Music ¶¶ Thank you. All right, good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. Pretend my voice is the gavel. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to call to order the January 17th, 2023 meeting of the General Government and Planning Committee. We actually have more than one item for this one, but the first thing we're going to do is call for nominations for chair. And we've been through this a couple times, so you all know how this goes. At this time, I will open the floor for nominations for chair. Council Member Jay Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I nominate Council Member Worley to be chair of planning and general government. So moved. Second. Second. We have a motion to nominate Council Member Worley from Council Member James Brown, seconded by Council Member Ellinger. Council Member Worley, are you willing to serve as committee chair if elected? Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you for the nomination, Council Member Brown. Yes, Vice Mayor, I am willing. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I will declare nominations closed and call for a vote. All those in favor of Council Member Worley being chair, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes without dissent. Congratulations, Council Member Worley, and you may now have the chair. Thank you very much, and my first act as chair. If she'll accept, I'd like to appoint Council Member Kathy Plowman as the vice chair. Yes, I will accept that nomination. Thank you, Council Member Plowman. Then our next item on the agenda is the November 15, 2022 General Government and Social Services Committee Summary. This is, as you all know, a former committee that now is half in this committee, half in Council Member Reynolds' committee with public safety and social services. So we've put this item in this committee for information purposes only. We're not going to go through this, and it'll be the same in the work session for the report out. Those items were generally just presentations. There were no action items taken in that November meeting. Similarly, the December 6, 2022 public planning and public safety meeting committee summary, same thing there. Half of that committee is here as planning and the public safety portion is in Council Member Reynolds' committee. So that is for information only. The next item on the agenda is the planning zoning ordinance text amendment 22-15. This is the intent ZODA. And we have Council Member Reynolds as the council member. Do you have anything you'd like to say to open this up? Okay, thank you. Then I'll turn it over to the planning staff. Mr. Woodall? That's not her. Yeah. Not her. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Council Members. My name is Chris Woodall. I'm the manager of long-range planning for the city. I'm going to be joined today by my colleague, Hal Bailey, from Planning Services. We're going to talk to you about the intent statements for zoning categories, zoning ordinance text amendment. So first, Hal's going to give you a lot of what this ordinance does and what it doesn't do, but what I'm going to do is give you a little bit of background and context for the discussion today. And first, we'll start with the three regulating and guiding documents that we have in Lexington for planning, and that's the comprehensive plan, the zoning ordinance, and then the subdivision regulations. So state statute requires that if a jurisdiction is going to exercise land use controls, that they've got to have a comprehensive plan or a vision for how they're going to exercise those controls. Here in Lexington, we've been doing this a long time, since 1931. So it's safe to say that we've been doing this a long time. And also, we take this exercise very seriously, as I'm sure you all will see, with the goals and objectives that will be on your desk here shortly as well. Our latest comprehensive plan is Imagine Lexington, and it sets out a roadmap for where we want to go for the next 20 years. It's our guiding document for how we want to do planning here in Lexington. We also have the zoning ordinance, which establishes our laws that regulate development of land within Lexington, what you can and cannot do with your property, and also our subdivision regulations, which is how land can be divided and some layout requirements as well. But I want to talk to you a little bit about our comprehensive plan, Imagine Lexington. It's a forward-looking plan that recognizes that we've got a lot of work left to do for future residents who are coming here, but also for the residents that exist here now today. And this plan looks for an equitable growth strategy that acknowledges our regulatory shortcomings. So I mentioned to you a second ago that state statute requires that you have a comp plan if you exercise land use controls, but it also requires you to update that plan every five years. Well, there's no such requirement for our regulations. And what you end up with are regulations that lag far behind where we've said we want to go as a community. So what the Planning Commission has done is adopt a strategy to intentionally review and revise these regulations to ensure that what we're seeing on the ground in development matches what we've said is a community that we want to be. So the text amendment that you see today is one of many text amendments that have already come before the council and will continue to come before the council during your tenure. And it's important to note that these are each part of a broad strategy. While they stand on their own as individual projects, each one is part of a bigger plan about how we want to further our comprehensive plan. And lastly, I'll say each of them undergo a significant research and development phase and also a thorough vetting as they move through the planning commission process. So I hope you'll reach out to us as these projects continue to come forward and if you all have any questions with that we'd be happy to answer them at any time as well as chris indicated there has been a significant amount of time that has been set on this zoning ordinance text amendment to the intense statement for the zoning ordinance with all text amendments from the 2018 comprehensive plan we really started our work in 2019. The specific intense section really began in 2021 and then ran through to our current readings today. There has been numerous Planning Commission meetings on this, both public hearings and public meetings. There was an initial outreach in July to neighborhood associations, and the staff had reached out to both neighborhood associations, interested neighborhood groups, and to many of the land use attorneys within our community to generate the text that you see here before you. The importance of the zoning ordinance intent is really to provide that connective tissue between the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance. The comprehensive plan allows for what we are going to do in the future, how things might change. The zoning ordinance brings that information of the recommendations of the comprehensive plan, provides an intent to that zone, what is the zone established to do, and then provides a bit of the purposes of that zone. It also reviews the contexts in which that zone might be appropriate. So why are we updating the zoning ordinance tax amendment statements? It is really down to three main issues. The first being the technical or the legal reasons. Currently within our zoning ordinance, we have a reference to the 2008 comprehensive plan and before. Our zoning ordinance was established in 1983. And as we have gone along, we've updated that. This text amendment would update it to match the policy-based plan that we established in 2013 with the comprehensive plan. Without this zoning ordinance text amendment, we are still referencing back to outdated comprehensive plans. There's also practical reasons. We want to make sure that our zoning ordinance is modern. We are looking at 2023 and beyond with our zoning ordinance, not the original adoption of the zoning ordinance in 1983. And then finally, transparency. There is a fair amount of transparency that is provided within these intense statements, specifically providing information for both developers in our community to say, is this appropriate zone for me to be in or to be requesting, or members from the public to look at their zone and say, well, is this appropriate for my property to be used in such a way? So what is being updated within this language? First thing, we are changing and matching all the starting statements of our zones to match. It is now going to say the intent of this zone is to do something. for each of the different zones. This is very important because we have added new zones as time has gone along, and there are some inconsistencies between those zones. We also want to make sure that we are modernizing our zones to match what is being built currently and what is being provided within the regulations of the zoning ordinance. It strengthens that connection between the comprehensive plan by connecting it to our modern policy-based plan rather than having it be connected to a land use map plan. And then finally, it provides that greater context. So within all of our staff reports for any zoning ordinance amendment, I'm sorry, a zone map amendment, we have this right here. So within a review, we review the place type, the context of it, the development type, what the applicant is seeking to do, and then the zone. What is the intent of the zone? Those three factors come together very importantly for a zoning map amendment or a zone change. As you can see, this is the current text that is recommended. Within the underlined areas, you can see that it references a density or a units per acre. We moved on from that in 2013 with our comprehensive plan when we shifted from that map-based plan to a policy-based plan. This is now reflected within a little bit more information that talks about the goals, objectives, policies, and development criteria of the comprehensive plan. So modernization. We're also providing a fair amount more contextual clues within our intents to make sure that we're getting the development that is appropriate for different areas. We are also modernizing three zone titles or the nomenclature for those zones. This is also to try to bring our zoning ordinance to 2023. rather than the 1983 established nomenclature. Those three are the two-family residential R2 zone, the high-density apartment R4 zone, and the high-rise apartment R5 zone. We are recommending a shift to these three nomenclatures, which match development types that have been adopted within the comprehensive plan. They are also very reflective of what we're seeing in our community. The R4 zone, we're not seeing the same type of high-density apartment developments. We're seeing a crescendo of uses from single-family detached homes all the way to apartments. So we are recommending that it is reflective of more of that medium-density residential. High-rise apartment, we don't have high-rise apartments outside of the downtown, with the exception of one along Nicholasville Road as you're going south. What we are seeing is a higher density of development. It does not allow for single-family detached housing to occur within the R5 zone. So what does this text do and what doesn't it do? What this does is it corrects references to the comprehensive plan. It updates some of our nomenclature to be as modern as possible. And then it creates a bit more of that context for the future. It does not change what people can do with their property. It does not allow any new uses within the zoning ordinance. Staff would recommend or would like to see this move forward as this allows us to continue a lot of the policies that have been promoted or those implementation items that have been promoted within the comprehensive plan. If you have any questions. Also, I'm sorry, the Planning Commission did recommend unanimously approval of this after their extensive review. You don't need to read through all this. It is in your packet, but there was substantial evidence provided for findings of approval to recommend approval for this moving forward. If you have any questions, both Chris and I are here to answer. Thank you. Thank you. First up, questions. