Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It is one o'clock, so I want to welcome everyone and call our meeting to order for the April 18th meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. We do have a pretty full agenda today, so I just want to say I'm going to be kind of keeping on time, and I would ask that our council members think about that when they're signing in to talk and ask questions, that we do have a series of meetings today. So think about the rest of our day when you're chiming in on your comments. Let's see. So for the first item on our agenda, it's the approval of the April 18th, 2023 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? I'll take a motion to approve. Councilmember Civigni and a second by Councilmember Legree. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. For the next item on our agenda, we have an update on the home compost program. This item was referred by Council Member Legree, and I will turn this over to her for introductions. Thank you, Chair. I believe that Angela Poe is going to be presenting for us. Is that accurate? Excellent. Angela, we're so glad to have you here to provide an update about this at-home composting program. Colleagues, and as Council Member Sheehan mentioned, some of you all will recall that this program began as a pilot initiative out of my office in May of 2021 and has now grown into an established program with a very high level of community engagement, which is wonderful. It fills up very quickly and people have had very positive experiences learning about composting from great partners like Seedleaf and in places like McConnell Springs and we'll hear a little bit more about that and many of them have told me that they've left the workshop empowered and equipped to put their knowledge into action at home which is the goal. So thank you for the information you're about to share Angela and thank you to your team for the work you've done on this program. And I'll turn it over to you. And thank you, colleagues, for your attention. Thank you, Councilmember Liguri. All right. So just a quick review. The purpose of this program was to provide some way for folks to get rid of organic material in a responsible way. We do have the yard waste collection, but we do not accept organic food waste as part of the yard waste. yard waste program. And so the only option that we were giving people really was the landfill. And so this program was to encourage at home food composting, which was a quick remedy to get the people who are really excited about doing this right an opportunity to compost at home. So this is the first full year post-pilot program. We did three workshops at McConnell Springs in February and March. SeedLeave has been our facilitator the entire time. They're an awesome partner and very definitely the community experts on composting in Fayette County. We last year installed a demonstration site at McConnell Springs that has the various types of composters so people can see what the options are in person. This year we had 100 households seats available so 30 to 35 households per workshop. That actually turns into about 60 folks that show up because we encourage the whole household to come because everybody in the house has to participate in the composting program and needs to know what to do. Also, it helps deal with the fact that some people have young children and they don't want to have to get a sitter, and so bring the kids along. To participate, once they participate and complete the workshop, they get $60 credit from the city toward a composter of their choice. They can pick a worm bin, a stationary bin, or a tumbling composter, or they can choose to make their own or do their own thing. They don't have to take one of our composters. That's just the options we provide. So this slide was put together several weeks ago, so I have updated numbers for you. We did have 95 households that participated with 135 folks coming to the workshops. The number of no-shows was actually nine, not ten. Five of them even contacted us before and said, I can't make it. The March workshop was the Saturday after the big windstorm. So that probably explains a lot of those no-shows. They were dealing with very pressing things at home. 32% of folks who signed up for these composting workshops were already composting at home. So far, we have heard from 62% of the participants in response to our emails about which composter would you like. So 60 of them are requesting composters or they're already doing something at home. And two folks are like, I'm not sure yet. They have until the end of this month to redeem their composter. And the reason the cutoff is this month is because of the budget cycle. So we want to buy them as part of this budget year. Successes, McConnell Springs and Seedleaf are both amazing partners, very easy to work with, very easy to schedule, it's a great location. There is significant demand. Workshops filled up. We had a whole promotional cycle planned out, but the workshops were filled up before we were even able to run all of the ads that we planned to run. We've got 95 households who have successfully completed the program. So again, even if they don't get a composter, they have the information that they need to successfully compost at home. And we had a $12,000 budget for this. We probably spent less than that because, again, we've only heard from 62 folks about which composter they want. And that's the big chunk of the budget is the per household composter. I also, I forgot, I gave successes McConnell Springs and Seedleaf. I also want to give a shout out to Jennifer Myatt who's in the room. She was our main coordinator for the program. And there are a lot of logistics with this when you're coordinating events with multiple community partners and 95 different households. So she did a really great job with that. Challenges. The workshop's filled up really quickly. So if you are less likely to be tuned in to Live Green Lexington or some of the publications, it's hard to get a spot in this. We did have a wait list, and I believe that we invited everybody on the wait list to the final workshop. Is that accurate? So if they were on the wait list, they actually did get to come to the final workshop. We had hoped last year during the pilot, the big issue for us was the logistics around figuring out which composter people wanted that they felt would work best for them. and then ordering that and getting it to them. When you're doing that with a whole bunch of separate households, that's a lot of emails, that's a lot of ordering, that's a lot of, it's just a lot of time. So our idea going into this year is we were hoping that local nurseries would step up and sell the composters for us and we would just give vouchers that could be turned in similar to the yard waste bag program that we have. Sadly, only one nursery came through and their composter was at a pretty high price point. And so it wasn't something that was accessible to a lot of our participants. And so we ended up doing, we're buying them. We did what we did last year. So we're buying them once they tell us what they want and arranging a time for pickup. So there are some other options that Jennifer is exploring that might be available, including is somebody who we might be able to set up an online version of what we were thinking we would do with the local nurseries. The downside of that is it's not a local company, and we were hoping to support local companies through that, but hopefully that