I want to fly like an eagle ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ I'd like to call the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee for March 1st, 2022 to order. First item of business would be the approval of February 1st, 2022 committee summary. Move to approve. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on that? All those in favor can signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's carried. Okay. We've got the first item on the agenda is a consent decree. remedial measures plan update and be director Charlie Martin and you've got it sir okay I brought my warm drink with me because I caught myself a little bit of a cold so hopefully my voice will hang out through the entire part of things here this is the annual update that we provide on the consent decree and typically it focuses on the remedial measures because it's kind of the 800 bound gorilla in consent decree world anyway, when it comes to dollars and cents and impact to the citizens. But we wanna make sure we cover all of it and keep you up to date. Let's see, I'm not advancing for some reason. There we go. This is what we're gonna talk about today, the overall consent decree status, the remaining capital obligations, the overview of that, and then try to drill down a little bit more onto what's going on and what will we expect to happen in 2022 and then leave time for some questions. So typically when I talk about the consent decree, I usually break it into these big categories. There's the stormwater part of it. There were supplemental environmental projects that we had to do to lessen our fine. There's the sanitary sewer obligations and then there's the reporting obligations. And I think the last time I was here at the podium, I noted that some of it had already been satisfied, particularly the stormwater compliance obligations. been released from that part of the consent decree. It does not go away because it becomes a permit condition. So we will continue to be doing many of the things we were doing under the consent decree in stormwater as before. The difference is that obviously there's no more federal intervention. It's more of a state and local issue. The supplemental environmental projects, there were four of them. All of them are done and the approval letters are in the files. And so those are closed out not to come back again. The sanitary sewer obligations are still ongoing, and I broke that down into two categories. The CMOM program, capacity management, operation, and maintenance. It's more like the day-to-day operations like we have today. And much like stormwater, even when this consent decree goes away, we'll still have to do those things. The EPA, the regulatory community, expects you to operate your utility, even when you're a city, in an efficient manner. The other part of the sanitary, which is the big part of it, is the remedial measures plan. It's the $594 million estimate that we had in the beginning, capital construction of big storage tanks, big pump stations, all of those things. And like I said, I'm going to drill down. That'd be most of the focus of what we talk about for the rest of the presentation. The reporting obligations, they never go away. They sometimes get to be somewhat painful. We do quarterly reports they get posted on the website, and then we also do annual reports as well. I know that, whether it's this committee or other ones, that you're looking at having reporting from other divisions as far as reporting metrics. When you get to water quality, we won't have a problem with that. We report metrics on a regular basis. Active construction projects for 2021. Those of you who represent these districts are probably well aware of these. Ms. Reynolds is probably ready for us to finish work in the garden side area. We started and had to stop in August of last year because basically we couldn't get any pipe. And we waited almost four months to get pipe to be able to get restarted on that project. One of the examples of supply chain problems in a post-pandemic world, I guess. There was some activity going on there because the Southeastern Hills Project, which is over in Council Member Brown's district, the pipe that's for that project was actually being stored on Furlong because it's the same contractor. So there was still some work going on there, but they were interrelated only because they have the same contractor, not the same pipe. The Upper Cain Run wet weather storage tank that's over in the Lexmark area, I think you're familiar with that one only because you know that we had to close Legacy Trail. in order to be able to make the connection. The good thing is, I guess, is I haven't heard from any of you about unhappiness with our detour. Probably even more important, I haven't heard from Nancy either, so that's probably a good thing. I can say that the pipe is in the ground now, and so we'll be working on the restoration of it. Hopefully this weather will hold good and the asphalt plants will be encouraged to open early. Then we can get that thing buttoned back up, get the trail opened back up fully just in time for good weather. The West Hickman Phase II wet weather storage tank. I'll talk about that one a little bit more in a minute, but it is ongoing. And then there's the various wastewater treatment plant improvements at both plants that nobody really sees or hears about because they're kind of behind the fence, behind the gate. But very important stuff. Great work being done by my engineering team in that group. Here's the headline as far as where we stand with the active construction or the construction projects associated with the RMP. 64 of them are done. 28 in the design and construction. I'm concerned about that number because right now it's kind of hard to get out of design and construction and get into, I mean, out of design and construction and get into completion because of some of the supply chain issues. But 115 total projects, 64 of them are done. 51 are in some type of abyss. That 51 number will be important when we get to the latter slide. So keep that in the back of your mind. My clicker's not very cooperative today, or maybe it's me. I'm out of practice with operating it. Financially, though, we're still in pretty good shape. I try to use this same format, just about any of the presentation I do. Basically, the bar on the left is what we would have expected to spend at this point of the consent decree in the capital construction end of over $426 million. and right now we're sitting at about $310 million. Very good news. We were able to save a lot of money up front because of some value engineering we did with some other decisions we made. I'm concerned about it moving forward. Again, I keep referencing the new world that we're facing now as opposed to the one we were facing before the pandemic. Costs are going up. Basically, anything that's linked to crude oil is making me nervous. And the large amount of PVC pipe that we use and crude oil is a functional part of making PVC. But at least we have a good cushion moving forward. And in case you're wondering why is this, say, September, typically we do it at the end of the construction season and at the beginning of the construction season. So I got asked to come a little earlier than I was ready to because it doesn't really change a lot during the wintertime. There we go. All right, so I usually try to cover some wins. You well remember that last year we were one of the first counties that got awarded a Cleaner Water Act grant. The governor came and gave us a big golf check. You see some of the plant staff holding $11.8 million to retrofit both treatment plants, eliminating gaseous chlorine and retrofitting it with UV for disinfection purposes. Huge win for us. Originally in the consent decree, we had some rehabilitation done of the