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Chair. I just have a practical question, and maybe this is just a technical issue on my end. But in the continuation of the packet, for example, the page after questions, all of my current are blank. And then the proposed has text. As with the slides on page number 10 for us, modernization of zone title, my current were blank and then the proposed had language. So I'm not sure if I'm the only one experiencing that issue. That should be a technical issue. Within the presentation, we have all of the current and proposed also, if you would like to look at those. But we didn't feel that it would be a good part of your time to go through each one. We can provide paper copies after this meeting if you would like. We may just need an updated packet with both the current and the proposed language just so we can more accurately compare those side by side and and and i think that when we log in we're able to see it but i'm not sure if everybody had that full information when it was emailed out so i know it caused a little bit of confusion for me as i was going through the slides but thank thank you um apologies chair uh maybe that My packet is the same, so thanks for bringing that up. Councilmember Plumman. Thank you Chair, and thank you Mr. Batley and also Mr. Woodall for the presentation. I know a lot of work went into this, and I really liked how each one of the new ones talk about in accordance with the guide. I thought that was consistent and that's very good. The one question I had, I've sat on infill and redevelopment for the past six years. One of the things that keeps coming up is context sensitivity. Did that interplay in this at all, or how does that move forward? Because I think that's really important. So within a review of an intent statement, we don't want to add new regulation. This is not meant to regulate the zones in the same way. It's supposed to provide that connective tissue. So with a review of context of the property, whether it's limiting the size or increasing the size of something, that really plays into the part of the body of the text, the regulations that say you can and cannot do this. The zoning ordinance currently regulates within the infill and redevelopment area based off of the size of the lot so that individuals with smaller lots or nonconforming lots can work on that property. But this does not get into the context in the same way. So that detail would come later? Yes. If we were to look at the infill and redevelopment standards again, that would be a different zoning ordinance text amendment. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Plowman. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I know you guys have been working on this for a very, very long time, so thank you. I just had a quick question about making sure that whatever changes we're proposing now will easily translate to any potential changes we make in the comp plan going forward, because the last thing I want to do is change it now and then have to change it again and again and again. Yes, and that really plays into the part that this is a policy-based plan. We're not seeking to change the policy recommendations of development criteria, goals and objectives. It will fit within that language, and that is a major proponent of this change. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other Council Members that have questions on this item? I have a few myself. I'm sorry, Council Member Ellinger, please. Thank you, Chair. And it's my understanding we had first reading on this already, and then we put it in committee. and I think the big was we just wanted to have this discussion just to go through because we weren't quite 100% sure what was changing, and it looked like there could be some potential big changes, so we wanted to make sure we did this, and I appreciate you putting this packet together so we can feel more comfortable going forward, so thank you. Thank you. Any others? Council, there we go. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I also want to thank you all for doing this. I think that some of our residents have just been confused about the practicality of what these changes mean. And I still think that is a little murky for the public maybe to understand exactly. If you were to sum up, you know, how this plays out in neighborhoods, are you able to do that just a little bit? I would say that this provides more information in neighborhoods. It very clearly references the different zones. It makes sure that we're the same across each one and that individuals can understand what's appropriate in those locations. It does not change any uses or anything like that. It just provides greater context, especially during a zone change process. All too often for my zone change process, we talk about what's the appropriate things or the intent of that zone. This will help that. Thank you. And the intent is also not to prescribe a certain density or promote a certain zone, correct? It's just describing how, I guess, how we interact with them and how we use them. Correct. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Heil, for the presentation. Is this, so is there any time sensitivity to this? for some of us that just went off the packet and would like to compare the current intent to the proposed intent. I mean, are you looking for an action today or if we can get that information and keep this in committee and make a motion out of committee? We would love to see this move forward just as there isn't a substantial change that is being made to the zoning ordinance. But staff understands that you might want to have further review. We understand that. And making sure that you know exactly what the language is across all levels is important. Okay. Tracy, do you want to add? Yeah, I would like to add. Thank you, Mr. Bailey. It's absolutely possible for us to correct this. I think it's a PowerPoint issue probably, maybe animation or something, and get that to you before the committee reports out next month, if that's possible. Okay. Okay. I guess I'll just leave it up to council members and see what they think, or committee members. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, council member. So a couple points that you made that I think are very helpful here. One, a clear intent is helpful to a zone change applicant, one way or another. It's helpful, like the comprehensive plan is, to say the plan or the ordinance has kind of directed that this is what the type of development you'd like to see, and so this zone is appropriate, or as is the other justification, the existing zoning classification is inappropriate because you have said that you would prefer to see. I guess I'm not sure that I've seen. One thing that concerns me, and then this would go to my next question, is that there's not limiting or non-exclusive language in here that says things like, for example, or to include but not be limiting, that sort of language, because I don't want to see a situation that someone says only those items enumerated in the intent should be in that zone, because as we know, particularly with the R3, and I think also the R4 zone, you can have single family. Anything that's a lesser density within the zoning ordinance that fits that is available also. Yes, sir. And the intent in our dealings with both the Department of Law and the land use attorneys in town, there was a clear understanding that we did not want to have any shalls within the intent statements or the musts. But when it came to the uses therein, we really wanted to specify them in a full way in the regulations. So the intent would not limit any of the prohibited or allowable uses with any zone. That's where we want individuals to look for for uses or anything like that. This is really for that connection to lead people to the zone and to connect it back to the comprehensive plan. And my reading of it and my understanding of what your intent would be, I get that. I think that we ought to before, either whether this stays in committee for a while or whether it moves on before it's reported out next month, I'd like to get maybe a position from the law department about if the non-limiting language is not in there, are we putting ourselves in a position that we – because there is a way of statutory construction that says if a legislative body started listing things, they knew what they were listing, and if they stopped, then they didn't intend to include something else. So I want to make sure that we don't put ourselves in that sort of interpretive situation, and I'd like to get some input from the Department of Law before this is voted on one way or another. Also, and I'm not going to necessarily put you on the spot to answer this unless you know it or if there's a member of the Department of Law that can answer it. Similarly, is a statement of intent just like a comp plan, a guide but not a straitjacket? And that language actually comes from the Kentucky Court of Appeals. I think it's a Bowling Green case that says a comp plan is a guide, not a straitjacket. if by codifying this transition from the comp plan to the ordinance, by putting it in the ordinance, are we making it concrete or is this still intended to be a guide and a transition? That's another concern I have that I'd like to get some interpretive guidance on. We did work with the Department of Law as well as the other land use attorneys in the community to make sure that it was a guide and not a straitjacket. Thank you. If someone could, it could be by way of email or if we ask for another presentation, but I would like to have both those questions answered in the affirmative. I'm not saying that you don't know what you're, but I'd like to have them answered directly to me through an email. And then the last statement, I think this will go to Council's preference on moving this forward. By, I think, nobody's fault, the packet, we were unable to see a difference between the current intent statements and the new ones. And so I think as you supplement that, could you also perhaps redline where applicable in the new proposed? I know some of them seem to be kind of full-scale change. Some of them seem to be just adding a little bit so that we could see that. Because I appreciate you recognizing that we may not want to labor over every page, but some of us do and some of the public does. And I think some of the comments that we've received have been because the packet that was published, the public was not able