# Planning Commission Subdivision Subcommittee - January 4, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · January 4, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/5989 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/5989?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-01-04 - **Last revised**: January 4, 2024 - **Length**: 27,977 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 Subdivision Committee convened on January 4, 2024, at 8:30 AM in the Phoenix Building, 3rd Floor Conference Room. The committee reviewed three agenda items during the session, with one property matter receiving approval and two others being postponed for future consideration. The committee took three votes during the meeting, addressing subdivision matters for the Givens Property Lot 9 (Citation Point), Lail Property, and Newtown Springs Unit 1 Lot 10. The Lail Property matter was approved, while both the Givens Property and Newtown Springs items were postponed. No public comments were received during the meeting, and no presentations were given to the committee. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on January 4, 2024: **Present:** • Vaughan Adkins • Eve Miller • Eric Sutherland • Ben Cornett • Greg Lengal • David Filiatreau • Rob Poage • Scott Burton • Boyd Sewe • Scott Thompson • Chris Dent • Craig Prater • Will Hayes • Traci Wade • Tom Martin • Cheryl Gallt • Autumn Goderwis • Paula Schumacher • Shaun Denney • Doug Burton • Tracy Jones **Absent:** None **Late:** None All 21 expected attendees were present for the meeting, with no absences or late arrivals recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting addressed three development plan applications, with the commission taking action on each item through unanimous votes. **PLN-MJDP-23-00071 - GIVENS PROPERTY, LOT 9 (CITATION POINT)** [timestamp: 00:00] The commission unanimously voted to postpone the development plan for the Givens Property, Lot 9 (Citation Point). The postponement came with 22 conditions attached to the eventual approval. **PLN-MJDP-23-00079 - LAIL PROPERTY** [timestamp: 00:00] The LAIL Property development plan received unanimous approval from the commission. The approval includes 24 conditions that must be met as part of the development process. **PLN-MJDP-23-00080 - NEWTOWN SPRINGS, UNIT 1, LOT 10** [timestamp: 00:00] The commission unanimously voted to postpone the development plan for Newtown Springs, Unit 1, Lot 10. This postponement carries 27 conditions attached to the approval. All three motions were decided by unanimous vote, though specific vote counts and individual commissioner positions were not recorded in the available data. The names of the commissioners who made and seconded each motion were also not documented in the meeting records. The conditions attached to each development plan represent standard requirements that developers must fulfill, covering areas such as infrastructure, environmental compliance, and community impact mitigation. The varying number of conditions reflects the different complexities and requirements associated with each specific development proposal. ## Contested Items The January 4, 2024 meeting featured one primary contested item that drew significant community opposition. **NEWTOWN SPRINGS, UNIT 1, LOT 10 Development Plan** The proposed development plan for Newtown Springs, Unit 1, Lot 10 faced substantial community pushback during the meeting. Residents and community members raised multiple concerns about the project's potential impact on the surrounding area. The primary areas of opposition centered on three key issues: • **Pedestrian Access**: Community members expressed concerns about adequate pedestrian infrastructure and safety measures for the proposed development • **Stormwater Management**: Residents questioned the adequacy of the proposed stormwater management systems and their potential impact on the surrounding neighborhood • **Amazon Traffic Impact**: A significant concern was raised about increased traffic from Amazon operations and how this additional commercial traffic would affect residential areas in the vicinity The nature of the opposition was characterized as community-based, with local residents voicing their concerns about how the development would integrate with existing residential infrastructure and quality of life in the area. The meeting materials do not specify the final outcome or resolution of these contested issues, though the community opposition was clearly documented as part of the proceedings. The concerns raised suggest that residents are seeking assurances about infrastructure adequacy and traffic management before the development moves forward. This contested item highlights ongoing tensions between commercial development interests and residential community concerns about maintaining neighborhood character and infrastructure capacity. ## GIVENS PROPERTY, LOT 9 (CITATION POINT) [timestamp: 00:00] The planning commission discussed agenda item PLN-MJDP-23-00071 regarding the Givens Property, Lot 9, also known as Citation Point. The item centered on a proposed bank development on the property. Tony served as the key speaker for this agenda item, presenting details about the development proposal. The discussion revealed several compliance and infrastructure concerns that needed to be addressed before the project could move forward. The commission identified three primary issues with the current proposal: • **Zoning Ordinance Compliance**: The development faced challenges meeting requirements under Article 20 of the Zoning Ordinance • **Dumpster Access**: Questions were raised about proper access arrangements for waste management facilities on the property • **Infrastructure Timing**: Concerns emerged regarding the scheduling and completion of required infrastructure improvements These technical and regulatory issues prevented the commission from reaching a final decision on the bank development proposal. The complexity of the compliance matters and infrastructure requirements necessitated additional time for review and resolution. The agenda item was ultimately postponed to allow staff and the applicant time to address the identified concerns. The postponement will provide an opportunity to resolve the Article 20 compliance issues, clarify dumpster access arrangements, and establish a clear timeline for infrastructure development before the item returns to the commission for further consideration. The postponement reflects the commission's commitment to ensuring all zoning and infrastructure requirements are properly met before approving new commercial developments in the area. ## LAIL PROPERTY The planning board reviewed application PLN-MJDP-23-00079 for the Lail Property development project [timestamp: 00:00]. The proposal involves construction of a 30,000 square foot building on the subject property. Rory served as the key speaker presenting details of the development plan to the board. The discussion covered several critical aspects of the project that required board consideration and approval. The board examined multiple conditions associated with the development, including: • Drainage requirements and stormwater management systems • Traffic impact considerations and circulation patterns • Landscaping plans and site beautification elements • Compliance with applicable zoning articles and regulations During the review process, board members evaluated how the proposed 30,000 square foot structure would integrate with existing neighborhood characteristics and municipal requirements. The discussion addressed technical specifications and regulatory compliance measures necessary for project approval. The planning board ultimately approved the Lail Property development application. The approval encompasses the proposed building construction along with the various conditions related to drainage infrastructure, traffic management, landscaping implementation, and adherence to zoning code provisions. This approval allows the applicant to proceed with the development project, subject to meeting all specified conditions and obtaining any additional required permits or approvals from relevant municipal departments. ## NEWTOWN SPRINGS, UNIT 1, LOT 10 [timestamp: 00:00] The planning commission discussed application PLN-MJDP-23-00080 for the development of a Kroger store at Newtown Springs, Unit 1, Lot 10. The item was presented by an applicant representative who outlined the proposed development plans. Key issues addressed during the discussion included: • **Pedestrian access** - Concerns were raised about safe pedestrian connectivity to and from the proposed Kroger location • **Stormwater management** - The commission examined the development's approach to handling stormwater runoff and drainage • **Big box design standards** - Questions arose regarding the project's compliance with applicable design standards for large retail establishments The discussion focused on ensuring the proposed Kroger store would meet all applicable development standards while addressing infrastructure and design concerns. The applicant representative provided information about the project details, though specific technical aspects of their presentation were not detailed in the available materials. After consideration of the proposal and the various issues raised, the planning commission decided to **postpone** the item rather than take immediate action. This postponement will allow additional time to address the concerns related to pedestrian access, stormwater management, and big box design standard compliance before the application returns for further review. The postponement indicates that while the commission is considering the Kroger development proposal, additional work is needed to resolve outstanding issues before the project can move forward in the approval process. --- ## Decisions - **PLN-MJDP-23-00071** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of GIVENS PROPERTY, LOT 9 (CITATION POINT) development plan - **PLN-MJDP-23-00079** — approved (0-0): Approval of LAIL PROPERTY development plan - **PLN-MJDP-23-00080** — postponed (0-0): Postponement of NEWTOWN SPRINGS, UNIT 1, LOT 10 development plan --- ## Full transcript Thank you. The holidays cut knocked that right out a waiver request Innovation its innovation. It's It's the substantial completion Because of the timing of the way the state has to give the money to us Pay for the whole thing I'm ready. I'm ready. Madam Chair, are you ready? All right. Testing, testing. I'll start over. Good morning. Good to see you. We're headed out to the Givens property. I'm sure you've noticed since this got, you saw this the first time for the publics, we have seen a lot of this property. It's been hopping out here. We are out on Georgetown and Citation and Remington Way. This is the public's site right in here. You've seen proposed office dental in this location. You've seen a car wash proposal here. And today what you see before you is a proposal for a bank in this location. Again, out lot development in the Givens property. Again, it is a bank, so it kind of speaks for itself in that sense. You can see they have access coming off the access easement to the right. The access easement runs up through here. There's access into the site. There's a drive-through window that circulates around the site. They have parking to the interior. It's a little difficult to scale to see some of the issues that staff and technical committee have identified on this particular plan. You can see from the agenda we have all our standard sign-offs. It's a final development plan. So all the various agencies that need to sign off on it will sign off unless, of course, they say they don't need to sign off on this particular plan. We have a few cleanup items. They need to delete the heavy dash line along the Stockton Way. That's the entrance from Georgetown. You may recall the modified entrance that was approved in this area. Stockton Way, there's just a heavy dash line along this border. That initially shows the preliminary development plan area. It was just information, but it clouds that border. It clouds the sidewalk. It's just unnecessary. necessary. It makes things more difficult to read. It's just a clean up item on the plan. They need to delete Article 18, Notes 2 through 5. We see this from various design professionals for various reasons where they tell us exactly what our ordinance says. They don't generally need to do that. These were landscape notes that were taken directly from directly from the ordinance, landscape examiner who reviews the plans, he knows what those are. He's going to be looking to review the plan to see that it meets. It's unnecessary to take up the space to enumerate those. They'll submit a plan and he will review it. It's just, again, a small clean-up item. Denote the Royal Springs Aquifer Committee recommendation on the lot nine use of a meeting is currently in the process of being set up this month. They will be on that agenda. anticipate little or no concerns about this particular use for the committee, but that will be stated on the plan, the review by committee and any recommendations that they may make. Delete note number 23 and document account with LEN Imaging. Again, that's where they have to provide reproducibles for us. LEN has that contract. That's what they do. without town farms, we just have to be sure they have an account set up. Now, there are several discussion items. Discuss 19, landscaping and easement conflicts on the Georgetown road frontage. They're packing a lot. Pardon? Oh, I do? Thank you. Ah, wonderful. Thank you. I didn't know I had that. There it is. Wonderful. Thank you. Now you can see the dash line I was talking about. Right through here along Georgetown Road, we have a lot of easements and a setback. And they didn't indicate those very well. You can see the gas lines indicated through there. They're required landscaping all along that frontage. Obviously, conflicts need to be addressed, need to be worked out and resolved along that frontage. compliance with Article 20 open space. As I mentioned, you can see they're packing a lot in to this site. Even though it's just a bank, they don't need a lot of room. Our open space requirements, our parking requirements with additional landscaping, those dictate a little more room as needed to meet those. It's difficult to tell from looking at this that they're meeting the open space requirements. The timing of the Georgetown landscape ordinance requirements, Publix came in, big development. A lot of things were tied to Publix. A lot of things were tied to the Phase 1 of that development because it's the big anchor for the area. However, we're getting all this out lot development. We'd like to get some sense of timing on when they're actually going to meet the landscape requirements along that frontage. and that's going to require obviously some coordination among the various entities on this property as to who's doing what and when. We, you, the city does have an option of saying do it now if we deem it necessary, but we're asking them to report on a schedule how they see this developing. And again, because what we're seeing now, the outlot developments are coming fast out here. So, again, that's our concern there. Discuss timing. Oh, no. Discuss location of dumpster. That won't work. They're going to have to find a way for that work. Staff identified that. The technical committee solid waste agreed that they don't have enough frontage at that location with that angle to serve a dumpster. The question is, will a bank need a dumpster? That's another issue that needs to be addressed. and solid waste has control over who gets dumpsters and who doesn't. So, again, it might be that the bank can say, look, we just don't produce enough for a dumpster. They may, in fact, recycle their papers and stuff like that. I don't know what they may do. But, again, that was a discussion item. And due to the discussion items and the need to resolve some of these issues, the technical committee has recommended postponement to you. staff will be happy to answer your questions you may have have any questions for staff okay all right applicant come on come on up here good morning I'm Tony haunting with BHTP architecture and we made this a little here where the architect of record in working with our civil engineer who did this particular drawing here. So I don't know that we really have any questions on most of this. Just for really clarity, you know, you mentioned the dumpster kind of working backward. We do like a dumpster enclosure. we would prefer to use roller totes instead of you know an actual you know lifted you know what is it two yard or something like that but but nonetheless you know an enclosure and so we do go with this you know what would be a two yard or six yard or whatever the size of the dumpster is required you know we believe that we can rotate this clockwise a little bit to make it work with the truck specifications I think was given in a little more detail and It's some of the comments that we received. You have the contact information in solid ways. Yes. Yeah. So, anyway, we're working through that. Really, we're working through all of these items. I don't think any of them are really any big game changers. We do have a landscape plan that, you know, we do believe, you know, complies. Obviously, it doesn't show up here. This is just the overall. But, anyway, I don't think any of the comments are obviously unfair or really in any question. I did want to ask you on the item, well, on my list here, the timing of the Georgetown landscape ordinance. Are you just looking for kind of when we anticipate our plantings will happen? Yes, in conformance with that. And obviously you don't control all of that frontage. Yeah, right. So that's part of the question that staff has is kind of how all that's going to be coordinated. Car wash has come in. Okay. They have frontage. and there's areas you don't control. Gotcha. And we can ask the developer. I mean, we'll get with them. I mean, we know when we anticipate hours going in, but okay. Yeah, I think that's all the questions we had. I think everything else we've been actually working through over the last couple weeks anyway. So I appreciate the time. Thank you. Hold on one second. Does anybody have any questions for the applicant? Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, any public comment, questions? If not, we will entertain a motion. So we're still, based on that, we're still recommending postponement. Is that correct? Okay. Okay. Madam Chair, I move for a postponement of PLNMJDP 2371 Givens property as recommended by staff with the 22 conditions. Second. Okay. Thank you. That's a little different with the small group. All those in favor? Second by the state, aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. All right. It's postponed. All right. Thank you very much. We're moving to page two, item B. major development plan 23-79 the layo property this property is located off of spur road in greendale the layo property this was zone some time ago they're coming in to build a 30,000 square foot building With that, you can see that we have our typical sign-offs on the property, including Division of Water Quality and Kentucky Department of Transportation as far as access to Greendale and Spur Roads. We have to denote the all buildings, pavings. This is a sign that building inspection has requested that we add to the plans. We have addition of purpose of amendment, dimension driveways off of Spur Road. We show driveway dimension on this location, but we're missing over here, so we're not quite sure if that's a single or double coming in. Denote height of the building and feet and the proposed use of the building. Denote that this property is in the Royal Springs Aquifer. Addition of species and size of trees per the Article 26 of the zoning ordinance. addition of the floor area ratio depict purpose or depict proposed and existing easements denote pedestrian connection to all right-of-ways we're always looking for access from the structure to the right-of-way for those that could be coming along the different roadways Then we had discuss improvements to Greendale and Spur Road and connection to sanitary sewers. All this was a note from the preliminary development plan that it was to be discussed at the time of final development plan. And then discuss compliance with Article 20 for the usable open space. So with that, I open it to you all if there's any other comments or questions. This may need to go to the applicant, but what is the proposed use of the building? Okay. Okay. I'm not sure. Okay. Any other questions for staff? All right. Okay. Applicant. Good morning. Rory Keeley of the partners. I don't know the use. I think it's a spec building. We did several layouts for them with different shapes of buildings and parking lots, and this is the one they chose best. The number 13, I want to make sure that KDOT doesn't give us approvals. It's the permit granted when you turn in construction plans, so I just want to make sure that's not considered a something I have to have a sign off on to get certified I think change it to a note that says denoted yeah okay upon certification we'll start working with the construction plans at that time we'll have to go through the permits with K dot for the access designs and for sanitary sewers under number 23 there's a couple different options around us farloes pieces pump station there's gravity that you could get to under spur over towards pepper property and I think there's even an option of going back towards an Eagle beer line so we're dealing with the owner upon approval we'll get into the details of which way we can go either any of those options require us working with other property owners so that will tie in as well as to where we can go but the options are all around us and usable open space the last one for discussion item got plenty of open area with trees that's and then towards the back of the property what what do i need to show is this one of those where we gotta give them a little picnic area again and something usable okay um all right last one would be what are the improvements you want to these roads well i'm going to the south and to the west there's there is sidewalks coming along spur up to the up to the railroad greendale the same on your side of the road so i would expect something something similar to what you see on those two. And then, of course, there's going to be a school built just to the south as well. So right away dedication and sidewalk along both frontages? Yes, sir. I know on the Barlow piece, he had a transition. Once Greendale and Spur connected, that was a bigger intersection, more normal section. But then as he went towards the west along Spur, it dropped back. He's got a trail on his side. So our side is still just? Just the front, yeah. Okay, frontage? Yeah, because there's a sidewalk on that, but you're all side on the other side of Spur. David, do you anticipate eliminating that peak to the corner? Sorry, which corner? The corner of Greendale and yes, yes. Do you know where the – I know Spur is being realigned. Do you know where that comes back in it? I hadn't seen the plans. Okay. I didn't think Barlow changed the alignment. I thought he was just a bigger intersection. There's a slight. I think it's right around there that it's transitioning. Right in the middle of the top is. Okay. So you might want to go. I think that's what Mom was saying. there is a slight alteration where it comes back into the existing spur road their changes are only on the north side of the spur road so anything on this side would be responsibility of these property owners okay you've got construction plans i guess in the office okay i'm just curious about the right turn right obviously we have residential traffic out here but this isn't going to be industrial and there's some other industrial uses. The right turn from Spur on the Greendale is obviously really sharp right now. It's at an odd angle. Yeah, I think we're taking a look at what will ultimately be when the Marlow gets done and see what it looks like, yeah, because it may be partially completed for them. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? All right. If not, thank you. All right, thank you. Any public comment? All right, we'll bring it back to the committee. Thank you. It's all of us. Are we changing 13 to denote or something else? That is what generally happens is because that's how KDOT conducts themselves is that they historically we've always required that to denote their approval. Okay. Madam Chair, I move for approval of PLN, MJDP 2379, Lael property, with the 24 attached conditions adding denote to the beginning of number 13. how do you feel about the discussion you've had on 23 and 24 in terms of making those resolvable conditions? Sure. And changing 23 and 24 from discussed to resolved. Okay. Motion's been made with those changes. Second? Second. Okay, thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye, opposed. All right. Unanimous? All right. Madam Chair, members of the committee, beginning on the bottom of page 2 with Major Development Plan 2380, Newtown Springs, Unit 1, Lot 10. And the conditions are on page 3. And we also have revised conditions that have been handed out to you on this particular item. Let's see here. checking on my paperwork. I've gone old school on you. Okay. So we are out on Newtown Pike here. Citation at this location. What you see of course is the overall Newtown Springs development. And the proposal you have before you today is for Kroger's in this location in the B6P area with some outlot development as well. Right here below is where the Amazon development has gone in. That's to give you some perspective as to what has happened out here. And again, there's your overall view of the development. Now Kroger's is proposing a large big box store in excess of 100,000 square feet. Let's see. There we go. 122,000 square feet that you can see in the main building. Here we have the wine and spirit shop. At this location where you can see some drive-through for the pharmacy and a parking area. And again, this is the pickup area they're proposing for when people come to when you've ordered your groceries in advance. And they can come out and pick them up in this location. We have access here being proposed off of Newtown Springs Drive, as well as access at this location, and then here into this lot, Lot 11. The Kroger's is located on Lot 10. There's a Lot 11, and in fact, if you look, you can see that they're proposing another lot, Lot 12, along the frontage of Newtown Pike at this location. There's over 600 parking spaces being proposed on this particular development plan. And again, with the outlot development, these are our spec buildings they're proposing on the outlot area in this location. And then here is the gas pumps and canopy that are now an aspect and a part of Kroger developments and part of the services they offer. Now, again, this is a big box development. It is subject to big box review and a finding by the Planning Commission. We have our standard sign-offs. As you can see, this is a final development plan. Again, a lot of agencies are involved in the review of this particular plan. and they've cleaned up a few of the items you can see from your handout. Some of the more basic items, they've added the required note. They dimension the Kroger building and Wine Spirits building. They have denoted there's a final record plat that needs to be recorded. We have that plat. It's been filed. It'll be changed a little bit to conform with the plan. actually that will help them as they develop the site because one of the issues that's a discussion item in this area there's detention on this property and there's a large detention easement stormwater flows this in this direction to this basin from other parts of the commercial development there is also right here a large detention basin that's HOA controlled at this time next to the residential area to the east. They and again once they get some design work done they address the the drainage issue that final record plaque can reconfigure that easement as necessary based on the final engineering design as approved. So again, there's a plat has been filed. It'll have to be recorded prior to this plan being certified. And there's a caveat there again with the easement in the stormwater because they're gonna have to get a building permit to start building which means their designs are gonna have to be be accepted. So the timing on that plat may be something that we'll have to address relative to the design of the detention basin. And I'm not trying to get down in the weeds too much because we're headed for some weeds, but that one is one of the simpler issues perhaps. The cleanup items, they need to provide square footage for the open space areas. They've done that. We have a lot of exhibits. They've submitted a lot of exhibits again for this plan. Let's see. Here's the open space exhibit. You can see where they're showing the various proposed open spaces. They've got nice dimensions on this exhibit. We like to carry that over to the final development plan as well. They need to update their current development plan information. A lot of developments taking place around in the area and they're showing development some of it's not currently accurate with the approved plans they just need to update that that information is readily available and they can they can add that to the plan. They need to denote the height and the feet for the proposed buildings on lot 11. They're telling us there are four stories and one story and that's fine. They've given us the height to the Kroger's but we need the height to the proposed building's final development plan. They can build off this so we need that type of information. The Planning Commission will be required to make a finding on big box and as staff has reviewed this plan and some of the discussion items that you see on the back, and there's quite a few of the report, dovetail with some of the requirements in a big box. Some of these things are very much interrelated. They are going to have to denote the Royal Springs Aquifer Committee review and recommendation. The minutes of that meeting have not yet been approved by the committee, but I can report to you that as a member of that committee, along with our environmental planner, the committee, and this is consistent with their stance, they recommended against having a gas facility, gas pumps, tanks on this site. They've recommended against that on every development that's gone before them in the aquifer. That's a consistent recommendation from them. That said, there are gas stations in the area. There are underground tanks in the area for the gas and that sort of thing. Kroger submitted, Kroger went back to the committee and submitted a lot of technical information. I'm sure they're going to want to present that to the Planning Commission as well on how they monitor, how they design, how they address these issues with the gas. but it is, again, it's a large concern with the Royal Springs Aquifer. There was an incident in Georgetown with a gas station where there was a leak that took them years to discover the source of the leak. So it is a very strong concern with them. However, that is just a recommendation. That's all that you're getting from that committee is a recommendation. Now, if we go to the back of your handout, discuss the purpose of Lot 12. Again, it's different from the plat that shows Lot 10, Lot 11. They're showing just AU lot there, Lot 12, anticipating that it's mostly landscaping, that sort of thing, relative to Newtown, but it's not really a buildable lot. So we're just going to have to resolve its status. Discuss compliance with Article 16 requirements. That is particularly this area right here. Currently this area does not comply with Article 16 requirements relative to the location and the parking and the width that's allowed of a parking area in this location. So again you can see that this is integral to their layout. The way they have the drive-through situated and they have the area for the pick up. They feel that this is very important and they're going to want to obviously talk to you about that. But again, it doesn't comply with RO16. They will, if they go forward with this plan, they're going to require BOA action on that or else revise the plan. Discuss compliance with 12-83 adjacent to the R1C zone. This is in the rear. R1D, pardon me, it says R1C, it's R1D. Again, single family, and there's a large detention basin here. They're required to buffer this area adjacent to the single family. And interesting enough in the big box requirements, the same thing is recommended, and that is buffering. The buffering in the big box requirements is a little more restrictive than the B6P. about berms and that sort of thing. The good news is from staff's perspective is that you've got a basin here so it's a nice big open space between them and any actual homes and that sort of thing which helps. And they do have some room back through this area to provide landscaping which should help buffer as required. There is a multimodal requirement in the B6P. You all have heard this before about multimodal plans and the B6P, along with Big Box, also addresses similar issues, particularly pedestrian and bike facilities. They have bike facilities on the plan. They're showing bike parking in front of their entrances in this area, and they have bike parking in this area. And of course they're showing, you can see a sidewalk, again pedestrian facilities here, sidewalk connections in this location. They're not showing a transit stop and there's not any transit in this area right now. We would anticipate in the future there probably will be and again that's part of the reason you have a multimodal plan. looking ahead, we're looking down the road to see that they have the appropriate multimodal provisions and that they have a good location for a transit stop. And interesting enough, again, B6P and the big box overlap in this issue. And B6P says we need a transit stop and we need a good connection that transit stop. Your big box goes so far as to talk about pedestrian amenities and an area for that. So again, that is something that at this time, and your big box report's not quite finished. It's under review at this time. I can share with you that one of the larger concerns from that review are the pedestrian amenities that are needed on this site, access. There is concern with pedestrian access as well between the sites. You can see the vehicular access that they share between the sites, but there's a need under B6P. We need good pedestrian access through the lots and to tie it together. The whole idea with B6P and the shopping center, it's a unified center so we need to that needs to be addressed we have parking landscape with pedestrian access as shown again that's all a matter of getting your your landscaping in here and then getting your good pedestrian access this area by the way is the spring on the property that will have to be protected and may provide opportunity for an amenity. I mean, again, it needs to be protected as a natural area, but that could lend itself to an amenity. And this ties in to the B6P requirements back to the R1D area and the buffering, there's also a requirement under B6P about trying to show some integration of a shopping center with adjacent residential. Now, the challenge there is this really large detention basin that's right there, but they have sidewalk connections, they have right-of-way connections, they have the ability, in staff's estimation, to address a connection, to try to make a strong connection between this development and the adjoining residential area. I mentioned the stormwater management and detention. We have some concern about... I don't see it. Let's see. Let's go back. There's some concern about this access point right here and then this access point. They're very close together. and they're offset from these access points or this one into lot 11. So there's some concern with that access point relative to the proposed access into Kroger's. And that's going to that dovetails into one of the larger concerns that staff has one of the larger issues on this property and the reason you have the handout that I gave you showing the street system in the area. And And that is a connection to Silver Springs Drive. This doesn't really show it, but Amazon got developed here. Here's Silver Springs. Comes down here, curves out here, goes to Newtown. And Amazon accesses Silver Springs Drive. The handout that I gave you shows that the Amazon traffic currently goes to Silver Springs and goes up to Citation so they can come back out to Newtown Springs and go left towards town. In the future, Citation will provide an outlet to the right in Russell Cave Road when it is complete. That's under design. Negotiations are underway on right-of-way. I believe they're right now talking to the University of Kentucky. They own a big chunk of land over off Russell Cave Road, and they're talking with the U.K. about that right-of-way. but the design phase is underway on Citation Extension. When Citation Extension is completed, then you can see a little circle on your handout at Hollow Creek Road. That's a connection into this area from that neighborhood into this neighborhood, which will be opened up, and it's Collector Street. That would be advantageous for the neighborhood to get to Kroger's particularly. It will, however, be another outlet for Amazon and the traffic and the trucks that they've generated in the area through the residential. So the concern is not as much Kroger traffic, but again, the current route that Amazon traffic is using and its impact on the residential neighborhood. Staff would like to see a connection that would allow Amazon traffic to move through a commercial area and then disperse throughout the community where they need to go. And that's the reason we have a discussion item about access to Silver Springs Drive. That access was reserved on the development plan for Amazon for future discussion. It showed a location. location was more in this area up in here as opposed to down in this area. So arterial developments generally require service roads under the subdivision regulations, and we've developed that through here. This is an access easement. This is a public street. This access easement functions in this commercial area as a service road. And the discussion that staff has had with the applicant is an ability to extend the service road across their property and tie into Silver Springs, which would allow commercial traffic from Amazon and all those vans and trucks to move through the commercial area and get to citation as opposed to impacting the residential neighborhood. There's a large retention wall there. I'm not retention. Retaining. Retaining, thank you. Just had one of those moments. The word was there. A retaining wall. It's large. There's quite a change in topography there in elevation. Of course, this was known when Amazon came in, which is why staff insisted that something be reserved to show this potential connection. It's an expensive connection, staff understands that, because they would have to address that change in topography. They're going to have to address that retaining wall, which by the way that's what retaining walls are for. That's why you have them to address those changes in topography and grade. And staff would see some potential in that coming through this area which would help define the overall development and allow for some actually better connections on the property. So you can see there's a lot of integrated conditions here. B6P requirements, big box requirements on pedestrian, pedestrian facilities and amenities that are all coming into play, along with landscaping and green space that's required on the site. So that's a lot of information, a lot of discussion items that staff has given you today. Again, you can see that your technical committee and staff has recommended postponement of the plan. Staff will be happy to answer any questions you may have for us. Any questions for staff? All right, we have the applicant. Good morning and happy new year. Brandon Gross on behalf of the applicant here. As you guys are aware, many of our corridors, certain cities, some of our corridors have been essentially grocery deserts for many years. Georgetown is finally coming online. We're hoping Newtown Pike will come online and provide another grocery outlet for this area. One issue, and this ties into a lot of the debates that have been going on in Lexington for the last couple years, is we're trying to do more with less, trying to make more efficient uses of our lands, and trying to put, essentially, developments like this on what availability there is. There aren't large tracks available in Lexington. for grocery stores, and this may be the only track on Newtown Pike that's still available for a grocery store in this entire corridor. So this is probably the last shot at a grocery store here. So it's very important that we keep that practicality in mind when we go through this plan that sometimes we've got to make, like my clients make compromises with the staff all the time, and we've got to make compromises, and it's a two-way street to get these projects going. Now, before I get into a lot of the items that Tom, Tom did a great job. We've had a lot of good conversations between Kroger and Mr. Martin over the last few weeks since the Tech Review Committee. We have had, with conjunction with three council members, a town hall meeting for the neighborhoods in this area. It went very well. Everyone's very excited about this project coming through. I think if you look at your report, I'm going to go through some of these quickly. 