# Council Work Session - October 19, 2021 > Auto-transcribed civic record · October 19, 2021 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5455 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5455?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2021-10-19 - **Last revised**: October 19, 2021 - **Length**: 26,201 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government held a work session on October 19, 2021, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber, with Mayor Linda Gorton presiding. The meeting addressed two main agenda items: public comment on agenda issues and new business items, with the new business items receiving approval. During the session, the council heard from 3 public commenters and conducted 3 formal votes on various matters before them. The meeting served as a working session format, allowing for both public input on agenda matters and the advancement of new business through the approval process. ## Attendance All members of the council were present for the October 19, 2021 meeting. **Present:** • Mayor Linda Gorton • Council Member Kay • Council Member McCurn • Council Member Ellinger • Council Member Plomin • Council Member Reynolds • Council Member Sheehan • Council Member Kloiber • Council Member F. Brown • Council Member Bledsoe • Council Member Lamb • Council Member Worley • Council Member Moloney • Council Member LeGris • Council Member J. Brown **Absent:** None **Late:** None The meeting achieved full attendance with all 15 council members and the mayor participating. ## Votes and Decisions The council took three unanimous votes during the October 19, 2021 meeting, with all 15 members present voting in favor of each motion. **Agenda Amendment** [timestamp: 00:01] Council Member Kay motioned to amend the agenda to move the recognition of the rental assistance team to the top of the agenda. Council Member McCurn seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously with 15 ayes and 0 nays. All council members voted in favor: Mayor Linda Gorton, Council Members Kay, McCurn, Ellinger, Plomin, Reynolds, Sheehan, Kloiber, F. Brown, Bledsoe, Lamb, Worley, Moloney, LeGris, and J. Brown. **Meeting Docket Approval** [timestamp: 00:02] Council Member Kay motioned to approve the October 14, 2021 Council meeting docket, with Council Member Plomin providing the second. The motion passed unanimously with 15 ayes and 0 nays. The same 15 council members voted in favor of this motion. **Budget Amendments** [timestamp: 00:03] Council Member Sheehan motioned to approve budget amendments, seconded by Council Member McCurn. This motion also passed unanimously with 15 ayes and 0 nays, with all council members voting in favor. All three votes demonstrated complete consensus among the council members, with no opposition or abstentions recorded for any of the motions. The votes occurred early in the meeting, covering procedural matters including agenda modification, meeting record approval, and budget adjustments. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed three significant financial authorizations totaling over $414,000 in commitments and amendments. **School Zone Enhancement Project Amendment** The council considered authorization to amend Resolution No. 029-2020 for the School Zone Enhancement project under identifier L0986-21. This amendment involves $272,000 in coordination with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to enhance safety measures in designated school zones throughout the jurisdiction. **Sole Source Vendor Authorization** Under resolution L0992-21, the council reviewed authorization to establish Idemia Identity & Security USA LLC as a sole source vendor for $9,344. This designation allows the government to contract directly with Idemia Identity & Security USA LLC without competitive bidding processes, typically reserved for specialized services or products where limited alternatives exist. **Dell Financial Services Lease Agreement** The council examined a substantial technology lease arrangement identified as L0998-21, authorizing a 5-year lease agreement with Dell Financial Services. The lease requires quarterly payments of $35,518.25, representing an annual commitment of $142,073 and a total 5-year obligation of $710,365. This lease likely covers essential technology infrastructure and equipment needs for government operations. These three financial actions demonstrate the government's ongoing investments in public safety infrastructure, security technology services, and operational technology systems. The School Zone Enhancement project represents the largest single expenditure at $272,000, while the Dell lease represents the most significant long-term financial commitment. The Idemia sole source contract, though the smallest at $9,344, indicates specialized security or identification services requirements that necessitate working with a specific vendor rather than through competitive procurement processes. ## Public Comment Three residents spoke during the public comment period, all addressing concerns about Kentucky Utilities' tree removal plans in their neighborhood. **Rob Walker** [timestamp: 00:05] expressed concerns about Kentucky Utilities' plan to cut down over 200 trees in his neighborhood. Walker emphasized the negative impact this would have on the community's aesthetics and property values, highlighting how the extensive tree removal would fundamentally change the character of their residential area. **Bobby Owens** [timestamp: 00:20] also addressed the Kentucky Utilities tree cutting issue, focusing on the broader importance of trees for neighborhood aesthetics and drainage systems. Owens urged officials to work toward finding a reasonable compromise with Kentucky Utilities that would balance the utility company's needs with the community's desire to preserve their tree canopy. **Rebecca Farris** [timestamp: 00:35] discussed the environmental consequences of the proposed tree removal. Farris outlined specific concerns including increased flooding risks due to reduced natural water absorption and higher energy costs for residents who would lose the cooling shade provided by the trees. Her comments emphasized the broader environmental and economic impacts beyond just the visual changes to the neighborhood. All three speakers presented a unified concern about Kentucky Utilities' tree removal plans, approaching the issue from different angles - property values and community character, drainage and compromise solutions, and environmental and economic impacts. The comments suggest significant community opposition to the utility company's current tree cutting proposal. ## Contested Items The primary contested item during this meeting centered on Kentucky Utilities' proposed tree cutting activities, which generated significant community opposition from local residents. **Tree Cutting by Kentucky Utilities** Residents voiced strong opposition to Kentucky Utilities' plan to remove trees in the area. The community's concerns focused on two main areas: environmental impact and aesthetic considerations. Citizens argued that the proposed tree removal would negatively affect the local environment and diminish the visual appeal of their neighborhoods. The disagreement involved Kentucky Utilities on one side, seeking to proceed with their tree cutting plan, and concerned residents on the other side, who mobilized to express their opposition during the public meeting. Community members appeared unified in their stance against the utility company's proposal. The specific details of Kentucky Utilities' justification for the tree cutting, the exact locations affected, and the ultimate resolution of this dispute were not captured in the available meeting data. The outcome of this contentious issue and any compromise or decision reached by the governing body remains unclear from the provided information. This tree cutting controversy represents a common type of municipal conflict where utility infrastructure needs clash with community environmental and aesthetic values, requiring local officials to balance competing interests between essential services and resident concerns. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:05] Multiple residents addressed the council regarding concerns about Kentucky Utilities' tree cutting plans in the community. The public comments focused on environmental, aesthetic, and property value impacts from the utility company's proposed vegetation management activities. Key speakers during this portion of the meeting included: • **Rob Walker** - Expressed concerns about the tree cutting plans • **Bobby Owens** - Shared community perspectives on the utility work • **Rebecca Farris** - Addressed impacts to residents The residents who spoke raised several issues related to Kentucky Utilities' tree cutting operations, including: • Environmental concerns about removing established vegetation • Aesthetic impacts on neighborhood appearance and character • Potential negative effects on property values in affected areas • Community concerns about the scope and methods of the planned tree removal The public comment period served as an informational session, allowing residents to voice their concerns directly to council members about the utility company's vegetation management plans. No formal action was taken during this agenda item, as it was designated for public input on issues related to other agenda items. The comments highlighted community opposition to or concerns about Kentucky Utilities' tree cutting activities, with residents seeking to ensure their voices were heard regarding decisions that would affect their neighborhoods and property values. ## New Business Items [timestamp: 01:30] The Council addressed several new business items during this portion of the meeting. Council Member Kay and Council Member McCurn were the primary speakers leading the discussion of various matters requiring Council action. The new business items encompassed multiple areas of municipal operations, including proposed budget amendments, lease agreements, and grant authorizations. These items represented ongoing administrative and financial matters that required formal Council consideration and approval. Council Member Kay and Council Member McCurn presented the various items and facilitated discussion among the Council members. The specific details of individual budget amendments, lease terms, and grant applications were reviewed as part of the deliberative process. Following the presentation and discussion of the new business items, the Council moved to approve the matters presented. The outcome was approval of the new business items as discussed. The consideration of these new business items reflects the Council's ongoing responsibility to address administrative, financial, and operational matters that arise between regular meeting cycles and require formal legislative action. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Amend the agenda to move the recognition of the rental assistance team to the top of the agenda - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Approve the October 14, 2021 Council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (15-0): Approve budget amendments --- ## Full transcript Thank you. I went uptown to see my cousin Play his guitar sound like a James Sopper In the crowd I see his mom and dad I say, hey, hey, Uncle The End ¶¶ Thank you. Welcome, everyone. I'd like to go ahead and call to order. the October 19th, 2021 Urban County Council Work Session. And the first thing is we are going to have a motion from Council Member Sheehan about the agenda. Thank you, Mayor. Due to the folks that are here for public comment for issues on the agenda, I would also like to move forward, make a motion to move the presentation on transmission cycle-based line clearing up in the agenda to just after public comment for issues on the agenda. Thank you. Is there a second? Council Member Ellinger seconds the motion to move the transmission cycle-based line clearing presentation up to follow public comment. Is there any discussion? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Thank you very much. And the first item on the agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda. And I'll ask for everyone's patience. We have many, many folks signed up to speak. And so I'll do a brief review of how this operates. The council rules ask that you state your name and your council district. That's for the record after you come to the podium. And you'll have three minutes to speak. If you wish to give your time to someone else, you may give three minutes to that person. The max anyone can have is 15 minutes. And we do have rules of decorum here in the chamber. We discourage clapping, cheering, booing, et cetera. But I can tell this is a crowd that's very respectful. So with that, I will start and call the names of folks who want to speak. and first up is Rob Walker. Are you here? Okay, if you'll come to the podium, state your name, your council district, and you'll have three minutes, and unfortunately I have to be the timekeeper, so I'll tell you when it's over. If I might, I believe we have some people that have dedicated their three minutes to me. I'll need their names, and they'll have to be present. Would you stand up if you donate time to me, please? And I'll need your names. Well, now that's way too many people because you can only. Okay. The maximum you can speak is your three minutes plus 12 more. I understand. So that's four people can cede their time. And you'll. Do we have four? Diane Lason. Okay. Hang on a second. I see six people standing. We're going to straighten this out right from the beginning. Now there are only three. Okay, this is a math problem. Okay, the first four, we will give their time to you, Mr. Walker. And so are you on the sign-up list, ma'am? Yes, I am. Tell me your name. Diane Lason. Diane Lason. Lason, okay. And please sit down. Yes, ma'am. Cheryl Halton, okay. Debbie Owens. Yes, sir. James. Hang on. Let me find you. Are you signed up? James. Jamie. Okay, there you are. All right. Very good. Okay. This is all just basically a math problem, right? So you, Mr. Walker, you will have 15 minutes. Our council staff will set the timer, and I'll be the one to let you know when your 15 minutes is finished. Fine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, council members, for having us here today and allowing us to speak. I am Rob Walker. I am from the 5th district, and I am representing, in particular, the residents of Glen Hill and also Lakes Edge in connection with a problem that we are having there with an easement owned by KU. As you know, this is where we are most concerned with our neighborhood. However, as you also will know, that this is not a problem that's confined just to our neighborhood. This is a city-wide problem that our neighbors are having with KU in the use of their easement. Lo and behold, I've suddenly found out that this is not confined just to Lexington, but apparently it's a statewide pandemic. Louisville apparently is also having a problem with KU and the abuse of their easement. This easement covers an area in southeast Lexington. It's depicted on three. Down in the lower southeast corner, you'll see the circle there. More particularly, it is an area between Reservoir No. 3 and Alumni Drive. It's an area that covers Glen Hill and Lake's Edge. The area in question is about 300 yards. That is the easement that runs along those two drives there. More particularly, what is being proposed is that the trees within the easement, certain trees are to be cut down. More particularly, there are over 200 trees that are in this easement that are on Kentucky Utilities' cut list, which we are most concerned about the impact on the neighborhood and how it's going to denigrate our neighborhood. We have some overhead pictures that I'd like you to see that depict exactly what is going to happen, the trees that are going to be impacted. Slide 18. Slide 18 is an overhead. As you look at the center of this picture, I think you can see the utility lines of Kentucky Utility. and the trees on both sides of that. They are proposing to cut trees that are more or less 20 to 30 feet on each side of the center of the line there. If you would show 20. 20 as you will see the red line is the outside where this easement lies to the left of that and on the other side of the power lines that are depicted there you will see the trees that are going to be impacted there. You will also, this is depicted in photograph number 21. You see more trees in our neighborhood 22. This is the end of the Glen Hill where you see the Kentucky Utility Pole. That's where Glen Hill ends. The trees that you're seeing in this photograph are going to be, are proposed to be clear cut, and virtually every tree that you see in this photograph will be eliminated. If we could see 24. Again, 24 depicts an area on Glen Hill. both sides of the line depict all the trees that will be taken out. Line photograph 25, please. 25 is a different shot of the neighborhood and the street and the line additional trees. As you can see, these trees that are going to be removed are very prominent large trees, But as you can also see from this, they are not into the Kentucky utility line. I'd like to give some specific examples of trees that are going to be or proposed to be cut down. If we could see photograph number 29. This tree is an oak tree. it's probably the best example of an oak tree in our neighborhood. It's 32 years old. It has a trunk with a circumference of 8 1⁄2 feet tall. You see the lines, of course, up in the left-hand corner there. This tree is right now below those lines. Kentucky Utility however feels that this tree is going to continue to grow and may get into its line and therefore propose to cut it down We have asked for a compromise of that We could see 30 please We propose at the owner's expense that this tree be trimmed down as depicted by the red line there which would put it somewhere below 25 feet below the line, which is certainly manageable and would cause the Kentucky utility lines no problem whatsoever. However, this has been rejected by Kentucky utilities. They still want to take this down. Photograph 31, please. the pole that you see on the left the black and white pole that is exactly 15 feet kentucky utilities said that they will allow shrubbery that is under 15 feet to continue on and not be cut down and this is this is below their their lines they had the rule of the 15 foot rule will allow shrubbery under 15 feet not to be taken out if they could be proven that the shrubbery is not going to continue to grow and give above the 15 feet arbitrarily we've been told that this shrub which is 50 years old has not grown an inch in the last 30 years it's coming out. No real reason for it at all. 33. 33 is a tree that's been planted three years. It's a tree that's under 15 feet and coming out. 34. 34, again, 15 feet limit. This is below, another tree below the 15 limit. Informed by Kentucky Utilities, it's got to come out. 35. 