Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Music to the December 5th, 2023 meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Our first item on our agenda is approval of the October 24th, 2023 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Okay, hearing none, is there a motion to be approved? Second. Okay. I have a motion from Council Member Civigni and a second from Councilwoman Gray. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes. Our next item on our agenda for today is our annual consent decree and remedial measures plan update. We have Charlie Martin here today, the director of the Division of Water Quality, to present this item for us. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for having me today. I've got Bob Peterson back in the back with me here as far as when we get into some of the maps of the upcoming projects in case I need to phone a friend. He's the one that I will phone. Run through the agenda as we normally do, an overall consent decree status, talk a little bit about the remaining capital obligations, really try to hone in on what's getting ready to happen or what's happening out there on the street right now so as you hear from constituents that you can be informed about what really has happened or why is that hole being dug there and those kind of things. And then lastly, the questions. I included this map in here kind of as the beginning. The consent decree has a lot of components to it, but the big part of it has been reoccurring sanitary sewer overflows. And this map has existed since the beginning. All of those little dots there used to be red. And the green ones now are all the ones that we have abated, that we have repaired through the course of the consent decree. We still have some clusters, particularly in the West Hickman area, and then some individual ones kind of scattered around the map. But it's a good visual indicator of the success that we've had to this point as far as implementing the consent decree. So in the overall status, I always mention this, and I think maybe we'll finally stop here soon after, because some of this has been done for a while. The stormwater and the supplemental environmental project obligations have been done for quite some time. It was a big part of the consent decree, but again, it's something that's kind of now in the rearview mirror, so we're trying to focus on those last two bullets. uh one of them being the cmon program the cmon program stands for obviously you can read capacity management operation and maintenance it's really about trying to make sure that you operate your system efficiently every day not just the days that it's raining it goes on forever it will be something that will exist even when the consent decree is finally closed out today your your one of your new business items has to do with the annual fine that we pay for overflows and so So that's related to the CMOM program. That fine situation will exist at least for the duration of the consent decree after it's over. I'm not so sure how they will treat that. That will be a matter of negotiation, I'm sure, when we get to the end. But the 800-pound gorilla still remains to be the remedial measures plan, which is basically the capital construction projects that eliminate those overflows that I showed you on the earlier map. You know, I think when I've told you last time I was here that we had submitted a request to EPA and the state to get an amended schedule, basically amending the schedule due to the impact of the pandemic. We were going along pretty well until about early 2020, and then the wheels fell off just like it did for everybody. You know, staff shortages, not just for us, but for our contractors and in the engineering world. More importantly, the supply chain disruptions that we're still experiencing to some level really, really kind of just basically was a stick in the spoke, so to speak. So in August of last year, we made a request to EPA about extending the deadline. The current full compliance deadline is December 31st of 2026, and we ask that that be moved to 2030. We had a couple of other requests in there as well as the consent decree required interim deadlines for all of the projects that got approved by them. The actual projects were approved outside the consent decree amongst EPA, ourselves, and the state. But this complete design, complete this, complete this, these interim milestones were all in there. And given the number of projects that we have, it was just a nightmare. With over 100 projects and each one of them having six individual milestones, it made the quarterly reports just overwhelming because if you missed a little deadline, you had to ask for a formal amendment to it. And so what we pointed out to them is that what really matters is when's the construction going to be done? When's it going to be placed in service? So that was an important part of what we were asking for. We asked that we eliminate the quarterly reports and then try to do more electronic stuff. when the consent decree was first lodged, that was mid-2000s. So we've come a long way with electronic submittals and those kind of things like that. The submitting papers and stacks of reports and stuff like that became very difficult. So you can see that they basically conceptually have agreed with us on all of those requests except for the electronic reports. I think they're going to agree with that as well. That was kind of a late addition, And I put this presentation together a couple of months ago, to be honest with you. So it's not necessarily as current. They basically have conceptually agreed to everything that we've asked for. With the exception of the quarterly reports, they would rather us do semi-annual reports in the quarterly report format. But again, eliminating all of those interim deadlines will make that quarterly report a lot easier than it used to be. So, make sure that I'm clear on this, that this, if we're modifying the consent decree, that has to go back to court. That was approved by a judge, and the modification has to be approved by a judge. So, if we're modifying or altering the language that's contained in the consent decree, it has to be agreed to all parties and then filed with the district court. We expected that to happen by November of 23, and you see we've not quite missed that deadline. I'm not worried about it, and I think the attorneys are still talking and stuff, but work continues. And so I'm comfortable that we've got at least a glimmer of hope of being able to make this. And this is my glimmer part of it, I guess, is that currently right now we have 117 total projects that we have to do as part of the remedial measures plan. Seventy-five of them are done. 22 of them, Bob and Tiffany Rank, who handles the treatment plan aspect of things, they've got them going on. Either they're actively under construction or in design, they are active. 