existing chlorine system. It was about 395,000, as you can read there. That was the equivalent of replacing the appliances and putting down a new floor and doing some paint in your kitchen. And, you know, $11.8 million is a gut job of the kitchens and the bathrooms, and we're really, really excited to do that. We're anxiously awaiting the grant documents from the state. We're expecting those sometime in the next couple weeks. So I will probably be back, you know, through a work session agenda item asking for council's approval of awarding that grant. So stay tuned. I mentioned the West Hickman wet weather storage tank, the West Hickman wastewater treatment plant wet weather storage tank. KIA granted us an expanded loan for that. The prior phase one project was funded by KIA through a low interest loan. And so they've increased that loan amount by another $15.8 million to allow us to complete the phase two project. Total amount is about $81 million in loan money that we've gotten from KIA. So it's a big signature project for them along for us as well because they will typically fund things at that level. $81 million, that's a lot of money. You know, the original estimate for that project, $125 million. So we came out well ahead in this. When I showed that earlier graph, a lot of it has to do with what happened at West Hickman. Ultimately, we will have right now that tank you see right now is 22 million gallons. There'll be an 18 million gallon storage tank right next to it. But of all the rain and snow melts that we've had here over the winter time, we've filled that tank three times in the last couple of weeks. So the second tank has demonstrated itself as being very needed. The flip side of that though is the plant superintendent, Jim Wharton, had to do some work on the plant and he was able to completely shut the plant off and send all the flow to an empty tank, work on the plant and then turn it back on. We never had that luxury before. So it's nice to be able to turn everything off, do what you need to do and then turn it back on without any repercussions. The last win I want to talk a little bit about is Overbrook Farm. If you'll remember from when I was here last year, I was asking the committee for their endorsement. It was the whole council, actually. We had a plan that involved Overbrook and the RMP that involved us going through Overbrook, and it was just not working out for a variety of reasons. And I think I said here at the podium is that we've learned that working on active horse farms with construction projects just don't go well together. So you all endorsed, along with the regulatory folks, endorsed a different plan where we're going around the farm now. So I want to highlight the two projects that are in red, and then I'll touch on the last one, the Heartland 3, towards the end of this. But the first two, the red ones, are the ones that are very near-term projects that you're probably going to hear about from people and constituents. So this is where I get to use my pointer here, if I can remember how to use that. This is the East Hickman Force Main over here in the upper right-hand corner of Buckhorn Drive. That is the dead end of Alumni Drive. We have a large pump station there called East Hickman and a storage tank and an existing pressurized line that goes off in this direction. This pink line is what's going to be a new pipeline that comes along that same alignment. It's going to deviate to some extent by going down the Squires bike path right by Squires Elementary School here. It comes out on Armstrong Mill. It works its way across the air navigation area there off of Trent Boulevard and Man of War. And then it comes down Trent, down Kennesaw Drive to Tates Creek Road, Tates Creek Road on over to Brandon Road. basically pumping around. Going through some neighborhoods, going by some schools. We're in the process of really starting the outreach part of it because we've already started the easement acquisition. We've got about five easements that we're going to have to get. Hopefully we'll have our public meeting set up for that sometime in the next 30 to 60 days. I think Council Member Brown, I think they've been working with you and Council Member Worley in particularly because your districts are impacted significantly. I never liked going through neighborhoods, but given the alternative, if you remembered correctly, this alternative saved us somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million in the overall concept of things. And so we're about at a point to where we feel like we're ready to launch with it. Hopefully by late fall of 2022 will be the starting point of it, and we'd be starting over on the Buckhorn Inn most likely. So I pop up this little circle here, this little yellow circle, because that leads into what I'm getting ready to talk to next. One of the sister projects to this is the Armstrong Mill Pump Station. The existing Armstrong Mill Pump Station is roughly right there, and it pumps up to roughly where that circle is right now. Ties into the existing force main and all that. Obviously, we need to deal with that while we're putting in this new force main and all that. and putting the pump station back where it is right now makes no sense because that's not where the urban service boundary is. Here's where the pump station is right now. The urban service boundary is actually right here along DeLong Road. Let me stop for a second here and walk you through this. Following my pointer from the top of the page down, that's Armstrong Mill Road as it dead ends into DeLong Road. If you think about as you go out Armstrong Mill Road, Heartland is on your left, the open fields, and then pretty soon you're in open fields. And if you're like me, you've come across a car coming the other way and a bicyclist at the same time, and there's a little narrow bridge right there. That narrow bridge is where the existing Armstrong Mill pump station is located at. It is the worst overflowing pump station that we still have remaining in the system. And so rather than rebuilding it right there where the field that's off to your right as you're still heading out there, you follow the creek farther down. That's still in the urban service boundary. We're putting it down there right at as far down as we can on the property that belongs to Overbrook Farm here off of DeLong Road. Now, it will pump back up to where that yellow circle I had is before. So we've got to do the East Hickman Forest Main first and then follow right behind with the new DeLong Road pump station because otherwise it doesn't have some place to connect to. I know that's probably kind of, as I said before, this would be the hardest part for me to be able to explain. You've heard me say this before and probably read me say this. It's like working on your car while you're driving down the road. We've got to keep all these things moving while we build the new stuff and then somehow be able to tie them in together. And so the sequencing of the projects, the East Hickman Force Main, and then followed by the DeLong Road pump station are going to be critical to be able to make all this stuff go together. We think we can do this. I think we think we're on a good path to do this. Since I put this presentation together, we've had a lot of conversations with Overbrook with Mr. Young. We have a verbal agreement basically on acquiring the lot that's depicted in this here right now. So we've got to obviously work through the details. And so when I come back with that, the opportunity to ask more detailed questions on this, you'll have it. So, all right. What's it going to look like? It's going to look like a barn. You know, that's what's very important to the folks at Overbrook is to make sure that we blend in. And we've done this before. You know, we've got one out in