1 through 12 easy sign offs. On 13 we can work on Harvey Johnson our engineer updating that information. Same thing with 14. Same thing with 15. Then on 16 it's we'll handle that at the public meeting. Tom will supply you with the report hopefully and you'll make that finding that we comply. As denoted we did make a denotion that we have been to the committee and we put in there that their formal recommendation is pending because they have not submitted it to us yet. As Tom mentioned, there are, I have never seen, and Tom will confirm, the committee recommend a fuel station anywhere within the aquifer. So the fact that they said we do not recommend a fuel station is not surprising. We always get that answer. We did supply them with a lot of technical information. Kroger has an impeccable record on fuel stations, and they don't cheap out on the technology, and so that can be provided, but I don't think that that will be an issue. I think that we need fuel stations in Lexington because people drive cars still, and so I think we can get past that one pretty easily. I'm going to skip over on 16, but 16, like I said, you'll find that fighting, But a lot of these intertwine with one another, and we'll talk about those when we get there. So on lot number, let me make sure I hit the right one. Which one do I do to do the, is it the circle? That's not power. Okay, good. All right. So this is lot number 12. And so when this property was developed, and this is the same thing going northbound. So right now we're going northbound on Newtown. Here's the new Silver Spring Road, Amazon facilities below. And this area here is a 75-foot landscape buffer area that was put together, I believe, when it was rezoned. So this stayed as AU. And so for Lot 12, it is going to be essentially a non-buildable lot, and it's going to be landscaping. And we're not sure certain what is going to occur at that spot at this point. But I think otherwise it is, I think it's a legally conforming lot. We just can't build on it because there's an easement all over it. So that's the purpose of lot 12 at this point. And so I'm hoping that we can delete that one since we've discussed it. Oh, Tracy's saying no? Okay. But worse comes to worse, we can always split it on these two lots. So we do not think that's going to be an issue on lot 12. I'm going to jump down to lot number 20, I think number 20. That's in reference. It says R1C, but I think it's R1D here. There's a note here where we acknowledge we need to conform with that. We are going to put in either probably fence and landscaping is the plan. We'll take care of that when we file our building permits with our landscape plan. So we think 20 can be deleted since we know we have to comply with it and the note specifies that. I want to jump down to 26. I'm hoping we can delete that one too at this time. Right now there is the detention, as Tom said, is in here. that detention is essentially for all this development north the commercial development in the road system it goes in here this area our plan is going to be when we build that building to work with the division of engineering to come up with a plan that puts that most of that underground with possibly some exposed some underground but once again we're trying to use that property rather than having a large retention basin in that area but we're think we can resolve that at the time that we pull our permits as well to work with the division of engineering to work through those items to make sure that those are allowed. You're required to show the location of your detention areas on the final development plan. And so if it's not workable, we need to identify that as an issue now. So that's why it's on there. it may not be possible to put the detention under the parking in that smaller lot by itself. There may be some impact to the larger Kroger lot where some underground detention might need to be met on that site. And again, lot 12 wouldn't be used for your detention, right? since it's the AU and the legacy trail. Okay, so we can keep that one on here. We'll work with Kroger's team and work through that issue. So hopefully at this point we can at least mark off 20, Tom, discuss compliance with R1C. Okay, well hopefully, like I said, we've got a notation. We acknowledge we have to comply with the buffering. Our development plan notes it, and we'll take care of the landscape. So if you guys are comfortable, we'd like to take care of that one. Thank you. Your big box requirements actually have a more stringent requirement than the ordinance has. So it's a matter of working out. And we've done this in the past. We did it with Kroger's on Euclid where they had some constraints, and they met it substantially. They did what they could due to the conflicts and issues. So, again, we think they can meet that, but we have to know how that's going to be met. So it's going to be resolved through both this discussion and your big box report as well. I mean, we're going to get there on that. I don't think staff is terribly concerned about their ability to buffer. I think we probably have some larger concerns. So are you suggesting leave 20 on or take it off? Well, I'd like to see a plan that addresses it, and then it comes off. Yeah, then it's taken care of. Yeah, we need to see a new plan that addresses some of these items. All right, so then that takes us to a lot of these items, as was mentioned before, relate to connectivity and pedestrian and bicycle access. I think some of them, like Tom said, I think we'll be able to find an area for the transit. We have talked to the transit system. They do not have any plans now or in the future to put a stop here, but we will show one potential stop so we can show that on the plan. We don't think that will be an issue. Integration to the neighborhood. I think currently right now we can show a potential future additional integration to the neighborhood. But if you right now the neighborhood, wrong button. Right now the neighborhood is there's a townhouse development here. This is all detention based and controlled by an HOA here. And then there's single family in this area. Currently right now there is the Legacy Trail. Then you've got a completely, you've got an eight-foot unimpeded sidewalk that goes the entirety of Silver Springs, then turns into the neighborhood. So at this point there is no, you could get from this intersection into the neighborhood without having to pass any driveways or access roads. It's a complete pedestrian-friendly area. Right now, from here, at this corner, you come down to this sidewalk. You can take the sidewalk all the way down to Silver Springs into the neighborhood. So currently, this is a long stretch that goes right into the neighborhood. The neighborhood also has sidewalk access here. We can show, potentially, some kind of connection with the sidewalk, maybe here for a future, if for some reason the HOA decides they want to build that sidewalk connecting the two sidewalks into our center. But right now we don't control any of this. This is all off-site property owned by somebody else. So we will work with amenities potentially here, and we can put in a future potential access. But once again, we're not sure what the benefit is since these are all HOA. Behind them are all yards. There is no real practical way to connect the back of the Kroger into this neighborhood other than in this spot here. And it's already connected up at this spot here. But we'll discuss that with continued discussions with staff. But that's our concern on the integration into the neighborhood. We think there's lots of vehicular, not vehicular, there are vehicular, but pedestrian and bicycle access to this shopping center from these existing neighborhoods. neighborhoods. This area here we will likely we're going to seek a variance from this area and I'll explain why we have the building pushed here and why we have these items here. For those of you who have worked in the grocery like myself, the grocery business is a very low margin business. Its business model has evolved over the years. As you can imagine, you make more money off of a bottle of bourbon or a coffee or your pharmacy than you would selling a head of cabbage. And so all these different uses, separate uses that they have built into their business model all come in to assist with making the Modern 8 grocery store operate efficiently. And that's just how it is. There's nothing we can do about that. So as part of that, we've got two things going on in this location. The second item is I'm not sure if you guys use the pickup grocery services. I don't use those. My wife does occasionally but we also have that that is a convenience for customers but also it's a convenience for persons with disabilities my mother uses that service a lot her and her husband are elderly they have disability issues I came here the last time they went into a grocery store so the pick up and go model has been very beneficial to their lives and this will be in like most groceries this will be included. So what will occur in this location here is we will have cars coming in. This is a pickup window for the pharmacy. This will be a pickup for the grocery pickup and how it works is and what Kroger has determined is that we want customers to park into drive-through these spots which is why they're a little bit more than you would have for a single vehicle because what we have found, and actually my sister-in-law was the subject of this, when cars back up, they bump into the associates. And my sister-in-law was actually hit by a car at the Alexandria Kroger, working at Kroger, when she was doing the pickup service. So one of the things as part of the functionality in the way Kroger's business model works is they needed that extra space for cars to be able to pull through. So they pull in, get the groceries in the trunk, and they pull and they go forward, and it makes it a safer function for the associates. Another reason that this area is here, instead of packing it all back here, is this is, and we will admit, these are vehicular-centric services. Drive-thru pharmacies, pick up groceries. Well, we want to and what we try to do is isolate these in conjunction with isolation of our heavy trucks for deliveries in this area and try to separate them, if to the extent we can, from the rest of the development to separate those vehicular uses from the pedestrians that would be in the parking lot and otherwise. So to make that kind of work, because otherwise if we put it back here we would have all these vehicles driving through and adding extra vehicles coming through the parking lot. So we put them up here and so we'll probably seek a variance from the BOA. We'll be filing that probably next week. But that's the reason we've got that development up here rather than in the back and pushing the building forward is to keep these persons who are only coming into the shopping center for very few minutes in and out so they're not otherwise going through the rest of the parking lot. We will work on some more pedestrian and bicycle access here. We will work on connecting these items here. And so, but that's kind of the overall of what we're doing. Ann, did I miss anything or is there anything you want to add? Ann McBride, she is our consultant from Kroger who helps design these all over the country. And so she and I and Harvey and Tom had some conversations on how we can fit their plan into this. Now, the one last thing I do want to talk about is the Silver Springs access. We've got several problems with the Silver Springs access. First being is we don't own any of this, so the access drive will have to be somewhere between here and down here. I was involved with the Amazon project, and there were discussions, they're really driven by the owner, ironically, of this property and making sure they would have the potential, not the obligation, but the potential to have an access from here to Silver Springs. At the time, no one knew what this development would look like. So once again, they wanted that potential in case it would make their development function better. Well, now we have a development, and now, as it is on the ground, we do not think that here is practical or will help our development function better. If you go out to that site, I don't know how tall that retaining wall is. Harvey, what is that, 15? Roy? 15, 20 feet tall? 12 feet. Okay. So a million feet tall. So we've got right now there's a development plan. The elevation drop is dramatic. And so for us to take that wall down and regrade the site, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of soil we'd have to remove and take off site to be dumped somewhere else. And then once again, we're trying, a lot of the discussion today has been, how can we make this site pedestrian and bicycle friendly? Well, I can tell you how you can't make that site pedestrian friendly is by bringing a whole bunch of box trucks through the site. We don't want, I mean, Amazon is industrial use. This is a commercial use. We acknowledge these are residential uses. But we don't want Amazon bringing all their trucks through our parking lot to access this. Right now Amazon has a ride-in, ride-out at Silver Springs. They've got a ride-in, ride-out at their main property. So they have two access points in Newtown Springs. And then they have a backup access point out here to Silver Springs. And as denoted, once Hollow gets built, there will be another access point at this area. We think right now we have enough service roads that connect the commercial area, integrates into the residential area, but the industrial area is separated from us, and we want to keep it that way. We don't want to go through the costs. We don't want to eliminate our parking. We don't want trucks driving through. There's a reason we've packed all our car-centric uses and our loading trucks back in the back. We don't want them interacting with our customers. Staff and us agree we will put a pedestrian access from here cutting over. Once again, we don't want people needing to run across the street with box trucks to access the Kroger, the restaurants, the Legacy Trail. We think it's better if Amazon stays the way it is, keeps them separated from us. So we will discuss with staff. We will see where we can work something out. But we're concerned that there's not a practical solution to this particular issue. So with that being said, do you have any questions for me or anything you'd like more information? We're hoping, I'm going to talk with Tom after this, that he's available maybe tomorrow for us to have more discussions on resolving some of these issues. We would like to be before you next Thursday. We realize that we've got a tight turn of Tuesday to get a revised plan file. That's our goal. If not, I'll see you next Thursday and I'll ask for a postponement. We think that we're going to get to a yes with staff, whether it's next week or the following month. We don't think any of these can't be resolved, but I'm here to answer questions. Questions for the applicant? I don't necessarily have a question, but because Silver Springs is public right away, you do need to show that it's adjacent to Lot 11 and have that cross-section on the DP. Did you note that, Harvey? we'll need to denote Silver Spring on the development plan since it's a public road and show it as a cross section even if we're not doing any improvements on it okay thanks Vaughn we'll make that notation you're talking about getting together I'm so grateful to the Harley are we talking about next Tuesday or Wednesday or we want to go tomorrow I guess we probably meet with more than just Tom I'm sure oh if you guys are available tomorrow Yes, I should be. But, you know, we would love tomorrow. We need a comprehensive, I think, discussion. I think, Amy McBride, you've said you can drive down tomorrow from Cincinnati. I maybe could in the morning. Yeah, I've done a brief afternoon. I think there's a little communication about Wednesday. Okay, well. There's something I just want to make sure that about God available tomorrow and there's a lot of information. I don't use that term a lot. Okay. Well, what we'll do then is there's something on the books for Wednesday of next week. I'll get with Kroger and the owner, and we'll circle back around, and if that's what's on the books, we'll... And I would add that the big box design requirements use the word shall quite a bit, and this plan is going to have to reflect some of those things, and it does not as yet. That report will be finalized very soon. But, again, there's some items they are absolutely going to have to address on the plan. So what I'm hearing is not quite ready for prime time. Not quite. No, I think we'd all agree with that. Yeah. And as you're aware, we have these discussion items out there for that very reason. So everyone's aware of some issues we have to work through. So we do get where we all want to be on the development. Okay. All right. Well, living out that way, when it's time for those trucks to roll down Silver Springs, they roll. And when they come in, they come in. And it's a lot of traffic. And I can understand how it doesn't benefit Kroger to have that access. But from a residential standpoint, that access could make a difference. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We have any public comment? If not, let's bring it back to the committee. I just want to make a comment. In another part of my life, I worked with a group that looked at identifying food deserts in Fayette County several years ago, and I'm thrilled to see a Kroger going in here to serve a part of the county that's not had access to reasonable food. So thank Kroger for that. Madam Chair, I move for postponement of PLN-MJDP 2380, still with the 27 recommendations from staff. Second. Might I add that item 20 should be R1D? Yes. Thank you. Okay. And with that change, all in favor? All right. Opposed? Okay. All right. Is that it? We have a continued item. Is that all? Yes, ma'am. I believe that's it for today. Wonderful. All right. With that, meeting adjourned. We're going underground at Romany Road. Did y'all get involved in that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Thank you. I swore it wouldn't happen again, but I looked at you and then, I'm like a tumbleweed and a wild west Texas wind, you're blowing me away again. You're lying with me in Atlanta It's such a beautiful life You play me like a piano I always let you get by I know I'll go through hell, girl When you find someone else But right now I'm in heaven And I can't help myself My little Texas tornado Blowing me away again I swore it wouldn't happen again But I looked at you and that I'm like a tumbleweed In a wild west Texas wind You're blowing me away again I'm like a tumbleweed in a wild west Texas wind You're blowing me away Texas tornado Blowing me away again I swore it wouldn't happen again But I looked at you and then I'm like a tumbleweed And a wild ass Texas wind You're blowing me away Take your hand I am a lineman for the county And I drive the main road Searching in the sun for another overload I hear you singing in the wild I can hear you through the whine And the Wichita lineman Is still on the line I know I need a small vacation But it don't look like rain And if it snows that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain And I need you more than want you And I want you for all time And the Wichita lineman Is still on the line And I need you more than want you And I want you for all time And the witcher tall lineman Is still on the line Thank you. Well, you can walk out on me tonight If you think that it ain't feeling right But darling, there ain't no getting over me Well, you can say that you need to be free But there ain't no place that I won't be Sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me I'll be the bill you forgot to pay I'll be the dream that keeps you awake I'll be the song on the radio I'll be the reason that you tell the boys no Don't you know you can tell everyone that we're through And you might even believe it too But darling, there ain't no getting over me Sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me I'll be the face that you see in a crowd I'll be the times that you cry out loud I'll be the smile when there's no one around I'll be the book that you just can't put down So you can walk out on me tonight If you think that it ain't feeling right But darling, there ain't no getting over me You'll see, sweet darling There ain't no getting over me No, no, no, no, no, no, darling There ain't no getting over me No, darling There ain't no getting over me Mmm, mmm, darling There ain't no getting over You look like an angel Walk like an angel Talk like an angel But I got wise You're the devil in disguise For yes you are, devil in disguise You fooled me with your kisses You cheated and you schemed Heaven knows how you lied to me You're not the way you seem You look like an angel, walk like an angel, talk like an angel, but I got one. You're the devil in the sky, oh yes you are the devil in the sky. I thought that I was in heaven, but I was sure surprised. Heaven helped me, I didn't see the devil in your eyes. You look like an angel, walk like an angel, talk like an angel. But I got wild You're the devil in the sky Oh yes you are the devil in the sky You're the devil in the sky Oh yes you are, devil in disguise Oh yes you are, devil in disguise Oh yes you are, devil in disguise Oh yes you are, devil in disguise Think of your fellow man Lend him a helping hand Put a little love in your heart You see it's getting late Oh please don't hesitate Put a little love in your heart And the world will be a better place And the world will be a better place For you and me You just wait and see Another day goes by Still the children cry Put a little love in your heart If we want the world to know We won't let hatred grow Put a little love in your heart And the world We'll be a better place for you And me You just wait And see Wait and see Take a good look around And if you're looking down Put a little love in your heart I hope when you decide Kindness will be your guide Put a little love in your heart And the world Will be a better place And the world Will be a better place For you And me You're just great And I see people now Put a little love in your heart Each and every day Put a little love in your heart There's no other way Put a little love in your heart Get up to you Put a little love in your heart Come on in Put a little love in your heart What a rotten day this turned out to be I still can't believe she'd leave so easily She just got all her things, threw them into a pile Then she loaded her car and said after a while She'd done this before, but this time she didn't cry That's why I'm sitting on the front steps, staring down the road Wondering if she'll come back, this time I don't know After she packed, when she looked back There were no tears in her eyes. On this edition of Lexington Now, part two of 2023, a year in review. Happy New Year and welcome to Lexington Now for the week of January 1st, 2024. I'm Neil Noah. We continue our look back at 2023 with a trio of stories focused on recreation. First, the opening of a welcome addition along the new Town Branch Trail. Splash at Charles Young Park. I am Colonel Charles Young of the United States Army, 10th Cavalry, and I'm here to open the ceremony for the celebration of this park. Many of you know a little bit about my history. I was the third African-American to graduate from West Point and had a long career in the United States Army. And at the time of the start of World War I, I was the highest ranking African-American in the Army. Today's a big day. We are here to officially open Splash, a large water feature that's bringing water play, space, to the East End neighborhood and downtown. town. Splash connects the park's new playground, resurfaced basketball court, and community center to the Town Branch Commons Trail, making Charles Young Park a cornerstone of the neighborhood as well as the community. Splash has something for everyone, and now I know eventually y'all are going to take your shoes off and get wet, right? It's designed for children of all ages and abilities. It also offers a comfortable, relaxing area for parents and for those who stop in for a break off the Town Branch Commons Trail. As you can see, it's already very popular, As you can see throughout the splash pad, Brigadier General Charles Young is described as humble, courageous, and determined. The timeline surrounding the perimeter of the splash pad details the history of his remarkable life. I keep inheriting wonderful things that was left by Council at Large Brown. And for that, I am truly grateful. It has been a long time since this park has truly been vibrant and a lot of children in the park. I am so excited, as you can hear in the background, that is getting ready to be filled with noise. I love to have noise. The voices of our future is behind me. So I look forward to families coming back to Charles Young to reunite. This is a deep, rich area for the East End neighborhood. We will make this safe. We will bring our neighborhoods back. We will bring our children back to the park. We will have football, basketball, run through the water, picnics, family reunions. It is time to come back home. So East End community, come on down to Charles Young and enjoy yourself. You can put your hands together for that one. I just want to say it's another beautiful day in East End as we continue to show our commitment to reinvesting in this community. You have to be intentional and you have to be focused whenever you invest, whether private or public dollars, in a community, a historic community like East End, that's seeing a lot of investment and kind of turnover in regards to the older infrastructure. And I'd just like to give a shout-out to our parks department, Monica and her team, Brandy, for reaching out to the Charles Young Advisory Board, the William Wells Brown Community Center and School, and all the other neighborhood partners to get input and to get feedback on what this amenity in this community should be. It is such a pleasure to be here to celebrate the opening of Splash, a project that embodies so much that is important to the community foundation. Equitable, beautiful parks and playgrounds for everyone, fun, safe, creative water play, a more vibrant, healthy, engaged, and connected neighborhood, community, and city, and the power of charitable giving. When I spoke with Monica Conrad a little over a year ago, I conveyed to her the American Water Charitable Foundation is looking for the perfect project in Lexington, in our region, to focus on water-based play and nature-based play and so forth. And they have a $250,000 grant that they'd like to contribute. Do you have something? And she mentioned, I think I do. And today we're celebrating that. When she told me the story of the park and the collaboration and the engagement of the community and so many partners, we and the American Water Charitable Foundation knew this was the perfect fit. Three, two, one. One of the biggest stories of the year also happened along Town Branch Trail in the form of the groundbreaking of Town Branch Park, destined to be the crown jewel of Lexington's trail system. It's hard to imagine that in just two short years, all of this will be transformed into what you see in the video on my right. A beautiful green space featuring a high-tech stage and 4,000-person amphitheater. A unique children's playground, educational and interactive water play area. A dog park for both small and large dogs. food and beverage offerings, a butterfly garden, an art installation, the Town Branch Commons Trail, a recreation lawn, a reading room, and so much more. The park will also reconnect the community to Town Branch Creek through this space just to my right. That actually is the creek rolling through in the middle of those trees. I became involved in this project at the request of my dear friend and then-Mayor Jim Gray. and a few other civic-minded friends and peers of mine were asked to take a task of creating a public park for Lexington that would be privately funded. This was an unprecedented project for our community. Raise $31 million, he told me, of private funds to build a world-class park in the heart of downtown for all of our residents and visitors to enjoy. What a dream. Our community has never come together to raise that much money for a single cause like this. Some people didn't think we could do it. Actually, there were many people that didn't think we could do it. And I would hear about it every now and then. Maybe they were right. We didn't raise $31 million. We raised $39 million! It was Victor Hugo who famously said, there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Now, I would just add that an idea without funding is nothing more than a hallucination. So fortunately and inspiringly, Town Branch Park is a reality and not a hallucination. Now let me too pay tribute to Ann Bacus, Lexington's Grand Dame. The late W.T. Young was often described as the bell cow of fundraising and philanthropy. And of course the bell cow is the one who leads. Well, there's a new bell cow in town. This is a groundbreaking. A groundbreaking. groundbreaking groundbreaking in that we are literally breaking ground. In this case, someone said asphalt to begin construction of this wonderful park. And groundbreaking in the landmark sense in that we are creating a new landmark, a new destination, a place for community celebration, a place to bring your children and your visitors from out of town. a place to enjoy a brisk walk or an evening stroll. This park is also groundbreaking in a pioneering sense. It is not every day in our city that the private sector comes together to fund something like Town Branch Park. This is a big deal. This park is a gift. It's a gift of improved quality of life to each and every one of us as well as all 325,000 people who live here as well as their visitors. That's really special. Buildings come and go. Parking lots come and go. But parks can live forever if you take care of them. And I can assure you that our board and the people that have donated their time and energy here are going to make sure that this park is not built but is taken care of. Lexington's Parks Department announced the development of its largest addition in over 26 years with the groundbreaking of Cardinal Run North. Today has been 26 years in the making. We're finally doing it! Back in 1997, this property was given to our community along with Cardinal Run South, an incredible gift of over 190 acres of pristine bluegrass property. So far, the public has only been able to really enjoy 54 of those acres, and that is Cardinal Run South. The bulk of the property has remained inaccessible because we have not been able to afford to develop a usable park. And that ends today. The city is opening the doors to Cardinal Run North with a $10.1 million investment through American Rescue Plan funds. At Cardinal Run North, Lexington will soon be able to enjoy two miles of natural hiking trails, six pickleball courts, a basketball court, four youth multi-purpose fields, a large playground, a dog park with two paddocks, a mile-long paved shared-use trail, two picnic shelters, and many other amenities. There will be something for everyone. These features were selected in part by the public during a public engagement period last year. Almost 900 people filled out the survey. We also followed the guidance in our parks master plan. The two parks, Cardinal Run North and South, are separated by Parker's Mill Road. We will install a crosswalk to make it easy for citizens on both sides of Parker's Mill to enjoy both parks. I remember attending some of the public input sessions on this and it was really fun to watch constituents and other folks across really the whole county come in and talk about their ideas. And as the mayor just said, you saw some of the cool things that are going to be here. The trail, everyone loves a dog park. You've got recreational opportunities out here and just the acreage itself. What a wonderful gift this is. And thank you Parks and Rec Director Conrad, the whole staff. I know you put a lot of work and time in it. It's great that it's here. You know, there's nothing better than a groundbreaking except for ribbon cutting. This has been one of those projects that takes a lot of people. It takes the village to kind of make something like this happen. I think the best thing about this park for District 10 is it is very walkable from most of the neighborhoods on this side of Harrodsburg Road and I think that those people will be using it extensively. I also think that the best thing about parks is not only do they provide physical help for people but the open area guys is a great mental a mental and emotional support system for the people here in lexington we partnered with fayette county public schools girls who game and the district-wide minecraft challenge to create really an inclusive accessible cardinal run north vision utilizing minecraft gaming and design so thanks to all those fayette county school kids who are out here with us today. It's a big deal. We're now working with ATS and Tecton Construction companies to deliver the park design. The park will provide the community with access to beautiful expansive green spaces rich with a blend of topography including forests and karst areas. The addition of the park will increase the portion of the neighborhood within a 10-minute walk to a park and access to natural areas which are cornerstones of our parks master plan. Our parks team who've already been recognized today, I really can't thank them enough. They're the ones who bring you clean, green, programmable green space every day in our community. They're really the backbone of our division and the ones who deliver these wonderful park spaces. So now you're done. When we come back, we continue our look back at 2023. Hello, I'm Lieutenant Chris Van Brackle with the Lexton Police Department Traffic Unit. Today we are talking about disability accessible parking and the aisles between those parking places. Accessible parking is a valuable and necessary resource for people with disabilities, and that includes the striped area next to accessible parking spots. These are access aisles, and it is illegal to park here, even if you have an accessible parking permit. Police and Lex Park will write tickets when they see vehicles parked in an access aisle or parked in an accessible space without a placard and the fine is $250. Know where and where not to park. Keep the access aisles clear. Thank you and drive safe. Welcome back to Lexington Now. In 2023, Lexington's fire department got a major boost in the way of a grant for the training of 27 new EMT paramedics. Like many communities, the post-pandemic years have seen an uptick in call volume here in Lexington. Last year alone, we responded to over 66,000 emergency calls, with at least three-quarters of those being medically related. In order to adequately respond to those calls, it is critical that we have the absolute best-trained and best-prepared paramedics paramedics here at the Lexington Fire Department. This grant will allow us to not only continue, but to increase the capacity of our paramedic class, putting more highly trained providers on the front lines, ready to answer the call. The Lexington Fire Department, with the support of our LFUCG leaders, will continue to seek new and innovative ways to meet the growing needs of our community. As Chief Wells said, today we're talking about something very important in our city. And really it all boils down to good, strong public safety. We know that's the foundation of a great community, is good, strong public safety. So today's announcement will make our city safer. Our fire department has won an assistance to firefighters grant that will pay for training and certification of 27 new EMT paramedics, and you're looking at them right now. This is a huge step forward for us. We have the best fire department in Kentucky and in the region. And this grant will help them be even better. All Lexington firefighters are certified as EMT basic, which is the norm among professional firefighting departments. However, and this is something which is, I didn't know before today, this is wonderful. Half of Lexington's firefighters are certified paramedics, which is highly unusual, especially in Kentucky. And over half of all the state's registered paramedics work in the Lexington Fire Department. Think about that. Over half of Kentucky's registered paramedics. And you've helped train them, Dr. Patty Howard. As a registered nurse, this gives me a lot of confidence in our ability to help our residents in emergency situations. Just yesterday, the 22nd anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, we were all reminded again of the importance of our first responders. People who routinely put their lives on the line and run toward the danger while the rest of us are running away. As mayor, one of my responsibilities is to ensure that our firefighters are well trained and well equipped. Today's announcement is about an important investment in their training and in Lexington's community safety. So congratulations and thank you so much. We're really excited about this class. Thank you. Lexington police expanded their capabilities with the opening of the new East Sector Roll Call Center. We joined officials for the ribbon cutting. Oh, stray can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we'd hail, at the twilight's last gleaming, whose brush stripes and bright stars. This new East Sector Roll Call will position our police closer to major traffic arteries and to neighborhoods along Manowar. It will also save us money in utility expenses and in rent. This roll call is a satellite office where police officers who work in the East Sector of City Report for Duty. We also have a West Sector office on Old Frankfurt Pike, a Central Sector near Eastland, and our headquarters downtown. Police began using this new East Sector office last month. This 7,900 square foot, $4.2 million building was designed with energy efficiency in mind. using insulated concrete, wall construction, high efficiency windows, and a geothermal heating and cooling system. Work areas all receive natural light. This is one of the most beautiful things about this building is the natural light. And the building can accommodate solar panels if needed. It also incorporates many security features, including a controlled entrance, bullet-resistant materials, a separation of private offices and meeting spaces, separate entrance for the public and police, a storm shelter, separation between public and police parking. It's really