# Special Committee of the Whole - April 19, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 19, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5800 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5800?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-04-19 - **Last revised**: April 19, 2023 - **Length**: 16,099 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council Special Committee of the Whole convened on April 19, 2023, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM in the Council Chamber on the 2nd Floor of the Government Center, with Vice Mayor Dan Wu presiding. The meeting focused entirely on informational presentations regarding the 2045 Comprehensive Plan Update, with three agenda items covering recommended goals and objectives, review themes, and next steps for the planning process. No formal votes were taken during this special committee session, and no public comments were heard. The meeting served as a working session for council members to receive updates and discuss the comprehensive plan development without taking formal legislative action. ## Attendance All council members were present for the April 19, 2023 meeting. **Present:** • Vice Mayor Dan Wu • Councilmember David Sevigny • Councilmember James Brown • Councilmember Fred Brown • Councilmember Gray • Councilmember Fogle • Councilmember Plomin • Councilmember Monarrez • Councilmember Worley • Councilmember Lynch • Councilmember Baxter • Councilmember Sheehan **Absent:** None **Late:** None ## Contested Items The April 19, 2023 meeting featured two significant areas of disagreement among councilmembers during policy discussions. **Housing Density and Infill Development** Councilmembers engaged in a heated discussion regarding the city's approach to increasing housing density. The primary disagreement centered on whether to emphasize infill and redevelopment within existing neighborhoods versus expanding the urban service boundary to accommodate new development. Several councilmembers raised concerns about anticipated neighborhood opposition to infill projects, questioning the feasibility of pursuing density increases in established residential areas. The debate highlighted tensions between growth management principles and practical implementation challenges, though no specific resolution or vote outcome was documented in the available materials. **Equitable Development and Antiracist Policies** A second contentious discussion emerged around the implementation of antiracist land use policies designed to address historical segregation patterns. Councilmembers sought specific clarification on how these policy goals would translate into practical, actionable measures. The debate reflected broader questions about the city's commitment to equitable development and the mechanisms needed to achieve stated antiracist objectives in land use planning. Multiple councilmembers participated in this discussion, expressing the need for concrete implementation strategies rather than aspirational language, though the specific positions of individual council members and any resulting decisions were not detailed in the source materials. Both contested items remained unresolved based on the available information, suggesting these discussions may continue in future meetings as the city works to address complex housing and equity challenges. *Note: Specific transcript timestamps were not available in the provided source materials.* ## 2045 Comprehensive Plan Update, Recommended Goals and Objectives Overview and Presentation [timestamp: 00:00] Planning staff presented an overview of the recommended goals and objectives for the 2045 Comprehensive Plan update during this informational presentation. Chris Woodall served as the key speaker for this agenda item. The presentation covered several major themes that will guide the city's development over the next two decades. Staff outlined recommendations focused on housing density strategies, emphasizing approaches to accommodate population growth while maintaining community character. The presentation addressed infill and redevelopment opportunities, highlighting how the city can maximize existing infrastructure and promote sustainable growth patterns. Environmental protection emerged as another central theme in the recommended goals and objectives. The planning staff discussed strategies to preserve natural resources and integrate environmental considerations into future development decisions. Equitable development was also emphasized as a key component of the comprehensive plan update. The presentation outlined objectives aimed at ensuring that growth and development benefits are distributed fairly across different communities and demographic groups within the city. This agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, allowing staff to provide council members and the public with a comprehensive overview of the planning framework that will guide the city's development through 2045. The presentation served to introduce the recommended goals and objectives before more detailed discussions and potential adoption in future meetings. The comprehensive plan update represents a significant planning effort that will establish the policy foundation for land use, transportation, housing, and economic development decisions over the next 20-plus years. ## Review Themes [timestamp: 01:00] The committee conducted a comprehensive discussion of various themes included in the comprehensive plan during this agenda item. Chris Woodall presented the themes to the committee, covering three primary areas: housing, environmental sustainability, and economic development. The discussion focused on examining specific goals and objectives within each theme area. Committee members engaged in detailed questioning about the proposed approaches and implementation strategies. **Key Discussion Points:** • Housing affordability emerged as a significant topic of inquiry • Infrastructure considerations were raised in relation to the overall planning themes • Environmental sustainability measures were reviewed as part of the comprehensive approach • Economic development strategies were examined for their alignment with community goals Councilmember James Brown and Councilmember Gray actively participated in the discussion, raising questions about specific aspects of the themes and their practical implementation. The councilmembers sought clarification on how the various goals and objectives would be achieved and measured. The conversation covered the interconnected nature of the three main themes, with particular attention paid to how housing, environmental, and economic considerations would work together in the comprehensive plan framework. This agenda item served an informational purpose, allowing committee members to thoroughly review and understand the thematic structure of the comprehensive plan. The discussion provided an opportunity for elected officials to ask detailed questions and gain clarity on the proposed direction before moving forward with further planning processes. The review process enabled committee members to better understand the scope and focus areas that would guide future community development and policy decisions. ## Next Steps The committee discussed the upcoming process for reviewing and potentially amending the comprehensive plan's goals and objectives [timestamp: 02:00]. Vice Mayor Dan Wu outlined the framework for how future meetings would be structured to systematically address the plan's various components. The discussion focused on establishing a clear methodology for examining specific themes and objectives within the comprehensive plan. The committee agreed that subsequent meetings would continue this review process, with each session dedicated to particular aspects of the plan to ensure thorough consideration of all elements. Vice Mayor Dan Wu emphasized the importance of maintaining a structured approach to the review process, indicating that the committee would work through the comprehensive plan's goals and objectives in an organized manner. This systematic review would allow for detailed examination of each component while ensuring that all relevant themes receive appropriate attention. The committee determined that future meetings would build upon the foundation established in this session, with continued focus on the comprehensive plan's various objectives. This approach would enable the committee to maintain momentum while providing adequate time for thorough discussion of each element under consideration. The outcome of this agenda item was informational, serving to establish the procedural framework for upcoming meetings rather than making specific decisions about plan amendments. The discussion provided clarity on how the committee would proceed with its review responsibilities and set expectations for the continued examination of the comprehensive plan's goals and objectives in future sessions. --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Let's get the show on the road. Thank you all for coming. Calling to order this special committee of the whole on the comprehensive plan goals and objectives. This is going to be the first of four meetings, four special committees of the whole. The way I would like to structure these meetings is we're going to start today off with a comp plan update from planning staff, along with the recommended goals and objectives, an overview. And then we would like to go through basically theme by theme. There are, I believe, five themes, A through F. Is that six? That's six themes. A through F, and then try to knock out a couple of themes per meeting if we can. But we'll kind of play it by ear and see how far we get to move this thing along. So let us go ahead and get started with the planning staff's presentation with Chris Woodall. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Council members, good to be with you this morning. Good morning. I'm happy to be talking to you all about the Planning Commission's recommendation on Imagine Lexington 2045, which is our comprehensive plan. And as you all know, our comprehensive plan is required to be updated every five years. The Planning Commission makes a recommendation on these goals and objectives, which are the big picture direction setting for the rest of the comprehensive plan, and that recommendation comes to you all. And then you all have a 90-day time period with which to consider those and to adopt those as the final goals and objectives. And the Planning Commission will then create the rest of the elements and implementation, basically the strategy for how to implement those goals and objectives after the goals and objectives have been approved by you all in their final form. So I want to talk to you all first about Imagine Lexington, which was adopted in 2018. And you may notice that this time it's not Imagine Lexington 2023, it's rather Imagine Lexington 2045. And what we did here was make a specific strategic change here to let everybody understand that the comprehensive plan, though it's updated every five years, that's really just a calibration of the plan. We're trying to calibrate our plan every five years to make sure that it's still relevant, it's still viable, but it is really for the next 20 plus years. So we kind of rounded to a nice number here of 2045 and saying, indicating that we are looking forward into the future as we grow and develop, which is what a comprehensive plan is supposed to do. But before we move on from Imagine Lexington 2018, I want to let you all know that there was emphasis in the 18 plan on a number of items that continue to be important in the recommendation of the Planning Commission here in the goals and objectives for the 25 plan. A couple of these are corridor redevelopment. That continues to be important as we anticipate further shifts in our retail landscape. We knew that this was happening as goods and services are more provided through online means now than traditional brick and mortar. And we've seen that just be exacerbated by the pandemic as well. Also, improving our transit infrastructure along our corridors is important in determining the compatible land uses in those corridors and how we can allow them to provide for our growth needs as we carry on. Also, prioritizing infill and redevelopment. It's