will take a lot of the load off of the workshop time for us. And once we solve that issue, we might be able to grow the program even more. I don't want to do that until we crack this nut, but obviously there is an interest in the community for us to continue to expand this. So for next year, our plan is to keep the number of workshops and the numbers in the workshops the same. So we'll aim for around 100 households, 30 to 35 households per workshop. We'll continue to hold the workshops in late winter. That's a less busy time for our friends at Seedleaf and McConnell Springs. will continue to partner with them. McConnell Springs has the three composters on site, but there isn't signage. And we do have draft signage that we want to get up next year. And as I mentioned before, exploring an online partner who will sell direct to participants using our vouchers so that there's less of a lift for us in those logistics of that. We just, we aren't set up to be a store. We are in a store and it's really hard to kind of pretend that we are. So yeah, so that's what I have. Are there any questions? Thank you, Ms. Poe. And I'll open up to council members for any comments or questions. Council member Gray. Thank you, Chair. So one of your challenges this year was the workshops filling up quickly. what do you seek to do to remedy? Because I heard you say that you're going to keep the numbers the same for next year. So how are we going to fix it? Well, I do take comfort in the fact that we were able to get everybody on the white list into the workshop by the last workshop. I think that we will continue to, and I hope that this year, if we can solve that problem of how do we get people connected with those composters in an affordable way, we would be able to grow the numbers in the program. We have so many people that are so keen about it that some people are just waiting. They know that we're going to put out in January. We're going to open up the registration. And so those communities and the folks that are plugged into those communities that are super excited about it, do get in there kind of immediately. I think it was the first workshop that sold out like the first day or two, and then we had about a week before the others filled up. I will say I do have a list from Jennifer about the distribution from a zip code standpoint of who registered that I'd be happy to email to you all if you would like that. There was pretty wide distribution. 40502 had the highest number of participants at 19, but the rest was pretty spread out through most of the zip codes in the county. So I've spoken with several people who didn't know about the program, who aren't those people who normally compost, but are interested in it. So how, what is your plan to, your comms plan to communicate with people who typically aren't engaged with GreenLex or with anything else? Yeah, so one thing is that I'm hoping to, there's two things. One, if you've got contacts that we need to connect with, please connect us. And I will get the information to them as soon as we have dates and as soon as we have that registration set. We want to get the information to everyone who is interested. So please let us know. we will make sure that they're in that first round of contact. Second, this upcoming fiscal year, we're actually going to work on, I'm hoping to hire a community outreach specialist in the office who will focus on those gaps in our relationships and working with the sections of the community that we haven't been this plugged into. and building better bridges. Such as 40505, 40511, 40508. Those zip codes, they are interested in this. However, we have not been reaching out to those areas. We had four from 04, seven from 08, and eight from 11. So they were represented, thankfully. We can also, and I cannot remember if we did it this year or not, a lot of times we will send information to the council members to distribute. because you all have different contacts in your communities than we do as an office. And so we do rely on the council members to help us push that information out to their constituents as well. I just want to make sure that we're getting a diverse amount of our citizens involved, and not just 40502 is great, but we have so many other zip codes within the city of Lexington that we need to make sure that we're reaching out to so that we have equity involved in everything that we do. Yes, ma'am. That is all. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me since I'm not on this committee. And I really appreciate this program, so thank you, Council Member Legree, and thank you for working on this, Angela. I have had several inquiries lately from businesses in my district that are wondering how they could do a possible pilot program for composting. Do you know if that would be a possibility or what route we should go down to? Is there a way of exploring that at all? I think for businesses, it would be a very, there would be such a varied input depending on what type of business they are. For example, if you're talking restaurants, that's one thing, versus if you're talking a hardware store, for example. We can have conversations about that. The criteria for being part of this program is if you're in the urban service area that gets curbside waste collection, and some businesses would meet that criteria, so they would qualify, and that's due to how the program is funded. So that's one option, but that's something that we can definitely explore. If they're interested, we want to support them. There is all of the information on getting started. We've got the lexanyky.gov slash compost that's got all the tips and information on how to get started on your own. But we can certainly work with them on working through that more. There's also the Green Check program that Green Source manages for us. That's the sustainability certification program. And it's free to businesses that are located here in Fayette County. and certainly through the green check program, there would be assistance to help them get a compost program started and they would get points toward their certification for that. So if they had more questions, could I give them your email? Yep. Is that okay? All right. Thank you very much. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thanks so much for the presentation and I'm excited to see composting go in a great direction in Lexington. One question, and thank you, Council Member LeGrie, for being such a champion of this. Have we, like, this is a method, you know, of dealing with composting, is backyard composting. But have we looked at it more on a larger scale? And I'm, like, I know Cleveland and Chattanooga both use, I think it's like New Terra. Like, it's a company that basically does commercial-grade composting. And basically, people opt into the program, and they basically come get your stuff. They commercially bring you back dirt, basically. You give them stuff, they give you dirt. And it's just kind of another way to do a program that kind of speeds up the compost process, really. I would let Nancy, I think, address that, Commissioner Albright, address that. I do know that Waste Management did a study on looking at compost options that the city could pursue. I will say that there has been conversation on and off over the years since I've been here about kind of a curbside composting program. There was a pilot on that at one point. And from the communication and public engagement standpoint, one of the big concerns is contamination will really mess up compost. You have to have people participating who really want to participate and care to do the right thing. With our recycling program right now, we've got 25 to 30 percent contamination on a regular basis. And if we had that for a compost program, it would really just mean that we were wasting a lot of money trying to do a compost program. But that's a different model, and I don't know if they explore that, and I don't know if Commissioner Albright, I don't even know where we are with that RFP and the responses that are back from that. But that is something that waste management has been exploring more. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Albright, would you like to add on to that? Thank you. It's all right. Yes, sir. We are in the middle of a study of the feasibility of something like a real model shift. The report should be back this summer. It is modeled after the Sevierville program based on the field trip that we took last summer or spring. And we hope to be able to provide the results of that report after summer break. We do currently have an update on the schedule for the fall. I don't see any other folks signed in. Council Member Licorice, did you have any summary remarks? Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much to our colleagues for their excellent questions. These are all things that we've discussed in relationship to this composting program, and we want to make sure as many people know about it as possible. And if it is a building block for something larger, then we're doing a lot of really good community education so that people know how to do it at home in case they ever have the opportunity to do it at a higher level. Yeah, so that's it. Thank you, Angela. Thank you to your team. And I'm really hopeful that we can figure out some ways that logistically this becomes more manageable. and it sounds like we've been in the process of streamlining everything, testing new ways to interact with people and to get them so they can pick up their new materials as easily as possible. And I appreciate all the legwork that you all have done behind the scenes. And I'm looking forward to helping promote alongside my colleagues our future opportunities for engagement with this program. Awesome. Thank you. And I want to go back to Council Member Gray's question really quickly. I just remember that we also, we are promoting the program in Spanish as well as, you know, again, thinking about that. We want to have a diversity of participants. We want everybody to feel welcome. And so trying to promote through nontraditional outlets and in other languages. and we have translators ready if there are people who would prefer to get the information in Spanish. So I forgot to say that, and that is an important part of what we're doing. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Our next item on the agenda is under the title of Explore Lexington Sustainability Options. We have Jada Griggs here, the Sustainability Program Manager and Division of Environmental Services, who will do our presentation today. But just to give you a little bit of history on this item, this was actually put into committee in 2018 by former Councilmember Jennifer Massati, and then I took it over when coming on to Council. And we have been kind of in a holding pattern because we knew that we would be working on an update to our sustainability plan called Empower Lexington. So Ms. Griggs is here to give us an update on that and then to also talk about the Solarize Lexington program that is currently underway. So thank you for being here. Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to be before you. As mentioned, I'm Jada Griggs. I'm the program manager senior for sustainability. And I'm glad to be here before you. So I want to say I've been in this position for 14 months. I've been with the city over 22 years, going on 23. So it's a good opportunity for someone who's been in government to also take on this position with sustainability. What is kind of unique with me in this role is when I was an environmental initiative specialist with environmental services, I had the pleasure to be a part of Empire Lexington. And I went through that process. This process was stakeholders, community stakeholders that came together. It was a three-year period. You see the dates there. LFUCG facilitated that process. And so when it was done, the focus was to reduce energy usage. There were five sectors that are there. I won't read those. But when the plan was done, it was to be flexible. There were voluntary measures to reduce our energy uses by at least 1%. At the time, there were no targets or goals, but this was the plan. And then things changed internally. There was retirements and changes and shifting of positions. And so that changed. But there were still, as I mentioned, three years of efforts from community partners and stakeholders. And so what they did is actually come before council and our administration and say, we need someone to be committed to the government for outward facing issues with sustainability. And so that's where my position was developed from. So this time we are doing updates. So one of the first things that I knew is I've got to pull the Empire Lexington plan back out. That's our sustainability plan. Its title is Empire Lexington, a plan for a resilient community. And so what I did is as I was going to workshops and conferences, I would see people that were in the previous efforts. And so I ask those who were previously involved to join as chairs, our core team that eventually became chairs of the sectors that we have. They have made changes, and one of the changes is that we would align with Lease for Cities. And I have a slide to discuss that, a few slides down. And our core team members, and there are several of them here today. And so if you all would please stand and let the committee know that you are here. Thank you so much. I mean, they have put in so much work. They definitely should be acknowledged for that. Because this plan really becomes the premise as to how I do my work. And so we know with the community involvement and the engagement piece in there, these are the new sectors because they do align with lease for cities. And so there are a couple that are new, and that would be water efficiency and quality of life, which includes justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. That is not something we were discussing 10 years ago, but it's certainly in the forefront of issues today. And so that is the Empire Lexington Group. I know there have been several council members and administration as well who have asked me, what are our targets? What are we going to set for our goals as a city and as a community? And so I would tell everyone it's coming through our Empire Lexington, that it's a process. We are getting ready to update our website. New information that came out of the planning they started. in January and have worked through March and even actually through April and May helping with this information. One of the things that I have done is actually re-activate our greenhouse gas emissions inventory. That is so we can track our community-wide, and also we're going to track LFUCG's greenhouse gas emissions. An RFP was put out. We have selected a consultant for that, and that is actually will be before you as first reading today. I believe I am R. That will establish our baseline starting at 2021. We did greenhouse gas emissions inventory previously, but they all were not quantified. So we're going to