20 pending projects that still need some type of level of work, but to get an extra four years on top of the two that we have right now, that's kind of a big exhale because that's doable. Before, we were doing about six projects a year. We're working towards getting back to doing six projects a year, but those numbers tell me if I've got six years and I divide that into the 42, I'm getting pretty close to it, better than I was before. I included a Blenheim Way project that's not yet on the approved list because there are recurring SSOs that go on in the field at the dead end of the road. I think you're aware of it, Councilmember Sevigny, that it's in Councilmember Baxter's district, but it's right there on the border. Most of that work will probably go on in the field itself, not necessarily impact traffic. So you see where we were with projects. Here's where we are with money. You've seen this graph for several years, if you've been on council for a while. The black one is what we would have expected to spend by this time on the projects that we've either completed or that are under construction that have a bid in hand. The bar on the left in the green is how much we've actually encumbered, either spent or obligated via contract. So we're still tracking pretty well based on what the original cost estimate was of about $590 million. My big concern with this is that these were numbers from 2011. We continue to use this, but now we're headed towards the finish line. We have updated our construction cost estimates because finance really needs that in order to be able to plug that into the financial model that we use to try to predict how these projects are going to impact current and future rates. So inflation is, I'm afraid, going to erode into this, but I still hope to reach the finish line that the green line is somewhat less than what the black line is. Okay, switching gears now into the active and upcoming projects. We're going to be kind of map heavy here for a little bit, so we'll see if I can use the new clicker here very well. This is the East Hickman Forest Main Project that's going on in the south part of town. Basically, if you look at this map from left to right and follow the red line, that is a new pipeline that is being installed right now at various locations. The X spot is on Tates Creek Road south of Cumberland Hill. If you go down that way, you'll see a couple of big holes alongside the road. Likewise over here at Heartland Park, they're working in the back part of that between the park and the navigation center. We've already done the part that is on the bike trail here behind Squires Road Elementary School. We've worked on this part down here at Brandon Road as well. Basically a very long pipeline with multiple crews working for a single contractor. Still projecting that it will be complete sometime in 2024. They're making pretty good progress with it. This part right here is going to be going right up the middle of the road, right up the middle of Kennesaw. So we're going to have some traffic impacts for that. I let Council Member Brown know is that I've let a lot of the neighbors know because I live there too. So I'll be able to inspect that part of the project to myself personally. Okay, another project that is active right now. This is in Gainesway. Here is Armstrong Mill Road. And so this is going up Green Tree all the way to New Circle and then under New Circle and working back behind the apartments there that are off of Shenway and Creekwood. Unfortunately, this project's gone a lot slower than what I would have liked it to. I know Bob is working really hard to try to keep that contractor on pace and keep them working. Right now, I think they're working right around what is Center Parkway, the part that goes into Tate's Creek Campus. So getting them out of there and getting them further up towards New Circle is important to us, because especially as school goes out and comes back in in January, that maybe we can get people to school a little bit more efficiently. Another active project, if you drive out Armstrong Mill Road to the dead end, where it dead ends into DeLong Road, and look to your right, you'll see a lot of work going on in that open field. That is the DeLong Road pump station that's part of the Overbrook farm property acquisition that we made a couple of months ago. Building a new pump station there where the Red Star is, replacing one of the worst overflow pump stations that we have in the system. Two good headlines on this one, I guess, depending on what your perspective is. number one, $9.5 million of this is grant funded through the Kentucky Cleaner Water Act grant money, ARPA money, basically that funnels through the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. Secondly is that the yellow box area basically would be eligible for development if and when the property owners decide to do that. What has been an inhibiting factor for them before has been the limitations of that existing overflowing pump station. didn't have enough capacity to be able to handle it. So where you see the box that says Armstrong Mill Road, there are two development plans there that have been waitlisted for quite some time. When this project is finished, they'll be able to come off the waitlist, and then whatever somebody decides to do, we're not holding them up anymore. So I'm excited about that. Continuing on with the active projects, this map probably needs a little bit more explanation. this is harrisburg road right here running this is coming from downtown working its way out of town the frishes that's on harrisburg road is right there where my dot is right now and if you go to frishes you know where we're working at because we're working in right behind there we've got a big pit and we're basically drilling under harrisburg road and popping out on the other side of the road where the human being is at and that's when you'll probably really start seeing work right now the stuff that's going on behind frish's is somewhat of you know out of sight out of mind unless you go there but when we really get going with this after the first year you'll see a lot of construction particularly crossing clays mill road and then going along south bend towards lafayette parkway again we'll have to be very considerate about how we allow school traffic to be able to manage our construction work there as well. This is a very soon to be active project. We've had the neighborhood meeting. It's been awarded to a contractor. Kind of excited about this one. This is the same contractor that did Euclid Avenue for us during the pandemic. They had the advantage of a lot of traffic got out of the way when that happened, but they also did a really good job with it. So I'm excited that they've got another project for us because hopefully they'll be able to make good work on this. We're at Alexandria Drive over here and then it comes over and crosses Versailles Road. This is Versailles Road right here. Works its way where this this open area was where there were always Christmas trees or other pine trees and stuff there. Works its way back across Parker's Mill Road along Cross Keys. There's Cross Keys Park. There's the pond right there and it terminates up there back there behind travelers. Again, all of these things are designed to eliminate reoccurring sanitary sewer overflows. There are about three manholes that are along that path that overflow every time it rains. And so putting in these new pipelines such as this one, bigger, steeper, able to carry more capacity will eliminate those overflows. Okay, transitioning into what's getting ready to happen. I wish I could say I thought this was getting ready to happen. I put it in here because I really believe it will at some time in 2024. This is New Circle Road. There's New Circle Road. Lexmark Campus is over here. And so you're over here to where the baseball stadium is right here. This is still stuck in condemnation. We have one property owner that we're trying to get an easement from, and now they have elevated to the Court of Appeals. So we're just kind of sitting on a holding pattern waiting for this one to happen. When it does happen, I'll let somebody know. Am I out of time already? You are, but could you do five minutes? I could do five, yes. I'll go faster. Okay. All right. This is one that you know about. Basically, this is over around Plainview Road and Lakeshore off of Patchen Drive. Very small project, but still there's three overflows that happen in this location, basically because of poor pipe geometry. We'll be fixing that in 2024. Moving over to another part of town, New Circle Road. If you look at the bottom of the sheet, that was, well, up and down is New Circle Road. If you were driving towards the bottom, you would be