35, you see the pole. So you see just a few little branches above the 15 feet definitely has to come out according to Kentucky Utilities. What a waste to take a landscape that's been there for years and years and simply for no justification take this out. I want to point out to you that Kentucky Utilities' lines are up in the range of 60 feet above the ground. And so subtracting the 15 feet, I mean, it's over 40 feet away from their lines. So there's no reason, there is no justification to take out 200 trees that are not currently interfering with their lines, but just prospectively cut them down for no reason at all. Basically, the Kentucky Utility is relying on an easement that they acquired. The easement originally was granted in 1924, and I can tell you that the easement is exactly the same as it was in 1924. It hasn't expanded, has not changed in any way. That's what they're bound from. This easement, of course, gives Kentucky Utilities the right, and they've inherited this, to build poles, put their wires on the poles. Looking back, I mean, this was the original easement. Back when this was granted in 1924, the electrical poles were about 25 feet. And yes, they needed to be cleaned off and cleared of brush and limbs. It was a necessity. However, now these poles are up 70, 60, 70 feet, and there's very little vegetation getting into them. It can be managed. It can be trimmed with a great deal of ease, and these magnificent trees can continue to live. But that's not satisfactory with Kentucky utilities for basically no reason at all. Seven, this is an excerpt from the 1924 right-of-way, and in that there is a requirement. This is a contract. It's like a deed and a contract. Kentucky Utilities can only remove vegetation where it is reasonably necessary to prevent interference with the wires. That's their original contract that they are still bound by. Kentucky Utilities, in all fairness, has gotten along with our neighborhood very well. We've not had problems. We've had a very pleasant coexistence until a month ago when suddenly they have decided that they need to cut down these trees that are anywhere under their wires or close to being under their wires. this really does not make sense because of the low growth of many of these trees and the height of being at least 30 most of them are 20 30 feet away from the wires if I could stay number 16 This is a graphic. The center there represents the pole. The red lines immediately on both sides closest to are restricting the height of any tree to 15 feet. Anything over 15 feet is proposed to be cut down. It's going to be clear-cutting 60-foot wide and approximately 300 yards long. That's where these 200 trees live. Mr. Walker, you have a minute and a half left. Thank you. Before this, there was an understanding, and it was in writing, that the agreement, that's 14, please. we had an agreement that as long as no vegetation got closer than 25 feet to the wires as long as all trees that were under the wires were less than 30 feet then that was acceptable we were going to be allowed to keep those trees it was in writing we relied on that since 2007 all of a sudden, Kentucky Utility is going to take all those trees in that 60-foot-wide corridor down. I'm not sure what this council can do about this, but we desperately need your help to preserve our neighborhood, the beauty of the neighborhood, and the value of the homes in our neighborhood. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Now, next is Bobby Owens. Welcome. If you'll state your name, your council district, and you'll have three minutes. Thank you, Mayor. Bobby Owens in District 5. I'm on one of the affected streets. I've spoken in front of the council twice before as chairman of the airport board when we had a problem at the airport that we solved. We've got a problem here that we would like to solve, too. In our neighborhood, most of our homes are our biggest asset, and that's probably true in any neighborhood. In our area, most of our homes are well-landscaped. We take pride in our homes. And on our street, we've developed it in such a way that it almost looks like a park. It's a very beautiful street that we live on. As as Rob stated, we have 200 trees that are in question that that KU wants to clear cut. Many of these trees are 30 years old. They're less than 40 feet in height. They're at the maturity level. and and well below the 60 foot line that runs through our neighborhood. In fact, in 2007 KU redid the polls and they gave us $30,000 our neighborhood to do all the plannings that we've done that now they want to clear cut. So it doesn't make any sense. Also, we have a serious drainage problem in our neighborhood. We have a number of springs around. We have a lot of water that affects many of our homes, and we're afraid that if you start cutting all these trees, it's going to have a very negative effect on our drainage. You know, past court decisions on tree cutting, dealing with tree trimming, have always used the word reasonable in their decision. So far, KU has been unreasonable in dealing with this with our street. And they've continued to clear cut as we've discussed this. They did not give us much notice on it, saying that they didn't recognize our association, which we've been an association for 30-plus years. They actually settled with us in 2007 with our association. We simply want what's reasonable to this clear-cut policy, something that protects the beauty of our neighborhood, solves our stormwater problem, and also protects the value that we have in our homes. And that's all we're asking. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next is Robert Briggs. We do have an overflow room, so are you in here? I'm going to pass. You're going to pass? Okay. Bonnie Briggs? I'm going to pass. You're going to pass. Okay. Charles Lason? okay sarah grau oh okay ryan ann bickley um i believe it's jason harris is that correct i'm so sorry if i got that wrong welcome Name, council district, and you'll have three minutes. Thanks very much, Dr. Jason Harris. I believe I'm with the 5th district. I'm recently from Jessamine County moving back, have a piece of property on Lake's Edge. Happy to be here with some future neighbors, Lexingtonian Loraxes. We speak for the trees, right? So essentially what I'd like to say is that I am a huge proponent of this city. I grew up in the eastern part of the state. And one of the things that's most attractive about Lexington are these beautiful mature trees that we have. And it's just an absolute shame to me that these trees have to seemingly come down with no real compromise by KU. At least it seems that way. KU, as my understanding, is a subsidiary now of Pennsylvania Power and Line. And it also strikes me as a little bit counterintuitive that these decisions are being made well outside of the state of Kentucky for what's good for Lexington. So I would ask both the council members to consider, or both the council members and our neighbors, really to consider what's the ecological impact here. I am by no means some sort of eco-warrior, but I do understand that some time ago, Lexington got into a bit of a trouble with stormwater drainage and so on and so forth. So has there been any sort of ecological or environmental impact study that has been done to determine whether this is the right thing to do or possibly should be done? And if so, what's the remediation there? I don't understand why we can't come together and appreciate that there is some alternative means to really get at this in a way that simply clear cuts these beautiful, mature trees that helps make Lexington Lexington. So with that, that's all I'll say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is, I believe, Joan Halton. John, did I mess that up? Close enough. Mayor, Councilman Sheehan, I'm in the 5th District, and I have a very short comment for you. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act Protected Species of 1918 protects owls. There are owls in this neighborhood and a competent professional needs to do a study of this neighborhood before the owl habitat is destroyed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Barbara Whitlock. There you are. Welcome. I'm Barbara Whitlock, the 5th District. Hi, Liz. Thank you. I'm not nearly as well prepared as these gentlemen, but I'll just tell you my story. I live at the corner of Manor and Lakeshore. That's three streets up from Henry Clay High School. I am directly on the easement. I have a magnificent elm tree that is up and as Spencer, whoever Spencer is, explained to me, they go up to the line, they come down and over 50 feet to the trunk of the tree. Well, my elm tree is about, oh, just maybe less than a foot inside that line. And there's a ratty old pine tree right beside it, but it's up that other two feet, so it doesn't have to come down. It's just ridiculous. But I'm on the easement. So if we had an ice storm, they don't have to clear anything to get to me. It's just right there, something falls. And the water problem is something that my sump pump runs all the time. We really need to think about the environment. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. Next is Rebecca Farris. Welcome. Thank you. Rebecca Ferris, I'm in the 5th District. Thank you all. I live at 1741 Lakewood Lane. We're about 300 feet from the KU power lines that you saw earlier in the PowerPoint presentation that run along Glen Hill. We can see the lines from our home and all the trees that provide a visual buffer from these lines. I've worked in the environmental field in Kentucky, South Carolina, Washington, DC, Maryland and Connecticut. My experiences include working for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, EPA, National Park Service, environmental consulting firms, numerous nonprofits, and environmental education programs. I mention this only because I'm hoping it'll help some credence to what I would like to share with you all. My depth of knowledge of the ecosystems and the human impacts on the environment is based on education and career experiences. It is very clear what will happen if KU is allowed to proceed with this unnecessary tree removal. There are many topics I could discuss today, like the owls, but I will just try to mention two, rain and trees. The trees have extensive root systems underground which stabilize our soils when it rains and absorb all the rainwater tree root systems are two to three sizes the ties the canopy of a tree so what you see above ground there's two to three much more of the tree underground that's helping us without the mature trees in our neighborhood and across Lexington the miles of root systems in our neighborhoods will be floods in our streets and in our homes I also have two sump pumps they run for a week after every rain event we already struggle with rain events in lexington additionally there's a natural spring in our neighborhood that's been there since henry clay lived back there and owned that property and our properties stay wet for days lexington averages 45 inches of rain annually in 2020 we have 50 inches of precipitation i mean that's almost as tall as me and in 2019 we have 56 inches inches of precipitation we need every tree and more to absorb all the rain we receive the rain water that isn't taken up by the trees and the vegetation travels down hill and ends up in the storm water dis sewer systems and i think we all know we have problems there as well to put it simply helping ku's bottom line by allowing ku to clear cut the trees will only increase problems for our Lexington Fayette County government all the residents we have to do more to fix our already stressed sour excuse me stormwater system and we will end up paying the price of the runoff for every tree that KU cuts down additionally keeping trees in our neighborhood helps keep the temperatures down in our homes by removing the trees the residents will notice hotter temperatures around their homes and end up having to pay more energy to keep their homeschool. Rebecca I'm so sorry your three minutes is up. Thank you. Thank you. What is your name? What is your name please? Hang on there you are. Okay we'll give Rebecca your three minutes. So we'll notice that all of the houses that lose these trees the temperatures will go up around them and you'll end up having to pay KU more every summer. Lastly, I'll just mention this personal note. My grandfather worked for PPNL for 40 years. He also worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. I don't know if you all are familiar with him. During the Depression, they planted 3 billion trees between 1933 and 1942. If he was still alive, not only would he be against this tree-cutting policy, he would be standing here with me, and then he would be at PP&L headquarters to get this policy changed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Christy York. Welcome. If you'll state your name in Council District, you'll have three minutes. Yes, and my husband is going to yield his three minutes to me. Is that okay? His name is Tim York. Tim York. Let me find him here. Yes, that is fine. So you'll have six minutes. Thank you. Well, like I said, my name is Christy York, and this story is going to go back farther than probably a lot of you were even born. My parents built a house. I represent District 11. My parents built their house there in 1958. That made me two years old, kind of telling on myself. However, the story behind this is that there were trees, and it was beautiful. It's in a part of the city that the railroad track kind of, they back up to. So this is a picture of our beautiful trees right now. And about 10 years, it's been in the late 60s, KU came in, and someone mentioned KU abuse. I'm just going to tell you a little story about that because it is relevant to today. Okay. My parents allowed them to come in. They put a pole. I call them monster poles. Those two monster poles, one sits 25 feet from the back of our house or the side of our house or a door. We were inside when they did the dynamite on these trees. I mean, on these holes for these monster poles. All this to say is that they abused their easement by coming off their easement and putting their lines over my parents' house. Not only that, but the heavy machinery that they brought in destroyed the backyard, and it flooded. It floods to this day. These beautiful trees that you see are apples and orchids. We have magnolias. They home birds and squirrels, and they produce fruit for us. Four months ago, someone that represented KU came in and said that they were going to take the trees down, cut them down. They were not from KU. They said they represented them. I didn't give much credence to that because KU has never done that. We've had no problems. They have come in and they have trimmed the trees. Sometimes not very pretty, but they did leave the trees for us. My question is this. What's changed? We pay taxes to KU. In those taxes, they are supposed to maintain the trees, and they are supposed to maintain their lines. By cutting down the trees, we are going to have a major flood in our backyard. No longer are we going to have this beauty. And that is what Kentucky stands for, beautification. I also stand for knowing that, like this wonderful young lady just said, our power bills are going to go up. This is not going to be good for Lexington. It hasn't been, and it won't ever be. Let me go back to the taxes. So if we continue to pay taxes for the trimming of the trees, where's that money going? What's going to happen? That 20 years of where they've maintained it, where is our money going to go? So I am just asking you to please, please stand for Lexington. Stand for the beauty. Stand for everything that we've represented. You know, in the last year and a half, we have had so much taken away from us. There's one place that a lot of us can go, and that is to the peace of our own backyards. We don't have to wear this. We can enjoy everything that God has given to us in that backyard. And now that's being threatened to be taken away from us. So I am so appreciative of all the facts and information. I stand here today to speak from a heart, and I'm sure from a heart of a lot of people in Lexington, to say please, please stand for Lexington, stand for Fayette County. Don't let them abuse what they did to my parents. And like beautiful young lady said, if my mama was here today, She fought over 50 years to keep her yard beautiful and maintained. And she had to fight KU tooth and nail. The only compensation they got was resodding of that backyard and a poor job at that. That's what feeds these beautiful trees. Have no problem with them coming in and trimming them. I have no problem for paying for it myself. What I do have a problem with is the control and it's not right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Greg Doyle. Welcome. Hello, I'm Greg Doyle. I'm on the tree board. I'm also on trees Lexington board. I'd like to yield my time to Dave Leonard. Okie dokie. Let's see. Dave Leonard? You will have six minutes. Welcome. Thank you, council and mayor, for allowing me to speak. It seems I'm speaking for council district five right at this time. And I've spoken to many councils before this. Just so you know who I am, since a lot of council people probably don't, I've been in the tree care business for 47 years. The first mayor I worked with was Jim Amato. Okay. So the latest one, not the last one, So I'm what we call an International Society of Arboriculture, board-certified master arborist. We are the most qualified of the most qualified to speak for trees. And on top of that, then we have an American Society of Consulting Arborist, which I am a registered consulting arborist, and another group. So, and I've worked with Kentucky as the Kentucky Arborist Association director for 18 years and been a member of that since 1979, which was five years after they started. So, also, I'm on the board of directors of Trees Lexington, which was started with Jake Gibbs and our council and our tree board. and we've just taken it from there to build a small organization that we hopefully can make an impact. I've been a member or friend of the tree board since the year after it began. So that's my major experience with Lexington too. I worked my way through college as a utility arborist. A lot of you didn't know that, but I was working with trees and power lines back then to put myself through college. So I do know a little bit about power lines, even though it's changed a lot then. since then i received my degree in forestry from uk and i've been working in arboriculture ever since which is the care of single trees not forests so uh with kentucky utilities i've when it was locally owned we worked together a lot i advised them i even trained their sub subcontractors as and as well as being expert witness and in testimony in court cases defending ku and and asplund and their subcontractors so um since ku has changed ownership and become part of and large much larger company they have become seemingly a lot less responsive to lexington's needs and this is what we're seeing right now. Caring more about the bottom dollar than about Lexington where they're coming from. Michael are you going to speak