Hamburg that basically blends in, one we build out by the Federal Medical Center that looks like a barn. So we've done this before, and this is a very workable situation. We want to obviously blend in with the landscape that's out there. This is probably the summary of it all, is that the new DeLong Road pump station is the arrow that you see in the lower right-hand corner. I'm sorry, the star that you see in the lower right-hand corner. All of that area within the yellow box is undeveloped land that is in the urban service area that will be serviced by this new pump station. I know that there are existing development plans, I think, for this portion of the farm. There are not any for this portion of the farm. But I wanted to be able to make sure that I was clear to you that, you know, there's obviously a lot of things that somebody has to do from a planning standpoint, from anything else. From a sewerability standpoint, this pump station will ultimately solve that, whether or not this area can be sewered or not. The area that has the current development plan is wait-listed under the Capacity Assurance Program and can't move forward as it's approved right now because of the limitations of the Armstrong Mill pump station. And it was clear from EPA and from the council at the time when we did the RMP is that we're building this, and we're building this for 2035, full development of 2035. Don't underbuild this and then leave somebody in a lurch. And so that's the concept here. So, all right, I think I probably confused you completely. I might explain it. I don't know. We'll get to the questions, I guess. All right, ready to launch. We've got a couple projects that are on the launching pad, if I can get my clicker to work. You know about both of these because they both recently have traveled through council. The Liberty Road project, Council Member Clover asked for a double reading on this a couple of weeks ago. This is the one that had a supply chain issue with the fact that the price of pipe went up before we could even award the project. We think we're in a good place right now. I don't see any risks out here. And we've got a contractor. The contractor that worked for us on the Euclid Avenue project is the one for this. They did a really nice job on that one. Hopefully they'll continue to do the same here. Another project that has been traveling through council, I don't know if you've given this second reading yet or not, because I was out last week, but this is the Heartland 3 pump station. It is located, this is the Heartland Neighborhood Association Swim Club tennis courts, and so it's back a shared driveway that we have with them. Building a new pump station right next to the existing one, connecting to the red line, and off we go. not one that people are going to see a lot. Council Member Plowman and I, she's been intimately involved in it, so she's probably the one who's most concerned with it, but our goal is to try to get this thing going as quickly as we can because I want to have the worst of it done before swim season starts, obviously. All right, so unfortunately, I only have two projects that are ready to launch, and I'd like to have more. I need to have more. We've got some struggling projects right now that have been sitting on the launching pad for a while for a variety of reasons. And the main reason is easements. Easements are just absolutely killing us right now. We have 229 various easements that we're trying to acquire for a variety of projects in water quality. 229. And it's really hard to get people to say yes to something. Hey, I'm going to dig up your yard and we're going to put a pipeline through it. It'll be fine. And that's a really, really tough sell. And I found it. It never was easy, but it's even more difficult now in the pandemic world, it seems like. And I don't know why that is. We had a really good guy that was working on it. He had a really good rapport with people and stuff. And we were really picking things up. And then he abruptly left. He took a job, similar job, in Boca Raton, Florida. We couldn't compete with the money. And we surely couldn't compete with the environment. So, you know, he was gone. And it took us six months to even recover from that. But easements are a significant impediment to getting more progress on that 51 projects that I mentioned earlier. That's why a lot of those are sitting in that design or pending thing because of the easements. The supply chain disruptions, I think we're just beginning to find out how bad that is. You know, we experienced that with Liberty Road. We're experiencing it on different levels at different projects. I have a very good friend who works for a major pump manufacturer. And he told me, he said, you know, our sales are out the roof. But lead times now have gone from 16 months to 18 months. And you're seeing that with a lot of equipment suppliers. On a personal level, I waited two months to get a new dishwasher. I got reacquainted with washing my own dishes. I had to wait for so long. The escalating costs are obviously a concern as well. And that's a concern here locally. I'm not so sure that EPA will have as much concern with that as we do. but we do. And so we're continuing to try to make sure that we don't have that graph that I had on there earlier going in the wrong direction. So for me, aside from all the capital projects, you know, there's these two big RMP projects questions that I've got here is have we exhausted all remedies that we need that are available to us to complete the 51 projects by the end of 2026? Currently, that is the consent decree deadline. All compliance measures have to be done by December 31st, 2026. Can we make it? And if we can't, is there regulatory relief available? I don't know the answer, but we're going to be working really hard on trying to figure out what that answer is because 2022 will turn over to 2023 very quickly. Time is running out. So in summary, all the compliance measures done except for the Sanitary Sower R&P Capital Program and the ongoing reporting obligations. Eighty percent of what we were obligated to do is either complete or in process. You know, we haven't, as a community, we should be proud of the fact that we've been so aggressive in doing what we've done. The council and the citizens have not failed. They've been faithful in far as raising the money and the rates that needed to be done to do these projects and stuff like that. Our inability to do projects really have to do with these external things that we necessarily can't control. The point of that is, I guess, is that my clicker is not helping me. Somehow I've got to figure out a way to be able to embrace these challenges. In 2021, I told you that we had to do eight projects a year over the course of six years to be able to get it done. You can do the math in your head right now. I told you we needed to do 48 over that period of time, and we're at 51. we're losing ground. We are losing ground. I think we need to really figure out what EPA and Kentucky's position is about trying to be able to give us more time. Because I don't, I can't imagine how they contemplated the impacts of a global pandemic when we agreed to this schedule in the first place. It was an aggressive schedule to begin with. 14 years to try to do all of these things. and you throw in what we as citizens have gone through over the last couple years. I don't know. Anyway, I'm telling you this now. I said obviously there's going to be more to this than anything else, but I could not do this presentation without at least putting it on the table, I guess, or at least laying it in front of you to consider what impact or what role you might have or what advice you may have as far as what we're going to do moving forward. I'll stop there. Thank you, Director. It's a good presentation on