to see that. So I think that that supplement would be helpful to us. So that's all I have. I would, if Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. I got a couple more questions. One of them is, I was always of the understanding that, like in an R3 zone, it doesn't exclude R1 single-family housing. Would the intent, if we updated the intent statement, would it have any impact on that in certain zones? No. The R3 zone is allowable to have anything from single-family detached up to multi-family apartments. It would not limit it in any way. The intent statement does not limit any aspect of the uses allowable in the zone. That would be a separate text amendment to either allow or disallow certain uses in the zone. So this is purely information and contextual information that connects to the comprehensive plan. Okay. And to Council Member Worley's point, and maybe it's the way he worded it, and I'm just looking for clarity. So updating the intent statements, I mean, does that, and also having a comprehensive plan, are they supposed to work in tandem with one another, or could we potentially put ourselves in a situation where the intent statement is a little more restrictive than the comprehensive plan, where they're both are acting as guides to the zoning? This is making a connection back to the comprehensive plan. It is not limiting the comprehensive plan. This is merely just trying to connect them for a zone change process. If you look at the language, it says, when established, it should review the comprehensive plan. And the only way to establish a zone is through a zone change process. Okay. Is there anything, I know we're working on the comp plan, and I know you guys always have a lot of things going. If we kept this in committee and brought it back next month and got some of these questions answered, Is there something out there that this would completely tie your hands on or limit you to move forward with? It doesn't limit us. It just means that we're still working with somewhat outdated information as we do our zone changes. Okay. Okay. All right. So with that, and I'm not going to make a motion. Personally, I would like to keep it in committee. If it's not going to hinder us on anything, get some of these questions answered and then move it out of committee then. That's just my preference. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Any other council members? Well, then I would, again, reiterate that my two questions I would like to have answered directly when you all are able to get with the law department and send that. And I think that some of the others have similar questions and updates to that packet would be appreciated. So I'll put it to the committee if there is a motion to move it forward or if there is an interest or consensus to keep this item in committee. I think this is one that we could keep to the top of the agenda. next time if the if the planning staff is able to answer these questions and then of course if we were satisfied at that time we could move to have it reported out at the same time so there wouldn't be any real delay but it also would give this committee more time not my not my not stating an opinion one way or another I'm just going through what the process could be so I put that to the committee Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate your proposal because I feel like it finds a middle ground for us to be able to have the option to report it out next month a little faster if we do have time to discuss in committee. I think there have been enough questions raised that we would like some more information before moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilmember Reynolds. I agree with Councilmember Sheehan. And the reason why I put this in committee was because of some concerns that were raised by the community. And I think we still have a few more questions. So I'd like your proposal as well. All right. If that is the consensus and hearing no motion, then we'll move on to the next item, which is the Civic Lex public comment proposal. And Council Member Sheehan, you are the steward of this, at least for purposes of the agenda. So if you'd like to lead us in. Thank you, Chair. So I want to acknowledge former Councilmember Lam's work on this proposal. This was originally her item, and I'm just bringing it forward today. Just so everyone has a little bit of the background on this, in early 2021, we engaged in a process to have Civic Lex, have a memorandum of understanding with us to work on evaluating our public input process. And so we engaged in that agreement and then they worked on collecting data not only from the public but also from those who work in LFUCG on how they thought that our public input process worked. They presented back to us a couple different times, most recently in April of 2022 to give us some preliminary results. and we have Richard Young here today from Civic Lex to give us a final update on this report. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. As Councilmember Xien introduced me, my name is Richard Young. I'm the Executive Director of Civic Lex. I think you all know Civic Lex, but if you don't, we are a nonprofit civic education organization here in Lexington that helps folks understand how city government works and how they can get involved with the complicated issues that are impacting our community. Before I jump in, I want to just do some thanks myself again to former Councilmember Susan Lamb, who was an incredible partner to work with on this, as well as CIO Aldona Valicenti. Thank you. They've been incredible partners to work with on this, and so just incredibly grateful for that. As well, Drs. Yulia Shibalkina and J.S. Butler and Alan Bartley, first two of which are professors at the Martin School for Public Policy at UK, and Alan Bartley is a professor of economics at Transylvania University. They've helped us design a lot of this process, the surveys, and all of the data collection mechanisms that went into making this happen. Also, to everyone in the council's office, thank you all. They've been incredible to work with and just wonderful, just incredibly generous with their time, and ideas for this process. So thank you all so much. As well as current and former council members that have provided a lot of input, surveyed city staff. We talked to 78 people in local government through a survey process, as well as public focus groups and the over 1,000 survey respondents from residents that live here in Lexington. The issue that we were sort of addressing is essentially this challenge in the public input on legislative items that are coming before council. Right now, the best ways for the public to provide input are to email you all, call you all, or to show up here generally at the 6 p.m. meeting on Thursdays to provide public input. And what this sort of sets up is some challenges, right? Because they're showing up at the tail end of the process in the Thursday night council meetings, it's sort of inopportune for them to actually effectively make input. it can be sort of confusing and underwhelming to show up here, give an impassioned speech, and then, you know, have a vote happen. That is already, there's a lot of sort of conversation decisions that you all have made that, you know, folks feel a little bit underwhelmed with their ability to provide input. And what we've seen in conversations with residents, and I'm sure this isn't any surprise to you, is that that process can also lead to mistrust and disempowerment. It's also not very good for council, right? It's sort of, if folks come here that Thursday night, council meeting right before something goes up before its second reading, it can derail months, years of work done by city staff, done by you all, after an incredibly lengthy process. It can be demoralizing to have something come all the way to the last minute to its second reading and have it sort of kicked back to the beginning again. And it's cost inefficient. It is a not financially sustainable thing, right? to have over and over again this process happening in staff time wasted, which costs taxpayers money. The background on this that Council Member Sheehan already reviewed, this started back in the fall of 2020 in conversations with Council Member Lamb. I had conversations with CIO Valicenti, talked with other folks inside the administration, and we brought it forth before the General Government and Social Services Committee in 2021. This is actually almost two years ago, around the week of that first conversation, so it's very exciting to be back here. The process for our research is pretty simple. The first phase is to survey the public on their perspectives on providing input for items that are coming before you all. The second phase was to sort of interview city staff on the same topic. And the third phase is to sort of find alignment between what these two groups think and what different folks inside the city think would be appropriate to address the sort of shared challenges between the first two groups. I'm going to run through this pretty quickly since we have done this presentation, parts of this presentation before. But we sort of created this public survey protocol after some focus groups with the folks at the University of Kentucky and Transy. That survey went out to Lexington residents. We heard from over 1,000 Lexington residents. We found that on average, most of the folks that responded to our survey were not very engaged with LFUCG, as you can see by the chart on the right. Of those that had engaged with the city before, we found that they were motivated to do so by issues facing their neighborhood, which should not be a surprise to any of you all, or an issue they care about. And so this is really helpful for understanding people's motivations. We also learned why people don't participate. And what we found is that respondents don't really know what items are being discussed by council, and some don't know how to participate. Some also reported that their opinion wouldn't make a difference in the final result, but we were encouraged that that was actually less than a third of people that responded. We also asked, how do residents currently participate? And what we found is that respondents directly engaged through governmental representatives through you all, essentially. That was their primary way. It was like emailing you or calling you or showing up to a meeting that you're holding. But we also found that a lot of people engaged in some form of direct action, be that protesting, letter writing, or petition signing. We also found that most residents do want to be more engaged with city government. 