later? Yes, good. Okay, I've got somehow I got in front of Michael but I'll leave that for then. So everyone should have a handout that's benefits of trees that's done, that was published from the International Society of Arboriculture. We had these printed up and just gives you a brief list of what what trees do for us. Not really a brief list, but it's not an exhausting list as well. And a lot of these have been covered, including wildlife issues, economic benefits. A lot of the communal benefits have not been covered. The social benefits have not been covered. Environmental, yes. Health benefits of trees. Another thing. We know, we've scientifically proven that trees, where trees are, people are healthier. And we see that time again and again. So our goal here was just, I wanted to mention our decline of our canopy. we're seeing like our canopy is already rapidly declining from an already low percentage to due to having too many over mature and dying trees and the emerald ash borer killing off another 10 percent of trees the loss of trees causes us to use more electricity which has been brought up for cooling and running sump pumps which has been brought up as well as devaluing our property and increasing the stormwater runoff. All negatives. Dave, you have a minute and a half. Somebody else yield to me? Can I yield if my time had an abuse? I'm so sorry. The public is spending more money. Dave, I'm so sorry. If we're going to have yielding, I need your name again. Yes. Yes. Can you? Can I hand it, please? I just passed earlier, but I'll give it my time if I can. Okay. Now, if I recall, you were with the man who had six minutes and you had a minute and a half left. Okay. So KU has previously pruned several of the trees that they plan to remove now. They could easily prune them again. There's no reason why they can't. I agree that KU has some, that there are some trees that need to be removed and that are wrongly planted or have grown up wild, surely. But there's a lot more that could be done with them. And what KU is wanting to do right now, there are minimum requirements, the NERC standards, basically the NERC standards. What KU is wanting right now is greatly exceeding those minimum requirements. So since I have to end it, at present, KU's bottom line is not really good for Lexington. There should be a compromise on some trees and adequate payback for canopy loss. Yes, KU has sponsored such events as Arbor Day, Reforest of the Grass, and more. This does not equal what we're losing. I have appraised trees officially for years, and I've never appraised one as low as $250. They're worth thousands of dollars. So Trees Lexington is tasked with increasing Lexington's tree canopy, while KU is decreasing it. I'd really like them to do better. That's all. Thanks. Well, Dave, you still have time left. All right. I didn't know. You said I had a minute and a half. And I apologize to the young woman in the back. I think you passed earlier, didn't you? She did. So you have another minute and a half. We don't want to short you on your time. I can feel it, I think. On Lake's Edge, there are trees outside the power lines that have been pruned before and could be again. KU wants to remove them. Several of the people stood up for themselves. That's great. These are healthy trees and with intelligent pruning and other things that can be used such as tree growth regulators, they can be kept out of the lines very easily. And they're well aware of these things, but they seemingly don't want to do any of them. And to replace the other thing that really is terrible is to receive permission to plant trees on Lansdowne Drive and then plant them according after research with UK and getting OKs from KU and planting the trees and then watching them get to the point where they're now 15 years old and actually beginning to pay us back and not being anywhere near the power lines, and they want to cut them down. That is almost the height of stupidity and going totally backwards, what Lexington should be doing. So I don't know how we can stand up to that, but I hope the council will somehow help us do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Michael Potapoff. Welcome, if you'll give your name and council district for the record. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council members. Thank you, representatives from KU for showing up. They say 90% of life is just that, right? So we appreciate you being part of this discussion. I am in the third district, and one thing I wanted to highlight, a lot of the people who have spoken are directly affected. The trees being taken down next to their house, but we need to think about this wider because our entire city is affected city is affected when large trees are taken down because of power lines or other things. I wrote an op-ed, some of you have read and mentioned, I just wanted to highlight that I think as a community, as a city, we should start thinking about trees as a utility and work around them accordingly when they come in conflict with other utilities. I wanted to make just a few comments that this community clearly cares about trees. We as a community funded a study in 2015 to understand our tree canopy, which the council I believe just passed another amount to update that study. And what we found out in 2015 was that as of 2012 we only had 25% tree canopy coverage. As Leonard mentioned, we have had challenges through disease and just mature trees being taken down and we've trees lexington i'm a board member as well as a member of the tree board lexington tree board we've tried to work to increase the tree canopy and i should highlight that ku has been a good partner sponsoring reforest plant the planet the arbor day we were just planting trees there so so that's that's been a welcome effort and and ku clearly cares i think about trees in Lexington. Now in 2012, Lexington was at 25%, just to highlight the difference in Louisville, they were at 37%. There are some differences, but that's still not a, we're far away from Louisville's target. It was highlighted in that Davis study that, to increase our tree canopy by just two percentage points would take 60,000 trees and $23.7 million. That's what Davis study found in 2015. Now, I spent 16 and a half years as an investment analyst at a large firm here in town, and I was doing fundamental analysis on publicly traded companies. So one of the things in preparation for this meeting, I briefly looked at the annual report for 2020 for PPL. And in Kentucky, for the state of Kentucky, which is LG and the NKU, revenues were about $3.2 billion. I'm not sure exactly how much of that comes from Lexington. That's not readily disclosed. And the company has healthy margins, 20%, which is great for the day income. May I borrow somebody's time? Sarah Brown. Okay. And you had, Sarah, you, I believe, had passed earlier. Is there anyone else who passed who wants to speak now? Or are you kind of hanging on to see who you need to give your time to? It's inspiration. Inspiration. All right. Three minutes. Thank you very much. So, as an investment analyst, I'm a CFA charterholder. If I were evaluating a strategy, it makes perfect sense. You cut trees down once, you don't have to come back for things that are over 15 feet. There are probably shareholders in this room who would appreciate it. I'm not a shareholder, for the record. And so as a financial strategy efficiency it totally makes sense. But there's more that enters the equation as you can see this city does care about trees. And so we would like to ask you to work with us to help us increase our tree canopy. Continue to support these programs and maybe step up your support through the savings that this program is surely to generate longer term. Because we're in this for the long term. you're going to be around, you're going to be in the city, you're going to be supplying our electrical power in a safe, reliable fashion, which we all depend on. And likewise, we're trying to manage our tree canopy and all the benefits that tree utilities provide to us. So we hope that this is a long-term partnership for our community. And so that's what I'd like to encourage the council and the members from KU to work on and help us figure out. so with that I yield the remainder of my time, thank you thank you very much next is Laura Zimmerman welcome thank you Mayor, Council my name is Laura Zimmerman and I live in at this point District 4, my change we've talked about mostly district three i believe but you know there's other areas and i think they mentioned lansdowne the median in lansdowne we're supposed to we're slated to lose 99 trees there three kusa dog was are slated to stay and i was on the board i'm not on it now but i was on the board back when we had a neighborhood action match grant and actually worked with the city arborist and with KU to okay the trees that we've put in and that number was 77 trees, 77 trees. And to my knowledge I've gone down that street many times. I'm not right on Lansdowne but I don't care where the tree is, I'm supportive of trees. So these trees are not near the lines again. You've heard that before from other speakers, and that these were approved at one point by KU and the arborist. And also, I looked at the order that the PSC has to approve for KU to do this, and maybe we can get some explanation on this, but the order talks about vegetation management, which is a pretty all-encompassing term, but they then separate trees, and they say trees, hazard trees, and those hazard trees are trees that are dead, dying, or diseased, and so a lot of these trees that these other constituents have talked about are not dead, dying, or diseased, so I don't know if it's legalese and we put other trees, healthy trees to be clear cut under vegetation management, or I'd like some maybe clarification of that, or I don't know where our trees fall. If that's the order that was approved by the PSC, then I have a little confusion about that issue. And there was also, talking about KU, and I guess in terms of the analysis, they applied for a rate increase to begin in 2017, based on need for an increase in operating revenues. However, when KU attempted to reduce the value of reimbursements to homeowners with solar generation, they were denied the full amount they requested as their current economic did not warrant it. And we question whether the vegetation management, this five-year cycle, is more operational revenue driven or outage reduction. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next is Matt Harrison. Welcome. I believe there should be two people on that list that yielded time to me. Do you know their names? Beth Hilliard, for sure. Beth, what's your last name, Beth? Hilliard. Hilliard. And there was one other gentleman that we were just kind of talking together, and he said, I'm not going to speak. You have notes. Right here. There he is. okay I'm sorry Jerry Friesen okie dokie so you'll have nine minutes well terrific thank you my name is Matt Harrison district 5 I live on Norborn Drive which is off a lake shore between Henry Clay and the island thank you very much for taking the time to listen to all this and thank you for all that you do for the city I know it's a thankless job a lot of times and we're grateful for it And I believe this is the KU folks here, including one of my close neighbors. Good to see you. Thank you for listening as well. We appreciate it. And I hope you really are listening. I'm trusting that. So I want to share a couple of kind of smaller pieces of this process that have been difficult. And I'm really speaking on behalf of several of my neighbors as well. I'm reiterating what a lot of people have already said. But the first smaller piece is the lack of warning. I got a door hanger and a letter in the mail that was three weeks ago. They're supposed to come through our street yesterday. And, you know, maybe I'm off on the timing on that, but it wasn't, you know, three and a half weeks maybe. And I didn't meet with somebody until two weeks before it was supposed to happen. That's pretty short notice for a pretty drastic change to our neighborhood and my own personal property. I just you know personally I just spent a fair amount of money on landscaping in my backyard I just treated my ash trees again You've known about this for a long time I think Would have been nice to have a little bit more warning And I'm not the only one on my street that has done some extra landscaping and planted some trees recently So that's just been frustrating from a consumer standpoint You know somebody just mentioned the compensation piece I think that's a statewide or a PSC decision But what I was told, in my yard, I'll lose 11 or 12 trees. And I was told I would only be compensated for six of those. And I just don't understand that number. Who decided that number? It's an arbitrary number. Exactly. Were there any homeowners who would be affected by this at the table during any of those discussions? I don't know. But it just, and hey, I'm saying 11 or 12. I think there's people that are going to lose a lot more. So that's kind of the smaller stuff. The bigger picture is what has already been brought up, but maybe I'll frame it a little bit differently. This seems to be a one-size-fits-all blanket approach to cities, counties, and states that all have vastly different topographies, climates, and tree canopies. And each property has different wire heights. and that blanket approach I think is the biggest piece that everybody is reacting to so much I'll give you two examples from our neighborhood I've got a magnolia tree that's just like somebody else said it's like a foot from the edge of the furthest outline we planted it about 18 years ago I had my laser out yesterday, it's 28 feet high we planted it, it was about 8 feet high It's roughly grown a foot a year the most. And I did a little homework. That's typically what they say magnolias grow. It's coming down. I lasered the wire. At its lowest point on my lot, it's about 80 feet high. Highest point is more like 90. Do the math on that. We're talking 40 years before it's going to be anywhere near those wires. It's a beautiful tree. Spencer, people referenced before. Great guy, by the way. He did a nice job communicating. I liked him a lot. He apologized. I said, man, the last thing I want to do is cut down a magnolia tree, but those are the rules. It's coming out. My neighbors next door, because of water issues, we deal with a lot of water and drainage issues on our street. It kind of flows downhill to the reservoir. They're this high. Planted in the last two years. All coming out. It's frustrating. And it seems like it's a cost savings, cost cutting measure that is not environmentally friendly when you've had approved rate increases recently. So it's frustrating. You know, I'm a small business owner. And for about 15 years, I ran a nonprofit here in town, several staff, 100 plus volunteers. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about our mission statement and our values. and what does that mean as we engage with people in the community. There's a business term, and you guys know this. You're smart people. You all know this. It's just simply alignment. It really matters for a nonprofit or a business to have their practices match up with what they say their values are, what you do in the community, how you engage with your customers, how do you treat your employees. It needs to match what you communicate your values are. So I spent some time on your website. I know you sponsor Arbor Day and do different things like that. There's a lot of stuff on the website about being environmentally friendly. This does not seem like there's alignment there. The way this approach is does not match what you say matters. It's what it feels like for us. So I can't make a formal request for everybody, but I can talk for my street. We request that you would slow this down a lot, listen more to the people that you're impacting here, and that you would reconsider this one-size-fits-all approach. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much. Now, I have a couple of people who are signed up next who want to yield their time to someone who's down the list a ways. Just let me confirm that. Patty Broadbent, where are you? You want to yield three minutes to Diane Atchison. Okay. And Mary Lou Friesen? Yes, you want to yield. There you are. You're three minutes to Diane. Okay. Diane is, we have several people in front of Diane. So, and we have a couple more. Let's see. I'm not sure who this is. Is it Nicole Wechter? I'm so sorry. Someone on Moreland Drive has yielded your time. Tell me your name, please. Nikki Walker. Okay. Three minutes to Diane, is that correct? All right, and then Chaz, Chris, excuse me, Chris Pace, you wanted to yield your time to Diane. Okay. So there we go. So when we get to Diane, she'll have 15 minutes. We have just a couple people before you, Diane. Next is Dallas Law. Where are you? Maybe Dallas is in the overflow? Grassmere, are you here, Dallas? Dallas? No? Okay, we will come back to Dallas. Julian Campbell. Welcome. Good afternoon. I live in Fred Brown's district, but I've worked a lot in the Lansdowne and Merrick areas with the park and many neighbors in the area. And I'm with Charles Sither here in Lamar Drive, and he'll interrupt me if I say anything he doesn't agree with. So real briefly, rather than repeat what other people have said. I mean, the really interesting issue from a legal point of view is what is reasonable use? And I think that's a fascinating question. The city probably doesn't want to take it to court, but it would be great to have discussion extended, informal, amongst neighborhood associations about that issue. Not just for this problem, but many utility company problems across the city often come up to this question of what is reasonable use. Obviously, they couldn't have a picnic for their employees in our backyard along the right-of-way. That would be probably unreasonable. But the question is, are they really able to maximize the profit for the sake of their shareholders at the expense of our environmental interests? I mean, that's perhaps the crux of the question. I mean it does seem that the problems along power lines are often the small lines really that have the bigger problems with ice storms. And it's been working fine on the big lines for many decades in general. So of course I would advocate that to continue more or less the same way, but to be more careful and more regular about it, which may cost a little more money, but think of the benefits. And lastly, really just to think in terms of the urban environment is different from the rural, Presumably high in the corporation, there's a general broad brush prescription for power line management. I just don't know yet if you've differentiated the urban landscape from the rural. And to recognize in the urban landscape, number one, you've already got partners all around you mowing their grass. Without that, you would have to bushwhack every two or three years. So you're already built, you're already in an area where you've got built-in partnership already there. and recognize the value of that mowing because that keeps the vines and the small trees from just taking over. And of course, many individual landowners have their own particular aesthetics about their shrubs and their small trees. They want to be able to micromanage themselves. Let them do that as often as they can with understanding and care about balancing the various interests. And of course, lastly but not least, the riparian zones have a special interest to the city with all the creek interests and the water issues we have in this town. So obviously we need to do something very special with the riparian zones and some micromanagement and pruning as opposed to taking down the whole trees will be very useful. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Lance Lawrence. Are you here? There you are. Welcome. If you'll give us your name and your council district, please. My name is Lance Lawrence. I'm District 5. I live on Norborne Drive, like Matt spoke before me. I'm just, to reiterate, I just wanted to voice my concern as an individual homeowner over KU's proposed enforcement of guidelines that has not been enforced previously. I found this approach disappointing and not in line with the KU's or the city's stance on having unnecessary negative environmental impact. My yard alone, I'm affected by having nine mature trees eliminated using KU's new scorched earth premises. My house is nine, probably 10, 12 houses on my street, and the houses are backed up. So those numbers add up very quickly. And these are not towering pines or large trees. outside of two, the majority of mine are mature trees and probably reached the around 30 foot height. Only two of them would go above that and would be considered maybe encroaching on those lines. And I'm, as most everybody here, am willing to work with that. If that's something that I need to address as a homeowner, as my responsibility, as my accountability as a homeowner, because I've done it already. I've had two or three or two trees I took out last year that they kept encroaching on the distribution lines those are the lower lines they had been l cut and kind of shaped and i was like man it's not worth it i'm just going to take them out and i did that on my own dime because that's the right thing to do and i think everybody here wants to do what is right okay i think the ku and the neighborhoods should come up with a mutual understanding and compromise on how to address ku's infrastructure concerns and having homeowners have some accountability and some influence and have our voices heard before we go and scorch the earth that will take years to repair. Now, I was coming back from South Carolina on vacation last week. I took note. I saw heavily forested areas with the transmission lines, and I got it. Those trees are 100 foot tall. It needed to happen. It's ugly, but that's something that's an area that's remote, it's not visited and a devastating storm could just break havoc on the power grid that's not what we have on norborne drive it's not what we have on lansdowne drive come on people we just need a little help and i plead for you let's let's compromise and let's get this done but get it done it's something that works for everybody thank you thank you very much next is john atchison all right thank you Next is Diane Atchison and you will have the maximum 15 minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Diane Atchison and I live in the 4th District. Susan Lamb has been terrific. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. Just for a little background, I've been working on this issue for over a year. I'm on the board of the Lansdowne Neighborhood Association and we were alerted over a year ago that Lansdowne Drive was going to lose a lot of trees so I went to South Point Drive to see what had happened there spoke with many neighbors they were given very short notice excuse me they were basically blindsided and they are still devastated. I have driven hours around this town. I have followed transmission lines to dead ends. I have knocked on doors. I have met fantastic people who feel helpless. They don't have any representation against a corporation as big as yours. They don't have a functioning neighborhood association and so even though they didn't ask me, I'm here to speak for everyone. I am not directly impacted by this. I'm not losing anything on my personal property, but this is my city and I love it and this is wrong. Why are we here? The residents of Lexington who are directly and indirectly affected by the newly implemented vegetation management program that Kentucky Utilities has instituted, they have many concerns. What you've seen, complete transformation of properties. We've listened to so many perspectives, all the reasons why this is so wrong, or at least why we need to get to the table and talk. Wildlife protection, increased temperatures, the beauty of our land, the The one-size-fits-all approach. I mean, there's just so many different perspectives on this. Of course, we have to have reliable electric service. There's no doubt about it. None of us want to lose our service like we have in some ice storms. But does it necessitate such severe changes in our landscape? I don't think it does. Here's what we know. Kentucky utilities is clearing trees that exceed previous standards. No one has ever told us, explain to us, I've never seen in writing a change in the standards. Properties are being negatively affected. Properties owners values are being lowered. Energy costs are being increased. Citizens are concerned about what's happening now and what will happen in the future. Could I get page two? Citizens have not been given ample notice. Maybe when you were coming to trim trees and you gave someone two weeks notice that you were going to come on their property and trim a tree, maybe two weeks is acceptable. But when you're going to come on someone's property and you're going to clear 10, 20, 30, 40, someone in this room is losing over 50 trees, that needs a lot more notice. It's just unacceptable. Here's what we don't know. We don't know the long-term effects of these actions on the storm sewer capacity, which is already overburdened. And I believe there's a federal mandate that we have to improve our storm sewer system. Flooding. A lot of areas are already experiencing massive flooding. We're looking at a lot more erosion, loss of wildlife habitat, and the delay of reaching the goal of 30% for the tree canopy, which in, I know someone referenced a year, I think it was 2012, maybe we were at 25% and then in 2050 we set a goal of 30%. We're going backwards and this doesn't all have to happen. Another thing I don't know because they have in meetings with a Kentucky utility representative and our board, we have been told that one of the reasons for the new vegetative management program is the massive blackout in 2003 that shut down the whole grid in the Northeast United States and part of Canada. They told me that it was started by a tree falling on a line in Ohio. If a tree falling on a line in Ohio can shut down the grid in the whole northeastern United States, I think you need to look at your grid. Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm so sorry to ask that we get back to our standard here. We have not received clear communication from Kentucky Utilities to owners, neighborhood associations, and HOAs. We need transparency from Kentucky Utilities in several areas. We need to understand the necessity for the distances of the vegetation from the lines and the heights of the trees. We need some proof that this is what has to happen to keep your lines functioning. We need examples. I'd like to know of an example of a tree that has interfered with a transmission line in Kentucky and caused a major outage. I don't know if that's happened. No one's been able to tell me that. We need to see the documentation of the approval of this vegetation management plan from the Public Service Commission. I did request this from someone who was very helpful, but I got pieces and parts of several documents, and I'm not saying I could read them and understand them all, but I think you need to sit down with some knowledgeable people and show us exactly what the Public Service Commission authorized you to be able to do. I need to know the urgency for this. You got this vegetation management program approved five years ago. Why do you have to come into an area and cut trees down in two to three weeks? You've known this for five years. Five years ago, four years ago, you could have publicized this. I guarantee you that when this was passed, you knew every area, every subdivision, and every street that was going to be affected, and probably every address. And yet, we're five years into this. The vast majority of Lexington has never heard of it, and these people are getting two to three weeks' notice that you're cutting their trees down. What's the big hurry? Why has this not been made public? In a meeting with the representative from Kentucky Utilities last January, we had a Zoom meeting. We requested that Kentucky Utilities publicize this plan in the newspaper and maybe the Chevy Chaser and the South Sider, and absolutely nothing was done. It's been kept a secret. And I want to know why you want to keep it a secret. And I don't understand how you can possibly think that mitigation of $250 a tree and capping it at six trees could be in any way acceptable when people are losing 10, 20, 30, my friend, 50 trees, and you're going to give them $1,500? Could I get to page three? What we're asking for is a temporary moratorium. We need time. We need time to understand what you're doing, what it's based on, why you're doing it. We need a citizen-engaged process to address the issues that have been brought up by all the people in this room. We need a citizen friendly plan that could include maybe community open houses where you can share your information person to person, ask people questions. I wrote all this last night, but today is addressed. And I had it on and I looked at this shirt that's covered with feathers. And I was reminded of a time in our history where actions were taken that led to such devastation, heartbreak, and loss. Perhaps if open discussions had been held, if those with the power had taken the time to address the concerns of those affected, perhaps a better result could have been reached and we could be in a much better place today. Today we ask for a moratorium, we ask for open discussions, sharing of information, and a cooperative process. And I don't think it's too much to ask. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm so sorry. The council rules ask for decorum, which is no clapping, no booing, no commenting. And I'm unfortunately responsible to enforce that. I know you all appreciate the comments. Next is Mary Beth Spickler. Welcome. Okay, thank you. Fred Spickler. You pass. Okay. Is Dallas Law here? Thank you. No. Faith Harters. Faith, if you will state your name and council district for the record, and you'll have three minutes. Welcome. My name is Faith Harters. I live in Council District 2, which puts me, I think, the first person talking from downtown. I live on 539 West 3rd. I'm on the corner of 3rd and Blackburn. And just talking about my house, it's 1835. I think my Osage Orange was planted in 1893. And my maple tree is hitting 90 to 95 years old. they shade my home when they're gone my utility bill is going to go up i also wonder what ku is going to do with those trees when they cut them about 20 years ago i had to have a window repaired in my home and i had to use old growth timber eight dollars a board foot so i'm sure those trees are worth a lot when you sell them to a lumber company. I'm also, I walked from my house over here. I looked at all the trees along 3rd Street that are going to go. A lot of Gratz Park is going to go. I am not currently on the board of the Northside, but I was on the Northside board in the 1980s when we got our tree grant to do Broadway. So when you go from Main or 2nd, all the way out to New Circle Road. Those trees were planted through our grant, and there's going to be nothing. You're just going to go out a bare street. I'm also worried about who is going to move into our city with no trees. What business is going to come here and ask their employees to live in such a bleak place? I would also point out about downtown is so much of it's paved over, and more and more is being paved over. And we need these trees to contain the rainwater. They also clean our air, and they add oxygen. Wildlife. When the city put through Oliver Lewis Way, it disrupted all this wildlife, and they all moved into us, which is fine. We've got raccoons. We've got groundhogs. I had a mallard duck in my birdbath this spring. Everyone is, we need to provide. Do you want to get up in the morning, have no trees, no birds, no owls? I'd much rather have the raccoon family living in my tree than in my attic. So they do a lot for us. And I just want to say I think something can be worked out. But Lexington needs to preserve its tree canopy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, is there anyone who didn't yield their time and didn't pass who would like to speak, who didn't get to sign up? Did we miss anybody? And we have a few folks in the overflow, so we'll wait just a couple seconds. Otherwise, we have come to the end of the list. So I do want to, Council, I want to just make a few comments, and then we're going to hear from Kentucky Utilities, and then the council will have its opportunity to speak and ask questions. I want to thank each and every one of you for coming today. It is clear that our tree canopy is important to the people who live here. I know it's important to me, and I suspect it's important to all of our council members. And so I want to thank Kentucky Utilities for being here in force. I think the whole first row, right? To hear our folks who are impacted by this. And, Council Members, I want you to know that you knew that I was going to meet with the new CEO of Kentucky Utilities, which I did yesterday. I also had Dave Frybert in the meeting and Beth McFarland, who's the vice president of transmission. And so I want to tell you the six things that I asked the CEO, Mr. Crockett, to consider. And KU said they would go back and discuss these things. first was, and you've actually heard some of them suggested by the people, first was to consider the potential for changing and compromising the tree cutting and the height that trees can be. To have a more robust revegetation on private and public property. better notification to neighborhoods and neighbors. You heard this repeated several times here. Allow LFUCG to provide input on the stormwater study, which KU intends to conduct in the lakeside area. And they have already agreed to do this stormwater study. I asked them to study the Kentucky Geological Survey maps regarding sinkholes, whether there are any in the area and what impact they might have. And finally, to implement a pause. We've heard it called a moratorium while they consider the request that I made of them. and as I told Mr. Crockett yesterday we clearly recognize the importance of our electrical service of reliable electricity we all get that some of us were two weeks without it in 2003 in the ice storm and I personally believe that in most cases we probably don't have to totally cut down trees to get to that. So that's what I'm asking them to consider. Lexington's work hard to be a tree city for the past 33 years. We are a tree city USA, the most years of any city in Kentucky. And we've put local dollars into our tree canopy. Over the past year, my team and I I have had many conversations with government agencies, attorneys about this issue. It's become abundantly clear to me that we do not have local authority. We understand that. Or oversight of KU's tree trimming policies. We understand that that's a Kentucky Utilities decision. And so I also am asking, and in a respectful way, because you all were really good to have that very positive meeting yesterday, respectfully to do the right thing for Lexington. Lexington is not the rest of Kentucky. We want this to be a local solution for our people here. And with that, I think that, Kyle, are you giving, who's giving the presentation today? Okay. So whoever wants to kick it out, if you want to kick it off, Kyle Burns, and we'll hear about Kentucky Utilities' presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. So my name is Kyle Burns. I'm the director of transmission engineering and construction. We have David Freybert today. He's the vice president of external affairs. Chris Wealdon, he's a manager of transmission line services. Kevin Montgomery is our transmission right-of-way coordinator. And we have Terry Snow. He's the group leader for our transmission vegetation and asset management programs. I had more comments, but I'm going to keep it really brief because I was along the lines of what you said. We did come here to listen today. We come to all the meetings to listen. We want to solicit feedback. We want to take that and continuously improve our programs. We do have a program that we're implementing across the state. it's focused on safety, it's focused on reliability, it's focused on consistent application which you'll hear when when Kevin speaks. The comments that we heard tonight were very impactful. It's clear to me, clear to the team how much the residents and all those impacted and those that spoke are you know they they value the trees within the community and it was uh it was very moving to hear you know the the level of depth and concern within the community so um we will have an opportunity i think for some questions after the presentation. I think what I'd like to do is turn things over to Kevin. He can go through the elements of our program and then of course we would be able to answer any questions that there might be from the council or others. Okay, thank you very much and I did note you took a lot of notes. Definitely, thank you. Welcome. As Kyle said, my name is Kevin Montgomery. I'm transmission right-of-way coordinator. Am I on a time limit? Okay, I don't see the clock. That's why I was looking. Can't show on the presentation. You've got 12 and a half minutes. Okay, thank you very much. My role here today is to explain the program a little bit to you and maybe differentiate transmission versus distribution. And I do want to say we've all heard your comments. We feel your hurt and your passion for what you're looking at. I, too, love trees. I personally have planted well over 100 in the last three years in my own yard, and we walk around and look at them about three times a week and see how much the deer destroyed. But anyway, on to KU business. The first slide, you can go on to the second slide. My name is Kevin Montgomery, as I stated. The first thing I'd like to do real quick for all of you at the council and in the audience is just to make sure we differentiate transmission and distribution lines. If I were to put that in a simple analogy for you, a distribution line