# Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee - Virtual Meeting - May 18, 2021 > Auto-transcribed civic record · May 18, 2021 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5356 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5356?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2021-05-18 - **Last revised**: May 18, 2021 - **Length**: 16,173 words - **Speakers**: Excellent Question > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality & Public Works Committee met virtually on May 18, 2021, at 1:00 PM, with F. Brown presiding as the committee chair. The committee addressed five agenda items during the session, focusing primarily on environmental initiatives and infrastructure updates. The meeting included two formal votes and featured four informational presentations on various environmental topics, with no public comments received during the session. The committee's work centered on environmental quality matters, including discussions about single-use plastics and energy conservation, a proposed home composting pilot program, urban forestry and street tree management, and updates on the Scott County Landfill operations. One formal action was taken with the approval of the March 9, 2021 Special Committee Summary, while the remaining agenda items served as informational briefings to keep committee members updated on ongoing environmental initiatives and infrastructure projects within the jurisdiction. ## Attendance The following members were present at the meeting on May 18, 2021: • F. Brown • McCurn • Kay • Moloney • Ellinger • LeGris • Sheehan • Kloiber • Worley • Bledsoe All ten members were in attendance. No members were reported as absent or late for the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the May 18, 2021 meeting, both passing unanimously. **Approval of March 9, 2021 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] - Motion by: Kay - Second by: Ellinger - Outcome: Passed unanimously - The committee approved the summary from their March 9, 2021 meeting without opposition. **Move Landfill Discussion to Full Council Work Session** [timestamp: 02:45:00] - Motion by: McCurn - Second by: Worley - Outcome: Passed unanimously - The committee voted to move discussion regarding landfill matters to a full council work session rather than continuing the discussion in committee. Both motions received unanimous support from committee members present, with no recorded opposition or abstentions on either item. ## Contested Items The meeting featured one significant contested item that generated heated discussion among committee members. **Scott County Landfill Closure** The primary point of contention centered on the potential closure of the Scott County Landfill and its implications for Lexington's waste management operations. Committee members engaged in a heated discussion regarding how the city should respond to this development and what alternative arrangements should be made. The disagreement appeared to stem from differing perspectives on the best path forward for the city's waste disposal needs. While the extracted data indicates this was a topic of significant debate, the specific positions taken by individual committee members, the detailed arguments presented by each side, and the ultimate outcome of the discussion are not available in the provided materials. The discussion highlighted the complexity of waste management planning and the challenges municipalities face when regional disposal facilities face potential closure. The heated nature of the debate suggests that committee members held strong, divergent views on how Lexington should address this waste management challenge. Without additional transcript details or meeting minutes, the specific resolution of this contested item and any decisions made by the committee remain unclear from the available documentation. ## Approval of March 9, 2021 Special Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:30] The committee considered agenda item I, the approval of the March 9, 2021 Special Committee Summary. F. Brown served as the key speaker for this item, presenting the summary for the committee's review. The committee conducted a review of the meeting summary from the March 9, 2021 special session. The discussion focused on ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the documented proceedings from that earlier meeting. Following the presentation and review process, the committee voted to approve the March 9, 2021 Special Committee Summary without any noted objections or concerns raised during the discussion. ## Single Use Plastics / Energy Conservation [timestamp: 01:00] Vice Mayor Kay introduced agenda item II, presenting a report on single-use plastics and energy conservation initiatives. The presentation included recommendations that had been developed by the Environmental Commission. Key speaker B. Early participated in the discussion of the environmental proposals. The agenda item was structured as a presentation to provide information to the council and public regarding potential policies and measures related to reducing single-use plastic consumption and promoting energy conservation within the municipality. The item was designated as informational, meaning no formal action or voting was required during this meeting. The presentation served to brief council members and the public on the Environmental Commission's research and recommendations regarding these environmental initiatives. The discussion covered both single-use plastics reduction strategies and energy conservation measures, representing a comprehensive approach to environmental sustainability at the local government level. The Environmental Commission's involvement indicates this was part of a structured review process for potential environmental policies. No specific outcome or next steps were recorded for this informational presentation, suggesting it may have been part of an ongoing review process or preliminary discussion of future policy considerations. ## Home Composting – Pilot Proposal [timestamp: 02:00:00] Council member LeGris presented a pilot proposal for home composting during the May 18, 2021 meeting, aimed at providing residents with alternatives for organic waste disposal. The presentation was designed to encourage community participation in composting programs as a way to reduce household waste streams. Angela Poe also participated as a key speaker in the discussion of this composting initiative. The proposal was presented as a pilot program, suggesting an initial trial period to assess the feasibility and community response to home composting options. The agenda item was classified as informational, indicating that the council received the proposal for consideration rather than taking immediate action. The presentation focused on introducing the concept and framework for the home composting pilot program to council members. This initiative represents the city's exploration of sustainable waste management practices by engaging residents directly in organic waste reduction efforts through home-based composting solutions. ## Urban Forestry / Street Trees Update [timestamp: 02:30:00] Director Susan Pflueger presented an informational update on the city's urban forestry program and street tree initiatives during agenda item IV. The presentation covered the current status of street tree maintenance and enhancement programs within the city. Director Pflueger provided details on ongoing forestry operations and outlined various initiatives aimed at improving the urban canopy and street tree infrastructure. This was an informational presentation with no action items or decisions required from the council. The update served to keep council members and the public informed about the progress and activities of the urban forestry department. No specific concerns were raised during this agenda item, and the presentation concluded as scheduled. The item was purely informational in nature, providing transparency about the city's ongoing efforts to maintain and enhance its urban forest resources. ## Scott County Landfill [timestamp: 02:45:00] The council held an informational discussion regarding the future of the Scott County Landfill and its potential impact on Lexington's waste management operations. The discussion was led by key speakers McCurn and Greg Elkins. The agenda item focused on examining the implications of a possible closure of the Scott County Landfill facility and how such a closure would affect the city's current waste disposal arrangements. The discussion addressed the need for contingency planning and alternative waste management solutions should the landfill become unavailable for Lexington's use. During the presentation, speakers outlined the current relationship between Lexington and the Scott County Landfill, including operational details and the volume of waste currently being processed at the facility. The discussion also covered potential challenges that would arise from a landfill closure, including increased transportation costs, the need to identify alternative disposal sites, and the timeline for implementing backup waste management strategies. Council members received information about the landfill's operational status and any known factors that could influence its future availability. The speakers provided context about regional waste management infrastructure and how changes at the Scott County facility could affect broader waste disposal planning for the city. This was an informational discussion item, meaning no formal action was taken by the council. The purpose was to ensure council members were aware of the potential issue and its implications for city operations. The discussion served to inform future planning and decision-making regarding Lexington's waste management strategy and the need for diversified disposal options to maintain uninterrupted service for residents. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of March 9, 2021 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Move discussion on landfill to full council work session --- ## Full transcript I know, disbelieving, disbelieving, to your passion, make it happen, what it feels, what it feels. Good morning. Today's forecast goes to the blue sky. It's a Tell us why you had to hide away for so long. Where did we go wrong? Mr. Buskye, please tell us why you had to hide away for so long. Where did we go wrong? Thank you. I've been away for so long. Where did we go wrong? Baby, Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you. Look around, see what you do. Everybody smiles at you. Mr. Blue Sky. Mr. Blue Sky. Mr. Blue Sky Mr. Blue, you did it right But so comes Mr. Knight Creeping over Now his hand is on your shoulder Never mind I remember you this way I remember you this way Mr. Blue Sky Please tell us why You had to hide away for so long Where did we go wrong? Hey there, Mr. Blunt's God We're so pleased to be with you, God Look around, see what you do Everybody smiles at you Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh We'll be right back. We'll be right back. See my signals turn from green to red. And with you I can see a traffic jam straight up ahead. You're just like. So hard to get through the U. Try and get run over U. Thank you. I wonder when I'm on. All right, go right ahead, Mr. Brown. Okay, thank you. Welcome to the May 18, 2021 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee meeting. um before i begin the official meeting i want to read a statement i hope it might be the last one for this committee but anyway due to the covid 19 pandemic and state of emergency this meeting is being held via live video teleconference pursuant to 2020 senate bill 150 and in accordance with KRS 61.826 because it is not feasible to offer a primary physical location for the meeting. So having said that, we will go into our meeting agenda. First item on there is the approval of the March 9th, 2021 committee summary. I need a motion and a second to approve that. I move approval. Second. Vice Mayor Kay moves for the motion. And who seconded that, please? Chuck Ellinger seconded that motion. Any discussion on those minutes? Okay, all those in favor of approving those, signify by raising your hand. Anybody in opposition? Okay, carries unanimously. We'll get right into our meeting agenda. The first item on here is the single-use plastics. And Vice Mayor Kaye will introduce that and bring us forward on that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And can we... Okay, I was just going to request having this early brought in, but there he is. I just very briefly want to say that you introduced it as single-use plastics. It's really broader than that. That's a report from the Environmental Commission with a couple of very important recommendations. And I will have more to say about that after you've heard the presentation. But right now, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Early, who's the chair of the Environmental Commission. And welcome. Welcome, Mr. Early. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor Kay. And there are three other representatives of the commission as well. I think I see them listed, at least some of them on the screen. And so they'll unmute and talk as we go along. We do have a PowerPoint presentation that was included in the packet. And I think that Ms. Thompson has that available. We'll be projecting that. If we can start that, it might be helpful. Thank you. I think that that'll be controlled there at the council. So again, thank you all very much for having us this afternoon. It's been a long road to get here. and we're glad to be able to engage in this discussion with the committee. I'm the current chair of the commission. The commission is an old organization. It was created by ordinance in the 70s, and probably our longest-running activity, I know that many of you have attended the ceremonies and some of you have been recognized, are the environmental awards held each year. But the commission also has a variety of other aspects as well. Next slide, please. we are a diverse committee we can have up to 40 council commission members commissioners right now we have 38 and that number changes over time i think the mayor will be coming to you with some recommendations as people's terms have rotated off but in addition to the environmental awards one of the key aspects of the commission is to advise the mayor and the council on environmental issues. Our commissioners are, again, very diverse. We have college students, retirees, a range of professions from educators, scientists, finance, healthcare, government service, representing a broad, broad spectrum of the community. And with all that diversity, we have in common the shared commitment to improving environmental quality in Lexington Fayette County. And so we ask the council, this committee and the larger council, to call on us at any time if we can provide background information from our objective and, again, diverse viewpoints. Next slide, please. The two recommendations that we want to talk with you today about include greenhouse gas and energy emissions, excuse me, greenhouse gas emissions and energy reductions in Lexington Fayette County and reducing waste, primarily focusing on plastic waste. We're going to hear more about that in detail, but a lot of this is centered on actually implementing the Empower Lexington plan. Next slide, please. That plan is about 20 years in the making. It began with some citizen input in the early 2000s. Various mayors have signed on to climate commitments. There was a broad, again, a group of stakeholders over a couple of years developing the Empower Lexington Plan, which culminated in a resolution that the council adopted in 2012 endorsing that plan. Next slide, please. In the materials is a two-page summary of the plan. I also direct you to the Environmental Commission website. The link is there at the bottom of this slide, and you can get a copy of the plan and see some of the other outreach educational materials that the commission is making available. But the Empower Lexington plan focuses on these five segments of the community, residential and so forth, again each with specific recommendations about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and importantly for the plastics aspect in the waste portion of that plan was a zero waste objective. The problem with this is that the city took this and ran with it and so James Bush who reports to you regularly about the city's efforts to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions that's going very very well. What's lost though is outreach to the community as a whole And as our former chair, Paul Swoveland, says, that's resulted in this being everybody's task really being nobody's task. And so now let's jump into our two sets of recommendations today. You're going to hear next from Sarah Azalon, who's our secretary and who is chair of the Community Development Committee, talking about energy and greenhouse gases. Paul Swoveland, who is a past chair of the commission and chair of our Pollution Abatement Committee, talking about plastics. And then wrapping up will be Danny Willems, who's our current vice chair. So with that, Sarah Aslan, next slide, please. Hi, thank you. So our rationale behind this, so the public really is recognizing that it is really important to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. We've got several organizations in Lexington that have already started working on plans for this. Of course, we have, but also the University of Kentucky, Bluegrass Green Source, and Solarize Lexington all have plans going into action to help with gas emissions and energy use. And one really big deal, not only does it make the environment a better place in our community a safer and healthier place, but it saves money. And at the end of the day, I think that's a really important point. Next slide. So here, this slide shows how in the United States, over 70% understand that global warming is happening and that we need to start to take action. Kentucky as a whole is a little bit lower in that area with just over 60%. But the best part of this slide, I think, is that Fayette County in general is higher than the national average for people that understand that global warming is happening. And we're going to have to start taking action in order to combat this problem. Next slide. So when we're looking at this, since, and this starts at 1960 and goes on up, there's a definite constant increase in the surface temperature of the earth. There's really no way to mistake it. It has gone completely up over the years. And it's time that we really need to start thinking about ways to help this problem. Next slide. So when we're looking at these two, the first part of this, it talks about how participation, and even though it fluctuates, it's got this kind of up and down kind of flow with it. It does continually basically keep going up where participation is rising above three inches at times. And of course, that's another sign of climate change and can be associated with extreme weather. Also with this, we're looking at how temperatures are above 75, and it's basically that the temperatures just keep going up. And there's a huge difference between the 2000s and the 2010s, where suddenly our temperatures are just skyrocketing. Next slide. This one, I think, really can hit home here because we're looking at where the people most impacted by surface temperatures rising are the people with the lowest income. So when we think about our community as a whole and we think about certain parts of our community where they have an income well below, say, the average, they're the ones that are going to be most affected by surface temperatures rising. Next slide. And to expand on that, so more than nearly 35% of the population have had problems with energy insecurity. And of course, that takes on different kind of faces. So that can be anything from not being able to pay an energy bill or having a disconnection notice to even keeping temperatures unsafe at home. So whether that be in the summer when you have homes getting well above 100 degrees, which can cause all sorts of health issues and even lead to death. And it does the same thing in the winter when homes are reaching well below where they should be temperature wise because they are unable to afford what is needed to keep their temperatures and what have you safe in their homes. Next slide. So one big thing when we think about energy use and greenhouse gases, there's a direct correlation with plastics. And now I think Paul's going to take over and talk to you about plastics. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Sarah. I hope everybody can hear me okay. As Pollution Abatement Committee of the Environmental Commission, we chose to examine the issue of plastics. Plastics were introduced as a technical solution to many life problems, and they've become the material of choice as a solution, both with low cost, but with many life cycle concerns. Next slide. The question of plastics and what is the local concern needed to be examined. The concerns about plastic go around waste volumes and local handling, litter, and recycling limitations. We also find the problem of ocean plastics, energy use, and petrochemical resources concerning to the local environment. Next slide. single-use plastics as well as durable goods have environmental and health issues when outside of the waste handling system bags cups straws packaging these are all considered single-use materials relatively cheap and intended to be thrown away after one use all of these clogged waterways, and sewer systems. When plastics degrade, they break down to smaller pieces. They form fibers, which break down and form microplastics. Next slide. Thank you. The concern with plastic is that they are in the food chain. Particles are in all locations of the They're in freshwater, land, and oceans. We have the microparticles that are in products. They come from our clothes, and they even end up in our sewage sludge. And sometimes they're in the air. You can think of like tires wearing down or manufacturing processes. Next slide. increased recycling alone will not solve the environmental impacts of single-use plastics i want to repeat that reduction of use is critical it must be focused on by manufacturers consumers and policymakers even with improved recycling the life cycle concerns still must be dealt with. Recycling does help to reduce the need for virgin materials, but the U.S. only recycles roughly 10% of plastics with a huge improvement. We still are only facing a growth of 400% in plastic volumes by the year 2050. Next slide. so the common plastic policy options the city will have to deal with the policy issues of single-use plastics reduction in some fashion the key to all options is the clear and open communications with the public the creation of alternatives and incentives is the most useful policy, but others are trying material bans, implementing fees on different plastics, and encouraging voluntary action. Next slide. Okay, now we're going to turn it over to Danny Woolums to go through the recommendations. Thank you, Paul. So I want to begin by stating that the following recommendations were approved with unanimous consent from our commission. As our chair mentioned earlier, we have a very diverse group of people from a wide range and wide variety of backgrounds. When we bring these forward to you all, we are doing our best job as your commission to give you the best information that we can representing the many cross sections of Lexington and our Lexington community. Next slide, please. our main proposal today is to ask council to work with us to update and implement the empower lexington plan as council has in the past said that yes we appreciate the power lexington plan we want to work with this as again paul mentioned and as blaine mentioned there is no current ownership for the plan there is no one person whose sole dedication is to focus on helping us reduce our greenhouse gases helping us reduce our plastics and use in lexington So we're requesting that the city appoint, hire, or designate an existing staff member to update the Empower Lexington Plan and assist you all and us in its implementation of the plan. We recognize that this is a lot of work. We are not going to have this one person do this work alone. But we know that the city needs to have somebody dedicated to this task. We need somebody with that ownership, and it should be coming from our own city government. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, we want to work with that person. It's a lot of work, and we have a lot of expertise in this commission. So we want to work with them to do a variety of different things, like identifying neighborhoods and existing housing types with greatest potential for energy savings. As Sarah mentioned, there are a lot of people in our communities who are impacted more by climate change because of their income and income disparities in our city. We want to make sure that we're targeting our work with these people to make sure that we're helping the whole whole new group. We want to focus, provide that focus advice to low income areas. But we're not only focusing on one group. We want to make sure that we're reaching everybody that we can in Lexington. and communicating our needs and resources across to landlords, neighborhood association, residents, homeowners, and more. And when it comes to plastic pollution, again, we want to work with that low-hanging fruit of educating and communicating the public. We know that the city has an excellent communications team who are doing this work diligently. We want to do what we can to support and expand that work and continue that messaging of reduction before we talk about other things like reuse or recycling, and continue to support the efforts of the city to, quote, recycle right. Next slide, please. We also want to be able to provide different policy and ideas initiatives for you all. The ones you see before you are not ones that we're suggesting today. They are ideas of what we can do together. Again, we have a wide variety of expertise, a wide variety of backgrounds. And so we bring to you that expertise and those backgrounds to kind of give ideas of how we can actually make change happen in Lexington. We need that ownership and we need action as part of that as well. And so working together with the council, we want to kind of find different policy initiatives and ways that we can help make Lexington a better, greener city. Next slide, please. Again, we recognize that there's a lot of importance to public education and reaching out to people. We want to work with the city to increase stakeholder engagement and work to increase educational efforts to focus on these different areas. We want to make sure that we are connecting as many people as we can to the message of the Empowered Lexington Plan. Again, that plan had a wide variety of people working on it, and it had a lot of support from Council at the time. So we want to bring in more people. We want to make sure that we're spreading that message and spreading that education. Next slide, please. So again, we are requesting that we have some ownership from the city to work on the Empower Lexington plan so that we can reduce our single-use plastics usage and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And we're also asking that the Council endorse the work that we're doing on climate change and plastics pollution. We recognize that this is a work, a joint effort from all of us. We want to work with you all and we're asking that you all join in on this with us. Thank you all so much for your time today. We know this is a lot of work to come forward and we're excited to be part of that. And again, thank you to council administrators and council clerks for helping make this presentation possible today. is back on full. Okay, we're on screen. Vice Mayor, you want to take questions or that and then you wrap it up kind of, is that okay? That would be fine. Let's see if Council Members have questions first. Okay, I have Council Member Sheehan. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. First, thank you all for your work and your presentation today. I am encouraged to see that you're bringing back up the empower lexington plan i know i've talked with a number of you about this one of my items that's assigned to this committee to work on is looking at the sustainability and environmental components of the com our comprehensive plan so as your conversations go forward i would like to collaborate on the effort of um updating this empower lexington plan to make sure that it's consistent with what we have in our comprehensive plan as well. So my ask is that you include me in this effort. And then I want to ask a question. I know that some of the folks on the commission and outside of the commission, some of them were involved in the Empower Lexington plan from 2012. We're working on a grant process with LFUCG to hire a sustainability coordinator. Can you give us an update on where you are in that grant process? Certainly, Council Member Cian. This is Blaine Early. I'll be glad to address that. And we will certainly work with you in terms of making the comprehensive plan and the sustainability plan slash Empower Lexington consistent. The commission did comment extensively on the comp plan at its last iteration. And so we'll continue to look forward to having that input. In terms of hiring or looking for outside funding to hire a sustainability coordinator, Henry Jackson, who was involved in the initial discussions of the Empower Lexington plan and was one of a group of five or six that came to the council maybe a year or so ago, is coordinating those grant-seeking efforts. He is beginning by identifying possible sources. He's worked with the mayor's office. The mayor has authorized several letters of inquiry. And understand with the recent COVID, the last iteration of the COVID relief bill, there may be some funds for communities to implement those kinds of green, if you will, green initiative efforts. And he's looking at that legislation to see if there's some hook that the city could use for funds there. Right now, though, to my knowledge, there is not an active grant application anywhere. We're still still looking for sources that would support this kind of effort at the city. Thank you. I ask because I know we also have a model for starting positions through grant funding that end up being turned over to more permanent positions with success. And so I do support this effort of trying to find this outside funding because I know that we are very strapped when it comes to budget here. So thank you. I think that's one of the reasons that we included in there designating a current staff member to have this as part of their duty. So it's not just a new position. I think there are lots of different ways to address that need. Thank you. Council member LaGree. Thank you, Chair. I mainly want to say I thought your presentation was so excellent. And if there's anything that I can do, Council member Sheehan or with the Environmental Commission to help support the process of locating a staff member or a new position for the sustainability coordinator type role. and or workshopping policy ideas to promote energy conservation and reduce waste. And even with grassroots promotion of the work you're doing and the work we're doing already, then I'm completely on board. I'm really impressed with all of the efforts thus far. And I know that you all need even more support to move forward, both with the staff position and with the promotion of your current work. So just thank you so much for this presentation. Thank you. Council Member Maloney? Council Member Maloney, we can't hear you right now. you're not muted but i can't hear you is anybody picking him up try it again you're not coming through you're unmuted but you're not coming through okay all right i think he i think we can move on try it again council member maloney one more time Unmute. There. No, his system's not working evidently. Okay, any other comments or questions before we go to the vice mayor? Okay, vice mayor, let's roll it up for us and see what we're going to do going forward, I guess, and anything else you need to speak on. You can have the extra five minutes if you need it, because they were right on on the presentation. They did a good job. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Blaine and everybody else for putting this together and presenting it to your council. So by way of background, I was part of the group that was convened in the early 2000s to begin to work on the question of what we could do as a community about environmental issues. when I got on council, when I got elected, I left the group thinking it was more important to be on council and to be working from the inside. So I've tracked this for a long time. And what you'll notice if you look at the timeline is that there's a significant gap between 2012 and where we are today. There's a whole variety of reasons for that, which at some point I may want to go into. But one of the things that actually happened out of that work was having a position created, and it's been filled by James Bush, to work on savings within LFUCG. That's been very effective. He's been the point person, and he has managed to guide the city in making changes that have made us less energy reliant, saved us money. All that's to the good. what has not happened is that there hasn't been a point person to guide the effort in a larger community. And that's essentially, I think, what the Environmental Commission is putting before us today. So I think what you saw in brief is that there's a lot of work to be done. and while there is a lot of energy in the community as evidenced by the number of people who serve on the commission and the work that they've done so far what they don't have is the kind of support they need and the kind of support that we need as a community to really address this set of issues effectively so i've tried to figure out i've been supportive of the effort to look for grants that might fund a position on a pilot basis. As you've heard, so far that's not been successful. I've talked to the commissioner about the capacity within her staff to provide the kind of support necessary, and I agree with her assessment that they are full up. James has his hands full and everybody else does too. So then there's one other factor I think that has come into play that makes a difference in my mind about what we as a city ought to be doing in our budget. And that is, as has been mentioned, the ARPA funds, the COVID-19 funds. I believe there's an opportunity to use some of those funds for the kind of work that has been needing to be done all along, and especially the focus on low-income communities. There is a lot of energy savings to be made. There are some, I think there'll be some grant opportunities, there'll be federal funding, but we don't have is someone who's working on that full-time. So what I have done to meet the deadline for our present budgeting cycle is I have put in a request for a full-time staff person within the environmental quality and public works area essentially to staff the environmental commission to work on finding more grant funds to coordinate efforts not just in the city in the city government but in the broader city on efforts to reduce our environmental footprint so I'll be talking about that more, but I wanted to put that on the table at this point and begin the conversation about why at this moment, this is the right thing to do for the city. And I very much appreciate all the work that the present environmental commissioners have done and all of the people who have worked on this set of issues over the years to try and and basically raise it up on the agenda. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that. Any questions for the Vice Mayor? I have a couple, but go ahead if anybody's... Okay. On this particular position that you're talking about, you didn't run it through links or anything, did you? I did not. I have not. Okay. And is that position pretty much, would that be under the direction of Charlie Martin's group? Is that what you're thinking? I believe that would be in environmental quality. So I've had some preliminary conversations with Commissioner Albright. And the likely place is within environmental quality. Although it has to have a larger span because it, I think potentially it affects many areas that we work in. Okay. All right. Well, I guess as we go forward, you'll bring us some things that you're interested in and some suggestions. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. Any other questions on this topic here? Okay. Well, we thank all of those who presented it. We thank you for your service there and especially the commission. We've got an awful lot of people throughout the community that are on that commission. And keep up the good work there and keep rattling the chains of the other council members, maybe. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Appreciate it. Let's go on to our number three item, home composting, the pilot proposal. Council Member Lagree, did you want to lead into that, please? Sure. I'd love to chair. Thank you for the opportunity. Over the past couple of years, LFUCG has begun the much needed discussions that we've had about what happens to our city's waste. And our discussions have ranged from landfill use to how we want to handle our recycling and even safe ways to handle yard waste in a pandemic, which is a discussion that no one here could have expected. And all of those conversations have one thing in common and that's what happens to our community's waste at the end of the cycle. But one conversation that we have only just begun is one with our constituents about the generation of that waste. So we've started talking about items that when we could no longer accept paper and we continue to talk about it in warnings about wish cycling and the damage it does to our facilities. And to me, the next step in that conversation, which I very much hope that you'll support, is a conversation about food waste and how we can help divert it from our waste stream. So I've been working with Angela Poe to craft a series of educational opportunities around backyard composting, and she's developed a pilot program to teach Lexington homeowners about backyard composting and how to help divert certain waste from our waste streams. I've reached out to Seedleaf as well about delivering the program in three different sessions next fall. So Angela is here with a presentation to tell you more about the proposed program, the costs, and how each household will leave with a composter of their very own. And in the end, as we wrap back up, I'm going to request your support for a future budgetary recommendation for the fiscal year 2022 budget to fund this pilot program. So I'll turn it over to Angela to present. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. There is a PowerPoint that goes with this. But as Council Member Legree said, I'm going to present information on a pilot program that we could embark on to get a feel for and test the idea of encouraging, doing more to encourage backyard composting for folks in the county. If you want to go ahead and just click on through to the next slide, that'd be great. Okay, So the purpose of this program is to provide alternative disposal options for organic matter. Right now, residents have two options. If we're talking about food waste, it's really landfill or they might be composting at their home already. But as far as what the city provides, landfill and then for yard waste, we do have the yard waste program where it goes out to Haley Pike and is turned into mulch. But we want to encourage more at home food composting. Next slide please. So overall, the program will consist of a workshop where residents that participate will get a free or discounted composter. We'll offer three different types at three different price points so that everyone, so that at least cost is not a barrier to people to be able to participate in this program. And we're going to ask because this is a pilot and we want to make sure that we're gathering information into, if this does develop into a full-blown program to have the best program you possibly can, we'll be doing pre and post surveys. Next slide, please. So if a homeowner would choose to participate in this, they must have city waste service because of the proposed funding stream. For the pilot and potentially after, this will be limited to homeowners because it needs to be people who are paying the fee. And it would be limited to one composter per household. The one member of the household will have to participate in the workshop that Sea Leaf has expressed interest and willingness to host on our behalf, since there are local compost experts. And the workshop will be about two to two and a half hours. And then the participants also need to agree to complete the surveys that we need to get the information to build the program the best that it can be. So they'll fill one out when they're registering so we can get some pre-information from them. They'll do one immediately after the workshop, and then we'll do a follow-up with them six months and a year after. And then, of course, we're going to ask them to agree to use the composter that we give to them. Next slide, please. As I already said, the workshops are two to two and a half hours and facilitated by Seedleaf. All members of the participating household are invited, although only one is required. The reason we want to invite everyone in the household is hopefully everyone in the household is contributing to the compost bin. And so we want them all to know how to do it properly. Topics that will be covered during the workshop will be just a general overview. Also reducing food waste. As our friends in the Environmental Commission just pointed out, reducing is the first step, not the last step. So we want to reduce food waste as much as possible before we even talk about composting it. How to compost, do it yourself compost options. Somebody may start with a worm bin and love it and want to grow their compost situation at home. And so we'll teach them how if they want to do more, they can do more troubleshooting. And then once you have this beautiful compost, what do you do with it? So we'll talk about using the compost. Next slide. So the plan for the compost bins is the city will purchase them and sell them to workshop participants. And they can buy them at the workshop or they'll have three months after participating in the workshop to take advantage of this opportunity. So there'll be a verma compost bin, which is a fancy name for a worm bin where the worms eat your compost. And that costs about $50 to put together and including giving them the worms and everything they need to get started. That will be given to anybody who participates. So that's a free thing that people can take. Or this is not an and this is an or. you can choose to get a stationary backyard composter. Those cost around $85. We would subtract $50 and so someone who wanted this type of composter would owe about $35. And then there's the tumbling composters where you put the material in and I have one that's a ball and you roll it around or you get your kids to roll it around. Those are a little more expensive around $100 and so approximately participants would owe $50. I'm hoping we can get some discounts on those that we're purchasing just because we'll be buying them in larger quantities, but I wanted to give you an estimate of the cost. So next slide please. So workshop budget, it's about two thousand dollars per workshop. We're paying seed leaf for their time and expertise that has value and we want to acknowledge that. We'll give people some coffee and snacks when they get there because we're going to ask them to come to a workshop on their own free time. The counter compost units you all may be familiar with, Waste Management has had these on and off over the years. The little green grubbies is what they have called them. That's what you keep inside on the counter so that it's really convenient and as you break those eggshells, those eggs open, you can put the eggshells in there or cut off the stem of the broccoli, put it in there, and then you carry it out once a day to your compost unit. Then there's the city-funded portion of the larger compost unit, the vermicompost bin or the tumbler or the composting bin. And then we will create handouts so everybody has reminders similar. Think about the recycling flyers, something like that, but for compost, what goes in, what does not go in. And then obviously we'll have to tell the public that these workshops are happening. And if you'll go to the next slide, you'll see that that second line is now that now that restrictions are lifting a little and we're starting to see people in person we'd really like to have a demonstration that we can take out on the road with us when we do tabling events and go to things like crave or the baseball games the legend stadium and promote home composting and that so there's a one-time cost for that worked into this total budget for the pilot so in total to do three workshops we're proposing to do three workshops this upcoming fall it would be just over $6,500 to carry out. And then at that point, we will look at the survey information that we have and we'll be able to report back to you in the spring and see how it's going and then decide whether or not this is a program we want to expand and move forward with. And next slide. Okay. Questions from council members. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Ms. Pell. I have a quick question about how this scales up. So are there models where this has been done in other cities like ours, or what happens after the pilot program, assuming it's successful? I think that's going to depend on the level of interest. I know that in the past, before I was at the city, but when the city would offer home composting workshops in partnership with the extension office, that those would sell out quickly. Those would be full workshops. So there has historically been an interest in this topic. I think there's two ways we can scale it up. We can scale it up by making the workshops larger, and hopefully by the time we're ready to scale it up, that will be possible without so many concerns about health and germs. And then we can also offer those workshops more frequently. We haven't had conversations with Seedleaf about how frequently they'd be willing to do it because we just don't know what that is. There are potentially additional partners available to us. It doesn't have to be just Seedleaf. Bluegrass Greensource does composting information. The Extension Office does composting information. So we could reach out to them and see if they'd be willing to host workshops on our behalf as well. There are other communities that have done this. We have not reached out to them to see. We've just kind of stopped them online, but we haven't done any talking to anybody yet because we just aren't sure how comparable our interest level and program is to theirs. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions? I have a couple. on the composting there where would you put that workshop on where would be your location or would that be in parks I mean at one of the parks or do you have an idea we haven't said it yet I believe seed leaf council member of the Greek text to seed leaf I believe they offered to host it in one of their gardens which would be a fantastic location because they have compost bins set up in several of their gardens already so that's one outdoor option for sure And you're looking at $1,940 per workshop. How many participants would that be? Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that. I apologize. That's 20 households. And we estimated two people per household on average would attend. Do you think you have that audience? Based on what I've heard of past interest in this topic and based on the questions that we get when we do things like the Citizens Environmental Academy or go out and when we used to be able to see people in person and table i do think that these workshops will fill up no problem okay council member uh lagree you want to sum it up sure i would be glad to chair thank you um and thank you all for your clarifying questions i appreciate that and thank you miss poe for the presentation that you gave Council members, as I mentioned, because this proposal will occur in fall of 2022, the funding will need to come from the fiscal year 2022 budget. So I'm going to be including as a budget recommendation a reallocation of nine thousand dollars in total to account for potential additional promotional costs. For example, above sixty five hundred. That is our minimum for the program. And I'm going to be recommending that that come out of the urban service district proposed fund balance to cover the costs. And I am very hopeful that you'll support my recommendation at that time. So thank you, Chair. Yes. I just want to clarify. We were talking about doing it in fall of 2021, which is fall of 2022 budget. Yes. So I just, I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page there. Exactly. Fiscal year 2022, fall 2022. Clarification there on, is that what, would that be an individual item that you would run through our links committee? Is that what you're referring to, how you want to address that? Sir, yes. It would be an individual request from me. Yes. Okay. I don't know when those requests are supposed to be in, but it's pretty soon. From Stacy. Chair, that deadline has passed. Chair, I did submit that on Friday. Okay. All right. Yes. Okay. Great. Great. Any other questions? Okay, thanks for the presentation on that and we'll move on to our urban forestry street trees update and I'll ask Council Member McCurron to introduce us into that topic. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Director Pluger is going to kick us off with a presentation on the street trees. She does this about every year for us, and she does a great job. I do feel like this is a very important conversation for all of our neighborhoods and for the public to understand that there are opportunities out there. If your street tree, if it dies, if you need it taken out of the ground or sidewalk, even replacement, we offer help with those. and I think this conversation here kind of dives into not just that but kind of the background of of the whole program itself. Director I know you've done this for several years and before we get kicked off I believe this is your last presentation before this committee so I wanted to thank you for your service and I know I'll dive into that a little bit later but I just wanted to kick you off with that one. Thank you. Well thank you yes thank you. I want to thank all of you. It's been a great pleasure working with everyone, and it's very bittersweet, actually, to come here and do this. It's like my swan song, so I wanted to provide a lot of information for you. I will, I don't know how long I might have for this presentation. Just a second, Ms. Bluger. Council Member Maloney, are you on now, all right? I'm going to ask you, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hearing you now. Dang, I'm okay. I'll get the test. Thank you. Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead, Ms. Blueberry. Okay, so I'm not sure how long you would want me to speak on this, because I do have a lot of slides, a lot of information that you can keep and review, so just let me know how long you'd like me to go. And I do have slides, so I'm ready for those. All right, so I first just like to say, this is an update. It's more than just street trees. Tim Querrey had said, Susan, why don't you talk about the entire urban forestry program? And you know what? He's right. The urban forestry program is much more than just street trees. So I want to try to provide that information for you today. It's really through your support, the support of the administration, through the support of the prior administration, the tree board, the corridors commission, and the citizens of Fayette County that our urban forestry program has grown into a very strong and robust program. We do a lot of great things and it's just my pleasure to be able to come on behalf of all of the great people who do that work to represent them. So next slide please. So I'm just going to go over our organizational chart and then talk some about street trees and then how do we address the responsibilities associated with street trees the city has some responsibility the citizens have some responsibility and then I want to go into some major enhancement initiatives that we've been working on for several years but I've never actually presented on okay next slide all right this is a very important chart so keep it for future reference John Saylor is the manager of our natural resources and operations section within the Division of Environmental Services. So you can always contact him for any issues related to urban forestry. You can see under him, he has public trees and private trees. And this relates to the city arborist, who is Heather Wilson. She's responsible for the care of our city-owned trees, the ones that we are responsible to maintain. We have two tree crews led by two arborists. We have our technician vacancy, which we're getting ready to fill. And then we have our tree nursery manager, who you all may not have met, but I am going to speak about him a little bit later in the presentation. And we have our forestry and our horticultural crews within the Division of Environmental Services. Then when it comes to private trees and private tree compliance, our urban forester, which is really almost like a planning position, is Tim Query. And then he has Rob Ballard that works underneath him. we're going to talk about what they do and just a little bit related to private tree compliance. Then if we have to go into enforcement related to street trees, which is rare, we have Demetrio Melhorn, who's the manager of our enforcement section. And so Bancor Networks on that. Then we have the streets and roads. They also have a tree crew and they primarily focus on rural roads, taking down dead trees on rural roads and emergencies. And we work very closely and very well together with the tree crew at Streets and Roads and oftentimes Heather will doing the workload for all the Lex calls that come in will send some to them and we just work together on different projects so we greatly appreciate that Kevin Dennis and Greg Talby and then you have your appeals boards which you need in order to address enforcement action appeals or decisions of the urban forester and those are two different boards we really appreciate the work. Our tree board is an advisory board as well as an appeals board related to the urban forest. There's very few appeals that come to the tree board. Mostly they're doing advisory work related to our urban forest. Next slide please. Thank you. A little bit about street trees. We have about 75,000 street trees in Lexington. We're not, we don't know the exact number because we have not completed a recent survey, but about 10% of them are publicly maintained. So these are the ones that the city arborist is going to really focus on with her work, whether you can think of places such as Tate Creek Road or Richmond Road, but we have publicly maintained street trees all over the city, anywhere where there's a median most of the time, unless there's some neighborhoods such as Beaumont, there's some neighborhoods outside of New Circle that have significant number of median street trees that are maintained privately. But the ones inside the new circle are going to be city maintained. Next slide. So 90% of the street trees are probably maintained. So the property owners responsibility to take care of them. If they die they need to be replaced, they need to be removed. If they are trees are blocking either sidewalk or a roadway, they need to be pruned. Well, these tasks are a responsibility that can sometimes be difficult for a property owner to do. And so over the years, we've looked at ways to provide assistance to our property owners in these programs. And that's what I'm going to talk about next. We have found that our assistance programs have been very successful at providing what the property owner needs to meet their obligations and also do it in a cost effective manner for the taxpayers and the fee payers of the city to make sure that we are getting the job done. So by working together, we've been able to advance the ball down the field much better than just doing enforcement only. So that's what I'm going to be talking about next. Next slide. I just want to mention there's a lot of different varieties of street trees. You've got your old trees is in the last slide. You've got your trees planted maybe 15 years ago in a utility strip, maybe some are 30 years ago, and go to the next slide. Some of them are planted in street tree easements, which are behind the sidewalk. These really don't cause much of an issue related to clearance or even dead trees because they're in the yard. So some developers will choose to use the street tree easement to meet the tree cranky requirement. And also provide, I think, a way to keep trees from creating issues in the road. Next slide. Okay, so our hazardous tree tree cost share program is a 5050 cost share for hazardous tree removal and replacement. It's only used on owner occupied residential properties, but it provides 100 percent assistance when it's a low income. This is very important. This program is very important to remove those dead and hazardous trees that we don't even really realize are an issue until we see one. And then when we see one, particularly the large ones, we realize how important this is for public safety. So the program requires removal and replacement with an acceptable tree when a suitable location is available. Sometimes they are not. It makes no sense to be overly bureaucratic about tree replanting when the tree should never have been planted there to begin with. It may be a 50-year-old tree in a spot that's this big. So we work with the property owners on that and they obtain competing quotes from pre-qualified certified arborist vendors and the urban forester manages this project and the arborist technician who works under him goes out and inspects prior to reimbursement. So we think we have a really tight program to make sure that the owner is doing what they need to do to handle it properly. Next slide. So here's the sum total of the numbers for this program for the last six years. We've replaced 1019 trees, replanted 955. It's been a fabulous result. So some of the I've got it broken down by a council district here. So you may see a lot of different numbers depending on council district that has everything to do with the age of the trees if trees were being planted in the utility strip at the time the area was developed and also the types of trees that were planted so that the districts that have the most highest number are the ones that are either the oldest trees that were with significant numbers planted back when they were developed or those planted in ash trees because we had several areas that that was the case. So you can see some areas that may be fairly new but they have higher numbers here and that is for that reason. All right next slide please. So this is a more of a detailed breakdown on what we actually expended on the program. So I went back and looked at all the numbers for all the years and you can see that it varied somewhat this last year. The current year that we're in now our budget is currently 50,000 and we've expended about 36,000 on that so we should be very close to spending the entire 50,000 this year so it does fluctuate the budget has fluctuated for obvious reasons but we've continued to make significant progress our average cost share is about is 548 dollars per tree so that means the average cost of tree removal and replacement is about 1100 total All right, next slide. We consider this a compliance success story, no doubt. Significant reductions in ice storm damage, hanging and falling limbs, Lex calls, time from when you identify the hazard to being able to remove the hazard. If you're just in an enforcement mode and you're not providing assistance to compliance, that time can get very long and that's very frustrating for everyone, particularly when they're driving past a very large tree every day. You know, they need to be addressed as quickly as possible. And obviously, staff time and cost. This program has really reduced those things. And we have many positive comments. And again, as I've mentioned, low-income assistance is essential to providing safe environments. All right, next slide. The next program is the Street Tree Clearance Pruning Program. So the way our ordinance is written, our trees need to be pruned 12 feet on a local road above the road so that trees waste trucks can pass safely and then seven feet on the sidewalk. Next slide. Here's a summary of the program. We have to date pruned, well actually to the end of fiscal year 20, I should say, pruned 18,890 