providing pathways for more housing opportunities, focusing on our redevelopment, again, going back to our emphasis on the corridors, but also looking for other ways to include adaptive reuse potential. place making making sure that our development is creating inspiring quality public and private spaces encouraging these spaces to be well designed well intentioned and then making sure that the development that occurs results in community instead of just more buildings so it actually becomes a place economic development continues to be important enhancing the quality of life for existing and prospective residents to our community and then expanding our capacity for jobs and research through the cold stream and the legacy business park the cold stream land swap that occurred concurrently with the 2018 plan and now the legacy business park the 200 acres and the 50 acres of available land right now and then the urban and rural balance continuing to be important in this plan as it was every plan since 1958 and then maintaining the current urban service boundary while improving and creating a new process for how we create these land use decisions regarding the urban service area but also maintaining you know the unique agricultural areas in the ag economy that we have while providing ample growth and opportunities for the evolution of our city and then of course public engagement was a tenant a core piece of the 2018 comprehensive plan we had unprecedented public input into that plan and that carries forward here as well as well as finding new ways to engage with the community as we vision and figure out what we want to be as we continue to grow and then updating and modernizing our regulations we've seen several examples you all have approved for our updated regulations to improve housing affordability and availability improving quality of life so those continued updating and modernization of the regulations are really important i say this every time our Our comprehensive plan is required by state law to be updated every five years, but there's no such statute that says that our regulations need to be. So we sort of lag behind in our regulations, and we're playing catch-up on some of that in order to meet our goals. So, again, that is where we were at in the 2018 plan. A lot of those things continuing to carry forward. I want to talk to you a little bit about the staff process and the planning commission process for the goals and objectives. We had such a big change and rewrite of the plan in 2018 and a lot of public input and engagement. So really this was intended to be an update to that plan. And we wanted to limit the proposed changes to the goals and objectives to only the areas that had a specific need. You know, the public input that we engaged in, what did we hear from that, our research, but also the events of the last five years. And I think everyone can agree that we've had an event for the last five years. So for the goals and objective inputs, we always consider a number of things. The public input report that we have included on the table some organizational input, some meetings with the divisions. I'll explain a little bit more in detail about that. But also we looked at census data, national, regional, local planning trends, best practices across the country. And then the Sustainable Growth Task Force Existing Conditions Report was a wealth of information as well as the Planning Commission was considering these goals and objectives. So again, the events of the last five years, the Mayor's Commission for Racial Justice and Equality had a lot of really important recommendations that we're trying to incorporate into these goals and objectives. the Neighborhoods and Transition Task Force. There was a council resolution on housing, a memo from the Infill and Redevelopment Steering Committee. Again, all things that were considered. So we started this process last year in January of 2022, talking to the Planning Commission, and from there we kind of set the stage for some of that and had our data and trends open house in March and from there in the spring we had our public input that included again a number of of inputs. We had our goals and objectives draft in June and those were continued to be discussed through July. Then there was a series of goal four work group updates that happened and then in January we finalized the goals and objectives at a planning commission work session and then February 16th there was a planning commission hearing and ultimately the recommendation was approved on the 23rd at a continuation of that hearing. So talking about the public input process that went into this again the public input report included on the table which was a huge undertaking that was done through partnership with Civic Lex and we engaged thousands of people from across the community. This time it was a little bit more intentionally focused than it was in 2018 to ask questions that are specific to the comprehensive plan, each of the themes. And what you can see here, I'll zoom in in a second at the specific topics that were talked about, but there was a wide variety of issues that were discussed throughout the public input phase. And each of those colors represents the theme in which that topic was discussed. And so you can see that there was a lot of overlap between each of the themes and the questions and Civic Lex and planning staff worked diligently to try and tag each of those comments as they came in and say, okay, now what are we talking about here? What is each of these talking about? And we found a lot of overlap. But the main codes that came to the forefront was walkability, bikeability, and accessibility was something that was incredibly important, followed closely behind with public transportation. And again, I should say that these were just an indication that these were being talked about, right? So for example, in public transportation, it might be that we really like the bus system, or it might be we need the bus system to do more, or it's not working for us, or our walkability. I love our trails, or our trails are substandard. We need more sidewalks, that sort of thing. So really what we're getting at here is these are the things and the topics that were discussed by the public, and these are the things that are important to them. So also, in addition to reaching out to the thousands of folks, the general population, to talk through the on-the-table process, we partnered with Commerce Lexington. They hosted a bunch of roundtable events, and they hosted those by development sector. They had kind of development and building industry, the major employers, small businesses. They had a host of different groups that they considered and that they worked with. And what they found was that there are some challenges and there are some positives, right? So we have a highly educated workforce. We've got a good location. There's a strong chamber. Our downtown seems to be thriving, and all these things were noted as positives. But also we heard, and this is sort of nationally as well, that employee attraction and retention is challenging at the moment. There's issues to transportation and housing and child care. All of these things were listed as challenges. So in addition to talking to the external sources, we also talked to our internal folks as well. Oh, excuse me, we talked with organizations, civic organizations across the community. So what we did is we made ourselves available. We had slots that people could book if they wanted to speak to the planning staff and tell us what's on their mind. and give us some materials to give directly to the Planning Commission. We had 30 slots that were available in March, and we had about, I believe it's about 10, 9 or 10 organizations that participated. And they ranged from neighborhood groups to folks that were focused on the environment. We heard from several folks, the Kentucky Tenants Association, which is a new group that we hadn't heard from up until this point related to the comprehensive planning process so we heard a lot of good information from them and then of course our data analysis and collection was incredibly important as we were trying to create the recommendations for the planning commission and they considered again all of these things from the range of sources that we talked about and we also talked to our divisions as well and had them give us some feedback from inside LFUCG, some things that we needed to consider as well. So taking all of these things into account and working with the Planning Commission, discussing those at the work session, there are really two key themes that came out as far as changes that they felt were necessary to the existing goals and objectives from 2018. And those changes revolved around equity and they revolved around the environment. So it's about acknowledging and working to correct the inequities that exist in our planning practices and policies. Our American Institute of Certified Planners, Code of Ethics, also instructs that we do such. And the mayor's social justice and equality report also said that that was important as well. And on the environment side, we heard from a number of people during the public input that the environment was important, that climate change was something that we needed to respond to. So really this was about identifying and mitigating the local impacts to climate change and the environmental issues that we see. We heard from several environmentally focused groups that we hadn't heard from before, and the Planning Commission was really focused on this issue as well and pushed for these changes and recommendations. So on the equity piece, it's about neighborhood enhancements. It's about equitable development, anti-segregationist policies going back to historic planning policies nationwide and here locally, housing affordability challenges, community benefits. All of these things were incredibly important and are baked into the goals and objectives that you have already received. And then the environment, again, looking at green infrastructure, how can we handle our storm water in different ways, our street trees, our urban canopy, mitigation for, again, for these environmental issues, greenhouse gas emissions, recycling. Again, important topics that came from our planning commission, the public, and from our research as well. so again we'll kind of i'll just walk through each of the themes and and give you the high level overview i know the vice mayor had said that you all will kind of go through theme by theme and talk through the specific changes that were made so i'm just going to cover the broad strokes and then of course we'll be able to answer any questions that you all have after that but the mission statement again those were just minor changes that were made we wanted to include an equity component and issue and add a wording about public health but not major changes that were made there but there were some big changes in theme a we wanted to explicitly call out infill and redevelopment and update the list of incentive programs that we have we wanted to talk more about parks greenways and recreational facilities as being some of our focus areas and then perhaps the most significant important change was with goal five in theme a and the new objectives that came with it this was again to implement the mayor's report on social justice and equality and it was acknowledging and mitigating the historic segregation and providing walkable and transit accessible neighborhoods for everybody in our community improve improving our housing affordability issues, investing in areas that have seen historic disinvestment that have been perhaps ignored and ensure that those investments that we make in those areas are benefiting the residents that live in those areas. It supports the mayor's report's call for improving enforcement outcomes through code enforcement and ensuring that they're better protecting our at-risk homeowners and renters, setting language to support our affordable housing, capital A affordable housing programs that we have, and then perhaps most importantly ensuring that our zoning regulations are achieving the goals and objectives that we've set out for equitable and affordable housing and building on as I said those regulation