where we're at now and hopefully good information for the committee. Got some questions here. Council Member Ellinger? Thank you, Chair. Director, when it says pending, where is that at that point in the process? Pending in my mind means it's still on the master list, but we have not hired an engineer to start the design process. So I'm trying to think of one that would be an example of that. Richmond Road in front of the water company, we've got a small segment of lines that need to be upsized. They're the last part of all of that work that we did around Southland, Lexington Mall area and stuff. We have not hired an engineer to actually physically start putting together plans and specifications, easement, descriptions, or anything for it. So that's one I would list as pending. And you said 26 is when we're supposed to be complete by the consent degree. And you said we have been in contact with them to let them know our time schedule. and as you said when we dealt with this back in was it 2004 what was 2008 is really what kind of the starting point for the that's when we approved the consent decree my life changed in 2005 because that's when we started negotiating it right so in 2008 when the time started and as you said we they couldn't have nobody could have predicted a two-year pandemic that we'd be going through so So what have other communities that are on the same situation that we're in that have timelines are dealing and how have they been working with those? You know, I've not talked to all those communities. A lot of those communities, I'll be frank with you, is they they went and asked for more time under a previous administration in Washington. So they found their way to get some relief prior to us. Louisville they're looking I think for potential relief as well but their problem is different than ours because when I had talked to them last fall their problem was more about raising rates. Their last two rate increases have failed there's not a tolerance for raising rates in Louisville like there has been here. So like I said our problem is different. It's a supply chain issue informal conversations that I've had with Kentucky is they understand. They understand. I've not had any conversations with the EPA about it. I'm more working on right now trying to put together what I think is our case. And you know how it is. It's easy to be able to. It's never good to ask for something and not offer a solution along with that. You know, I don't want to go and offer it to them open-endedly. You brought up the East Hickman Force Main Project, And you said the bike path that's go down there. And that was one issue when we dealt with Amazon and the Legacy Trail. Are we looking at trying to have a detour or something that we can work with that bike path? Yeah, there's tons of detours. There's all around through the neighborhood and stuff. We'll be able to do that. You know, I think that we'll probably put more meat on the bone on that, so to speak, when we have the meeting at Squires Elementary School because the Squires folks use that a lot to be able to get to school about it as well. And then when you talk about, and I ride out DeLong a lot, so when you were talking about going out to Armstrong Mill and the farm and where the pump station, if you're heading east going down Armstrong Mill and you run into DeLong and then you head south, where did you say, which bridge were you referring to? Is it the one on Armstrong Mill or the one on DeLong? The one on Armstrong Mill is where the existing pump station is on your left. And then when you tee into DeLong Road, you turn right. There's a little bridge down there. That's where the new pump station is. That's where the new one's going to be. Okay, that's what I thought. Thank you so much. Roughly. I mean, it will be set back 100 feet off the road because there's a 100-foot setback that's required as part of the, you know, Jim Duncan would probably correct me on this, but I think it's in the zoning ordinance. It has to do with maintaining a buffer between the urban area and the rural area, and we're following that. Thank you. Thank you for the update. Council Member McCurron. Thank you, Chair. Director, thank you for the presentation. It's good to see you. Obviously, going through and talking about some of the wins and your cost savings, those are always a plus. But I'd like to back up some of the projects you mentioned. You have 51 remaining and about $115 million that were in cost savings currently. But what about these projects that are left over, those 51? Are any of them larger projects that are going to be more costly, especially as we move forward? And I know that some of the material is a little bit difficult to obtain right now, but do you see that those are going to be larger scale projects or that will eat into the 115 cost savings? Or do you think that that's a good trajectory of what we're going to be on? I think my personal opinion, based on what I'm seeing right now, is that I think we're going to eat into that savings to some degree. because even before the pandemic, the pipeline projects were proving to be typically underestimated as far as cost, where the storage tank ones were overestimated. For example, the original RMP had almost 100 million gallons of storage, and the projection for cost per gallon was somewhere around $3 a gallon. We've built 88 million gallons of storage so far, either done or under construction, at $1.78 a gallon. So when you're talking about $88 million and saving a buck a gallon, there's where your savings came from. Well, I hope we can keep that dollar a gallon. $1.78 is what I'm talking about right now. And what we typically find is the big tanks, you know, it's like with anything, economy of scale, the bigger the tank, the less per gallon it ends up costing you. The smaller ones cost the most. We have one more to build that is over in the Hamburg area and then one more to build at Town Branch. So we're getting close to finishing the storage tanks. Great. Well, again, thank you for all of your work and your team's work. You guys do an excellent job. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Charlie. Good work as always. I'm curious about the easements. Are those permanent easements or are those work easements? Or is there a mix? A mix of both. I'll use an example. We need a temporary construction easement through somebody's drive-thru on New Circle Road. They don't want to shut down their drive-thru for two days, much less two weeks or two months or anything else. And so they're not working with us very well. And so that's just adding time. That's the new circle project. We've already asked for multiple extensions and received them. But that's just a temporary easement. We already have a permanent easement where that drive-through is. So what's the process on a temporary easement if they're not interested in granting it? Obviously, I don't want to speak on behalf of the law department, but ultimately we do hold a card as far as that we could play that's eminent domain. We're always very hesitant to be that heavy-handed, so we're trying really hard to work with them. We have an easement tracker software that basically we track all of the contacts that we have with them. And to be honest with you, the ones I typically would send to the law department, and I've been in front of you all before in closed sessions, is the ones who just plain won't work with you. The others who are continuing to work with you, you just kind of keep holding out hope that somehow you'll find a way to be able to reach an agreement. But it's time consuming. And so is the question of reimbursement for that loss of revenue? Or I guess I'm a little bit confused about why, given that we have the right to do that, that there's negotiations. I guess it's, you know, we work for the