start with 2022 as our base. We are from those efforts will be recommendations for those targets. Not only that, what is your plan to hit those targets? I did not want us to say we're going to set this goal or this target and not have a game plan to get there. So this is how we get there. Our greenhouse gas emissions targets then will allow us to do the programming, potential policies, the projects and initiatives to reach that goal. And then from that, we're going to request our greenhouse gas emissions be completed every two years going forward. So Leads for Cities. Leads for Cities is leadership in energy and environmental design. And so with the core team saying that they wanted us to align with Leads for Cities, One of the things that I did was apply for their leadership, their cohort program. And so Lexington was actually one of only 13 cities selected this year. And so that is through the U.S. Green Building Council. And when you think of the U.S. Green Building Council, you normally think of leads for buildings and that type of certification. That is not this program. This is designed to help cities have a peer-to-peer networking opportunities. They will give us technical assistance, educational resources that we need to help work through these targets that we're going to set. And then it's a year program. And at the end of that year, then the efforts from the Empire Lexington Group, They have been working to look at the prerequisites and the certifications to see where we are, where we line up. Many of them have actually already had the information I need for those. And then if they don't, they're saying, here's the person you need to go to to get it. I'm already ahead of the game, really. But this process for certification will likely take a year because we will meet monthly until this process is completed. So if you see the 13 cities up there, there is one that has some basketball team called the Jayhawks in Kansas. So we've already had interesting conversations about that. Up next is our Solarize Lexington program. And so this program we kicked off on March the 13th. The information that you have there, I have updated data for you on this. At the time when I did the slides, we had 400. We now have 411. It has slowed down, so we're trying to see what we can do to get more momentum out about the Solarize program. 51 grants eligible. We now only have nine waitlisted, but there are eight who were ready to go through the grant process that we had to put on hold, and they have not completed that. Because this program has just been phenomenal. We are still getting calls. I'm still getting calls and questions about it. And are we going to do additional grants? I was told about this. My neighbor, my family member was talking about it. And so I just want you to know just how much interest there is out there for this solar program. And so we partnered with the Kentucky Solar Energy Society to vet the installers. We put out an RFP. And for the installers that did reply to that, we vetted them and selected only one installer, and that's Solar Energy Solutions. This is a group buying effort, and it's designed to promote solar. Our main focus is residential, but it is open to businesses, nonprofits, and also small businesses, nonprofits, and places of worship. I will tell you that when I was looking at my data, there is at least one contract that has been approved in each one of your districts. And so, as you know, council approved a million dollars for that for low to moderate income households. And I've updated our numbers. We have now 30 approved grants. I have slowed that process down just to make sure that I'm doing my due diligence when it comes to people being in order because it's a first come first serve basis. Our average is now $21,671,000 for install. We now only have $283,000 available, but we will continue to work through that process. We've gotten significant press. I'd like to get more. We are accepting interest forms online through July 20th. And then you see there in the corner where it starts with a thank you, thank you, thank you. That is actually an email that I received from one of the recipients. And so I thought it would be nice for you all to see that. There have been a few hiccups around the way that we've worked through. But overall, this has been phenomenal. So thank you so much for that. And so at this time, I'm ready to take your questions. Thank you. Council members, you can sign in with questions. And I just want to quickly acknowledge former Vice Mayor Kay, who is in the audience today, because without him championing the $1 million supplements for the low to moderate income folks, we might not have had that program. So I thank him for that. Council Member Civigni. Thank you, Chair. And thanks so much for the presentation. This is also near and dear to my heart. And my hope is that we actually do come up with a goal for our carbon neutrality in the next four hours. I almost said we will. And, you know, it's a good thing I listened. My hope is that we will. And so you may be working a little bit more on that. So I really do appreciate everything you guys do. and I know you do a lot with a little bit of staff and I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Council Member Licory. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Griggs, for this presentation and to all of our community members who are here who've worked on our core teams and in general to make these programs stronger. I wanted to ask a question that a constituent had asked me recently at a neighborhood association meeting. They said, we're so excited about this Solarize Lexington program. It's really cool. And they were going on about solar panels and whatnot, and they have them on their house. And something they asked had to do with energy efficiency in general. So if people sign up, they express interest in this program, this individual is wondering, do they get an energy audit? are there ways to make their house tighter or more efficient prior to putting solar panels on, for example? And I thought that was a great question, and I'm wondering if you'd be able to answer. Oh, it is a great question, because energy audits and energy efficiency, what they call tightening the envelope of your home, is important. And so we did not have funding for that. One of the things that I did do is I did reach out to Community Action Council because the grants that they have for energy audits goes through them. And so I sent cards to those that I knew already had gone through that process. And so she gave me the number of 50, and so we sent 50 interest cards to them to let them know about the program. And so we did get good feedback from that. But there is a grant that our division actually put in. If we get that grant, it's a competitive grant, so I'm not certain about that. I know there was a lot of hard work that went into the grant, but part of that would be energy audits. And then so we would be able to pursue that because we are targeting lower income households to be able to do that. because we know if you can even do that without the solar panels, you will reduce your energy usage and that it is important. So currently we do not have a program for that, but I would love to pursue that if indeed that's something that we can do internally. Thank you. That's helpful. It sounds like that's something we could explore more either in relation to this grant if we're able to secure it or through other avenues. And thinking about what you said about the savings associated with tightening the envelope, is in the past or in what you've seen with community action, are weatherization programs open to renters and to homeowners or just to homeowners from what you've seen? I'm not certain, so I can't speak to that. But our program, our Solarize program, is open to homeowners, single-family dwellings. And so those are the ones that we send it to. So I want to say homeowners, but I cannot speak for sure about that. Well, thank you. I'll do a little bit more research for my constituent and just in general. I appreciate that response. And thank you for your work. And thank you, Chair. Well, and I will mention that on our webpage for the Solarize Lexington, there is a link there for energy efficiency. And so it gives great tips on what you can do at home. And I do believe that there are organizations and maybe utility companies that also have ways to get energy audits. And as I mentioned, lower income households can go to community action. There is a grant for that as well. Thank you. Vice Mayor, Blue. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Griggs, for the presentation. I've got a couple of questions about the Solarize Lexington program. I'm a huge fan of anything that will get us to greener alternative energies, especially make it affordable for our residents here. Do you know, looking forward however many years, is the basic cost of the technology expected to go down, like our cost? It has gone down over the years. And then with our Solarize Lexington program, that gives them an additional 20%. And so it's kind of hard to gauge. I believe that the technology has become more efficient and a little more affordable. It's still not cheap, right? But it is more reasonably priced, if you will. That said, there is a 30% tax incentive as well. And so that's a significant, it helps offset the cost. And usually the installs, though, they pay for themselves now probably about 12 years. So it pays for itself. It just takes longer for that payback. But once it's done, then all that money and the savings then stays in your home and you can use for other things. So this program, Beyond Homeowners, is also open to businesses and other organizations, right? What kind of participation have we gotten from businesses and organizations? Can you give us a number in terms of maybe percentage or just anecdotally? I actually have not. Now, I will say, once we get through this process, I will have all the data, and we'll break it down for you. I have not focused so much on that. I will say that I have seen a place of worship. of worship, there have been credit unions, there have been others, I believe, and nonprofits as well, I know for sure, that are on that list. But as far as the percentage for each of those, I do not have that information, but I will. Okay. And then last question, what's next? How do we see this program grow? What do you need from us? How do you see it being different than what it is now? I think, like I said, it's been an incredible program, and I would love to continue it on. If there are other avenues that we can pursue, it's possible that we can do that. I'd love to keep it going, to be able to do it next year, and to continue, because one of the recommendations coming from Empire Lexington will be the solar program and trying to get more solar and cleaner energy options to help us hit our targets. So I would love to grow it. It's just figured out how we are actually going to do that. It may be a challenge, but we will be looking for other avenues. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate your work. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. This is on Solarize Lexington program. I noticed you have, I guess there's contracts with these individuals, the residential homes. Well, the contracts are between the homeowner or the business owner and Solar Energy Solutions. We do not have any liabilities to that, but the contract is between the two parties. Who bills the government then? Solar Energy Solutions. So what they're doing now is giving them a proposal. So we check to see if the home is a good fit for solar. If it is, then they go through the process of getting a proposal, and then there is a cost estimate for that. Then they go and get a firm cost and a contract. They will contact me and say, this homeowner is a grant recipient, and is the funding available? And I will let them know, you know, yes, and then we move forward with that. So there's an inspection from our offices as to whether there's availability or whether they can actually have the solar system? They went through the process, and we actually, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because that gives me an opportunity to thank Danielle and Community and Resident Services, because they went through the process of qualifying the homeowners for the grants, and our categories was, you know, income, but they also have to own the home or have a mortgage and then also live in the home. And they have gone through that process. We created a form, and they sign off on it. They email it to me, and then we start the process of getting them online to the form, and then it goes into our database, if you will. There's no payback or anything of that from the homeowner then? It's paid 100% through the grant. Okay. What's the accountability there or follow-up that you might have on those particular properties? And by follow-up, I'm sorry, what do you mean? The accountability or, you know, the fact that they've actually met their obligations and have still been true to the form. I don't know if there's a limit that how long they have to own the home after it happens or whether they can sell it or rent it or what. We did not put any, we didn't put anything in there like that. They just need to meet the income requirements to own or have a mortgage for their home and live in the home. So initially, if they qualify, that's it then? That's it. Yes, sir. What about the future maintenance of this particular solar system? Is that, I mean, is that on the homeowner, I guess? Well, and really there isn't any maintenance per se. I mean, with the rains that we get, that should clean it. And they say that here in Kentucky, there's really nobody climbing ladders to clean that. It should really be pretty much maintenance-free, that the rains and the seasons that we have should take care of that. Do we have anything in the budget for 24 that's for this solar system yet? No, sir, we do not. But all this is budgeted, is 23 budgeted monies, right? It's coming through just coming through the new year. I guess it's really a grandiose type of pilot program, and once we get feedback, see how it's going, then we'll look at it for future dollars. Is that the understanding? Well, I would love that. I would say that I believe it is our intention to request additional funding because I do believe, and we did send out an email letting you all know that we had stopped the grants and that we believe that we would deplete the funding. And I believe there will be homeowners waiting and wanting us. But I haven't promised anything but what we initially have. But if there is a way to continue, I would love to do that. Final question there. I understand we are solarizing some of the government properties, but that's not in this program at all. Is that correct? It is not. That's a separate program and initiative that is head by James Bush, my colleague, and he is here if you have any questions. I do have a question, a real quick question from Mr. Bush related to that. I understand, and as you're coming up, I'm running out of time, but how many properties are we actually dealing in as far as government-owned assets? As I understand it, we're going to do one of the parks areas, Tates Creek Center, and we've done another park, I think. So just sum it up there. You got time? Sure thing. We have four live installs. They're all on fire stations. We have just kicked off our fifth build, which will be on the Police West Gymnasium. That will be our largest single array rooftop. We have one virtual array, which is a solar share program through LGKU. A second one is in queue with LGKU. And then there are two park projects that will be on your docket at 3 o'clock, items X and Y. Thanks for the summary. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Our last presentation for today is actually energy-related. It's Kentucky Utilities. Thank you, Ms. Griggs. We have the title of the presentation is Process and Considerations for Burying Electrical Lines. I actually asked them to come and do this presentation for us because particularly after we have big storms and there's power outages for various reasons, we oftentimes get questions from our constituents about how decisions are made about burying lines. And I asked them to come and talk about what the process is and then also what are the considerations or challenges that come along with that process so that we can better answer our constituents and resident questions when they come up. So this isn't really a time for having them address specific situations or past happenings or specific neighborhoods, because they won't be prepared to do that today or have the research. So I would encourage you, if you have questions like that, to schedule a one-on-one meeting with them. But they're going to give us kind of a broad overview of what this looks like for us. So we have Chris Mayes here today from Kentucky Utilities. And if you want to take a moment to introduce anyone else that you have with you, you could do that before you start. Okay, sure. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I've got Mr. David Fryberg and Mary Kate Gray with us, as well as our director, Adam Smith. Thank you for having us. After the March 3rd windstorm, Council Member Sheehan reached out to us and asked us to provide some information on undergrounding. So that's why we're here today. I'm Kentucky Utilities Lexington Operations Manager. Everyone's probably familiar with the kinds of damage that windstorms and ice storms can do to our overhead facilities. I'm going to show you a few pictures to kind of jog your memories. This is of the 2008 windstorm. It hit parts of Kentucky. It's basically the remnants of Hurricane Ike. We had 80 mile an hour winds all over the Louisville area. damage in other parts of the state as well. Most of you probably remember the 2009 ice storm, a severe impact here locally in Lexington. That storm was actually the number one event in the history of KU in terms of customers out. We had over 368,000 outages due to that storm. If you remember, we had about two inches of ice coating all the limbs, all of our wires, a tremendous amount of damage. And the restoration for that work took nine days. So it took nine days to get the lights back on. And as you went farther to the western Kentucky area, it was even a little worse. You had three to four inches of lights there. Some of you may remember, it's a little less maybe in the memory, but in 2018 we had a severe thunderstorm roll through parts of Lexington and Versailles. This picture is of some damage where we had several transmission poles that were broken and out in the road blocking US 60 outside of our sails. Pretty scary for some folks. We had some cars with wires across the hood of the car and people trapped in their cars. So definitely a scary event for those folks. And more recently, you guys probably remember the March 3rd storm that hit here. It's actually the second largest event for KU in its history. We had 220,000 customers impacted from that event. Just a tremendous amount of outages, and it was very widespread. It wasn't like one particular area. It was all over the state. Lexington may be a little more severe than some areas. Just to give you an idea of the damages, the Kentucky Mesonet site, where we get some of our weather data, recorded 75-mile-an-hour wind gusts here in Fayette County. So basically, it's Category 1 hurricane winds that we had with that event that people might not realize. I'm happy to say that we were able to restore power within five days in that event. Very fortunate to have got a lot of external resources. We reached out through our mutual assistance channels, and we had 1,000 extra line workers here for that event. That's the only way we were able to get that done, so I'm very thankful for their help. Obviously, if you put our facilities underground, you mitigate some of that risk. You take care of some of the ice and wind things, so you get a benefit from that. However, you do still have outages. Underground systems do still fail, and those outages sometimes can last longer than those on a typical overhead line. And also performing any kind of routine maintenance or repairs on those facilities can be challenging for us. Obviously, you can't see it, and sometimes you have to actually dig up those facilities to get access. Anytime we put existing overhead underground, it can be quite disruptive to the customer. You're going to be damaging streets, sidewalks, yards, possibly trees. When we're digging around the large trees, there can be roots damage that can harm the health of the tree. Also if we're actually putting facilities underground from the pole to the house, there There may be some work involved at the meter base that could involve, could need an electrical inspection to take care of that. And then even after all that work's done, we're still going to have some equipment that's going to be above ground. Typically our pad-mounted transformers, the green boxes would be above ground. I'll show you a picture of those here in just a second. Here's what our underground boring operation would look like. This is actually in a neighborhood here in Lexington where we're replacing some aging underground facilities. One thing probably worth noting is that underground facilities typically do not last as long as comparable overhead facilities. So we do have to replace them quite frequently. Here's a look on the left at what an open trench would look like for a new development. And then on the right I'm just showing you what one of our track machines looks like operating in a backyard just to give you an idea on and what the equipment would look like and the kinds of disruptions we're talking about. So if facilities are replaced with underground, we would still have these green boxes that you see here, whether it be in the front yard or the backyard. So in these pictures, the green rectangular box is our Padmata transformer, and the other pedestals you see are phone and cable. Typically, we like to be in the front lot, much easier to get access. It's easier to troubleshoot, maintain. You don't have to deal with fences and dogs, swimming pools, all those kind of conflicts in the backyards. But we do have quite a few facilities in the backyards. So cost is obviously a big piece of this. After the ice storm in 2009, our companies looked and did an analysis to say, okay, what would it take if we were to put all of our facilities underground? We looked at