headed towards Winchester Road and Eastland Parkway. If you were headed towards the top, you'd be headed towards Lexmark and all that. Again, some other geometry issues. Basically, we've got an overflowing manhole in the wooded area on the left, and we're going to redo the red lines to be able to get it over where it needs to be to eliminate that overflow. last but not least I included I guess what is the ugliest project that is pending this is Tates Creek Road Armstrong Mill right there you see that that red line that's a pipeline that's going to come along cross Tates Creek Road go under Kirk Levington go under New Circle Road and then along Tates Creek road over to dove run very difficult very very difficult i know that bob has been working really hard with easements and and traffic management plans and all of this but i'll be honest with you sometime in 2024 we're going to have to rip the band-aid off and be able to do this the earlier map you saw that where there were some red clusters of dots in the west hickman area this pipeline has to go in in order to be able to reach those because they're further upstream from Dubrun. And so unless you build a storage tank somewhere up there, which I wouldn't recommend, we're going to have to make this pipeline bigger so it can convey those flows onto West Aikman as intended. Okay. So just widening this up is that our main consent decree obligations is the remedial measures plan. Everything else is done. We're expecting to receive an extension to where full compliance would go to december 31st of 30 30. we're getting that largely because of the pandemic the impact that that had was 64 of the projects complete another 19 active i feel like we can get there with 2030 i really think we can get there overall the rmp costs are under budget but inflation has begun to erode the savings i didn't use my all five minutes good okay Thank you. Council member, First up is Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Great presentation, I really appreciate your work and I have had you guys out in the district doing presenting on Parker's Mill and different things, so it's been very helpful. Could you just explain really at a high level the financial piece of it? So we basically, we have the sewer, we have sewer bills and we have water quality fees on our sewer bills. Is that paying for x percentage of these products? And then are we getting grants for other, I'm just kind of wondering how it works financially. The remedial measures plan is entirely a 100% sanitary sewer obligation. So only the sanitary sewer user fees are used to be able to pay those obligations. So that's Fund 4002, and then things get transferred to what is known as Fund 4003 because it is an open fund. It's a construction fund as opposed to having others that close at the end of the fiscal year. It stays open. That way you can keep doing your work. Largely paying for it with cash, there's some mixture of bonds that I think that we have. Finance could better explain the details of those. The ones I do know about are the loans that we get from the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority under the Clean Water Act. There are state revolving funds that are available to all states as part of the Clean Water Program. And what KIA does is administer them for the state of Kentucky. We fill out project profiles, and then they consider whether or not that we're eligible for those loans. The last time I checked, we're roughly about $140 million in debt with the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. But they are favorable loans, low interest, 2%, sometimes less than 2%. They are subordinate to your other loans, and so they don't necessarily impact your debt service the same way as a conventional loan would be. And then we also get grants whenever we possibly can. When the Cleaner Water Act money came along, we were right in line for that. That's why we got the money to grant fund the Armstrong Mill Road pump station. Okay. And what's kind of our capacity to do like per year, million dollars per year? Well, as far as our capacity, I would need Aaron here to help me if we're talking about the financial capacity of it. because we actively share with them what we project as being the costs of doing the design and construction, the timing of it as well, and then they use a financial model that they use to be able to predict if and when there's rate increases. As far as for us, as far as our people capacity, is that we use a consultant, a remedial measures program manager that offsets a lot of our staff needs by providing them. That's a plan we basically followed all along because this will end eventually. And we didn't want to staff up for something that had a shelf life to it. And then when it was all over with, then we've got all the staff when they don't have anything for them to do. So we've relied heavily on consultants and contractors through the duration of this. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. As you alluded to earlier, three or four of these projects are in the 8th District, so I've got enough headaches out there. Speaking of, when we're looking at Green Tree, which is already in the works, excuse me, we are doing extra work there with the water company. Are we doing that on some of the other projects? And could you, you know, elaborate a little bit on how our relationship is with the water company as we go down the middle of the street? Yeah, Bob, I'll invite you up if you want to offer any specifics to that one. But I can tell you as a whole, as a department, I think the commissioner is really trying to demonstrate a high-level leadership to be able to coordinate utility work that involves us or Kentucky American or Columbia Gas or anybody that has underground type of work. I mean, we all know nothing irritates you more than to have something done, a new pavement put down, and then somebody turns around and comes back in and rips it back out again. The fine line of that is getting everybody to get their contractors timed up to where the disruption doesn't seem like it lasts forever. This is slowing down the process, really, on some of the projects, right? Yeah, I don't think it's slowing down the contractor. I think they're doing sometimes too good a job of that on their own. Sorry, I had to say that. No, I think that Kentucky Americans anxious to get in there as well to do their work because they've got money sequenced in it. And sometimes when you don't do stuff, then your money goes someplace else. And secondly, everybody right now is trying to stay ahead of the paving truck. Okay, on Kennesaw, do you think you'll have the same problems on Kennesaw since it goes down the middle of the street also that we've had on Green Tree? No, for two reasons. Number one, it's a different contractor. That contractor's worked with us a lot of years and stuff like that. They're doing a really good job on what they're doing right now. And secondly, that is a pressurized line. There's no individual houses being connected to this whatsoever. This is lay pipe. It's in the middle of the road, isn't it? It's still in the middle of the road, but it's shallower. It doesn't have to be laid on grade. There's just the whole construction technique. Is it going to do laterals in there? Or is the water company going to do laterals? I do not know that one. They have not asked us to do anything. So it might go a lot quicker then as far as that particular. And then the final question I have is on the Tates Creek Road, which is, you've got pending in there. You know, we've met out there with a property owner, and that one there is what you described as going to be a monster or whatever. It doesn't hurt probably to move that down the road a little bit or down the time frame until we get these other areas done along Armstrong Mill Road and Kennesaw and Green Tree? Because the traffic pattern kind of, you know, comes together there in some of those areas. I don't expect this one to come together quickly. And so when you use the Kennesaw, and based on what I see going on right now with the Kennesaw pipeline, it will be done before we get to this. So we envision all these other projects going to be done before we tackle this one. I think a lot of them are, yes. Yeah, Bob and I will have to talk about the green tree issue in this, because I see what you're saying is that your cut around is to go down Tate's Creek if you can't get down green tree, and we can't have both of them closed at the same time. Right, okay. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. My questions relate, of course, to those that touch and concern the 6th District. On the Floyd Drive, where it's crossing New Circle Road, going across Rookwood and close to near where Yates Elementary School is. What, because I know that is actually a flood zone in the top part of the page on the left. Right, sir, yes, that is considered to be a flood zone by the city. Do you foresee any complications, any hindrances to that area right there? No, I don't. This is Dartmoor right here. We actually own, tore down all those houses. You know that. Yeah, no, very personally. I mean, basically, we're going to dig it up and then bury the pipeline and then just put it back. There are pipelines that are underground there already. So, you know, while the construction is going on, we'll have to be sensitive to the fact that maybe more water gets there than it does before. But then when it's over with the railroad tracks as well. Yeah, the grades and all that shouldn't change. Yeah, there's like a hill right there where the railroad tracks is and stuff like that. And we'll be going under that. And like I said, we'll put everything back at the same elevation that it is right now. It should be fine. I'm not too concerned about it. And also going across New Circle Road, I'm assuming we, right there, I'm assuming going cross that area we're going to time it with traffic because that area is as you know yeah there will be some type of pit built on this side of the road and then another pit built on this side of the road and we will drill under the road because we can't we can't close the circle no we You feel better about that already? I feel great about that. And lastly, I know that when we spoke about the other area on North New Circle, it's predominantly in the first district, but it does touch and concern the sixth district. It is the New Circle trunk. Yeah, New Circle AB. I've got it up on the map right now. Good stuff. From, I believe, our conversation earlier in this year, you mentioned that it doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily in the 6th District side. It's on the other side, close, what I call the Kmart side. But it's not Kmart anymore. Yeah. Kmart is right there. And so it comes over on this side and then hugs on the inner belt side of New Circle until it gets up to roughly about where Sonic and Salvation Army is, I believe. Okay. It goes back behind there. You know, we had brought this up to you when you came into office just because of the traffic stuff and all that, and that when they're ever on the corner or the edge of a council district, let me try to share that because. Thank you for that. Okay. I just wanted to just confirm that it was still the same as our previous conversation. Yes. Thank you, sir. Okay. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair. I don't have a question, Charlie. I just want to, you know, every time we talk about this, since I've been here in office, and I used to know the numbers closer off the top of my head of the significant efficiencies and cost saving that your team has operated this project, I just think you have to be unbelievably commended to take on a project of this magnitude for over a decade, and every single report we are still saving money. And I know you're concerned that costs continue to go up, and of course they are, and money that we've planned and that we're going for may run out. But to this point, to go as long as you have, and not just with savings and efficiency, but significant savings and efficiency. And really, most of the projects you've done have been not terribly intrusive to the public while you've done them. So you guys have just, you've done a fantastic job. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director. I would echo everything that Council Member Aurelie just said, and I appreciate the presentation for today. Okay, thank you. Get out of that. There we go. Did you have something to add? Yeah, I'm sorry. Just to be the attorney here, just wanted to make sure it's understood by everybody, that any amendment to the consent decree, it's preliminary and conceptual at this point, and we're still awaiting sign-offs by related parties. And, of course, like the director said, that it will be going to the court, but before that, it will be coming to you. So it's where, and, of course, until a change is made to the consent decree using a second material modification, we're acting under the existing deadlines as it stands right now. So that's all. Thank you for that disclaimer. Okay, next on our agenda today, we have environmental best practices in our paving process. This item was placed in committee by Council Member Worley, so I'll turn this over to him for opening remarks. Thank you, Chair. Paving is a big part of our budget and our discussions every year. And I know Council Member Brown always had a particular interest in paving, but through discussions and getting ready this past year for our paving plan review, for our budgeting, I happen to have some conversations with Brian Billings is here, president of ATS Construction, who's our paving partner. and he told me about some things that our environmental quality team is doing that were really interesting to me. And I followed up with those conversations with Commissioner Albright and learned that we are doing things like adding synthetic fibers, Kevlar, to our asphalt, reusing and recycled asphalt. So practices that are technologies making our asphalt better and more sustainable for our community, but also more sustainable for our environment. And really, Lexington, I believe, has an opportunity to be a leader as a government paving purchaser for some of the efforts that our team are making. And so really, I put this in committee just, quite frankly, to give them an opportunity to brag a little bit about being innovative and forward-thinking, and then so we could learn how we could continue these efforts. So please brag away and educate us, Director Allen. Council Member Worley, Chair, Council Members, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this. It almost seems like an oxymoron, environmental best practices and paving that folks look at. I have been advised that this could be very technical and a cure for insomnia, so I'm going to try to do this at a summary level. I'm not going to read everything, and certainly I'll be available for questions, and then Mr. Billings and Commissioner Albright are here to help answer anything that I can't. So one of the first things that we do is the use of recycled or reclaimed asphalt. And basically what this is is the milling portion of paving. We grind up the road and we recycle the debris in fresh pavement. And we use about 20% in normal roads. We've been doing it for years. This goes back to John Y. Brown's administration, where Kentucky was actually the leader in the nation to start using this. One of the things is there are grants out there right now, and coming online, I heard about one on Friday, as they look at manufacturing and practices and things like that that would really go far as far as paying for some of these innovative and