73% of respondents indicated a desire to be more engaged with you all. and over half thought that their current options for doing so were inadequate. How do they want to participate? We asked residents, sort of, what would make this process better? In an ideal world, how would you participate with local government? And what we found is that most people want public input, a way to provide public input outside of city meetings, and they want to have a better way to track items as they move through the legislative process. And what we found when people were asked to pick one of about ten options, we found that most of the sort of plurality of folks really wanted options to provide input virtually. So, like I said, we also interviewed city staff. But the first thing we did before we interviewed city staff was look at the legislative process. This comes from the Code of Ordinances. This is currently the only publicly available document that shows how legislation gets created inside city government. And this is a direct copy. It looks very pixelated, but that is sort of how it presents itself in the Code of Ordinances. So we made this sheet, which on here doesn't look very good, but I promise in the actual PDF looks great. But it is a really clear walkthrough with so many caveats of what all of those boxes are of how this process works. And I'm happy to send a sort of better version of this out to you all that doesn't get sort of strangely formatted by this PDF. So again, with the survey, same partners as part one. edits were made to our survey from the division of human resources CIO Valicenti worked with us to distribute this to commissioners directors and anyone else that regularly engages with the public we targeted 150 staff, we heard from 78 what we found is that city staff thinks it's very important for the public to be able to provide input on items going before council no city staff selected that it was unimportant or very unimportant, which was a really encouraging result and not surprising. LFUCG staff sees the current options for providing public input as only somewhat effective with most falling in the middle. And again, this is from 78 staff members, so it's by no means everyone in city government, but it is people that interact with the public the most, which we think were a really important sort of subgroup to survey. Of staff that are working on these sort of public facing issues, we found that public input frequently impacts their work. Staff are sort of split on whether current public input is productive. 26% say yes or say no, 22% say yes, and 52% are sort of in the middle. Staff doesn't think the public has a good understanding of its current options for providing input on legislative items. No respondents in city staff selected that the public understands their current options well or very well. This is a really, really interesting little bit of information for y'all that is sort of basically from residents. We looked at the sort of subgroups of what sort of what groups of residents, sort of what were the characteristics of residents that trusted the government more or less. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I just thought this would be some helpful information for you all. We also had a little bit of sort of additional data from LFUCG staff that we thought was really interesting. LFUCG staff who are more impacted by public input rate the current effectiveness lower. Staff who have had a better experience with public input rate the importance of that input higher. Divisions of departments most likely to be impacted from public input in our survey responses or EQPW planning in the mayor's office and 80 percent of city staff who had a bad experience with public input still say they want the public to be more involved with their work. We also found some discrepancies between what the staff thinks about the public and what the public thinks about local government. The public thinks they understand the process more than the staff thinks they understand it. And the sort of public thinking that their input won't matter is actually less of a concern to the public itself than it is to local government. We also asked LFUCG staff about when it would be helpful to actually receive public input on legislative items. And the clear trend is that the earlier the better. So second reading was actually ranked as the worst time to receive public input, followed by first reading. And then the best time was in committees, followed by work sessions. So that is what would be most helpful for them. It's also what would be most effective for the public. So this is pretty clear consensus across the surveyed focus group, or the surveyed staff inside local government. One more little thing, just this sort of just shows the discrepancy between the public and the staff on why they don't think people will engage. And we also asked the public and the staff about what options would improve how the public could provide input. What we found was virtual input and outside of these traditional meeting structures was the best, according to the staff. were also highly ranked by the public. I'm not going to read these quotes, but these are some quotes from the open response section that we heard from city staff, and I think we're happy to provide you with all of them, but this is more or less a representative selection of them. And what we got from these quotes was that the process isn't very good, and it's leaving people feeling disempowered, and there needs to be more educational resources for folks on how to actually participate. So after all of this, we have talked with different folks inside local government and are coming to you today with recommendations for improving this process. They fall down into three buckets, process changes, technology changes, and education resources. And what we're asking today is that these recommendations are going to take some consideration and some deliberation, and that today is the sort of start of a process. We know that these aren't all going to be implemented tomorrow. So the first one is moving public comment for items on the agenda to the beginning of meetings. One thing we heard in open response from residents is that they show up and they could wait around for hours and be forced to give public comment at the end of the meetings. We also heard from folks on council and in local government that maybe not all of public comment was appropriate at the beginning of meetings. So what we're recommending is that public comment for items on the agenda be moved to the beginning of meetings. We're also recommending that public comment be allowed on all meetings, public-facing meetings of the council, the council committee, work session, Thursday night council meetings, and committee of the whole. As would probably not be surprising to you all, there aren't a whole lot of people showing up to give comments in committee meetings and work sessions, but again, what we found, according to staff, is that that is the best time for people to provide their comments. And so while we understand that it will add time, there are a lot of considerations to think about, we do think it's important that the public knows that when there's a council meeting, that they can show up and that they can express their opinion on items that are on the agenda. It'll just make it a lot clearer for folks that they can participate whenever the council is meeting. Another recommendation that may be a little bit out there, but it's one we're actually really excited about, and is something that's sort of borne out in the data, sort of came out of that process, is the idea of actually holding specific meetings that are designated for public education and public input that are outside of City Hall. So there are a lot of cities that do this. We've looked at Fort Worth and Denver as two sort of examples where they actually have meetings that are just for public comment and just for public education. And it's really an opportunity to help provide a lot more information to the public and provide a better structure for actually receiving feedback than when you are trying to do your business in chambers. I will also say that sort of an interesting opportunity here is actually to move it out around the districts. There are 12 months in the year, 12 council districts could be kind of fun. And the last one in our process recommendations, which is sort of the biggest one in here, is looking at what it would look like to actually change when meetings are to better incorporate public input. So what we're sort of recommending in here is that you all consider moving work sessions to the evening. Committee meetings, we've heard from a lot of folks on council and in local government that this is an important time for you all to do deliberation. And so maybe committee meetings aren't the best meetings to direct people to to provide input. But we know from the data that Thursday nights are also not the best night to recommend folks show up to provide input. And so what we think could be an interesting option is actually to direct people to the work session. And in order to make that an option for people, moving that towards an evening time and potentially shifting council meetings, the traditional Thursday night meetings, into the daytime. The second group of recommendations is in technology. So we think there's a real opportunity to utilize just quick stopgap measures to provide options for virtual public input. But even something as simple as a form stack on a website for high-impact legislation that you all are considering could be an option. And relatively easy to implement. Another one is providing additional options for on-the-record virtual comment in public meetings. Cities all across the country are doing this. The National League of Cities. Mr. James. I'm hitting my time. I hate to interrupt you, but you've run out of time. About how long do you think you need to? Three minutes. You don't restrict yourself. Five minutes. Okay. Can I get a motion? I make a motion for five additional minutes. Thank you. Any objections? All right, five additional minutes. Thank you. We'll see if I can do it in three. Put on a timer for me. So provide additional options for, on the record, virtual public comments. So people don't actually have to show up here, right? Cities all across the country have options to send in email comments. They get entered into the record. Provide feedback on a website. Record a voicemail. but record a video message and actually send those in and have those things entered into the public record. The last recommendation in our technology section is looking at user-friendly technologies that allow for legislative tracking and public input. There are really robust technologies that allow people to follow along the legislative process and provide input as it's happening. My favorite thing to compare this to is the Domino's Pizza Tracker. When you order a pizza and you can see when it's coming in, there are some really great systems that allow this. The last bucket of our recommendations are all around education. The first one is providing a public guide to LFUCG's legislative process. We have made one. It was made with input from a variety of folks inside LFUCG. You all can have it. But just having this posted somewhere publicly so that residents can understand the process. Creating online resources that explain actually how to give public comment. Because right now, there's not a good explanation of how to actually give public comment in council meeting. What happens when you show up here? What's the best way to give a comment? What do you all want to hear? What are you all going to, how, you know, how does the process actually work? There's not a whole lot of information for this. We think it would be really helpful. Creating resources that could be at the back of the chamber for folks that may be coming in to provide a comment. Maybe there's a document with a QR code that has the sort of rules that you all have to follow, that you can't respond to people, that you can't react to people, that link to the agenda and to the presentations. creating