street trees. That's an excellent result and far higher than we thought even when we first started this program. We did a pilot project in 2016. We really didn't ramp up until 2018. So the average costs around 10 to 13 or 14 dollars per tree. We have a budget every year of somewhere between 65,000, 75,000. We're paying for most of these out of our urban service fund. That's because most of these trees are in a full service tax district. And so our waste trucks need these trees to be properly pruned in order for them to provide their service and so that's really helped if it's not in an urban a full tax service tax district or an appropriate tax district then we can use general funds for this program we haven't needed that that much but they are available all right next slide oh i should also mention from that prior slide the numbers on those are thank you obviously district um two six seven nine and ten have the most because this program is targeting those trees 10 to 25 years in age. Those are the ones that have the issues as they grow out and they haven't been pruned. They're going to cause the clearance issues. So that's why it's spread out. It's always based upon the trees and what's happening on the ground is where the work has to be done. Okay, next slide. All right, again another compliance success story, our ice and wind storm damage significantly reduced due to this program. Incidents of auto pruning, that's where a car or truck comes through and takes the limb off. All these things, damages to waste trucks have all been reduced. It's just a really positive program. All right, next slide. Now I'm going to go on to, if you can tell me how much time I have, I'm gonna wrap it up with the you have about three minutes Susan okay all right well I just want to make this focus on our forestry initiatives we're focused on native trees and shrubs growing our own stock of bluegrass phenotype trees and shrubs and creating a local seed bank Kent Slusher is our plant nursery manager he goes around and save seeds from historically significant trees. I bet people didn't know that. He is the Johnny Appleseed of Lexington, and this is a really great and wonderful program. He takes the seeds, and then he puts them into the nursery and grows trees, native trees, to be re-transplanted throughout Fayette County. All right, so I'm going to skip through and just show a couple of pictures if you want me to stay with my time. If you can go to the next slide, I'm just going to skip through real quick on these. So we have a big, a large plant nursery at Heisel Park, a small one at Masterson Station. We've got our Reef Forest Bluegrass areas. Legacy Forest is a partnership with Fayette County County Schools. Go to the next slide. And then we also have a partnership with the Friends of Parks. We have all of our greenways and green spaces and water quality lots. All of these are areas of focus for our urban forestry, our public side of the urban forestry program. Next slide. But y'all didn't know that we had a walnut forest going on over across from North Base on Liberty Road in one of our water quality lots. Three and a half acres, 3,500 native black walnut trees being grown by your urban forestry staff. Next slide. Heisel Park started with a donation from Shooting Star Nursery and the Friends of Wolf Run. Next slide. That's Heiser Park Nursery. You can go on the next slide. I've got another picture of it. So we've got 1,200 spots and so you can see all the different types of native species that we're planting there. Keep going. Next slide. And we also got a federal grant to do a gravel bed expansion. Next slide. Very successful. The state was very pleased with the results of this program. Next slide. That's our crews constructing it. You plant in the gravel. Next slide. And then you pull out a bare root tree ready for transplanting. Next slide. Easy to transport. They're light. They're easy to plant. No large root wad to try to transport. We're bringing 100 trees a year just out of the gravel bed alone. So we're planting hundreds and hundreds of trees every year from our nurseries now all done by your urban forestry staff and I think they deserve great credit for what they have done and it's been a pleasure working with all of them. Thank you. Oh path forward yes I'll finish with this slide if that's okay. So we need to continue to expand our resources which I think we are. Town branch commons coming on we've got lots of pelvic trees being planted our nursery um we're helping division water quality with a new they're providing us an air knife to do more tree protection continue that street across our program even if you don't have a lot of money just a little bit helps cutting it off really is makes it difficult for the citizens um and we got a potential tree canopy assessment could come back around. Council member Legree is very interested in that and True Board is as well. I recommend that you continue to have these comprehensive urban forestry updates every year to council. This is a very important program and well loved. Now I'm done. Thank you. I don't see where Council Member Brown went. All right. I guess that'll defer to me then, and I'll go ahead and open up for questions here. Council Member Maloney. I don't have a question. Susan, I just want to thank you for that presentation, and also thank you for all the years you've been here. You will be missed. I wish you luck, and you've got an outstanding staff, and I look forward to working with them, continue working, and wish you luck in your future. So thank you again, Susan. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Susan, for the presentation. I also don't have a question, but I wanted to add my thanks as well. Actually sent you a little message while you were speaking, but I want to say it publicly that often you've been one of the people that I have cited when I talk about what a great staff we have at LFUCG. I enjoyed especially my working with you on the Corridors Commission, and I have a great deal of fun pointing out when we're riding around town all of the ways in which your work with the Corridors Commission has made Lexington such a more attractive place to live. So thank you for all your service and good luck with the future. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. um well if anybody else doesn't have any questions i'd like to uh i'd like to jump in here and echo director thank you for your 12 years of service to lbcg you i want to echo something that you had mentioned just a little bit ago about your your team being an excellent contribution to the city and you're absolutely right without this program in front of us this year's ice storm that we had would have been horrible. And I know that my district has seen a lot of trees that have come and gone, and these programs are extremely helpful to bringing them back. I did have a few questions for you, if I may. And you mentioned about the street tree replacement as a part of the program, too. What is the age or is there a diameter to the trees that we try to focus on? for replacements? Yes, ma'am. I think it's an inch and a quarter minimum. Is it two, three? Three quarters. Inch and three quarters. Okay. And is there a specific trees that we use or is it just kind of any tree that we're going for this year? I know that this year we had a focus with reforest of specific trees, but I didn't know if that was kind of the same nature. Well, we have a list of prohibited street trees, which is very important because some trees should not be planted in the right of way. And then we have a list of acceptable trees, fairly long list. And it also depends on the width of the utility strip. So there's several factors that have to be considered. Overhead power lines, there's all kinds of things. So those are in a brochure and they can find them online. And when people apply for the program, that information is provided to them and they receive the permit. And then the urban forester reviews that says, yep, it's the right tree for the right place, because that's a very important concept in urban forestry. So we want the trees to be healthy, to live a long time, and not cause people problems, because when they cause too many problems, then we're not going to have, people are not going to want to keep the trees. So there's many species on that list. Thank you. Is there a, that can all be found on our website, the species? Okay. My last question was about Reforest this year. Do you have an estimate of how many trees we were able to give out? John, do you have those numbers? John Saylor is here, so he may be able to. He's looking them up. We can provide them to you. It may take us a minute. That's okay. Well, and while we gather that number, again, I'll echo thank you for your years of service here to our city and to these programs. I do feel like these programs are extremely helpful and the word should be spread out to our neighborhood associations or neighborhoods and try to keep trees planted in our front yards and on the easement. So thank you. About 500? About 500 for the reforest? Okay, because we did the reforest at home and then we did the small reforest areas also. I think we've found larger trees. Is that 500 altogether? Or just the at-home portion? Just the at-home portion. That's awesome. About 5,000? 5,000 planted total. Wow, that's even better. I'm always reminded that Lexington, this whole region, it was a buffalo run of valleys and fir oak groves and black walnut groves. It was a vineyard, a beautiful vineyard. And so that's kind of been our thing. It's like we want to recreate as much as we can the incredible ecology of this region. And you can do it with people living here in the city. It can be done. I think you've shown that. So thank you, Director. Thank you. Council Member McCurron. Yes, ma'am. I got a call from Chair Brown and he was kicked off. He's trying to get back on, but he just needs you to take over until that is possible. That's perfectly fine. Okay. Thank you. Everyone, we only have one more item on the agenda today, and that is my item here. Do I need to turn the chair over further or? Why don't you just proceed? Okay. Thank you. Chair, I would just say you go ahead and introduce it in whatever conversation you need. If you need to make a motion, then perhaps you could turn to the vice mayor. But I think you're fine to take your own motion or your own topic from there. Thank you, sir. Can we have a presentation, if we can pull that up here? While we get that pulled up, I do want to thank everybody on the committee, and I want to give a shout out to Chairman Brown and thank him for letting me throw a fourth item on. I know he's been explicit in wanting only two, maybe three, but this is something that I feel is time is of the essence, and I'll explain that as we go through the presentation. So thank you all. And lastly, with that thanks is also for your patience and getting the presentation over. Initially, this was going to be a presentation I'd like to see at work session, and I will have a motion later, but I thought that this would be important for visuals and extra clarifying background information. So if we can go to the second slide, please. So a brief background of our contracts here with the landfill and waste services of the Bluegrass. Back in 2014, so before 2014, we had another vendor as our transfer for our municipal waste going to another landfill. And so we put it out for an RFP back in 2014, and we had three vendors that responded. Next slide, please. Of that, these were the six criterias that were evaluated for the proposals. And I'm not going to necessarily dive into them. I will leave room for questions if anybody has on this, so please let me know. But for time, I'd like to move forward. Next slide, please. So of the considerations between the different three contracts or bids that we received, there were four items that stood out for waste services of the Bluegrass. One of them was our considerable cost savings. Before 2015, when we adopted the resolution to go with waste services of the Bluegrass for a five-year contract, we were paying roughly $24 a ton with Republic. Waste Services of the Bluegrass came in and offered us not only a lower cost rate of $17.75, but then they also offered us several