would be like a, well, I'll start with a transmission line. If you put it in an analogy of roads, it would be like your major interstate highways connecting cities, metro area to metro area, all across the nation. Distribution lines would be more equivalent to getting off that ramp and entering a neighborhood, whether it be residential shopping centers or anything like that. So with the power lines, the distribution line, when you have an outage on it, it's more of a minor impact in terms of numbers. It's like in the hundreds, and usually it's in the hundreds of people on an outage. It's just much like when you pull off that interstate and you're in a local subdivision, you have a road closure or a wreck. It's impactful, but it's not severe. The transmission lines, they connect substation to substation, not only throughout Lexington, but throughout the other communities in Kentucky and neighboring states as well. So when you have an outage on a transmission system, it's akin to having a major event on the interstate, stopping the flow of traffic and having a major impact on all communities. So I just kind of wanted to make that quick differentiation because we're only talking about transmission lines today. We're not talking about the distribution lines. Our distribution program has not changed. It's the way it's always been for the last 20, 30 years. It's a trim program. So I kind of wanted to make that clear. So if you could go to the next slide, please. Thank you. The pictures on this slide show some work we've done within the last year, and kind of a before picture and an after picture of the impact of the tree removal, which is always pretty impactful because you've got wood shavings and stumps ground and everything like that. And then a picture a year later of what you see up there as far as reclaiming it. But to give you a little bit of an overview of the program, in 2014 we had a third-party consultant come in and review our entire vegetation management program for the transmission department. Try to see what we do well and what we don't do as well and what we could improve upon. So they patrolled lines with us in helicopters. They walked on the ground. They digested tons of data for allergies and things like that. So when that was all said and done, they provided some recommendations to us for best practices as far as managing rights of way on transmission lines. And two of those things were convert your program to a cycle-based management program. Be proactive in your approach to transmission lines. Work them every so many years. In our case, five is the goal because we've always had a reactive maintenance program in the past. It's what we tend to call hot spotter just in time. The lines are patrolled. You find something that's too close and it's urgent need. You send somebody out to do it, so you have people jumping around from spot to spot throughout the 5,400 miles that we maintain trying to keep trees out of lines. So that was the big recommendation, was a cycle-based approach. And the other recommendation was to have a hazard tree program to patrol our lines and identify hazard trees because 85% of our allergies at the time were from off right-of-way trees. And the Emerald Ash Board had just come into Kentucky five years prior to that, so that was starting to hit pretty hard. So in 2016, the company did submit a rate case to the Public Service Commission, and it was for a transmission system improvement plan. That plan involved several components. One of them was replace aging infrastructure, poles and wires, because we're just like the roads and everything else. They're all about the same age. Install a lot more switches, motor operators. and lastly to implement cycle-based vegetation management on our transmission lines. So we started that in July of 17. That's when the approval was given to fund these programs. So we started out in the rural areas, and in those areas where we don't have very many houses, we have been and are reclaiming our rights of way to full width because part of that proactive cycle approach involves reclaiming your rights of way and then sustaining them, a lot of it through herbicide in the rural areas especially, not in town necessarily, and then go back every five years and trim the sides. So we started out there on the first few years, And then in 19, we started in what we call our urban areas or our residential areas and cities. When we started that, we knew it was going to be a drastic change from what had been done in the past because we had been just in time. We had been trying to trim. We were trying to go out every two years and cut the tops out of the most urgent trees. So we thought this is going to be really, really impactful, as you all know and you all have stated. It is impactful. I'm not, it is. There's no denying it. But what the company decided to do is like, what can we do to try and make it less impactful for all these people in the urban areas and residential neighborhoods? So the company came up, I think you can go to the next slide, please. with the wire zone, border zone approach for our transmission lines in these areas. And what that really means is instead of clearing the entire right-of-way, we used some LIDAR data, which is survey data in case you don't know. And we surveyed our lines and we modeled them. And we're required to design our lines to certain specifications, National Electrical Safety Code specifications. And we take in those criteria and some ocean clearance distances and things to come up with this wire zone border zone program as far as the mature height of the tree that we're allowing. And we'll get to that in a minute. But as far as the wire zone itself, we take into account how far the wire moves. The wire, transmission wire especially, is very dynamic. It moves with wind and it sags with load. And all of our models have to be for worst-case conditions for contingency plans in case other lines go out. That's the way that they have to be designed. So we looked at this and decided that, okay, we'll look at the wire zone, a distance that the wire moves sideways plus some buffers, and then we'll have a little border zone beyond that, and then we'll leave the rest of the easement so that the property owner can utilize it as they see fit. We might have to side trim a tree that hangs over into the border zone, but we wouldn't have to take the tree out. And with all the specifications that we looked at on worst-case conditions, it was decided that, okay, the wire zone would be a 15-foot height maximum tree at maturity, but that would be considered compatible vegetation. And then in the border zone, it would be 25 feet. and the goal of an integrated vegetation management program, which is what was part of that recommendation, it's all part of the cycle-based program, is to promote compatible vegetation within your rights of way as opposed to letting stuff grow up and trim it, but promote it through all kinds of different means, whether it be chemical treatments or mechanical cuttings, ecological, biological, all kind of controls. And I've never memorized the definition of that. It's about that long. But so with that, we decided that hopefully this will be a little bit more feasible and less impactful for the property owners. With that, I still don't know how much time I have left. You have two minutes and 53 seconds. Thank you. I'll move on. So with that, what else can we do? And the company decided to do the mitigation payment of $250 a tree up to six max. That's not intended to replace trees. It was never intended to replace trees. It's more of a just let's make it more palatable for the property owner. The other things we're doing in the community areas, especially city-owned primarily, medians, parks, HOA community areas, is we have been working with the city. We've been meeting monthly actually in person since July with those city representatives from environment, whatever Jennifer Carey's position is. I forget the exact name. Environmental services. Yeah, we've been meeting with them monthly, and we've been talking to the Arbors and John Saylor prior, and we've been developing replanting plans for medians and parks, and we've hired a landscape architect for Lansdowne Merrick to look at that, to address those riparian issues and things. We also, like you said, Mayor, agreed to environmental analysis over there in the Lakes Edge community to do that. And so those are some of the things we're trying to do. And we are trying to be transparent, and we've actually improved our communication process, I thought, until I hear some things tonight. But, you know, you're meeting with Paul Thompson, or he wrote a letter, I guess, back in the summer, and we extended those notification periods for council members, HOAs. That's been a little bit of a challenge where we have defunct HOAs, and I know you addressed that yesterday, I think, And that's something we need to wrap our heads around is how do we accomplish that mission when we don't have the HOA to help spread the word for us. So I guess my time's probably up. Well, you have about a minute left. Oh, well, okay. Need it. You know, obviously, when we do this work, we are going to grind stumps, remove the debris. We have to restore the property back to a condition like it was before. That's just what we do. It's morally right, and it's just the right thing to do. So I guess really that's all I had. I was trying to rush through that for you. And I think the last thing is just a slide of maybe where our lines lie within the – I thought we had one. I've got one over here if you all want it, with the council districts and the lines on it, to show you what's coming up in each of your districts in the future. And I'd love to talk to you about that. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Now is the time when council members can weigh in, and the rules for council members are a little bit different. They each have five minutes to speak, and they are permitted to speak twice on an issue. And so I'll be keeping track of that. And so as they weigh in, I want to thank you again for your presentation and for being here and listening. So first is Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you to everybody who came today. Thank you to KU for being willing to come to a forum like this. and I just wanted to provide a little bit of the background and framework about how we got here today. I think everybody is conscious of the fact that there has been a fair amount of e-mails and calls and personal notes, et cetera, to counsel about this set of issues. and as a result I contacted David Frybert and I asked if KU would be willing to come and provide some additional information to the community and he agreed and I appreciate that and I schedule this for the full council to hear as an opportunity for an exchange of information From my perspective, the main question on the floor is this. What latitude does KU have in satisfying its requirements for safety and efficiency and in meeting the needs of the community? So you mentioned the cycle based recommendation. So this is a question you may or may not, you may not be willing to answer or able to answer, other people might. My question about the cycle based is, did that consultant take into account the impact of the policies that might be implemented on the community? Or was that consultant basically interested in saying to KU, here's the most efficient way that you can get this done, given your requirements for safety? Question one. I'd have to reread some of that report, but I know. I'm sorry. Let me just, if I can. I don't know the whole thing. I'll finish it up, and then I'll open the floor. Sure. Kind of the related question is about the requirement about the height of the trees given the height of the lines. So if a tree is going to be 18 feet at maturity, but the line is 45 or 50 feet up, is there any latitude? and I guess the underlying issue for me and the concern is that it has seemed that there's no flexibility and in part some people have the impression that that is because of the requirements of either the PSC or federal regulations and my understanding is that neither of those things is the case. So I don't want to, I think I just wanted to open it up And again, appreciation for everybody who came out today. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Did you want to? Next is Council Member Maloney. I, too, want to thank everybody for being here and also KU, listen to their concerns. because around this horseshoe for the last two years we've been hearing the same story. And the thing that kind of threw me out is in 2007, you all had an agreement to plant all these trees, and we're sitting here today trying to take these trees out. That's a big concern of mine. Now, my one question I have is on the transmission line. Has there ever been in Lustington a tree that has fallen on that transmission and caused this city to shut down? I know in 2003 we had all these other trees, but has there ever been in the history of Lustington a tree big enough that has fallen on this transmission here in Lustington, Kentucky? I'd like to get that answer if you'd let me know. And I understand why you all are concerned about this. I can see it doing in Eastern Kentucky, because I can see what happened in California. We're one of these transmissions, we're hit by a tree, it caused a fire, and that's a big fire. And the utility got in a lot of trouble for that. I know we're not California, we're not Eastern Kentucky. We're less than Kentucky, and we control, we know, we can see how high things are and all that. We have a better control. I can understand why you're concerned about Eastern Kentucky on these high lines. I think locally in the city, I don't think we need to go that direction. That's personally my opinion. I don't see none of these trees as I look at them. They're not getting close to it. There are some and they're willing to cut it back. And I'm glad if you all listen to that. But I don't want to be compared to Eastern Kentucky and I don't want to be compared to Western Kentucky. I think less than different. You can see the trees are getting too big. We can monitor that. In Eastern Kentucky, I don't think you can because you got too many, There's no houses, and people are seeing the trees get up here. So I do appreciate you all with them, Mayor, and I appreciate you coming to the table and working with them. But I do want everybody to realize there's a big difference, and I don't want to be compared to other counties like eastern Kentucky and California and places like that. But I think we can cut these trees back a little bit if they get too big. But I'll be honest with you, it'd be used if we ever get up to that height when I look at this. So I would just hopefully don't compare. That's all I ask. We're not Eastern Kentucky. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. And I guess I'm going to start out by saying is I want to recognize Mr. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery and I have talked. I don't know. we've gotten to know each other pretty well and I want you to know that everything that's coming out of my mouth today has nothing to do with anything that we've ever talked about because you have been very responsive to me and I also want to make sure that I say up front that I'm very appreciative of our environmental services because along with a lot of people talking and them getting involved they are now working with KU and that hadn't happened And back in March of last year, that wasn't happening. Now, what I'm going to say now is that from here on out, KU's vegetation management plan needs to start in the 5th district because it's already raped the 9th and the 4th district, and it took the 5th district to get everybody here. And, yes, I am very upset today, and I'm going to stick to my script so that I maintain my composure. But let me just say, I have asked on numerous occasions for this kind of a presentation to come forward to this government for public transparency with no avail. And yes, it is upsetting to me. I want to say, and do not clap, please. Having said, many properties in the 4th District have been stripped of its tree canopy. Since March of 2020, myself and many other property owners have contacted the Kentucky Attorney General, the Public Service Commission, former Public Service Commission members, city attorneys, and arborists like Mr. Dave Leonard here today. He and I had numerous conversations last year early in 2020 inquiring about this federal vegetation management plan and that KU had claimed that it was mandated to follow. We approved a resolution in 2020 that condemned KU's tree removal practices. These colleagues approved it unanimously. I've had countless conversations with KU representatives and constituents in regards to specific circumstances on residential properties and public medians. And let me just say, my heart goes out to every single one of the stories that were talked today, but I've got some that'll beat your all stories, all pieces. what bothers me the most is is that if this is true that this federal vegetation management plan is not mandated but a choice i don't take that lightly to being misled on such important matters as this one i have had residents who have already had 20 trees removed and they planted every single one of those 20 trees, 20 plus trees. And they did it to buffer the traffic from Wilson Downing and Lansdowne. Very busy intersection. The next thing, we have another property that was just obliterated, and their trees were buffers between vehicles that run off the road on a consistent basis and wreck their home and wreck their vehicles. And the one that tops it all is that when a home that had a young child that had sensory emotional issues, that these trees that were in this young person's property had all of her sensory, it was her space. It was her safe space in her backyard. And albeit the fact that they did replace the trees with much smaller ones, but everything that was safe in those trees they moved out of that took away from this young child. and those parents I had conversations with, and that child had numerous problems as a result of that. Now, these are all circumstances that I would think would mitigate. A very significant reason to take into consideration other options. But it took to come to this day and to come to the 5th District before the issues would be listened to. And yes, I've got 14 seconds. I'm going to stop here and saying this is a horrific emotional issue. It is my hope that we can come to understanding that extreme and unilateral tree removal practices is not the best thing for Lexington. And unfortunately, the properties in the 4th District, of which I represent, have already been massacred. So you can't go back and fix that. So I just pray that the rest of the city doesn't have the same. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Council Member LaGree. Thank you, Mayor. I'm a tree board member and I believe that my responsibility as a member of that board and as a person is to act as a strong advocate for trees. And number one, I want to say thank you all for this presentation and thank you to every single one of you all who spoke out and shared so much about the social and and economic and communal and environmental benefits of trees. This is not only a personal issue, but it's a city-wide issue. It's not district specific. We've spent this whole past week talking about and championing trees with Tree Week. And so many people across our community have come out and shown up and benefited from the connections they've built. And so many of us have benefited from trees. And I think that today we are talking about the unnecessary cutting of hundreds of trees. And I do think that that is devastating because as we're looking forward to a new tree canopy study that we've just secured with our council funding, our goal is to increase and to protect our tree canopy. So I actually do have a couple of questions. I'm not sure if this is a space for that. Because I think that LFUCG has a stake in this conversation in so many ways and our city at large does as well. So I'm not certain who will answer these questions, but number one, this is a pretty easy one. So is it correct that LFUCG owns the right of way? Who will answer? Commissioner? Are you the right Commissioner Nancy Albright, who, thank you very much, attended the neighborhood meeting on my behalf the other night? You're fine, Kevin, don't worry. You might want to stay close. And yes, you can stay close. Yes, ma'am, in several instances we do own the right of way. It's a little different with the utility strips. Okay, and it's my understanding that KU is paying $250 per tree for up to six trees that are owned on properties, residential properties, is that right? Yes. And how much is KU paying in a city or park right away for trees that are cut down? I think that's a case by case basis, but I would not want to speak for them. Can you- If you have the answer. Yes. Yes, with the city, instead of paying a monetary amount, We've been working on replanting plans and funding those. Okay, so rather than compensating, there are some replanting efforts. And I do think that when we cut down trees, as some of you all have mentioned, that's a devaluation of our property, and potentially this is a devaluation of personal property and then the city's property as well. And so when you all cut down these trees, it sounds like, as you said, that you're focused on safety, reliability, and consistency with the service. Is that accurate? Correct. Okay. And I guess my main question is, do we have to cut down trees to accomplish those goals? And as the mayor mentioned, is there any kind of potential for a community-specific focus for how we could maybe change the height requirements or something along those lines? Is there an option for trimming trees instead of cutting? Is that something that is on the table? So you asked a couple of different questions there about whether the trees need to come down. Is there an option for trimming and is there an option the way I kind of hear it for compromise? Yes. So continual trimming of trees like we've done in the past, hot spot is really not an option for us just because the growing seasons are longer. We've had wetter weather. and then as suburban sprawl is spread out and going underneath our transmission lines and more trees are being planted. In the past, you know, trees, well, they always grow at different rates. So we would go get the ones that needed to be trimmed, then the others would mature in a few years. You get them, and so you're always juggling. So it's really not something that's sustainable with 5,400 miles that we have to maintain. and it's like 65,000 acres and to go back and keep trimming them is not really sustainable for us. I do have a follow-up question about that, this idea of sustainability and cost, but I do think that I'm out of time, so maybe I could come back. Do you want to, Council Members, do you want to give more time or you can come back for your second go-round? Council Member Legree. What would more time look like? More time, a second. Go ahead, Vice Mayor. If I may. At this point, I think if Council Members have the option of coming back in, if we can first hear from the Council Members who have not spoken, if that's okay. Okay. Yes, that sounds good. We'll get you on a second go-round. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. Can you put the last slide up from the KU presentation? One of the things, we have heard a lot from our 5th District residents tonight because this is happening so soon in the 5th District right now. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that in this plan and on this map, all of those green lines are the, this is entitled the 2022 Lexington Transmission Work. So this isn't just a 5th District issue. But the reason that some of those residents aren't here yet is because they haven't been notified that this work is being done in their areas. So I don't want to characterize this as a 5th District problem. This is a county-wide issue. But in the 5th District, you've heard people talk about the transmission lines going through neighborhoods. We have a large transmission line going through Lansdowne Merrick Park. And residents are greatly concerned over the consequences that this will have. And we have talked about this. We have had hours of meetings. Me and the KU folks, I have communicated this with you. And I have appreciated that you have been working with me in Lansdowne Merrick in the park area because that is LFUCG property. You've brought in a landscaper to work on revegetation. I appreciate those efforts. But that is the agreement for public property. It sounds like with the meeting yesterday with the mayor's office that we are working on an agreement for a larger plan. In Lansdowne Merrick, you were able to agree to pause the work that was about to happen there so that we could come up with this plan and we could get community feedback. So my question is, will you say that you will, like the community has asked, like the mayor has asked, pause the other work so that we can come to this agreement that affects all of these other areas like the one that we have done in Lansdowne Merritt Park? Like the agreement that we have there where we're working on the plan, we've paused that work. So while you're working on an agreement with the mayor's office, will you pause the work? That's a yes or no question. David, can you go to the mic, please? The answer is I can't tell you right now, but I can tell you two other things. The first is that as yesterday and as Thursday for the homeowners association meeting and the dozen or so previous homeowners associations meetings, We have done enough of them that we hear a lot of the same issues and concerns each time now, so we know where the focus is, where people care about things, and they get reinforced. Last Thursday was one of the ones that surprised us because we were not aware of the stormwater issues. And the reason we do those meetings and we're happy to be here today and yesterday is because we do learn, and we are obliged to try to improve our processes because this is one of the most important things we can do to keep reliable, safe service, but it's also the least popular thing that we do, and we recognize it. We feel the same way you do about trees. But every time we go, we learn something new. The thing we learned last week is the issue with stormwater, which is a preexisting problem. Look from the videos that we saw at the meeting. substantial, real, and meaningful. I don't think we had any hand in causing it, but we surely do not want to be, or our work to be, part of making it worse, so we are going to work with the city on doing the study, and it would be, I think, imprudent to proceed without whatever that study can inform us on. But that is the study for that, the six weeks or four weeks that you're talking about doing the study, that's just for Lake's Edge. I'm asking for the community. I can tell you that it's going to take us 30 or 60 days to do that. And other than that, we're happy to take back a broader request and socialize it, but that's not something I can do right now. But you will consider the moratorium while the agreement is being made? Sure. And again, we gather, we go back and see what is possible and practical, and look at a number of things that have been raised through these and other meetings. And then before we leave today, I would like to ask our council to set a date for when we would like an update on these conversations before we leave today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Council Member Kloiber. Thank you, Mayor. I'd just like to echo the sentiment. Thank you guys for coming down here. Obviously, this has been something on our mind, and the council's weighed on this a few times, and I'm glad you guys are here to talk about it today. A couple of things that were brought up is this, you know, if it's possible or practical, right? So I kind of want to cut through a few of these definitions to talk very specifically so we can all be speaking the same language oftentimes. Disagreements happen when we're not using the same words. So if we're talking about possible and practical, here's kind of the crux of my first question. Is there any regulation, state or federal, that requires you to cut these trees to the ground? Answer now? Yes, please. Our only mandates are from the PSC to provide safe, reliable, and affordable power. And then the FACT 003 does state that we have to comply with the regulations. It does not state the method of compliance. and our program that we administer is of our choosing. It's not mandated that we do it a certain way, just like every other power company. Okay, thank you. So when we're talking about possible and practical there, we are actually talking about a discretionary choice that your company has made to choose this particular pruning method. And you're saying this is coming off of the third-party group that you had to come in that gave you recommendations. Is that correct? It is our choice to use this method because it is practical for us. You speak in possibilities. If we had armies of people and armies of workers, lots of things are possible. But, I mean, the reality is there are budgets, there are constraints with resources as far as workers, and that existed prior to the pandemic. So, and the other constraint is, I don't know if you can word it as a constraint or not, but it's just the vastness of our system and trying to reclaim it. Because not only are we in this situation in the urban areas, our rural areas were grown up like this too. I can definitely understand that you guys are working over a large area of land, but here we're mostly going to just talk about what's happening in our city. That's our concerns right now. Now, this cycle-based approach that you went to, I think it's going to be really useful for us to clear up one thing about it. A cycle-based approach does not mean that you would have to come in and clear-cut trees. It just means how frequently you would be taking measures in order to protect these lines, correct? It's just dealing with frequency, not implementation. It is about frequency, and it's about developing an integrated vegetation management system, which ensures that you have compatible plannings under the right-of-way as opposed to incompatible. Absolutely. So to this point, you were advised to get onto a cyclic approach, an approach where you were being proactive, that you were going out there and making sure that these issues were not going to cause power outages so you could provide the reliable and safe service that you're mandated to do so. And of all the choices that you had, either by trimming consistently on a cycle over a five-year plan or even trimming a little bit more extremely and having that reflected in the rate case, the choice that was moved forward was this, what we'll call the most extreme measure, which was to cut the trees down. And the only reason that we can feel that that was the option chosen is because, as you've said, it's an economic choice because of the cost it would take in order to maintain this trimming? No, I don't think that's exactly what I said, but I see Kyle wants to weigh in. I feel compelled to kind of step in and help Kevin. Can you hear me now? Is this better? So in your response, I guess one of the words that I heard you use was, the most extreme implementation of the program. When we're looking at a cycle-based program, as Kevin mentioned, that's a program that we can implement across our system on a predictable cycle. The most extreme, I guess, implementation of a program like that would be to go edge-to-edge on easement and to clear. That's not what we are implementing, especially as you referenced in the Lexington area. We're really primarily looking at our wire zone, border zone approach, which is not the most extreme approach. It's more of a compromise in the sense that we want to balance the ability to maintain those corridors with preserving as much vegetation as is possible. Well, I know that I'm out of time here, but to the point, I think that when we as a community talk about extreme, it's not necessarily a lateral extremity, but the vertical extremity, right? You have taken things all the way down. And you saying that you're only taking it between two boundaries that may not be as extreme as you could, it provides only a little bit of sympathy and a little bit of us understanding when especially if something encroaches just a few feet onto that border, the entire tree has to come down. So I'll leave the floor on that point and let someone else speak. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. And, Mayor, I had a question I wanted to clarify. You said in your meeting yesterday that you asked for six things, and I did not catch number two. That was a robust revegetation plan. And a good example. I'm sorry. It was a more robust revegetation plan. The thing that we talked about in our meeting yesterday was South Point Drive. If you saw what happened there after the trees were cut, it was not what we or KU felt was robust. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. And I had a question. We were talking earlier about cutting the trees down to 15 feet, and that was in the transmission area, is that right? And that's where the lines are at 70 feet? Correct. Within the wire zone, the standard that we use is if it's at 15 feet, One clarification I guess I want to make is that's at mature height. So it's not based off of the height of the vegetation at any particular time. It's based on the arborist assessment of what it's going to be at mature height. So if it's at that height, then it comes down? If it's at 15 feet, then it would be removed. Or if it's over 15 feet, it would be removed. or if it's below 15 feet today but in the arborist's opinion it's going to be over 15 feet at mature height then that would also be a candidate for removal. Okay, yeah, that's really bothersome to me because as was stated earlier that's a lot of height there and just cutting down a tree at 15 feet when you have all of that space to reach 70 seems seems practical for your all's end, but not practical for preserving our tree canopy. And I just really want to say that I hope that everybody has heard the concerns that were brought today by so many residents and by council members. And I would just like to echo the mayor and my colleagues' request for you to put a moratorium on moving forward with this plan. It affects my district as well, and I'm very concerned. And I think that sometimes it's hard to come to a compromise, but that we need to come to some sort of a conclusion to move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank every resident that came out today to express your stories and your feelings on the matter. I want you to know that you were heard today. I also want to thank KU for coming out and for the presentation, but for listening. I think that's one of the most important things that you guys could have done today and I appreciate that. Could you pull back up the last the map and this is just for complete understanding and transparency for our community. Can you just explain to me what all of the colors mean and what that what it means in regards to when those areas can expect this potential work to occur uh yes ma'am we highlighted six areas on here that are on the plan for 2022 and at the speed we're going maybe beyond but the blue lines are areas that either have been worked or do not get worked in this manner this urban approach with the wire zone border zone the green lines the areas that are highlighted and it's really hard to tell on there or areas we plan on working in 22 and would that be the red areas okay and we have another map with us if you want it afterwards those areas we would plan on working in 22 with this same wire zone border zone approach and the reason is they are transmission lines only that's all they are is transmission and you'll see there are a lot of lines on that map especially the blue downtown to the northeast and northwest I'm sorry and a little bit to the northeast they have nothing on them and the reasons for that is that those are transmission lines that actually have distribution under build on them but they have distribution as well as transmission so the distribution people are taking care of the trees under their line they won't be able to encroach up on us unless they leave something on the side so we don't have to use that approach on those lines And plus we have some of those are along rights of way to so the easement rights do not extend to great widths. Okay, so there's one area in particular that's in my district that I'm interested in. And it is where in area four, there's an arrow pointed at the corner of what looks like New Circle and Nicholasville Road. It looks like a green line that follows the railroad tracks, which would be Shillitoe Park. And I'm just curious if that whole tree line could potentially disappear between the park and the railroad? Well, actually, the Shillitoe Park, it has some distribution underbuilt on it, and they actually mowed that about three years ago. If you go out and look at it, the actual impact in the park itself is pretty negligible. It's mostly brush under the line. Okay. I just wanted to make sure of that. I appreciate that answer. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Next is Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor, and like my other council member colleagues, thanks to everybody that came today and shared their sentiments and their stories. And I emphasize, KU, thank you for being here and listening. And one of the things that we've all kind of referenced was the big storm we had back in 2003. And we all lived through that, and that was tough. With that said, that was almost 20 years ago, and you have mentioned along the way that there's been a lot of improvements with your wires and different things that you've done over this past 20 years to make it better. And I think last year, if I'm not mistaken, I think we only had one storm that had some type of knockout for about 30 minutes. Am I right on that? Okay. Okay. Well, I just know it wasn't very bad last year. David, can you go to the mic, please? We have all this on the record, but only if you're on the mic. You watch thunderstorms around here like I do, and you know that even as close as my mother's house is, two miles away. She got wet today or that day, and I did not. But it was not, we've had a couple of gentler than normal weather years, the last couple of years, yes. Do you feel like the improvements you made over the 20 years has made a difference on that? We do. And I don't want to throw anybody else under the bus, but we have invested in the transmission system in a large manner. We have also invested in our distribution system, the smaller wires, to put smart technology in the infrastructure to basically, and here's where I get in trouble because I'm not an engineer, but to limit the extent of an outage, to sense an outage, to tell a machine to do something when it senses a problem coming or when there is a problem to cordon it off so it's a smaller problem. So those are things that we believe have helped increase our reliability in the last eight or ten years. And one of the ways we validate that in addition to metrics, we're utilities, so we have metrics out the wazoo, but when we get hit by a big storm that everybody else gets hit by, you can see who comes back faster, who had less immediate impact because of some of those investments and also technology involved in the restorations. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Farber. Yeah, I know there's been improvements made over the last 20 years, and I guess in looking at that and just kind of the results over those past 20 years in terms of the storms and knockouts, and I think this is a very dramatic approach that we've been listening to today, so I did want to put that out there. And also, and I want everybody, I want to share this, I've worked with Mr. Fryburn and KU, many community projects over many years, and they are very caring community citizen. And so I feel like this is kind of adverse to what I've seen and experienced with them. So I know that they'll be very receptive and listening and trying to work this out. Do you have that local flexibility? I know that someone, I think Mr. Montgomery, you said that it was your choosing, it was the company's choosing. That's a corporate mandate, if you will. But is that local flexibility here? I'm a Lexington, I grew up here. When I first took my first job with KU, I went to Stone Road where the guys that actually do the work work. And they knew my name because I'm junior, David Junior. My dad used to run those guys off his property every time they came near there to trim his trees. But that has changed over the years as well. The difference about a regulated utility is we are both required to, regulated to, and have become just part of our DNA is to treat every customer fairly and treat every customer the same. And it really takes a lot to push us out of doing anything we wouldn't do every time, one time. And that's just kind of a general view on how we come to every problem. We sometimes find ways to make things work, but that's how we approach every problem. Do the right thing, do the same thing for everybody. But you can do the specifics. All righty. So do the right thing and do the same thing? Is that what I heard? Okay. Okay. Doing the right thing for everybody. Okay. When we look at our cycle-based program, elements that are very important to us, as David mentioned, are that if we make changes in one area, we want to make sure that those are applicable across the system. So I guess I can go back to the fact that we have certainly heard the message previously. Our president met with the mayor yesterday, heard the same message. We've heard the message today that we've heard that request for that flexibility, for that review. So, as David mentioned, we definitely are collecting all that information. I also really appreciate all the feedback that we got from council and from residents today. We will be taking that back and looking at our programs and the comments that we received. That's great to hear. Thank you very much. I am out of time. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Are there any council members who have not yet spoken on this issue who'd like to speak? We have a few signed up for a second time. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. Two comments I wanted to finish saying from my earlier comment. You know, like I said, the 4th District has already had massive vegetation removed from its properties that can't be healed. So if there is some way, I wish there was some recourse for their property to be better tended to in order for us to treat all properties the same. I understand to the credit of Councilmember Sheehan, and I realize this probably makes me look like a daggone weak Councilmember. And you know what? I'm just going to say it. But I tell you what. You brought in a landscaper for the 5th District. And do you know that Lansdowne Neighborhood Association paid for, and I helped them, to have a local resident to come up with a landscape plan. And it came out of government funds and it came out of pockets of Lansdowne Neighborhood Association. You know, I'm trying to keep my composure. The stormwater study that is for the fifth district area, I think that's wonderful. Perhaps maybe there should have been some studies that were performed in the ninth and the fourth district as well that were not engaged and discussed about at the time. More robust replacement, I will give accolades that the Lansdowne Drive median, that we have worked really hard with a plan. Again, that was paid for by Lansdowne Neighborhood Association and the government funds to plan it back not one to one, but three to one, which is a good thing. But the last thing I would say is that our franchise agreement was extended in 2018 for five years. And what I'm hoping for is that when it comes time for that discussion for our next franchise agreement, that we take into consideration of all of this conversation, because I know that it's supposed to fall under the PSC, but it seems like that there should be a massive amount of collaboration between the council members who represent the constituents that are here today and that I've spoken to on the phone and prior council members have spoken to as well. So there's a way for collaboration to benefit both our citizens and KU in the future. And I guess, you know, in future rate cases, I would have to say, and I hope that I'm alive to see this and hear this when it comes back around, because I think that this really needs to be taken into consideration for future rate cases, the rate increases that if you're going to clear cut the trees as a cost saving method, then that should help save money for the residences who pay the cost for the electricity in this town. And I also wanted to say that it does, I hope that all of this conversation doesn't negatively impact. If you're all going to pause the work, I appreciate that, but I also don't want this to negatively impact the already agreed upon replanting on Lansdowne Drive median that was supposed to begin in November. Now, if you all are willing to pause on that, and maybe we can come up with a more robust plan, but I hope at not the cost of any more of Lansdowne Neighbors Association in the city, but at the cost of a collaboration and perhaps KU. So, thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Lagree. Thank you, Mayor. Something struck me at the end of Councilmember Plowman's questions. And that was a statement about doing the right thing and doing the same thing for everyone. I think that doing the right thing in this situation in this city might look a bit different than doing the same thing for everyone. when it comes to all of your different constituencies and jurisdictions. And I know that from what I'm hearing that it's important to KU to implement a system that's predictable, right? And that's cyclical and that is manageable for you. But I am really hopeful that there is another path forward than the one that we're on right now. With the clear cutting that we're anticipating throughout our city. And I'm hopeful that we can find a way and I think Mayor you're working on this it sounds like. To have intentional cyclical maintenance of our trees. And that there's a way for communities across our city to work together with your company so that we have more situations like this where there's listening and a mutual understanding about a solution where we can maintain the benefits of trees for our community. where people can have tree canopies, where we can have stormwater mitigation, so that people's bills don't go up, so that they can have a higher quality of life, and so that KU can also do the work that they need to do to deliver their services. And so that's all I wanted to say to finish my remarks, and I appreciate the time and the effort of everyone here today. Thank you. Council Member Kloiber? Thank you, Mayor. Just to echo a couple of things here, the same for everyone. Comment, we have a franchise agreement here. Lexington is not the same as everywhere else in Kentucky or up through Pennsylvania or any other state, knowing that your utility company has a lot of customers across the country. So saying that you have to do the same thing for us that you would do for everyone else really isn't going to fly when we have a specialized agreement with you and we work with you in these rate cases in order to try and make sure that we're dealing with our local communities. Specifically, talking about the rate case, this method that you've begun implementing will result in year-over-year cost savings to your company. But in our last rate case, we were not looking to pass those savings back on to us. The rates went up, as they always do in those kind of cases. So I'm just curious with the infrastructure cost, it's going to come back to us with the fact that stormwater maintenance, even the tree canopy maintenance, and as some people pointed out, the heat desert effect that happens when more trees are removed and our ACs have to run more consistently. All of these seems like rate increases for us when you're getting a rate savings from a discretionary choice. And I think it goes without saying that when you start doing things in that discretionary area, that's when you get into the legal gray area. That's when there's a lot of questions about where the jurisdiction comes down. And I think that you can hear from our community and from those of us on council who are speaking, we are highly motivated to find a solution with you on this, but we probably will not stop from looking into that gray area to see what limits there may or may not be on that discretionary choices if we can't come to some kind of an agreement. So, again, I'm really glad you guys came down here and you've said you're hearing us, you're listening to us, But I'm strongly encouraging you to do a lot more than just listen and collect this data, but to make actionable choices and work with the administration to try to come to a mutually beneficial solution. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you. When I look at this map, what y'all, the future is. And when I was a commissioner, I always had meetings with all the utilities because I got tired of seeing the roads get torn up after we blacktop it. Nobody was communicating with anybody on fixing those roads. As you look at the storm water and the sewer, we're doing big projects across the city. And I look at this area, I look at, like for instance, on my street, we're getting ready to put a whole new water line all up and down our street. I'm going to bring up a statement that maybe can't be feasible, but when you open that ground up, why couldn't you all come in and put underground utilities? You can't do it now because if there's no project going, you have to pay the easement and do all that. But if it's already opened up, the land is already opened up for sewer improvements or water or any kind of improvement. If you all ever communicated to think maybe we ought to go ahead, because for instance, Hamilton Park and Westgate, two dead ends on that main power there, they're going to be opened up this year, but put water line all the way down both streets. If you all would put the, because we have tons of trees in that area, but lucky we don't have a transmission, so we'll come and cut it down. But we do have wires in there that if you take those wires and put them underground, we'll never have a problem, which you all have at the trimming them up. But have you ever thought about communicating with the utility companies and with Nancy Albright on possibly looking where those opportunities are, where the ground opens up that you might be able to use those cost savings and piggyback on with the storm water or the sanitary stores or any project. Have you ever looked at those? So I guess the way that you described it, I'm familiar with a joint trench type of construction process. On our distribution side, typically when we have new subdivisions, we do look at joint trench opportunities we can combine utilities into one kind of corridor. One of the complexities or challenges that we have, and again I guess thinking about the fact that we're representing the transmission group, is the transmission lines because of the much higher voltages have a lot of requirements for special infrastructure. When we're thinking about putting that underground, underground is a technical possibility. Generally it's about 10 times more expensive to put lines underground rather than have them overhead. To the specific question of have we discussed that with the city on a collaboration, we have not done that. Generally I think that we would be challenged in looking at just the overall complexities of a project like that. But it's, I guess, something that's always, you know, we're open to discussing with the city about what would that look like as a possibility. Yeah, because we just got, I remember a couple of years ago, when we did the sidewalks on limestone and also on Vine Street, we wanted to put it on the ground. The problem was we didn't go deep enough. Now, with the sewer, you go deeper. And there's a lot of sewer improvements that I thought maybe if we were doing something like that, that maybe we could have put a lot of these things underground which would save a lot of problems and not have to worry about cutting trees down. But it's just an idea. I don't know, it may be a long shot, but I just see so much land that's been open lately that we should partnership and see if there's a way we can do it. Because it reminds me when we did the blacktop, every six months after the blacktop, I see a utility coming across cutting the whole thing up. And it just tears me up after all the good work we did, and then I have to sit there and bump the hole for the next, so we blacktop it again. So it's just an idea. Thank you. Yeah, I think generally that ten to one kind of cost multiplier has been the major constraint for us considering that. Thank you. Next is Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you again to KU and to everybody who came out today. I really have one last question, and this may be for Mr. Freiberg, and that is, I believe it's already been mentioned, but I would be interested in working with you to schedule a time to have you and or other representatives from KU come back. and I think the question on our minds would be what, if any, modifications could be made in the existing policy and what that would mean for the city. Is that something you'd be willing to do? Absolutely. And I know we'd love to schedule it right now, but I think that there's – we have just begun talking about this groundwater or the stormwater survey, and between Commissioner Albright's group and our group, it'll take us a couple days to figure out who we're going to bid it with, and then the scope of it and then how long it'll take. But once we are studying and discussing the results of it, I think that'll help us figure out what we need to do differently in this case and in general. And at some point then I think it'd be worth scheduling. That'd be fine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Are there any other council members who wish to speak? No? And I will tell you, Vice Mayor, the KU folks I met with yesterday were very good about saying they wanted to hear from council, they wanted to hear from the people, and they wanted to talk to me, and then they would go back and look at all these issues and see what they could consider doing that would be different and better for our county. So we're all expecting that, and we've all agreed to that. And so I do want to thank all of our residents who've come today to speak and help us understand your situations. And I want to thank Kentucky Utilities very much. We appreciate it. You have a lot of thoughts and work to do, don't you? All right. Thank you, everyone. Now, we're going to continue with our meeting. Take a short break. Does council need a five-minute break? Okay, five minutes. We'll reconvene at 18 till. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ The End Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next item is approval of the October 12th work session summary. So moved. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger, and a second by Council Member Baxter. Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion passes. There are no budget amendments. New business, could I have a motion to approve? Second. Thank you. Council Member Plowman moved. Council Member Ellinger seconded, and if you'll weigh in, please, with your questions. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I've got a few. Let's start with A, if you don't mind. And I think it said once again that there's going to be exhibits, and I didn't see any exhibits in here. Do you have exhibits? They were in the blue sheet, or in Legistar, so did they not make the packet? Okay. No. The exhibits, one of the exhibits gives a legal description, and the others are essentially the maps of where it's going to go. which is what you see out in the field today. I believe we have a map that shows kind of a comparison. Yeah, that's what I want to see. Thank you. Yep. This basically will show in 3D and a much better of what. This is the temporary that was put in, which mimics what the original was. And then you can see where that culvert is in that short section of asphalt that's to the, I'm not sure, yeah, to your right as well. that's where the new alignment's going to be so that the vans coming in and out of Amazon will go over the trail and will basically eliminate a conflict point. So I think when it finally gets done, that will be the southern one where the ingress will go over that bridge and the egress will come out in the northern one, is that correct? Correct. I believe they have a right in, right out access to that as well. But the vans, the truck traffic will primarily be there at the point that the Culver is, so there isn't a conflict point. Thank you. It said exhibits, and I wanted to be able to see it. Yeah, they were in the legislature. I'm not sure why they didn't show up in the packets, but that's what they would have illustrated, but in a lot more words. Thank you. And then number I, with the Airbnbs and the HomeAway, and I guess HomeAway was formerly VRBO, I believe. And I thought that they were already collecting for that. We did not have a formal collection agreement with VRBO. We have one in place with Airbnb. Right. So this will cover VRBO and HomeAway and platform under the Expedia Group. So this will cover about 97% of all short-term rentals that we should see, and we should be getting transient room tax from those. starting in January. Okay, the next one was O on the Palmer Pharmacy. And Commissioner Ford, could you tell us what's going on here? I know we've been working on this. It looks like we're moving ahead here. Yes, Council Member. We issued an RFP. This was our third public attempt to engage a partner for the adaptive reuse of Palmer Pharmacy. We have the United Way was the one responded, and we are asking for authorization to formally take the first step to enter into a negotiation with them on a redevelopment agreement. Effectively, what that will allow us to do is we're going to conclude our current activity, which is roof replacement. We're scheduled to finish that by hopefully early January. Then it allows us to work to form an alignment with the United Way as they formalize and identify their retrofit and renovation plans, but also perhaps just as importantly to identify sources, the fund development and the resources they'll need to carry on the project. Once we have agreement with that, we hope to return with the mayor's support to the council to begin in earnest to talk about discussions of perhaps transfer and activation of that space. So that's where we are now, the first formal step at the... Thank you. I don't know if there's any other council members that might want to ask questions, but that's all I needed on that one. Thank you. And I had one more. Okay. I just didn't know if... Okay. And the last one was why. And we did this way back when with the beginning of the pandemic to help out the restaurants and bars. And it's, I think, been successful. And it looks like we're extending it through December 31st. And I think I saw the mayor that at some point we're looking at maybe doing this in a long-term plan to give them an opportunity. And could you kind of tell us what's going on here and what's our future? Yes, sir. That's exactly right. Thank you. We are extending this while we work out the options and work through some of the hurdles that exist as far as making it a permanent option. Working with a lot of the divisions in our department, but also public safety and some of those other groups to make sure we're doing it well when we write it. I know the businesses have liked it, and it has kept a lot of them afloat. So we appreciate everybody doing that. So thank you. That's all I had, Mayor. Thank you very much. Next is Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Mayor. Chris, back on all, Chris Ford, Commissioner. Is United Way going to take this building from us? If it worked out there, keep it, we will no longer own it. They will not be operated, maintain it. We'll no longer be owning that building. Is that correct? Council Member, that is correct. That is the hope. That is our objective. That's our intent. We hope they've expressed interest in their Waypoint Center initiative. We're looking to have Jonathan Cohn, the vice president, here today. But at the end of the day, vice mayor and council members, that is the ultimate goal, is to identify a community partner who can make that center a benefit to the community. We've had that center under our site control since November of 2016, but we've never intended to manage it and operate it ourselves. But if we're successful, that's our hope. Good. Thank you. And also I want to go on record, I will be voting against P and Z. So in case you want to, well, I'm voting no. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. Just a few things. One, on item number B, I don't need this now, but I'd be curious about the $272,000 for school zone enhancements, what that is. And only now, just would love to know that. And then two, I want to give a special shout out to Director Holbrook. Congratulations. That's been a number of years now working to get to that high a percent since we started that endeavor. Well done. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Mayor. I also wanted to give kudos on item I to Director Holbrook and all of his crew. I know that these voluntary collection agreements have been a long time coming, so I appreciate your work on that. And then the other is, I just wanted to give a shout out. I know that item D is a mayoral portrait from Mayor Charles W. Fauci. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. From the city of Lexington, a family member had called my office actually and said that they had it and that they wanted to give it over to the city. And I thought that was so cool that somebody saw it. And apparently it's in really good shape, too. I'm really excited. This mayor was mayor from 1888 to 1892. So I think it's really cool to have more portraits about it. And so I appreciate the council clerk's office and Ms. Allen for working with the person about getting that. So just some fun things. Thanks. Are there any other council members who have questions about new business? All right. All those in favor of approving, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? No. On P and Z. P and Z. Okay. Thank you. Those all pass. Next, our continuing business items. First is neighborhood development funds. If I could have a motion to approve those. Second. Second. Councilmember Plowman moves vice mayor, vice chair, vice mayor, excuse me, seconds. It's already been a long day, right? Are there any questions about neighborhood development funds? All those in favor of approving, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Next, I'd like to recognize Councilmember Fred Brown, who will give the Environmental Quality and Public Works report. Thank you, Mayor. Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee, this is a report out of August 24th, 2021. The meeting was called to order at 1.02 PM. The first item on our agenda was approval of the June committee summary. There were no additions or corrections, and the summary was approved without dissent. We had the annual stormwater drainage program update presented by Director Martin. He provided a review of the stormwater priority list, which is updated annually. After some discussion, there was no further comment or action needed to be taken on this item. Next, we had a 5G small cell wireless update provided by CIO Valensini. She provided a detailed overview of small cells in the 5G network. She said the city is beginning to look at the strategic plan to effectively utilize fiber assets and the 5G infrastructure. We had some discussion on this item, but there was no additional comment or action needed to be taken on this item. Finally, we had a presentation on abandoned shopping carts. Councilmember Klober, 6th District Councilmember, reviewed the issue of abandoned shopping carts, which was last presented to committee June 22nd of this year. He provided a recap and explained that there is no centralized way to address the issue of abandoned shopping carts and the financial burden falls on the city. When asked where the collected shopping carts will be stored, Council Member Clover explained that an abandoned shopping cart gets reported and it is not collected in 24 hours, it would be picked up and taken to the landfill. The committee agreed that there is no perfect solution to this problem. There was a motion to move forward to the full Council proposed draft ordinance creating section 1211-11 of the Code of Ordinance Related Abandoned Shopping Cart, but that motion failed. No further comments or action was taken on this item. The meeting adjourned at 2.33 p.m. And that concludes my report. Thank you very much. Are there any questions for Council Member Brown? All right. Thank you. Next, our council reports, if you'll please log in. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to start by speaking to the Palmer Pharmacy building in the East End neighborhood. I just wanted to thank my fellow council members for the investment that we've made as a city government into that building, into that facility. I think it was a lot of questions last year about whether that's money well spent or the best investment. But I think now that we're at a point where we have a potential community partner that can redevelop, reuse that facility in one of the neighborhoods that was most impacted by the pandemic and Other issues, I think we're on the right path. It's been a long time coming. I'd also like to thank CAO Hamilton and Commissioner Ford and their team and the administration for working to try to get that facility to this point. But I think we still got a little else to go, but I think we do see some light at the end of the tunnel with that project. And then I'd also like to, I didn't speak today in regards to the KU and the trees incident because all the comments that I wanted to share had already been shared. I think the advocacy from council members listening to residents being true advocates for their neighbors and neighborhoods played out today. I think KU actually came to the table and has always been at the table. I think the folks that work for KU share some of the concerns, but I think now at the corporate level, we're seeing where they're trying to be responsive to the concerns and work to address some of the issues that have been brought forward. So I appreciate the council members that have been leading this effort for a while. And then I'd also just like to thank the mayor, council member Maloney and Councilmember Legree for joining me this past Sunday in Duncan Park for the mural dedication in the Peace Walk for Anita Franklin. The sheriff has been a constant advocate to continue Ms. Franklin's work and find a way to remember her that is appropriate of the work that she's been doing. And I think the partnership with LexArts, The Nest, and Keaton Young, the artist who created the mural, has been a real dream of hers and a project come to fruition. And I think Sunday was a very special moment. It was great weather. It was a good crowd. And that mural, if you're not familiar with Keaton Young, look him up on the internet. He is an impressive artist. And I think he did Anita and her family and her memory justice in the artwork that he has on that building in Duncan Park. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. It is a beautiful mural. If you haven't yet seen it, go see it. And it's on both sides of the building. Next is Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to remind the public that tomorrow afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Lexington Green Mall in the lower lot, our Lexington Public Safety Division will be hosting a job fair. That includes police, fire corrections, E911, and emergency management. And I know they'd love for anybody that's interested in a potential career in public safety to come out and meet with those individuals and we're happy to host in the ninth. I appreciate it. That's all, thank you Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to share with my colleagues that last week was the Bluegrass Airport's 75th anniversary. Of course, that's located, that's the 12th district destination. We've got a few photos here from, we want to show from the airport in its early days. And actually, go back to that other slide because I found out who that was, that gentleman that's receiving the flowers or giving the flowers is E.S. Dabney, and he was president of the Board of Commerce, which was the predecessor to Commerce Lexington. So I thought that was kind of cool. But so on this month in 1946, Kentuckians saw the first commercial aircraft serve the region via a Delta Airlines flight on a 21-passenger Douglas DC-3 en route to Cincinnati. This first flight was quickly followed by Eastern Airlines flight several hours later. And over the years, of course, we've seen many things happen out at the airport. The first airport was actually at Haley Field located near Meadowthorpe, which I thought was kind of interesting. And then the second airport was located at Fasic-Tifton, or the second at that time. And then since 1975, the airport opened a new terminal and also has invested $100 million in enhancements to the field and several support facilities. So happy birthday to our Bluegrass Airport, and just wanted to put that out there so everybody could celebrate in its memory. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Bledsoe. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple things. One, I wanted to let, as more of an announcement, the one time salary supplemental pay for non-ARPA qualified personnel, we're moving from BFED on Tuesday the 26th to the compensation workshop on the 10-28. Mostly because it just makes more sense to talk about these things combined at the same time, so as we're not cross referencing. So that's an announcement, we're moving it from the 26th to the 28th to be held in discussion all at the same time. If you have questions, please feel free to ask me after. Sure, the one time supplemental pay for non-qualified ARPA personnel that was to be heard on 1026 in the BFED committee will now be heard on Thursday, 1028 in the compensation study workshop. Good? Okay. And then this is actually Councilman McCurn had to leave and ask me to make two announcements on his behalf that are time sensitive. One, the last night of Freaky Friday Flicks at Masterson Station will be at 6 p.m. for costumes, and the Nightmare Before Christmas will begin at 7.30. Second, he is hosting a pancake breakfast at Fire Station 24 on Saturday, October 23rd from 9 to 11 a.m. There will be pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, and good company. Everyone is welcome. He is planning on cooking, and people are invited to wear their costumes. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. My big question is, will Council Member McCurum be wearing a costume? I don't know, but that is a good question. That's what I need to know if I'm going to go to that breakfast. I also have a festival that I want to remind everybody about. As most of you know, Sunday, October 24th, from 5 to 8, we have a Halloween festival downtown. And that includes a very special Lexington tradition, and that's the Thriller Parade. So just a reminder, the Thriller Parade is this weekend. And the rain date is the 25th. And thinking about downtown, I also want to thank Commander Newman and all of our public safety officials for their extra efforts in the downtown area and around the UK campus area in these past several weeks. I know that you all have put in a lot of extra time to secure various parts of my district and And of our city and I'm very appreciative and I'm hoping that the Thriller Parade goes smoothly. So that's it. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. Wanted to mention this Thursday at Village Branch Library from 6 to 7 or 730. I will be hosting a meeting for the Cardinal Valley area, but anybody is welcome, along with Officer Jones, who's my neighborhood resource officer. And we are having a special guest. We're having a lawyer who works in the county attorney's office. And we're going to be talking about crime and the process of what happens when you get arrested and things like that. And we're going to be also giving an update on what's going on in the district. So I hope people will turn out for that. Once again, that'll be at Village Branch Library Thursday at 6 PM. And then this Saturday, there's a few events that are going on in the district. And the first one that I want to mention is the Valley Park Fall Festival. And that will be from 1 to 4 PM, and kids are encouraged to dress up. And there will be prizes and contests. There will be a DJ, there will be food, and it's always a lot of fun. It's one of my favorite events. So you can show up for that. And then also the Pine Meadows Cardinal Valley Mason Heavley Neighborhood Association is having a Halloween carving contest. And I think they're also doing a costume contest, and that's from 3 to 7 PM. So I just wanted to mention those things. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't weigh in on the KU presentation or the, you know, the audience viewing the policy, the new policy or policy they're trying to establish. But I did want to commend the mayor for meeting with them. And I think you had six items on there on that list. Is it possible that we could, as a body here, put that in the form of some type of resolution and send that to the powers to be? Because I'm really concerned about their new policy. And two things. I think having a policy for the entire state, I guess, is what they're trying to do, and not segregating at least urban and rural or segregating cities out or particular governmental bodies. And I don't think we got our day in court yet. You probably don't either, but I don't see any reason why we can't. I don't know how the other council members are going to vote, but I'd certainly support your six plan program there. And add maybe some different language to it. But that's just a thought I want to throw out. Okay, thank you. I think it's a nice thought. I'm hopeful that they might even have more things that they will come up with. They have promised me that they will come back on those six items. And I think they heard loud and clear from all of you, from the people. I know they've heard it from me that we are, you know, we love Kentucky, but we want a policy that's specific to Lexington. And so they understand that. And I was appreciative that the first gentleman said he had had written remarks, but he thought he just wouldn't say this because he'd been listening and taking notes. So I think they got the message loud and clear and what they'll do with it. You know, I'm optimistic, but we don't know for sure yet. Any other council reports? All right. There is no regular mayor's report, although I did want to say a word about General Colin Powell, certainly a fine statesman and servant leader. And he reached the highest military position that anyone can reach as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. and he was the first African-American Secretary of State. And in 1999, there may be a couple of you who remember, our family care center celebrated its 10th anniversary, and he came here for that celebration, and I was able to meet him. He was a well-respected man and had a very strong ethical foundation. and so just wanted to remember him in that way. And now is time for public comment for issues not on the agenda, and I don't think there's anybody left. So with that, is there a motion to adjourn? All right, all those in favor say aye. We are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.