city. And so we're trying not to get into a situation where you all's phone's blowing up or the mayor's phone's blowing up because we're not working with people and stuff. And so we try very hard to acquire these easements in such a way as that we're working with people. You know, maybe we are taking longer with these things than we have to, but it will end up turning into a one, two, three strikes, you're out. And I'm not so sure that the citizens will be really happy with that. That's just my perspective. Okay, but it's not an issue of, or is there an issue of reimbursement for the inconvenience and lost potential loss of revenue? an inconvenience thing than it is the money. At least the people that I deal with, and I'll be honest with you, this kind of illustrates how bad of our easement problem is, because your director is out negotiating easements along with everybody else. And that in itself is a manpower problem. I've got four people that I'm working with in Councilmember Reynolds District. They own condos. We're in their backyard. We've got to modify our alignment a little bit. They've got dogs, they've got fences, they've got concerns because basically they're going to lose their backyard for two months while we do this work and stuff. And so they want to have some level of assurance that their dog's not going to run away and get hit by a car. It's not really about the money to them, to be quite honest with you. And all four of them have been very nice, very nice to work with and stuff. And so to come in here and tell you, oh, we need to condemn them just doesn't feel right yet. So the negotiations are about timing and extent and conditions to prevent unwarranted loss of what use? It's monetary, but it is more of a convenience situation. What we ran into on New Circle, when we first started negotiating, we're going through businesses' parking lots, basically taking their parking spots away from limiting access to their businesses, coming out of all the restrictions that went on the pandemic, the last thing they wanted to hear from us was that somehow we're going to find a way to further impede their business. And so a lot of those conversations shut down pretty quickly. It's a difficult situation to be in. You're right, we have the right to be there, but there's always that question of, well, can't you find a different way? Can't you find a different way? And so we look at different ways, and time gets burnt doing that. I've been doing this in some fashion or other for 38 years. And it's always very difficult to deal with the people who are your customers and try to tell them this is all in your best interest when they're not getting anything out of it truly except a lot of aggravation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, I'm going back to Overbook Farm. and I noticed that the way you're putting the pump station, it's going to be that new development that they may have already on the other side of Squires Road on that side. Is that what they're talking about? They may have a plan for development on that? I know that there is development plans as you're going out on the left-hand side of the road because we've got them wait-listed for a lack of capacity at the Armstrong Mill pump station. So Armstrong Mill Pump Station sits roughly about right there. And there are development plans, I believe, that have been approved here. And so we've got a capacity allocation for a mixture of single-family homes and apartments, one, two, three bedroom. So kind of a mixed-use type of thing. They would naturally follow that blue line because that's a stream, and they would tie into Armstrong Mill Pump Station. Armstrong Mill Pump Station is capacity limited. That's one of the reasons why it hasn't moved. If the picture doesn't do it, I have the contours on, but they don't help you very much. But the natural drainage of the land is this area here also then would drain to here. It doesn't drain over here, but it drains over here. When I build this pump station, I need to size it such as that I conserve everything that naturally drains to that location. And so that then allows this to go through the planning process and not have sewers as being an impediment to an approval. Whatever other merits of a proposed development plan is obviously up to the planning commission, planning staff, and otherwise. But the sewerability issue gets removed. so the pump station now when i look at the not the one to get ready to build is way where is it now the one that you get that you have now where is it this is the armstrong mill pump station roughly about right there that's where the pump station is now yes it is and you're moving that over there where the new one's going to be moved back to that corner yeah the natural flow of water is from the top of the page to the bottom so that's when the new This is where the new one's going to be here on the Long Road. And the reason I asked, when you look at the plans, and we had a TV show last night, and everybody thinks it's going to be the savior of some of our housing market, but I've got a couple friends of mine that I ran into that have rent that farm for horses, and I don't see them getting off that. But that's why I asked the question, because that is some of our development down the road. is going to be there, but it doesn't sound like they're going to do it other than maybe they'll develop on the other side of Armstrong. I mean, Armstrong could see something being built there maybe, but I can't see anything because my friends, they have rent a lot of that farm, and they come all the way from Maine, and they're going to stay here for a long time is what I mean. So I just want everybody, that's the concern I have. Now, the other thing, when you say we need to start talking about, I think it's amazing what you guys have done. I think we were ahead through this pandemic. We hit a wall. And I think hopefully that our congressmen, and we're having a Senate race this year, whoever wins that, they're going to be there after 2026, I think. We may want to start talking to the EPA because I think they're going to have to give us two more years. We want two years staying still like everybody else. But to be honest with you, we don't know what impact this inflation is going to come. And you see what Louisville is having a problem raising taxes. We eventually may have to do the same thing. So I just hope whatever we decide or whatever we do, that Washington realizes that the last two years has been a tough time for everybody across the country. We don't know. And to me, I'm hoping we don't ask for those two years. we may ask, hopefully we start those conversations. We may want to have, we have a late, that does all our lobbying. Maybe we'll have somebody else, in my opinion. Well, I appreciate that. And it allows me to add something, if you'll allow that. You know, so far, EPA and the state has always been very easy for us to work with, short of the initial negotiation of the thing. They were hard, because they were trying to negotiate a consent decree. I'm optimistic that they will. I think, number one, and those of you who have been around a long time have heard me say this before, you know, we earned, I feel like we earned a lot of goodwill because we started this thing well before when we had to. And if they can look at the numbers and see that we've worked, you said, but as a community, everybody here and in the community have put in some heavy lifting. They have to be careful about establishing a precedent that may be used elsewhere in the country. Being a former regulator, I see that through that lens as well. But I'm optimistic, a solid case to them, that it was not for a lack of significant and dedicated evidence, along with a plan of how we're going to remedy this with some additional time. I feel okay about