaller MPOs, but over the next few weeks I'm practicing on my Lexington MPO responsibilities to others within the Cabinet. So you likely won't see me at another meeting, but, you know, if there's questions that come up that I may remember something that happened a few years ago, then I'll still be around to help out if needed. Who will be representing or taking your place? Do you know yet? I don't know yet. I'm on several committees. The Congestion Management Committee, the Technical Committee, and the Bike Pit Committee. Thomas Witt, hold your hand up, Thomas, works with me in the Division of Planning, and he'll be serving on some of those committees. We haven't decided about the policy yet. Thank you for your service. I've been on the committee a number of years ago and then back on this term and appreciate it, and it's been good to have you on the committee and your insight and your input. So I, for one, wish you well. Thank you. I'll just add that Barry is one that gets in the trenches with us, just like he's a working planner with us many, many times, gets into the numbers and the issues, and we just really appreciate it. He keeps us straight, keeps us walking the line and on track, which is good for us. And he actually goes to bat for us with the state many times, you know, advocating for what the Lexington Area MPO. I don't know that everybody would do that, but Barry will do it, and we sure are going to miss him and appreciate his service, like you said. I think the next meeting date is Wednesday, October the 23rd, and it will be 1.30, and it will be in Jessamine County. That is correct. Everybody take note on that because sometimes we can't get a quorum over there, but we want to be represented well. Right. I guess I've got it. Motion to adjourn. Second. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. No time at all. I'm falling faster and faster and faster. There's no time to stop. Ooh, baby, I love your way every day, yeah. Ooh, baby, I love your way every day. Shadows grow so long before my eyes, and they're moving across the face. Suddenly the day turns into night. Far away from the city. But no, oh no, hesitate, because your love just won't wait.