# Council Work Session - June 13, 2023 > Auto-transcribed civic record · June 13, 2023 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5843 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5843?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2023-06-13 - **Last revised**: June 13, 2023 - **Length**: 27,936 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 convened on June 13, 2023, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber at 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507, with Mayor Linda Gorton presiding. The meeting addressed a focused agenda consisting of 2 items, including a public comment period for issues on the agenda and the approval of a summary document. During the session, the Council conducted 3 votes on various matters before them. The meeting provided an opportunity for public participation, with 2 public comments heard from community members regarding agenda items. The primary substantive action taken was the approval of a summary, which received council approval. The public comment period served an informational purpose, allowing residents to voice their concerns and perspectives on matters under consideration by the Council. ## Attendance The meeting was attended by Mayor Linda Gorton and Vice Mayor Wu, along with 12 council members. **Present:** • Mayor Linda Gorton • Vice Mayor Wu • Council Member J. Brown • Council Member Ellinger • Council Member Fogle • Council Member Lynch • Council Member LeGris • Council Member Sheehan • Council Member Gray • Council Member Worley • Council Member F. Brown • Council Member Baxter • Council Member Sevigny • Council Member Reynolds **Absent:** • Council Member Monarrez • Council Member Plomin No council members arrived late to the meeting. With 14 of 16 total members present, the meeting had sufficient attendance to conduct official business. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included three formal votes on various agenda items [timestamp: 00:00]. **Approval of May 23, 2023 Work Session Summary** Ellinger motioned to approve the May 23, 2023 work session summary, seconded by Gray. The motion passed unanimously with 14 ayes and 0 nays. All members present voted in favor: Wu, J. Brown, Ellinger, Fogle, Lynch, LeGris, Sheehan, Gray, Worley, F. Brown, Baxter, Sevigny, and Reynolds. **FY2024 Budget First Reading** J. Brown motioned to place the FY2024 Budget on the docket for first reading, seconded by Gray. The motion passed unanimously with 14 ayes and 0 nays. All members present voted in favor: Wu, J. Brown, Ellinger, Fogle, Lynch, LeGris, Sheehan, Gray, Worley, F. Brown, Baxter, Sevigny, and Reynolds. **Comprehensive Plan Affordable Housing Amendment** Gray motioned to include affordable housing language in the comprehensive plan, seconded by Ellinger. This motion required a roll call vote and passed with 13 ayes and 1 nay. Members voting in favor were: Wu, J. Brown, Ellinger, Fogle, Lynch, LeGris, Sheehan, Gray, Worley, Baxter, Sevigny, and Reynolds. F. Brown cast the sole dissenting vote against the amendment. All three motions were decided during the early portion of the meeting, with the first two receiving unanimous support from all 14 members present. The affordable housing amendment was the only contested vote of the session, with F. Brown being the lone opposition voice among the council members. ## Budget and Financial Actions The meeting addressed two significant financial agreements totaling over $4.4 million in contracted services and infrastructure improvements. **Radio Maintenance Contract** The council considered Resolution 0602-23 for a radio maintenance contract with Tait Communications valued at $4,085,406. This substantial investment represents ongoing maintenance services for the city's radio communication infrastructure. **Transportation Infrastructure Agreement** Resolution 0601-23 involved a $330,000 agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for the Alexandria Drive at Trailwood Lane Left Turn Lane project. This contract addresses traffic infrastructure improvements at the specified intersection, with the state transportation department serving as the contracting partner. The two financial items combined represent $4,415,406 in municipal expenditures, with the radio maintenance contract comprising the majority of the financial commitment at approximately 92% of the total amount discussed. *Note: Specific voting outcomes and detailed discussion timestamps were not available in the provided meeting data.* ## Public Comment Two community members addressed the council during the public comment period. **Bob Quick** [timestamp: 00:00] spoke regarding the Comprehensive Plan, expressing appreciation for the council's ongoing work on this initiative. Quick emphasized two key priorities for the community: job creation and housing affordability. He commended the council for their efforts in developing the comprehensive plan. **Jim Schropshire** [timestamp: 00:00] addressed the Urban Service Boundary Expansion, urging the council to exercise caution in any expansion decisions. Schropshire advocated for data-driven decision-making processes before considering boundary changes. He raised specific concerns about the potential impacts on affordable housing availability and local farming operations, suggesting that expansion could negatively affect these important community resources. Both speakers focused on planning and development issues facing the community, with Quick supporting the comprehensive planning process while Schropshire called for careful consideration of urban growth boundaries and their broader implications for housing and agriculture. ## Contested Items The primary contested item during the June 13, 2023 meeting centered on the Urban Service Boundary Expansion proposal, which drew significant community opposition. **Urban Service Boundary Expansion** Several community members voiced strong opposition to the proposed expansion of the urban service boundary, raising concerns about the lack of a data-driven decision-making process. The opposition focused on two main issues: the potential impact on affordable housing availability and the preservation of existing farmland in the affected areas. Community members argued that expanding the urban service boundary without proper data analysis could lead to unintended consequences for housing affordability in the region. They expressed concerns that such expansion might contribute to housing market pressures that could make affordable housing less accessible to residents. Additionally, opponents emphasized the importance of farmland preservation, arguing that the expansion could threaten agricultural areas that are vital to the local economy and food security. The community members called for a more systematic, evidence-based approach to evaluating any proposed boundary changes before moving forward with the expansion. The nature of the opposition was characterized as community-driven, with multiple residents participating in the discussion to express their concerns about the proposal's potential impacts on both housing and agricultural preservation priorities. The meeting materials do not indicate a final resolution or outcome for this contested item, suggesting that the Urban Service Boundary Expansion proposal may require additional review and community input before any decision is reached. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 00:00] During the public comment period for agenda items, community members addressed the board regarding the comprehensive plan and urban service boundary expansion proposals. **Key Speakers:** • Bob Quick • Jim Schropshire The public comments focused on the comprehensive plan and urban service boundary expansion, with community members expressing varying perspectives on these development-related issues. Some speakers voiced support for the proposed changes, while others raised opposition to the expansion plans. The comments were received as informational input for the board's consideration of the agenda items. No formal action was taken during this public comment period, as is standard procedure for this portion of the meeting. The discussion provided community feedback on significant planning and development matters that would be considered later in the meeting's formal agenda items. ## Approval of Summary [timestamp: 00:00] The council considered approval of the summary from their May 23, 2023 work session. Council members Ellinger and Gray participated in the discussion of this agenda item. The council voted to approve the summary of the May 23, 2023 work session without recorded debate or concerns raised during the meeting. **Outcome:** Approved --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the June 13, 2023 Council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the June 13, 2023 meeting of the Urban County Council, a resolution adopting goals and objectives for the Imagine Lexington 2045 Comprehensive Plan, as amended - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend Theme E, Goal 3, Objective C to read as follows: By December 1, 2024, adopt a new Expansion Area Master Plan to ensure the above acreage is responsibly developed while balancing the integrity of our agricultural land and the clear need for additional acreage to address Lexington’s housing and economic development requirements. To ensure coordinated development, the master plan should plan for infrastructure, community facilities, and land uses that include a variety of housing types, with a focus on low and middle-income housing types, and a wide array of employment opportunities. It is the intention of the Urban County Council that the new Expansion Area Master Plan include provisions for the construction, creation and/or funding of additional affordable housing units, as defined by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and middle- income housing. As such, the Planning Commission shall recommend to the Urban County Council mechanisms to create, construct and/or fund affordable housing units and middle-income housing in correlation to the development provided for in the Expansion Area Master Plan. Completion of this master plan shall be the priority of the work of the Division of Planning to ensure timely adoption and implementation of critical needs identified - **Motion** — failed (0-0): amend Theme E, Goal 3, Objective A to replace “identify no less than 2,700 acres but no more than 5,000 acres” with “identify 2,700 acres” - **Motion** — failed (0-0): amend to "up to 2700 acres" - **Motion** — failed (0-0): amend to add "up to 3000 acres" - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the June 15, 2023 Council meeting docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the June 15, 2023 Council meeting, a resolution for rent of office space at 4701 Tates Creek Center Drive, at a cost not to exceed $10,716 - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the May 30, 2023 work session summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve budget amendments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve new business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend and postpone item N (Authorization to amend Ordinance section 2-96 of the Code of Ordinances for the Environmental Commission to change officers’ term length, the addition of an information officer, a reduction in membership from 40 to 25 members, the addition of a Council member seat, the designation of an ex officio member, and the name of the commission to The Environmental Commission of Lexington-Fayette County. No budgetary impact. (L0613-23) until the July 11, 2023 work session - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the June 15, 2023 Council meeting, a resolution approving the FY2024 budget for the Downtown Lexington Management District and further move to schedule the required public hearing related to this matter at the regularly scheduled Council meeting on Thursday, June 29, 2023 at 6pm - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor's Report - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the Mayor's Report - Price Contract Bid Recommendations - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjournment at 6:11pm --- ## Full transcript What do I do the things I do? I tell you what I am new My girl I don't even think that I love you Won't you take me? Give me money. Won't you take me? Give me your money. Oh! Tell me, tell me. Tell me, tell me. I've come to settle for a ball like me When all I can see was the end of the week All the things we sign and the things we find Are gonna keep us together It's just a matter of time My situation changes Walking in and out of that door Like a stranger But with wages I give you all you say you are not And all I could see Was the end of the week All the things you said And the things we'd buy And gonna keep us together Girl, it's just a matter of time Just a minute Somebody tell me Why I work so hard for you Oh, to give you money. Somebody tell me. Why I was so hard for you. Oh, to give you money. Somebody tell me. Don't you tell me why I do the things I love She's got a way about her Don't know what it is But I know that I can't live without her. She's got a way to please me. I don't know why it is, but there doesn't have to be a reason anyway. She's got a smile that heals me. I don't know why it is, but I have to laugh when she reveals me. She's got a way of talking. I don't know why it is, but it lifts me up when we all walk anywhere. She comes to me when I'm feeling down, inspires me. Without a sound, she touches me. And I get turned around. She's got a way to show. How I make her feel. And I find the strength to keep on going She's got a light around her Oh, everywhere she goes A million dreams of love surround her everywhere She comes to me when I'm feeling down inspires me without a sound she touches me I get turned around Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh But I know that I can't live without her anyway. I was a little too tall, could have used a few pounds, tight pants, points, all the renown. She was a black hat beauty with big dark eyes, and points all her own, sudden way up high. We're firm and high I passed the cornfields when the woods got heavy Out in the backseat of my 60s Chevy Working on mysteries without any clues Working on our night moves Trying to make some front page driving news Working on our night moves In the summertime In the sweet summertime We were in love, oh no, far from We were searching for some high in the sky, some We were just young and restless and bored Living by the sword And we'd steal away every chance we could To the back room, to the alley, or the trusty woods I used to have shoes, but neither one cared We were getting our share Working on our nightmares Trying to lose the awkward teenage blues Working on our nightmares And it was summertime Sweet summertime, summertime Oh, wonder. I felt the lightning. Yeah. I waited on the thunder. I waited on the thunder. I woke last night to the sound of thunder How far off I sat in one day Thank you. The End Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome everyone. I'll go ahead and call to order the June 13th, 2023 Council Work Session. And we have first thing on our agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda. and so what I will do is when I call your name, the way this works is that the first thing I'm going to ask you today is if your issue is on the agenda. So everything listed on this agenda is fair game and otherwise if it is not on the agenda, we'll hear from you at the end of the meeting at the proper time And the way it will work is I'll call your name and ask you that question, and then you'll come to the podium and state your name and your council district, and you'll have three minutes. So first on the list, we have quite a long list, so everybody needs to be patient. So first on the list is Bob Quick. Is your item on the agenda? Yes. Okay, welcome. Hello, Mayor. I'm not Bob Quick. My name is Bob Quick. I'm President and CEO of Commerce Lexington, and I'm here to talk about the comp plan. On behalf of Commerce Lexington, our more than 1,900 members, investors who employ more than 90,000 people in Fayette County, I would like to express our appreciation to the council for your work on the comprehensive plan. We've been a part of this process for over a year, hosting roundtables, attending meetings, and talking with many of you about our concerns. It has been refreshing to be part of an inclusive process and to see how thoughtfully each of you have handled the critical decisions. We appreciate you making job creation and housing affordability a priority in this plan. We also appreciate the inclusion of a compromise expansion proposal to address short-term and long-term needs for our city's growth and development. We've studied this issue and delayed decision-making on growth long enough. Our community is at a tipping point. Our workforce needs housing. Our employers need more land to expand. And we're making it almost impossible for new businesses or young professionals to locate in Lexington. The changes you have made to the comprehensive plan are a significant step forward to addressing all these challenges. We just want to thank you for your leadership, thank you for your courage to do what is right, what the right thing is for the community, and we look forward to continuing to work with you as we go forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, we are over our capacity in here. So if you are standing, I need to ask you please to go to the overflow. And we will be sure and get to you if you're signed up. And one of the things that I'm going to do, and thank you very much for that, we don't want the fire marshal on us. And then as I call your name to speak, I'll also call the next person's name so that you can queue up and be waiting so that we're a little bit more efficient with our time. Thank you very much. All right. Dottie Bean, are you on the agenda? No? No. All right. All right, we'll get back to you. Jim Shropshire, where are you? You on the agenda? Yes. Welcome, if you'll state your name and your council district. My name is Jim Shropshire and my wife Jane and I operate a 300 acre cattle farm, 3079 Royster Road, we're in council district 12. As I've just mentioned, I'm a cattle farmer. I'm not an orator, so please be patient with me. But I felt it was important to address you folks today on the issue of expansion. I thought it would be helpful to you to put a face and a name with Fayette County Agriculture. And so I'm the poster boy, I guess. Our farm is in the area of I-64, I-75 split, which means if you all decide to expand, we're at ground zero. We have the bullseye on our back. We're in that area. I'm here today to ask you not to vote to expand the urban service boundary at this time. I'm asking that you wait for studies that will provide facts and data that will guide future expansion. Is expansion warranted now? Where's the data? And if so, where should this expansion occur? Question. And what will the cost of this expansion be and who will pay for this expansion? I'm asking for a data-driven and orderly process. I participated in the last rush to expansion expand in the 1990s. It was anything but orderly and data driven. Many of us came away from that process disillusioned and frustrated. It created winners and losers. It divided this community. I would hope that we could do things differently today. There should not be winners and losers. That is not the way to move Lexington forward. Many of you on the council are concerned about affordable housing or the lack thereof. Affordable housing was not built after the last expansion. Certainly, little of it was built in the expansion area. I don't believe it will be built this time unless it is required. And if you vote to expand first and then try to require affordable housing, I don't believe that it will happen. Finally, if a decision is made at some point to expand, what requirements and rules will be put in place to safeguard farms such as ours? what protection will be put in place to enable us to continue farming and raising cattle? We have made a commitment to keep our farm in agriculture. What commitment in return is this community offering us and others? Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next is Brittany Rothmeier. Is your issue on the agenda? And then if Rhodes-Cleland will please queue up, You'll be next after Brittany if your issue's on the agenda. Thank you, Mayor. And there was someone that yielded their time, so I just wanted to move that. Okay, now I need to know who that is and where they are. Robert James, 12th District. Okay, so you've yielded three minutes to Brittany, so you'll have six minutes. Thank you, Mayor. My name's Brittany Rothmeier, and I'm the Executive Director of Fate Alliance. You all have heard a lot from us, I know, but in light of the last Cal and the historic nature of the decision related to the goals and objectives, I'm here again today to speak to you. Before the previous Cal vote, it came to our attention at Fade Alliance that our council members had received letters regarding the legality of expanding the urban services boundary and their authority to act on this from lawyers representing developers and home builders. We disagreed with the legal basis of those opinions and felt that it was necessary to hire legal counsel to outline and for us to understand the limits of council's authority to expand. Research and being a voice for our community are core to who the Fade Alliance is as an organization. Please know that our intention is not and never will be to intimidate or threaten. We will, however, keep asking the hard questions and demanding and providing answers that are based on facts and within the law. Fade Alliance recognizes that Lexington needs more affordable housing, that people are being priced and displaced out of our neighborhoods. We believe in finding solutions to these issues. Some in our community, and we've seen some decision makers, say expansion of the USB is the solution to lowering housing prices based on the theory of supply and demand, and because that's what the community wants. We fundamentally disagree. But you don't have to take it from Fayette Alliance. The Sustainable Growth Task Force, initiated by the mayor in the 2018 Comprehensive Plan, issued a report that was adopted by the council in 2021. It concluded that we have enough land to meet our market needs for the next 20 years. Civic Lex and the city led on the table in 2022 to get public input on growth. Fate Alliance and numerous community organizations committed financial resources and hours of time into a process that resulted in thousands of comments about growth. LFUCG created its own public input report within the planning department based upon research and hours of community meetings. Page 55 of that report reads that in general, people expressed a strong desire to see continued infill and redevelopment opportunities as the dominant way to accommodate future growth. The Bluegrass Realtors Association specifically hired the University of Kentucky to study this exact question. The answer was that expansion would not make housing prices go down in the long term. Expanding the urban services boundary up to 5,000 acres is five times the size of the Lexington Airport nearly. More than five decades worth of development at the rate that we're absorbing land, which can also be found in the sustainable growth report and other studies. And yet, there's still no explanation of how we got to 5,000 acres or how exactly it's going to solve all of our problems. We're about to give away the store for nothing in return. No guarantees of anything, no guarantees of types of housing or jobs, no guarantees of affordable housing, just like in 1996. Fade Alliance has consistently and continuously pointed to research to support our positions. We have not asked you all as decision makers to never expand the USB. We have not asked you all as decision makers to take our word for it. We've asked for a data driven process to evaluate when, where, why, and how expansion would take place, and why wouldn't we want that for our community? We hope that you all will consider for the future success of all of us putting completion of the goal four process into the goals and objectives before a mandate to expand the urban services boundary and let the process guide our next steps. Let's talk as a community about real solutions to affordable housing, preventing displacement, creating workforce housing and jobs, and creating a Lexington for everyone. Fate Alliance will continue to advocate, educate, and research whatever the outcome of the goals and objectives. We're committed to moving forward with our mission because we believe that Lexington is worth it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Rhodes Cleland. Is your issue on the agenda? Yes. Okay, and then is Bill Justice here? Bill, you'll be next up. Okey-doke, welcome. Great, thank you. Thank you to everyone that's here, and council members and everybody in the room. My name is Rhodes Cleland, I'm district five. I sincerely appreciate your dedication to the growth of Lexington. Thank you. From my point of view, I see this as an exciting time where this council has an opportunity to make an impact, to think next level and write the future for smart growth in Lexington. Your votes will potentially contribute to the lasting legacy and desirability of Lexington. I am asking you to please consider what if we focus on process before expansion. To briefly share a bit of a personal story on what fuels my advocacy, as I was headed down here today, I was recalling my maternal great grandfather. He owned a car dealership behind what is now Frank and Dino's. And then my paternal grandfather, he was an usher at the Kentucky Theater. And then he went on to work for the Herald Leader for over 30 years. My opinion is that they helped to contribute to the vibrancy of downtown. That was then, now we need the opportunity to create the new future vibrancy. We need you to help create the opportunity. There are a few areas here and I did send an email earlier this morning with links to substantiate the claims. But they include research and studies to support some of what I mentioned. The 5,000 acres, that does seem to be an arbitrary number. And what we learned from the 96 expansion is that adding land does not equate to more affordable housing. That was the big learning there. So what if we give Lexington long lasting solutions to affordable housing? The next is choice, I ask to please find in your heart the capacity to choose a solid, methodical, albeit more difficult path versus an easy, fast, leading path. So I'm saying I support the completion of a data driven process to guide growth decisions. Vision, I also want to mention that the sustainable vision delivered by council member Hannah Legree demonstrated strength and clear focus on what's best for Lexington based on data and facts. I believe that what we solve for needs to include infill and redevelopment based on research to focus on that solution. And you can choose a data driven process to guide growth. Thank you. Thank you. Bill Justice, and then is Karen Terrell here? Yes. Is your item on the agenda? All right, you'll follow Bill. Welcome. Hello everyone, I'm Bill Justice, owner and operator of Justice Real Estate, established in 1980. In all transparency, I'm on the board of Fayette Alliance. I'm also on the board of the Kentucky Horse Park Foundation. I'm also on the board of Town Branch. I've proudly served the Bluegrass Realtors as their past president. And I want to thank each of you for what you're doing to make our community an even better place to live in. Kathy, we really appreciate you with all you're going through, too. I probably have the best job in all of Kentucky. I get to show our city, our countryside off to people from all over the world. These people not only buy horses, they buy farms, they buy houses, they buy office buildings, they invest in Lexington Live downtown, they stay in our hotels, they eat in our fine restaurants. And you know why? Because of our brand, the equine industry, Lexington, Kentucky, the horse capital of the world. That's why they're here and that's why they're investing here. This unique brand attracts the high-end jobs and the high-end businesses that Mr. Quick refers to. It allows us to attract and retain some of the best educators and doctors in the world. But it also attracts out-of-town developers, people from Birmingham, Nashville, California, who have no regard for what makes Lexington special. We all need to be vigilant, all of us, and cognizant at what makes and keeps Lexington the horse capital of the world. To that end, we need data and research, data supplied by competent planning staff, by our competent planning staff that us taxpayers pay for. They don't need to be mandated to expand willy-nilly, as Linda Blackford so well said. Lexington has a 65-year history of keeping a special planning model. You are response with keeping that tradition and with keeping Lexington, Kentucky, that special place. Our community, I've got five minutes from Carolyn Conway. I'm sorry, can you stand up back there and tell me who? Thank you. Are you signed up here? Yes. Okey-doke. I don't go by too many buzzers anyway. We have the, you know, the council has its rules. Tell me your last name again. I apologize. I don't have you on my list. Conley. Conley. Conley. Okay, thank you. Okay, three minutes. I don't need three more minutes. Our community spoke against expanding the urban service boundary. Sewerability is a major issue. How and where we're going to pay for it. Exaction fees, how is it going to be paid for? Why are we, and I say we, why are we in such a hurry? Let's take our time and get it right. There's enough developable land in Lexington Fayette County for 20 years. And I quote our mayor, thoughtful and deliberate planning is what makes Lexington such a desirable place to live. We need smart, sustainable, and equitable growth for Lexington Kentucky. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Karen Terrell, and then is, oh, I'm sorry. Hang on one second. You know we're relying on technology here. Is Phil Meyer here? Okay, Phil, you'll be right up next. All right, welcome. Hi, I'm Karen Terrell. I live in District 12 and I've been on some Zoom conference calls over the while with Ms. Loman, so thank you very much. And I got to meet you, the Mayor, and some of you on the council this past, well actually just yesterday. I'm part of the senior intern program and I really appreciated meeting you all and it was just real timely because I did want to come to talk. I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, which is, it's now a high school, no longer a farm. That's a different story. I've lived in Lexington for 40 years and I've loved it. We built a house, moved into it in 1987, which I know it was on a horse farm at one time. I was sitting at a window, writing a paper on a, I guess it was a word processor from IBM at the time, an old time. And looking out the window and they were tearing down a fence across the road and putting another subdivision in. But I was living on something like that. I've promoted Lexington. I've recruited a jazzercise instructor from Huntington, West Virginia to come to Lexington to teach. I love Thursday Night Live and Wood Songs at the Kentucky Theater and then moved to the Lyric. Southman Jamboree is wonderful. And now I can go to the Senior Center and learn a bunch of things. So it's been wonderful. But I promote it, we've got to promote Lexington, but we need to do it carefully. We want more people, I wanted more people to move here, but we have to have affordable places for them to live. I oppose expanding at this time. We need to make a better plan. In my work as a clinical laboratory scientist and then data entry, We have to have procedures and plans, and we need to be careful in what we're doing. So I want us to plan, plan, plan, and now thank you for listening to me. I've got enough time to get out of here and go to my jazzercise class. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Phil Meyer, and then is Rob Tribbett here? Yes. Okay, you'll be up right after Phil. Okay, welcome. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council. lifetime lifetime resident of faya county i'm a retired cattle farmer i now live on shady lane in the third district i've been through years of these meetings and witnessed many expansions big ones and i have seen very little affordable housing created anywhere which is a problem as you all know what affordable housing was created appears to me to be apartments with a 10 to 15 year Here, reduced rent, and then after that they get refitted and the price goes way up and they're no longer affordable. So I ask you on the council, those of you that are voting for this, maybe because one of your reasons is we're going to get more affordable housing. What makes you think this is going to be any different? Because I don't think it is. There's been a lot more eloquent speakers up here than me today, so I'll cut my comments short. I want to remind you for every new house that's built in the county and the property taxes that come in for every dollar comes in, and you've heard this before, we pay out, we spend $1.67 on services. So building new houses is just going to put more strain on what we've got already. So instead we need to focus on finding ways to fund and create affordable housing and we do not need this expansion. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you very much. Next is Rob Tribbett and is Aaron McHale in the house? Michael, excuse me, you'll be up next. Welcome. Thank you very much. My name is Rob Tribbett and I'm a resident of District 5 and a board member of the Kentucky Equine Education Project. First of all, I would like to offer my appreciation to everyone on the council and everyone that's been involved in the comp plan. I know it's a lot of work and I appreciate all your efforts. However, despite these great intentions, I do not think the vote by the Council last week to call for expansion of the urban service boundary without relevant data and without a clear path for expansion does not represent progress for the residents of our great city. The data that we do have is very clear. Expansion of the urban service boundary will not accomplish the goals that we all desire. It will not, despite what the Commerce President would like you all to think, it will not increase job growth. It is not what our residents want. We have plenty of opportunity for infill and redevelopment that will help us have a more vibrant city while protecting our farmland that makes Lexington the horse capital of the world. Residents of our city have made it very clear what they would like to see. This proposed expansion made in haste out of a desire to do something rather than wait until we have a strong plan that benefits all in our city, not just the developers that would like to see this land added to the urban service boundary. This is going to make our city more car-centric, increase our infrastructure costs, while building more homes that are out of reach of most of our residents. I'm urging the council to rethink their decision and to listen to the residents of our city who would like to see smart growth that makes Lexington the horse capital of the world that it's always been and continues to make it more affordable for more new residents. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is Aaron. And Katie James, where are you? You're after Aaron. Welcome. Hello, council members. My name is Aaron Michael. I'm a resident of District 10, and I'm a relatively new Lexingtonian. So I'd like to share with you how I got here and some of my experiences. When I graduated college, I moved to Los Angeles. I heard the weather was nice, and I wanted a big city. First time I flew in, the lights and the sprawl, as far as you could see, I was so impressed at the time. And that wore off. I realized when I moved there, I would never be able to buy a house. Rent was going to be a monthly struggle. It was also the first time in my life I witnessed crushing poverty and housing insecurity by so many people. I left after two years with less money than when I moved there. Then I moved to Louisville, Kentucky. I spent five years in Louisville. I started a family there, and we were lucky enough to buy a house. It was a great experience of my life. After five years, we witnessed the rising cost of housing, and the house that we bought increased in value and we were still pushed out of the neighborhood that we grew to love. And from there, we were so fortunate to find work and move here. I tell you all of this because the previous cities that I've lived in before Lexington, they had an affordable housing shortage and they had an increasing cost of housing. And neither of those cities had a growth plan. As it stands today, Los Angeles County is 500,000 units short of affordable housing and only 2% of the county is farmland. Jefferson County is 58,000 units short of affordable housing and only 7% of the land left in Jefferson County is farmland. Urban sprawl is not a solution to affordable housing. I've experienced that. 70% of the land in Fayette County is still farmland. That's incredible. And that is foresight by the early planners of this city. And I want you to know, I believe that we will have to use that farmland at some point to grow our city. It's inevitable. Not like this, though. Not without a plan. Not with how you're proposing. The way this city has thought about growth is more progressive than the larger cities that I've lived in. And I brag about that all the time. So what I'm asking you is to continue that progression to growing this city in a smart, sustainable, responsible way. Thank you. Thank you very much. next is Katie James and then is Casey Mather here? Casey Mather that person has yielded time to Richard Levine are you here Richard? okay maybe somebody can see if they're out in the overflow Okay, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Katie James. I'm a part of a seven generation farm family here in Lexington, Fay County. I wanted to talk to you today about not expanding the urban service boundary. 17,000, that's how many acres are available within the urban service boundary. Not 2,700, not 5,000 acres like your current arbitrary request calls for. But 17,000 acres are available. Over three times the amount of what you're calling for. Lexington has sufficient vacant, undeveloped, and underutilized land available inside the current USB to accommodate Lexington's projected growth, including future job growth. That's 5,117 acres of vacant land, over 2,000 acres of which is zoned residential, and over 700 acres of which is zoned commercial. 1,112 vacant acres are currently in transition. We're calling for the completion of a data driven and long term strategy to evaluate Lexington's growth needs. And before receiving an updated sustainable growth report or updated sewer capability study, you all voted. Did you know what your constituents want? 8.1% of residents believe that private developers should not guide planning and development. 15.3% of residents support building new housing by expanding the USB. Only 15%. Research shows that the residents of Lexington understand the need for a growth plan, but value one that is based on research and data. If you haven't heard of data-driven decision making in your professional career, maybe the phrase measure twice, cut once will resonate with you. It's a reminder to take the time to double check measurements and ensure accuracy before taking any irreversible actions. Once you cut into the USB, that damage to our limited resources cannot be undone. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Now, I just need to see Casey. You're here. And I believe you have yielded your time to Richard Levine. Is that correct? All right. Welcome. If you'll state your name and your council district, and you'll have three minutes. Six minutes. Excuse me. Thank you, Mayor, City Council members. fellow citizens. I came to Lexington as a young, if you can believe it, professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky. When I came here, Lexington had less than half the number of people that it has today. Call that Lexington 1. Lexington 2 is the other half that we have now and call that Lexington 2. Lexington 2 happened because of Lexington 1. Lexington was such a lovely place to live. It had a beautiful old center city with wonderful buildings, walkable neighborhoods, city services clustered all over, and it was an attractor. It also had a wonderful landscape, a unique landscape of agriculture and horse farms, idyllic. Lexington 2 happened because of Lexington 1. People were attracted to all of that, And the expansion happened in the surrounding areas of the urban service area. Lexington was a pioneer, the first city in the country to combine city and county, emulated all over, and even in some states, which now have regulations for that kind of city-county structure. What happened after that did not really follow that model to its best development. It used to be, it still is, that we have people coming from all over the country. I recently hosted a family from Austria, which included one of Austria's preeminent film producers who stayed at my house. They put on a short film festival at the Kentucky Theater of three award-winning films. One of them was a film about China. It was about a research project that I participated in. I'm director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at the university and the CSC Design Studio, Center for Sustainable Cities Design Studio. I work all over the world giving lectures on sustainability. I recently went to China to work with my Chinese colleagues to produce a project for Brussels, Belgium, a sustainable neighborhood interrupted, I hope, temporarily by the pandemic. In China, they adopted a program. When I first got to Lexington, China was one of the poorest countries in the world. Today it's one of the richest and challenging us in all sorts of ways. We're looking at the challenges economic and military, but they are actually making another challenge which may be even more significant. China had adopted a program of growth at all costs. They ravaged their environment. They destroyed large parts of it. They did terrible things with their people. They threw people off the land and moved them into cities to work in factories to produce the China miracle that gives us most of the things that we use today and wear today. They did what Mark Zuckerberg, much later, called move fast and break a lot of things. They did that to their whole country. And now they've realized what an enormous mistake it was. So much so that they've become the leaders in all kinds of sustainability and ecologically oriented production and programs in the world. They make more photovoltaic collectors than the rest of the world combined, more windmills, along with everything else. And they're exporting them to the West. This is the industry of the future, more batteries than anywhere else in the world. Not so many years ago, they started a program to build 185 eco-cities. These eco-cities, which they build in as little as six years, are each larger than Lexington. They're modern cities. They're far better than the horrible new cities that China used to build. I wrote a book on it. Here's the book. On the cover are two photographs of Tianjin Eco-City. Tianjin. I'm so sorry. Your six minutes has ended. Thank you very much. Can I just make one last statement? It isn't about affordable housing. No housing is affordable. It's about affordable, not affordable, but communities and rich neighborhoods, the kind that were in Lexington 1. Thank you so much. We appreciate your comments. Sustainable communities will have, by definition, affordable houses. Thank you. Is Don Robinson in the house? Okay, Don, did you yield your time to Jim Hodge? Okay, Jim Hodge, you're up next, and then after you is Justin Landon. Are you here, Justin? Okay, you'll be up next. Madam Mayor, members of the council, My wife, Mary Ann Delaney, and I live in the 12th district. I want to speak on a narrow subject. As one wiser than I said, and has been quoted many times, oft expectation fails, most oft where it most promises. If we expect that expansion of the urban service area will lead to affordable housing, we will be sorely disappointed. I want to introduce two articles into the record. In accordance with your rules, I've given them to the clerk. The first article was in New Republic, dated February of this year. It's entitled, More Building Won't Make Housing Affordable. As the title indicates, it explains in great detail from people who are very concerned about affordable housing why more buildings won't make housing affordable. The second article that I have introduced and would like to discuss with you was in the Bipartisan Policy Center. The bipartisan policy center was formed a number of years ago by both Republican and Democratic senators in the United States Senate. This article was dated in August of last year, and it's entitled, Ten Actions Cities Can Take to Improve Housing Affordability. By the way, none of the ten actions in this article involve expanding an urban growth boundary. Just to briefly summarize for you the 10 points that these people make, and obviously they don't have a specific dog in this fight. First, legalize more apartment units. Second, legalize accessory dwelling units. Third, eliminate or reduce parking requirements. Fourth, more quickly and predictably approve developments that meet zoning laws. This section deals with doing development in the inner city and not out on the edge of the perimeter. Fifth, build more affordable housing near transit. And as many articles I've read point out, real housing costs aren't just the cost of the housing. They're the cost for the homeowner of the housing and the transportation of wherever it is they have to go to get to work, shop, and so forth. Six, establish and expand affordable housing trust funds. Seventh, improve housing voucher programs. 8 maintain and establish emergency rental assistance programs. 9 inventory and allocate public land for affordable housing, public land as opposed to private land and 10 support community land trust. In conclusion, they state tackling the affordable housing crisis will require an all hands on deck approach at the federal state and local levels. Some of the actions highlighted in this block can be carried out at the state level, a more efficient process than instituting reforms by city by city. Nevertheless, cities should not hesitate to do everything in their part to address the urgent need for more affordable housing as soon as possible. No single policy is a silver bullet to sufficiently improve affordability. So once again, this is an article by people who are concerned about affordable housing. But none of it and anything else I've read shows that you're going to create affordable housing by expanding urban growth boundaries like our urban service area boundary and putting housing out on the perimeter of a community. You have to take all these factors into account, including where you put the housing, and what we have before us, if it produces anything, it's going to produce, as it always has in Fayette County, market-based housing out on the perimeter of the community. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Is Tony Russate here? There you are. You'll be up next after Justin. Welcome. Good afternoon. My name is Justin Landon, District 12. I'm the CEO of Bluegrass Realtors, a trade association serving thousands of real estate professionals across central Kentucky. I'm here today to say thank you for your work on the comprehensive plan, goals, and objectives. We believe that the goals and objectives as amended offer Fayette County residents a balanced approach to new housing and jobs and that which makes Lexington special. A housing shortage exists today and we need to start solving it today. The document you'll consider in the days ahead is a compromise of a lot of different perspectives. And as someone who spent 10 years in politics and 10 years running a trade association, I hope you can appreciate that I can appreciate how hard it is to stitch together all of those different perspectives. But I can tell you that the product that you're working on is better for having heard all those voices. Thank you for working through all the volumes of information that many of the folks in this room have presented to you as you've made an informed decision about what's best for our community. The truth is, despite the vote on these goals and objectives, there's still a lot of work to do. Many of the goals throughout the themes in the goals and objectives speak to ensuring that we're prioritizing housing that low and moderate income people can afford. Thank you. And I can't stress how important it is that we continue to emphasize those opportunities while understanding that we need housing of all types. Thank you again for all you do for Lexington, and I would urge you to support the amended goals and objectives and ask the Planning Commission to have a plan by December 1st of 2024. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Tony, but hang on just a second. John Tucker, are you here? He went in the other room. What did you say? Yeah. Brittany, are you still here? I think John Tucker wanted to give you three more minutes. Do you need three more minutes? Okay. I just, when he comes back in, I'll find out if he wishes to speak. Welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Tony Brzezade. I am in the 10th District. My wife and I have lived there for over 25 years now. I come here feeling that I should have addressed this a lot earlier. I also serve as the president of the Central Kentucky Audubon Society. So I'm here in some ways to speak on behalf of the birds and on behalf of the habitat. And anytime there's expansion mentioned, it means loss of habitat. And I understand that that's going to have to happen at some point. But I also understand that a lot of people here have spoken against not using the data that we have at hand and rushing into this with the idea that it will provide affordable housing. I spoke out against the Squires Road development, and there was talk of compromise then as well. My district member at the time ran into me later and said how great it was that we got the realtors to compromise. But if you're talking compromise, and they start high, and you start where you think you should be, and they pull you up. Well, I sold cars in this town for 17 years. I understand how that works. That means that you haven't really won. I grew up in Detroit as well, and I've seen people address problems with affordable housing by expanding the boundaries umpteen times. It takes two hours in good traffic to drive across Detroit these days. And when I was growing up, we were at 12 and Ryan, then 17 and Garfield. My parents are now at 21 and Romeo Plank, and it's expanded beyond there, and it is still not an affordable city. It has left a husk downtown. I also come before you as somebody who lives on Rosemont Garden, where you talk about expanding the service boundary, and I can't get people to pick up my compost there. I don't have city pickup. It's come to vote four times in the time that I've lived there. There are too many rentals down towards Nicholasville Road, and consequently, it gets voted down every single time. All I want is compost. I pick up my yard waste, I put it in bags that I buy myself because I don't get coupons, and I drive them around the corner so that I can leave them on other people's curbs. Because I don't want them to go to the landfill. If we just took our compost and sent it to the compost instead of to the landfill from our urban city area, which is already defined, would save a lot of money. Expanding will not necessarily bring you better housing. Not without a really, really good plan. There are people here who said we need to fill in. There are people here who need to do better things. Cincinnati just bought hundreds of homes and offered them back to the people who are living there at subsidized loans. That's a way to do it. There are ways to do this smart, and then there are ways to do this where we lose a lot of birds. If you take care of the birds, you take care of most of the important things in the world. Thank you very much. John Tucker. Brittany said that she does not need your minutes. Do you wish to speak? Okay. Then next up is Henry Jackson, and then after Henry Jackson is Kathy Adams. Where are you, Kathy? So you'll be next after Henry. A familiar face. Hi, Mayor. Members of Council. Henry Jackson, retired city planner, District 7. I agree with the Fayette Alliance analysis to not support expansion of the USB. I would urge adoption of the Fayette Alliance recommendations in their letter of April 18th. Additionally, I think LFUCG should first conduct a climate change vulnerability assessment and subsequently prepare a corresponding resilience plan, which is based on the risks that are identified in such a study. There are two reasons for this additional step. First, should our weather pattern continue, and specifically where it seems like most all of the extreme weather continues to blow around central Kentucky, we have a special opportunity to make the best of our fortunate location, especially in addressing a very likely and possibly immense influx of people in search of higher, safer ground. And also, by the way, in the case of Lexington compared to other Appalachian refuges, we're also something of a tourist destination, and we also have a world-class health care center, which are tremendous draws. The second reason is that as the oldest urban growth boundary in the country, it seems fitting and logical that we make every effort to maintain the USB status as an urban planning landmark and example adaptation, which I think would be especially useful in this likely rapidly approaching epoch of climate survival. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Next is Kathy Adams, and Kathy will be followed by Ray Daniels. Are you here, Ray? Can someone, okay, thank you, Commissioner. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Kathy Adams, and I've been in Lexington for the past 31 years. This is my first time at a council meeting and my first time giving public comment. I'm here today because I want to ensure that any decision to expand the urban service boundary balances both the needs of the entire community and the very thing that makes Lexington so unique and valuable, its protected farmland. I also feel strongly that a data driven process is imperative to determine the trajectory of our land and our community. Some will argue that we need to expand because it will lead to more affordable housing and job development. That data does not exist or support the argument. You can read the report prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky, Gatton College of Business and Economics. The report is dated March 24th, 2017 and will explain that conclusion. And if you want to know how Lexingtonians feel about the thought of expansion, look at the on the table data and the Imagine 2045 public input report. It reveals that most Lexingtonians in general expressed a strong desire to see continued infill and redevelopment opportunities as the dominant way to accommodate future growth. I love the city of Lexington and I want to protect and safeguard what makes it so unique. Please take into account what the data reveals and what most Lexingtonians want. Please do not expand the urban service boundary without having a data driven process that will inform how best to move forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is Raymond Daniels, and is Judith Humble here? Judith Humble? Okay, you'll be after Ray Daniels. Thank you, welcome. Thank you, Mayor, thank you, Council Persons. Thank you for your service. My name is Raymond Daniels, District 7. And on behalf of Lexington for everyone, I want to thank you for your hard work on the comprehensive plan, the work that you currently have done, the work that you currently will do. As you can see, we all kind of disagree on what kind of housing we may need, what kind of jobs need to be created. And that's really up to you, our council persons, to kind of figure that out and create a road map for that. So we do know we need housing, right? So I want to applaud you guys for your thoughtful and intentional approach for adopting a plan that reflects the needs of our diverse community. I want to thank you for prioritizing addressing housing affordability and job creation. needs while balancing the need to preserve and protect our unique agricultural land and equine community. Thank you for emphasizing housing affordability solutions such as exploring opportunities for unused and underused city-owned land to be developed for affordable housing developments. Thank you for adopting a reasonable responsible parallel approach to addressing short-term and long-term needs to our city's growth and development. Thank you for recognizing in a sense of urgency for immediate action in addressing our housing, all types of housing, and job needs. We've been studying the growth issue for 27 years. In fact, the 2018 comprehensive plan called for the creation of data-driven growth management plan, but this work has not been completed. We support completing that plan, but also taking limited action to address our community's most urgent needs, which we have identified through this process through research, also as apparent in people's everyday lives. Less than 4% of the land within the current boundary is vacant and available for housing and jobs. Home prices have skyrocketed more than 80%. The city and school district is losing population. Land for job creation is limited to a handful of sites. Our community cannot afford to wait another 5 to 10 years for more study and growth process to be implemented. Development takes time, and we are already behind. Our discussion over the last few months is proof that all voices are counted and heard, and thank you for that. We look forward to continuing to work with you and other community partners on housing, jobs, and equity policy solutions. Together, we can make Lexington a place for everyone, and thank you again for your service. Thank you. Next is Judith Humble, and is Mary Ann Fox in the room? Mary Ann? If someone wouldn't mind to see if she's in the overflow, please. Marianne Fox, welcome. Thank you. I'm Judith Humble. I'm chair of the Bluegrass Climate Action Team, and I speak on their behalf today. We would like to go on record as strongly opposing the expansion of the urban services boundary. There are many reasons for this, but I will address two. The first is the issue of affordable housing, which many people have spoken to today. We very much understand the crisis. We support searching for innovative solutions. We have done extensive research on this subject, and the research we have done concludes consistently that expansion does not solve the problem of affordable housing. Indeed, it creates another one, that being the problem of transportation and car dependency for people who are already challenged to meet the cost of daily living. I've worked with a lot of these people in my career, and I've learned over and over again that maintaining a working vehicle is one of the biggest challenges they face. So we support the search for other solutions, and we believe that they are out there. The second thing I want to do is put climate change on the table. I think a major development in our comp plan is the addition of the language describing climate change. We now have a goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050. I'm very proud of that. And we've started some important work in this community. We know that outward growth will inevitably make a dramatic increase in our emissions at a time when we need to be moving in the other direction. It's time we started work on maintaining a livable climate. And for anybody who's in doubt about climate change, we've had four signature events in recent times that provide evidence it's reached Kentucky. that being the eastern Kentucky flooding. They're still working on recovery down there. They'll be working on it for a very long time and the news says they may not be able to afford their new increased insurance premiums. We've also had the recent polar plunge which damaged plants throughout the area. We've had the severe storm that damaged tree canopy throughout the area and a little bit further back we had the severe tornadoes in western Kentucky which took out a major research station. So we believe that we've started good work in Lexington on this problem. We'd like to see Lexington continue and then we think expansion of the urban services boundary is a move in the wrong direction. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mary Ann Fox is next and then Don Todd, you will follow Mary Ann Fox. You'll be up next. Welcome. My name is Mary Ann Fox. I live on Holly Springs Drive in the 11th district. I'm not in favor of expanding the urban service boundary. I came to this decision after learning from a city planner that Lexington already has enough available land within the current boundary to meet our housing and job creation needs for the next 20 years. I believe this move to expand the boundary is premature and only eat up the unique farmland that currently draws business and tourism dollars to our city. It won't lead to more affordable housing because increasing the size of a city doesn't decrease housing prices. It simply puts money in the pockets of developers and increases sprawl in traffic, decreasing quality of life and making Lexington less attractive to investment and outside talent. There's a smarter way to grow our city, One that uses infill and simple changes that make the most of the land we already have and that isn't being used to its fullest potential. But if council does expand the boundary, surely it shouldn't be done without a plan. One that is based on data and evidence and not on assumptions. Please don't just redraw the map and let the chips fall where they may. Lexington deserves better than that. We need a data driven plan in place. And finally, I urge you to require the groups who are lobbying you for expansion to disclose their funding sources. If they won't voluntarily disclose where their money is coming from, that means the information is a secret. Secret money is not good for our city. It leads to undue influence and it disenfranchises voters who can't afford to secretly fund their own lobbyists. Please put a stop to the secret money situation before making any decisions about expansion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Don Todd and then Liz Natter. Are you? Okay, you'll follow him. Thank you. Three minutes is not a long time there. That's right. You better use it quickly. Welcome. Give me a little more time. Don Todd, 12th District. I've served on three comprehensive planned update committees and I served eight years on the city council. I've been involved in this process since 1978. I've seen it, argued, been through it all. Nothing changes. It's the same issue. Should you expand the urban service area or not? The answer to that question is maybe. It depends. What does the data show? You cannot make an arbitrary decision of 5,000 acres and then turn around and say, gee, we don't know why we came up with that figure. How do we justify it? It'll never stand up in a court of law. It never will. But that's not what we're here about. We're here about trying to educate you. So I've given you 11 points there that I want you to consider when you review this issue. These are pretty significant points. I don't have the time to go through it. So I want to talk to you about the horse farms, briefly. We have done a terrible job at educating you about the importance of that industry and how it interrelates for this community. Terrible job. And that's our fault, okay? We used to take the council members out to all the farms. We'd show them the stallions. We'd show the breeding operations. We'd show the pastures. We'd show where the mayors are. We'd show them all the aspects of how the farm works. What's the most important thing for the horse farms? Why are they here? Anybody on the council know why? Why are the horse farms here? The stallions. The only reason why they're here is because of the stallions. If you take the stallions out of here, we lose everything. And so why are the stallions here? Best veterinarians, best soil people, best farm handlers, best feed managers, got the university to support them. We have blood stock agents. We have people that are involved in every aspect of the industry. We have hospitals, emergency care centers, all related to this industry. What's the worst thing you can do to a horse farm? Anybody have any ideas? Put a subdivision next to it. Kids and horses do not mix. Kids and dogs do not mix. You cannot do that. If you're going to put something next to a horse farm, you put light industry, or you put P1. You do not put residential, period. Or you ruin that farm. Because if I'm a farm manager, and I've got broodmares worth $200,000, or in foal, whatever, and I've got a subdivision next door, I've got to build an eight-foot-high fence, bury it four inches, six inches in the ground, and then I can't use those pastures. I'll turn out barren mares, I'll turn out teasers, but I won't put my good animals in that field. of you knew any of that. It's important for us to teach you. We did a piss poor job. Thank you very much. Can I have another one minute? I'm sorry. I am having to make the rules work for everybody equally. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you have a friend. Amy Clark is giving up. Wait a minute. Amy Clark, can you wait right there, please? Has said she'll We'll give you one of her three minutes. I might take it, obviously. I'll be quick. And she is signed up. Okay. You want to give him your three minutes? All right, thank you. You have three more minutes. So we don't say give us 5,000 acres and, well, let's go out Winchester Road and along I-75 because there's no horse farms out there. If you want to build a horse farm, you don't buy an old horse farm. You buy a cattle farm. Why? I don't know. Parasites, no other animals have been on that farm for a long time. You want a clean farm, you can start over with. Yeah, you have to develop it. You have to build fences. You have to do things. But a cattle farm is the best farm for horses. So Winchester Road is a particularly nice area. It's got good soil. What do we know about soil? Why would we go out Winchester Road? Does it have more silt alone? Does it have Huntington silt alone? What kind of dirt does it have? Hell, I don't know. Well, that's why you look at your soil maps and you make those critical evaluations. That's what we do in the PDR program. We make all those evaluations. We just don't buy what the developers sell you. I got up two minutes. When I was on the council, developers always came to you. Same story. Don, you're doing a good job. You're going to go places in politics. We really like you. Let's give you a little money, help you win. We need this expansion. We got jobs out here. We got all this. Well, if you go back and look at the points I gave you, how much affordable housing have we built? How much land is still available? We put 2,500 acres for 5,000 and 90, whenever it was, 98. We put that in the USA. We use 110 acres a year. That's what we develop, 110 acres a year. So what's this big land rush all of a sudden? Well, it's because a lot of guys have got options on that land now. There's some speculation going out there. If you don't believe me, go down to the clerk's office like I did and look up in the deed books, grantor grantee indexes, and look and see what options have been acquired and where they are and whose name are they in. You guys don't know that yet. A lot of you are green. That's okay. You're going to have to learn. You're going to make mistakes on the way, but be patient. Take your time. Listen to these folks over here and know what they're doing. And serve us right, because you represent one chain, one link, in the higher chain of Fayette County and the industries that it's had, and the way, the lifestyle that we have, it's really important. That's about all I have. I just wish we did a better job of educating you. When I was on council, we'd put you all on buses and took you at every horse farm. And then we opened up the buses and took the people that wanted to go. And then we took it all the various aspects of the industry so that people could see how it interrelates and how many people work in the industry and what jobs are created. And how you have people in the entry level all the way up to veterinarians and people that are highly educated. And that's a really sensitive industry. It's very fragile. So you have to be very careful about what you do. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is Liz Natter. And is Ann Bakas in the house? You will follow Liz. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Liz Natter. I'm in District 10. And I don't have any prepared remarks, but I wanted to just stand up. I wanted to thank each and every one of the council members for your commitment to public service and for your commitment to public comment. I know sitting through meetings like this can be a chore. I'll say that. I do feel that affordable housing is extremely important to our community and we really need it and we see it that all the time. I don't think, I agree with many of the speakers here today that I don't think expanding the urban services boundary by 5,000 acres without putting in a process that guarantees that there will be affordable housing makes sense in terms of that goal. I also agree with what many of the other speakers here have said about planning for climate resilience, the kind of smart planning that our planning staff can do and needing a data driven process. So I'm not going to use all of my time. Thank you all very much for allowing me to speak and for listening to all these comments. Thanks. Thank you. Ann Bakas is our final speaker. We have no one else signed in, so welcome. Thank you. I'm district 10. Okay. The sustainable growth task force and advisory committee was created by our mayor, and $125,000 was approved by our city and Stantec was hired to help us. We had 19 members on our committee and we met 16 times between the year of 2019 and 21. I was co-chair along with Greg Paget, Randall Vaughn, Steve Kaye, our Vice Mayor, Dennis Anderson, Amanda Bledsoe, Price Bell, Larry Forster, Richard Gaines, Chris Non, Frank Penn, Don Robinson, Lynn Phillips, Fred Combs was advisory. Rick Butler was advisory, Lewis Johnson was advisory, David O'Neill, advisory, Becca Self, and Myron Thompson were all advisory members. We worked hard. We worked truly hard for that time. I ask for you all to please consider requesting our planning commission to share their data-driven information with you that our committee created the baseline for, and they update yearly on available land. Please show that you are interested in the work that we put in place to make these important decisions. Let our planning commission do their job and complete this work that we started that you can make this important decision on baseline data. We need good data to make this decision. Please don't put the cart before the horse and request that our commission completes this process before they affect our urban service boundary. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have no one else signed up for issues on the agenda, so we will go to our docket. And by the way, I do appreciate everyone who showed up today to speak as well as to listen. We have two dockets. So we will start with the June 13th, 5 o'clock docket for today. Could I have a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Is there? All right. Council Member Ellinger moves to approve. Council Member Worley seconds. Are there questions, additions, anything about the docket? For the docket, yes. Council Member Reynolds, do you have a walk-on for the docket? Okay. On behalf of the administration, I move to place on the docket for June 15th, 2023. Excuse me, did you say 13th? We're on the 13th. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. Just hang on, we'll get there next. Okay, Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for the June 13, 2023 meeting of the Urban County Council a resolution adopting goals and objectives for the imagined Lexington 2045 comprehensive plan as amended. So moved. Second. Okay. I heard, I think I heard Council Member Gray. Is there any discussion on Vice Mayor Wu's motion? If you have some, please log in. Councilmember Gray, this is to the goals and objectives motion. Can you restart her time, please? All right. So I make the motion to... Go ahead. I make the motion to amend the motion to add the following to Theme E, Goal 3, Objective C. I can read it all out. By December 1, 2024, adopt a new expansion area master plan to ensure the above acreage is responsibly developed while balancing the integrity of our agricultural land and the clear need for additional acreage. and to address Lexington's housing and economic development requirements. To ensure coordinated development, the master plan should plan for infrastructure, community facilities, and land uses that include a variety of housing types, which focus on low- and middle-income housing types and a wide array of employment opportunities. It is the intention of the Urban Council, County Council, that the new expansion area master plan include provisions for construction, creation, and or funding of additional affordable housing units, as defined by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and Middle Income Housing. As such, the Planning Commission shall recommend to the Urban County Council mechanisms to create, construct, and or fund affordable housing units and middle income housing in correlation to the development provided for in the expansion area master plan. And completion of this master plan shall be the priority of the work of the Division of Planning to ensure timely adoption and implementation of critical needs identified. So moved. Council Member Ellinger seconds. Now, we'll need to have discussion on this amendment. Is there anyone who wishes to discuss? Council Member Plumman, were you on for a separate item? Do you mind to come off, and then anybody who wants to discuss the amendment can log in, please. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. And I'd ask the Planning Department. Director Duncan is here. Director Duncan, yeah. We are having a sidebar there. Welcome. One of the issues that we're talking about with this expansion is going to be affordable housing, and if it's going to create affordable housing. And we actually, I think in the 96 expansion, if you look at what Don Todd put in there, what he gave us in his points, it said a specific incentive program for affordable housing was created during the last expansion and was not utilized by any developers. I guess was that not a mandatory requirement, but it was a volunteer one? And one of the terms that we talked about last time, what I brought up was inclusionary zoning. And would this be similar to that, that you all would come up with a plan that would require affordable housing, and we wouldn't set a percentage on it, but you all would set up a system that would require that then? So, Council Member Ellinger, to answer the first part of the question, the options in the expansionary master plan in 1996 were voluntary. So if a private developer provided housing that met the affordable standard, which would have been the HUD standard, then they would have been given a density bonus in order to offset that so that they could build additional market rate housing to offset the cost of having to set aside land and make affordable housing available. It was a voluntary program, and it was not taken advantage of by any of the developers. So that was the first part. And then the second part on this, does this amendment, does this take, require then, does this become a mandatory part that when you all set up the master plan that will require then affordable housing? And will you look at the AMI, is it 80%, 50%? How do you foresee this working? I believe this objective is stronger. And if it says it is the intention of the council that it include affordable housing, then I believe that would be the expectation of council, that when the master plan was returned, or when the master plan was adopted by the planning commission, there would be provisions for the affordable housing, which essentially means the planning commission would be recommending back to the council what those mechanisms are, whether that's an inclusionary zoning ordinance, whether it's a funding mechanism to ensure that there's a robust funding source to be provided to others or other changes that will be needed to ensure. But the master plan will be making those recommendations back to the decision makers, the Urban County Council. And then just because we do expand does not mean that it automatically that they're going to be due to new developments. They still have to go through a zone change and they'll still have to come through with our goals and objectives that will require this then, correct? Yes, and a development plan as well, yes. Thank you, thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember, for bringing this ordinance forward. I know it's been, affordable housing has been a topic and a point of clarity that a lot of council members wanted to make in regards to the comp plan. And Director, if you don't mind coming back to the microphone, I just have a few questions. So, you know, I think from the conversation that we had last week, was that last week or was that two weeks ago? It seems like a long time ago. Council member Legree's motion, we kind of had this conversation and got to the point to where putting all this back in the hands of the planning commission, we wanted to give them the maximum amount of flexibility to do what needs to be done at their level. Changing this language or inserting this language, it feels like to me that we may be, well, let me start by saying I'm a full supporter of affordable housing and that we need to do it. But I just wonder if putting this language in there makes it too confining for the planning commission to do what they need to do in regards to developing an expansion area master plan. And then the other layer, and I guess I just said that as a statement. The other layer seems to me as if, you know, I think we were being advised that council's role is to set the guardrails through the goals and objectives. So if we put this in here, then it has to come back to council to be approved for the affordable housing mechanism that gets put into the expansion area master plan. Is that correct? No, sir. The master plan would be recommending solutions. And so those would likely be amendments to the zoning ordinance, the Zota process. They might be recommending funding mechanisms that would not have anything to do with zoning, with the zoning, but that the government would identify a funding stream that then make that available through the Affordable Housing Fund and any other number of recommendations that would ensure an increase in affordable housing supply. So, no sir, just the list of recommendations do not have to come back to you for approval, but you would then decide if you wanted to turn those into policy. Okay. So are there any policies, and just if you can give me an example, any policies or any mechanisms that the planning commission and staff can put in place in an expansion area master plan to encourage or as close as you can mandate that affordable housing be built. Is there anything you can do in regards to the zoning, to the density requirements, or anything that would give, are there any tools that would encourage and compel affordable housing be built? There are tools that could help enable it, Council Member Graham, but they could not require it. And we continue to pursue those tools. You all have already addressed a number of those by big and small through the floor area ratio, through eliminating the parking requirements, through the accessory dwelling units. So those are the kinds of tools. But then there are additional tools that ensure that there are density, perhaps density minimums, and certainly no density maximums. Other dimensional tools such as how small a lot can be and still be considered a single family lot. So those kind of things can be put in place in the zoning ordinance and our subdivision regulations that certainly offer more options for affordability. And perhaps a non-profit who would be doing affordable housing with funding through the government or other sources could take advantage of those perhaps even more so than a private for-profit builder would. Okay. And I appreciate you sharing that because that's what I was thinking. I think we were headed in the right, or are headed in the right direction. And a lot of ways to eliminating barriers to create affordable housing. Without saying it, but I guess Council Member Elgin already said it, is that this language is going to push the inclusionary zoning button. And I have concerns that that's going to trigger a reaction at the state level. Is that a real concern from your experience talking about inclusionary zoning or is that not a real concern? It was a reaction in the 2007 comprehensive plan when we listed a number of affordable housing options that other communities have used successfully and said that the Lexington could look at these and consider these without a recommendation that they'd be further pursued. then amongst the Fayette County contingency in the legislature, there was an effort to prohibit cities from doing that. Again, what would be coming to you would be a list of recommendations, and it would be up to the council to decide whether they wanted to pursue those. And having the discussion, and of course that was 15 or so years ago, so perhaps things have changed. There would be a different approach to that. I don't think saying the words out loud we should be afraid of that, But there would also be other considerations that the council could look at. Okay. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make note on why I'm bringing forth this amendment. Because it is already inferred in what we've already done, affordable housing. However, I'm hoping by saying explicitly affordable housing that we don't repeat what has happened previously in Lexington's history. I believe by expressly stating affordable housing, that puts it on record that we're giving planning the abilities to decide the mechanism so that they have it always in their purview. that we are seeking to ensure that Lexington is a place for all citizens, and that we're thinking about affordable housing according to the HUD recommendations and according to our middle-class housing, which often gets left outside of the conversation. I know that many people would like to keep Lexington as it is, but as it is, it's becoming a city that no longer, that many people who have been born and raised in Lexington can still live here. It's no longer became a city where our own police officers and our firefighters and our educators can make Lexington their home. And I want to make sure we do all we can to protect those people who are not here, who cannot come to these meetings, because they're working. And they want to make sure that they live here for a long time. And I want to make sure our next generation no longer has to deal with what I am dealing with and what so many other people are dealing with. I know that this is not something that most people in this room can relate to, but we have a lot of people who are struggling. And I'm speaking on behalf of them with this amendment, and I'm hoping that my colleagues will stand with me and say yes. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu? Thank you, Mayor. One of the things I feel like that's come up over and over again in this entire debate from both sides of this issue is everybody talks about affordable housing. And so we've also heard arguments of the idea and the fact that we haven't built a lot of affordable housing in previous expansions or in expansion areas. We've heard about how mandating a percentage may not work, may not be legally defensible, various other arguments. And for me, it always comes down to if you don't try, you're not going to get there. And that's really it. So I think having philosophical language in some of the goals and objectives and aspirational language, I think that's important. But I think putting in more solid, concrete frameworks for building the mechanisms to create more affordable housing, I think, is very necessary. So if this is indeed a point on which all sides agree, I think it is important to move forward in this manner. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. I'm going to call on Council Member Worley first since he hasn't spoken, and then we'll go back to Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Council Member Gray, for this additional language. For those that were listening to our conversation on June the 1st, this was a lot of discussion about what does this expansion area master plan mean and what's its purpose. And so many people say, oh, we're just expanding without a plan. Very specifically, we are asking the Planning Commission to make a plan to say where acreage ought to be expanded, what it should look like, and what are those policies that should be recommended to encourage the type of development that we want. And we've already made a very strong statement in Council Member Legree's edition last Thursday to state that we want policies and procedures and planning for low- and middle-income housing. I think making it even more specific, more called out in this particular instance, it shows that this theme E is a statement of intent by this council. And it's asking that we continue to work towards policies. And this is amazing to me the way this discussion has happened over this past weekend, whether it be an editorial in the newspaper or the work of some of the lobbying groups. But I've never seen the word affordable weaponized before in my life. When we make a statement that say we want to do something to make housing more affordable, and then now we all have to debate about whether that word means what it means or what it actually means. And it somehow is bad that we've said that our justification for expansion is affordable housing. Folks, that's not real. And we cannot, it's true, we cannot guarantee that every unit or any unit in the expansion area is affordable. Unless we make statements that say we want to try. We want to do something because right now what we're doing, nothing, is making the entire county unaffordable. And again, we hear more data, more data, more time. 80% increase in housing costs in 10 years. Lexington had the seventh highest rent increase in the country last year. We're losing jobs, we're losing citizens. And so we can't criticize policy makers for aspirationally saying we want to build affordable housing or we want to try to do something that will make housing affordable. So, council member, I thank you for this because I think it makes it clear what our point is here today. It's again asking our planning commission, which we have been advised through many, many conversations, many debates, many compromises for us not to make all these decisions. for us to ask the planning commission, our planning staff, one of the best in the country, to talk with stakeholders, to talk with residents, and come back with those policies to us. So I think we'll probably be talking a lot more tonight about this issue. Will we have affordable housing? Does this expansion guarantee what we want? It may not. But we're trying and we're making statements of how we're going to, and if we do nothing, we will get nothing. Thank you, Mayor. you council member james brown thank you mayor and director duncan just just one more question i i asked about this language and how it could potentially uh uh confine the planning the planning commission are there any recommendations that you think may come out that may prohibit development or us or or the commission being able to zone certain properties appropriately because of their relationship to agricultural operations just to make sure that we include the residential requirements or the need for residential units that we're talking about? Council Member Brown, I may not be fully understanding your question, but I would expect in the development of the master plan that we would not only be looking at, of course, the where of expansion and the relationship of that land to the ability to provide infrastructure, particularly sanitary sewer and roads, but then also what would be its impact on the rural resources that we're trying to protect. So that would be part of that equation, as well as these recommendations that would be coming out of that master plan. So there's kind of a map and then there's the policies that would be coming out of that, recommended policies that would then be addressing this request for affordable housing solutions. But then there would be other mechanisms as well, like buffering and that sort of thing that would need to be put in place to ensure that the rural resources that we're trying to protect have adequate protection as well. And I apologize, I guess my question was kind of hard to answer and understand because I think it was hypothetical. But I think the basis of it is, I think we all want to make sure that if land gets identified and is zoned properly, it gets developed. And I just want to make sure we're not putting language that would make that hard to accomplish. I don't see this as doing that, Council Member Brown. Okay, thank you. And then, is it Tracy, who's here from law that could speak to this language? Welcome. Yeah. Tracy, and I guess just following in the same spirit of two weeks ago, are you all, I know you wrote the language, but are you all comfortable? And are you all comfortable with the language and have any concerns? We're comfortable with the language. which I think it allows for it to go back through the expansion master plan process and come back with recommendations from the Planning Commission to you all if there's specific items that require your all's action. Okay. All right, thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Are there any other council members who wish to speak to the amendment? All right. All those in favor of supporting the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? No. All right, there's one no vote. Council Member Fred Brown. That motion passes. Now, we are still on the goals and objectives, and I believe, Council Member Plowman, you were signed up for something different, presumably. Thank you, Mayor. Can you hear me? Okay, thank you, Mayor. I have a short little preamble I'd like to give before I actually bring my amendment forward, Mayor. As you're aware, I was unable to attend and ultimately vote at the June 1st Council of the Whole last week due to an unavoidable health-related issue. That was the meeting where the verbiage and the decision was made to proceed with the proposed goals and objectives forward with the first and second reading both tonight and on Thursday night. Were I in attendance, my vote would have been no, against expansion without a plan, a fact-driven plan. As a matter of fact, with so many folks that spoke tonight, not just from the 12th district, but from our community, I am against the expansion of our urban service boundary without a bona fide plan. However, I will bring to you today that less than 48 hours, we are mandated by the state to submit our goals and objectives, less than 48 hours. And I will also bring to you that we do not have eight votes to overturn the expansion of 5,000 acres. So what I would like to bring to you at this time is a consideration for reduced acreage that would soften the impact of unnecessary, unprecedented, and instantiated 5,000 acres that we have before us. It is important to note that 27 years ago, in 1996, that we still have approximately half of that 2,700 acres that are still undeveloped. If you were to take the 5,000 acres that we're considering, add onto that the 2,700 that are just sitting there undeveloped, that's close to 8,000 acres. That's not going to happen. That absorption is not going to happen in our lifetime. So why are we considering that? So what I would bring forward is an amendment. And this amendment would go forward to, let me see here. This would go to the theme E, and this would be goal three. My amendment would be to identify 2,700 acres for inclusion within the urban service area, thereby deleting no less than 27 acres, 2,700 acres, but no more than 5,000. So that amendment again would be to identify 2,700 acres for inclusion within the urban service area, so moved. Is there a second? Second. Councilmember Sevigny seconds. So we have the amendment up for discussion. If you have a comment, councilmembers, please log in. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Could you restate, did you say up to 2,700 or 2,700? Councilmember Plowman. I'm sorry. Councilmember Ellinger has a question. Can you restate, did you say up to 2,700? And I guess I'll ask you and then ask also planning. When we set a number, I think I want to make sure that what we do is what they want us to do. But how did you say, did you say 2,700 or up to 2,700? Will you, will you? Shall amend. Shall amend. Just repeat the whole amendment, please. Okay. My amendment would be shall identify 2,700 acres for inclusion within the urban service area. Is that what your request was? Yes, thank you. And then planning, director. Does that follow? Because I know when we were starting to talk about numbers, that becomes an issue. And we had said no less than 27 up to 5,000. Does hers say in 27, does that work? That's more specific, Council Member Ellinger, than we would recommend. We would prefer a range like is offered right now, between 2,700 and 5,000. Something, as you've recommended, up to 2,700 would be the range rather than just a specific number. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. That is, I share Councilmember Ellinger's concern about that because that is something we ran into with the original proposal of 5,000 acres when it just said 5,000 and it's a very specific exact number. And I think that would be difficult to achieve. So I would like to move to amend Councilmember Plowman's amendment to read up to 2,700 acres. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Council Member Ellinger seconds. Now, we have two people on to discuss the previous amendment, but we're going to do a hand if you want to discuss the current amendment, which says up to 2,700 acres. If you want to discuss this, please raise your hand. Okay, we'll start with Council Member Gray, then Council Member Reynolds, then Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to say on June 1st when we made our decision, we were very clear in our stance, 2,700 to 5,000. We had 10 members of our council who did agree to that. And to decrease, to say up to 2,700, I would need to just have a rationale for that. Are you asking? I'm asking. Do you have a rationale, Vice Mayor? Yeah, thank you. One of the criticisms of the original 5,000-acre proposal was that it was arbitrary. It is a number kind of drawn out of thin air. 2,700 came about first from Councilmember Sevigny's suggestion because it is 10% of the potential expandable land out there. Honestly, any number that we throw out there is going to be somewhat arbitrary. And I think to Councilmember Plowman's point, we're trying to come up with a compromise position that whatever this expansion does, that it doesn't have more far-reaching, larger impacts than it would with a larger amount of acreage. So I'm not wedded to this number. I'm not sure if Council Member Plowman is, but to me it's a compromise position. Thank you. Okay. Did you have anything else? I always do, but I'll let that. Okay. Councilmember Reynolds and then Councilmember Worley. Thank you, Mayor. I guess my question, I don't know if it's for law or planning. So if we say up to 2,700, could that mean nothing or a thousand? Yes. Okay. That's what I needed to know. Thank you. I love short answers. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. And that's precisely why I'd ask my colleagues to not support this motion. It defeats the purpose of the whole conversation we're having. 2,700 in itself may not be enough acreage. Certainly less than that would almost certainly not be enough acreage. And that's why, through previous compromise, we backed off from my original proposal of a hard 5,000 acres to a range that would be determined by the Planning Commission so that this council states a policy directive that we need more land for housing and for jobs, and then we let the experts do that. This is doing exactly what we were advised not to do and getting back in and being too specific and keeping our hands on it too closely. And when you say, where did the original 5,000 acres come from, that it seems arbitrary. And Vice Mayor, you're right. Most any number we come up will have some level of arbitrariness to it. But it came as a suggestion from Lexington for Everyone, who is made up of stakeholders that are involved in the jobs, homes, and cultural and faith leading of our community. So Commerce Lexington, the Building Industry Association, the Black Faith Leaders, the Bluegrass Realtors. people who are studying this and watching this every day it was 5,000 was their suggestion and that's why I use the 5,000 number through conversations with you all through compromise up at this horseshoe through listening to the advice of our law department we said let's do 2 700 to 5 000 because that was a range that we all thought might work and let's let the planning commission decide and the planning commission may well say 2 700 is all we need but if we limit them to that we may well have had all this debate for little success we have to build more housing and we have to make more for jobs and we can go on and on and on about what is affordable and what's not affordable all housing will lead to more housing will lead to all housing being more affordable at all levels supply and demand is a real thing and more housing more opportunities gives our administration the planning commission our planning staff and ultimately this council more tools more opportunities to be creative, come up with new ways to build, new ways to incentivize. An expansion and a master plan is a tool. So we are cutting ourselves off here if we accept this. And I would ask you all not to follow that along. We have to see the writing on the wall. People cannot afford to live in our community. And those who will not see it, I tell you there are none so blind as those who will not see. We have got to see, and we've got to do something to help. We are now limiting ourselves after months and months of debate. We are limiting ourselves here. Please do not support this amendment. Does anyone else wish to speak to Vice Mayor's amendment with the words up to 2,700 acres? Council Member Legree. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you Vice Mayor for this amendment and Councilmember Plowman for bringing this forward I know that as you insinuated that was a pragmatic suggestion on your behalf as you'll recall from my June 1st vote the statement about which I will not rehash here I though I remain against the underlying expansion I want to know that i will vote uh in support of this motion thank you thank you thank you does anyone else wish to speak to the motion to amend the amendment council member james brown thank you mayor and uh council member plowman i do appreciate and know where the spirit of your motion is coming from and i guess we can talk about that when we get if we get back to it but i won't support the amendment from vice mayor wu i just think saying up to uh does put us in a position where we we're not giving our planning commission enough uh acreage to consider in regards to addressing the issues that we've identified so thank you thank you mayor thank you does anyone else wish to speak all right we'll take the vote on the motion to amend the amendment to say up to 2,700 acres. All those in favor say aye. Is anyone opposed? No. That motion fails. All right. The amendment on the floor by Council Member Plowman is to put in the number 2,700 acres for expansion. Is there any discussion? Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. And I, Council Member, I'm glad that you're here back with us tonight. And I understand the nature of this particular motion. And I think there are always compromises that can be made. I think we've already made a compromise to leave this to the Planning Commission. I think we need to give them a range. And to me, just a hard 2700 doesn't provide us, I think, what we need. I think there needs to be a range and it needs to be the Planning Commission's decision. So I'd be interested to hear what my colleagues feel about any sort of compromise language here. I think we've already made that compromise, and I think our planning staff and our legal department are comfortable with that. So I'm not supportive of the motion, though I'd understand in principle where you're coming from, Council Member. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. And I appreciate the fact that you are with us tonight as well, Councilmember Foreman. And we also have another councilmember who's with us tonight, Zona, and I appreciate you being here, Councilmember Lynch. So you can enjoy the fun that we've been having. I would like to, I would, and I get where this is going. and I think that there's several of us who do not feel comfortable with the upper limit. When I originally put the lower limit on this, my intent was to try to give a big enough range for the Planning Commission to work with. I would be very comfortable with tightening that limit, And I'm going to make a motion to just change the, but no more than 3,000 acres, between 2,700 acres and 3,000 acres. So there's a motion to insert language of 2,700 to 3,000 acres. And it's mostly because I know that a range is needed. And I think it deals with the concept of this council understanding that the process actually is important. And I think we do realize that it's important. I do think that by limiting the amount, we can provide for maybe a better solution for everybody and a decent compromise on this piece of legislation. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. All right. Council Member Ellinger seconds. So that is changing the language to include the range of 2,700 to 3,000 acres. Please log in if you wish to speak to this amendment. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Mayor. Once again, I'm about to be a broken record. On June 1st, we, the council, made a decision. We had an opportunity to say 3,000. We had an opportunity to say 2,700. We voted and we agreed. Ten members of the council said 2,700 to 5,000. I don't understand the decrease in the number. I would need to, colleague, I would need to have an actual concrete, expressly stated reasoning and rationale for why we would be decreasing that number. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I will not be supporting this amendment because I do not feel like a 300-acre swing is enough leeway for our planning commission to do anything with. So I will be standing firm in my original vote for the 2,700 to 5,000 acre range that we have given them. Furthermore, I really hope we can just stop this conversation with the compromise. Seriously, we've hashed it out. We've talked about it. I understand why everybody is still working towards it. But we're not getting anywhere. and we've done the work and let's move along. I will not be supporting the amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I won't support the amendment either. We sat in several hours of deliberation two weeks ago and decided that it would be the best for the community and the best for everybody that we give the range to the Planning Commission. I really didn't agree with the Planning Commission having that much authority or that much power, but that's what the compromise was. So the compromise was that 2,700 to 5,000 would take care of that. Unfortunately, we've still got a crowd of people that don't want to compromise for any acreage. And I understand that, where they're coming from, but I don't agree with it because a compromise usually allows for a lot of things that we can do going forward. So I just think that my colleagues who have brought this up, these amendments up, if you look at their voting record, they were the ones that voted against it when we went 10-3. So it's kind of a delay tactic to me, and I think we just need to go forward, and let's make our votes known and move this community forward in the right way. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. I share my colleagues' frustration with the fact that we've been at this seemingly for a long, long time, and I've probably expressed in the past my own personality, especially coming from a small business point of view. I'm a very impatient person. I'm a very action-oriented person. I don't like to talk things to death, but I do think this issue that we're tackling right now is the most important issue of not just this year, but years and decades to come. And I do want to be very deliberative about it. As Council Member Plowman said, we're in a place of very realistic political situation in that those of us who oppose the current expansion, as it's stated, don't have the votes to overturn it. So what we are trying to do again, which is what I've been talking about, is build in safeguards, guardrails, and mitigate whatever lasting effects that it may have. I honestly don't know, and I don't want to speak for the people in the audience. My feeling at this point, I don't think we are where we are 27 years ago in that folks are adamantly opposed to any expansion of any size. I think what I heard from public comment was folks were opposing the expansion without a real true process, which was what I was trying to push for in goal four. So I will be voting for this amendment, but more importantly, I will be voting for Councilmember Plowman's amendment to limit the size of the overall expansion area. And I want to go home, too. I absolutely do. But I think we need to figure this out, and I think this is very necessary, what we're doing. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Plowman, I want to say I support your efforts to make an amendment tonight. I understand that you could not be here when we had the original discussion due to health concerns, and I think you should be allowed to take rest when you need it and then come back and join the discussion when you were able because I think it is your right and your responsibility to represent your district, and you've heard from a lot of them today, and I know we've been receiving a lot of emails on both sides of this issue, But I do understand what you're wanting to do with this expansion, limiting the size of it. I am going to support the amendment and support the underlying motion because I think this is a compromise point. We can hear from the community that there is some disagreement over this. So I think this allows a limited expansion up to 3,000 acres with a master plan. And then anything beyond that would return to the goal for process that would be underway. So again, I'm going to support this because it allows for expansion, but then also which is what we hear from some community members that they want. But it will also allow us to return some of that to the goal for process, which I have been a vocal supporter for since the beginning. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmembers. Thank you, Councilmember Sheehan. I guess I wasn't following the compromise part of another statement, because in my mind, if 5,000's out there backing it up, kind of half and half, well, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,700. I guess I come back and I gravitate to, again, the point I made, All that acreage out there and in the next couple years we're not going to be able to absorb that. So why put that out there? Let's come down to a level that's reasonable. And I think too the perception of the public. I think that when you say up to 5,000, that's what they walk away with. They walk away, gosh, 5,000. Well that's, what did we say before? Five times the size of the airport? I think with time and with history, you're going to see that what we're putting out there right now, 2,700 or if it goes to the 3,000, is reasonable. It is reasonable and history tells us that, but also, and no pun intended, the lay of the land tells us that. So I do, again, stand behind what I have put out there. I think for our community, being able to say to our community, we recognize where you're coming from, we recognize where you're coming from, let's come together. I mean, that's what we're about, and that is the greater good. Is it perfect always for each side? No. But isn't that our role? Is to take kind of a look and just say, okay, we can't win them all. But we can come closer together, and let's do it together. So that's why I've put that out there. I consider your consideration of that, and that's it. Enough said. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Mayor. I think what you have to keep in mind is, and we all have been at this a long time, but not even all of us sitting here, we've been at it for 27 years. For 27 years, we've not expanded the urban services boundary. And at that time, there were 11,000 acres alleged to be available with inside the boundary. Nowadays, regardless of how you argue it, the highest number that's been offered by reasonable studies is 5,300 acres. We know that the actual availability of that is more like 2,000 or give or take. When you look at an expansion and when you think about a master plan and when you think about the comp plan, you are planning for the future. We cannot wait until we are completely choked out before we decide that it is time. We have to start planning for the future now. We know that we're not even going to have an idea of what this acreage is and what it might look like for at least 18 months. We've directed that of our planning commission. I would encourage those that think that five is too much to be interested and work with the planning commission. Make your voice heard. And it may be too much. They may decide they don't need it. but they need a lot of land to make this happen, and they need to put it in reasonable places. We just, you know, we talk and talk and talk, and we let this conversation get emotional about horse versus people, to be honest. The Urban Services boundary is not solely about preserving horse farms, and I am for that. Let me tell you about the day, last Thursday when we finished, the next morning, Friday morning, I represented a client buying a horse farm, who wants to be a farmer. I represent racetrack owners and horse owners, but I also spent 13 years in the affordable housing world representing affordable housing developers and lenders. I get all the sides of this. We are now talking about something of one last thing to knock back just a little so that we, I don't know, appease? We know what we need to do here. We need to give our planning commission and our planning staff every possible tool that they have so that we can make a difference in our community. And we need to start thinking about displaced low and middle income residents, particularly those in minority and downtown neighborhoods. We need to think about, we heard from our poet laureate that Lexington has always been a sanctuary for for people in the LGBT community to come from other communities where they didn't feel so welcome. What if those people can't afford to live here? We hear about our great farms, and they are great, and they do provide jobs. We heard that tonight. They provide great jobs. But what about several of our immigrant community, in our immigrant community? They get some of those great jobs, but then can't afford to live in Lexington and can't find safe places to live. What about mothers and fathers who have raised their children here and then have to watch them go live in other communities? Because they can't afford to live here or they can't find a job here. What about all these great students that we attract here and we want to be a part of our community? And then they can't stay because they can't afford it or they can't get the job that they want. At this point, we are literally trying to go X and O, X and O over some sort of appeasement. We know what we need to do and we've been advised to empower our planning commission to do it. Let's not choke that off now. Council member Gray, are you on again to speak? I am. Council member Savigni, do you want to go ahead first? Thank you, Mayor. And I think council member Gray had asked me a question specifically and I just picked a 10% range. So just mathematical, just mathematical 2,700 to 3,000. And then I just wanted to add one other thing is that this council has agreed that goal four and the process is actually important. They're just putting this little piece, this little piece in front of the process, okay? So the process is still going on. The process is still going to happen. And to be quite frank, I'm quite sure that when our planning commission is doing their big plan for geography, it's going to include more area than 3,000 acres. They'll probably have several different scenarios. And then when we start using the actual process that actually brings in land that people want to actually sell and want to actually do something with, the process will actually work the way the process is supposed to work and will engage people that want to sell. So I think all we're trying to do is limit the amount that is not being used, is going to be used circumventing the process. That's it. That's all we're trying to do. And I appreciate your yes vote on this. Thank you. Council Member Gray? Well, I would appreciate your no vote to this. it was mentioned earlier that this is a political issue it may be a political issue by the way thank you mayor it may be a political issue for those of you who think it's political however for me this is a community of all people issue it's about ensuring people of my district who are not represented here because the people of my district, the 6th District, are busy working two jobs to ensure that they can afford their home here in Lexington. I know that you can't relate. I know you can't relate. But there are people in Lexington who really want to live here. who really want to make Lexington their home, but they can't. Decrease it, you say. Who is that helping in the future? Is it helping actual residents of Lexington? Is it helping our next generation who are growing up, who want to make Lexington their home? I don't want another generation of Lexingtonians who want to live in their hometown, who want to afford home in their hometown, who don't just want to be the help. As some of the emails said they were okay with the people being the help and making an outside county their home. If you work in Lexington and you want to live here, we should do everything in our abilities as lawmakers who represent all Lexingtonians. This is not a political issue at all. It's about ensuring that all Lexingtonians can afford to live here, that we have the acreage here in Lexington. for them to make Lexington their home. This is not about the present. This is about the future of Lexington. And I'm passionate about making sure Lexington is a place for all people and not the most wealthy, not just the farm owners. We want the horse farms to be here. There is no way that any of us want to do away with what brings Lexington our funds. This is about humanity. And I'm passionate about every single resident of Lexington. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. no one else has signed up to speak so we'll go ahead and take the vote on councilmember civigny's motion all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion failed and so now we'll go to councilmember plowman's amendment which is still on the floor and has not been amended. Does anyone wish to speak to it? Hers is the amendment that states 2,700 acres for expansion. Does anyone wish to speak to it? Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Mayor, and I'll be brief. And, Council Member Plowman, I agree and share the same sentiments that Council Member Sheehan shared about you not being here and you June the 1st but being here today in bringing this amendment forward i think a big part of it is is what it may do is address some of the fears that a lot of folks think that we're just being this council is not being considerate of the urban service boundary and what it has provided for our community and i don't think that's the case but i think your amendment will probably or has the intent to to to share that with folks my concern and i want to support it but my concern is uh is being as us being too restrictive on the planning commission i think when they expanded the boundary in 96 you know there are partial uh lots that are in and are out and i think they were probably trying to and i don't know stick to a number try to do the best that they could with the information they have but i think that has created some challenges for us today and i think given the planning commission a range will give them the opportunity to be more flexible and more diligent with crafting the new line in the expansion area. So I appreciate the sentiment of your motion, but I do think it would be beneficial to give the Planning Commission a range to work from as opposed to a set number. So thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak to the amendment on the floor? I see no one. All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? No. Okay. That motion fails 6 to 7. All right. So we have a motion on the floor by Vice Mayor Wu. I'll take us back to the beginning, which has been amended by Council Member Gray's motion in the beginning that passed regarding low and middle income and affordable housing. Is there anything else about the motion to approve the goals and objectives as it's amended? Anyone wish to speak? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. I haven't made a statement about my stance on this publicly, though I've spoken with many people and tried to write back my constituents that wrote me, though I might have missed one here or there. So I just wanted to speak a little bit about my opinion and hope that everyone realizes that each of us have struggled with this and have worked a long time on this issue. And as many of my colleagues have said, none of us want to eat up our precious farmland and we're not talking about taking away big farms. Those are protected, many of them, and that will not change. And my idea about the urban service boundary has evolved a lot since I first got on council. As I've seen so many struggle to find an affordable place to live. I've also seen most people who I talk with say that they want to maintain the boundary, but in reality be against almost all development inside the boundary. I have been yelled at and I quote, the city hates us. And that is because of the comprehensive plan when they are referring to being in opposition of density. Our constituents are saying one thing, but in practicality are wanting another thing. In order to infill this, we have to do development everywhere. and a lot of drastic things have to happen. We have to build up really high. We have to have huge apartment complexes. We have to open dead-end roads. We have to have affordable housing in our backyard. We have to have zone changes and all kinds of zone amendments that favor infill. and this includes having businesses in our neighborhood. Right now, all of those things are being opposed at every turn and there's a lot of pressure on council members to represent the constituents' desires not to develop at all near their neighborhood or their house. And that means that I am in a really hard position. Defend infill and redevelopment because we have a boundary and goals and objectives or represent the interests of the people who elected me. I try to do both, but it doesn't always work. Another senior housing tower is literally being built in my own backyard. And while many of my neighbors have a strong issue with it, it doesn't bother me because I know that that housing is needed. We cannot keep a boundary and build the more housing that we desperately need and at the exact same time make infill impossible. We cannot do that. We will never reach a decision that makes everyone happy and only a compromise is possible and that means that none of us, myself included, are going to be content with all the details. I don't want to get rid of our farmlands without a plan and as has been stated this evening we have a plan and we're working on a plan. We're working on both at the same time. This issue is not all one-sided. It is not just about the horse farms and greedy developers. This issue has been messaged every which way and there's a lot of parts of this issue that have not been messaged and have not been messaged properly. I'm not being swayed by one side or the other. I have gone to many farms and I have also looked at the boundary and seen where developers want to develop. We are looking for ways to ensure more affordable housing in this plan and beyond. And I'm interested in making sure we can help developers build more housing and especially affordable housing. We need to do a better job of that and I've seen how it's done in other communities and I'm ready to move forward and help make improvements. That being said, we have to make a decision now. And we are going to entrust our planning staff and the planning commission to help us move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to make a few comments. I wanted to say that I am really proud of the work that we have done. We've gone through a deliberative and thoughtful process, and I'm really, really proud of our work. I believe that we all want what's best for our community, but there's a lot of opinions on what that means. But I am confident that we have built a firm foundation for community growth in these goals and objectives and that we have placed our trust in a highly competent and professional planning department and planning commission. We have set the guardrails for how this land and how our community will grow and how this land will be used, and I'm really excited for our future. As Council Member Reynolds said, and I will echo, I am tired of sitting through zone change after zone change to deliberate and fill projects that are continually opposed by neighboring communities. And I think this work will put us on the right path. Like Councilmember Reynolds said, we can't have it both ways. We can't maintain our boundary and disagree with every infill project that is proposed. It's just not possible. I truly believe that the work that we have completed is the best for our community, and it has been my pleasure and honor to work with all of my colleagues on