sustainable and environmentally friendly practices. WRAP asphalt is slightly less expensive than comparative asphalt, which uses a heavier binder. And we add, as Council Member Worley talked about, we're adding fiber to the mix to help with the rutting and shoving that you see around town. A lot more traffic on the roads these days, and it's a good additive. Louisville has been practicing it for several years and is happy with it. We went full force with it this year. We are also using the highest RAP content in the country right now as an experiment. We're able to go up to 45%, and as I mentioned before, industry standard is 20%. So in effect, we're going to be using more than double recycled asphalt in our roads. This year, we were able to use it in collectors. So if you had a collector in your council district that was paved, this mix was used in that. Previous roads was the Mercer Road rebuild near Amazon and UPS. That was a really bad intersection through their industrial section. A lot of folks worked there, a lot of truck traffic. We put down 6,000 tons all the way to the bridge, and it is holding up amazingly. And then one of the early experiments we did was with ATS at Man of War at Brissales Road in the airport. The concrete was failing at the intersection there, and we worked with fiber and polymer. There's one lane in each way that has that treatment, and it's holding up really well, too. We also are continuing to monitor these experiments, both with external and internal folks. Black and Ship Asphalt is doing testing for us. ATS is helping us. Manufacturers' representatives nationwide are coming to look at this. We're meeting with one next Thursday, and we're going to look at the airport in Mercer Road again, because, of course, they're interested in promoting their product, but it really does work out for us. And as you can see, Mercer Road, heavy truck traffic. One of the additives which softens the older asphalt and allows it to be mixed with newer is soybean oil. It's obviously a derivative and it's sustainable. And then the Kevlar fibers, same thing that's put into a bulletproof vest. They help add strength to the pavement and resist that heavy truck or bus traffic. this just talks about so what we normally used was a heavier asphalt pg-76 and we're able to use the same asphalt grade which is as i mentioned cheaper and adding the fiber and the polymer we get essentially the same performance as the heavier grade asphalt but we're able to use more than double the recycled asphalt. As I mentioned, we're probably, I haven't heard of anybody else in the country doing this, and we have folks checking it out. It's very similar to what we did as far as, you know, Lexington, the early adoption of the seat belt law, and of course the indoor smoking ban. And Louisville has been using fiber for several years. They use a single dose, and they've had good results because we used a collector roads as an experiment, which, of course, has more traffic. We wanted to be doubly safe. And then, obviously, the environmental implications of using recycled asphalt, there's less energy used in manufacturing and mining and environmentally much less intensive. Here's an example of the roads that were treated with the high wrap and the fiber. And then, yeah, there's Man O' War, where you have one lane each. And then we also did Cedar Street, which is near UK campus, another high traffic area. Not necessarily truck traffic, but. Now, moving on to two other practices that we do, and folks are pretty familiar with these. We invest through our paving formula that was developed in Council Member Brown's subcommittee, 10% of our paving budget in what's called preventative maintenance. The two practices we use are rejuvenation and crack sealing. Both can extend the pavement life for five to ten years. industry studies say that for every dollar invested in preventive maintenance you save six to ten dollars in paving. Also I'd like to point out there are a lot of other treatments, chip seal, fog seal, microsurfacing, things like that, but they need to have the road or lane closed for an extensive amount of time and does not get favorable responses from Lexington driver. The state did a chip seal on Tates Creek last year, and we were just bombarded with calls because folks didn't care for that treatment at all. And we've done slurry seal on the county. Won't do that again. Here's the conventional chart, and what that shows is when you do a, well, preventive maintenance treatment here, it raises the condition rating of the payment there. Then in the life cycle, you go another couple years, do another treatment, raises it, versus untreated pavement, as you can see, the condition declines rapidly until it's a full rebuild. And we typically do rejuvenation in years three to five after a new pavement is put down, and then crack seal in years five to seven. And what the whole goal of this is to keep the good stuff in and water out. and continue the life of our pavement. As I said, it's a fraction of the cost of mill and fill. So what are we going to do next? We're going to continue to monitor the roads that we've put down and continue to work with our partners on any innovations that will help towards that. Here's an example of rejuve. They put it down. They sand it to allow time for the chemicals to absorb. The next day they come back, sweep it with a street sweeper, and move to the next street. And there's an example, crack sealing. Folks ask about this. Now, one thing we have learned in the past and we do practice is if we crack seal, we do go back and redo the pavement markings. In years past, we did not, and that caused a lot of problems. And with that, I'll take questions. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for presentation. When you're using this rejuvenation, isn't there a difference between residential streets, collector streets, and arterial streets on what you have to do? No. The only difference is traffic control. It's a lot easier to do on a local road with lower traffic, but basically it's like conditioner for the pavement. You're adding these chemicals back in to make the pavement flexible and increase. But it doesn't depend on the amount of traffic because residential streets are going to last longer. Yes, sir. As far as the paving. And, of course, the more traffic you have, the less good it will do, per se. But application is the same. Yeah, and as far as this preventive area that you're talking about, this is all year round process? Yes sir, for example, crack sealing is occurring now. Doing it in colder temperatures, they don't have to apply a sealant to it. And it tends to cure faster and we don't have the problem we had in years past if it's sticking to tires. So that works out really well, especially for the contractor, because this is the off season for them. As the asphalt plant gets ready to close, and then rejuvenation pretty much coincides with paving season, spring, summer, and fall. And we got our contract locked in for next year as far as paving amounts? Paving amounts. We have a budget request in. Well, I mean, generally we line that up in the wintertime, try to get the paving contractor to see what our costs are going to be. Because you enter into a contract for at least the year, don't you? Yes, sir. Actually, our paving contract extends to June 30th of 2024, and we will be putting it back out this spring. So we're good through June 24 on our existing costs. Yep. You foresee anything in the future after that as moving up or? No, and I'll look to Mr. Billings, the price of asphalt has been really stable the last two years or so. I mean, it is an increase over the last five years, but we haven't seen the fluctuations or the supply chain problems have evened out. We had a couple problems several years ago at the end of COVID, getting some of the