# Planning and Public Safety Committee - October 1, 2019 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · October 1, 2019 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/4852 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/4852?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2019-10-01 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: February 5, 2026 - **Length**: 18,959 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council held a committee meeting to address several key municipal issues. The meeting included four agenda items, with one item receiving formal approval and three serving as informational presentations. Council members took two votes during the session and heard from nine members of the public during the comment period. The committee accomplished approval of their previous meeting summary and received informational updates on three significant policy areas affecting the community. The Sidewalk Assistance Program was presented to inform council members about infrastructure support initiatives. Staff also provided an overview of the Five-Year Public Safety Plan, outlining the city's strategic approach to law enforcement and emergency services. Additionally, the committee received information regarding Short-Term Rentals regulations and their impact on the community. The meeting provided a forum for both official business and public engagement, with nearly a dozen residents taking the opportunity to address the council during the public comment portion of the proceedings. ## Attendance The following committee members were present at the meeting: • James Brown • Fred Brown • Angela Evans • Lamb • Ellinger • Maloney • Farmer • Gibbs • Worley • McKern All committee members were in attendance. No members were recorded as absent or arriving late to the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took action on two items during the meeting. **Approval of Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] The committee voted by voice vote to approve the committee summary. The motion passed without recorded opposition. **Short-Term Rental Ordinance Changes** [timestamp: 180:00] James Brown made a motion regarding proposed changes to the ordinance regarding short-term rentals. The motion passed by voice vote without recorded opposition. Both votes were conducted as voice votes with no formal roll call taken. No vote counts or individual member positions were recorded for either item. ## Public Comment Nine residents spoke during the public comment period, with all comments focused on short-term rental regulations and Airbnb hosting experiences. **Airbnb Host Perspectives** Multiple Airbnb hosts shared their experiences and concerns about proposed regulations. Kathy Burke [timestamp: 360:00] expressed her enjoyment of hosting and emphasized her compliance with tax regulations. Fran Taylor [timestamp: 366:00] highlighted her positive hosting experience and noted the self-policing nature of the Airbnb platform. Jennifer Leslie [timestamp: 378:00] stressed her compliance with existing regulations and expressed concern about being penalized for other hosts' non-compliance. Stephanie Clark [timestamp: 381:00] shared her positive hosting experience while emphasizing the importance of maintaining high standards. **Regulatory Concerns** Several speakers raised specific concerns about proposed stay limits. David Gaither [timestamp: 369:00] expressed opposition to the proposed 52-stay annual limit, arguing it would make Airbnb hosting unprofitable. Chad Walker [timestamp: 372:00] discussed his Airbnb experience and raised concerns about both the zoning ordinance and the 52-stay limit. Kevin Baker [timestamp: 384:00] questioned the rationale behind the proposed 52-stay limit. **Economic and Community Impact** Micah Miller [timestamp: 375:00] highlighted the positive impact of Airbnb on his neighborhood and the local economy. In contrast, Mark Streedy [timestamp: 363:00], president of the Ashland Park Neighborhood Association, discussed potential negative impacts of short-term rentals on neighborhoods. The comments reflected a divide between hosts who view short-term rentals as beneficial and compliant operations, and neighborhood representatives concerned about community impacts. The proposed 52-stay annual limit emerged as a primary point of contention among multiple speakers. ## Contested Items The committee meeting featured one primary contested item that drew significant community opposition. **Short-term Rental Regulations** Community members voiced strong concerns about the proposed regulations governing short-term rentals in the area. The opposition centered on two specific aspects of the proposed regulatory framework: a proposed limit of 52 stays per year for short-term rental properties and new reporting requirements that would be imposed on property owners. The nature of the disagreement involved community opposition to these regulatory measures, though the specific details of who participated in the opposition and the exact outcome of the discussion were not captured in the available meeting data. The 52-stay annual limit appears to have been a particular point of contention, as this would effectively restrict short-term rental operations to an average of one stay per week throughout the year. The reporting requirements also drew criticism from community members, though the specific nature of these requirements and the administrative burden they would create for property owners was not detailed in the available information. The committee's response to this community opposition and any potential modifications to the proposed regulations as a result of the feedback were not documented in the extracted meeting data. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps and detailed outcomes were not available in the provided meeting materials.* ## Approval of the committee summary [timestamp: 00:30] The committee reviewed and approved the summary of their previous meeting as the first item on the agenda. The discussion was brief, with no significant debate or concerns raised regarding the accuracy or completeness of the summary. The committee formally approved the summary without amendments or modifications. No specific speakers were identified during this procedural item, suggesting it was handled as routine business with general consensus among committee members. The approval allows the summary to serve as the official record of the previous meeting's proceedings and decisions. ## Sidewalk Assistance Program [timestamp: 01:00] Councilmember James Brown led a discussion on the Sidewalk Assistance Program during agenda item 2. Brown provided an overview of the program's history and outlined proposed changes to its structure, including modifications to funding mechanisms and grant allocation procedures. The discussion was informational in nature, with Brown presenting details about how the program has operated and potential adjustments being considered for future implementation. The presentation covered both the historical context of the sidewalk assistance initiative and forward-looking proposals for program enhancement. No formal action was taken on this agenda item, as it served as an informational briefing for committee members. The discussion provided background information on the program's current status and potential future directions. ## Five-Year Public Safety Plan [timestamp: 120:00] Director Stack presented the five-year strategic plan for the Division of Enhanced 911 during this informational agenda item. The presentation focused on two primary areas of concern for the division's future operations. Director Stack highlighted ongoing staffing challenges that the Enhanced 911 division faces, which impact the department's ability to maintain optimal service levels for emergency response coordination. Additionally, the presentation addressed future capital needs that will be required over the next five years to maintain and upgrade the division's infrastructure and equipment. These capital investments are essential for ensuring the Enhanced 911 system continues to meet community safety requirements and technological standards. The agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, allowing committee members to receive updates on the division's strategic planning efforts and understand the long-term resource requirements for maintaining public safety communications services. No formal action was taken on this item, as it served to inform the committee about the division's planning process and anticipated needs for the coming five-year period. ## Short-Term Rentals [timestamp: 180:00] The committee held an informational discussion on potential regulations for short-term rentals during agenda item 4. Evan Thompson served as the key speaker for this agenda item, presenting information about proposed regulatory frameworks for short-term rental properties. The discussion covered several key regulatory components that the committee is considering implementing. The presentation addressed three main areas of potential regulation: • **Registration requirements** - establishing a system for short-term rental operators to register their properties with the city • **Safety requirements** - implementing safety standards and inspection protocols for rental properties • **Reporting obligations** - creating mechanisms for operators to report rental activity and compliance data The committee examined these regulatory approaches as part of their ongoing evaluation of how to manage short-term rental operations within the jurisdiction. The discussion was informational in nature, focusing on understanding the various regulatory options available rather than making specific policy decisions. No formal action was taken during this agenda item, as it served as an educational session for committee members to learn about potential regulatory frameworks. The committee did not vote on any specific proposals or advance any particular regulatory approach during this discussion. The agenda item provided committee members with background information on short-term rental regulation options, which may inform future policy discussions and potential ordinance development. The informational nature of the discussion suggests this topic remains in the early stages of the committee's consideration process. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the committee summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Proposed changes to the ordinance regarding short-term rentals --- ## Full transcript ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"] Any intention of speaking at this committee for any of the items, would you please sign up in the back of the room? I'll need a motion for the approval of the committee summary. Second. Motion to second any discussion on a motion. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Item number two is the Sidewalk Assistance Program, and I'll turn this over to Councilmember James Brown and Councilmember Fred Brown. I see that I don't see Councilmember Fred Brown, so Councilmember James Brown, if you want to start on this item, it's yours. Thank you, Chair, and I'll just kind of open it up. I know the issue of the sidewalk grant program, we had looked at and got an orientation on the program earlier this year, and we had asked the Director of Code Enforcement to take a look at it and make some changes to the information that was presented and to come back to us with some of the changes. So I'll ask the Director to come forward and go through and talk about some of the changes and improvements that were made to the program, if you don't mind. Thank you. Good afternoon. So we'll start with the history, like Councilmember Brown mentioned. We talked about this back in the summer, and then I went back and looked at some of the data over the years to figure out the history of how the sidewalk assistance program had performed in the past, and it brought us to the idea that maybe we could tweak the ordinance on the grant side to help take a little bit of a burden off the fund that we've recently seen spike into us. So basically, here is the numbers as they played out from 2014. Prior to 2014 and 2012 and 2013, the fund was not funded at all, so there was no grant assistance program the previous two years. As it was budgeted, we actually spent the numbers in the second column. So from $75,000 in 2014 to approximately $39,821 was actually spent in 2014. Of that, 100% grants was $3,045, to the tune of about I think it was five applications that came in for that year. So basically in 2015, we were granted $75,000 again. We spent almost all of it that year, and the 100% assistance grants went up to $8,700. That was about as high as it had ever been until this year. In 2016, the grants were still at $75,000 as the allotment. We spent almost all of it again with $5,000, $867 towards the 100% grants. So there's not a real correlation between the actual expenditures and the amount of 100% that we get. Could not make any sort of anything to match up and say what was going to indicate how we could predict the 100%. In 2017, we got $80,000 allotted to the fund. So we only spent $62,900 that year, but only had one grant for $200 on the 100%. So just when you think you're getting a trend, it kind of ended. 