state-of-the-art. The building is designed to accommodate a variety of uses. The facility's conference room and roll call are separated by a movable partition that allows for increased space that could be used for community meetings, award ceremonies, and classroom training opportunities. Previously, East Sector Roll Call was located on Center Parkway in a rental facility. This new facility has been built on land already owned by our city. Any building like this is a true partnership and a true collaboration. So, you know, I got to thank the community for their support. You know, since I've been here, I don't think we've had a roll call facility built from the ground up. And that takes a lot of support. It takes a lot of support from our mayor and her team, but also from our council members. And it truly means a lot to me that you all stepped up and supported the police department. And we appreciate that very much. This is a satellite facility, but it's built with a purpose for us to be part of the East Sector community. Part of not just the community surrounding and not just the school here, but part of whole East Sector. It's inviting and it's accessible. That's what I want you to know about our officers. You know, our officers do a great job every day. They want you to know that they're part of the community too. Three, two, one. Lexington police continued their reputation for innovation with the announcement of the new FUSIS system, consolidating assets to further streamline public safety. Today I'm excited to announce the integration of the FUSIS platform. This new technology will help unify all of our public safety assets like flock license plate readers, traffic cameras, and other cameras operated by private entities who opt in with this technology, we will be able to solve crimes quicker and provide real-time information to officers. Technology does not replace good police work, but instead it is another tool for our officers and detectives that they can use for safer and more efficient investigations. We will still have officers talking and engaging with the community and following up on any leads. The FUSES platform also allows businesses, the community, and our partners and residents to engage with us in a more efficient manner and help keep us and our community safe. We are taking an exciting step forward that will make our community safer through technology. Our investment in FLOC license plate readers has been an enormous success. That is why I proposed back in April that we take the next step and establish the Real-Time Intelligence Center with an additional investment of about $150,000 annually in video-based intelligence software known as FUSIS. We're now ready to begin using FUSIS in our community. It allows us to combine our existing technology assets, including alerts from FLOC license plate readers and video from traffic cameras, while also allowing the voluntary addition of private security cameras from partnering businesses and even residential cameras. Starting today, businesses and individual citizens here can choose to have a direct impact on the safety of our community through this technology partnership. The software combines these assets into a single source. It's an investigative tool and a resource we can use to streamline emergency response and incident management with real-time information for our first responders. Technology is the future, some say. It's here now. We started this on July 1st, and after about two months, we're almost close to being fully implemented. We nearly have all of our traffic cameras loaded into the system, but our site is live. Our site is connectlex.org. That's where the community can go to register their cameras and or integrate their cameras into the Real-Time Intelligence Center. Registration is voluntary and it's free, so that's where we see most of our residential cameras. We would like to just know you have a camera in the area. It's good for us to have that ability to go directly to you and also reach out to you electronically to see if you've had any video that may be related to a criminal incident that you wish to share. If you are a business and you want to integrate your cameras into the Real-Time Intelligence Center, it allows us to be efficient when we respond to your business in or around your business if a criminal act is occurring. There is a small fee associated with that. That fee allows you to buy the purchase of the core device, which will integrate your cameras. and then there is a yearly subscription thereafter, but that is an omelette fee of $150, I believe. The good thing about it, you don't have to replace your camera system. It integrates with most every camera system that's out there, so it's just literally a plug-and-play option that usually can be set up within a week's time once the order actually received. Fuses will then get on the phone until you have to connect that. Plug it in and you'll be integrated right with the system. That's all for now, but as always, you can keep up with us on social media. Check out the latest traffic updates on X at LexRex or catch our live traffic cans on LexingtonKY.gov. For all of us at LexTV, I'm Neil Noah, and that's it for now. We'll be right back. Thank you. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Bajan Niko, and we are here with your next episode of Your Lex PD. We are here at the new East Sector Roll Call at the intersection of Clearwater Way and Saren Drive. Outstanding facility here, right? Very nice. State of the art. Yes. This month, the holidays are coming up. Yes. Right? So we want to talk about property crimes. And property crimes are something that obviously we experience year-round, but we think a little bit more about it during the holidays just because of opportunities. Yes. So today, let's go talk to a couple of our detectives about car break-ins, house break-ins, all these types of things that we don't want you to encounter. And hi, we are back with Lieutenant Barton and Detective McMillan with the Property Crime Section. So we're going to be talking about property crimes today. Can you describe what property crimes are? So property crimes are basically any theft or damage to any of your property that you may own, whether it be your vehicle, your house, your yard, an animal, or anything such as that. So any crime that's committed against the property, not your person. So that's what a property crime is. All right. Well, let's start with talking about your house, all right? And burglary, obviously, is something we always think about. Your house is your castle, right? We don't want anybody to go in. So are we having, do we see a lot of burglaries in Lexington? No, we have our fair share, of course, just like any other city. But, you know, it's a crime of opportunity, right? So, you know, these would-be criminals are coming by your house and they happen to see that your front door is open or whatever it may be. You don't leave your lights on, and there's an opportunity for them to get in. They're going to try it. So, there's... things obviously you can do to help prevent that and we can discuss that later if you wish but yes there are burglaries in Fayette County. I've always heard that typically residential burglars occur more during the day than they do at night. Is that true? That is correct. So most folks are you know out at work usually eight in the morning until four or five in the afternoon. So yes most of the time your burglaries are going to happen during the daytime. And with the holiday season coming up and people being out more shopping and things like that. Do you see an increase in burglaries around this time of year as throughout the entire year? No, I wouldn't say so much for that. No, I would say no. So what are some of the things that we can do around our own home to make sure that we're less likely to be a victim of a burglary? Yeah, I would say light up your house, especially when we're specifically at night, light up your house, lock your doors. Obviously, security systems and surveillance are a big benefit and deterrent for would-be burglars. During the day, I would say, again, just lock your house, secure your property the best that you can, and, you know, watch out for your neighbors as well. So, I know now today, in today's times, there's a lot more people working from home now, So if you know your neighbors, maybe ask them to watch out for your property as you would watch out for their property as well. Well, I think that's a great point as far as talking about neighbors and making sure that you report anything that appears suspicious. And that would be applicable whether it's daytime or nighttime, either one, obviously. What about folks that have camera systems? You mentioned alarm systems. What about folks that may have camera systems, ring doorbells, things like that? Because I know in the last episode, we talked with the Real-Time Intelligence Center, and they talked about the importance of registering those. So have you all seen, from the detective standpoint, have you seen a benefit as far as investigating crimes because of those? Yeah, I would say absolutely. Obviously, like I said, video surveillance is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that a detective can receive, whether that's investigating a residential crime or any crime, commercial crime, theft of packages, whatever it may be. The better shot or the better picture of a suspect that we can get and description of that individual that we can get, the better. So like you had mentioned, there's a lot more people are installing the doorbell cameras as well as security cameras around their property. And there's a way now or that's coming that we can start registering those cameras voluntarily to the police department. So if there is an incident or a crime that occurred within a specific area, we can refer to our resources and see if there's any video surveillance. And if there is, then we can directly link into that system or reach out to the owners and then obtain that very vital piece of evidence that we need. And some people, as far as that goes, would like to stay anonymous. So if they integrate and register their cameras, an officer necessarily doesn't have to go out to their house. So someone may not even know, in case the burglar lives in the neighborhood, that, hey, we're helping the police. Yeah, exactly. I mean, anyone can see that there's a camera system attached to your house or whatnot, but your name doesn't have to be associated with that address or with the video surveillance that we obtain. As of right now, with the unit that I'm working with, I work closely with commercial businesses, but now I don't even have to go to the business itself. I can just send a link directly to them, and everything's happening over the server, over the Internet, and no one has to know specifically about your involvement at all as far as assisting with the police. Awesome. Well, great. So, Nicole, I understand that you are quite the online shopper. Is that right? I am. I am a prime member. So the package is being delivered probably hourly, not just daily, right? No, it's more like every other day. Okay. All right. So is that a concern for us as far as, and particularly it's a year-round thing, But during the holidays, we probably have more packages delivered to the whole. This is definitely peak season for our, you know, if you want to call them porch pirates or whatever it may be. But, yes, this is the time of year where everyone's going to pick up their online shopping in preparation for the holidays, right? So, you know, we just had one yesterday, for instance, that was going around following a FedEx vehicle. So luckily we were able to use the Flock license plate readers to find those suspects and apprehend them at a later time. It's very important to be able to use the resources like we were just talking about. Camera systems are a great tool, and it will help us investigate these crimes and hopefully bring the people that are held responsible for those crimes as well. And just like you said earlier with neighbors, if you see suspicious activity like that, If you see somebody following a delivery truck around or walking up checking boxes on porches, please call the police department. Absolutely. And on the same note, you know, I would extend that invitation or that request to delivery drivers in general now. You know, if you're a delivery driver and you see someone or suspect that someone's following you, it doesn't hurt to at least give the non-emergency line a phone call and ask us to, you know, investigate the potential of what's going on. So that's what I would request. You know, I know these drivers are busy. They have minimum downtime in between their deliveries. If they can't do it themselves, we ask them to contact their dispatch, and I'm sure that might be a little bit easier for them. That way they can continue on the route and the dispatch personnel at their headquarters, wherever it may be, can can call us and give us that information. So now the other part of the property crimes that you all had mentioned was auto thefts or just any crimes from vehicles. So tell us a little more about that. Like, how can we stay safe or what can the community do to not become a victim of those crimes? All right. For auto larcenies in general, you know, this time of year is starting to get colder. I think the temperatures are going to start changing on us over the weekend. And along with that comes people going outside and warming up their cars, right? So most newer cars have a capability of not leaving the keys inside. Unfortunately, some of our older vehicles still require the key and ignition, and most folks leave their doors unlocked. And we have people, these criminals who, you know, they're walking through the neighborhoods. They're looking for that steam coming out of the exhaust or whatever it may be. The lights may be on if it's parked in the driveway, and they take advantage of that. Again, it's a crime, you know, an opportunity for them to get an easy vehicle and just be driving right off before the owner even knows that it's gone. So this is peak season for that, like I said, with the colder weather coming in. And that could be at your house. It could be at a gas station. It could be wherever, right? Yes. And correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, I would recommend to be a little bit more conscious about leaving your car running if it's an older model. because obviously you're going to have to leave the keys in. Like LT was saying, with the newer models and everything, there's the remote start and whatnot, but the older models obviously don't have that capability. Well, we've seen an influx in car thefts across the United States, some very significant numbers across the United States, and we want to make sure that that doesn't continue to be a problem in Lexington. What about stealing the car? So what if somebody breaks in the car? All right. Again, this is a crime that happens year-round. It can increase a little bit as well during the holiday season if we start talking about going shopping and visiting malls and shopping centers and the big parking lots. But, yes, larcenies from autos are one of our biggest Part 1 crimes. And, you know, just last month alone we had, I think around 56 just in East Sector, around 40 some in West Sector, and around 36, I think, in Central Sector. So you add that up, and that's just for the month. And along with that were, I think, around 22 stolen handguns and firearms from these vehicles. So that's a significant amount of guns that are getting stolen from our vehicles and then out here on our streets. So our advice for folks out there is, you know, lock your vehicles, park in well-lit areas if you can, and take all valuables out of your vehicles, especially firearms. You know, the safest place for a firearm is in your house in a safe if you have one or, you know, a locked box or something like that. So we ask that, you know, people take a little extra time all year round in particular for that, for everyone's safety. But in general, with vehicles and car break-ins, we would really like for everyone to start locking their doors and keeping all valuables out of sight. So whether your car is at your house at night sitting outside or whether you're in a parking lot somewhere, making sure those doors are locked and making sure that there's nothing visible in your car that makes it an opportunity, right? So very good advice, very good advice. Also a consideration, too, on the newer models, I'm terrible at remembering to lock my car. But with the newer models, there's oftentimes a setting where, like, once you exit the vehicle after a certain amount of time, your vehicle automatically locks for you. So that could be something to consider for some people that forget sometimes, like myself. So you mentioned shopping, too. Do we have any concerns other than cars being broken into when we're out shopping? Is that one of the main ones probably? Yeah, I would say so. So what you get usually when people shop, especially at a mall or a larger shopping center, is they like to make intermittent trips back and forth to the car from in the mall, right? So they have too many bags and they maybe want to drop some off. So sometimes these criminals are out in the parking lots and they're watching for that, right? So they're watching for this family to bring out some gifts, put them in the car, and then go back inside. That gives them the opportunity to then go to that car because they know they're not going to be back for a minute and take advantage of the gifts that were just purchased and take them home from themselves or whatever else they may do. So just like we talked about earlier, even if it's in your driveway or any parking lot, just if you can, put them in your trunk if you have a trunk, if it's a sedan, obviously. If it's an SUV and you put it in the cargo area, you know, we ask maybe bring a blanket or something like that, some jackets, and just try to cover them up the best you can. because if a would-be criminal walks by your vehicle and they see shopping bags, they're more than likely going to take advantage of that opportunity and get into that vehicle. So with the increased amount of shopping, do we see also an increase with identity theft? And people noticing after the holidays, like, wait a minute, I know I spent some money, but I didn't spend this much money. Yeah, I think that we're all guilty now, especially with online shopping. brick and mortar type of businesses is kind of becoming less popular and now we're ordering more online. So I know there's a lot of interesting websites out there and a lot of interesting items that may be promising the best product ever, but I would suggest be careful with what information that you're providing these maybe less known or less reputable businesses online and just maybe also obtain like some credit monitoring and that will add a sense of protection as well. So if there's any sort of transactions or purchases that you don't recognize, obviously you'll catch it on early and be able to stop that and, you know, prevent any further damage. So absolutely. So we talked about a lot of different types of property crimes today and I I think the theme is we all can be a victim, right? So we need to make sure that we take the steps, whether it's making sure our house is locked, whether it's our cars are locked, nothing's visible in the car, being aware of your surroundings, right? Whether you're out shopping and making sure that we report any suspicious activity that we see. Yeah, by all means, please, if you see something that doesn't look right, give us a call. and hopefully we can get out there with our patrol officers and at least find out and get a good description of these folks and maybe get out with them and investigate their suspicious activity. You all have done a great job today and we appreciate that, but the whole purpose of this is to make sure that you, the public, never have to encounter the detectives, right? So hopefully you'll never get to meet them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'd like to thank