asphalt mixes that were needed for binder. We're limited on contractors too, so that's one of the problems I think on who can handle the jobs overall. It takes a large sized company to handle the amount of paving that we put out there. Obviously we're not like the state who can put a couple hundred million dollars out there, But putting roughly $15 million worth of pavement out there really takes an economy of scale to get the best price. And you tend to get a little more professionalism and consistency. Yeah, well, I think it's important to this council and in the future as far as our budgeted amounts. If we maintain a dollar amount out there, then we're more apt to get a better or a good contract. And it would be consistent because you can't do $5 million one year and $15 million the next year. The contractor is going to balk at this because they've got investment. And that's why we've been able to maintain probably a good working relationship the last couple of years because we have funded up to $15 million out of our budget. And I think we certainly need to continue to do that in a consistent manner because I believe that's the amount we probably all, everybody came up with, that the contractor felt comfortable with and could actually do that much work, that much paving throughout Fayette County. Commissioner Albright has said during the paving plan presentation before, the best thing we can do is be consistent with our budget for our contract partners so they feel comfortable investing in equipment and upgrades and, most importantly, people. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. Council Member Savickney. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. Very good. A few questions. On the services that you talked about, crack seal, the rejuvenation, and then, of course, paving, are there any of those that we self-perform? No. Okay. Now, we have the ability when we do certain road patches that we do have a small crack seal machine and we do seal the cuts. But, no, once again, it's an economy of scale. Yeah. Have we ever done the work to kind of look at basically perform versus contract out on certain things? And I don't know what other cities do, and if there's a certain size city that generally there's a break even. A lot of smaller cities will perform crack sealing on their own, but they don't do rejuvenation. It's a pretty complex process where they actually bring in bulk materials by tanker for us. So once again, it would be scale. So crack ceiling is relatively easy to get into, but maintaining a workforce and things like that, plus you're only going to do it certain times of the year here. So as I mentioned, our partner for crack ceiling right now is CNR Asphalt, and this is their off time for them as the asphalt plant winds down, and they can do that. But competitively, they make a lot more money paving, So we wouldn't get as good a price. But since I've been with the city roughly over 20 years, we have not looked at doing it in-house. Okay. And then, so I can tell the folks in my district, typically a road should be, because they're all wondering why their streets never was repaved. and they still have one of them is like i've still got the can of paint that i dumped on the street 20 years ago and it's still there um what what should we typically tell uh a constituent so you're wondering about how long certain road classes should last yeah um an arterial could go three to five a collector five to seven and a neighborhood road about 25 years and to put put it in context my house was built in 1988 and it still has the original pavement in front of it. Got it and then do you guys the one thing I noticed is that I wasn't necessarily notified of the the crack ceiling or the the rejuvenation like it just happened and I had some neighbors saying oh we got these signs up what's going on and I didn't necessarily know that are there but you guys do a really good job. You folks do a good job at letting us know like when the pavers are in our geography. Has anyone else said that to you? We've done a little better since we've been in the 10th district. Communication is something we always strive to improve and unfortunately it's like, oh shoot, we should have put out a list to let council members put it on their website and get the word out. But subsequently, and I've even been trying to let folks know when we're doing ADA ramps in their district because I know that generates, once people come to a corner and start putting out paint marks, folks tend to get excited, especially if it's your property, it's what's going on. So we continually strive, the commissioner's office does, and certainly positive feedback like that to reinforce that, yes, because I know when the trucks show up or the signs show up on a Sunday, especially, or Saturday, the folks really get anxious. They do, and they're excited, and it is actually a fun part of the job to basically say, oh, yeah, they're over there, they're going to be doing it this next three days. Yeah, and we have also, speaking of the no parking signs, we've been working to kind of mitigate the impact for folks like that. For example, if we have to leave them signed over the weekend and things, we're really trying to be less intrusive moving forward. Really appreciate all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. Hi. So going back to a little touch on what Council Member Savigny just mentioned about notice. I know in the 6th District, I must toot my own horn, that I was the first council member to get their list in. And, however, also ATS, I believe, began earlier than what we had initially planned. And it caused traffic backups in certain areas. I was not given notice, nor was the neighborhood. What procedures do you all have so that this does not happen again? Well, ATS actually changed personnel this year, and we're getting much better communication from them. They're actually publishing a two-week look ahead, which is way more than we've ever had before. And if you would like to be shared with that or shared when it impacts your district, happy to do so. So as I said, we're learning as we went. Council Member Brown can talk about, you know, for years we funded paving with fund balance. And it was a million to two million dollars. And then around 2014 we ramped up to 12 million dollars and then 10 million and back down to five. So we're trying to grow things like our communication process with the program. So I'd be happy to include you or any other council person that's interested in that. I would like to be included, just in case you didn't catch on. Also, I'm just trying to make sure that I fully understand. In a previous work session meeting, I asked a question about the sealant. If the sealant is, is it the norm for it to stay there indefinitely or not? I was told that it is not. Could you clarify that for me? I'm going to have to ask a question back. Are you talking about rejuvenation? From the cracks in the road, I'm assuming so. Oh, from the crack seal? Yes. That's permanent until the road gets resurfaced. The biggest enemy of pavement is freeze-thaw and water. And so crack seal is going after those larger cracks and sealing out the water. And other questions I can ask you one-on-one. They're specific for my district itself. Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you to Councilmember Worley for lifting up, highlighting this program, because I had no idea what was going on. And this is just really cool. And I'm not a science person, but I was really fascinated about the things that you are doing and just excited about these innovations and learning about high-wrap content asphalt. So I will be definitely interested to see as you all continue to test these roads in the future and see what the results are. Because I think it's just really, really cool that we're doing this and leading the pack in this kind of work. So I'm really excited about that. And I was excited to learn more about this. So thank you for all that you're doing and all the innovation that you all are doing in the team. And also, just to echo what Councilwoman Gray said, any notice you can give to us about upcoming paving and things like that, I would appreciate that as well. It gets me excited, so I appreciate it. Certainly. No, and we do, as a government, need to be able to tout ourselves and things that we're doing correctly a lot more. So I'm all for that and all for communication where we can help. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Whirley. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director. I guess before I make just a couple comments, I didn't know if, Director, If you had any closing remarks or Commissioner Albright or Mr. Billings, if there's anything wanted to add to highlight to close out our conversation. Thank you, Council. I would just like to say you all have an outstanding team of professionals that work with us every Monday. We have a coordination meeting and go over all the plan for the week. the uh... nancy robin their staff it's it's pleasure working with them everything everything that we do we're very glad to serve like sentence eight years instruction we uh... we try to staff and now knowing what you all want to do your year and year out we we try to bring resources to do that so where we all need will make sure that we europe for and take care of to care of your also research needs and other project needs Any questions? While you're up there, I think the statistics that Rob showed us show that, but just anecdotally from being in the industry and going to the conferences that you all do, the seeing the science that you see and the other contracts you have with the state, are you in agreement that Lexington is a leader in this effort of sustainability and new technology? Lexington is, of course, one of the best places to live in the entire country. I'm going to say that. I live here. I moved here several years ago. And just being a citizen of Lexington, it makes me feel good that we are putting wrap into our mixes at a higher level. Because why would you throw away something you can use? And that's what recycled asphalt pavement is. When it's been put down on the road and it's paved and life's been 15 or 20 more years, you ground that up, we take it back to our plan actually and reprocess that. so that when it goes back into the asphalt mix, it's done in a manner that's engineered. It's done in a professional manner. So a lot, you all are ahead of the highway department because the highway department is just starting to look at some of these methods. You all have went out and got professional advice from the Blankenship Asphalt Group and brought in new techniques to be able to do this. And, you know, being able to lower your carbon footprint, be more environmentally sustainable, that's what we should all be looking to do. So I'm very, very pleased to see what you all are doing. And to further answer your question, you ask about, you know, what we do. We attend a National Asphalt Pavement Association conference once a year. Last year, the biggest topic was called Environmental Product Declarations. That was kind of a new terminology to us, but it basically looks at the product that we produce, how much energy we use, how much raw materials we use, all the things that go into it. Then it says, how can you reduce that? Well, you all, what Lex is doing, you're blowing everybody else off the chart when it comes to environmental product decorations by being able to do all the methods that we're doing. So I think it's great. We'll be going back to that conference this winter and radar on with any new ideas and things that we can bring back and hopefully help that and even further that cost. That's great. Well, thank you very much. Following up to what Councilman Brown was saying about our pavement management plan, the past couple years we've done a really good job. I think this budget we did $13 million. Last year, fiscal year 23, we did $15 million. I think that's the first time we fully funded the pavement management plan. But then the year before that was 14. I think we've been right around it these past couple years, though I remember a few years that we were down around four and five, which is difficult for our team here in house and then our contractors to plan to do these sorts of things at the scale that we would like them to do. So I hope we continue to focus on fully funding our paving. And I hope that our community that's listening to this and follows this sees the investment that we're making, not only in fully funding or close to funding the pavement management plan, but then what our team here is doing with this recyclable asphalt. Asphalt is a petroleum product. So when you think about trying to reduce your use of fossil fuels, not to mention all the other materials. So what I gathered from today was it's less expensive, it's more environmentally sustainable, it's stronger more long-lasting roads and that we're setting ourselves out as a nationwide leader as a government payment paving purchaser so I think that we should be very very proud of that so thank you director yep one final note 45% is the highest amount technologically possible right now so we were going all in recycled asphalt millings is like like slag to the Northeast. They have thousands of tons and they're trying to figure out what to do with it. And we're kind of jumping ahead and appreciate the opportunity, appreciate the opportunity to present. Thank you, Director. Our last item on our agenda for today is a presentation from our Environmental Commission. This presentation is focused on a proposed ordinance update that governs the membership of that commission and the commissioners have been working with our law department on these changes. Is Evan still here? I don't see him. But, oh, there you are, back in the corner. They've been working with Evan Thompson in our law office. So we have Grace Downey here, the chair of the Environmental Commission, to present about the commission and then also about the proposed changes. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I just want to confirm this, like we go next, right? Like, this goes forward and this goes back. Okay. Great. I am just old enough that, like, I should know how to use these. I'm just young enough. So, hi. Good afternoon. My name is Grace Downey. I am the chairperson of the Environmental Commission, and my hope is that this takes much less than 15 minutes. It's pretty straightforward. I want to talk to you all a little bit, like Councilmember Sheehan said, who we are, what we do and why we want to change the ordinance that's related to us and then end with specifically what we would like to change. If you need to review the current ordinance, I put the link up there. I don't know what you have access to on your end, but I think you would be just fine to not look at it because I have what's been redlined later in the presentation. So we have representatives from each district that work together. We meet roughly once a month. Right now, during the winter, we tend to take a little bit of a hiatus, or our next meeting is not until February. But we typically meet monthly to talk about really all things environment. You know, we have members of our commission that specialize in, like, drafting proposals and driving policy change. We have some commissioners that are more grassroots trying to improve their neighborhoods through beautification projects and things like that. And so what we do as a group, like I mentioned, it can get as grand as driving policy change or ordinance change, or we can help communities and individual neighborhoods just improve their environmental practices. I