other conditions too. One of them was going to be that the capacity of their landfill, next slide please. One of them was their capacity of their landfill and the potential for expansion, and that they were intending on expanding their landfill within that timeframe of us being in contract. Another option or another consideration was the overall impact on our environment. So our current landfill that we go to is in Scott County, which is only 28 miles away. The nearest one in our bid proposals was 53 miles away. Outside of that, if you look at all the different landfills that are in Kentucky, this is the closest one to us that's in operation, especially of the ones that we receive bids on. I thought that was very important. But not to mention, I know Councilmember Maloney has brought this up multiple times over the past several years of how much money we make off of our waste going to Scott County. But that's because of the methane gas that is received under the soil and they vacuum it out and then combust it into energy. And they send that through wires that are the current infrastructure is already there at the landfill. And they send that to Toyota. LFUCJ receives 20% of the net profits from those proceeds. If we can go to the next slide, please. I kind of went over this just a little bit ago. We adopted a resolution back in March of 2015, and we went into a contract with Waste Services of the Bluegrass in July of 2015, and then we renewed this in 2020. There was no cost difference. Next slide, please. This was a slide from back in 2017 and what our kind of forecast was and some of the bullet points of the positives of us changing over to waste service of the bluegrass and the central Kentucky landfill. We had already received and seen a $1 million cost savings and that was going to continue as a cost savings into the future. We also receive funds from our transfer station that go through from Franklin County, Jessamine County through our transfer station and out to Central Kentucky Landfill. Next slide, please. This is a brief overview of how much we have received from the methane gas program with Toyota. Next slide, please. And then a few pictures from when we went out there. I'd asked all of council for the opportunity to go out and take a tour. We've heard different complaints. We've heard different reports of the actual landfill, and a majority of us went out and actually saw it. We went on two different trips, and here are a few pictures of the actual landfill, and in my personal opinion, I was rather impressed. I thought it was very clean. I thought that there was no odor. I mean, you can see from the picture here, we're about 100, maybe 150 yards off from the actual dumping site. And I couldn't, standing on the ground, I couldn't smell anything. Next slide, please. This is a picture of the generator. There are multiple, there are two generators on the landfill currently, but there is room for expansion. So what that means for us is the more methane gas that is being produced, the more generators that they have, the more net profit income that we are going to receive. Next slide, please. Another picture of the landfill. Next slide. And then this is a picture of our transfer station here. And just, you know, this is in the middle of their day when they're working. And it was clean. You know, the trash isn't blowing everywhere. It was well organized, well maintained. Next slide, please. With this conversation here, and before I make a motion or anything, I would like to open up for some questions, but I'd like to discuss what's happening, what's occurring in front of us here, and kind of moving our steps forward in the future. So currently, Scott County has submitted a new environmental plan to the state, And that has essentially stopped the central Kentucky landfill from expansion or from accepting any more of our solid or municipal waste in October 31st of this year, 2021. So when I said earlier on that time is of the essence, that's what I'm referring to is because if we don't make a move here and the state doesn't allow for the landfill to expand, what we're going to be looking at is, sure, we have a contract that provides that Waste Services of the Bluegrass will continue our contract until 2025. But this landfill will no longer be in operation in 2025, which means that we will be looking at what our next opportunity would be for another contractor. In 2015, when we bid out the process, we had three bids. One was $17.75. One was $20, which was from Republic as well, but went down from their current contract. And then the other one was upwards of $40 plus. dollars. You know, if we look at not having this landfill as an opportunity in five or four years, what are we going to be looking at for a bid opportunity at that point? Gas prices have gone up. Cost of living has gone up. You know, being on the highway is a further travel. So I do see us looking between $35, $45. And that's a conversation I'd like to prevent us from having, hopefully in the future. Along forth with this, excuse me, we have a contract right now that is through 2025. And I think that we need to try to back our contractor here and what their proposal is to expand. If they have the expansion permitted to them, then what we're looking at doing is potentially having this, again, as an option moving us forward. And next slide, please. All right. So before I go to any motion here, Chair Brown, I see you're back. We missed you. Yes, sorry for that. I got my internet went off and I appreciate you taking back over because you knew right where we are. Yes, sir. So you've made your presentation, correct? Yes, sir. So I'll turn it back over to you, please. Let's see what kind of questions we have from other council members. Chair Brown, before we do so, if I may, we do have Greg Elkins with Waste Services of the Bluegrass. He's in the waiting room. If there are any questions for him, and we have Commissioner Albright as well in the chamber. Are there any questions for her, too? And I'd be happy to take some. Okay, yeah, we've got people available there. I think most of us made the visit over there. I came away pretty, you know, what I saw and what's happening over there. I was impressed with what they were doing. Of course, I don't know how I can compare it with too many landfills, but I thought it was pretty impressive and the presentation was good. Did any council members have any problem or any complaints about visiting the site? Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. And no, I did not have any problems or complaints visiting the site. As a matter of fact, I was incredibly impressed with the operation there. and the sophistication in operation there, the cleanliness, and then the work coming for the energy production. I thought it was a really impressive operation, but mostly I was – sometimes it's hard until you see those things to understand their value when people think about garbage, and you see how important that is to not only our community but surrounding communities all throughout central Kentucky. uh we are one of many that uh that landfill services so i i appreciated the opportunity to see it and uh and i think that we need to we need to get involved in this issue significantly i know councilmember mccern um has a motion that he wants to bring forward but uh to answer your question no not only did i not have a problem with the experience i was uh compelled by the experience that we do need to get involved with this issue and i've got a problem with what's being done that could hurt our community. Yeah. Well, just let me add something. Go ahead, Council Member Maloney. I'll add after you. I just want to echo what Council Member Worley. It's not just Lexington. It's Harrison County, Woodford County. It's a regional problem. And they do have sent their letters to Frankfurt on how important this is for their community in the future. and it goes back to why we did this many years ago is that we wanted to think out of the box. We didn't want to leave it in the ground for a thousand years and this group here has done this and not only has it done it, it's helped one of our largest manufacturers in Central Kentucky to keep their prices down on their service for electricity. So I think it's a regional planning And we need to follow what our other counties are doing and help them too. And hopefully we can get that message to Frankfort. And I appreciate what you all have done. And thank you all for all your homework. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Maloney. Just, I don't think you've touched on any of our discussions. You just did the presentation. Is that right? That's right. Okay. Josh and I have been working on this and trying to come up with a resolution. and you know I'm going to be I'm going to be frank with you committee we had thought about sending a letter I mean a resolution there and have actually drafted up two or three from the law department they were very reluctant on giving us anything because of pending suits that are at frankfurt related to the contractor and the scott county is that correct uh what what what came up and there's two things here one is is that uh we're told that they the contractor has a lot of violations and josh and i are trying to follow up on that to see what's going on there and my understanding is every landfill in the state of Kentucky has violations. But anyway, Scott County, we did talk to the to judge executive at Scott County yesterday on the phone. He was very gracious to talk to us. And Josh and I had questions. And we did, you know, we wanted to see what was the other side of the issue there. And basically he said that the contractor was out of compliance right now and was not supposed to be accepting any of our garbage, land waste, whatever you want to call it. And we haven't been told that particularly because we're still sending it out. And that was one of their things that they had with the state is they have done a new plan. Is that what they did on that, a plan to close the landfill? Isn't that what they've got before the state, Josh? Yeah, they submitted an environmental plan to essentially stop them from growing any farther. Yeah, actually. And our resolution that we've been trying to adopt here is basically to ask the state to allow them to expand. So that's the other side of the issue. One side is that Scott County don't want them to expand. they say they're full and they want basically they've given an October 31st deadline where our contractor can no longer take lexicon waste. So that's another that's another problem there but our resolution would basically be allow that we would support the contractor to have additional open up additional land there for the landfill so that would kind of assure us about 10 years out And that's kind of summary. We got negative feedback basically from the judge over there. And as we expected, it pretty much is political to the extent that he's dealing with his constituents and Scott County people have informed him evidently by vote and by comments and addressing this issue. that they want that landfill out of there. And, you know, that's the bottom line. So where are we at? Well, we're just trying to protect the interest of the Fayette County. And my understanding is we do about 70%. I think we were told yesterday, Josh, it was 86%. Yeah. Actually, Fayette County waste is going there. And so, you know, that's kind of the dilemma there. And we've been, you know, the administration has been involved in some discussions, but we as a committee and other council members, we haven't been privy to that information. So we're not really getting the blessing of the administration or the commissioner of environmental quality. So, you know, it's very difficult. That's why we wanted everybody to go there and look at it, talk to the contractor and go from there. So it's a little, it's a complex issue, and I'm not sure which direction. Now, Josh wants to go with a resolution and straight out of the work session and not from this committee. But I give you that as a little bit of background. I'm concerned about the timing. Our contractor has two options. They will continue to take us through the five years, 2025. and by doing that they'll have to find another location