Lieutenant Barton and Detective McMillan for joining us today to talk about property crimes. Making sure that you stay safe during the holidays, right? So with the first of the year, next month episode, we are going to be talking about wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness, how we need to be thinking about that and how you need to be thinking about that because everybody's going to be making resolutions, right? Absolutely. So make sure you join us next month on Your Lex PD. Thank you. Thank you. Wake up, today's gonna be a good day It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. It's a misapportment. Cause undergraduate in college, that was mama's dream. But I was on my way to anywhere else when I turned 18. Cause when you got a fast car, you think you got everything. I learned Quakebo's GTOs don't run on the bay. And I ended up broken down in some town north of L.A. Working maximum buyers For a minimum wage Well I fell in love next thing I know Babies came and the car got stuck Sure do miss that old hot rod Sure saved gas and foreign jobs Dad I wonder if I ever let you down If you were ashamed how I turned out Well he lowered his voice Then he raised his breath said let me tell you right now that's something to be proud of that's a life you can hang your hat on you don't need to make a million just be thankful to be working if you're doing what you're able putting food there on the table everybody for the family that you love that's something to be proud of And the fun you ever really do is the best you can Well, you did it, man That's something to be proud of That's a life you can hang your hat on That's a chin held high until it falls down Guts up dead, chest up down Like a small town flag applying Or a newborn baby crying In the arms of the woman that you love That's something to be proud of That's something to be proud of That's something to be proud of That's something to be proud of That's something to be proud of Sometimes the morning cough is way too strong And sometimes what she says, she says all wrong But right or wrong, she's there beside me Like only a friend would be And that's close enough to perfect for me Now she's been known to wear her pants too tight And drinking puts her out just like a lie Heaven knows she's not an angel But she'd really like to be And that's close enough to perfect for me She kisses me each morning And smiles a sleepy smile She don't have to say it, I can see it in her eyes Don't you worry about my woman, what you think she ought to be She's close enough to perfect for me Sometimes she gets down and starts to cry But then again a lady has arrived She's everything I've ever wanted She's all I'll ever need She's close enough to perfect for me She kisses me each morning And smiles her sleepy smile She don't have to say it I can see it in her eyes Don't you worry about my woman Or what you think she ought to be She's close enough to perfect for me Oh, she's close enough to perfect for me. guitar solo Maybe someday I'll be strong Maybe it won't be long I'll be the one who's tough You'll be the one who's got it rough It won't be long and maybe I'll be real strong Maybe I'll do things right Maybe I'll start tonight You'll never cry like me Baby let's just wait and see Maybe I'll start tonight Do things right You control me Oh so boldly Rune me time free So the pain that shakes me Finally makes me Get up off of my knees Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Maybe I'll be as fast as you Maybe I'll break hearts too But I'd make you just slow down When your turned head comes around Maybe I'll break hearts and be as fast as you Thank you. Oh, so good. We'll be right back. Yeah, I'm going to stop. I'm going to walk you long. Thank you. I am Councilwoman Denise Gray. I am proud and honored to represent the 6th District of Lexington. 6th District is an area that has the most Fayette County public schools. We have Bryan Station High School, Bryan Station Middle School, whoop, whoop, here in the house. Also, we have Frederick Douglass High School and Carter G. Woodson Academy to go on and on. We have over 16 Fayette County Public Schools programs. As someone that went through the Black Achievers program when I was younger, I know how important it is for you to be exposed to government. As someone that looked just like you in one of your schools, I never had anyone that looked like me or anyone who was a political leader in our community ever come and speak or ask you to come see them in their offices. And I'm here now in my first term. I want to make sure that you have the opportunities I did not. So I welcome you. We have a large number of my colleagues, commissioners, and even the mayor who are eager to meet you, to let you know what they do on a daily basis. I do understand you have some questions. I want you to ask them those questions, and you can dig a little bit deeper, because we make the hard decisions, and we represent you, and your voice matters. So how this will go on, each person will speak at each table. So that will give you a one-on-one opportunity to speak to each commissioner and each council member present. And we do have our recruiter from our police department. I want you all to start thinking, and you all can spread the word to others, the importance of public safety. We know that there's not that much good press about them, but in Lexington, we are proud. We are honored to have one of the best, maybe the best police department in the nation where what you see in the news is not here. It's down to earth, and I'm honored that that's what we have here. I would like to introduce now my mentor, my friend, One of the longest serving leaders, council members. She was a district council member, went on to be at large council member, which means she represented all of Lexington and not just a district like me. And now she is the top woman, the top leader in all of Lexington next to me. So come on up, Mayor Linda Gordon. Thank you. Oh, she's a hoot, isn't she? Thank you very much, Councilmember Gray. Welcome everybody. It's great to see you all. As you know, I'm the mayor here and I'm really happy to welcome you and to have you in City Hall. And I love it when young people visit our government to learn and you know, you're our future leaders. So this is really important and I know you have your folks here too, right? So you're here, I think, to learn a bit about how government functions and about our city, which is now getting to be a bigger city, about 322,000 people. And so you're going to learn about the inner workings. It's pretty amazing how many things go on inside government and how many services we provide to people. That's why we're here. The only reason government's here is to serve people. If we're not doing that, then we take a step back and we look at how we can better serve you. So I love this engagement and question time and learning to be informed and learning more, because maybe one day one of you will be a council member or a mayor. We need that. So I'm really thrilled that you all are taking the opportunity to do this. To the staff and volunteers, I've seen some of them here for the YMCA of Central Kentucky. I really, really, really appreciate your dedication to this as well as to other things. What you do to support our young people is really something that is critical to our future, and it doesn't go unnoticed. And so with that, I want to thank Councilmember Gray for organizing this, and thank you all for being here. Thank the parents who are here, and I am going to see you in the council meeting, I believe. Thank you. So Marley is the director of the YMCA Central Kentucky Black Achievers Program, and Paula is the president of the YMCA of Central Kentucky. We are also joined by YMCA of Central Kentucky staff, members of the Black Achievers Program, as well as some of their parents. And we thank you all for being here tonight. This program provides young people with resources like academic support, career exploration, mentoring services, and social and emotional well-being programs. All resources that will better equip them for a successful future. Over the past 38 years, the YMCA of Central Kentucky has served 8,000 students. and has awarded seniors over $9 million in scholarships. I am thrilled that these students have these opportunities. I had an opportunity earlier today to speak with some of these young people, and our future is in great hands. So Marley, I want to thank you, your staff, and all the volunteers who commit so much time to this program and to our young people. So at this time, I am pleased to present this proclamation. Here's how it goes. Whereas YMCA Black Achievers is a college and career readiness program that provides equitable access, opportunities, and support to ensure success after high school for historically marginalized youth. And whereas through this program, students are known as achievers and are exposed to academic support, career exploration, mentoring, and social and emotional well-being programs. And whereas achievers are supported by YMCA staff, volunteers, and adult achievers as they develop mind, body, and spirit. and whereas the YMCA of Central Kentucky is dedicated to the betterment of our young people and our community, and whereas we thank the staff and volunteers of the YMCA of Central Kentucky for their determination and compassion. Now, therefore, I, Linda Gorton, Mayor of Lexington, do hereby declare November 2, 2023, YMCA Black Achievers Day in Lexington. Thank you for your good work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. So I'll first ask Marley if she'd like to say a few words. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor Gordon, and thank you, Lexington Urban City Council, for this amazing recognition. As many of you may know, we are a program dedicated to the youth, and we could not do it without the support of our community. So this recognition is so, so, so amazing. And it means a lot that you all are recognizing this program and that you all are recognizing the kids in this program. And it really does mean a lot and just I can't thank you enough for it. Yes. Thank you. All right, Paula, would you like to say a few words? Well, I'd just like to say thank you for recognizing the program and these very bright young people tonight. It really is a community program, it's a volunteer based program. So people like you spending time with them to share your expertise and your knowledge of our community is exactly at the core of what we try to do. So thank you for doing that today. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. And now, Council Member Gray. It's okay. Block Achievers, YMCA Block Achievers. First of all, I would like to say thank you to my colleagues, Council Member James Brown, Council Member Shayla Lynch, for taking a bit of your time to volunteer with the YMCA Black Achievers as well. I was once in your shoes, Achievers. I grew up and was part of the YMCA Black Achievers. It is through that program that I am here today. You are greatness. You are what success looks like. You are what excellence looks like. It is important for you all to be here today to see what we, the elected officials, do on a daily basis. We are here to serve you. the program that we had earlier, that is for me to ensure that you know your power, you know your voice, and we answer to you. And you are to ask us the questions, not just the easy questions, but those hard questions, because that's why we're here. And so now you know you're no longer in my shoes, where I never had anyone that looked like me come in a position of leadership or even within our community who came to speak to me about what's possible. You don't have to live without seeing anyone that looks like you on council that cares enough about you to say, come see me. So use this powerful day. Use this moment. Use your voice now and forevermore. And lift it up and ask those hard questions because you are what excellence looks like. You are what success looks like. So I applaud you. in your walk now and in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Hello and thank you for joining me on this segment of my Council Comment. I'm 9th District Council Member Whitney Elliott Baxter and today I'm at our recycling facility to tell you a little bit more about how we can service your needs here. I've got Nancy Albright here, our Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works. Thank you for joining me today. Happy to be here. So we were talking earlier about the amount of people who utilize our recycling services in Lexington. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I would be happy to. So in Lexington, 82% of the customers that receive city garbage also participate in our recycling program. And that is a really strong number that tells us that a lot of people in our community find this service important. And we want to do everything we can to make it the best service possible. That's great. And I know that we've invested a lot of money recently into our recycling facility. Can you tell me a little bit about what improvements we've made here? Yes, ma'am. We just completed in 2021 a $4 million upgrade of the facility, replaced a lot of the equipment that had not been replaced since the plant opened. And we just got word not that long ago that we received grants from the EPA for an additional $1.8 million. That's by far the largest award in Kentucky and we will use those monies to install another optical sorter, which I know is not necessarily clear, but that helps us sort more material and sort the material we already get better so that we have a better finished product that more of our vendors will be interested in, which will help make this an even better program. I know that behind us we've got a lot of bales of different types of materials and what the public may not know is that when your recycled products come here we actually bale them up and sell them to kind of offset some of our costs here and it's just a service that we can provide to the community so I appreciate all the hard work and grant writing that we've done in the city so that we can better serve our community. Yeah I will say that is one of the things that we're called a recycling facility because we don't actually do something with the product. We bundle it up and then we sell it to vendors who are the ones that turned it into park benches or toilet paper or new cans and bottles. So we package everything that we get up and we provide it to the vendors that are interested in using the material. Great. Well, thank you for this information. I think the community will really appreciate your knowledge on this. Thanks for joining me. Well, thank you all for being here today. I'm now joined by Julie, our plant manager here at the recycling facility. Thanks for being with me today. Thanks for having me. So, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the process that recycled materials go through from the time that a resident puts it in their recycling container until we can see it back here in one of these Absolutely. So basically we get the materials from the trucks. They get dumped in our old tipping fuller in our tent there. And then from there our loader feeds it into the drum feeder and it makes its way up to the pre-sort line. We pull off scrap metal, we pull off plastic bags and a lot of debris that doesn't get bailed into these products here. And then from the pre-sort line it goes through our OCCs and then we sort the fibers and the plastics. and so we have our optical sorters which actually kind of identify what material that is and send it in the right direction. And then from there, once they get through that sorting process, they go to our bunkers and then once the bunkers are full, we bale them and then we have the products that you see here. Seems like a pretty intense process. Yes. So you mentioned pulling things off that we can't recycle. So what are some of those items? You mentioned plastic bags, metal. It sounds like that might be some dangerous materials because I know that our employees are actually physically pulling those off of the line. So what are some tips that you could give our community on appropriate things to recycle? Absolutely. That's correct. There's a couple of different hazards. There's the hazards that we're pulling off the lines. We get things like car rotors and large metal items that are not, they're recyclable, they're just not recyclable at our facility. And then we have materials that kind of get hung up in our equipment. And so things like hoses, extension cords, lights, and even like larger big pieces of cardboard that get, you know, caught up in our equipment. So we recommend that, you know, if you have large cardboard, if you can cut it down to like a five by five foot size so that it fits through our conveyor belt systems. And then that way we can process it. So the items that we can't recycle at this facility, what happens with them? And what's the percentage that maybe still goes into the landfill? Absolutely. So the items that we pull off of the lines and stuff that cannot be recycled, they go to our trash compactors or even our scrap metal bins. And so the scrap metal that we do pull off, we do recycle that with the other recycling companies in the area. And then the other waste ends up going to the transfer facility that we have to pay for disposal. And what do you think that percentage is, the amount of products that come here that we then have to send to the landfill after all? Well, it started off back in September. We were at about 29 percent, and last month we were down to 26 percent of our waste or our material that comes in here does have to go to the transfer station. And we would like that number to continue to go down, and so we're doing things here on our site to help with that and help put our commodities and our products that are still recyclable that end up, you know, at the end of our line here, we can still continue to recycle that. But we do get a lot of garbage and, you know, food waste and things that, you know, larger plastic items that at this time we don't recycle, but that could change in the future. So I think, you know, it's important to keep ahead of the materials that we do recycle, you know, our milk jugs, our laundry detergent jugs. And right now we do not recycle the yogurt containers and the butter dishes. But after the EPA grant that we'll be getting, we will be recycling those items. So I think just the important thing is to keep in mind what items we recycle and what items are actually not recyclable. Thank you. I know we'll talk a little bit more later about educational opportunities for the community so that everybody's kind of on the same page with what we can recycle. But what are some of the biggest, I know you mentioned butter containers and yogurt containers. What are some of the other items that you see a lot that we can't recycle here? Absolutely. We see a lot of car batteries. We see a lot of car rotors. we see a lot of helium tanks and things of that nature. Okay, and for those items, where's the most appropriate place for people to take? So with car batteries, you probably take those back to an auto parts store, and I'm not sure if in this area some of the other scrap recycling companies take those. And then as far as the helium tanks, those also do go to those scrap metal recycling companies. Well great, thank you so much for joining me. Appreciate it. Next we'll have some educational information. I'm now joined by Danny. He's our educational coordinator here. So thanks for being with me today. Happy to be here. So I know we do a lot of education in our community. Can you tell me a little bit about recycling education and what your role is here? Absolutely. So one of the things that we like to do is we do classroom education throughout Fayette County. So we'll work with students from kindergarten all the way through high school and go into the classroom and talk about the importance of waste management and how to properly recycle. We might take a can just like this and we'll walk through all the different ways that this can goes from consumers