2018, it was funded for $80,000. There was $10,000 added to it because the fund was going to run short. We actually spent $93,346, and the 100% grants were $87,674. Last year, the first year that I was lucky enough to inherit the program, we started out with $80,000 budgeted. We almost immediately by December had to ask for another $20,000 and then actually ask for another $15,400 at the end of the year for a total allotment. It was $117,456 to pay what we thought was going to be all the bills at that time. The 100%-ers that year were $1750, and there was only three of those, I believe it was. This year to date, we were allotted $85,000. As of the day this presentation was sent to you, for October 1st, we had spent $47,000 of this year's fund already, and we had $9,775 in the 100% assistance program. One sidewalk in that alone was $5,400. So it basically so you understand what 100%-ers are. 100%-ers are the qualified property owner by definition in your ordinance, and basically it's set on the annual income property guidelines that actually grants, that we get through grants that are set through adult and tenant services. So code enforcement has nothing to do with the actual qualification of the property owners. They go to adult and tenant services. Adult and tenant services says they meet these criteria, and they're eligible for 100% reimbursement of repair and replacement. What we propose to change after all the things that we went through in working with the committee members is some clarification to the sidewalk replacement grant program. The first section is to assist. The original ordinance, as it reads, is to assist residential property owners. It was never really clearly the intent in some discussions with historical, with some law and some of the people that were around a few years back, that we didn't mean to exclude rentals because it was all residential. But the intent was not to give assistance to investment property because they're making money off the property. So this clarifies that now only owner-occupied residential properties would receive grant funds. We'll also change that in this section, 17-164, where we took out repair for grants because we have never actually issued dollars for repairs. We have only issued dollars for actual replacement of sidewalks, though the ordinance mandates that you repair or replace. And the reason for that is typically repairs can vary in price all over the place, from buying just some patched concrete from Home Depot and epoxy and simply some caulk to fill up some cracks. It's not nearly the extent of burden on an owner to do the repair options versus a replacement, which is jackhammering out the slab, throwing it away, forming up, and putting in new concrete. Again, we clarified that the grants are for owner-occupied residential property and another issue that's come up that we thought required some clarification was when are grant funds going to be dispersed related to the fiscal year because the funds are only allocated from July 1 to June 30. We've never run out of money until the last two years, so it's never really been an issue about do you keep paying after the end of the fiscal year. When I read the program will continue each fiscal year as long as the appropriated funds remain available, as I read it said when the funds are no longer available, I can no longer write checks for reimbursement. So whatever I run out first come, first served, those grants wouldn't be paid. This clarifies that reimbursements are issued upon the approval of the placement in the year they were replaced, not necessarily the year they applied for the grant, the year they were actually replaced. So it helps in one sense and hurts in another that if you got cited in late 18 and you actually didn't fix it until fiscal 19, you would still get your money. But if you finished it in 18 and the funds were gone, you weren't going to get your funds or you're not going to get your funds based depending on the allotments that you have. The other part that I recommended was qualified property owners, which are our 100 percenters, have some issues with getting legitimate reasonable bids. Adult and tenant services and our office have reviewed these bids on occasion for people to make sure that they're not getting gouged. We've had bids for certain projects go from $6,000 to $2,000. So we take the reasonable price based on the typical market cost, which we believe to be a fair market price to replace sidewalks is approximately $10 a square foot. That's not including anything like cutting out extra tree roots, regrading of anything else. This is simply picking up a slab, taking it out, forming it up, and pouring it back. What we suggest on the 100 percenters is a review of the bids by code enforcement for approval to make sure that they're considered reasonable. And then the owners may give permission for that reimbursement to be sent directly to the contractors instead of the property owners as it's currently written. Because some of these folks did not have money to pay the contractor up front, and the contractor wasn't going to do the work waiting for us to get the check and then wait for it to pass through another third party. So if we can work that out with the contractors with their approval, we'll send the check to them with approval of the homeowner so that they're not out any of the funds in the meantime. The other property owners, which are typically what we refer to as the 50 percenters, they say the grants for up to 50 percent of the reasonable cost of replacement. We're striking out repair. Again, repair does not cost anywhere near what replacement does. The language has always said repair and replacement in the ordinance is what you're bound to fix. The grant money, though, in our references in the past, we've never actually paid any grant money towards repairs. So I'm just taking it out so it's no longer a question. The sidewalks are for, again, the primary owner-occupied residential property as it's cited in 17-147. So the reasonable cost factor is going to be determined by us and engineering based on current average market rates in terms of cost per square foot and approved by the chief administrative officer or their designee. This came up, I think it was Councilman Brown that asked, how did we come up with a $5 per square foot instead of 50 percent? Well, several years back, code enforcement would review all the bids and then decide which ones were reasonable. We went to the marketplace, found out what the average cost was, came up with this is up to 50 percent at $10 a square foot, which means we didn't have to sit and hold all that money and wait for reviews and do all those bids and get all the invoices back and decide what was going to be the ones we were going to pay. Because what if it exceeded 50 percent? Then we wouldn't pay. We could only pay up to 50 percent of the repairs. So it would be a lot of invoices that would be coming back through to us to approve at the end of the project after we'd already allotted what we thought was going to be the amount of sidewalks fixed. So we didn't get rid of some of the bureaucracy related to this. We figured that we could determine the price, keep it established at a square foot price. We might have to change it every couple years based on inflation, what happens to concrete and labor. But it's only changed three or four times in the last ten years, and that's basically because concrete has just gone through the roof. On the administration side of 17-165, we're proposing another thing that hurts the fund a little bit is the reserve of 25 percent. Based on the ordinance, I have to hold that back for the 100 percenters just in case. So as soon as we dip down into approximately $21,250 of this year's money, I will stop releasing funds until we make sure all the 100 percenters for the rest of the fiscal year are addressed. We have not, as you saw from the previous slides, we haven't been anywhere near that amount, the amount of money we've given in the 100 percent program. With some of the committee members, we just said, well, let's go back it off to 20 percent. That leaves us some funds, some more funds to distribute up through until we hit that reserve mark. That would lower the reserve and allow me to pay out funds a little longer into the year. But those also, they should be reserved for the grants for all the other residential property owners if they're unused. That means if the 100 percenters don't come in, this clearly says I can distribute the funds to the rest of the applicants that have been waiting in the pool. Unreserved funds may be available in the last 30 days of the fiscal year for which they were allocated. This also means that they finish it in June. With the fact that we can write on checks only until that second week, we will try and get all the funds out in those last two weeks of June. And we're keeping all those applications. We'll do them first come, first serve as they come out. The language at the bottom was struck because simply put, it's inaccurate and out of date. It's no longer commissioners of the Department of Finance. Housing and Community Development does not handle it anymore. And Social Services is where Adult and Tenant Services resides. So they're responsible for the money side of making sure that those qualified owners are vetted properly. And with that, that is pretty much the amendments as I propose. And if you're so inclined, we'll move forward and blue sheet this and then bring it back. So do you have any questions related to anything on the ordinance? Thank you, Director. Do any of the council members have any questions for the director? Council Member James Brown. All right. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you for recognizing me. I'm not on this committee, but I did meet with Council Member James Brown. We met in the subcommittee. I don't know who else was in that subcommittee. Okay. I didn't remember you being there. Anyway, we met and talked about this particular ordinance and the need for the ordinance. The problem I have with it is probably two things. We owe or we've got some outstanding commitments out there that we're not paying simply because the fiscal years do not match when the replacement was done. And I think you sent me a listing of about $10,000. How can we address this that we don't get in that bind of because it takes time to do this? You know, the residents out there that have bad sidewalks, it may be a year before they get it fixed if they keep getting extensions or if there's some extenuating circumstances. So how can we do that to protect those people? And this particular ordinance that you're suggesting to change has got the owner occupied that no rentals could take place. But until this is passed, you can still reimburse people that have rental property. Is that correct? We can. They're not the top priority, owner occupied. But you chose not to because that's a policy that you in-house. Correct. But that doesn't adhere to actually what the ordinance says. No, that's correct. Okay. So my plea is, is that we've got $10,000 listed. I think there's 2,100, 2,200 of rentals and 7,100 of nonpayments because they didn't match the fiscal year. But we promised these people that we would assist them and help them. And we had the funds, but the ordinance, the way it is right now, ties them down to where they have to deal with just the fiscal year. So I don't know if we need a motion to change this or to go back. And we talked about this in subcommittee, too. Correct. It depends if there's going to be motions that are going to be put forward today. And I would think, Mr. Brown, that's your intent, isn't it? Yes, ma'am. So you're aware, you know, we talked about that in the subcommittee on catching up. And we want to at least take care of that. And then the other item there is do we really want to use the fiscal year versus how much time we can give a party to get reimbursed? That's my spiel. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Angela Evans. Thank you, Chair. I'm also not on this committee, so thank you for recognizing me. I think I have the same concerns, maybe slightly different than Council Member Fred Brown had, that from what I hear, we still have some issues even with the way this is being updated, which I do appreciate. I do understand that there were issues with it. But we are still operating in this first come, first serve method for the non-grant applicants. And as I understand it, even with holding, you know, even the 20%, which I understand and appreciate, it sounds like we're still going to have individuals who still might be kind of out of luck, depending on when they get cited. You know, if they start the process, but depending on how far they get, they still might not have that opportunity to get reimbursed just based on the timing. I think, you know, we're not talking about, regardless of whether or not it's someone that owns, you know, it's renter-occupied or it's a senior citizen that can't necessarily, you know, it's not in their, you know, monthly budget to do it either. I mean, I think that's still a concern that I have, that, you know, this is not an expense that anyone expects. So how can we do our best to, you know, when we have something out there for people, how can we do our best to, I guess, give people the best shot at having that opportunity? I feel like we're still missing something here that's kind of what Councilmember Brown said, that for letting people just kind of fall through the cracks, but for timing. So I don't know if you can address that. Well, in all honesty, because this phenomenon of running out of funds is relatively new, unless you do budget amendments to increase the funds from one fund to another, I only get the grant money regardless. If it runs out, it runs out. If I spend all $85,000, regardless of the reserve or the timing, when it's gone, it's gone. So I don't know how that would help you. I mean, you could change it to say that it didn't matter that grants could stay open until the project would resolve. That wouldn't matter to me, but it's not going to change the fact that I run out of money on June 15th and they simply wouldn't get paid. You would have to somehow fund a replenishment fund to the fund that ran out from FY18. We borrowed twice from other accounts to the sidewalk fund last year by moving professional services within our own budget. I happened to have it last year in that budget. I may not have it this year to move it at the end of the year again. So it's been, simply put, I don't know if you could catch a scenario where you would always be able to make sure everybody got paid until you came up to June and said, how many do you have left to pay and we'll give you the money to pay the bill? Procedurally, I mean, do you know how many people are in the queue or how many people have applied? I've had 98 applications addressed, 33 in process now. That first 98 was the 47,000 you saw. The 33 I have now is another $10,000 being processed. I have 43 waiting for a total of another almost $15,000. And I guess when we talk about waiting, I don't know if there's a cutoff that needs to be made while, and I don't know, I'm just trying to have that dialogue, because I feel like maybe we're giving some people hope when we might know that there's a cutoff that needs to be made before they even apply. That depends on the fund. Right now, it looks like I'm going to, if I paid everything to date, we would still have money left. But I'm not done, we're not done siting sidewalks. It's going to about slow down for winter, obviously, and people won't even be repairing them when it gets really cold. But in the spring, it's probably going to pick up again. So is there a rotation in when the siting occurs? No. Still driven on complaints, so we address them as they come in. Okay. So, yeah, I just feel like there's something, and I don't know what it is, but we've got a timing issue. Because, again, when we know something's amiss, I'm not quite sure that this completely fixes it. And I don't know if it is truly emphasizing that that option is not necessarily available. I mean, I'm sure you say that when they apply or maybe setting a soft cutoff or what. I don't know. I'm not sure. But I'm not completely comfortable with this as it is. I do feel like there's something we're missing at this point right now. But that's my time. Thank you. And Council Member Brown, I think you had some motions, but I'm going to skip to Council Member Lamb first because I believe you have some motions. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. I guess my question is the application of which anybody would submit to request for funding, whether it was the 100 percent or 50 percent, I would ask you to explain the language that is included in the application. Does it show and signify that it's only available if the funds are available? It does. It's stated right on the application. Okay. So, having said that, I guess I understand what Council Member Brown, I understand and would want to support people to be able to have their reimbursements. But I'm wondering if those applications, depending on when they fell within the fiscal year that the applications were made, if it's just the fact that the monies ran out before those applications came up in the queue, I would guess. And so if we start making a precedent for situations like that, then I think we have to be careful about it down the road. So I would, if we are going to talk about what Council Member Fred Brown is talking about, reimbursing prior applications, I would like to see more information about those specific applications as to when they were submitted as compared to those that were already, that had been granted money before we moved forward on that. So thank you, Chair. I can answer that. Go right ahead. The funds, at the end of June, when the reserve funds were let go because 100 percenters were all addressed, we paid them all the way up through about January 6th. Those remaining applications were the rest of the applications up until after April 15th of that fiscal year. So we did, it's basically $7,000 short on the owner-occupied and $2,000 on the investment property. So that $10,000 example, if I were to pay that now, I would almost, without a doubt, lock us down now. No more applications would be paid until the reserve period ends in June. So we would shut it off today. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. But I also understand if you, in all honesty, the fund has to have the money in it or it doesn't, or I take it from someplace else at the end of the year when somebody gives me the ability to do so. It's not like I move the money on my own. It's that grant money was allocated as a budget item. So it's simply put, if we want to move money into it to pay for that bill, we're going to have to get permission to do so. Which is not a new phenomenon, but I may say it's a new phenomenon for this grant program that it looks like we're going to expend every bit of it. We've been this close twice. Now we've been over twice. This year looks like we're going to spend every bit of the $85,000. I'm on track to spend it all without going back to the additional $10,000. Council Member Maloney. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I'm not on this board. But just to clarify, the money guy, $85,000 this year is going to the 50% people. The other 100% is coming from CDBG. Is that correct? No. I just don't want to get it confused. So the 100% is still coming out of $85,000? Still comes out of this fund. Why is that? When we've got CDBG money, then why can't we use that money out of CDBG? It falls in that income guideline. And what I'm trying to do is use the money where we have money and use more money into the 50% and use the money of the 100% that are income eligible, they're going to fall under the CDBG program. And we do have money for sidewalks, as you can over in the north side, we're putting over a million dollars' worth of new sidewalk curbs and all that. We can set some of that money aside and try to not confuse the two. That's what I'm trying to figure out, why we don't go that direction. I don't think you can make that decision. I think that has to be CDBG or somebody in the administration make that decision. But it seems to me it's getting a little confusing here. I'd rather see the $85,000 go to the 50% grant and the 100% separately go to CDBG to make it not confusing. To me, I always thought it was. It's one budget fund on one account right now, professional services, sidewalk assistance. Well, maybe that's it. When we look at this budget, and hopefully the length will look at this, and maybe we ought to set aside. It doesn't look like it's taking a lot of money. Add it up for the 100%. We could drop it to $10,000 CDBG money or something. So it would make it more, less confusing to me. I mean, I sit up here and see, I just hate to see something when we've got money where we can use it for 85%, I mean, $85,000 for 50% and put more money into that and then use some of that CDBG money. So that's just a proposal that we'll look at the length next year and do it, go that direction. Thank you. Council Member James Brown, do you want to cede your space? All right. Council Member Fred Brown, this is your second. Let me speak to the, you know, this is a great program. It's a great program for the neighborhoods. It revitalizes neighborhoods. And granted, it's been abused a little bit because it's complaint-driven, and you might get somebody that walks a lot and they see all these, you know, these sidewalks that aren't in too good a shape, so they send that complaint in. But it really hasn't been overdone. And if we need to budget more money for this neighborhood, monies that promotes the neighborhood, and I agree with Council Member Maloney, we need to look and see about the 100% reimbursement. We might be able to infuse some money from CDBG grant to go into this. But I don't think we can put a price on this. If we need $150,000 to do our sidewalks, we ought to be doing our sidewalks for the right to make our neighborhoods look a little better and people be proud of it. And, you know, remember, they're putting up most of the money, or at least half of it. And so it's not we're not giving a full free grant. But I can tell you, I really think it's a worthwhile program and we need to support it. And I think the two things we need to talk about or do, and I don't know what your motion is going to be, is that we need to, everybody that's applied and have gone through the system, no matter what the timing is, I think those people should be eligible because they've already got their sidewalks done but they're not getting reimbursed. So they're losing faith in this government saying that we've got this program. And I know you say if the funds run out, we can't help you. But that's not in the process. They've gone through the whole process, got their sidewalks paved, and then you come in and they say, oh, we've run out of money, we can't pay you. And I think that's on us as a government, and I think that's bad rapport with our neighborhoods and our constituents. That's all I've got to say. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Council Member James Brown, you've been patient. You've got the floor. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Director, for the presentation and all the hard work and conversations that we had about making these changes. And to Council Member Brown's point, I think he's right. I think it is a grant program that has a certain amount of money that we're going to fund or put towards it, but I don't think we can put a dollar amount on making our community safer or more walkable. And I remember during the budget deliberations, we were talking about adding more money to this assistance program, but we backed off of it based off of the numbers that were spent last year and moving forward. It's good that people are out replacing their sidewalks, but I think we do have a responsibility to try to make sure that the funds are there to help those that need the help when doing that. So to that point, Director, once we get to a point this year with the current budget year and the 100% money that's set aside, is it your opinion off of experience that it may be enough money left to go back and recapture those applications or those sidewalks that were done that Council Member Brown is talking about? I don't believe we'll be able to recapture last year's. I believe we're on track to spend every bit of the budgeted amount at this time. Just adding up what I've spent, what is in the hopper, and then what the 43 applications currently sitting, that's going to be 47, 70, 61. Well, it sounds. That's almost 82,000. If I didn't get any more grant applications, we're going to spend about 83,000, if I paid every one I have right now. So it sounds like there may be a conversation and an opportunity to do what we did a couple of years ago to make sure that there was enough money to take care of that. I almost am concerned and don't want to get those two issues, even though they're related, confused with the changes that we have before us today. And I think we just have to look at the allocation going forward to make sure that we have enough money in that fund to address the need. And then the conversation about the cutoff date. I mean, we decided to change it from the application timeframe to actually looking at when sidewalks were replaced, when people physically have done the replacement to look at reimbursement. So I think that that's a step that we put in place to address the timing issue, but like we said, I think we're just going to have to put more money in the fund. I think the changes that you made addressed a lot of the issues that we had talked about, the owner-occupant piece of it, the reimbursement timeline. The part about the contractors was new, but I think it makes sense. I think if it's a step that's in place to help protect folks from being gouged and giving our department the opportunity to make sure those monies are dispersed, who does the work, I think that's fine. And I don't know if everyone noticed, but the 100 percent money, which we haven't been using 100 percent of over the years, we reduced that amount from 25 percent to 20 percent. So that gives a little more flexibility to the fund to be used for the 50 percenters. So with all that being said, and I know there's some more discussions about adding money to the fund, I'll make a motion to move forward the proposed changes to this ordinance to be reported out and presented to the whole council. So to be clear, you're talking about Section 17-162A, and it looks like 163, 164. Did you say 162? Yes. 162. 163, 164. 147. I think you need to make it a little bit more specific, if you don't mind. I think that would be helpful. Just go ahead and go through each one of them, if you want to do that. Okay, I'll do that. All right, I'll make a motion to move forward the proposed changes to the ordinance, Section 17-162, changes to 163, the changes to 164, the changes to 147. I've got you. Did I miss 165? Oh, 147, 148, 165. So moved. Okay, we have a motion and a second. And from what I understand, it's Section 17-162, 163, 164, A and B, C, 148 and 165. Is that correct? Council Member, did we get them all? Yes, ma'am. Did I just repeat them all correctly? I think you did. I think Council Member Lamb said it might be more expedient to just say, to approve the changes to the ordinance on page 12 in the packet, through page 12 through 15 in the packet. That works. Do I have a second? Second. A motion and a second. Do we have any discussion on the motion on any of these proposed changes? No discussion, no questions. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes, or motions passed. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. Okay, let's move on to the next item on the agenda, because it looks like we've got a full house for number three. So if we can do number two as expeditiously as possible. This is in reference to the five-year public safety plan. This was a result of the link discussion. I was a part of that. Council Member Ellinger was Chair, and Council Member James Brown was also on that link. So we are here to talk about that. If we can do that, as I said, as expeditiously as possible, that would be helpful. Thank you. Understood. Thank you for the time to go over the five-year plan for the Division of Enhanced 9-1-1. Go to the next slide, please. As you can see, we're authorized 75 personnel, and I want you to keep in mind when you look at this number, right now we have ten vacancies, so 65 people staffed 9-1-1 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And if you think about the math to do that, that doesn't leave a lot of people staffed on each shift. We answered 217,000 9-1-1 calls last year. The non-emergency are listed there as 260,000. Included in those non-emergency calls, those are the ten-digit calls that come in primarily on 258, 3600 for Lexington Police. Some of those are emergency calls. People just have it speed dialed into their phone, or they call from a business and use that number. I'm very proud of the next stat. 98.5% of 9-1-1 calls are answered within ten seconds. That's extremely good, but that's at a cost, and I'll talk about that here in just a little bit. A lot has changed in the last 20 years with 9-1-1. A lot of those changes have happened in the last ten years and even in the last year. No longer is the majority of our calls coming in from a house phone, a landline, on a desk. The vast majority are now coming in wirelessly. One of the challenges we face today is that what used to be a call or two about a wreck on New Circle Road is now a dozen or more people calling to tell us about the exact same wreck. We've had entire family members in a car all call from their own cell phones at the same time to tell us about the wreck because we can hear people in the background calling to tell us the same thing. It's a curse and it's a help. The help is we're getting the information very quickly. The curse is we can't answer a dozen calls at the same time. It's not possible. As you all know, we dispatch primarily for Lexington Police and Lexington Fire. That is a boon to us. Merger in 1974 was great for us because in some agencies they're dispatching for 26 police departments and 15 or 16 fire departments. We get to deal with two, and that makes our processes much simpler. We also are responsible for the addressing office, and you all get quarterly address changes. We review every development plan that comes through this city to make sure that the street name and the address for that property is correct and meets protocols. After construction is complete, we go back out to inspect to make sure the property number is up on that property following inspection. So that takes up the vast majority of our time. And then we are also, as of a few years ago, responsible for the government's radio system. You may not know that five and a half years ago we had about eight to nine different radio systems in this government. None of them talked to each other, okay? Police couldn't talk to fire. Corrections couldn't talk to police when they helped during NCAA. Streets and roads couldn't talk to anyone. They're all on the same radio system now. We only have one separate radio system used by a division, and that's sanitation. Everybody else is on the same system. So this is a major efficiency and one of the major requirements or recommendations following 9-11 that cities fix that issue, and we have fixed that here in Lexington. Some metrics that I want you to dwell on for just a minute, and I'm sure you've had a chance to read through the presentation, but I think this is very important. Lexington's population grew 23 percent in the last 21 years. Our calls to 911 grew 55.3 percent, and the number of people we have answering those calls dropped 20 percent. That's not good, okay? That's not good at all. I'll tell you how we managed to have such a good stat here in just a minute. On top of this, a lot of things have changed. Twenty years ago you heard something come out called OnStar. Remember, GM came up with that. Now all the auto manufacturers allow you to sync, either have an onboard cellular feature or sync your phone to your car. Now we have cars calling 911 to tell us they've been in a collision or they've hit something. Whether they're going to report it or not, that's another matter, but we get calls from a lot of different things. We get calls from the buttons that you see advertised on TV, Help, I've fallen and I can't get up. You're familiar with that. We get calls from apps, including Uber. We get calls from a lot of different places that we didn't get 20 years ago. So the types of calls and the complexity of these calls has changed a lot in that time period. So more is expected. I'm not ashamed to say the city has increased the number of police and fire personnel, increased firehouses, and added responsibilities to those divisions. But in that time period, we've not increased 911. They don't go anywhere unless we take the call and send them. And if the logjam is on taking the call, they're not going anywhere. So keep that in mind. And we are getting a logjam on answering the calls. So I need you to keep that in the first foremost of your mind. We are very much into meeting national standards. One of the first things I did when I got this job five years ago is learn the national standards through various organizations, including the National Emergency Numbering Association, the National Fire Prevention Association. All these standards are very important. In November, we go before the commission to become the first accredited communications center, nationally accredited in the state of Kentucky. There's never been one in Kentucky yet. We'll be the first. We've already had our on-site assessment. We've already been invited to the commission. And pretty much it's one of those things you just go through the formalities. But I feel like we'll be accredited come November. That took a lot of work. And the team I have at 911 has worked diligently to become the first in the state. I mentioned in the first bullet that we've implemented a lot of efficiencies. If you were around the city of Lexington 33 years ago, we had a director of 911 or a director of communications back then. We tried for over 30 years to merge two dispatch centers. Three years ago, we merged two dispatch centers. We trained dispatchers who had never answered the other type of call before to enter those calls. We've become more efficient with the new 911 phone system. We've implemented a switchboard operator who transfers out tens of thousands of calls a year on the non-emergency line for people who just want to speak to a detective, community services, or some other unit and don't require the services of a telecommunicator. We've done all the efficiencies that we can possibly implement. I'm here to tell you there's none left. We've done everything we possibly can. Hiring personnel is a challenge for us. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about this process. But as you can see, all but the last two bullets are all the steps it takes to get hired by 911. And they're almost identical to what you have to go through as a police officer or a firefighter. That process can take as much as six months. If I start with a dozen people, I'm lucky to have one make it to the finish line. Nobody's going to hang around six months to be a telecommunicator. That's just the bare truth. People grow up wanting to be firefighters and police officers. I did. But people who don't grow up say, I want to be a dispatcher. They're not going to wait around for the job. Many of these points that you see here are required by Kentucky administrative regulations. So it's not something that we can just wave our wand and say, go away. We must do backgrounds. We must do polygraphs. We must do an interview, psychological suitability screening. These are requirements. And we also do, by our own requirements, medical exams and drug screens, which are essential. After they finish this process, they're told they're going to go to the academy for five weeks enrichment. A lot of what we hire are single moms. Imagine telling your family you're going to be gone for five weeks, and you do not get to come home at night. Okay? That's what we do. And we have a lot of people still take the job. Starting next year, we have already acquired our academy status back, so we'll be running our own in-service training, so we won't be needing to send as many people to Richmond and out of town for training. We are considering establishing our full five-week academy as well, in light of some changes at the Department of Criminal Justice training. I won't go into, but we'll see if those changes stick after November. But we're not happy with the changes. So next year, if things continue down the path that they're going, we'll ask to have our full academy status back. We'll start training our own people starting in 2021. The challenge to that is if we're only hiring onesies and twosies, we have to run a full academy for five weeks with one person sitting in the seat. And if we finish the material in 20 minutes, it doesn't mean we can quit. We have to stay there for the full hour if it's an hour-long instruction. That's very difficult when you're only training one or two at a time. It's different if you have 30 in the classroom asking questions. So it is a challenge to try to run your own academy. This is what our attrition looks like, and as you'll notice, it's fairly consistent over time. I went back and looked at attrition charts that go back 20 years. It hasn't changed dramatically in that period of time. Our staffing has been fairly stable during that period of time. You'll see one blip back in October of 2018, and the benefit of that blip was that we got money in public safety to do radio advertising. And suddenly we had more applicants than we'd ever seen in years, and we were able to get our numbers up. That was huge. I know corrections benefited from that advertising money. We did. It's the first time we've had an advertising budget. And that was extremely beneficial, and that's something that you ought to keep in mind. We have to quit thinking that people go to our website to look for a job. Frankly, they don't. We get some applicants, but most people are looking other places. Websites like Indeed, Glassdoor, and others are the go-to places in today's markets to find a job. We don't have a recruiting budget to go out and say, come look at us at our website. So we do the best we can with the funds that we have. Some of the staffing challenges, call takers. To give you an idea, this week we finished applications last week. Ninety-one applied. Forty of those are not eligible for the job. Fifty-one were invited to testing, and only 26 have signed up so far for testing. That's for three positions for call taker. Out of those three, I'm going to ask for some overhires from the COO in the coming week or two. I'm going to ask for a couple of overhires. If I get five people slotted for three jobs, I'll be lucky if two show up on day one. Okay? That's what we're working with because other jobs become available in six months. It's just a challenge to get them in the door. Call taker is the job that everybody wants because it is the least technical, although it is very difficult to take a lot of calls from the public that are often very angry, upset. To give you an idea of how many calls they handle, it's not uncommon for our call takers to handle 1,800 phone calls in one month. That's a whole lot of telephone calls to answer. Many of these people, when they're at work, will go an hour or more without a restroom break because they see calls waiting. It's the only job I know in city government where you can't go to the bathroom because calls are waiting. That's how they work. I once had a council member come in. Actually, it was the former chief of staff came and sat with 9-1-1 back when we had the talent acquisition review committees and hiring freezes eight years ago. And after Jeff Reed sat there for an hour, he realized that nobody could go to the bathroom. If somebody went to the bathroom, 9-1-1 didn't get answered. We were taken out of that freeze process immediately. It's a challenge. Even if we are fully staffed, there are times when calls do wait. For dispatchers, the situation is quite a bit different. Right now we have seven vacancies. We've selected five people, five applicants for the job, and that's all that we had. And we've selected all five. We will be lucky to have one or two make it through the process and actually become fully trained. The challenge to us, and I'll illustrate it using the Kentucky State Police, we've hired three state police dispatchers in the last two years. Only one of them has made it. The state police dispatcher has maybe six to eight troopers out on the road. A Lexington police dispatcher has 48 to 50 officers on their channel by themselves, all wanting to make traffic stops, get out with suspicious subjects, and be dispatched on calls. It is very challenging. If you want to know what it's like, I know Councilmember Ellinger has come by, put the headset on, and listened for a while. I think most of you will realize you would not want that job. You have to be an adrenaline junkie. It's like being an air traffic controller. You either love it or you hate it. And most people don't find out until they've been in the job for about six weeks whether they're going to stick or not. Mind you, it took us six months to get them there. So that's part of the reason why attrition can be a challenge for us. Some of the things I want you to take note of is if, for example, we hear periodically the topic of fourth sector coming up, that's nine additional dispatchers to make that fourth sector happen. So just don't think in terms of the officers, but also think of the dispatchers as well. Whether we do a fourth sector ever or not, we're pretty much past due from splitting out some of the officers onto a fourth dispatch channel. The radio traffic is getting so crowded on these radio channels, it is difficult for dispatchers to do dispatch calls, particularly in the evening, for all the radio traffic that's going on. That's just the nature of having such a large agency. FIRE has asked for a full-time FIRE status channel with the requirement that it never not be staffed from the day it started, which is something I can't agree to. You may not know it, but during the night we sometimes go down to two channels on police because we don't have enough dispatchers. Somebody calls in sick, there's things like that that just happen. But to have a channel that is staffed and never not staffed is an impossible mandate for me. It just can't happen. If we get enough dispatchers, if we never had a vacancy, we could probably do it. But we've never been in a position where we didn't have vacancies. One of the things I want to look at in the future is automatic dispatch software for FIRE. It's available, it's expensive, but it basically does all the talking on the