resources that can help residents understand what issues are being discussed by the council in a given week there's a lot of information that's out there sometimes it's hard for people to find it and so just creating better ways for that information to get delivered to folks and this is sort of my favorite one in the education category and that's to provide just a more friendly user experience when people come to city hall right there's a really great example in this website clip over here to the right in Boston, where they work with several universities in town to actually have it as an internship, to have greeters, kind of like when you go to Walmart, at the front of City Hall. When you come in, that can direct people around. I've also seen there are some other cities that use folks that are retired that may want to come in and just, you know, be a friendly greeter to put a really positive face on local government when you walk in. So moving forward, on our side, We are going to submit a formal report to you all. The report that you all have is more or less the final draft, a couple more tweaks. All of our survey data is going to be anonymized and made public. We would be happy to provide support in advancing any of these recommendations. Like I said, we want this to be the start of a process. Obviously, I don't even know if any of these recommendations are easy to implement right now, but we think that we would love to see this as the sort of start of a process. One last thing, I think, is that all of these recommendations really tie together. The education resources on their own aren't going to work if the public still shows up and doesn't know it and participate. And if the process changes aren't going to work without more education around it. The technology changes aren't going to work without more education. We really need all three of these types. So that's it. Last thing I will say is that just a couple weeks ago, the city of Lexington was named as the first Our Common Purpose city by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We are the first city in the country that is being tapped by this really prestigious national institution founded by John Adams and John Hancock to advance recommendations to build a healthier democracy. And the recommendations that we adopted as a city, or one of the two, is to expand the public's ability to participate in local government. And I think this is a really excellent opportunity to go ahead and get started on that. So thank you all so much, and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you very much. Council members, are there any questions, comments? Council member Lynch. Richard, thank you so much for our very thorough presentation. I'm appreciative of Civic Lex and all of the work that you all do to make our democracy in Lexington better. As I was reviewing the presentation, I could feel and hear and the public apathy of their abilities to be involved in the legislative process. Do you think the educational recommendations you make will help to shift that apathy that's existing right now? I think so. I mean, obviously, these are issues that we work on a lot at Civic Locks. And I think what we've found throughout our work over the past five years is that when the public understands how to get involved and engaged, that starts this sort of cycle, this virtuous cycle, right, where people get engaged, and then because they see that engagement working, they want to get more engaged. And what we're stuck in right now is the sort of opposite of that, right, where people don't engage, so they're apathetic, so the decisions that are being made don't entirely reflect their priorities, so they get more apathetic. And we think this is a really exciting opportunity to sort of turn that around and get the public feeling good about participating in local government again. And I think in a time of like really complex and nasty national politics, the ability to do this here locally, to get people the opportunity to engage in the things that really shape the communities that they live in in a really wholesome and productive way, I think is really exciting. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Richard, for your presentation. Like Council Member Lynch said, you know, your all's hard work is evident, and we are so thankful for your involvement with us. I don't think there's anyone that's sitting up here that doesn't want our public to feel more engaged and more educated in this process. I'd say many of us, before we took our positions, probably felt the exact same way, and that was one of the reasons why we got involved to begin with. So can you tell me what your all's overall community reach is in general, just how many people sign up for your newsletter, things like that? Sure. Yeah. So Civic Lex annually engages tens of thousands of Lexington residents across the city. As you all may recall from on the table process, we have a pretty good ability to reach residents in their homes, in their places of business, and sort of help them understand how these processes work. Our newsletter, the Civic Lex Weekly, which some of you all may receive, went out this morning, first time this year, goes to thousands of folks across the city. And we hear a lot of really positive feedback about how it helps folks understand what's going on in a pretty clear and consistent way here in Lexington. For this survey in particular, we reached over 1,000 folks in Lexington and feel pretty good about that reach for a survey of this scale. And so this survey went out to your typical distribution list, or it was a targeted approach? No, we had a pretty broad approach. So we did flyers all across town. We took out pretty considerable paid social media ads to get outside of Civic Lexus' typical networks. We also communicated with all the council members and asked you all to send it out in your newsletters, send it out through various community groups. We talked with neighborhood associations. We offered paid prizes for people that participated in the survey. And I think what's actually pretty reflected in the survey data is that the folks that we heard from aren't actually our audience, right? They're folks that aren't really that engaged at the moment. They're folks that maybe have never engaged before, have engaged once or twice, but aren't doing it anymore for some reason, but want to be more engaged. That was definitely something that stood out to me was that they typically weren't very engaged, but yet they felt the opportunity. I think it was those prizes really got them. Note to self. Offer prizes. Okay, I think there's just a lot of questions surrounding this whole issue, and I think we probably need to dig into it a little bit more, and this is a great set of first recommendations on things that we can think about and kind of a springboard for further conversation. So I think some of my colleagues may have some ideas, but I'll leave it there for right now. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Richard, for all of this work and for your whole team and everyone from the staff who participated in this. I appreciate all the time and effort. I would like to dig into the technology piece a little bit more, and maybe CIO Valicente, I see you back there. It might be helpful to have you come and help with this question. but I was wondering about what the typical process would look like for adopting new technology or what some of the options might be for this work, particularly for the legislation tracking, but then also the virtual input piece, because it seems like there's a lot of interest in that. So let me just give you a little bit of background. I'd say that probably with the onset of the pandemic and the fact that it was much more restrictive to citizen input into actually physically showing up someplace, technology really took off. And there are probably at least a dozen providers now that have various, let me call them solutions or packages of solutions, that allow us then to have input into the process. And now I'm talking about the actual process of creating ordinances, the legislative process, et cetera. So you could do that remotely without necessarily showing up. I'll just cite one example. For instance, one piece of software was actually developed in Australia, of all places, where even before the pandemic, the issue was distance. People couldn't show up because it was too far to go. That particular solution has now been bought, and it's been bought by one of the vendors that we use, Granicus. But just one solution. So there's many, many solutions now which cities are implementing as a suite of various modules with one of them being an input. Now I think that the recommendations that were made have an opportunity for us to kind of say, all right, what is it that we can start or begin with? The education process is always one that is good because it eventually is going to serve us well no matter what we do. The other one is that, you know, things like emails, et cetera. Remember the Zoom meetings? We had some good ones. We had not so good ones where we had an awful lot of comment that was either unnecessary or actually extremely, extremely upsetting. But I think that what we need to do then is to sit down and say, all right, what is it we want to do first? What is it we want to do second? And then what is it that we can do in parallel? We can always look for some solutions in parallel to see what might be possible. But I think that there are some things that can be done. Time of meetings, that's something that you probably will need to address. Is there a better way to do that? How do we reach the audience, the people that actually took the surveys, and want to get better engaged? So I would suggest that I will be happy to do what we can do from our end, from a technology end. But I think that there are other process kinds of things that you may want to discuss. Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes. And I would, well, particularly for the ability to track a piece of legislation going through our process and then also being able to give input at the different stages. I think a virtual option would be very useful for us. So I would, based on the conversation that we have and how that goes, I personally would like to see maybe a proposal or recommendations come back from you on cost and then what things might work best with the systems that we use currently. We can certainly do some surveying. In fact, I've got a meeting already set up with our vendor, Granite Casino, which has done Legistar for many, many years for us. They're the ones that actually bought that piece of software from Australia. It's called Bang the Table. And in a lot of ways, it's extremely visual title to that software. But anyway, and maybe it'll take me a couple of weeks to actually assign someone to help me do this. But anyway, I'll be happy to come back. Thank you. Another piece that I would like to see related to technology is I know in, I believe it's in our planning commission meetings. I feel like I've seen this in our zone change meetings where we will actually enter things into the public record. So if we have maybe an email set up that's for all the feedback that it comes to or if we have these virtual options, I would like us to see some acknowledgement of this online feedback. So maybe officially putting it into the public record during our meetings when we start to discuss a topic so people know that the feedback has been received and is now an official document. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. And our council administrator is, I think, trying to jump in here. You may have something to add. So we met with Richard a few weeks ago while you guys were on break to talk about some of this, too. And even since then, like, things are ever evolving. So just a couple of things that are moving in this direction of some of these recommendations. I have been working with, well, I started the groundwork to work with Nick Brock to set up a form sack on our website that will go into each committee. You could drop down your committee. You could drop down the items in committee and comment specifically on those that we can compile and send to you all. It's very early. I have gone into it as much as can we do this? So we're looking into that. And then I didn't want to throw Chris under the bus, but I told him I was going to. There are some updates being done in the chamber that will allow us to have virtual public comment. It won't happen until you guys are on break because we need a pretty good amount of time with no meetings in here to do that because there's some wearing and stuff and he i'm sure can tell you a whole lot more about it than i can other than it's been ordered so thank you all right thank you stacy and uh while he's had uh ample opportunity to speak uh up to this point uh uh we'll be running most meetings and not get the opportunity to be recognized so it's a pleasure uh to first recognize the first time in the chamber vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Appreciate that. Thank you, Richard, and your team for all the very thorough work that you all do, and I really do appreciate it. I might have to call our Council Administrator back up. I have kind of a question that bounces off of Council Member Sheehan's question. It is about the technology. I personally love the idea of expanding the range of possibilities for us to give public comments, So whether that is email, recorded videos, things like that. My question is more of a either legal slash charter slash council rules kind of question. Are we limited in any way as to what the form of that input has to take? Are there codified rules that say it has to be in person or somebody has to read it or it can't just be in writing, that sort of thing? I am going to turn this over to Michael Cravens. He's on my look of help, please. You are not necessarily limited in terms of how you receive public comment. You can receive it via email. You can receive it. And there's lots of ways, as we've talked about, that you receive public comment. You get into some open meetings issues when you start touching on how you all are actually holding the meeting. But in terms of the actual submission of comments, I'm happy to take a look. but I'm not aware of anything that would limit your ability to receive input in different forms legally. So to follow up with that, there's receiving and then there's also how it's presented. So can it, you know, can we as council members read those comments? Do they have to be read by sort of a third party? You know what I mean? Like all those kind of things. I mean, I'm shooting from the hip here, but my sense is if you're going to do, depending on what the issue is, you might want to just think about how you would accept it in the public record rather than necessarily reading every single comment that you receive or reading the feedback you get. And that may be partially a technological issue. I'm not aware there's a legal restriction in terms of... I think it would go more to how you draft your council rules as to how you formalize that if you decide to formalize that. So that's something that we're happy to work with you all on if you're interested in pursuing that. Thank you. And Stacey, you said you're not aware of this particular issue being tackled by council rules. Is that right? No, the only reference in council rules is to the amount of time and yielding of time for public comment. It doesn't go into any other details other than that. It doesn't go into any, like, electronic receipt. during COVID when we would have people submit comment we were compiling those and I know they are kept with the work session packets and the work or the docket for the meetings those are two official meetings that we keep forever so those were attached to those meeting agendas so going you know 10 years forward if someone asked we could pull that and have it as part of the record but we didn't read any of it or anything like that into the record great thank you Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Chair, and Richard and Civic Lex, thank you for this. It's long overdue and we really need to do something. I think what I see all this, to me, the main issue is education on issues. I don't think folks know what's going on down here, so we've really got to. And I think in the presentation it talks about our website. Quite honestly, I would say 99.5% of folks in our community do not know how to get to the Lexington government website. So I would like to see a full-fledged marketing campaign and look at other outlets for outreach so that the issues are front and center. So many times an issue will come up, one person might find out about it, kind of get the troops going, but it's still a small percentage of folks. To me, that is so key, to educate, well, this is coming up. It's got to come up and they got to be interested or they're not going to give us feedback. They're not going to come down here. They're not going to do emails. So I think, again, to really look at a strong marketing plan for education in our community about issues is really key. But appreciate all your work on this. I can't wait to see where it goes from here. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for recognizing me even though I'm not on the committee. Richard, great job. I just have a quick question. On your website, this is kind of what you guys do. You're responsible, you call out public engagement as your thing. Is it easier for you as an independent agency, you think, to get feedback and to kind of develop a feedback mechanism on your own that becomes kind of part of our process? Or do you think it's our responsibility to do a better job with it? I think I would say that it's all of our responsibilities, right? Like, I think that having a really clear and understandable feedback mechanism inside, for the local government to move things into council I think would be really helpful. I think we are always willing to work with the city to help gather input. We did with this, we did with On the Table, we've done it several other times before. And I think that it is just a really great example of what can happen with a public-private partnership. But in terms of us serving as any sort of official collection vehicle, I think that's great on a project-by-project thing. And again, I'm happy to work with that, but I think systematically, or systemically, I think it is sort of the city's responsibility to gather that information. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much, Richard, for putting this together and your dedication and Civic Lex dedication to this project for a long time. And I do think to echo Councilmember Plowman, this is way overdue and that I look forward, hopefully, to take some action on some of these things. I think it's really important that we expand the public's access to us and to what we're talking about, what we're working on in public comment. I'm especially impressed with the diagram about how legislation is created by the council. It did turn out well in our packet. And I, in general, really appreciate the way you all put materials together. They're very easy to read. They're eye-catching. And I do wish we could adopt something like this on our website. And I don't think it would be that hard to add something like this in a prominent place so that people know where to go. Sometimes people text me and they say, wait, is this on the agenda? How do I find the agenda? How do I watch? What do I do? And I think it would be nice to just have several steps of this is how you engage, these are the rules of public comment, and this is the process that the government is going through to make legislation. So I think we're going to look at some of these things in more depth, but I just wanted to echo that I especially appreciate that and hope that we can make some changes to our website. So thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Richard, and thank you to everybody who's been involved. This is a huge undertaking, it's taken a lot of work, and you brought forward a lot of worthy ideas. Many of which I really believe that we could move forward with some more information and with some more intentionality. I think that many of us could agree on the fact that we want people to feel empowered and to have input at key points in the process so that we can understand what questions they have and their thoughts. And I think that the suggestions that you've outlined in today's presentation provide a really clear starting point for what that could look like and what changes could occur, practically speaking. As I'm listening to my colleagues and thinking about what you presented, I mean, we have a number of details to sort through in terms of like the use of technology, more effective use of technology, what's available, what would it cost. The better implementation as council member Reynolds just said of design on our own website. And our sign in process, our timing. And I think that we want to implement these new practices smoothly and with proper outreach and educational resources. I would like to suggest a work group to help us do that. And I know that you put on the last page of your presentation that Civic Lex would be happy to be in a support role for moving forward with any of these recommendations and I know Ms. Maynard and our CIO have a lot of really valuable information as well. And I'm wondering, Chair, if that's something you'd be willing to consider as we determine our scope of work in relation to the CIOs, in relation to Civic Lexus. So, yes, absolutely. I think that's a fantastic recommendation. I think there's a lot of great stuff in that proposal. I think there are a lot of other issues that need to be considered along with that. And so I would be more than happy to appoint a subcommittee, or perhaps I'll work with the Department of Law and figure out exactly, because there are certain stakeholders that we may be one of a part of that that are not council members and members of the committee. So a subcommittee may not be the appropriate way. Perhaps it would be a task force or work group, and the extent to me as chair versus asking the vice mayor to establish how we do that. But am I hearing that we might have a chair of that work group or subcommittee? Yes, I'd be glad to serve as a chair. and to gauge other council members interests i know council member she and technically has this in committee right now so i know there are others who have expressed curiosity about being involved with sorting through the specifics so i'd be glad to chair if that would be the will of our committee the council members of the committee would get us consensus that that's how we'd like to proceed and that uh council member