changes that Imagine Lexington has called for and has been working towards for the last five years. So these recommendations in theme B, most of them come pretty much directly from our environmental services folks. We talked with them, I mentioned that we worked with our our internal people to figure out how can we best support the work that they are doing. So admittedly our previous goals lacked some specificity and so broad improvements have been made to specifically address the needs related to stormwater improvements and sewer infrastructure and to improve our water quality protect our environmentally sensitive areas and as well to ensure adequate infrastructure for our growth hey chris can i interrupt you for just a second i'm sorry um i want to make sure everybody up here council members have a copy of this presentation do folks who we do not okay do we have um either digitally to put on our screens excuse me or um physical presentation copies for all the council members up here working on it okay all right we're working on it okay so we're going to get that up i think it's for for some folks it's a little hard harder to follow without the um Sure, I apologize about that. Yeah. Let's just pause for just a second. And let me run down what I think we're going to do once the presentation is done in terms of how we're going to tackle the themes and the items real quick. And I want to get a little bit of input from you all to see if that works for you. The way I've envisioned it is once Mr. Woodall finishes the presentation, we can ask him some general questions about what he's gone over, and then we can start hitting the themes and the goals kind of line by line or item by item. We have a red line copy of the Planning Commission's recommendations, so we can go through that. And the way I've envisioned it is that if people have particular changes that they want to make on any of these items, we can discuss it, we can make a motion to make a particular line change or language change. We vote on that, and then that gets added to, I'm going to call it a blue line. I don't even know if that's a thing, but I want to distinguish it from this red line version. So I'm going to say if we, you know, let's say change the word ensure to promote and everybody votes on it and it gets approved, then Stacy will add that to our blue line version, which is our council edits, and then that gets added. And then at the very end of this whole process, we vote on the entire thing as amended. Does that make sense to everybody? Do we have any issues or objections with that? Go ahead. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just have one question. At the end, could we do just like an overall review? Because I think sometimes in the moment we might not have a change, but at the end when we have the whole thing before us, we might have some slight modifications we want to make. So at the end, I would just ask for a whole complete review. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a good idea that we can make sure we see the forest for the trees, as it were. Are you all good with, since we are in the chamber, let's go ahead and do our usual sign in process to speak, just to make things a little more organized and clean, I think. Council Member Savigny? Yeah, so do you plan, thank you, Chair. Can we also pause the clock for Chris or give him a few more minutes on there? Go ahead. So is it my understanding, do you plan to just say, hey, at this point, At this point, is there any wording changes that you guys would like to alter, or do you want us to do them as we're thinking of them? Let's kind of, I think we'll figure that out as soon as we get a couple lines in. All right. Thank you. And we'll play it by ear to see what makes the most sense. Thank you, Chair. To run it efficiently. I'm, as you all probably know, I like to run a tight meeting and want to get us done within the four meetings if we can. and we have a lot to go over, especially if we're hitting line by line. All right, how are we looking on copies right now? Excuse me. I think we're trying to get them on the screens, is that right? Or on our? Okay, perfect. Okay, Council Member Gray? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Question. So, just to clarify, as we go on, if we have questions, we can push the button to speak, right, and ask that question. May I ask Chris a question now, or are we totally on pause right now? Let's pause and let Chris finish his presentation, and then we can pepper him with questions at the end. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. All right, so let's wait until we get up on our screen so we can follow along. So thanks for bringing that to my attention. Actually, while we're waiting, Ms. Sargent, I believe we have some guests in the house. If you want to come up to the podium and tell us about them, we'd love to recognize and welcome them. So thank you, Vice Mayor. Yes, we have welcomed to our city, for they've been here this is the third day now, a group from Jeju City, South Korea. We have the mayor, and this is his secretary and interpreter. So they're here to discuss some future possibilities with Lexington. They're from the horse area in South Korea, and we have many similarities between our two cities. And so we're here to, we're meeting with the mayor at 11 to just talk about friendships and partnerships for the future. So would you like to say a few words? Welcome. Thank you. I'm not really good at speaking English. so he's going to speak in Korean. That's okay. We don't speak Korean, so you're good. I'm the mayor of Jeju City, South Korea, and my name is Byung-sam Kang. Nice to meet you. It's a beautiful island in Korea. But in Korea, we're growing a lot of words in the world. We want to share a lot of the Lexington city with Lexington. In a year, in a year, and also, in a year, in a year, like Lexington. So we have several similarities. So based on the similarities, I wish our friendship will be more deeper. We are only spending three days in Lexington, but I really express my gratitude to the Lexington people for the warm welcoming. And then very thanks to let me speak in the council. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Welcome, Mayor. My name is Dan Bu. I'm the Vice Mayor of Lexington, and this is our city council. So you are very welcome here, and I think we call ourselves the horse capital of the world, but we don't want to compete and we don't have to fight over it. But you are very welcome and we appreciate you all being a sister city with us. If you all would like, would you like to come up here to the front and we'll take a group picture together? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. But if I do, I guess I'll do it. Thank you very much. That was a very fun little surprise. And I really appreciate this sort of level of civic engagement that we have with other folks from around the country and around the world as well. Let's see, how are we looking on? It's printing now and it's as emailed. Okay, so we're printing as we speak, so. Does anybody else have questions in terms of what our process is looking like? And I think just to clarify, they are not from an official sister city, so we'll call them a cousin. And the only Korean I speak is for ordering in restaurants, so it wasn't helpful today. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take a quick five minute recess to wait for the paperwork. Thank you. The End Thank you. piano plays softly Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, looks like we're getting our paperwork situated. Thank you all for your patience. Let's go ahead and come back into session if we could, please. All right, all council members up here, we have the presentations, yes? Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you all for your patience, and thanks to Kay Sargent for that accidental, a very fun little recess that we had greeting the mayor from Korea. Okay, let's see. I think the clock is back on. Mr. Woodall, continue, please. Thank you. All right, so I'm going to start again at the beginning. Just kidding. I appreciate y'all's patience with me on that, and I hope everybody's got the information they need. So we'll keep plowing right ahead on talking about theme B. So again, we talked with our environmental services folks to make sure we had the best information we could to support them in the work that they are doing, the very good work that they're doing. And our goal that we had and our objectives lacked some specificity that they thought we could improve upon and was in line with the public input that we heard and what we heard from our civic groups that came as well. So we've improved, you know, specific, we've addressed some additional specificity related to stormwater and infrastructure needs, improving our water quality, protecting our environmentally sensitive areas, ensuring that we've got adequate infrastructure for growth. And then this is a first for comprehensive planning in Lexington where the community is specifically calling out the need to address climate change and the issues that are associated with that at a local policy level. Again, the public, that was something that we heard loud and clear from the public, from the Planning Commission as well. Let's see. Okay, so I think that covers the majority. We also, there's a focus on improving the government coordination between the different various groups who are involved in the environment, improving the environment and environmental equity, and making sure that those groups are talking to each other and making sure that we're doing the coordination that we need. So in theme C, where we're talking about economic development, creating jobs and prosperity, this really emphasizes workforce education and development. It also adds an equity component and improves language related to opportunities for small businesses and for startups. And the new goal specifically furthers one of the pillars of this plan, which is prosperity within our comprehensive plan framework. It identifies ways to improve economic mobility, socioeconomic and health issues across the community. And so three new objectives within this section address access to financing and home ownership, food and social services. So in theme D, we specifically addressed enhancing options for those without access to vehicles or those who choose not to drive, addressing pedestrian safety within our neighborhoods. That was a big topic of conversation that we heard. We also simplified language on how to meet some of our urban design goals that provide a safe and accessible development for our community as it continues to grow. And then taking a proactive look at electric vehicles and what it means for providing infrastructure for this emerging technology. And then a focus on monitoring the outcomes of our newly passed parking regulations as well. so theme e which is the urban and rural balance we've included equitable sustainability as a goal as we continue to grow and develop within our urban service area we need that growth to be equitably sustainable also is responding to the planning commission feedback to include local food production and ag tech as important components of our agricultural economy and then finally theme f which is implementation these objectives are about broadening the scope of our public engagement past two comprehensive plans have really been about broadening the umbrella of who's involved in this comprehensive plan and trying to make sure that it's more inclusive and so some of our regulation changes some of our procedural changes have been specifically about that as well. So we're continuing that through theme F here in the comprehensive plan, also recognizing that we have a new process for receiving annual data updates, and then the new objective C makes it explicit that we need to update our regulations. Again, another call to update our regulations to implement the other goals and objectives that are found throughout this plan. And with that, our team here planning, all of us will be able to answer any questions that you all might have on this. Thank you. All right, thank you, Mr. Woodall, appreciate that. I'm going to open up the floor for kind of general overview questions as regards to the presentation. We can get more specific as we start drilling down and this whole team is going to be here through the whole process to walk us through. Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Chris, so I think when we met earlier in the week that I asked you a question about the definitions. If there was an area that defines certain things, because I saw, I've read numerous times this packet. Affordability. I would like to know the definition that the writers of this have with certain words because it's kind of abstract. And it depends on what's affordable. What I think of affordability or what's affordable may not be the same what someone else thinks. And I think for our population that we need to be more concrete with what we're saying. Is that a possibility? Just internally? So this is a conversation that we have often when we're discussing housing affordability. There's the broad housing affordability that applies across the board, and then there's capital A affordability that is talking about specific requirements for being eligible for affordable housing projects and providing housing that is actually affordable for those who are below the poverty level as well. So, for example, in theme A, goal 5, it talks about existing housing affordability for low and middle income housing. So there it's kind of talking about, you know, more of an umbrella. But then when it talks about innovative programs in Objective E, where it's talking about the Affordable Housing Fund, Community Land Trust, and those sorts of things, Where it's talking about affordable housing there, it's really talking about capital A affordable housing projects and developments there. Is there a way to just make it more clear for, we're in the weeds with this and we read this repeatedly, but I want to make sure that our comp plan can be easily digested by our population. Does that make sense? Sure. So I would, I mean, of course, we would be open to amendments that you all might have. I think, for example, in goal five, objective E, where it's talking about subsidizing affordable housing, you could put in, you know, AMI numbers in there that might make it a little bit more clear that you're talking about that with those programs in particular. And then perhaps when you're talking about more umbrella affordability, you don't have those specific numbers in there. Would that be something that would be helpful? Yes, that's what I believe so. And also with the word, when we say low income, are we always using the federal definition of what low income is? I believe, yes, we would be referring to the federal definition there. Okay. And lastly, and underrepresented. That was another wording or word that I was like, what does that mean from those who wrote, who put this together? I would say, you know, historically we have not been able to hear from folks. The underrepresented populations are those who are, you know, may not be able to attend meetings, may not be able to be as specifically involved in the formal processes that we historically have. So it would be broadening, again, broadening the umbrella and looking for additional ways to incorporate through perhaps various notice methods that are maybe nontraditional, maybe meeting times that are nontraditional, looking for other ways to have those folks that, you know, sometimes we call the frequent flyers, right? like the people who are always participating in the process, and it's important to have them here at the table, but it's also those that we haven't heard from. We need to be able to find additional ways to reach out to those to be able to include them in the process. So I would think, you know, for what we're thinking, it's those for a variety of reasons, either haven't been consulted or have been unable to represent themselves in the process. And part of what planning staff is charged with is to help to be that voice when that voice is not present, but also to look for opportunities to reach out to them in ways that we haven't considered before. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair. Chris, thank you very much. You guys have done a great job. My question is overall around smart goals, so basically specific, measurable, achievable, that concept. And I've always kind of done that business-wise, and I'm just curious, is our history, is the history of the comprehensive plan, is there not a ton of date and time and measurable specific items on it? And I know it's probably easier to do without that. And I don't know if that just ends up coming out later and if that becomes, those are policy issues that we end up trying to approve later or what. I'm just kind of curious how that generally works. Yes, thank you for that question. Accountability is incredibly important. We know that. I would say historically, specifically in the goals and objectives, the specificity isn't there in terms of those key measurable numbers traditionally. Those are, you know, as we develop policies and ways to implement those bigger, broader concepts, that's when we get into more specific numbers. but I would also say that I don't know that our comprehensive plans have been super specific even in the elements in terms of numbers of we need to meet this goal by this date. Certainly, though, I think that accountability is a good thing. But historically, I don't know that we've got a ton of examples of that throughout our history. Thank you. That's it, Chair. Appreciate it. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor, so in the vein of CM Gray's question, so the last 20-year comprehensive plan did not indicate a trend that would move toward this 20-year comprehensive plan as far as the underserved. And I'm pretty sure since Lexington has grown and thrived and downtown has become revitalized, I only lived on Short Street for 48 years, so I've watched this whole community change with the gentrification that came with it. So did those trends not predict that when you set out to make the next 20-year plan, that there should be some expectation of some things done differently so that the inclusiveness would be ready to just forge ahead? Yeah, I think we've learned a lot from our comprehensive planning processes over the years. And I think, you know, as part of the on-the-table process in 2018, we tried to include as many people as we could, and there were some consultants that were part of that process that was led by the Bluegrass Community Foundation at that time to reach out to some of these, you know, vulnerable populations and neighborhoods that are not, again, traditionally involved in the process. So that was important in 2018, but I think we have continued to learn of the importance of that. And so the language that the Planning Commission has recommended here is really becoming a little bit more explicit about trying to broaden that engagement. Because, you know, we know that we haven't done historically in planning, we haven't done on a national scale or even here locally, the best job of reaching out to those who need to be involved in this process. So I would say that we're continuing to learn as a planning staff. I would say that the Planning Commission has tried to make some specific language in particularly Theme F when it's talking about implementing the plan, talking about not just residents but advocates and stakeholders, ensuring that there's community involvement, includes renters, low-income households, people who are experiencing homelessness, becoming a little bit more specific than saying develop a network of diverse contacts and the means to engage them. So the Planning Commission has provided some more specific language and directive to us as we develop the remainder of this plan with the Planning Commission to say these things are incredibly important. Yes, sir. And the only last statement I'd make is that it's going to be a hard task to include people who are unhoused because they're trying to figure out where they're going to sleep. And so that's going to be a hard task to get them to the table so that the Planning Commission can hear. But thank you for your hard work. Yes, ma'am. I agree. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And thank you, Chris, and the Planning Department for all your work on getting us to this point. Just asking some questions. And I think Council Member Gray and I think Council Member Fogle made some good points in regards to talking about equity and representation in regards to the comprehensive plan. So we're talking about goals and objectives. The next phase is implementation. What more can we do? Tell me, or just give me an example. It says, goal five, ensure equitable development, rectify Lexington's segregation by race and socioeconomic status caused by historic planning practices and policies. Objective A, take an actively anti-racist approach to land use policy. What does that look like in implementation? Well, I would say that, you know, historically we have seen issues related to equity on the federal level related to redlining that folks are unable to purchase a house, making it difficult to do that, hard to generate generational wealth for their families. that's been done through inability to finance homes intentionally then followed by racial covenants that existed in neighborhoods followed by the implementation of zoning i mean we see in our comprehensive plan in 1967 it's got a lot of neighborhoods what they did was they graded them by by how well this neighborhood is doing whether it was good it was fair it was poor And so when you look at that map and you look at a map of what exists now in our areas that are vulnerable for displacement, you see a lot of overlap, which tells you that we have not done a very good job historically of addressing some of these issues and challenges. So I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that we have necessarily all the answers. I think there's a lot more work that needs to be done with the folks who put together the mayor's report with the communities that experience these things directly. But I think continuing to look at our zoning regulations and continuing to look at some of the things, how can we allow for more housing to be constructed? You know, we've done several things so far with our multifamily zones that we've allowed more units to be constructed. The council passed an amendment to the floor area ratios for our multifamily zones. That's a good way to allow, you know, break down some of those barriers to housing production. The parking amendment, you know, eliminating the parking minimums allowed for the additional creation of units in places where they weren't able to be constructed before. adding housing as a use in our commercial zones, allowed for more housing in places that it hadn't been before. So I think there's a lot more work that can be done. And I think, you know, we would be really excited to continue to work with the community to figure out exactly what those issues are. What can we do listening? You know, what are the barriers that you all are facing and how can, you know, the tool that we have is a regulatory tool through the zoning ordinance. So how can we look through that regulation and see where there are barriers to solving some of these issues? Okay. So I appreciate that answer, and I think, you know, from what I'm hearing is, you know, there have been policies and initiatives to address, you know, that goal and objective. I think, you know, listing those and reiterating that, you know, we have done some things, but there's still more that we can do, I think is what is being done and needs to be done. But another question I have, and I'll ask them both at the same time just to give you a chance to answer them. So when we were doing the work in Goal 4, we talked about rural activity centers and kind of how the name really doesn't fit the definition of what's happening in the rural activity center. And I guess to the point where if it's a rural activity center, a lot of times it's urban uses that are occurring there. Is there a better way in where do we redefine that so it actually is descriptive of what's happening in those spaces? And then my other question is, is the comp plan the place where we look to address the policy about infrastructure? If we wanted to make sanitary or sewer infrastructure improvements outside