it. We've got to put our plan together. Thank you. Pastor Mayor Cade, please. Thank you, Chair, again. And because I wanted to pick up on the comment you made about that, essentially making sure that we're ahead of the sewerability issue. I think, well, I was going to ask a question, but I'll kind of frame it a little bit. I think there are arguments made, whether it's about what the capacity is in the infill and redevelopment portion of what we do, or whether it's about specific proposals for development. Sometimes what is not, it's going to add to the sewer problem, and we have to be very careful about that. My understanding is that there has to be any proposed development at this point. There is a capacity assurance program, a written document that was approved by EPA, that basically says that if we don't have existing sewer capacity, we have to have credits in place in order to be able to restore that capacity if somebody else uses. We do allow, in certain circumstances, somebody to move forward, but basically they're taking a negative bank. I think, you know, so yes, we have to have capacity in order to be able to do this. we can be assured that whatever else is at issue, sewerability is not because it's been reviewed on that basis. Case in point, my map is gone again. The properties on the left side of Armstrong Mill, they are wait-listed. They cannot move forward at full development because of the lack of sewer capacity at Armstrong Point. Wait-listed. They're the only ones with... Any other questions? Thank you, Director. Appreciate it. Appreciate you, too. Okay, let's go forward. We've got the next item on the agenda is the abandoned shopping carts. Council Member Klover will introduce us and start us out. Thank you. Hello, everyone. We're talking about shopping carts again today. This is hopefully the final update that I can give you after going out and getting some exhaustive community input on this. So I'll just jump right into what we talked about last time. A couple of recommendations were made from this committee, mostly about reaching out to the community and also tracking the amount of carts that we had. So again, we had set up to track those carts, and our numbers stayed consistent and showed increases in the winter months, as has been expected as a trend. But we still have the issue where there's no centralized department or division that is looking to pick all these up. So it's been being handled by several different divisions, still at the same time because we have not changed anything as of yet. So that leaves us with an issue of not being able to track all of the carts that are being picked up right now. But again, we're doing our best to start that process. In reaching out to the community, we reached out to the Kentucky Retail Federation, to Kroger's, to other local businesses. And we gathered a lot of feedback and listened to their concerns. And then tried to work collaboratively to make changes to the proposal within the structure laid out, which I'll talk about if the clicker works. Oh, look, shopping carts. Again, you can see them all over town. If you drive around, you'll see shopping carts in the rights of way. So the business feedback, this is kind of the summary of what we heard. Businesses were concerned that there was a burden or a penalty on businesses that were working hard at retention, that there were many businesses that had put in hundreds of thousands of dollars and systems in place in order to try and keep these carts on their property, and they didn't feel that there should be some kind of an ordinance that would penalize them for those carts leaving their property. There was also a concern about carts left on private property and how that would be an issue for workers to go onto this property to try to retrieve them or all of the other hassles that come from being on private property themselves. The third concern that they brought up was that the signage requirements might require them to get an entirely new fleet of carts or even just completely redo all of their signs, which, again, they felt might be an undue burden for just trying to solve this problem. Because of that, they came to us, because we started this conversation, they came to us not just with criticisms, but also one area of support. and that had to do with the fact that they really want these carts back, if at all possible. Right now, with supply chain issues coming to the forefront, these carts are already not cheap to get in the first place, and losing them without being able to have a chance at reclaiming them or being able to have them delivered back to their stores is costing them a lot of money, and in some cases, they just can't even replace those carts because, as we heard earlier, it's taking months in order to get simple things like dishwashers. Working within the framework of the ordinance, just so we have a conversation starter, we started taking out and addressing these concerns together. So the first and biggest change we did was removed any requirements on private land. We already have a system internally with the government if there is waste on private property that we can go through in order to remove it. Within the ordinance, we removed that requirement of any of these shopping carts being on private land. so it would only apply to the public rights of ways. And that way we can alleviate people's concerns about having to go out there and take their personnel and put them out on private land and the hassles that causes. The next thing we did was we removed any fines for partners who are currently implementing measures. So this was kind of a big step in trying to say we're looking for a partnership. We're not trying to be punitive. This is we're trying to make sure that we can get these things out of our waterways and return them to you because at the end of the day, it costs us more money to send them out to the landfill and dump them than it would for us to return them to the place where they rightfully belong to. So we created a mechanism where anyone participating, if they are actively working to keep these carts on their property and working with us, there would be no penalties associated with these carts that might meander off of their lots. the next two were just about creating flexibility this is flexibility in signage and in communication and this is to say if we have all of your information we know where it is we can bring these back to we can come to your store and say hey we have these then all we need is a sign is some identifying marker which most stores already have so a submission of that would qualify and And then originally we had required a phone number, but we opened that up to any form of communication that would allow us to get in touch with these companies and get the carts back to where they belong. So I went through that pretty quickly because we've obviously talked about this a couple times. Here's where we get to the recommendations to go from here. because of the cost associated with taking these carts to landfills it is economically advantageous to us to make sure they get back to their homes if at all possible so any way that we can foster a relationship with our businesses in order to try to get these carts out of our waterways either with notifying them to pick up these carts or for us to pick them up and then find a location we can get them back to them is going to save us money as the government as well as help alleviate this problem with a partnership. So I wanted to put a couple of options on the table and then open it up to discussion. The first is a resolution and this is a resolution that asks the administration to reach out to these businesses in order to try to create a partnership and a structure of getting these carts back to them. Like I said it'll reduce the cost that we have of taking them to landfill as well as allowing these carts to get back with any of the stores that are willing to partner with us. The second option is the ordinance, and this option obviously solves the problem for a longer period of time. It puts something in place that can address the issue and has been thoroughly vetted and worked with the community to try and find the best way to create a partnership that will solve this problem both for us and for the stores that are affected. So I think that sums up where we are at right now. Like I said, it's a pretty quick update. If you have any questions about this, I'm happy to answer them, but I open the floor for discussion. Okay, I think we'll just treat the questions to Council Member Klober as if he's the presenter. And so we can get some information. And then if you want anybody else in the administration to come up, that's your prerogative. So, anybody? Council Member Reynolds? Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. And thank you, Council Member Kloiber, for working on this again. Could you walk us through, if we were to pass an ordinance, what it would look like? You mentioned if they are doing the signage and the things that they're supposed to do, that their carts wouldn't get fined if they were found. Is that correct? Yes. The way that it is currently laid out is that anyone who participates in giving us a plan for their retention, which includes letting us know what their signage looks like and how to get in touch with them and to return these in that case. If they are working on that retention plan and trying to keep these carts on their property, then they would not be assessed a fine for us reaching out to them to either pick up the carts or for us to bring them to them. But if they have not established a relationship, they have not put proper signage on their cart, then they would be subject to a fine? Yes. The goal is to try and create partnerships with our community. And so if there were people who opted out of that partnership, again, that puts all of the burden of resources on us. And so in the ordinance, there is a fine structure in place for that. And I know it said it looked high, but you were saying that it wasn't per cart. So what would that fine look like? I believe it's outlined in there. I think it's on a sliding scale based off the amount of times that these things occur. But again, all of these are not fines that are attached as liens to anything. And it's mostly, as I said, able to be eliminated or alleviated if a partnership is created in order to try and work to get these carts back to where they belong. Okay. Well, I once again really appreciate your work on this. It's a very complex situation. And at least one, if not two, of those pictures that you showed were in my district. And the other day, I was at a park, and there were eight shopping carts in the entrance of the park. Eight. So this is a huge, huge problem, once again, in my district. And I've heard a lot of different sides of how to approach this. And I don't think that it's easy. But I do think this is a good start to create these relationships and try to encourage business owners to keep track of their carts. There's already several businesses that are doing that and that drive around and that work with people in the community to recuperate their carts. So I think that if we were able to have the manpower to set up this infrastructure, that it would be positive. So thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Kloiber, at the very beginning of your presentation, you talked about the consistency of the data from the 311 call-ins. Could you talk a little bit about the amount? So what is it each month that we're looking at that we're getting calls for this? I think I have people who can answer that question a little bit better than I can. Thank you. So thank you for that. So, for example, from January 3rd to February 9th, there were 13 calls into LexCol. And we went to try to retrieve those. But when we were out there, only six of them were still where they were reported to be. So hopefully that helps a little bit. That's about a month's worth of data. Okay, thank you. But then it's an additional resource to send someone out there when the cart's not there. Then it's kind of like a treasure hunt. Okay. Thank you. And I think that the biggest thing there is, again, because we don't have a coordinated effort, we don't know who's picking them up. Everyone's doing a little bit of it because we always have. So that's why the numbers are a little bit hard to pin down on who's got them and where they are. So. Okay. Any other council members? Okay. I think that's all the questions we have. Yeah, if there are no other questions, and again, I'd be happy. I think this is an issue that our businesses are expecting some kind of relief. And so I'm happy making a motion for a resolution at this point in time just to ask the administration to work on creating these partnerships so we can try to get these carts back to the stores that they belong to. So moved. Okay, we have a motion on the resolution and a second by Council Member Ellinger. Questions to the motion? Council Member Maloney? I support what you're doing, but I also want to go on record here. I think the business community is changing, and if you go to Sam's or go to Kroger's, and they are telling people that it's costing them a lot of money for these carts. So I would love to give them a couple years so they can transition over to what those big companies and other people are doing and making it work and have the administration listen to their ideas. and I talked to a couple of my former council members who've been dealing with this. One of them is Council Member Henson and I also got to talk to my good friend Council Member Stenet the other day and they both kind of said that the business community needs to be out there making these kind of decisions because they're the ones losing the money and I don't want us to be setting up we're going to take these carts and take care of them and all that and then find that. And I think your ordinance doesn't do that. So I think the minister, I hope that we can get the business community, which I think very well, come up in the next couple years, an idea that watch how large companies are saving a lot of money by doing it the way they're doing. So I support the motion. Any additional questions? I would like to add my little bit to it. When you're instructing on a resolution, when we instruct the administration to reach out and work with local businesses, I think we probably need a little bit more detail there. What division is that? does that go to Commissioner Albright's area or does that go to the CAO Hamilton's area? Sorry, I believe the language on the slide says instruct. I believe my resolution is just to request the administration. I want to give them as much flexibility as possible. This is instructing. I apologize. That should say request. And I believe that when I just stated it, I am asking for a request. This is to give the administration the leeway to work with these partners to figure out how best to address it within their own structures. If we want to take a more formal approach, then an ordinance would be the way to go. But in this case, I figured something that was quick and easy to get relief to these companies was for us to ask the administration to work with them in order to try and solve this issue. Okay. Now I've got some questions. Council Member Bledsoe. Thank you, Chair. I thought you were going to keep going. I was just going to concur that I think request is one thing and strike to something different. And I think the administration was already working with the businesses, and I think you've highlighted an issue that we clearly have. We have it in Beaumont. We've had it in