but they've got options too if they can't do it and the bottom line doesn't tell them that then we are all of a sudden out of a place and we'll have to rebid and that's where it's at I think council member vice mayor Kay had his hand up Thank you chair so yes now I have a question who is who gets to decide whether it gets closed now and whether if it stays open now whether it is allowed to expand is that a state regulatory agency and you mentioned also a lawsuit can you tell us a little more about that uh josh you can go ahead and pick up on that and it's the state for sure uh and that's where our resolution would go to it wouldn't be going to the county as far as the lawsuit go ahead and pick up on that yeah vice mayor thank you that's a that's a good question so the lawsuits are not for the landfill being sued it's the landfill that is that is um suing against the the judgments that have been or the decisions that have been made So Scott County's environmental plan being adopted, they do not feel that that was illegal. They're already in contract for that. I don't want to speak too much as I'm not their attorney or I'm not an attorney either. But if you'd like, I can have Greg come in and he can speak to that a little bit. I guess my question really has to do with the status of the moment and essentially who what role does the Scott County Commission have? Sure. Yeah it would be helpful to have a little more understanding about that. Sure. And if we can bring Greg in, please. But in the meantime, what I'll say is, yes, Scott County, when they put their plan forward, it was essentially to stop the landfill from the expansion and from accepting our waste. Now, Fred made a comment earlier on about the 86% that is coming from Lexington. That's just 86% that comes through our transfer conversation. That's including Jessamine County. That's including Franklin County. That is not just Lexington. That's just what comes from our transfer. Now, they do not want Lexington there. And if I may be frank, and I haven't necessarily got into the comments of this one yet, but we're going to have to go somewhere, guys. And we're going to have to pay for this one way or the next. And I understand that when we talked to him yesterday, he was saying 70% is what from just Lexington that comes into Scott County's landfill. But we're, we're the second largest city in Kentucky. So if we go to another landfill that's 60 miles away, unless it's the same landfill as Louisville, we're still going to be looking at 70% is going to be coming from Lexington. So Mr. Elkins, how are you, sir? Yeah. I'm good. Council Member McCurron, how are you? I'm good, sir. Thank you. Did you hear the vice mayor's question by any chance? Yeah, I heard Vice Mayor Kay's question, and I have to be careful, as it is ongoing litigation, but I think I understand the question and shouldn't have an issue with hopefully explaining to you. Scott County has a solid waste management plan, just as every county in the Commonwealth does, and in that plan they had allowed for us to have 9.7 million tons of capacity and that was as late as the 2016 or 2017 plan I think it was and then last year they zeroed out that capacity they removed it even after presenting us a letter when we bid the Lexington contract assuring the capacity was there in their solid waste management plan of an additional 3.8 million tons above and beyond the 5 million that we had, 5.2 million I think it was at the time that we had then. So we relied upon that capacity when bidding the Lexington contract. Lexington relied upon that capacity when awarding us the contract. We also relied upon that capacity assurance when we applied for a horizontal expansion. The cabinet approved an amendment of the solid waste management plan through mid-cycle of the plan itself and allowed Scott County to zero out that capacity. The administrative law judge with the cabinet looked at that and questioned whether the cabinet did their due diligence when approving that capacity or that change of capacity to zero. So we have a case in front of her where we have finished our arguments. We did that a couple of weeks ago, and she has until mid-July to rule on that. So that's kind of where that stands. We don't know how she'll rule naturally. There was some question whether the cabinet did their due diligence in approving the amendment. We naturally feel that they did not. And so Scott County naturally feels that they did. So that's where we're at now with that case. I hope that answers your question, Vice Mayor Cade. That's helpful. And if I can, a follow-up question. Given that that's now with this administrative law judge, would it not make more sense to wait for that decision? I presume there may be action after that. If the judge decides that the action was inappropriate, then we're back to the status. Is that correct? Excellent question. Even if the administrative law judge decides that it was inappropriate, it still will be incumbent upon the secretary of the cabinet, Rebecca Goodman, to sign off on the administrative law judge's ruling. She still can, even if the administrative law judge rules in our favor, the secretary can still rule in Scott County's favor if she chooses to. So she's not beholding to the administrative law judge ruling. That would just then be appealed in Franklin Circuit Court, probably under Judge Shepard would be my guess. So a resolution would be very helpful in maybe persuading her to consider not zeroing out our capacity, because even if the administrative law judge rules against us, the secretary is not beholding to that either. She could decide that the cabinet had acted inappropriately in approving the amendment. So I think a resolution from this group would send a very powerful message to the secretary, and maybe if you should choose to the governor as well, to consider relying upon the capacity that was assured you and us in the 2015 bid process. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Elkins, for that answer and clarifying that a little bit. Council Member Worley? Thank you, Chair. I don't know if this is for Mr. Elkins or Council Member Kern, but it is my understanding that the other communities that are serviced by that landfill and Waste Service of the Bluegrass and a lot through our transfer station, many of those have already sent letters or resolutions supporting, doing exactly what we are discussing now and saying that we support the expansion and continued use of that landfill by Waste Services. Is that correct? Yes, sir. several of the other counties and Mr. Elkins you may be able to name the counties off the top of your head but I sent out a list of those counties and those letters from the administrations or their councils to all of our council members about two weeks ago just in reference to prepare us for this presentation and I'll get to where I'm at with my resolution here shortly but Mr. Elkins if you had anything to add to that I would say that to answer the question, yes, I think Mr. McKern has included those in the packet that maybe you have. But Franklin County was one, Judge Houston Wells, Judge Alec Barnett in Harrison County, Judge David West in Jessamine County. The city of Bursells, I think, was another. And who was it? Nicholas Villiers was another. So these were letters. These were letters only. There wasn't any resolution coming from the government body. That is correct. Those letters from the judges. That's correct. Letters from the judges and the mayors. I think a resolution would would carry a little more weight and speak a little more loudly. As a matter of fact, I think some of those communities are waiting to see if you do a resolution so they can follow suit. And that was a follow-up question. We talk about letters. That is an administrator, either the judge, executive, or the mayor, that has been willing to get into the fray, whereas we're being told by our administration at this point they are not. so that's why uh this this body the standing as a whole not just a committee can only act through resolution uh and not by i mean yes we can all write 15 letters if we like but uh we act by resolution whereas a mayor can act through a letter stating uh her opinion so i think that's also why the request is coming by way of resolution and uh again i support this there's not a motion on the floor but i would support this moving to the full council in work session, even if more presentation is required at that time and tweaking of a resolution. I don't know if everybody's seen a copy yet or not, but I think I support this moving forward because of a timing issue. We're looking at October being shut out. And so before we go on our council break, we need to have something out there trying to put our position out there. So I would support this going to the full council, even if we need further discussion and presentation at the work session. I'll wait for that. But Scott County and Georgetown, while it's hard to say benefit from our garbage, they do benefit from Central Kentucky's garbage. It partially powers their largest employer, the region's largest employer that pays occupational license fee and net profit tax to that community. So it's kind of, you can't have your cake and eat it too. And we certainly will be damaged if our servicer cannot service our garbage for the price quoted. It may put them out of business or may cost our garbage prices to grow exponentially. And so again, there's not a motion on the floor yet, but I'll support moving to the full council. Very well stated. Council member McCurn you wrap it up here a little bit yeah no council member Worley thank you for that and that's what I'd like to move forward with is I would like to move this to the full council at work session next week so I would like to make a motion to do a partial report out on the May 25th council work session and have a resolution prepared for that time so move I have a motion to have a partial readout of what? You need to be specific there. A partial readout of this presentation and a resolution. Yes. You want to, well, what you're doing is you're making this committee approve or disapprove the motion to read it out to the council. Now, let me rephrase then. I'd like to I'd like to let me rephrase in for the May 25th work session. I'd like to have a presentation for the full work session with support from this committee. OK. All right. That's a motion. Second. I'll second that. Any discussion on that? Chair. Summarize it for us, counselor. So this is similar for those of you on the budget committee, how we handled the local business recovery package. We couldn't get what we needed done in committee, but we wanted to move faster. So Council Member Brown at that point, James Brown, just simply made a motion to move this item out of committee and for discussion of the full council at a date certain work session. okay i think that's what council member mccurney is trying to do here understanding so get that down that that wording i like that verbiage better and and i and as opposed to saying put this out with support while i'm sure he would like to go out with support i think what he's trying to do is just we need to move the item out of committee in order for the council to take action and because of timing concerns it may get out of committee without a particular resolution or issue being resolved here. Is that okay, Council Member McCurron? Yes, thank you for that clarification. That's exactly what I'm looking at. Thank you. We have a motion in a second. Any other discussion on the motion? Okay, all those in favor of the motion, signify by raising your hand. All those opposed, like sign? All right, we have it moving forward and appreciate council member McCurron and his interest in bringing this up because it is timely and it is something that's very important to our community so appreciate it council member. Any other items that we have I believe we're we're pretty good time we got 15 minutes to the three o'clock session and I think we probably ought to just move on adjourn so I I need a motion to adjourn the committee. So moved. Second. Got a motion by Council Member Worley. Second was where? Where? Second by Council Member McCurron. We stand adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.