the boundary, we're limited to doing that. And I know part of the reason, I know my time's up, Vice Mayor, but let me just continue. So I know the slippery slope conversation about we don't want to make those infrastructure improvements outside the boundary because it may encourage additional development. But I think just being responsible with taxpayers' dollars and trying to build efficient, effective infrastructure where we may have to go outside that. Is the comp plan where we can address that issue or is that something in a different policy form to address that? Are those two questions, do they make sense? Yeah, let me see if I can address them and then you tell me if my answer makes sense. So the rural activity centers are really urban pockets that existed historically, right, and those have been just sort of characterized rather than saying those are now just nonconforming uses that you can no longer do they sort of got formalized at the time and said these are rural activity centers so this is where urban activity has occurred and some of those are sort of semi-adjacent to the urban service boundary and some of them are way out in the county so that sort of those were established as a reflection of the existing what was there and since that time the last comprehensive plan was talking about utilizing those rural activities to their fullest activity centers to the fullest extent that they can be used for jobs for you know as as their urban land right with the caveat that they continue to be sensitive to their agricultural neighbors right so that was that was what the comprehensive plan the last one said about it was we want to maintain those areas they're historic areas of of commercial activity or urban activity in areas where they would otherwise not be because of the rural activity center and then the question about addressing infrastructure i think um i mean i think you can make statements about provision of infrastructure again i'll kind of reiterate that the goals and objectives are meant to be sort of big picture so if you wanted to make big picture statements about infrastructure provision i think you could i think we could certainly do that so that's the that's the better way to categorize it as a provision for infrastructure as opposed to just wholesaling changing the policy yeah i mean i think when you're talking about the urban service area right you're talking about provision of urban services so they're kind of two sides of the same coin right if you're talking about extending infrastructure beyond the urban service area you're kind of de facto talking about you know expanding that urban service area because you're you're expanding the area in which you're providing urban services so i think those two things are linked but certainly in the goals and objectives i think you could talk about the provision of infrastructure and how you all see that you would like that to be directed if that makes sense okay all right thank you thank you thank you nobody else council member plumbin thank you vice mayor um in theme b there's a lot of discussion about protecting our natural resources and the gas emissions and what have you and i think that's a great i'm glad that's in there but my question would be that the rural man rural land management plan addresses a lot of that and it's not referenced or is that come later in this process um because uh it's it's throughout the rural land management plan yes so the the rural land management plan in 2018 was adopted as an element of of the plan so it is incorporated within that and all the things that it does become policies of the comprehensive plan so given the status of the rural land management plan and the recency of its last update i think we would advocate to staff that the rural land management plan be carried forward as an element of the comprehensive plan and continue to have those policies be enacted at that time because we've had discussions committee work on world land management and how they need to be more integrated than just our total planning process and that's ongoing right now and um i guess also too and i'm just throwing this out here because in the plan we also address our hamlets and there are historical hamlets that are out there and there really isn't a definition of how those should be treated and i'd like to maybe when we move forward somehow bring that in too i think that yes that would be something that could be added in there i would just note that the recommendations for provisions for those rural settlements are included in the rural land management plan and as they are continued to be you know incorporated into the plan would be incorporated that way but um certainly if you want to find this may be better defined sure absolutely they show up there but there's not really it thank you okay thank you and thank you planning for providing all this today thank you vice mayor thank you council member fred brown uh thank you vice mayor um i just want to get back on track here are we now looking at the themes um a uh you know we seem to be jumping around a little bit yeah so if we're looking at theme a and theme b because of questions been there or is that what we're trying to address Well, this time right now we're trying to address some general questions from- Of all the things. Yeah, from the presentation kind of general questions. Are we going to jump back to- Yes. Specific? Yeah, once we get through that we will- I've got some questions when it gets specific. Absolutely. We will go line by line. Thank you. Councilmember Menares. I just have a quick question about the report of all codes for the on the table discussions that took place. Mm-hm. The numbers for the input that were received, that's just total. I didn't know if there was a way that maybe potentially it was captured if it was the same people that were attending those on the tables and then could affect those numbers if you were given multiple input from the same people. Because you yourself discussed how sometimes there may be a group of individuals that attend meetings and give feedback more than other groups. So I just want to know if this is in context. That's a good question. I would say probably that the folks who typically attend and are involved in our planning processes were involved in some of those on-the-table discussions. I would say given the sheer volume of participants that we had, it would far exceed the normal people that we would see to be included in our processes that we typically see. So I would say that we've had pretty good cross-section. We went and we looked at the demographics of the cross sections of who has participated in the on the table. And we had, you know, it's not perfect point by point, but we did have a pretty good cross section. That was relatively representative of the community of Lexington. Thank you. Thank you. I have a few questions of my own. Let me run through them quickly. This is a follow-up on Councilmember Gray's question about the word affordable when it comes to housing. It does get used, and so I wonder sometimes, like, at what point are we using the federal or HUD definition of affordable housing, and at what point are we talking about it in generalities, and should that be sort of distinguished in the language so we know from a numbers point of view what we're talking about? I think we can take a look at that, certainly. and all the instances of where that is and sort of clarify that. We'll be happy to maybe at the next meeting we can provide that to you. That'd be great. Can you talk briefly about what Planning Commission's process was like creating this red line version? Did they go line by line, item by item? Did they go sort of theme by theme and say we need to talk about X and that's not here, so let's add that line? Can you talk just a little bit about how they went about it? yeah so after they were given the the draft you know the starting point based on the discussions that we'd had the feedback that we'd had from them throughout the initial discussions um we felt like we had a pretty good idea of what the community was saying what the the best practices were and and what the planning commission might want we put some language together we gave them a full draft of that. We presented it and went kind of line by line with them and said, is this, you know, what do we think of this? What do we think of this? What do we think of this? They had some changes. They had some things they wanted to see. We made some revisions. We came back. We went and did the same thing again. We went over the revisions of what they needed. And then certainly, you know, that happened a couple of times. And then we came to a Planning Commission public hearing And we had the public comment and the planning commission had a robust discussion here in this room. And indicated some changes that they would like to see. And then there were some changes that were made based on the public comment as well. So there were several revisions that took place based on their direction. Thank you. Sort of bouncing off of Councilmember Savigny's question. can the goals and objectives be more specific and goal driven is this kind of a loose framework that we can make it more specific if we want to or is the idea of it to be very general like can we put dates and goals i mean the the word goals is in the the title right so can we put specific benchmarks i believe i believe that you can i believe that you can i think you know it you know some of those And if they are date specific or that sort of thing are still long term goals. And I think, yes, I think you could make those types of things. And though we haven't historically done that in the past, I believe you can. So in your opinion, is it just one of those things that we haven't done it because we just never done it? Or is there a good reason that we stay more vague in general as opposed to more specific? I don't know that I'd necessarily want to speculate on that. I don't exactly know the answer to that one, so I'm not sure. But I do think having those big aspirational goals or what the goals and objectives are supposed to do, I think if you go back to statute and our conversation on Monday, the goals and objectives are to act as a guide for what the Planning Commission puts forward in their implementation and their elements section. So I think as long as you stay within the framework of that, I think, yeah, you can certainly do something like that. Director Duncan. Vice Mayor, if you don't mind if adding to that, and I concur with what Chris has said. Of course, the statute doesn't give that kind of specific guidance on what should or should not be in the goals and objectives. But I can tell you that there's a long history with our comprehensive plans of having the last chapter of the plan, which the council does not create, is created by the Planning Commission, called implementation. And those are specific tasks with specific, assigning specific responsibility, either within the government or within the community to address things, and on some sort of timeline. So I think what the Planning Commission attempts to do with the adopted goals and objectives that the council sends them, is then look in there where can specific tasks be mined and then turned into projects that are identified in this other chapter. And the rest of the plan is just as important as this part as far as reference and work product for the community. So if we don't want to put a lot of specificity on numbers and dates in the goals and objectives, but provide guidance that can then be turned into the implementation section i believe and and get more specific and then that's something that we bring back to you if something needs to be funded then we can say well the adopted comprehensive plan says that we need to pursue this and we need some help with that and we ask you all for for help on that so there is that opportunity for specificity but it generally shows up more in the implementation than in the goals and objectives thank you for that um for me it's it's i'm also trying to get my head around framing understanding what this conversation should be about, that if we start getting into the weeds with specific benchmarks and dates and goals and stuff, that we take a step back and say this is not