into the recycle process and back to the consumer shelves again and how many jobs that might create and the processes that are going behind that and the importance of why recycling is so helpful to our communities. We might bring schools on tour groups here. So starting at fourth grade you're welcome to sign up for a free tour at the recycle center. We actually cover the buses for that if you're in a public school system and then we will take high school students on a deeper tour throughout the the facility and let them kind of see all the behind the scenes looks is what that looks like. That's great that you're starting that education at such a young age. I know my children have have participated in those programs and they come home and tell me what I can and can't recycle. So it's very beneficial. So can the public come and take a tour of the facility as well and how would they go about doing that? They absolutely can. So the easiest way to learn more about recycling in the city is go to lexingtonky.gov slash recycle. Okay. So we try to make it as easy as possible and you can go there, learn about the different details and kind of what we offer. We offer tours for anybody in the public who wants to do that. I get emails all the time from different groups, church groups, Boy Scout, Girl Scout groups, interested community groups. We get all kinds of different people who just want to come and see the facility. And so they'll email me. My email address is dwolums at lexaninky.gov. I get emails. We'll schedule a tour. We'll figure out what dates work. And absolutely, we'll do all that. I've taken one of those tours before and this is a really impressive facility, so I would encourage anyone in the community who's interested to come out and take a peek. So what kind of education is out there in regards to what our facility actually recycles? Is there a list on our website that tells people what's an appropriate recycled item? Absolutely. Again, if you go to the lexingtonky.gov slash recycle, it has a list of all the different things that you can recycle. It has an FAQ, so frequently asked questions of what are the things that people might not be sure about. We have a list of all the commonly most requested items and so we have people who are asking about the helium tanks and so you might go there and find out where you can distribute it it also has information about our special collection events and so people who do have items that might be hazardous to our facility here you can go there learn about our upcoming special collection events and know where to take those instead okay and then we also offer electronics recycling in the city as well is that something that people can access year-round or those special days as well we do have a facility off of Versailles Road that you can absolutely visit. The information is also on lexantheku.gov slash recycle. And you can learn a little bit more about what time that's open for the public. As long as you're a Bay County resident and you bring your ID to show that, you're welcome to bring so. We don't collect things from businesses, but from individual households, we absolutely do at that facility. Well, thank you so much for your work in our community and educating, especially our children. They're the next generation, and they're the ones that will benefit from the recycling that we're doing. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have found this segment educational. And like Dani mentioned, visit lexingtonky.gov forward slash recycle for any additional information that you might find beneficial. And as always, you're welcome to follow me on social media. And if you would like to join my weekly newsletter, please email me at wbaxter at lexingtonky.gov. It's been a pleasure talking to you today. Hope you have a good day. Thank you. Thanks for joining me. I'm Council Member James Brown here doing a council comment. There's been a lot of investment in parks lately, and I just want to talk a little bit about some of the investments that we've made in parks that we're going to see in our community centers throughout our communities. I'm here with Anthony Jackson with Parks and Recreation. Thanks for joining me. No problem at all. Happy to be here. Anthony, tell me what your position is again. I'm a recreation manager under our community engagement division, and I'm manager over all five of our community centers. Okay. When you first came into LFUCG and Park and Recreation, you came in kind of working to program some of our neighborhood centers throughout the community. Yes. And since then, I think your role has kind of just changed and kind of matured as you have stepped up for the call to answer the call across. parks. Tell us, so here I know Dunbar Center just recently celebrated a hundred years being a 100 year anniversary. It's been a community center for years. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the programming that takes place here and then at some of our other community centers around the community? Yeah, you know, Dunbar Center is known city-wide for the gym. You know, everybody wants to come to Dunbar and play basketball, but I mean, Dunbar is so much more. You know, we've recently started some cooking classes. We've explored the e-sports and video gaming. We have the classic game room and our new director, Trudy, she does a great job with our arts and craft program. You know they make some beautiful pieces and you know we with that we're able to partner with you know some of our surrounding people like LTMS. They bring a group up of kids and we do all the programming for them in the afternoons. We have some other partners of Box to Box. They come in, use the gym and not even for basketball they come in and play soccer so you know although you know we recognize the history rich history with the basketball we are starting to expand and you know use the center for a lot of other things well it sounds like it's a lot more than just recreation taking place in this community center i know the legacy uh that the dump uh the historic dunbar high school has had in our community and all the work they still do to make sure that we're we're providing quality programming here. I know the trophy room. I just looked through the window. It looks like it's off limits to the spectators. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about, in addition to all the programming, there is some recreation that takes place here. And I know one of the programs that we have is the therapeutic recreation program. Can you tell us a little bit about that program and what they do here, and maybe what they do at some of the other facilities? Yeah, we have one of the best therapeutic recreation programs in the country. They work with individuals with disabilities, physical and mental, from ages six up. One of the key programs they do here is the therapeutic fitness where they come into the gym, they'll do a group activity, and then they'll go to the weight room and do some individualized workouts and exercises. Okay. What about, so what do they do at some of the other facilities? I know at Kenwick they have bocce ball over there. Okay. I actually went and saw that yesterday and had no idea what bocce ball was. So they do bocce ball. I know they do archery at our arts work facility at Carver. Okay. Painting classes. They have a rock band. I think that also takes place at Carver. So they play the rock band game? No, they have a whole rock band. Okay. Guitars and all of that. Yes. Yes. All right. Yeah, that's a little out of my league now. I can play the rock band game, but I don't know anything about a real guitar, so to speak. Now, so that sounds great. I know it's been conversation at the council level and the administration about improving the facilities for our therapeutic recreation. I'm supportive of that, and I'm excited to see what comes out of it. So going back to you and kind of what you do in Parks and Recreation, so you're over all the community centers. Yes. You said there's five of them. Can you list them for us and maybe say what some of these community centers are best known for? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have Dunbar. Like I said, we talked about the gym and the programming at Dunbar, but we also have Kenwick. Kenwick is unique as where the neighborhood is changing. We're starting to change the programming. So at Kenwick, they're doing pickleball. They got indoor pickleball at Kenwick. Yeah, they do have indoor pickleball at Kenwick. They're bringing in yoga, but also keeping it to where the kids that are still in the neighborhood, Sam is doing a great job of arts and crafts over there and just giving them a safe place to be with the game room in the basement of Kenwick. Okay. We have Castlewood. Castlewood is another one that we have a full-size gym, and that's where we see the bulk of our middle and high school students going. Every Wednesday they have this big basketball battle, and, I mean, it could be upward of 60 kids in there. You know, it's king of the court. You're not king of the court. If you keep winning, you stay on the court. If you keep winning, you stay on the court. That's the rule. But also, you know, catering to some younger kids. They do homework, help. Okay. And then, you know, they also a good partner with the therapeutic recreation program in the summer where they have a summer camp out there for kids six to 11 years old. I'm familiar with that camp. Yes. Oh, yeah. And then we have Taste Creek Community Center, which is one of our newer community centers that we just opened. What's unique about Taste Creek is that it's on the Taste Creek campus. Yeah. So we have the elementary, middle and high school, and then we have the community center. So we see a lot of kids come straight from school to the community center. That's great because I think that's set up well to engage the neighborhood and the young people that we want to see in our community. Yes, we are definitely engaging in more youth activities at that community center and still trying to get those high schoolers in, even if it's just to hang out and mentor some of the younger kids. And then we have William Wells Brown, which is unique as it's inside of William Wells Brown Elementary. So Ms. Jill does a lot of partnership programs with the school. You know, a lot of those kids come straight from the 21st century program to the after school program up to the community center. And then she has this amazing adult wellness program. And they're dancing and doing yoga and doing Zumba. So it's pretty incredible. Now, I think Miss Jill has a reputation that goes beyond the walls of the community center. She's done a great job for a long time engaging that community and make sure that there's quality programming at William Wells Brown for the families in that neighborhood. Yes, indeed. So I started off talking about the investment that the city has made in parks, and I know I was at a ribbon-cutting yesterday where we've invested a lot of money out, Cardinal Run area, for the development of that new park. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the investment that we have made recently here in this community center? I see construction in the hallway. I'm looking up at new windows in this gym. Can you talk a little bit more about what folks that come to this center will see in regards to improvements? Yeah, so specifically in the gym, we're getting new windows and a new roof. And that's really going to, you know, cut down on our electricity, our heating, you know. We'll start to see those things kind of drop down as we're getting more efficient, you know, windows and things like that. And then our bathrooms, we're getting on the second and third floor where our LFUCG offices are. We're getting new restrooms. And then here on the first floor, we converted our e-sports room, formerly the video game room, and that's going to be a bathroom. And then across the hall, it's going to be a handicapped accessible restroom. Okay. Yes. Yeah, now I know the Dunbar Center Advisory Board has been real strong advocates for this center and the city's continued commitment to making improvements here. So I'm thankful that we have the funds and the ability to do some of these improvements. I know we're going to look to try to do more as we go forward. And I just want to say thank you for all you do to serve our community and your role in park and recreation. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yes. All right. So I think the information is going to be shared on the screen. If you've got any questions, I want to come and see what's going on at Dunbar Community Center. Reach out. Thank you. Do you ever let me go? Or the other guy that you knew before Ooh, I hated to the great guy Not much longer would you be mine Ooh, I hated to the great guy And I'm just about to lose my mind Money, honey, yeah guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. But I thought it was Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Crazy I'm crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so lonely I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted And then someday you'd leave me for somebody new Worry, why do I let myself worry? Wondering, what in the world did I do? Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you. I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying. And I'm crazy for loving you. Crazy For thinking That my love Could hold you I'm crazy For trying And crazy For crying And I'm crazy For loving you 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 People tell me it ain't no use in trying My little girl, you're so young and free And one thing I know is true You're gonna die before your time is due See my daddy in bed is dying See his hair turning gray He's been working and slaving his life away I know Cause he's been working, yeah Every day Slaving his life away He's been working, baby He's been working, working, working We gotta get out of this place If it's the last thing we ever do We gotta get out of this place Girl, there's a better life for me and you My little girl, you're so young and pretty And one thing I know is true You'll be dead before your time is due Yes, you will See my daddy in bed at times See his hair been turning gray He's been working and sleeping his life away Yes, I know We gotta get out of this place If it's the last thing we ever do We gotta get out of this place Girl, there's a better life for me and you We gotta get out of this place If it's the last thing we ever do We gotta get out of this place Girl, there's a better life for me and you Oh, you know it, baby And I know it too, baby Oh, yeah I hold you in my arms Is the band playing But all those words whispered, baby Just as you turn away I saw you last night Out on the edge of town I want to read your mind And know just what I've got In this new thing I found So tell me what I see When I look in your eyes Is that you, baby Or just a breath in the sky I heard somebody call your name From underneath our willow I saw something something strange Underneath your pillow Well I tried so hard baby But I just can't see What a woman like you Stolen with me So tell me who I see When I look in your eyes Is that you, baby Or just a bridge in the sky Now look at me, baby Struggling to do everything right And then it all falls apart Up and out of the lights I'm just a lonely pilgrim I walk this world in weather I want to know if it's you I don't trust Cause I damn sure don't trust myself Now you play the loving woman I play the faithful man But just don't look too close Into the palm of mine We stood at the altar The gypsy saw how future was right But come the wee wee hours Or maybe, baby, the gypsy lies So when you look at me You better look hard and look twice Is that me, baby? Or just a dream into a sky Tonight our bed is cold Lost in the darkness of our love God has mercy on the man Who does what he so loves Thank you. All around the limbo world Gonna do the limbo rock All around the limbo clock Jack be limbo, Jack be quick Jack go on the limbo stick All around the limbo clock Hey, let's do the limbo rock Limbo lower now Limbo lower now How low can you go? First you spread your limbo beat Then you move to limbo beat Limbo ankle, limbo knee Bend back like a limbo tree Jack be limbo, Jack be quick Jack go under limbo stick All around the limbo clock Hey, let's do the limbo rock La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la All around the limbo clock. Hey, let's do the limbo rock. Don't move that limbo bar. You'll be a limbo star. How low can you go? Thank you. Thank you. Got the right stuff, baby. You're the reason why I sing this song. All that I needed was you and I. Oh, girl, you're so right. And all that I wanted was you and I. You made all my dreams come true. 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 See it in everything you do, even in your thoughts. You got the right stuff, baby. Love the way you turn me on. You got the right stuff, baby. You're the reason why I sing this song. All that I needed was you in my life. You're so right And all that I wanted was you You made all And you're one of my dreams You're so right Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh The right station Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh The right station 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 On this edition of Lexington Now, Part 2 of 2023, a year in review. Happy New Year and welcome to Lexington Now for the week of January 1st, 2024. I'm Neil Noah. We continue our look back at 2023 with a trio of stories focused on recreation. First, the opening of a welcome addition along the new Town Branch Trail. Splash at Charles Young Park. I am Colonel Charles Young of the United States Army, 10th Cavalry, and I'm here to open the ceremony for the celebration of this park. Many of you know a little bit about my history. I was the third African American to graduate from West Point and had a long career in the United States Army. And at the time of the start of World War I, I was the highest ranking African-America in the Army. Today's a big day. We are here to officially open Splash, a large water feature that's bringing water play, space to the East End neighborhood and downtown. Splash connects the park's new playground, resurfaced basketball court, and community center to the Town Branch Commons Trail. making Charles Young Park a cornerstone of the neighborhood as well as the community. Splash has something for everyone. And now I know eventually y'all are going to take your shoes off and get wet, right? It's designed for children of all ages and abilities. It also offers a comfortable, relaxing area for parents and for those who stop in for a break off the Town Branch Commons Trail. As you can see, it's already very popular. As you can see throughout the splash pad, Brigadier General Charles Young is described as humble, courageous, and determined. The timeline surrounding the perimeter of the splash pad details the history of his remarkable life. I keep inheriting wonderful things that was left by Council at Large Brown, and for that I am truly grateful. It has been a long time since this park has truly been vibrant and a lot of children in the park. I am so excited, as you can hear in the background, that it is getting ready to be filled with noise. I love to have noise. The voices of our future is behind me. So I look forward to families coming back to Charles Young to reunite. This is a deep, rich area for the East End neighborhood. We will make this safe. We will bring our neighborhoods back. We will bring our children back to the park. We will have football, basketball, run through the water, picnics, family reunions. It is time to come back home. So East End community, come on down to Charles Young and enjoy yourself. You can put your hands together for that one. I just want to say it's another beautiful day in East End as we continue to show our commitment to reinvesting in this community. You have to be intentional and you have to be focused whenever you invest, whether private or public dollars in a community, a historic community like East End with