lagree and i and vice mayor should get together and figure out the best way to proceed with that and and uh and either appoint a subcommittee or task force or work group. All right, well, thank you. Well, I'll commit to do that. Thank you, Council Member. Are there any other Council Members who'd like to speak on this issue or have questions? All right, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all so much. So let's move to our back page of our packet then. The next item is items referred to committee. And we don't often get a chance to actually address this. And being our first meeting and a new council, then I think we have a good opportunity to clean some of this up and get some direction. So the first item is the Civic Lex public comment proposal. So we've agreed to establish a subcommittee or work group. And this is still listed as referred by Council Member Lamb. I think Council Member Sheehan is the designee on this now. So if we could get that updated. and then perhaps recognize Council Member Legree as the chair or the head of that particular work group. The next item that was one of Council Member Lamb's items is diversifying hiring and promotional opportunities within LFUCG. Do we know where we stand on that and do we have anybody that's willing to take that on and serve as the shepherd of that item? So this is one of the ones that came from general government. Having not served on that committee, I don't know exactly what this item is, though the title of it certainly sounds like a valuable endeavor for this committee. But it will need somebody to take it on. Chair, I'm not signing up to take it on, but I think when we get the remainder of the study that's going to come from that consultant that's looking at the equity piece of the payroll study, I think that may address some of those issues that may be the intent of why this got put in committee. I understand. Well, then let's do this. It seems like maybe some people may not know what it is, be willing to jump on. Let's just leave it for now, and we'll find a new council member to take that on moving forward. let's see council member Reynolds your item number three would you like to keep that in the committee I just mostly had that in committee still about the update to the website then the translation to the languages and I haven't gotten an update on that am I allowed to ask right now if you can or let's just keep it in committee and we'll work we'll work through that okay it'll just be quick Yeah, let's go. All right. Thank you. That's fine. All right. All right. Study of a consent agenda process for council meetings. Council Member Plowman, I see that that's in progress, so I assume you want to keep that in committee? Yes, Chair, I do. Thank you. Item number five was Council Member Bledsoe's review of regulations and guidance for redistricting. She placed that in after our last redistricting and some concerns on that. Do we have someone wanting to take that on? I'd be happy to take it on, but I'm pretty sure that, huh? I think we can take it out because we've finished that work. Yeah, it shows that the item was completed November 15th, so. Moved or removed? So I moved, okay, there you go, second. All right, there were enough in there. I'm going to say that Council Member Baxter moved, Council Member Ellinger seconded. All those in favor to remove this item, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, an item that was referred from the Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee, was division and program review. I think that's more of a continuing, that should probably be more in our annual and periodic updates, wouldn't you think, as opposed to an ongoing committee item? Is everybody agree with that? Let's see, review of neighborhood access and traffic calming measures, Councilmember Baxter, would you like to keep that in the committee? Yes, Chair. Thank you. Short-term Reynolds, Council Member James Brown. I'm going to look at Council Member Sheehan. I think March may be a good time to see if we can't get that on the agenda. Let's try that. Yeah, we recently had a lengthy special meeting for public comment on that. So while maybe that's still fresh in our mind, we try to get that back. All right. recommendations for ensuring continuous operations for shared use past sidewalks and bike lanes. Council Member Ellinger? Keep it in. We're doing the complete streets, and we can keep it in for now. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Kloiber placed in the committee a review of, this says enchantments, I think it means enhancements, though it could be enchantment. I don't know which way the typo went. review of enhancements to the PDR program that will allow for public access to farmland. Does anyone want to take that over, or do we have a motion to remove? Chair, I'd like to make a motion to remove that. There were quite a few challenges, roadblocks on that, because the federal government would not come in and do a match. All right, we have a motion to remove. Is there a second? Second. I have a second. All those in favor to remove this item from the committee, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Next, Council Member McCurne had an item, Mass Transit and Regional Zones. I have to admit, despite that probably having been in the planning committee, I don't know exactly what that was. Does anybody recall what that is? Council Member Brown? Chair, I was going to ask anybody. Was Council Member McCurne working with anybody in the planning department on this issue? Is anybody planning familiar with this? No. Okay. All right, I'll make a motion to remove. We have a motion removed. Do I have a second? I have a motion to second. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Let that item be removed. Council Member Reynolds, examine ways to evenly distribute social service facilities in neighborhoods. It looks like that was just put in mid-year. I assume you want to keep that in? Yes, I would. Yeah, I'm still working on it. I'm not exactly sure what the presentation might be different than I originally thought, but it might take a little while to get it together. We'll keep it there. You let us know when you're ready. Okay, thank you. Council Member Plowman, assessment of Lexington's African-American hamlets and historic preservation of their heritage. I know we recently had a small presentation on this, but there seemed to be more work to do on that. We've got a lot of activity going on that right now. That's great. We'll leave that item. Another item that Council Member Kern placed in committee, how to communicate with broad groups of diverse people again sounds like a great statement don't know exactly what this was my suggestion chair would be to maybe include that with our work group on public comment so i move to remove it let's uh let's consider that as part of the work for the public comment group um and then we have a motion and a second on this uh that'd be council member black you've got the mo you got it right uh let's just all those in favor say aye Aye. Opposed? That item will be removed and really merged with another item. Council Member Sheehan, you have in here to examine opportunities to relocate programming and initiatives from the mayor's office to other relevant divisions within LFUCG. We can keep that in. This came out of our budget process last time about some programs start in the mayor's office, but then once they get on their feet, they get allocated to other divisions. so I would leave that in for now. I think that'd be good to get some education on that for folks. All right also Councilmember Sheehan is a charter review. You already took on a lot of Councilmember Lamb's stuff didn't you? This one was mine and so was the other one. The charter review process we are working there is a very delineated and specific legal process that we have to use based on the charter so we are working on confirming that but we'll bring that information back. That sounds great. Thank you. We'll keep that. And then Council Member Plowman, a study of conditional use permits and related zone text amendments in the rural service area. You just placed this in the very last meeting of the year, so I assume you'll want to keep this in. I want to keep that. We'll keep that. All right. For annual and periodic updates, Council Member Lamb, and this was a budget item, has the Explorium, PSA, requirements, achievements, additional funding. I, having served on the budget link that some of this discussion initially started several years ago, do we feel satisfied with where we are with the Explorium and what they've reported to us, or does this need to stay on as a continuing item, and is someone willing to take it on as theirs? I'll make a motion to remove. We have a motion, a second to remove. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That item will be removed. um council member maloney had an annual update about the bluegrass area development district do we have anybody willing to take that on or a motion i move to remove motion in a second um by vice mayor woo uh all those in favor say aye opposed that item will be removed and for the for folks watching that don't know or or for new members any of these items that have been removed it's it would be anybody's prerogative to make a motion to put these back in or the vice mayor has the prerogative to place items without motion into committee so if any of these come up as issues that we need to address in the future we're not abandoning any of these reviews or these items we're just trying to be as efficient as possible councilmember lamb had an item Lexington global engagement center global Lex as just an annual review we have someone willing to take that on? I am. Council member Reynolds? Yes. Thank you. Council member Brown has an annual PDR review reviewed by ordinance and required by ordinance excuse me so we have to do that are you still the one to spearhead that council member? I think my name was on it because I was the chair at the time so I think well yeah you can feel free to put my name on there then. Vice Mayor Kay had an item follow-up from Infill Redevelopment Committee regarding council-sponsored rezoning and resolution. Vice Mayor Wu, I know I've seen an email from you asking about the folks that are interested in continuing on with that. Is that something that you would like to just shift from Vice Mayor Kay to you, or would you like for somebody else to be the leader of that, at least right now? Yeah, I'm okay with wrapping that into infill redevelopment for our next meeting in February. I'm kind of asking for just updates and reviews on all the things that have been worked on in the last couple of years, so we can fold that in with us. Okay, thank you. Council Member Fred Brown placed into this committee an expanded public hearing notification pilot program. Council Member? That was come out of general government, which I was on that committee, but I'm not on this present committee, but I have no problem of taking that off, but I can't make the motion. All right. Is anyone willing to make the motion for Council Member Brown? Council Member Brown. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger, is there a second? Second. Council Member Plowman, having a motion of second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Let's remove that item. Thank you. Council Member Plowman, along with the Budget Committee of the Whole, placed an annual or periodic review of the Lexington History Museum. And I don't know the last time that we heard this, but I know there's been significant changes in the Lexington History Museum. I'd like to keep that on there for an annual presentation. There's a lot going on right now. I think we need to be in the loop on it. Yeah, thank you. Well, and I would like to get an update. I know the new executive director will do a fantastic job, and then obviously the sad passing of Foster Ackerman, who's led that group for a long time. All right, so that item will stay. There's a subcommittee for electronic billboards. Council Member Plowman put this item in, but Council Member Kern actually was the chair of that subcommittee. Vice Mayor Wu and I have discussed this and what we decided if there's no objection to the committee is that I would, as the chair, get some interest from those of you that would be interested in serving on that committee, reestablish the committee and let it move forward from there as opposed to just one of us jumping on and taking that on. Is everybody comfortable with that? So we'll shoot an email out and ask who has particular interest in that and we'll reestablish that committee. I think it had made some progress but really had been delayed a long time for some litigation. So it might be worth just picking that up fresh. All right, so those are all the items referred to committee. What time is it? 2.23. We have some people that are, a few people signed up for public comment. And so before, I am going to recognize them to speak, but I want to address that issue. So particularly in light of the fact that we are establishing a group to holistically look at public comment, I generally intend to follow the default position in committees that we don't take public comment in the committee. That's not on our published agendas, and it has never been our custom to take public comment in committee, though we have, because of several different items over the years, made motions to amend the agenda and to change our rules. So I do want to recognize these people, and I'll say, when I say that I'm not going to recognize these folks, public comment is incredibly important. Local government is the closest to the people of all forms of government, and that relationship should be reciprocal. And hearing from the public is very important. But we hear from the public a lot of different ways and a lot of different times, and we have to balance the business of the council, practically what kind of times we have, the time constraints of this meeting. We had only two actual agenda items, and we've taken almost an hour and a half for this meeting. So we have to balance all that. So I think the way that we're going to balance that is through this work group and a holistic change. But, you know, I think just like the intense Zoda, we got a letter from Mr. Gaffield and the neighborhood council. We got several e-mails and calls from constituents. So our constituents communicate with us a lot of ways other than just public comment at the podium, while that is an incredibly valued medium. So I preface all that by way of saying those that have signed up, I'm going to recognize you because it's the first full meeting of this council year, first meeting with a new chair. It will not be this chair's general practice to allow for public comment in the normal committee time until such time as we amend or change our rules to affect that. But that being said, and I'm only saying that by notice for future meetings. So that people, we've had a lot of inconsistent application of this rule and inconsistent expectations from the public. And that leaves us all walking out of these meetings feeling a loss. And I don't want that. So for the future, those that know, it will not be the general practice to have public comment during this committee. And we'll direct that comment to work sessions. And we'll try to be very clear about when something is going to be reported out. and that sort of thing. That being said, we are going to recognize these individuals who've come here today. Council Member Reynolds, if you have something on that. Yes, thank you, Chair. I just have a question. I know we're going to work on this, but currently, do our council rules say currently that it's up to the chair? So as chair, each of us is going to choose individually. Is that correct? I just want to make sure. So the council rules currently only reference public comment in regards to the work session and the council meeting, and those are the two meetings where it is on the agenda. I can't say never, but I've been here almost 12 years, and it's not been listed as a separate committee item in our standing committees. But as Council Member Worley said, there are times if there's an item that they will suspend the rules to allow people to speak. But it's not referenced, related to committees in the council rules. Okay, so it has been kind of inconsistent. Yes, ma'am. I just want to make sure, while we're in this in-between, before we review things and possibly change things, what we should do in the meantime. So, thank you, Chair. And thank you, and as a follow-up to that, it's those published agendas that is part of the reason why I'm taking this position. Because those published agendas are there not only to set our agenda and for our efficiency and our work, but to give the public notice of what should be expected at the meeting. so that's why that will be my general practice that being said and I hate that the first public comment that I'm going to announce I'm going to butcher a name but I'm having trouble with the writing is it Paula Singer thank you Ms. Singer next is Billy Mallory who says that she's going to yield her time to Amy Clark is that right Billy I'm still in my time to Amy Clark Well, I can see that Ms. Clark is there, and I wrote her name down, so thanks, Ms. Mallory. Ms. Clark, you would have six minutes. I believe action was taken in this committee either to keep it in committee or rather to keep it on the docket for second reading. And it wasn't clear to me which. I was here, but I didn't understand. It was to keep the item in committee. Okay, so the committee will have further deliberations before a report or advice goes to council to forward it? Is that the inference? Okay, thank you. This may then not be the time and place to offer comments, but I'm not sure when it is. It's clear that for the intents for the urban zones, they are critical in zone change decisions, judging whether a zone is suitable or not. And they also guide ZODA decisions. And it's clear, actually, from the findings for approval that are in the council packet forwarding the ZODA to you. The findings say that these amended intents will offer greater transparency as to the purpose of zones. There will be a foundation for future tax amendments. Those are ZODA. and they can implement place builder, which includes criteria for zone change applications. Talking about ensuring development compliance with the comp plan, I would say rather whether something's in agreement or not, compliance, I find too strong a word, and that's the findings that you can find in the council file as docketed. I'm going to just give you my last and final, the bottom line, I would advise that before this goes forward, you shorten the sentence, this zone should be established in accordance with the goals, objectives, policies, and development criteria of the comprehensive plan. It's sufficient to say it should be established in accordance with the comprehensive plan. If those are elements of it, you don't need to call them out individually. In fact, less is more. I would also suggest that, And that's in nearly every intent. I would also suggest that you remove the additional reference to adopted plans and studies that should go into the establishment of several zones. If they are adopted, they are part of the comp plan. If they're not, then they don't belong there. And I'm going to jump one. remove major collectors as what appears to be this zone shall be located fronting on, this, that, and the other, and it includes major collectors. And I want to show you a map of those. Okay, the major collectors are the green roads. It's adding a huge amount of possible roadway for B3 highly intensive highway service businesses like car lots and buy right drives through without restriction, have a look at B3 and see if you want it on these green roads in your district, see if that's what your council members would want. The locational standard employed here, or maybe it's just guidance in an intent that would be farther to a locational standard later introduced in the body of the zone, is really a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel, it's more like a hatchet. for example, putting B3 on major collectors. It's actually not getting away from a map-based plan. It's just substituting a really clumsy map. And I would urge that you remove from R1 and R2 the sentence, this zone may be used for zero lot line houses, patio houses, and other compact housing types. The reason for that is this, that R1 and R2 are, if it's in the ordinance, you can go and get a building permit, and if you comply with the ordinance, you've got it. And I think that needs to be in plan development, and it's already in R3, which gives a good place for it. And finally, I'm very concerned about R2, and that red are the R2 places. It's a very small zone. It only has 6,000-some properties in it. Many of them are in our older, our very vulnerable neighborhoods, high rental occupancy. And what it does is it gives the land greater value for redevelopment, which to my mind is an incentive for displacement of fairly vulnerable residents, usually tenants today. So I would urge that our two zoning remain duplex zoning. There are some homeowners there. It's a cheaper and easier way to own a home. There are also a lot, a lot of renters. And to say you can use this land to cut it into pieces that are townhouse size and then build up to a sixplex or townhouses on it. Now, here's the issue. If you're going to do that, you need an amendment to R2 as a zone, and I think it should include the intent. I think it's premature to amend the intent of the zone for what's termed low-density residential development, mixed residential development, to amend the intent, what the zone is intended for, before you actually amend the zone as a whole and submit that to public discussion. I would say in general, the intense ZODA lacks metrics, especially in the area of residential density. It's very curious because the zones are still named low, medium, and high density, and that's carried through as a foundation of the place builder development types, low, medium, and high density, and I think there's a medium high. So to say that a zone is intended for that density without saying either a range of units per acre or as the KRS suggests, FAR is a good measure of that. But some real metric to say if it is medium density or intensity, it has so much floor space relative to the land, that kind of thing. I can't watch the time, and you probably can't either. Is it up? Yes, your time is up. Thank you very much. All right. I thank you for admitting a measure of public comment. We used to have. Thank you, Ms. Clark. All right, that would be all that we have on the agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you.