what this particular thing is for, so if that's my understanding. And then my last question is what sort of accountability is built in to years down the road to say have we gone through with these recommendations? Are we moving in this direction? what what is built in there to make sure that we're actually doing this stuff well i would say the the goals and objectives talk about hosting some metrics again talking to the specificity this was something that of course we had hoped to get to the last time around in terms of measurables and metrics and i think that's still again to to the point it's accountability is incredibly important i would say that you know the the progress of this comprehensive plan gets updated to the planning commission every year we talk about you know what we've done the implementation items ultimately come to you all if there's a regulation change that needs to be done that you know then we go back and we look at the comprehensive plan and say how does this further what the comprehensive plan is recommended if there's small area plans that need to be funded or other specific implementation items that those come to you all and that's sort of a check as to whether or not those things should move forward that you all get a say in the ultimate say in that as well. So I think there's a couple different measures of accountability. The ultimate thing is that we do our status check every five years, where we get to take a look back and say, have we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish? What changes do we need in order to accomplish those things? And what's changed over the last five years, which is where we find ourselves right now at a checkpoint point and a calibration point and that's the ultimate accountability which is every five years we come back and we say do we need to scrap this or are we doing well are we doing what we need to do are we responding to the people of lexington great thank you so much if there are no other general questions for the presentation thank you chris let's go ahead and get into the weeds of it here let's go ahead and go kind of section by section item by item i'm going to ask if anybody has particular questions or comments or motions that they want to make to change any of this language. And so I'll go item by item and then everybody can sign in to speak on it or to move on it. And we'll see how that goes. All right, let's start with the preamble. And when I say when we're looking at this red line document, I want to make sure everybody knows that we are not just looking at what has been red lined. we can look at the entirety of the text to put our input or our opinion on it. So I'm hoping, and let's think about this for future meetings as well, now that we have all of the paperwork and stuff in front of us. Let's be ready with notes for future meetings so we're not sitting and kind of reading in real time during the meetings, so we can best use everybody's time. Okay, so do we have any comments, notes, motions on the preamble? And if we do skip ahead, we can always bounce back if we need to, but let's see if we can keep moving. All right, mission statements. Seems like that one was mainly a date change. All right, let's move on to theme A, growing and sustaining successful neighborhoods. Goal one, we have four objectives. Any notes on any of those objectives? And of course, planning staff is here this whole time. Chris, I think you can probably sit if you want. Thank you. We'll grab you as needed, unless you like standing. All right, anything on theme A, goal one? Okay, and I have a feeling too, just to put it in your heads that at some point in later meetings, Later items or goals or themes might inform our thoughts on previous ones. So we can always bounce back if we need to. This is not our only pass at it. Let's move on to goal two. We have four, five objectives, they're A through E. Okay, yeah, go ahead, Council Member Worley. Sorry, I haven't been looking at my screen, my apologies. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So back to goal one, the objectives B, when it says accommodate the demand for housing in Lexington responsibly, and we know that there's a significant demand for housing in our community, prioritizing higher density. Is that based on our general policies of infill and redevelopment, or is that based on a specific housing directive? What was the discussion with the planning commission and the staff on prioritizing higher density? So, thank you, Council Member. This is, again, an objective that is carried over from the 2018 Comprehensive Plan. I think we're, again, looking at the urban service area concept and looking at how to financially, responsibly provide for the housing needs. And additionally, we know that we've got housing needs in our community and making sure that housing is a high priority. So prioritizing that higher density is increasing the number of units that we would be able to have on the market to help address those housing affordability issues. I can tell you that I don't believe that this particular objective was discussed with the Planning Commission this time around, though we did go over it. I don't believe that they had any changes or any concerns about this. So, yeah, I see there's no change, but so you don't think that that was addressed generally in this discussion process this time around? Just in terms of the housing, in light of the housing issues that we see that have obviously increased over time in terms of the need for housing development. I think, yes, I think it still continues to be a priority based on those discussions that we had, but they didn't have any changes they wanted to see. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. We've got four people signed up to speak. Just real quick, are we on goal one or have we moved on to goal two? Does anybody have anything on goal one that signed up? Okay. We are on to goal two. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just to sum it up a little bit, I was here when we did the 2018, and there was quite a few changes, but we vetted that as much as we could and i think the council at that time and the planning commission and the planning department all kind of agreed that we were going in a certain direction and there was some some pushback as to when we get into the themes other themes there was some push back on if we needed some more land for development. So having said that, I'm getting down here to objectives. The new objective D, I think, is probably been reworded to some extent because I see where it's been crossed out on the second page, part of it. But, and I ask, maybe Chris would tell me, it says to encourage infill and redevelopment through several things here and I'm not sure what the background is is why why we need to encourage refill infill and redevelopment when that's kind of a given now say having said that last year of the fall of last year we overturned returned to Planning Commission things that had to do with infill, because the neighborhoods did not go along with it. And we were supportive of the neighborhoods. So how do you match that because there is some pushback from neighborhoods about infill and redevelopment? Have you got an answer to that as to why you're still promoting that so heavy? Council Member Brown, it's good that some of the old guard is still here. So you and I have been with this for a while, and let me take this one for Chris then. To address the question about these particular things that are raised in the encourage objective, we hear from developers who, local and out of town, who genuinely want to develop in areas that are kind of left over. And yet they find that there are more challenges than just maybe a smaller site or something. So there's infrastructure issues, there are title issues, there are financing issues. And so some of these things that are listed here are meant to say, well, what other things can the community, the government, or other people, even the lending institutions do to help ensure that these leftover sites, these past oversights can be turned into development for the community. Now, that being said, some of that doesn't need a zone change. Particularly the closer you get into town, some of those properties are already zoned for either higher density residential or mixed use. And so it's really a matter of getting an appropriate development plan for that site. And some of these issues would help overcome that. As far as the neighborhood opposition to infill, we will have that. There's just no, we're not going to dance around that. Nobody wants anything new next to them if they're used to what they already have. And we just know that. So we try to mitigate the issues and making sure that the development that goes in is not going to certainly have an adverse effect on environmental issues such as stormwater and traffic. So we try to address those. But also recognizing that this community has said that it wants certain things to be accomplished for its growth policies. And if you're going to do that, you're going to have to make some of these types of decisions. So we acknowledge that neighborhoods don't always like what's coming to them, but nevertheless, that's what we've got to continue to pursue. So summing it up, would you say this language here is less restrictive then as to infill? No, I'm saying that this is acknowledging that infill is challenging. Okay. And that perhaps these are some of the other things that we can do to make infill less challenging. One other thought on that, the optional offsite mitigation funds, could you give me a hand? You know, like transfer of rights, so if you've got, that could be a number of things. If we need to put trees or environmental features someplace else to address a particular site, maybe that would help do that. Okay, because that wasn't in the 2018, that's some additional- Right, we're seeing, what other things are we seeing that are challenges, yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My first question is regarding Section B of Goal 2. Could you explain that to me, please? What does that mean? Sure. That, I think, is kind of the flip side to what Jim was talking about here, is that as we grow and we develop and we are prioritizing some of this density, We need to make sure that, you know, it's, you know, when I talked about originally, placemaking is important. And it's not just growth for growth's sake. And we're not just cramming a bunch of people into somewhere. It's talking about, you know, how can that growth and development turn into a place that people can be proud of that can seamlessly incorporate into what's around it. So that's what it's talking about when it's saying respect the context and design features of the areas around it. it's really it's less about exactly mimicking exactly what's there right so just because it's a two-story building doesn't necessarily mean you need to have a two-story building next to it what it's saying is that there need to be relationships between the new development and the existing development there need to be connections so how can that continue to build upon what's already there and i think that's the challenge that we have in this objective here is trying to figure out what can we codify what can we make changes to within the regulations that can help ensure that that takes place because that's unquestionably a priority of this plan thank you I appreciate that and then in section D the new section when I looked at the former section and what was red line to create this section I just want my question was why the change what was you're thinking behind this new revised section. And I'm sure you were thinking about the removal of housing affordable at all income levels portion of that. Yeah. That was something that we did was basically relocating that particular provision, talking about providing housing to the new goal five, where it talks about housing affordability in a couple of different ways. So that was the thinking behind that. And then other than that, it was just simply to revise, as Jim said, some of the other options and things that could be done to help incentivize infill development. Okay. Then my last question is, I know Director Duncan gave a definition, but that was still a bit over my head. So what is optional off-site mitigation funds? What is that? So, for example, if you were unable to provide, you know, if it said you needed X percentage of tree canopy on your site, but you couldn't provide that for whatever reason, or if there's another regulation of something that's to be provided on that site that you can't necessarily do because it's a challenging infill site and because of space constraints, you wouldn't be able to do that. we could explore, now none of this is something for us to explore, opportunities for that to be done somewhere that is in close adjacency and another site, maybe that's taking those trees and planting them in a stream area, a wetland area or something of that nature that they would do some good there, but you for whatever reason can't provide them specifically on that site. So it provides a little bit of flexibility for infill and redevelopment sites that might be more challenging. Okay, I got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Was I already on? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Go to where you struck through land bank. You took the term land bank out. What was you thinking behind that? or ignore me sorry we have a little internal conversation there the the land bank reference is to my knowledge and jim you might be able to correct me on this that the land bank was was created and we have the the ordinance structure for a land bank but we've never fully funded that is Is that correct? So just as that was an option that wasn't currently being used, that's the reason why it was taken out. So let me ask you this, and this might be a question for legal, and it might be getting off the rails a little bit. But is the way that the current land bank is set up and was thought to function and operate just not efficient? And is that something that we should look at? Because I think the concept is sound. But I think if it's just not something that we can maneuver and use in a way that's going to be productive, maybe we ought to take a look at it. Councilman Warren, I'm not sure that we do have the answer here. I'm not even sure the legal that's here would be able to answer that necessarily. But I share your concern because the land bank has been around for a long time, probably 20 years or more now. And it's not, I don't know the answer to that. I think it would certainly be a good question to say what was the original intent of the land bank, what's its status now, and what could we do with that in the future. So I think it's a good question, but it's just something that has not worked for us at this time, so we've moved on from it. Okay, so I may come back later and make an amendment to add that. I want to have a conversation with law. I think if it's a potential useful tool, which I think it could be, But maybe we may have to tweak it or do something to address it. Vice Mayor, I hate to go back up to goal one, because I know we moved to goal two. But Council Member Worley's question about accommodating demand for housing. There's been conversation about eliminating R1 from zoning, starting with R2, just to encourage density, knowing that if a plan was presented to do a R1 type of development in R2, That's doable. What would that look like in the implementation? And I guess it's already there in place builder, so to speak. I think place builder doesn't kick out R1 as an option when a plan comes in. But is there a way that we can talk about that and maybe define it in goals and objectives as a way to encourage that and talk about truly being committed to more dense housing. You're going for the heavy stuff right up front. So I'll just say broadly trying to allow more housing to be built and more attainable housing to be built is something that this planning commission and the previous goals and objectives and comprehensive plan were highly, highly focused on. But not going to the extent that you were mentioning, that you're mentioning now, because that's just not something that the community has been ready to discuss and tackle in Lexington. Nationally, there's been a movement and lots of discussion on it, and a lot of the emerging literature and equity in planning is focused on historic practices related to single-family zoning, and I will tell you that if this council wants to take up this issue and talk about it, we are ready to talk about it. 100% if it's something that is, we've been waiting for a council to tell us this matters to them. And we are happy to have that conversation. We're well versed on it. And if it's something you all want to add, we encourage you to. Yeah, I just think it's something that we ought to be talking about and considering. Is there a way to have that conversation or to push that ball forward in goals and objectives? Absolutely. And it doesn't have to be in the form of get rid of single family zoning. That's not where the conversation is at in Lexington. The conversation is, let's have a discussion about the impact of, historically and currently, on single-family zoning, what it means on housing segregation, what it means on school segregation, all of its downstream impacts of single-family zoning. We should talk about those. And we can help you craft language if that is something that you're interested in crafting. But by no means, I think, would we suggest writing language that says eliminate single-family zoning. I think it just means that whatever you want us to write in that regard, we would be happy to help you craft something on it. Okay, all right. By the way, I forgot to add. My name is Chris Taylor, I'm the principal planner in Long Ridge Planning, sorry. I'll send back in. All right, thank you Chris. Thank you. Just a quick reminder, when you start to comment, go ahead and tell us what goal, what objective we're looking at so we can orient ourselves very quickly. So we figured it out. Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm going back to goal two, just in general. I noticed that I'm a newbie, I've got to say that. I'm fresh here on council. And I noticed that we have this emphasis on supporting infill and redevelopment. However, there is a secondary conversation that I've noticed been going on, and that is regarding infill versus expansion of the urban service boundary. I'm not sure it's either one or the other. I think that conversation should go on at the same time. with this being our goal just to support infill but the lack of discussion about the possibility of expansion I think is limiting for our population and understanding the possibilities for our city does that make sense just so I will just sort of say that the way we characterize infill and redevelopment is maybe even perhaps a little confusing in Lexington because we've got what we consider to be an infill and redevelopment area. It's a regulatory boundary that talks about infill and redevelopment. There's specific provisions for that. But if you go back to the concept, thinking back to our conversation on Monday about the urban service area and what it is intended to do, it's really about efficiency of providing services to make sure that you're making financially wise decisions in how that is done. So in terms of thinking about infill and redevelopment, if you go to other places, they consider infill and redevelopment. Infill would be maybe the lot that you skipped. If you've got a row of five houses and one in the middle is not developed for whatever reason, well, that would be infill. But here in Lexington, throughout our comprehensive planning evolution, we consider infill and redevelopment, well, particularly infill to be anywhere within the urban service area. Because every time we develop, because we're, you know, part of that system, we are thinking about the financial impacts that that development will have long term on the infrastructure provision for that. So when we talk about infill and redevelopment, it's a little bit confusing because we're not talking about it in perhaps its textbook definition, but we're talking about it in terms of efficiency of development and how we can most sustainably and wisely use our land here in Lexington. And I get that. And that was just purely a comment. I understand that there are certain areas in Lexington that we need to really consider how we're using that property and we can use it in more efficient ways for our population. I get that. I just wanted to make the comment that we can discuss both. Does that make sense? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, sir. All right, thank you. Quick follow-up to what Council Member James Brown was talking about with the idea of the elimination of R1. I wouldn't mind seeing planning staff just finding some data on other cities and municipalities that have done it and what those effects are. I'm always very concerned about unintended consequences of things that may seem like great ideas and then years down the road this other thing cascades from it. So before we can, I think, have a conversation, if we want to have that conversation, I want to get a little more information, so that would be great. Does anybody else have anything on goal two before we move forward? And as I said, we can always jump back as needed. All right, thank you. Let's move on to goal three, theme A, goal three. We've got four objectives here. If you have comments, please sign in. Okay, we're going to move on to goal four. Theme A, goal four, we have three objectives here. Addressing community facilities at a neighborhood scale. All righty, goal five, which is one single item. Ensure equitable development and rectify Lexington's segregation by race and socioeconomic status caused by historic planning practices and policies. Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I went to request to speak as soon as you got off of goal four. I wanted to look at goal four, objective C, establish and promote road network connections and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do we have something similar to that that talks about connectivity as far as sidewalks and that kind of stuff is concerned? Like road networks are important and we've addressed that with some of our. But I want to make sure we're addressing pedestrian and multimodal connections too. Yes, thank you. I would point you to theme D goal one that talks about working to achieve an effective, equitable, and comprehensive transportation system. The first objective being supporting a complete street concept with pedestrian first design. And of course, you are familiar with the complete streets concept now. Expanding the network of accessible transportation options for those who may not have a car as well. So we talk about some of the aspects of that and in the broader concept of the complete streets, but not necessarily in connectivity of sidewalks. Okay, all right, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First question is, going back to Goal 3, the new section, my question is why that change? You're very astutely pointing out the these important things that we have relocated. So this is one of those things as well where it talks about promoting, maintaining, and expanding the urban forest throughout Lexington. Obviously critically important. We believe in the Planning Commission does too. So that was housed in theme A, which is related just to neighborhoods. And so we relocated that to a different place here. Do you have it? Theme B. Goal 3. Theme B. Goal 3. Objective. Objective F. Yeah. So the language was just simply moved to theme B, which is inclusive, more inclusive of everything in the community. and then we never, you know, the Planning Commission took the opportunity of a deleted objective to talk about the importance of some of those things as they relate to neighborhoods. So green infrastructure, street trees, neighborhood serving businesses, sort of pointing some of those concepts and adding more to the concept of a focal point and addressing that in the new objective D. Thank you. Going down to goal five. Kind of following up on a question I think Councilmember Brown brought up, James Brown, about GO 5. A, take an actively anti-racist approach to land use policy with the purpose of integrated walkable transit accessible neighborhoods for all residents. Yeah, how are we going to accomplish that? It's a lot. And I want to