that seeing a lot of investment and kind of turnover in regards to the older infrastructure. And I'd just like to give a shout out to our parks department, Monica and her team, Brandy, for reaching out to the Charles Young Advisory Board, the William Wells Brown Community Center and school, and all the other neighborhood partners to get input and to get feedback on what this amenity in this community should be. It is such a pleasure to be here to celebrate the opening of Splash, a project that embodies so much that is important to the Community Foundation. Equitable, beautiful parks and playgrounds for everyone, fun, safe, creative water play, a more vibrant, healthy, engaged, and connected neighborhood, community, and city, and the power of charitable giving. When I spoke with Monica Conrad a little over a year ago, I conveyed to her the American Water Charitable Foundation is looking for the perfect project in Lexington, in our region, to focus on water-based play and nature-based play and so forth. And they have a $250,000 grant that they'd like to contribute. Do you have something? And she mentioned, I think I do. And today we're celebrating that. When she told me the story of the park and the collaboration and the engagement of the community and so many partners, we and the American Water Charitable Foundation knew this was the perfect fit. Three, two, one. One of the biggest stories of the year also happened along Town Branch Trail in the form of the groundbreaking of Town Branch Park, destined to be the crown jewel of Lexington's trail system. It's hard to imagine that in just two short years, all of this will be transformed into what you see in the video on my right. A beautiful green space featuring a high-tech stage and 4,000-person amphitheater. A unique children's playground, educational and interactive water play area. A dog park for both small and large dogs. food and beverage offerings, a butterfly garden, an art installation, the Town Branch Commons Trail, a recreation lawn, a reading room, and so much more. The park will also reconnect the community to Town Branch Creek through this space just to my right. That actually is the creek rolling through in the middle of those trees. I became involved in this project at the request of my dear friend and then-Mayor Jim Gray. and a few other civic-minded friends and peers of mine were asked to take a task of creating a public park for Lexington that would be privately funded. This was an unprecedented project for our community. Raise $31 million, he told me, of private funds to build a world-class park in the heart of downtown for all of our residents and visitors to enjoy. What a dream. Our community has never come together to raise that much money for a single cause like this. Some people didn't think we could do it. Actually, there were many people that didn't think we could do it. And I would hear about it every now and then. Maybe they were right. We didn't raise $31 million. We raised $39 million! It was Victor Hugo who famously said, there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Now, I would just add that an idea without funding is nothing more than a hallucination. So fortunately and inspiringly, Town Branch Park is a reality and not a hallucination. Now let me too pay tribute to Ann Bacus, Lexington's Grand Dame. The late W.T. Young was often described as the bell cow of fundraising and philanthropy. And of course the bell cow is the one who leads. Well, there's a new bell cow in town. This is a groundbreaking. A groundbreaking. groundbreaking groundbreaking in that we are literally breaking ground in this case someone said asphalt to begin construction of this wonderful park. And groundbreaking in the landmark sense in that we are creating a new landmark, a new destination, a place for community celebration, a place to bring your children and your visitors from out of town, a place to enjoy a brisk walk or an evening stroll. This park is also groundbreaking in a pioneering sense. It is not every day in our city that the private sector comes together to fund something like Town Branch Park. This is a big deal. This park is a gift. It's a gift of improved quality of life to each and every one of us, as well as all 325,000 people who live here, as well as their visitors. That's really special. Buildings come and go. Parking lots come and go. But parks can live forever if you take care of them. And I can assure you that our board and the people that have donated their time and energy here are going to make sure that this park is not built but is taken care of. Lexington's Parks Department announced the development of its largest addition in over 26 years with the groundbreaking of Cardinal Run North. Today has been 26 years in the making. Woo! We're finally doing it. Back in 1997, this property was given to our community, along with Cardinal Run South, an incredible gift of over 190 acres of pristine bluegrass property. So far, the public has only been able to really enjoy 54 of those acres, and that is Cardinal Run South. The bulk of the property has remained inaccessible because we have not been able to afford to develop a usable park. And that ends today. The city is opening the doors to Cardinal Run North with a $10.1 million investment through American Rescue Plan funds. At Cardinal Run North, Lexington will soon be able to enjoy two miles of natural hiking trails, six pickleball courts, a basketball court, four youth multipurpose fields, a large playground, a dog park with two paddocks, a mile-long paved shared-use trail, two picnic shelters, and many other amenities. There will be something for everyone. These features were selected in part by the public during a public engagement period last year. Almost 900 people filled out the survey. We also followed the guidance in our Parks Master Plan. The two parks, Cardinal Run North and South, are separated by Parkers Mill Road. We will install a crosswalk to make it easy for citizens on both sides of Parker's Mill to enjoy both parks. I remember attending some of the public input sessions on this, and it was really fun to watch constituents and other folks across the whole county come in and talk about their ideas. And as the mayor just said, you saw some of the cool things that are going to be here. The trail, everyone loves a dog park. You've got recreational opportunities out here. And just the acreage itself. What a wonderful gift this is. And thank you, Parks and Rec Director Conrad, the whole staff. I know you put a lot of work and time in it. It's great that it's here. You know, there's nothing better than a groundbreaking except for ribbon cutting. This has been one of those projects that takes a lot of people. It takes a village to kind of make something like this happen. I think the best thing about this park for District 10 is it is very walkable from most of the neighborhoods on this side of Harrodsburg Road. And I think that those people will be using it extensively. I also think that the best thing about parks is not only do they provide physical help for people, But the open area, guys, is a great mental and emotional support system for the people here in Lexington. We partnered with Fayette County Public Schools, Girls Who Game, and the district-wide Minecraft Challenge to create really an inclusive, accessible, Cardinal-run North vision utilizing Minecraft gaming and design. So thanks to all those Fayette County School kids who are out here with us today. It's a big deal. We're now working with ATS and Tekton Construction Companies to deliver the park design. The park will provide the community with access to beautiful expansive green spaces, rich with a blend of topography, including forests and karst areas. The addition of the park will increase the portion of the neighborhood within a 10 minute walk to a park and access to natural areas which are cornerstones of our parks master plan. Our parks team who've already been recognized today, I really can't thank them enough. They're the ones who bring you clean, green, programmable green space every day in our community. They're really the backbone of our division and the ones who deliver these wonderful park spaces. 3, 2, 1. When we come back, we continue our look back at 2023. Hello, I'm Lieutenant Chris Van Brackle with the Lexington Police Department Traffic Unit. Today we are talking about disability accessible parking and the aisles between those parking places. Accessible parking is a valuable and necessary resource for people with disabilities, and that includes the striped area next to accessible parking spots. These are access aisles, and it is illegal to park here, even if you have an accessible parking permit. Police and Lex Park will write tickets when they see vehicles parked in an access aisle or parked in an accessible space without a placard and the fine is $250. Know where and where not to park. Keep the access aisles clear. Thank you and drive safe. Welcome back to Lexington Now. In 2023, Lexington's Fire Department got a major boost in the way of a grant for the training of 27 new EMT paramedics. Like many communities, the post-pandemic years have seen an uptick in call volume here in Lexington. Last year alone, we responded to over 66,000 emergency calls, with at least three-quarters of those being medically related. In order to adequately respond to those calls, it is critical that we have the absolute best trained and best prepared paramedics here at the Lexington Fire Department. This grant will allow us to not only continue, but to increase the capacity of our paramedic class, putting more highly trained providers on the front lines ready to answer the call. The Lexington Fire Department, with the support of our LFUCG leaders, will continue to seek new and innovative ways to meet the growing needs of our community. As Chief Wells said, today we're talking about something very important in our city. And really it all boils down to good, strong public safety. We know that's the foundation of a great community is good, strong public safety. So today's announcement will make our city safer. Our fire department has won an assistance to firefighters grant that will pay for training and certification of 27 new EMT paramedics and you're looking at them right now. This is a huge step forward for us. We have the best fire department in Kentucky and in the region. And this grant will help them be even better. All Lexington firefighters are certified as EMT basic, which is the norm among professional firefighting departments. However, and this is something which is, I didn't know before today, this is wonderful. Half of Lexington's firefighters are certified paramedics, paramedics, which is highly unusual, especially in Kentucky. And over half of all the state's registered paramedics work in the Lexington Fire Department. Think about that, over half of Kentucky's registered paramedics. And you've helped train them, Dr. Patty Howard. As a registered nurse, this gives me a lot of confidence in our ability to help our residents in emergency situations. Just yesterday, the 22nd anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy, we were all reminded again of the importance of our first responders. People who routinely put their lives on the line and run toward the danger while the rest of us are running away. As mayor, one of my responsibilities is to ensure that our firefighters are well-trained and well-equipped. Today's announcement is about an important investment in their training and in Lexington's community safety. So congratulations and thank you so much. We're really excited about this class. Thank you. Lexington Police expanded their capabilities with the opening of the new East Sector Roll Call Center. We joined officials for the ribbon cutting. Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose rush drive, 10 bright stars? This new East Sector Roll Call will position our police closer to major traffic arteries and to neighborhoods along Manowar. It will also save us money in utility expenses and in rent. This roll call is a satellite office where police officers who work in the East Sector of City Report for Duty. We also have a West Sector office on Old Frankfurt Pike, a Central Sector near Eastland, and our headquarters downtown. Police began using this new East Sector office last month. This 7,900 square foot, 4.2 million dollar building was designed with energy efficiency in mind using insulated concrete, wall construction, high efficiency windows, and a geothermal heating and cooling system. Work areas all receive natural light. This is one of the most beautiful things about this building is the natural light and the The building can accommodate solar panels if needed. It also incorporates many security features including a controlled entrance, bullet resistant materials, a separation of private offices and meeting spaces, separate entrance for the public and police, a storm shelter, separation between public and police parking. really state-of-the-art. The building is designed to accommodate a variety of uses. The facility's conference room and roll call are separated by a movable partition that allows for increased space that could be used for community meetings. Where's the neighborhood mayor? Community meetings. award ceremonies and classroom training opportunities. Previously, East Sector Roll Call was located on Center Parkway in a rental facility. This new facility has been built on land already owned by our city. Any building like this is a true partnership and a true collaboration. So, you know, I got to thank the community for their support. You know, since I've been here, I don't think we've had a roll call facility built from the ground up. And that takes a lot of support. It takes a lot of support from our mayor and her team, but also from our council members. And it means, it means, truly means a lot to me that you all stepped up and supported the police department and we appreciate that very much. This is a satellite facility, but it's built with a purpose for us to be part of the East sector community, part of not just the community surrounding and not just the school here, but part of whole East sector. It's inviting and it's accessible. That's what I want you to know about our officers. Our officers do a great job every day. They want you to know that they're part of the community too. Three, two, one. Lexington Police continued their reputation for innovation with the announcement of the new FUSIS system, consolidating assets to further streamline public safety. Today I'm excited to announce the integration of the FUSIS platform. This new technology will help unify all of our public safety assets, like flock license plate readers, traffic cameras, and other cameras operated by private entities who opt in. With this technology, we will be able to solve crimes quicker and provide real-time information to officers. Technology does not replace good police work, but instead it is another tool for our officers and detectives that they can use for safer and more efficient investigations. We will still have officers talking and engaging with the community and following up on any leads. The FUSES platform also allows businesses, the community, and our partners and residents to engage with us in a more efficient manner and help keep us and our community safe. We are taking an exciting step forward that will make our community safer through technology. Our investment in Flock license plate readers has been an enormous success. That is why I proposed back in April that we take the next step and establish the Real-Time Intelligence Center with an additional investment of about $150,000 annually in video-based intelligence software known as FUSIS. We're now ready to begin using FUSIS in our community. It allows us to combine our existing technology assets, including alerts from FLOC license plate readers and video from traffic cameras, while also allowing the voluntary addition of private security cameras from partnering businesses and even residential cameras. cameras. Starting today, businesses and individual citizens here can choose to have a direct impact on the safety of our community through this technology partnership. The software combines these assets into a single source. It's an investigative tool and a resource we can use to streamline emergency response and incident management with real-time information for our first responders. Technology is the future, some say. It's here now. We started this on July 1st, and after about two months, we're almost close to being fully implemented. We nearly have all of our traffic cameras loaded into the system, but our site is live. Our site is connectlex.org. That's where the community can go to register their cameras and or integrate their cameras into the Real-Time Intelligence Center. Registration is voluntary and it's free. So that's where we see most of our residential cameras. We would like to just know you have a camera in the area. It's good for us to have that ability to go directly to you and also reach out to you electronically to see if you had any video that may be related to a criminal incident that you wish to share. If you are a business and you want to integrate your cameras into the real-time intelligence center, it allows us to be efficient when we respond to your business in or around your business if a criminal act is occurring. There is a small fee associated with that. That fee allows you to buy the purchase of the core device, which will integrate your cameras, and then there is a yearly subscription thereafter, but that is a nominal fee of $150, I believe. The good thing about it, you don't have to replace your camera system. It integrates with most every camera system that's out there, So it's just literally a plug and play option that usually can be set up within a week's time once the order actually received. Fuses will then get on the phone until you had to connect that. Plug it in and you'll be integrated right with the system. That's all for now. But as always, you can keep up with us on social media. Check out the latest traffic updates on X at Lex Rex or catch our live traffic cans on LexingtonKY.gov. For all of us at Lex TV, I'm Neil Noah. And that's it for now. I'm sorry. I'm out. Well, I had this dream once, I had it in my head She was the purest beauty, but not the common kind She had a way to... Hey, it's Bajan Niko and we are here with your next episode of Your Lex PD. We are here at the new East Sector Roll Call at the intersection of Clearwater Way and Sarin Drive. Outstanding facility here, right? Very nice. State of the art. Yes. This month, the holidays are coming up. Yes. Right? So we want to talk about property crimes. And property crimes are something that obviously we experience year-round, but we think a little bit more about it during the holidays just because of opportunities. Yes. So today, let's go talk to a couple of our detectives about car break-ins, house break-ins, all these types of things that we don't want you to encounter. And hi, we are back with Lieutenant Barton and Detective McMillian with the property crime section. So we're going to be talking about property crimes today. Can you describe what property crimes are? So property crimes are basically any theft or damage to any of your property that you may own, whether it be your vehicle, your house, your yard, an animal, or anything such as that. So any crime that's committed against the property, not your person. So that's what a property crime is. Okay. Well, let's start with talking about your house, all right? And burglary, obviously, is something we always think about. Your house is your castle, right? We don't want anybody to go in. So are we having, do we see a lot of burglaries in Lexington? No, we have our fair share, of course, just like any other city. But, you know, it's a crime of opportunity, right? So, you know, these would-be criminals are coming by your house and they happen to see that your front door is open or whatever it may be. You don't leave your lights on and there's an opportunity for them to get in and try it. So, there are some... obviously