transmission and distribution, and what we found, it would be $40 billion to put our transmission facilities underground, and roughly $24 billion for the distribution. So a general rule of thumb is about $1 million per mile for distribution. That's still a relatively accurate estimate. General rule of thumb for transmission is much, much higher at $10 to $15 million per mile. The way that would work is if a specific city or a neighborhood wants to do this, they would be responsible for those costs involved. So the process, if there's someone that's interested, typically a neighborhood HOA president or someone like that would reach out to the company and tell us you're interested. So we'll come out with our engineering group. We would take a look at the existing facilities. We would choose new underground routes and see what would be feasible. And then we would provide plans and estimates back to that group. Once that group's given us some feedback, if they choose to move forward, we would ask for payment for those costs. And once we've got that, we would go ahead and schedule the work and order any materials involved. Now keep in mind, any kind of agreement with Kentucky Utilities, you would still have to deal with those telecom companies individually. So I know you've got other folks on the polls, not just Kentucky Utilities. You've got folks like Windstream, Spectrum, Metronet, Kentucky Datalink. There's quite a few companies that share those rights away. Most of our, the vast majority of our new developments are already going underground. For new developments, that's driven by the developer. we're happy to do either overhead or underground. Most developers either see the value in the underground and choose to do that. Usually that requires some kind of a work contribution from them like trenching and conduit work. Currently, one third of our facilities in the Lexington area are already underground. And we are evaluating some areas where we think it might make sense to do some strategic undergrounding. But it's small pockets, small areas on a small scale. and it's areas where we maybe had some reliability troubles, some performance that we think may be subpar on reliability, and places where we can greatly reduce tree trimming costs and save some money. We have also done a few downtown, I'll call them downtown renaissance type projects in some communities where we've taken some existing facilities and placed them underground. I thought I'd put this slide together to help you to see on one slide some of the positives and negatives of undergrounding. Obviously, we talked about positive. It reduces those weather-related outages from the wind and the ice and the tornadoes and those things. We're going to have reduced tree trimming costs for the utility. It saves us money. Improved aesthetics. You don't have to look at those poles and wires anymore in that particular area. Some of the cons, obviously it's very expensive. Those underground lines are still going to fail. You're going to have outages. Some of those outages may last longer than what you're used to on the overhead. It can be quite disruptive. Also, one thing worth noting, if you choose to put a particular neighborhood underground, you still have all those existing transmission and distribution lines that come to the neighborhood that are still exposed to the elements, so you still have that risk. And I've already mentioned the disruption to the customer for trees, sidewalks, yards can be quite disruptive. In conclusion, undergrounding is one tool that we use to try to improve reliability. It's rarely the best tool. There's lots of other things that we do, things like distribution automation, better tree trimming practices, overhead circuit hardening initiatives, things that we're spending lots of money on to try to improve reliability in the area that we think you get a little more bang for your buck in there that's probably better results with less money spent. And with a few exceptions, very few utilities are doing this on a large-scale basis. That's all I have today. I'll turn it back over to Council Member Sheehan. Okay, Council Members, if you have questions or comments, go ahead and sign in. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. My question is, if a neighborhood association wants to work with you all to get their lines buried, how is that fee structure broken out per household? How does that work? That's a good question. And really, that's up to the HOA to decide how they want to do that. All we're going to do is provide the plans and estimates and tell them the total cost. And if they want to split it out by a homeowner, they're welcome to do that. Or however they want to raise those funds, it's totally up to them to decide that. So I guess I'm guessing that you all would want one check from the Neighborhood Association and not 300 houses paying their own payments. Yes, yes. Obviously, we're not going to try to go collect from each individual homeowner. So, yes, we would want payment up front for one check, yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor, Will. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. Got a few questions for you. In terms of the failure rates on underground lines versus overhead, If you took weather out of the equation, is there one form that has a higher failure rate than the other? That's a good question. If you take weather out, which if you're taking weather out, I assume we'll take like vegetation conflicts out maybe. If you take tree conflicts out, I would say the overhead system is a little more resilient. The failure rates on underground are a little higher just because you tend to have more moisture intrusion in the cables and they decay over time. And like I said before, they don't last typically as long. It's because of that moisture that gets in the cable. So no matter how you try to seal it and take care of it, it still finds a way to get in there. So I'd say the overhead is actually last longer, more resilient than the underground. And you had said in the presentation, too, that maintenance on underground is more expensive than overhead for some of the obvious reasons, I assume. It's more difficult, right, because you can't see it, and sometimes you have to actually dig up those facilities, and it adds cost and it adds time as well. Okay. Do you have just the ballpark, not necessarily even dollar figures, but maybe a ratio of what it costs to replace overhead with underground versus creating new underground, like let's say in a new development? Like what's the price difference look like? Yeah, it's a lot different. So a new underground, it's such a minuscule difference that we typically don't charge anything for those developments. If you're developing a new residential subdivision, what we'd ask you to do is provide the trenching workforce, and we'll do all the other work, and we'll call it a wash. And typically, there's no money changing hands for those. So we see the value in that for the underground or some value for us, and we're happy to partner with those developers to do that. So what makes replacement of overhead with underground so expensive? Obviously, you've got facilities that are already in place, right? Number one, it's all additional costs. So for new facilities, we're going to have to build something regardless, whether it's overhead or underground. If you're going to have to build something, there's not much difference between the overhead and underground. The underground is a little more