make sure that what we're planning is something that we can do. And I know we can. Yeah. So if you go back to, I think, I can't remember who asked the question, and theme A, goal 2, objective B about respect the context, I think that might have been you, Council Member Lynch. I think some of this is, it's helpful to understand the history of some of the conference of playing goals and objectives in the past and the way the language used to read. And a lot of it about neighborhoods used to say preserve and protect, meaning don't change anything. And there's sort of a structural element of segregationist housing policy baked into that language. And so over the years, we've been pretty successful at changing language to say respect the design and context of an area without saying it has to stay exactly as it is. And so change in the language of these goals and objectives has been really important in justifying zone changes to allow things to evolve and change. And so some of the text amendments that Chris mentioned when Councilman Brown asked about things that we've done, I don't think we led with the messaging that those text amendments were strictly about breaking down some of those issues, but they are inherently about that. Making multifamily housing easier to build in this community when it was explicitly made difficult to build for reasons is an important part of doing these things. And so we've done some of them already, big ones. The parking is a big one. We had exclusionary practices in our parking mandates specifically designed to deter multifamily development over time. So it's hard to think about the structural aspects of zoning as it relates to equity when they don't actually say don't allow these people into areas. That's not what the zoning ordinance says. It's not the way it was baked. It was much more insidious than that. So the anti-racist approach is going to be as mundane as taking the bricks of the structure like parking and floor area ratio requirements and other onerous restrictions that zoning has built over time and breaking those down and talking about them just like we are with single family zoning. And so how we're going to do that is we've already had some huge successes. Accessory dwelling units was a big change, a big success. Parking is a big success. We have a lot of other things, but they're not going to be flashy in terms of the statement about race and equity. They're going to be boring things in our zoning ordinance that we have to keep changing and evolving. So housing is easier to build and not just in certain places, everywhere. And so I think that's one of the things we're actually pretty proud of the text amendments that we've done so far is they apply everywhere. They're across the board. So while certain places may take advantage of them sooner than others, providing changes to our ordinance that apply everywhere is how we address equity in this section. If that answers your question. It does. Thank you. My next question is on 5D. Am I running out of time? Did I run out of time? Yeah. Can I go ahead and sign back in, and we'll do it the way we regularly do it so everybody gets time. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Wardall, you were talking, and when we were looking at Goal 2D, how that statement was changed to remove housing affordable at all income levels, and you said you believe that that was relocated to Goal 5. So I think this is, again, where we've got a little bit of a definitional issue in my mind. So first off, Goal 5 is a fantastic addition to this plan. I think there's a lot to be accomplished in Goal 5. But when I look, I'm wondering perhaps has HUD changed its definition or the way it's using? Typically when you see, if you look at objective B, protect existing housing affordability and expand low and middle income housing across the city, to me that's a little bit different than housing affordable at all income levels. Because typically when you see that kind of hyphenated low to middle, low, they used to say low to moderate, that's a HUD definition that's 80% area median income or below. So that to me seems like sort of a capital A affordable housing term of art we're talking about, which then would not encompass affordability for all income levels. Because that's specific to a low to moderate defined income level. And so I think that then that's where, while we have a certain need to address that issue and need to continue to do more, we have a lower case a affordability issue in our community. That folks that would not be considered by HUD definitions as low to middle income, still cannot afford to buy a home in the community. So that's where I've still got a definitional issue and I don't know if you can tell me, maybe you can enlighten me a little bit more about what the intent of that is. Particularly when you're putting it in a section, a goal related to equity, makes me think even more that it's intended to be that low to moderate income family. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. I think what, you know, if we think about the housing demand study, it talks about low income, as you're correct, is 80% AMI and lower than you think of workforce housing as being anywhere from like 80 to 120 AMI. So in the language that the Planning Commission has put forward in this particular thing, you know, perhaps perhaps it's not affordable at all levels as it was in the previous objective. I would say it's probably fair to say if we're talking about low and middle income housing, it's all the way down to the lowest, all the way up to probably about 120 AMI, if you're thinking about workforce housing or traditional kind of middle income housing. Sure. So, I guess you kind of said two things there. I don't mean to criticize your answer. You said that first you said you think it probably was referring more to your low income, that below 80% AMI, but then you at the end said the up to workforce housing. The low would be 80 and below, and then I would think middle would be somewhere between 80 and 120 if we're thinking of it as workforce housing. Again, I tend to agree with you. We perhaps may have a definitional issue that we need to clarify here, depending on what your all's intents are on this particular. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think so, because, again, 100%, capital A affordable housing is a need in this community. But then taking into that workforce housing, and then, quite frankly, in this community, some folks that may be a little higher income than that still can't afford to live in this community. So I think that's where going back to the all income levels, affordable housing and housing options, I think is something we need to continue to consider. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member, let's see. We're going to go Council Member Sheehan first. Thank you, Chair. And this actually is good because I want to build on what Council Member Worley was just suggesting. I wonder if there is a way for us to explore language in goal one that would then address the all income levels. Because that one is about expanding housing choices and housing affordability and demand. So I wonder if there is some language we could look at for that specific goal that would address that concern. And I don't have a suggestion at this moment, but something to consider for the future. Thank you. I'll just chime in that on that particular idea, goal one, objective B looks like a decent place to address that language. Okay, council member Brown, and just real quick, we're approaching 12. I would like to end these meetings as close to on time as possible without restricting our conversation. I feel like we're pretty close to a natural stopping point at the end of goal, where are we? At the end of goal five before we start on theme B next time. So, Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I agree. I tend to agree with Council Member Worley and Council Member Sheehan. I think maybe moving the middle income definition or wording back to goal one. probably in theme I'm sorry, probably in objective I think it's C, the one that says plan I think it's more appropriate. I think goal 5 is a great addition to this plan and I think it speaks to vulnerable populations and low income housing but I think when we're talking about planning for housing I think we want to hit the full spectrum and let folks know that we're looking to create housing at all price points. The other thing I'll say, too, is from the Mayor's Racial Justice and Equality Commission, one of the recommendations that came out of the Housing and Gentrification Subcommittee was a statement from the city admitting its role in gentrification, displacement, and all that in past zoning practices. Is goal five in the planning department's opinion kind of that statement? Is that what we're saying? We're acknowledging past wrongs and trying to correct them? Yes. Well, good job. Good job. Yeah, really, really good job. The next thing I'll say, too, is we're talking about planning, plan for safe, affordable housing. I know it's the planning department's desire to kind of move away from small area plans. I know it's kind of been kind of where we've been trending away from. But in the Neighborhoods and Transition Group, we talked about small area plans a lot and the benefits that they have provided to a lot of our communities with the East End, the Windburns, small area plans, Central Sector, small area plans. But then small area plans also got brought up again when we were talking about Go 4 and the Go 4 group. Small area plans, I think, actually give us the opportunity to develop and the plan for areas and neighborhoods it's probably the most inclusive way we can with the stakeholders that are involved. So as we talk about planning for neighborhoods, planning for growth, planning for infield and redevelopments, I think we ought to consider putting a refocus back on small area plans. That is probably an implementation device. But I'm interested in knowing or being guided on what type of language we need to put in goals and objectives to express the council's desire, or at least my desire, to do that and to move that direction. Council Member Brown, let me take that. I couldn't agree more. We have gotten some really good guidance from our small area plans, at least since, well, going back before even I was here. And we still refer to them, even once they get some age on them, they still have valuable inputs for future decision making. I will say we have shifted over the past couple of years to focusing on corridor plans. That didn't mean that we weren't interested in small area plans. We just had the capacity to do only so much. We had funding opportunities from transportation to fund corridor plans, so that's why we've been looking at New Circle Road and Nicholasville Road. All that to say, we fully concur. or the small area plans are important, and we will be glad to work with you all to find a way to make sure that we can address those in the comprehensive plan. Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I think we're at a pretty decent natural stopping point. We'll pick up with theme B at the next meeting. Thank you to everyone from planning for answering all of our questions, getting peppered. I can sort of foresee the way this has gone, and you all can tell me if I'm wrong. We're having a lot of sort of discussion and getting our questions answered and may not be ready in the moment to either make motions or amendments or edits to this piece. But I think based on the stuff that we've gone through today, it feels like next time we should be able to come up with potential changes or motions that we want to make on it, so if we can kind of work on that level. Councilmember Lynch. Quickly, Vice Mayor, I had additional questions on Goal 5, and I didn't want to ask them in the interest of time, but so can next time we be able to revisit? If you think you can keep them brief, let's do it here. I saw your name drop off. They're not brief. That's why I drew my question. I appreciate that. No, we can pick that up. We can always jump back and forth a little bit, but just try to keep on track as much as we can. But let's do that next time. All right, thank you all so much. Appreciate it. We are adjourned. Thank you.