radio for you, and you just monitor the radio channel and send the call out. I've observed it used in several cities. It's very effective, and that may be one option that we can look at in the near future. I am going to ask the CO for one temporary rehire per CERT process so that we can try to get our positions fuller than they currently are. Facilities. Y'all were very gracious over the last few years to make sure we have some of the finest facilities in the state of Kentucky. Our Public Safety Operations Center is truly state of the art. It also is a government-owned radio tower site. You can see the lease tower sites down below. Some of those leases vary in price, the cheapest being $500 a month, which is extremely inexpensive. Our backup 911 center is inside a police headquarters. We have occupied that many times over the last few years for various reasons. A city of this size should never be without a fully standing backup 911 center. It's not like, and I used to serve in the Emergency Operations Center, it's not like an Emergency Operations Center that you can set up in an hour or two. A 911 center would take weeks to set up. So if something happens to our center, our center's location, we really need to be back up and running in about 15 minutes. And we practice that. We can move our operations in about 15 minutes to the backup center. Director, I'm going to stop you right there. You've gone beyond your 15 minutes. How much more time do you think you may need to wrap this up? I know this is real important and it's critical that we hear this information. Can you give me an idea? I can skip ahead to a couple of things. Another five minutes. Would that work for you? Someone want to give the Director a motion? Second. Thank you. Go ahead, Director. Thank you. You're familiar with the 911 addressing office from the quarterly, and I won't go into any more details on that. But you're familiar with what that function does, because I mentioned earlier. They had a 100 megahertz radio system. It was nice that we got this radio system. I have one person to maintain it for the entire city. What my next step will be, if I can't get a position in the next budget request, is I'm going to make a request to convert a dispatcher to a system specialist to help maintain it. We have a person on call 24-7-365 who's never not been on call, except when he left the country, because we have one person to maintain a system for nine divisions. That's not good. So I'm going to ask again for another specialist to help with that in the next budget request. Here's our big capital forecast over the next five years. The 800 megahertz radio system will be 10 years old in 2023 and due for a refresh. Please don't get stuck on that figure, because I don't know what it will be. But this is just my best estimate of what a refresh of the system is. Our 911 hardware will be due for a refresh in five years. Logging recorder in eight to ten years at around $100,000. Servers every five years. And they're brand new, so we don't know what they'll be in five years. But you can get a pretty good idea of what it will take to keep 911. And we can use $911 for some of these expenses, but not all of them. But some of them we can use $911 for. So here's the down and dirty on my personnel requests. I've mentioned each of these already. If you have any questions. Council members, do you have any questions of Director Stack? Council Member McKern. Thank you, Chair. Director, can you touch base with what you just said about those funds? Are those one-time funds, or are those reoccurring every year? Every year we have a 911 fee on landlines in Fayette County. Every landline pays for it. The downside of the landline fund is that although it is growing every year, the number of people with landlines in their home is decreasing fairly rapidly. One of the things that's keeping the landline fund alive is the fact that a lot of Windstream, Spectrum, and others bundle, where you get telephone, phone, TV, Internet. That's the only way we're getting that fee. If that bundling process ever ends, we're going to see it plummet pretty quickly. We also get money from the state for wireless fees. That fee has not gone up since its creation because that would be considered by legislators as being a tax increase. So it's one of the lowest in the nation, and we get a part of that fee on a pro-rata basis along to other centers in the state. We can only use those two funds for expenses at the center and in the center. We cannot use them, for example, to update tower sites away from the center. So the funding for, like, the radio system and the hardware refresh and stuff, does that occur every five years, or is it just a reoccurring every year? The refresh for the radio system is a 10-year cycle. So in 10 years, we'll be able to use some 9-1-1 funds for that. But the sites that are not physically located at the center, we have to use general funds to refresh that or capital. Okay. Wonderful. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Chair. Robert, congratulations on the national accreditation being the first in the state of Kentucky. It looks like you have quite a few challenges in the personnel. Doing the math on this back page, the call takers make with benefits around $46,000. Is that okay? And I was going to also ask you, you said that you had success when you had marketing dollars. I wasn't in on your link. Do you have that line item this year, any marketing dollars? No. Okay. And it's also, I thought was interesting, is that when we talk or when there is talk about adding a fire station or a place, you're not at the table at all? Okay. Because as, obviously, our population increases, so will the demand, and that really needs to be looked at from a safety standpoint, I would think. But keep up the good work, and, obviously, we need to look at those challenges in the personnel and keep in pace with everything. Thank you, and thank you, Chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Stack, for being here. In our council week, we thought it would be important that we get five-year plans and know what we're going to be looking at in the future. So this will be the first of the public safety. We'll have police, fire, and community corrections as the months progress. But thank you for bringing this to let us know. And I would recommend to all my colleagues to go out to the facility. It is a nice facility, but it certainly takes a certain individual. It's very stressful, and you have to have a certain attitude because you're right. You have a lot of people screaming at you, and they have some really good people working there. I listened to all the different ones, and it was quite amazing. It was a long time, and it was only an hour. So it makes for a very stressful day. So thank you very much for what you do out there. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Stack, thank you for this presentation. I think this is really important that we know what's ahead of us instead of waiting until the day of, screaming and crying for what we need to fix. So I do appreciate this. I have watched our 911 system grow and become an amazing structure for this community because of having the wonderful facility and the wonderful employees. And I have been out there not recently, but a couple of years ago I came out, and I just want to applaud you and all of the employees out there for all of the wonderful work. And I think that knowing, just like Council Member Ellinger said, knowing this information going forward as we talk about in budgets, it helps us to better understand looking at the 911 fund. And I think, too, it might help us look at things when it comes to the legislative session, when there are discussions about the 911 fund and the cell phones versus landlines. And I know that has been something that's been discussed a lot, and maybe we can be more engaged in those conversations as they come up in Frankfurt. So I appreciate this very much. So thank you. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I appreciate what you've done. To clarify something up, an issue came up a couple of weeks ago, I talked to a couple of your staff. On Vassell's Road, the 311 and 911, are they on the same tower or are they on different towers? 311 does not have any radio capability at all. 911 is the entity that uses radio. Have you ever had this problem, like, for instance, on Vassell's Road, between the airport and Parker's Mill, there was somebody called in, they wanted a pothole complaint, and they were getting the metro, Louisville. So some reason the signal went all the way to Louisville, and they called three times, and they all went to Louisville, like their 311. I didn't know if we ever had that problem with our 911. I'm hoping we never have. That's my biggest fear. But I just didn't know. When you look at wanting to update the radios and all that, is that some of the reasons you're concerned about? You're the first person to ever mention it, but I will tell you that we own our own call handling system. When you're at a county line and on a cell phone, it could go to another call handling system outside of this city. And what that system does with it, I'm talking about Windstreams has 911 equipment, where it sends the call. If it hits our system, it doesn't go anywhere but our system. I just hope it never happened before. I know it happened 311, it happened three times. You're trying to get a pothole fixed. Right. I just worry about the connection with the cell phone, the same thing. That sounds like more of a cellular carrier issue than anything else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Director Stack. And don't go. If you had to sum up what was your biggest issue as far as with personnel, the hindrance, what would it be? I think it's not pay. I'll tell you that. I think our biggest hindrance is getting enough qualified applicants in the door and keeping them all the way through to the first day of hire. It's a six-month hiring process. That's a huge challenge, and most people aren't going to hang around for this job. And so by getting overhires, it allows us to start. If we have three vacancies for call taker, if I go for five names, there's a remote possibility five will start. I don't think it will happen, but at least I'll come close to having three in the door on the final day. So the CAO has been very good about approving overhires, and we're asking for those more often to try to get closer to our target number. Does the residential requirement play heavily into this? I think it does for single moms, but we are getting enough employees that go ahead and stick all the way through that I don't think it's the critical factor. I think one of the things that we will always deal with, and we have a lot of part-time employees, we are a great job for people who want to start a career, go part-time after they become parents, and then come back to finish their career. We have a lot of that that happens. We have a lot of people that will go part-time for five, six, seven years, then come back. That's always going to be a situation for us. We tend to recruit more females than males. About 70 percent of our staff is female. Thank you so much. I appreciate the presentation. The last item on the agenda is the short-term rentals. And, Council Member Farmer, since you put this into committee, I'll let you go forward. Short-term rentals may be a long discussion. I think so. We do have approximately ten members of the audience that would like to speak, so just FYI. I'll be brief. Thank you. Thank you for letting me place this in committee and to give comment here today. Lexington is a gracious and welcoming city full of great hosts, and many of those hosts are in the audience here today. We appreciate the work that you do on our behalf, because if you use the Florida weekend, all 8,000 rooms in Lexington were rented out. So people were looking for other places to stay. Many of the people in this audience provided places for that to happen. We appreciate that. I appreciate that. In taking up this issue, it's about leveling the playing field, and that's really the discussion point in the packet today is some potential legislation for the Council, the committee to react to, and for the public to react to. We did a little bit of work in this area in the last month, asking platforms that were not part of our database to come on board via a resolution. This is kind of the next step in terms of finding a way to help everybody participate in being a good host and providing a safe environment, and to make sure they're part of the structure that includes some of the fees that make the city go. So we had a little time over the summer during our break to have a couple of work group meetings, and basically we looked at what other cities do. If you look on page 38 of the packet, you can see some examples of what other cities do in relation to this emerging issue. So using that, some great work was done by planning, revenue, and certainly especially the people in law who helped draft what is in the packet today. What is in the packet today is a great start. It's not an end product, but something that we all need to give consideration to both today and going forward. There are some specific changes that will need to happen. I don't know them all, but the discussion here will help flesh that out. In the final analysis, when we met and talked about this, Evan Thompson, who is here to go over the specifics of the potential ordinance, did a great job of drafting along with Mr. Edwards as well as our commissioner. And having given just that brief background, I would ask you just to go over this, if you would, in outline fashion, and then we can take input from the community. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Evans. Hello. I think it's first important to define what short-term rental is under this ordinance. It's a dwelling unit that's rented, leased, or otherwise assigned for tenancy of less than 30 consecutive days where no meal is served, specifically excludes hotels, motels, extended stay hotels, bed and breakfasts, and boarding and lodging houses. This definition was already in our code from back in 2018 when we discussed this the first time. So I'm just going to go over broad strokes on what the draft ordinance says. So in order for hosts of these short-term rentals to operate in Lexington under this draft ordinance, they must first obtain a business license from the Division of Revenue. Then with that business license, the host must register his or her short-term rental with the division tasked with administering the program. I think that's currently being considered. So I'm just going to refer to it as the administrating division at this point. And then pay a registration fee of $100. After they register, they'd be provided a registration number, which would be required to be placed on all advertisements for that short-term rental. For instance, you go to Airbnb, for instance, they're required to put their registration number on their page for Dave's House or something like that. Let's see. Hosts are responsible for collecting and remitting to LFUCG transient room taxes and occupational license fees. But as we have with our Airbnb agreement, hosting platforms can collect transient room taxes for hosts by agreement with LFUCG. Like I said, we have one with Airbnb. We've discussed this before. Hosts must meet safety requirements related to smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, emergency exits, emergency evacuation plans. That's just a safety concern. There's talk that we'll be requiring an affidavit from them as a way to administer those requirements. Short-term rentals can only be subject to one contract at a time. That's to say one reservation. You can reserve your house for one reservation or a bedroom for one registration. But it can't be like, for instance, you have a two-bedroom house that you're renting. You can't have a reservation for one bedroom, and you can't have at the same time a reservation for the other bedroom. It's limited to one reservation. Hosts under this draft ordinance must provide a monthly report about the number of reservations and the number of nights per reservation for the prior month. A host must abide by applicable requirements under the zoning ordinance, one being the max one reservation per week or 52 reservations a year requirement currently being placed by zoning enforcement. I see something's going on, so I can wait or just keep going? Okay. I apologize. I saw everybody. Gives you a little guidance and helps others understand as well. Thank you. Yeah. Let's see. So under the ordinance planning, we'll continue to enforce zoning ordinance-related violations. Revenue will continue to enforce transient room and occupational license requirements. And then an enforcement agency division, which is currently being discussed now too as well, will be tasked with enforcing the other requirements in the draft ordinance. That enforcement division will issue fines for violations. Those fines can be appealed to the Code Enforcement Hearing Board. The division tasked with administering the program has the power to deny registrations or renewal for various reasons, including having unsatisfied fines, and may revoke registrations if the short-term rental is the location of a public nuisance or two violations of this ordinance. Denial or revocation of registration goes to the Code Enforcement Hearing Board. And then also under this draft ordinance, the Code Enforcement Hearing Board may subpoena information from hosting platforms like Airbnb to obtain information about unregistered short-term rentals to try to help for those who don't register with LFUCG. You good? Well done? I'm not sure he is. I'm done. Okay. If you have any questions, I'm happy to. There you go. That's a good one right there. Council Member Farmer, did you want to follow up, or did you want me to take some questions from some council members? He did a great job of summing that up. I think we're at the point now where people should have read this and be a little bit familiar with it, and we'll see what kind of input we get both from the community and the council, and then go from there. Thank you, ma'am. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Chair. Evan, I was just wondering the rationale for limiting it to one contract at a time. Anecdotally, a couple times I've stayed at Airbnbs where there were multiple rooms and I met some pretty cool people. So I'm just wondering. On a very broad stroke level, we tried to largely mirror Louisville's framework, and if I remember correctly, Louisville has that requirement. Louisville has that requirement. We're largely mirroring Louisville's requirements. It's up to, obviously, the council if they want to change it, of course. Another thing, it might just be worked out. You have to file a monthly report. To whom does that get filed? It would be to the administrating division, which is currently being worked out. Okay, it will be worked out. Okay, that's my question. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair. A couple of housekeeping things. There is a reference to an administrative hearing board and a code enforcement board, and I looked this morning and it looks like that all should be the administrative hearing board and not the code enforcement board because administrative hearing board is the actual board that is under Chapter 12-6. The other little housekeeping piece is under Section 13-81 under the enforcement, under subsection F, as in Frank, there's reference to Section 17-78 and 17-79, and those should be 13-78 and 13-79 just for housekeeping measures. Now, my other questions revolve around do the short-term rentals, do they fall under the property maintenance code or is there another set of building codes? So if I went out and I created a built or whatever, a short-term rental, does it have to be inspected in order for me to list it with the Airbnb or VRBO or any other? Do you know the answer to that? Are you saying like building a house for that purpose or? Right. If I have a property that I'm going to use as short-term rental, is there a mechanism where there is an inspection? Yeah, Dewey is not here, but I've worked a lot of time in code enforcement or in building inspection before code enforcement. State building codes are going to require a permit to build any structure here. Its use is an occupancy of the building code. So the fact that it's owner-occupied or rental wouldn't matter to its structural integrity or the life safety provisions under the codes, but you would not just be able to build a building without a permit, regardless of whether it was a short-term rental or an owner-occupied house. So, yes, these conversions would be permitted as remodels, additions, or new entities. From the standpoint of building inspection, issuing permits, and doing the initial inspections. That would give them a certificate of occupancy as a single-family dwelling or a one- and two-family dwelling or a townhouse or whatever it happens to be. Okay. I mean, I think that this is an area of expertise that I am learning about and trying to educate myself on, because I, personally, I have stayed in a number of Airbnbs in other cities, and I absolutely love them because they're really unique and you get to actually witness what the community is like in the area where you are staying, which is a very unique opportunity. Now, I don't go in and have big parties or go crazy or, you know, stay up and be loud all night or anything like that, so I realize there are two points to it all. I see the pros and cons to this, but I'm anxious to hear the public input from this before I really go any further down the road. But I think that this is possibly a starting point for the conversation, and I do appreciate those that have been involved in this bringing it forward. So, thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Farmer, for leading the charge on this, and, Evan, for your input and research and for the public to show up and weigh in on the issue. I guess, first off, have we had any response from any of the other organizations that host Airbnb? I mean, like Airbnb or any of the other organizations, have they responded to the call for compliance yet since we issued that about a month ago? Have we heard from anybody? No, we haven't. We've sent out correspondence to all the other different platforms, and we haven't gotten a response yet. Okay. The part about the host, the part in this draft about the host submitting a monthly report, what does Airbnb currently do? Do they submit a monthly report, or do they do it per the rentals? Because they're the ones, from my understanding, are handling the paperwork and the reporting aspect. For the transient room tax portion is what Airbnb has been doing. So, is that enough to cover the property owner's responsibility, or is the monthly reporting something in addition to what Airbnb is currently reporting? I don't think it is. Airbnb is, if I remember correctly, and Revenue can back me up on this, it's anonymized reporting. So, under the agreement, they're not required to tell us the property, how many times it was rented and where they're located and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah, and I guess the only reason I posed that question is because that just seems like, you know, a lot of folks that do the Airbnbs and do it well, they're not necessarily running it like a business. So, to generate a monthly report might be something, you know, more intense for, you know, those property owners to do. So, I just didn't know if the platform provided that service for them. I met their requirement. There could be. I don't run an Airbnb, so I'm not sure. But often there may be ways that they can download things from Airbnb's website to show a lot of the information that we're requiring under there. I'm just not sure. Okay. So, and a lot of the other things I'm kind of curious about, I'd rather hear from the folks that are in the business that do it on a day-to-day basis. But the other thing I didn't see, maybe I overlooked it in the draft ordinance, did we address zone and density at all as far as the Airbnbs and R1s, R2s, and R3s? No. Okay. But that is one of the things that we've kind of talked about and one of the concerns we've heard from residents. So, I kind of, you know, I'm kind of concerned about or would like to hear what other folks have to say about it. But I know that's one of the issues out there. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And I appreciate everybody showing up today. I'm not sure where to begin because I would like to hear from the audience. We're going to do that right after. I think I need to make a couple general points. First, I do have an Airbnb. I have since the middle of August, and I've had eight weeks of it, and I've had eight weeks of every weekend that has been full. So, I have a pretty good understanding with what's going on now with Airbnb. There was a learning curve, and I'm still learning, but I have a pretty good feel. I have a couple questions, I guess, just on the legislation. When you look at it, and when it comes to voting, I will recuse myself because I do feel like I have a conflict here. So, I think I need to be part of the conversation because I think I have as much knowledge on this as probably everybody on the stage, but I really wouldn't, I don't think I can vote on it. When it comes to, like, a bed and breakfast facility, could you tell me what the difference is? If I provide food for my Airbnb, now would I be considered a bed and breakfast? Do we require them to have a license outside of a business license? Yeah, that might be a planning question. Okay. I don't care who answers it. I'd just like to have an answer. Do we have someone from the Division of Planning? Mr. Duncan. I apologize. Director Duncan. Thank you. Council Member Horikoshi, would you repeat the question, please? Sure. We're making some specific legislation for our short-term rentals, and then in here we have a bed and breakfast facility. Could you tell me what, if I just added food to mine, could I then constitute myself as a bed and breakfast instead of a short-term rental? Well, a bed and breakfast, now the platforms may have changed since we certainly initiated the bed and breakfast years ago, but they weren't necessarily associated with online booking like the Airbnbs or the short-term rentals are now. But a bed and breakfast facility is defined in the zoning ordinance, and so therefore in order to have one you have to have the conditional use. So you go to the Board of Adjustment and seek approval through the Board of Adjustment for a bed and breakfast, and then the conditions are put on, and there are a number of existing conditions that have to be met also for bed and breakfast. So they are regulated in a way right now through the zoning ordinance that short-term rentals are not. Do we require a business license outside of just a business license? Do we have what they're required in this with another license? I don't know if a business license is required for a bed and breakfast. Okay. What about it? Can you come to the mic, please? Yes, it is. Yes, a business license is required for a bed and breakfast. I know. Well, all of them are required for a business license. Because right now this legislation is going to ask for a short-term and also a number. Do we require a number for each one of those? No, we do not. Okay. I just like to keep things consistent, I guess, if we're going to do it. How about on a boarding and lodging house? Could you explain the difference on those? A boarding and lodging house is also defined in the zoning ordinance, and that is for people, I believe it's five or more unrelated people. It is specific with separate mail service, separate not necessarily group meals, so it's not like a hotel or something in that respect. And it is, again, I don't know whether a business license is required for that, but it is regulated in the zoning ordinance. Okay. Do we require monthly statements from each one of those? From a bed and breakfast or from a boarding and lodging houses? Because I think what's going to happen now, according to this legislation that we're looking at, is I'm going to have to provide each month who stayed there, and do we do that for the others? No. Okay. Just checking. Okay. I think it's probably best that we hear from the. We've got one more. Well, we've got two more council members. I'm sure I'll have some follow-up, but I look forward to the conversation. Public input for sure. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. My question is, when we pay that $100, when they pay a $100 registration fee, and it goes back to Council Member Lamb's kind of question is, I'm not wanting a building permit. I'm going to take my existing house and take one of my bedrooms. Do I have to do anything to update it? Do I have to put something in compliance? I know you've got to have the smoke alarms. You've got to have the carbon outside and all that. Is there anything else? And my other question is going to be about the $100. Is there anything else that they have to do? Not to retrofit their house, if that's what you're asking. I mean, it's nothing they have to do anything else. Okay. Just smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers, emergency exits, emergency evacuation plans. I give you $100. Who goes out there and inspects it to make sure that there's carbon monoxide out there and smoke alarms there? Does anybody from the city go out there, or are you all just taking it from their words? I think that's still being worked out at this point. Do what? I think that's still being worked out at this point. There was talk about potentially requiring affidavits, that the requirements are being fulfilled as a way to ensure compliance. So no one from the city needs to go out there as long as they say the $100 they put in writing, that these things are in there, we're fine. We don't have to have anybody go out there. Like I said, I think that's still being discussed. Nobody goes out there. I think there's still administrative costs in the registration, registering these short-term rental hosts. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Evans. Thank you, Chair. I guess I just have more of a comment than a question right now, because right now I think this is – I appreciate the work that you've done, but I think we're overreaching right now. Having written regulations and all kinds of things with licensing boards and so forth, I think we always want to start with the question of what are we really trying to fix here. And this is a topic that we're not really sure – well, there are all kinds of opinions on what we're trying to fix. They run the gamut. So I think this body needs to really decide what are we trying to fix here. We got to a point where we knew that there was a tax that needed to be collected that was missing, and we're attempting to address that. I think this shows, just based on the questions that have been asked by Council Members, that this is perhaps overreaching and maybe treating some types of businesses much differently than others. So I think we need to go back to the original question. What are we really trying to fix with these types of rentals right now? And I honestly don't think we know the answer to that at this moment. So I think we might need to hold off on pushing this forward at this moment, because I know we want to know who is operating these businesses, but I don't think that requires everything that's in here. That's a simple just registration, which is a simple entering information. But, again, right now I don't feel comfortable with everything that's in here. And, again, Council Member Ellinger has pointed out some issues, along with other Council Members, just about specific information. I think it's asking for information that is already covered in other departments, just based on code enforcement, the entity, you know, what happens in building a home residence period. So I don't think we have to go all the way back to the drawing board, but I think we need much more specific questions for this body, for you, to take to you to say this is what we're really trying to fix. This is the problem. So I think it was a good effort, but I think perhaps there was an injustice given to you trying to answer or fix all of the questions that I think it's just too broad right now. But it's broad based on not having specific issues to address. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. Just an initial comment. I think that it's pointed out some problems that we may see about some inequities of similarly situated businesses, though I think some of the answers that we heard, and we still need to flesh this out, but I think some of the answers that we heard were some of these other businesses are already regulated, at least through our zoning ordinance, that short-term rentals are not. So I think we can see some ways of differentiating that I think are important as we go through this analysis. I'm not saying one way or another the way I feel about it, but I think that that's an important distinction is that we already have regulations in place for many of these other type businesses, which gives the necessity for a pretty long and onerous addition to our ordinance relating to short-term rentals. I think you've done a great job as a start. My question would be has there been any looking at the possibility of further regulations on the platforms and the sites and the organizations themselves as opposed to just the hosts? We recently passed a resolution that was intended to allow the administration a little bit more mechanism in dealing with these platforms, but if we're going to take a look at this in a really hard look and change our ordinance, I would like to see going as far as maybe prohibiting certain platforms that don't comply with our ordinance and aren't cooperative with us and what mechanisms legally we can use to enforce that. Have you taken any look at that yet? There's, without going too far into it to give free legal advice to other people, there's federal law and constitutional concerns about potentially requiring Airbnb to remove listings, penalizing them for not doing so, requiring Airbnb to give business information about the subpoena, which is the reason for the subpoena requirement in the ordinance. So that's just two ways where it makes it a little bit more difficult. I can understand that analysis being difficult because of federal, state law and obviously constitutional concerns, but that's not to say we can't have that conversation and we can't figure out what can we do as a city that is within federal law and within constitutional grounds. I don't want to get in a situation that we say, well, there's some impediments, so we're just not going to do it. Of course, yes. Because I think ultimately actually having some teeth to go after some of these platforms for causing some of the problems that our neighbors or our Department of Revenue perceive, I think it's going to be beneficial to us. And I'd like to see that as we move forward in this analysis. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. We have members from the audience who have signed up. If you wouldn't mind coming to the podium, you have three minutes to speak. Ms. Kathy Burke, you're first. If you would state your name and address, please. And then Mr. Mark Streedy and then Ms. Fran Taylor. I'm Kathy Burke, and I'm going to take about 30 seconds because I got eager signing up on the list. But anyway, I am an Airbnb owner. I'm also a conventional rental house owner, not in Lexington. Well, one in Lexington, but in other states. I will tell you it's been the most fun thing I've ever done in my life, and rental properties allowed me to quit my engineering job way, way back when to raise my kids. So it's a really, really fun job meeting people. I will tell you that I would rather live in my Airbnb than my own house because there's no clutter. It's clean. My lawn is cut. My neighbors love us. They actually tell us that we were better than the owners of that house before we turned it into an Airbnb. So I'm here probably once a week. I live in Cincinnati. I went through all the legal pieces. I met with Division of Revenue. Is it Jeff? Yes. To make sure I was complying with all the tax codes. I had a sit-down meeting with him. He was awesome. And I understand his frustration because he said they combed through the Airbnb sites trying to find those rentals that aren't paying the taxes. And I get that. So I am a compliant, law-abiding Airbnb host. I love it. I am willing to comply with other things that might come forth from the city, but not to the point of over-legislation, of making us do the things that you're not making other people do, other businesses do, other bed and breakfasts do, that type of thing. So anyway, that's all I wanted to say. I traveled here. I'm getting ready to go clean my Airbnb. That's why I look like this. But anyway, I appreciate your work, your hard work. I know it's a daunting task to meet with a group of people like this, but I appreciate you. Ms. Burke, before you step down, for the record, I need your address, please. My home address? Yes, please. 3613 Victoria Lane. Don't anybody write this down. Cincinnati, Ohio, 452. Thank you very much. 452. Oh, is that it? That's it. Thank you. Mr. Streety. Good afternoon. My name is Mark Streety. I'm from Fincastle Road. I'm currently serving as president of the Ashland Park Neighborhood Association. I forwarded about noon hour to your emails, as far as a handout, a link to a four-minute radio podcast, the title of which is New Orleans versus Airbnb. And I'll just assert to my colleagues and the people that are for or against different positions than me, and also each of you folks as well, that I wasn't, and I would assert to you that no one in this room is adequately informed or prepared to discuss this topic until you've listened to the podcast. It's a four-minute radio podcast. I highly commend it. It's Planet Money, number 897, because it's an American success story gone horribly wrong, and we can learn from it. I would also commend the research that's been presented in your work papers. At least 15, if not 20, cities listed with regard to their experiences. That's a lot of work. However, the cities that are destination cities, not university cities, like New Orleans, like Nashville, like Annapolis, Maryland, are not included on that list. They have had long-term lessons learned with short-term rentals. We should learn those now and apply them well in this body of work. I'm sure we can and will do that. But it would lift those cities up because they need to be studied as well. And destination, destination for tourism, destination for bourbon and basketball and horse country and bluegrass and all the things that make us wonderful, not destination necessarily to be a university student, which is some of the examples. And by these issues that I'm reporting, I'm talking to you about neighborhoods, fighting with neighborhoods. I'm talking about the coined phrase of home hotels, which violates zoning still in this city. I'm just talking about some really, I'm talking about neighborhoods without neighbors. There are now neighborhoods with no neighbors, no grandmothers on porches, no children playing, because they're all hotels for people that visit the Treme District next to the French Quarter in New Orleans. So please listen to the cast. I would really commend it to everyone. Those that agree with me and those that certainly don't, all of us. We like the work that's been presented today in the following ways. We like registration and accountability. We like reporting. We believe the other types of housing have those types of requirements now. I think it's fair that short-term rentals do as well. I think monthly reporting of some detail is probably what you give your CPA to do your tax return. I don't think it's onerous. We understand a shared economy. We appreciate that concept a lot. It makes good sense. We don't appreciate underground economies here for Lexington. So we like the details. It needs a lot of work. We like better enforcement. We have seen very lax enforcement currently. We were in an early neighborhood with our council person to identify that as an opportunity and a real stress point in our neighborhood. So we appreciate those things. We would prefer an annual registration, not an every two year. We'd like a lot better enforcement, as I just said. And if there's an administrating hearing board or a body that's formed or to be tasked with those appeals, we would like some neighborhood access to that hearing body. The things we don't like. Mr. Strady, you need to wrap up your time, please. Thank you. We don't like corporations. I don't want Marriott as my neighbor. So when these good folks that do things in their homes as a corporation and then exit that to a corporation much larger, we don't care for that. Intensity questions have already been asked. We like owner occupancy. If you own your property and you have one room or two rooms or half of a duplex, that's your business, and we'd like to have you do short-term rentals there because you're already our neighbor. We like you as our neighbor. We want to keep you as our neighbor. We like neighborhoods that have neighbors. And we didn't see, but maybe it's in there, and this is my final point, we didn't see the limit of once per week. And maybe it's still there referenced in some other way. What we read or how we read it said unlimited, or we didn't see a limit. And we very, very much strongly request that there be a limit to that. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Ms. Taylor. And then Mr. David, looks like Gaither, you would be next. Hello. It's good to see so many friendly faces out there. My name is Fran Taylor. I live at 722 West High Street in Lexington, 40508. We have two Airbnb units. The first one we started in 2014. The second one we added in 2016. They're in the house next door to our house, which is all part of a compound. Our house, then a carriage house slash garage slash office, and then the house on the corner has the two Airbnb units. Airbnb has been a self-policing kind of program, where you are judged on what kind of experience you are providing, what kind of setting you're providing for your guests. We've had a number of guests that have loved Lexington so much, literally, that they've moved to Lexington. We have neighbors that say, when is Rabu coming back? We were, you know, we really enjoyed his company. And I realize there are different situations for every neighborhood and part of town, but I think that you're on target when you say that whatever we're doing for Airbnbs, we ought to be doing for other lodging, other bed and breakfasts, and hotels, for that matter. Are they going to be sending how many visitors they had and how many nights a week? As for one visit a week, that's not really practical. It may be that somebody requires only a one-night kind of stay. We require a three-day, three-night rather, minimum. And typically people are coming in for the weekends, you know, so that's an important part of the economic scale. I'm proud to say I'm a super host and have been a super host for 20 consecutive quarters, which is five years of being a super host. But I'm trying to show you the amount of pride we have, and I certainly understood the woman who said that I'd rather be a guest in my own place than in my house, because, you know, we try to do it right. More regulation, I think, is fine within reason. I think we'd all agree with that. But thank you for hearing me out, and thank you for looking into this. Thank you. Mr. Gaither. And then Mr. Chad Walker. David Gaither, 464 Lakeshore Drive. We've had several Airbnb units for about six months, six to eight months now. And Mr. Ellinger brought up a lot of things that I was going to mention, so, and the lady in the two-sweater. So the main thing that I thought was not fair is the limit to one a week or 52 in a year. That actually will kick a lot of people off the platform because it won't be profitable for them anymore. We have a lot of people that come for the weekends, and they, you know, you rent it out. We have a one-night minimum. So we rent it out. That means we can't rent it out to a business traveler, you know, through the week. So that would really tie our hands. As far as the reporting, I mean, I understand that. It makes sense. And as far as the quality of the property, we have definitely improved the quality of the property. We have to keep it in tip-top shape to attract the best customers, the best guests. And we get more money ourselves that way. And I think anyone in our neighborhood will tell you that our place looks much better now than when it was rented out before because we do take so much pride in it. But that's all I had to say. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Walker and then Ms. Micah Miller. Afternoon. I thought this was the line to get March Madness Ticket or Midnight Madness Ticket. Don't you wish. Yeah. My name is Chad Walker. I'm at 5167 Briar Hill Road. And most of you that know me up there know I'm long-winded, so that's the reason I wrote down my remarks. Otherwise, I'd be up here. You've got three minutes. All right. So my family and I own several commercial properties in downtown Lexington. Additionally, my wife and I own several Airbnb or vacation rental properties, the first of which was at 420 Ash Street in 2013, which is about a block off Georgetown Street. We've hosted tourists, horse park competitors, artists, a multitude of Keeneland visitors. Now, this was a great property because the first year that we owned it, it was on the news four separate times, not because of anything we did, but the houses two doors down were getting shot up every other night. Our property was just far enough out of the police line that that's where it showed up on the news. When I woke up in the morning, I got to see that. So we've improved that property tremendously. We've been involved in the neighborhood and put up cameras and things, tried to make it a better place and, more than anything, lead by example. Now, my wife and I now own four vacation rental properties. We're in the 11th District, 12th, 2nd District, and Mr. Gibbs, you know, would be over in your neighborhood as well. So we have intentionally implemented our own governing. We've already paid the sales tax, the transient tax. We've installed smoke, carbon monoxide. We provide fire extinguishers, confirm the openings for emergency exits, and have all the contacts. So we're already doing the majority of the stuff. The problem that we have with it, you've got two issues. Number one, currently in your zoning ordinance, it says that a dwelling unit is for occupancy as family owner by lease weekly or monthly or longer. And so now we're going back to, well, vacation rentals are anything under 30 days. But it's already in the zoning that anything eight days and more, you're good to go. So I'm confused on that. The other part, and this is also with that stipulation, they're saying that you can have no more than 52 rentals a year, but that doesn't show up anywhere. Now, I started that whole thing because I called code enforcement and said, when we stayed in Napa, Sonoma, they said you can rent your house once a year. And if you want to rent it one day, I'm sorry, once a month. If you want to rent it one day or 28 days, that's your choice. So my argument with them was that if you only rent it 52 times a year, that by proxy ends up being once a week. And so it should be fine. But that doesn't actually jive with what the wording is for the 30 days. And the other part is I don't believe that anybody else has to report to code enforcement or zoning for what they're doing there business-wise. The rest of it looks great. The fees, all that stuff, that's fine. But those are the two issues that we have. And I'd gladly answer any questions. I know this is a rushed deal. I tried to get through it as quick as possible. So any questions you all have for me? Thank you. Mr. Miller. And then we have Lisa Hart, Jennifer Leslie, and then Stephanie Claib or Clark. I'm sorry if I made a mistake there. Go ahead, Mr. Miller. My name is Micah Miller, and I live at 433 Yale Drive. I appreciate you all taking the time to carefully consider these regulations. My wife and I, my wife's Caroline, Lexington natives. We love Airbnb. Like Councilwoman Lamb, we've stayed at Airbnbs in other cities and love that experience. And last year we purchased a property, renovated it, and then put it on Airbnb in April of this year. This was in the Woodward Heights Historic District in downtown Lexington. It was pretty dilapidated, so we really improved the neighborhood by making the place beautiful. And here are some things that I want you to know about how our Airbnb operates. Ninety percent of our bookings are between two to four people. We have a no-party policy. We've never run into a fraternity or a bridal shower or any crazy parties or anything like that. We've had no complaints from our neighbors. In fact, our neighbors like to have a place for their out-of-town family to stay. And actually, as we were sitting here listening to this discussion, we got a booking from our neighbor who has family coming in. And we said yes, gave them a reduced rate. So they love us. And we're one of many Airbnbs contributing to the $3.1 million in taxable revenue generated for the city of Lexington. And the best estimates that I can see out there is that the majority of the revenue from Airbnb is coming from whole house or entire house rentals. I think that's something that's very important to consider. We have 100 percent five-star reviews to date. And here's a little bit of what some of our guests have been saying. We stayed at Caroline's Place as a quick rest along the Bourbon Trail. The neighborhood was very cool and left us extremely disappointed that we didn't budget more time to explore Lexington. That's just a sampling. Most of the reviews sound something like that. Many of our guests say things like, we wish we had more time in Lexington. We'd stay here again. The Airbnb stay is part of what makes their experience so special. Going short-term rentals, say over hotels, gives the guests unbridled freedom in their travel plans and a taste of authentic Lexington, all while enjoying the comforts of home. If you don't believe me, you can ask Benny Snell, a former U.K. football standout now playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who stayed at our Airbnb earlier this spring. He opted for Airbnb over staying in a hotel. Part of the attraction of short-term rentals is not having to check into the front desk or meet the host, although you can do that if you'd like. It's hassle-free. I would say don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. While having debated the issue for an entire home, short-term rentals, Louisville and Cincinnati have not eliminated this option. Neither should the city of Lexington. I'd also add that I think the 52 stays per year will make it untenable for a lot of business owners who have Airbnbs. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Jennifer Leslie and Stephanie Clark. I, too, thank you for having us here today. I'm an Airbnb owner ending up my second year in November. Your address, please, Ms. I'm at 1085 Griffin Gate Drive, Lexington. Thank you. I have many of the same sentiments that are positive as these other fellow owners. My big point to make to everybody here, when we all, those Airbnb owners who follow the rules, do everything you're supposed to do, we're all registered. We were putting an article with the Airbnb insignia on the front page of the paper. And as I read the article, you know, the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up. I'm like, what are they lumping us in with? Okay. That's like saying the off-brand Jell-O of gelatin is Jell-O. Okay. Airbnb is very strict. It is a survival of the fittest mentality. I review every person who stays at my house, and they review me. You know if you've messed up. They don't come back. And myself, like the other speaker, I have a five-star rating. I'm a super host. And we strive, we pride ourselves in that. I don't like being lumped into a category of people who are taking advantage of short-term rentals. And even larger platforms that aren't paying into our government expenses here. Airbnb has been paying. Before Airbnb worked that arrangement with Lexington, I did my quarterly taxes. Being in business is new for me. So that was a little bit challenging. It's a little easier now. Now I just have to do it on my private side. So I agree with the enforcement. I leave that to you all to figure that out. I feel like I'm being penalized by people who are not doing things properly. And I have no parting. I have no curfew. My neighbors all are very pleased. And that's the way we want it. I agree with the man from Fincastle. We don't want corporations moving in and destroying our beautiful city. Thank you. Thank you. Stephanie Clark. Thank you all for listening to all of us. My name is Stephanie Clark, and I live on Military Pike. And we've had Airbnbs for four years. And I agree with the lady that said she would rather live in her Airbnb than live in her home. We have some really nice ones here. And we're great property managers. We're just like the rest of these fine people that have spoken, super hosts and premier members. And we pay our taxes. Airbnb collects those taxes. VRBO is working on collecting the local taxes automatically. But we pay those regardless. And we just have rules. There's nobody under 25. Everybody has to review us, and we review them. And we've got all five-star reviews. I just hope that we are able to continue to do this because my husband is a very good ambassador for this city and for this state. And, you know, we meet everybody that comes in. And there's no parties. We've got strict rules. And, you know, they come in and they really love the experience of living in an Airbnb for a short term. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. That's all who have signed up unless there's someone else that I'm not aware of on the sign-in sheet. I thank you all for spending your afternoon with us, and I appreciate your public input. Council Member Farmer, I think we kind of decided that this is going to stay in committee for a while. Is that correct? Well, I think this was an excellent, excellent public discussion today among council members and the community. I think it surfaced some things that we should be thinking about in terms of this potential legislation and other. I think you'll see this in a reconstituted form based on today's input, and we'll be back to you. Very good. Thank you. And thank you all for coming down. Are there any other concerns or questions from the council members? If not, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I wasn't here at the time. Is it possible to take another question? We've got three minutes. You have to come to the microphone. Sir, if you would state your name and your address, please. I'm Kevin Baker. I'm on Albany Road. And just kind of appreciated what the lady here, and I'm sorry, I can't read the. Thank you, Ms. Evans. You had mentioned at one point you said what problem are we trying to address. My question just has to do with the 52-state restriction, which I don't see codified anywhere. I do see it on visitlex.com, but I don't see it in the zoning ordinance or the code of ordinance or anything. I'm sure in some way it's authoritative. And if it isn't yet, it's going to be. But the main question is what problem are we exactly trying to address with that 52-state ordinance? What do we hope to solve? Because as some of the Airbnb hosts have pointed out, I'll just use an example. If you went to a hotel, if you went to the hotels and said starting effective immediately, you can only book one guest per room per week in this hotel, you're going to drop all the hotels out of business. So what are we hoping to accomplish by so severely choking off the revenue that the hosts are making? And by the way, I'm not even a host. I'm just curious. So that's my question. What do we hope to solve by so severely restricting the bookings in an Airbnb unit? Thank you so much. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Thank you.