this, and I really appreciate all of the community input as well. it has been a long process and I have lost a lot of sleep over what is best for our community and I really really truly feel sorry I'm getting choked up because I'm so passionate I want everybody to know that we all have thought about this so much and we are trying so hard to do what is best for our community. And I really, truly feel like this work is that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Mayor. First, I'd just like to thank my colleagues for the work that you put in on June 1st. And I apologize that I couldn't be here, but I was watching you every single minute and rooting you on. So I appreciate all of the opinions, the research, the feedback that was shared in the discussions that you all had that day. I want to thank everyone that has either called my office phone or sent an email. I'm an advocate by nature that's in my DNA, so I appreciate your advocacy quite a bit. I'm thankful for everyone that spoke up here tonight, sharing your issues, your concerns, your opinions. I take that all into consideration in my decision. I also take into consideration my over 15 years doing landlord tenant work in the state of Kentucky, and specifically in this county. I've seen, held the hand of many, many renters through eviction, through having their belongings on the street and not having any place to go with their kids the next day because they can't afford another place to live. I've worked with unhoused folks for over 15 years, seeing the struggles, stood by them, cried tears along with them. So I know how much of a struggle it is to live in Lexington and be precariously housed. I'm quite familiar with that story. I can even share my own story. When I was a renter here in Lexington and my lease was ending within 60 days and I had to give my landlord notice whether I was going to stay or leave. And I had been feverishly working with a great real estate agent to find a place I could afford to live here. And literally, literally, by the grace of God, I was able to find a house that I could afford 30 days before I had to be out of my townhouse that I was renting. I didn't know where I was going. I stepped out on faith that day. So I know how hard it is to find housing in this city because I've done that. I've been a renter here, and I'm blessed to be a homeowner here. And I know the struggle quite well. And I don't want others to have to go through that like I had to. And if there's anything I can do to prevent that, I'm going to do that. My neighbors in the second district elected me here, and I'm very humbly and blessed they did that, so that I can support policies with their futures in mind and our entire city's positive future in mind. And I've said in our prior meetings that we have to set ourselves up for a bright future. We're making decisions today that I want to be impactful, positively in the future. We're not just legislating in the now, but we're legislating for the future, with the future in mind. So I support the amended goals and objectives that my colleagues, through much discussion on June 1st and prior, that we did prior, that they have put forth. I think that we need to give our planning commission, our planning division, lots of area and room to make sure that we are setting our city up for the brightest future that can possibly happen. And if we can do anything, if I can do anything to prevent my neighbors from being precariously housed, or not knowing where they're going to go the next day, or that they can't afford a place to live and they're going to have to look for opportunities in other cities. I want to make sure that we make that right decision today to support opportunity. This vote is to support choice. Everyone should have choices. And if we make a decision to remove choice, what kind of city are we? We want to be able to give all of our neighbors, not just a few, but all of our neighbors the choice to live here with their family and to set roots here. So I thank my colleagues. Vice Mayor, I want to thank you specifically. You led a dynamic process for us to do a deep dive into these goals and objectives. I thought it was very, very well done, and I appreciate the intricate way that we were able to give input in discussion here. So thank you to my colleagues again, and I look forward to supporting the amended goals and objectives. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not sure where to start because I've been around so long. I'll start back maybe in the 70s with a merged government. And I'm proud of Lexington from that coming forward because we really had a plan back then of putting this community on one track. And that was to make it the best community that we could. And I think we've done that. I know I've served on the council several years and have seen a lot of zone changes and a lot of bannering back and forth on what's good for the community and what's not good for the community. I'll start with maybe 1996 when the urban service boundary was expanded. I happened to be on the council at that time and we deliberated and we went through process and really felt like that we needed economic growth and we needed to take care of our citizens out there. We actually at that time built a boundary, I call it a fence, around Lexington which says we've got a boundary here so everybody just stay out unless you can afford to come inside and buy a house that's for sell. I don't know very many communities that have actually circled the wagons like Lexington has and we still are doing that. 27 years later we're not we don't we're not given the opportunity. We need land for economic development more than anything. Affordable housing I'm not sure. I keep trying to define that and it goes it's ahead of me affordable housing is what you make of it what it is today won't be what it is in five years or ten years the I just I disagree that that this city and we've had that you know people have talked about this council and even prayer prayer councils that I've I've been on that we did not have a plan for growth. I'll tell you, everything that I've been involved in, we've definitely had a plan for growth. We've got a planning department and we've got a planning commission that is probably rates up there with anybody in the state or maybe nationwide. But we've fallen short on that plan, but it's not because we haven't tried. we tried the infill development plan was part of this thing that came in several years ago guess what the neighborhoods come here and say no we don't want infill around our area not in our backyard so you know we've tried that part of the plan and it hasn't worked effectively one of the other things and i'm real proud of in 1999 we said we've got valuable property here we've got a unique community. Let's see if we can set aside some property. And we called it purchase development rights. I mean, we went through a lot of deliberation on that to get it started. That's the greatest thing that we've done for this community. And we've already saved 33,000 acres and are on our way to 50,000 acres. So it's not like we're building out here and trying to expand just for the sake of development or just for the sake to have more land. You know, the 2018 comp plan had provisions in it, and that was, you know, it had a plan in there, but the planning department, you know, they didn't act timely on it, so we had to come forward in this 2023 and bring forth that 2018 and say, and we got it into committee, go for committee, to look at it, but nothing has been done. So there's another five years that we really have not made any progress. I venture to say even with this addition of land, it'll be another five to ten years before part of that will be developed. And I go back to the 1996 expansion that we had. If I'm not correct, I don't know the numbers, but probably half of that 5,300 acres has been developed. So, you know, you put the acreage out there, that doesn't mean it's going to get developed. But you've got to have a plan for the future. So I view this expansion, I'm going to support it. I view it as a protective land option that we have, and I'm going to vote for it. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make a quick point of clarification for everybody in the room. The thing we're about to vote on, we are not voting to approve the goals and objectives. We are currently voting to place the goals and objectives on the docket for the council meeting that is to follow this meeting for first reading. And then on Thursday at our council meeting, we will have second reading and the final vote on it. So I just wanted to make sure everybody was clear on that point. To something that Council Member Reynolds talked about, she mentioned that we would be working on expansion and the process at the same time. And if that were true, I would be pretty happy, and a lot of my reservations would be removed from our conversations on June 1. What we did is we placed one thing before the other. We placed expansion first, put a December 2024 deadline on it, and we put a process second and put a i believe it was fall of 26 so three years down the road that's been my concern this entire time it was not about whether or not we were going to expand it wasn't about where we were going to expand it wasn't about how much we were going to expand it was about how do we do it what is the process how do we build that process for the long term One of my frustrations as a new council member walking in in 2023 is catching up to everything that happened before us and finding out about the comp plan in 2018 and what was done and not done and kind of what gets put in our laps and wondering, wait, what happened here? Why wasn't this voted on? Why isn't this already existing? and so my biggest fear and i've stated this before is not about how much land we expand into where do we expand how big is the expansion my my fear has always been that this process will never get finished and that the council of 2028 will look back on us when they tackle the comp plan and say what was the council of 2023 doing and why isn't this done yet and why are we still having the same conversation that we've had for over a generation. I want to put process first. This current goals and objectives is not perfect. I think everyone knows my objections to the expansion proposal within it. But I'll say this, we all want the best. I think Council Member Baxter and I think everyone has expressed that. I really have enjoyed working with this council and really working through this process even though it's been a long sometimes bruising slog and i want to say as a new council member along with my new colleagues who have just gotten here and honestly along with the majority of this council who has not gone through comp plan right most of us were not here five years ago um i really really do appreciate the work the way that we have worked through this um without it ever getting personal without it ever getting mean that we are debating the issues. We have sometimes vast differences on how we think the city should grow, but I think we all want what's best for the city. So when it comes down to it on Thursday, if nothing else changes with reservations about the expansion plan, I will be voting to approve the goals and objectives as well. Who knows what will happen in two days. Thank you, Mayor. It's a long time, two days. Council Member Legree. Thanks. Thank you, Mayor. I was just deciding if I was going to weigh in at this point, and I've decided I will. You know, the motion in front of you is about moving our goals and objectives that we've worked on for quite some time onto the docket. And I want to say that I think that there are many outstanding aspects of our goals and objectives, and I want to share my appreciation for the intelligence and hard work of our planning staff and our planning commission, because I know that you've been working with us and with each other for a long, long time on this. And I really am supportive of many, many aspects of this plan. However, my position is still at no when it comes to short term expansion and I feel comfortable in maintaining that position. I really do believe, Vice Mayor, you were just talking about this, in our long range planning process and in the necessity of that process. we're going to get to where we need to be using the tools of long range planning. But I am concerned, and you all I'm reiterating something I shared previously, that this expansion plan in goal three will open up rural land for development and in turn require new city services, infrastructure, and utilities in that process. And I'm honestly not in favor of the ramifications of that decision because Even though I appreciate everything that we've added today and I'm in support of affordable housing and I added the amendment about middle and low income and I'm proud that those things made it through. I still have concerns that the true cost will outweigh the desired benefits. And again, this is my position as arguably the council member is arguably the most dense district. one who will feel many of the pressures and opportunities associated with infill. And as someone who feels very strongly about climate change and environmental concerns. And those are concerns that are shared by my constituents. And I know and I respect that everybody has thought about this really hard. But I remain concerned that rather than devoting resources to make our current neighborhoods more equitable, new tracks will again permanently change our landscape that they'll create sprawl that they'll create pollution with only the hope that they can actually address our our current and future needs and i say this as someone who cares about intentional city planning and who cares about a more walkable dense and more accessible city accessible for many many people um and i believe that many of these goals and objectives get us closer to that vision so colleagues i know that you know where i stand on this expansion in goal three and i hope that i've articulated my process and values in getting to this point in my decision making process and i trust that you respect that even though we're at very different places some of us thank you mayor thank you councilmember Thank you, Mayor. I know a lot of our discussion tonight has been particular to goal three on theme E and our goals and objectives. I want to encourage the public and everyone here today, anyone who is watching these meetings, to look at the entirety of this document. Because just like our budget is a reflection of our values, These goals and objectives indicate our values from this council and from the community as well. Theme E is all about housing and building successful neighborhoods, including infill and redevelopment and expanding housing choices, addressing community facilities. Goal, theme B is all about protecting the environment. And there are a lot of metrics and good work and policy recommendations that have been put into that. Theme C is all about creating jobs and prosperity, which we know is important for so many in our community and our economic development and success here in Lexington. Theme D is about improving a desirable community. So it's about our transportation systems and complete streets. It's about focusing on the health and safety and quality of life needs of residents in our community. And protecting our arts and culture. Theme E, we've had a lot of talk about it is all around our land use policies. But then importantly at the end is theme F. This is about how we engage and educate residents of our county in the planning process. And how we work to implement all of the goals and objectives in our comprehensive plan that we have outlined, including regional planning. So there's very important work here outside of just our land use, although of course that is important to our community. So I encourage everyone to get involved in the rest of the comprehensive plan and discussions as the policy recommendations come forward for the rest of this plan. I also want to say a sincere thank you, of course, to everyone from the community who has engaged on this issue. But I see a number of our planning commission members here in this room and I want to thank you all for the work that you did to bring this to us and the continued work that you will do to turn this six page document into about a 600 page document. So thank you for that in advance and for the work that you have done. And I want to sincerely thank our planning staff because I know you have worked with not only our planning commission, who are volunteers by the way, our planning commission, just to say that. They do a lot of time and work volunteering, but to our planning staff who have worked with us. I know you have helped me craft language for the amendments that I wanted to make for the goals and objectives. And you have been working with other council members and our planning commission and our community as this has moved forward. So I thank you for the engagement and education that you have done for us, but also for the community as a whole. So if any of my district residents want to ask me questions about my positions on any of this, or have questions about the comprehensive plan as a whole, I encourage you to reach out to me. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. So the motion on the floor is to place on the docket for the June 13, 2023 meeting of the Urban County Council, Resolution adopting goals and objectives for the Imagine Lexington 2045 comprehensive plan as amended. Please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? We only have eight votes. Ten. Has everyone voted? I think we need, okay. All right. Thank you. That motion passes. Now, let's move on. Is there anything else for the docket? No. All those in favor of approving the docket, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Before we move on, this was the June 13th, today's 5 o'clock meeting, which will occur a little bit late. I just wanted to remind everyone there is no public comment on the 5 o'clock meeting. All public comment will next come at the Thursday, the 15th meeting, just so everyone knows. And we still have our public comment for issues not on the agenda at the end of this meeting. So with that, we will go to the docket for June 15th. Could I have a motion to approve? Second. Thank you. Council Member Baxter, did you move? Vice Mayor Wu seconded. And are there any changes, amendments, additions? Council Member Reynolds. Thank you. On behalf of the administration, I move to place on the docket for June 15, 2023 council meeting a resolution for rent of office space at 4701 Tates Creek Center Drive at no cost to exceed $10,716. All right. There's a second by Council Member Sheehan. I'm just checking our quorum. Okay. Any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Are there any other motions for the June 15th docket? That was an amendment, yeah. No? All those in favor of approving, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Next is the May 30th table of motions. Could I have a motion, please? Thank you. Council Member Baxter, second by Council Member Gray. Any questions? Comments? All those in favor? I mean, yes, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Now we come to budget amendments. Could I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Vice Mayor Wu moves. Council Member Gray seconds. Are there questions? If so, please log in. Or amendments. Second. Council Member Sheehan, did you have an amendment about? I'm sorry. Yes, it was. All right, I see none. All those in favor of approving budget amendments, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Next, you'll see budget amendments for your information only, pages 5 to 11. Could I have a motion, please, to approve new business? So moved. Council Member Ellinger moves. Council Member Baxter seconds. If you have questions, please log in. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Mayor. Colleagues, I emailed you about this earlier today, but the Environmental Commission is going to be presenting in the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee meeting on July 11th about some ordinance changes they would like to make to their, make changes to their commission. So that is item N on our new business list today. So I am going to make the motion to amend that list to postpone item N under new business authorizing certain ordinance changes relating to the Environmental Commission to the work session on July 11th, 2023 after we've had that presentation. So moved. Is there a second? Council Member Sevigny seconds. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? That motion passes. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Mayor. If I could have Director Burton, Doug Burton up here, please, that would be great. I have two questions. On which item? One, the first is on K. Welcome, Director Burton. On K, I know this is the design money for the extra turn lane that will be needed for New Fayette County Public Schools buildings on Mason-Healy. Yes. Is that right? So this money was not included in the money that we included in the budget last year for this project? No, it is. It's just we had to go through the RFQ process, and then now we've hired the consulting engineer. So this is the first phase of that $1.4 million that was designed to cover design and right-of-way phase. So this is the first step. Okay, so this is part of the money that we already approved. Correct. This is not additional money. Correct. It's just you're approving the award to the consulting engineer. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. And then is there a timeline on when the design might be done and then next steps? So the design typically takes nine months to a year, give or take, and then the next step will be right-of-way acquisition because while we do have a portion of the property for Fayette County Public School that we need, there are several other properties, Cardinal Valley on the other side and a couple of other private owners that we'll need to purchase from. So that will be the right-of-way phase once we've completed design. So it could take up to a year to get to that point? Is that what you said? Yes. Okay. I've had constituents ask me, so that's why I'm curious. Thank you. And then on item P, this is about Manchester and the portion of Town Branch Trail? Yes. Okay. So when we're talking about this, this is for items that were also already approved. Correct. Like the like the this is going to include the delineator that is the planter. Yes. The purpose of it is to create the curb planters, for lack of a better term, that will provide that better separation between the vehicles and the bikes, bicycles, and also provide a space for plantings such as tall grasses. OK. And how do we I know there's work being done there right now. Right. Do we know how long it will take? to finish this? A couple more weeks is what we have from the, that will, the lane closures in effect now will take roughly another week. And then the plantings they'll be able to do on not a full lane closure because they won't be using heavy equipment. Okay. I just wanted to have that stated publicly. Thank you very much. Council member Baxter. Thank you, mayor. I have a question about item G. I think director Patton's on her way down. Thank you, ma'am. So I see this is a 10-year agreement, and I'm just curious if, okay, is this a new radio system or this is something that we've done in the past? This is not a new radio system. The current 800 megahertz radio system is approaching 10 years. So this is a maintenance contract for the next 10 years. It was the most fiscally responsible approach. There were other options upward towards $10 million, and so the $4 million was more palatable over the 10 years. Okay. And then is there any, if for any reason we have to break this agreement, is there any penalty to us to do so that you're aware of? I mean, I hear you say that we did a 10-year agreement previously. I'm just curious if there's any repercussions. I will get you the specifics of the termination clause. We do have one. I believe it is just to pay for work that's already been done, but I will solidify that with you. Thank you, and I definitely appreciate your fiscal responsibility on this one. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Number M. M. Is Commissioner Albright or? I'm sorry, Commissioner Albright or Director Neal? Welcome. Hi, welcome, Commissioner. We've been working on this quiet zone for quite a while. And so where do we stand here? This is just asking them to authorize them to a study. We already did the study. We set money aside, but I guess this is going to help us expedite it going down in the future. Well, this is kind of the design and feasibility of it. We had to work with Norfolk Southern's consultant. So we've been, yes, it's been a long process. We are now to the point where we are establishing a contract with them. Well, that's good because we've got communication. We weren't getting that for a while, and now we are, so we're slowly getting there, so I appreciate that. The next one would be, and I think you or Mr. Burton, number S. And this is another one that we've been working on. Can you tell us, with the safe streets, for all, what we're doing here? Oh, we've got the MPO, too. Yes, and although Burton is on the docket, it's actually the MPO that's done most of the lead work here. This was a collaborative process on two different tracks that this project bubbled up from. One was the Imagine New Circle Road study that just completed work that identified conceptually from the community what this corridor needed to look like. And then we had a safety action plan that we've been working with the transportation cabinet on to identify where are our most challenging locations for fatal and serious injury crashes. which it also happens to be the signalized section of New Circle Road. We have a federal program, the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, which is giving us an opportunity to accomplish a big chunk of that recommendation. And this is what's coming to you. There are two other parts to that application. One is to do an outreach community-wide through our Division of Environmental Services to address systemic issues that may be related to driver behavior, and then to hire a Vision Zero coordinator to help us on continuing efforts to try to get after fatal and serious injury crashes. Well, I sit on the NPO, and I've heard this, but I thought it was important for you to kind of let everybody else know, because these are big projects that we're working on that I think can have big improvements for this community. So thank you for that. The last one, Mayor, is W with the insurance. And I want to kind of, let's see. All right. That is Commissioner Hensley. No, that is Director Walters. Ms. Walters. And can you explain how, when we're self-insured and then how this works and how with this policy and the premiums on this? And it looks like some have gone up and some have actually gone down. Yes. So each year we go to market for excess insurance and I've got my skidmore here as well. So basically we work with Marsh McLennan. They go out and survey, I guess, the market if you will. Our folks do a ton of research on that, provide answers to questionnaires. And basically they look for the best price for us for insurance. We, of course, are self-insured as well, but this is everything above and beyond that. That's all I needed. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Are there any other questions about new business? Council members? Council Member Gray? I thought I was going to be quiet the rest of the work session. S. Thank you. I know we met yesterday, and according to the plan, much of it is first and sixth districts that the plan touches. Is that correct? That's correct. And what is different about, or is there anything in particular about this plan that will benefit those sides, those districts? So conceptually, we're talking about redesign of this section of the new circle to provide better bicycle and pedestrian accessibility. It's also a transit project so that folks who live along this corridor have better access to those services. It's also how do we connect the legacy trail to our network here. And this gives us an opportunity to do that as well. But we're also looking at intersections along the corridor as well, how they operate, some of the issues we're having with serious or fatal and serious injury crashes there as well. So if we are successful at this application, this gives us about, I believe, close to $25 million to address a lot of these design issues along the corridor. The concept that's come up is, or one concept that's going to be considered, is the RCUT type design that we're already looking at for portions of Richmond Road. But there are other innovative intersection designs that may be part of this, depending on what the design phase identifies. That's wonderful because in that particular area we have had numerous pedestrians who unfortunately lost their lives because they were attempting to cross New Circle Road. Yes, and the real benefit here is that we would double, more than double, the number of safe crossing points for pedestrians along this corridor through this conceptual design. Even better. So thank you for your information. Thank you. Is there anything else for new business? All right. All those in favor of approving, say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Now we will start our continuing business and presentation. First up is Council Member Reynolds with the Social Services Public Safety Committee. Thank you, Mayor. I have the report out summary. The meeting was called to order on May 2nd, 2023 at 1.02 p.m. The first item on the agenda was approval of the March 14th, 2023 committee summary. There were no additions or corrections, and the summary was approved without dissent. Next, we had a presentation on crime reduction technology, and Commander Greathouse with Lexington Police Department provided a review of the license plate reader cameras. He pointed out that the infrastructure for the traffic cameras has been developed over the last 20 years, and these are located at approximately 135 intersections in Lexington. Great House said, unless there is an event that requires a police presence, they don't actively monitor these cameras. He spoke about FUSIS software that would allow integration of license plate readers and traffic cameras, and he mentioned the Real-Time Intelligence Center, RTIC, which manages the technology integration. Great House explained how officers get access to the camera footage for an investigation, and he stressed that no officer has access to the videos except the intelligence unit. For those who have a privately owned camera and want to allow LPD access to footage upon request, there is no cost to register. For those who want to integrate with LPD using a core device, the registration cost is $350 for the first year, including the device and subscription, and $150 per year after that. No action was taken on this item. Finally, Ken Armstrong, Commissioner of the Public Safety, spoke about the city's response to the windstorm on March 3, 2023. He reviewed key factors and considered in the response, and he pointed out almost all departments can and did play a part in the response of this event. Armstrong reviewed each division with public safety, and he pointed out that Environmental Quality and Public Works Department of Social Services and Housing Advocacy and Community Development also provided services during and after the storm. Moving forward, Armstrong said Emergency Operations Center, the EOC, will only be activated in person and there will be backup communications in place. Regarding how we go about improving KU's communication, he said KU had an after-action meeting after the storm and they had a state EOC and local command center. Armstrong confirmed in the future that there will be a direct line of communication or someone physically present. There was a suggestion that our government communication staff put a plan in place and how that plan can be communicated. No action was taken on this item, and the meeting adjourned at 2.44 p.m., and that concludes my report out. Thank you. Thank you very much. Does anyone have questions about the meeting for Council Member Reynolds? All right. Thank you. The next item is for information only, Council Members, Special Committee of the Whole from May 23rd and June 1st. And that brings us to the Downtown Lexington Management District. And I was going to say I didn't see Mr. Frazier. No, unfortunately he had it previously scheduled up. Okay. So you guys get me. Okay, please introduce yourself. My name is Juan Castro. I am the treasurer for the organization. I'm very proud to bring to you the 2024 fiscal year budget. One of the things that I wanted to point out, or well, Mr. James Fraser wanted to point out, is what a district includes. Our downtown district includes a number of great businesses, great locations, great homes. And therefore, we're trying to be very responsible with the budget and make sure that we use the property tax money coming into the organization as best as we can. Our budget looks at over 80% is looking at maintaining the cleanliness, the security of the city. The next 10% is looking at grants. We have three specific grants that we provide for local business owners and property owners to improve their locations and to improve their properties. We have had several grants this year in the tune of $19,000. So our budget is about 5% over the one that was presented last year. We have been very fiscally responsible and careful. And so I submit to you the 2024 budget for your approval. Thank you very much. I'll ask council members if they have questions. The budget is on pages 74 through 75 and with the map, so if you have a question, please log in. No questions? Oh, there is a question. Council Member Legree. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming to speak to us and for your work in putting together this budget. As you know, we serve on the DLMD together, and so I just didn't know if there were any changes you wanted to highlight for us or anything special in this budget that you think would be worth noting for the council before we... Yes, thank you very much. A couple of the things that we have done is we have focused on that improvement grant. Originally, we were giving up to $10,000 for a number of properties. we cut it back to nine, and that is because we are trying to give more of the grant. So we moved from about a $20,000 to $27,000. It's still within the realm of about 13% of our total budget. But what we're trying to do is trying to put the property money back into our community so that they can improve the look and feel of downtown. We're absolutely honored and proud to be able to continue to do this for downtown because all of us pretty much live here, at least in our business lives. And so the major changes are a little bit of increase from the company that we hire to do the cleaning, which is block by block. It is at about a 5% to 10% increase, and the biggest increase has been exclusively to the grants that we offer our property owners. Thank you so much. That's great information. I appreciate it. That's it, Mayor. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions? Seeing none, Councilmember Legree, did you have a motion? I do, Mayor. I move to place on the docket for the June 15, 2023 Council meeting a resolution approving the FY 2024 budget for the Downtown Lexington Management District. I further move to schedule the required public hearing related to this matter at the regularly scheduled council meeting on Thursday, June 29, 2023 at 6 p.m. So moved. All right. Council Member Reynolds seconds. Are there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Really appreciate your work. Next, it's time for council reports. Please log in. All right, I don't think we have any. Let's move real fast. Oh, council member will agree. You all, I'm really sorry. Listen. But this is a big anniversary. I just want everybody to know that the 100th birthday celebration at Ashland Terrace is happening this Saturday, June 17th, It's from 5 to 8 PM, so if you want to come out and celebrate with the ladies at Ashland Terrace, we would love to have you. Thank you, that's it. Thank you, and thank you for reading the proclamation on Saturday, appreciate that. All right, there is a mayor's report, could I have a motion to approve? Second. Wait a minute. Council member Sevigny was the loudest, and then I heard council member Gray right next to him. All right, are there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right, that motion passes. Could I have a motion to approve the price contract bids? Second. Council Member Baxter, and then Council Member Sheehan seconds. Are there any questions? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that passes. Now we are to public comment for issues not on the agenda, and these folks have really sat through a lot. We have two people signed up. First is Dottie Bean, and you know how this works. If you'll state your name and your district, and you'll have three minutes. Welcome. Thank you. First of all, a couple of snafus in the information given to me. about today's meeting contained some errors. And that's why I am about to talk about what you all just talked about, which was on the agenda, but I thought it was only for your information only. So it is about affordable housing and the goal three. Firstly, we are pleased with the outcome of the council work on the theme E, goal three of the comp plan. We have agreed with Councilman Worley's idea about putting a range of developable acreage in the Goal 3, that it was a very good idea and certainly supported Councilman Gray's position about having a Lexington that is for everyone. We would suggest the council now organize a task force with at least one member from each council district, not necessarily council people, but someone who lives in that district, to study the affordable housing issue and hold public hearings in every district of this community hosted by district council members. It is not just a 12th district issue, this gun plan, an expansion of the boundary. It is an issue that we all have a stake in, an issue that will require a sizable investment for all of the Lexington taxpayers to fund infrastructure. To help fund the costs of this affordable housing, we want to suggest a moratorium on the local funds that are spent to underwrite PDR purchases for several years, and instead put the money into a program to subsidize buying lots and land to award the developers willing to build houses to sell at prices capped at $175,000 for the working poor and lower middle income renters and buyers. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you very much. Is Rick Day here? He was here earlier and signed up to speak. All right, I don't see him. We have one more person who is, I think, going to be signed in. Just one moment, please. Okay, Monty Price, and if you'll state your name and your council district, you'll have three minutes. My name is Monty Price. I live at 497 Angliana Avenue, apartment 2328, the 11th district. Everybody should have the right to affordable housing and not have to live on the street. Apartment owners should have less restrictions and reduce the cost of rent. This is a growing problem in our nation in that homelessness is on the rise in our communities. Also, citizens in our communities not being able to find jobs. The employers are not wanting to hire and laying off employees as well. Employers should lessen the restrictions for hire and have more training and education. Moreover, employers should give their new employees three to six months to prove that they are a valuable employee and not overwork them. Basically, affordable housing and jobs are decreasing in our communities. This is creating problems within our economy as a nation, in our communities, causing the cost of living going up. What is the Lexington Fayette-Oberwood County government going to do about the high unemployment rate increasing in our communities, and the cost of housing on the rise in our communities here in Lexington? Basically, everybody should be able to have access to affordable housing and a good paying job, no matter how much education a person has in our communities in Lexington and also in America. Thank you, Mayor, thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you, City Council, for allowing me to speak this evening. Thank you very much. And I believe that concludes our public comment. So that leaves us to adjournment. And before we adjourn, we have a very short docket for the 5 o'clock meeting. And we're going to adjourn. I just wanted to say this before. My suggestion is we adjourn this meeting. And if the council clerk is ready, we'll just take up the 5 o'clock meeting right away. If they can Lex TV. Can you all be ready? Ten minutes. We need ten minutes? Okie doke. All right. Is there a motion to adjourn the work session? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. We are adjourned and we will be back in ten minutes for the council meeting. you