different neighborhoods where more people are riding buses, and they're taking carts out. They're using them to transport. They're leaving them wherever they go. It's an issue. It's going to be an urban issue. And I think the question is, how do we best administer oversight and accountability? And I think the administration is the appropriate place to handle some of those conversations. And I think they've been working hard to do so. If anything, this just maybe gives it a little more, you know, a little more awareness, a little more to say, hey, we care about this. This is something that we're formally saying is important to our community to look at. And we are just simply asking the administration to continue working on it and to do so maybe a little more, maybe having the approval of the council gives them a little bit more oomph to do so. And that's, I think, all I'm seeing in this effort. Thank you. Speaking to the motion, Council Member McCurron. Thank you, Chair. No, I'll agree with that same sentiment. I think there's an appetite from the council to see something done here. You brought this to the committee two previous times, and we all agree that this is an issue that is across the city and many of our districts at our stores and whatnot. My question or I guess more or less concern moving forward would be how we're going to be able to maintain it. And I understand we're requesting of the administration to look into this, and I appreciate that you're looking to move forward with the resolution, not necessarily the ordinance at this point in time. But I do think that that's a concern is either we're going to have to look into a new position that is focused solely on this moving forward in the future, or because code enforcement, if that's who's going to take the reins of this at this point, I don't think they have the manpower at this point, for lack of a better term, to doing so. So I hope that we can come up with a good resolution or an option coming forward. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. Can I ask Commissioner Albright or somebody to come up about who would be in charge? If the government had some sort of control over these carts, who would take care of them? Well, to date, we've had an employee within Environmental Services taking point on the shopping carts on public property. And I believe code enforcement tends to take the ones on private property. And if I were to call 311 and say that there's a shopping cart on my sidewalk or in front of a business, about how long would it take currently for someone to respond to that? On a public property, it should take 24 hours or so. Within 24 hours? And note it and then contract with someone. Depending, we do have a couple of relationships where we will call an employee or a contractor for the business to come get the cart. If it's still there, if not, we will contract with one of our litter contractors to come remove it. And so if we had some sort of policy that said that they had to be picked up and people could call in and they be returned to the businesses, do you feel like we currently have enough manpower to do that? Well, my hope is it would be, I guess, that we would work that person out of a job eventually. So it would be a burden, at least initially. And developing those partnerships and maintaining those partnerships would be part of that burden, really, as much of making sure we have the right contacts and that that person stays appropriate as businesses change or leadership changes, things like that. That would be as much a part of that person's job as actually monitoring the 311 calls. Okay. Thank you for that information. I guess I'm just a little hesitant about, I know I don't serve on this committee, but on this resolution, just because saying to continue having relationships and talking about this, I think that's been done. I think we have been talking about it. It's been an issue for years and years and years. So I would rather come up with a more clear solution. But that's all. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Maloney. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Albright, as of now, we're going to request that the administration look into it. But like today, I get one on the sidewalk. I call 311, and they'll probably give it to Environmental. Do you have the truck and the capacity to pick that up, and then do you take it to solid waste and throw it away for you? Is that how that works? Generally speaking, we'll ask one of our litter contractors to do that, and they'll put it on their truck that they're already going to the transfer station with rather than our employee being in the line at the transfer station repeatedly for a shopping cart or two. They are being hauled to the transfer station for disposal when we pick them up. So I want to continue on. Even code enforcement will have someone pick it up and they'll take it to the transfer station. I wouldn't want to speak for the code enforcement process. I don't want to ask you for them, I understand. Now, the gather quiz, can you recycle some of these things? I do not know. They're frequently not made out of recyclable material. Are there only pieces of them that are recyclable? So, I mean, you know, if you look at them, a lot of them are plastic or plastic coated. So we have not tried to pursue the metal. Like you don't know if they're recyclable. Can we? Right. I do not know if they are actually recycled. And I'm not trying to. But if we may want to have somebody look into that, if we can, I don't want to send it somewhere and get money for them or get some kind of payback. Right. Well, then as you know, our struggle would become finding someone who would do the recycling. We're not actually a recycling center. I got you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Could you restate the motion here? So I know, and is there a time frame that we want the administration to come back with a plan here? I don't have the language for me. There it is. Requesting the administration to reach out and work with local businesses to develop a policy for return or retrieval of abandoned shopping carts. And I'm agreeable in theory. I just I'd like to have kind of a time frame so we can move forward this because I think there's a there's an appetite to make some some changes with this. But we want to kind of, I think, move forward. Well, if we want to keep, again, the same flexibility of moving this out as an action, we can come back and discuss this again. And we can put that on the schedule to see how it's going and review it in the future. But right now, this would be a good first step to affirmatively show the community that we are looking for these partnerships and that we're going to step up our work towards those partnerships. and I think that in passing the resolution today, that would put us in a good position to have data to come back and look at in the future. Thank you, Chair. Okay, I think that kind of sums it up. I think if the motion passes here, we'll just keep it in committee, and as it runs out or the administration comes back to this committee, then we can address it again. Does that sound a correct answer? I think that works perfectly. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. We have a motion on the floor and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Like a sign? Okay. We have a resolution that's been passed and we thank you. Councilmember Klober. Thank you, Chair. Okay. On the agenda is items referred to committee. Does anybody want to address any of the items that are, I think it's on the last page, if you are sponsoring this particular item, or you have any questions on it? Just leave them all as is. Okay, I'll entertain a motion for adjournment. Motion adjourned. Second. We are adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.