expensive. But obviously, if you're replacing it, we don't plan to touch those assets, right? They're performing well, working well for us. We're making a return on that investment. If you ask us to go replace those before they need to be replaced, that's all added costs for us. That's why we're going to charge you the complete cost of putting all the underground in, tearing out all the old overhead. So it's quite expensive. And one last question. During weather events, do you, for overhead lines, do you see more transmission lines or distribution lines affected? Well, typically more distribution lines. That's really just because we have a lot more miles of distribution than we do transmission. And on the transmission typically from town to town, the high voltage lines that carry the voltage there, there's a lot more mileage and a lot more exposure on the distribution. And the transmission is typically, a lot of that is now on steel poles instead of wood poles. And a lot taller, you have less vegetation management issues, less tree conflicts. So it's a little different animal, and I would say we have a lot less on the transmission. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. And thank you so much, Chris, for this. You know, as council members, or at least I have received a ton of requests to bury lines over the years. And I realize it is way more expensive. I have several issues that I didn't think it was better to bury lines but have led me to lean towards that. And in my neighborhood, there are lines everywhere. And some of them, I realize, are not KU, but there's wires falling down. There's wires bundled up. There's wires like this big in round things on a pole, and it's a mess. And they're hitting cars, all kinds of issues. I am led to believe that some communities are adopting an underground-only approach. in my travels and where I have family living in Florida and Michigan, entire communities are completely underground, and it's really refreshing. And, yes, we have the green boxes, and it's super annoying, you know, to have to deal with trees and things in people's yards. But I think overall, especially when I think of new developments, that this could be really helpful. And I realize it's expensive and it can be a pain. It's a pain right now the way it is. And it's really unsightly in a lot of neighborhoods. And some neighborhoods it's not. Some neighborhoods it's not as unsightly. But in my neighborhood where I live and where a lot of my constituents live, it's pretty bad. So I just wonder if we can find a way to encourage this type of thing in new developments. I don't know. I know it's a high price tag, but I don't know if there are any incentives or any other government funding that could help offset the costs. I really can't help you with any initiatives there, but what I can say is that most developers are already doing that. It's pretty rare that we go out and put new overhead lines in for a new subdivision or for even a commercial development. Now, typically what we might have is out in the county, you might have a new four or five pole tap built on five or ten acres or something to get service to an individual. But it's pretty rare that a developer would want overhead anymore. I don't have any numbers to tell you exactly on the new developments, but I would guess it's more than three-fourths of them are going underground already. Okay, so even in Fayette County, a new development would be underground. it's just complicated when we talk about taking the older neighborhoods and then converting them to underground. It is, and not just the neighborhoods, but all those main feeder circuits that go all over the city. So that's very costly and time-consuming, and it's difficult sometimes to even find a route, a place to put the facilities. So that's helpful to understand that it's not that everybody's against underground. it's just going backwards and moving backwards is what we already have is the main challenge. Right. If you had an ordinance in place 40 years ago, the city would look a lot different, right? So if people had the foresight to see what you want it to look like, you could maybe control that years ago. Now that it's out there, it's much more difficult to do something with it. Okay, and then, so as a city, we could mandate, we could make it an ordinance that here, moving forward, things have to be underground. That's for you all to decide. I'm not sure about that, but I won't comment on that. I'm looking at Mr. Barbary over there. Good afternoon. I need to look at the zoning ordinance, but I think if it reaches a certain level, all new development is required to be undergrounded now already on the books, which is what he's referring to. But I can send that to you all. But, yeah, I mean, you all can do that. But it probably needs to be clear. We have some exceptions now where we underground, where things are already dug up, and we're going to put the trenching in that he's talking about. So there are some exceptions that we've already recognized now. But, yeah, generally speaking, for new stuff, you can require it to be underground. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you both. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. I want to say thank you again for coming and talking with us. I can see, like, when I get questions about this, now I can take this presentation as a video to help start the conversation with constituents. So I appreciate you coming and having this education opportunity with us today. Thank you. Yeah, you're free to share that. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, the last thing that we could look at on our agenda today would be items referred to committee. Are there any items in our list that you would like to remove at this point? I would take a motion as a starting point for removing item number four, which is the KU presentation on process of bearing electric lines since we had that presentation today. So moved. Motion by Vice Mayor Wu. a second by Council Member Legree. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. Any other motions or edits today? Okay. I'm sorry. Are we done with the pavement management plan? um that or does that stay on there is an annual update that is required okay for that so we're we're not we have to leave that on thank you chair okay just so you have a little bit of a preview our next meeting is july 11th we do not have a june meeting and currently on the schedule although sometimes things change we have an annual energy improvement fund update from james bush who we heard a little bit from today we We have an update on our urban forestry and street trees from Director Carey. And then we have a presentation from the Environmental Commission because they are looking at changes to their bylaws and restructuring that commission. So as we get closer to that meeting, we'll confirm those for you all and send out the packet like usual. But that is all we have today. So I will take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Motion by Vice Mayor Wu and a second by Council Member Savigny. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. The time to hesitate is through, no time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose, and our love become a funeral pyre. Come on baby, light my fire. Come on baby, light my fire. Try to set the night on fire. You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be alive If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher Come on, baby, light my fire Come on, baby