believe you guys have a redlined version of the changes that we would like to make. So if you have not already turned to that, by all means do so. Ultimately, what we want to do is change some of our own bylaws so that we can improve our efficiency and really get the most bang for our buck, for lack of better words, in breaking up our subcommittees and really just meeting our objectives. But some and most of the bylaw changes, it just requires two-thirds of a vote, but some of the bylaw changes or amendments require a change in the ordinance. The bylaws of our commission have not been revised since 1989. And I think to say that it is outdated would be an understatement. And so we really just want to better meet our own intentions and our own goals. Like I said, most of those revisions don't need council approval. But if it comes directly from the ordinance, then we do need your assistance. in order for us to be able to revise them later. And so that leads us to the parts that specifically what we're trying to amend. If you look at Section 2-96, the first part, it just changes the name of the group from Metropolitan Environmental Improvement Commission of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to simply the Environmental Commission of Lexington-Fayette County. We wanted the community to know exactly who we would service, and some of our synergy committee was concerned that if we left Metropolitan in there now in 2023, that people may believe that we would work with Nicholasville, Versailles, Georgetown. And so just a clarification on the name was asked just so community members knew, Lexington Fayette County. In Section 2-97, we are also asking to amend the number of members that are on the commission. It currently says that it can be no more than 40, but no less than 20. And we want to make it 25 members with the idea that one of those members be a member of council. They would be a non-voting member. And then that the remaining 24 would still be equally represented by each district. To provide some flexibility in there, we also have the verbiage that there's at least one from each district, but no more than three. That doesn't do anything to our current commissioner's roster. Right now, we do have one district that doesn't have any, like there aren't any commissioners that represent that district. But we do have the space that all someone would have to do from that district would do is apply. And the space would be open for them. The reason we want to reduce it, however, is because in previous years we have had above 30 commissioners that are on the roster, but whenever it would come time for our monthly meetings, we would really struggle to meet quorum. And so by reducing the total number, our hope is just to be able to actually meet as frequently as we want to and really be able to get some tasks accomplished instead of having to figure out why this person didn't make it and see how involved they really are and are they just a name on a paper, if that makes sense. And then we would love for a member of council to be on the environmental commission just to close any gaps in communication and to make sure that there's a stronger sense of camaraderie to be able to accomplish more things. in the past there there would have been a liaison from lfucg to attend the meeting but they but they weren't always there um and then at one point there was someone that called like the liza the liaison for the liaison and i we felt that if there was a member of council that was a part of the commission, there would be less middlemen. And so we would love a council member. The last thing that we would like to change is just to change what the term looks like for our officers. Right now it's a two-year term from July 1st to June 30th. that at every year that we re-nominate people, that the whole slate could potentially change. We want to change it to where it just says in accordance with its bylaws, because our plan is to stagger which officers are elected which year, so that the entire slate doesn't change every single fiscal year. And that's really it. Those are the three things. Does anybody have any questions? Council members log in if you have questions. Okay. Seeing no one logged in, I'm going up. I have Council Member Legree. I believe you have a motion for us. Yes, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Downey. I'll go ahead and make a motion to accept the proposed changes and report these changes out to the full council. So moved. Second. Okay, so I have a motion from Council Member Legree and a second from Council Member Menares. Any discussion on the motion? Okay, seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Okay, that motion passes. Great, thank you so much. The commissioners are going to be really excited for me to report that back to them. As a novice in this, what next steps, like this goes to full council, and then what would happen? We can talk about that after, but yeah, we'll report it out after our next council meeting, and then it would go to first reading and second reading, but we can talk over the details after. I have council member Savigny logged in. Do you have a comment? Yes, thank you, Chair. Yeah, my quick question was, is there anything time sensitive about this change? Like, do you need it to be done by a certain time? Because generally we report it out when we meet again and then it gets reported out. So it could be late January or February. No. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Downey. I just wanted to say, we appreciate the work of the environmental commission. I know you have been evolving and really trying to engage in new tasks, and I know you've been working on some recommendations even for our committee, so we look forward to working with you in the future. Okay, colleagues, we have no other items on our agenda. If anyone has any motions for items referred to committee, I could take those now. I see Council Member Lickert. Yes, Chair, thank you. I am looking at item number five, which is short term rental enforcement. This is something that came out of our EQPW link and I believe that it is covered in the work of other committees as we heard recently in a presentation. So if it's the will of the committee, I'd like to make a motion to remove that from committee. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Any other items? It's me. I have one more chair. I also wanted to make a note that item number four, which is streets and roads fleet depreciation and replacement. I know that that is in the BFED committee for similar reasons. It was part of our EQPW link report out. But I do wonder if it should be in another committee, given the budgetary impact, so I just want to note that it's under my name because I gave our link report and I'll be talking with our council core staff to determine the best fit. So are you thinking maybe it would be moved to BFED instead of this committee? I think so, but I'd like to find an appropriate sponsor. Okay, thank you. Thank you. member really since you had your presentation today do you want to keep that item in committee for future updates or would you like to go ahead and remove it? I think that was good. I'll move to remove that from committee. Second. Okay we have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay that motion passes. And then we have an item in committee by me for the environmental commission ordinance updates and since we just heard those updates is it okay for me to remove that now or do I need to wait for the report out okay then I'll go ahead and take a motion to remove that item of emotion by Councilmember Sevigny and a second by Councilmember agree all in favor say aye any opposed okay thank you everyone any other motions or comments for items in Okay, then I will stand as adjourned at this point. Thank you everyone.