# Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee - April 30, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · April 30, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6101 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6101?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-04-30 - **Last revised**: April 30, 2024 - **Length**: 16,669 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 Environmental Quality & Public Works Committee met on April 30, 2024, at 1:00 PM, with H. LeGris presiding as the meeting officer. The committee addressed four agenda items during the session, focusing primarily on informational updates and administrative matters related to environmental quality and public works operations. The committee took three votes during the meeting, with the primary action item being the approval of the March 12, 2024 Committee Summary. The remaining agenda consisted of three informational presentations covering key operational areas: a review of the Urban Services Fund, an update on Urban Forestry and Street Trees programs, and a presentation on the Pavement Management Plan. These informational items provided committee members with updates on ongoing municipal services and infrastructure planning efforts. No public comments were heard during this meeting, indicating the session was focused on internal committee business and departmental updates. The meeting appears to have been primarily administrative in nature, combining routine approval of previous meeting records with informational briefings on important public works and environmental quality initiatives affecting the municipality. ## Attendance The following members were present at the meeting on April 30, 2024: • H. LeGris • D. Wu • T. Fogle • S. Lynch • B. Monarrez • D. Gray • P. Worley • F. Brown • D. Sevigny **Absent:** • L. Sheehan No members arrived late to the meeting. Nine members were present with one absence recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took action on three items during the April 30, 2024 meeting, with all motions passing by voice vote. **March 12, 2024 Committee Summary Approval** [timestamp: 00:45] D. Sevigny motioned to approve the March 12, 2024 Committee Summary, with D. Gray providing the second. The motion passed by voice vote with no opposition recorded. **Ordinance 16-203-2024** [timestamp: 02:10:00] H. LeGris motioned to approve Ordinance 16-203-2024, which amends Section 16-203 to update division titles and remove penalty reduction provisions for failing to contest citations. The ordinance passed by voice vote with no second recorded and no opposition noted. **Ordinance 17B-2024** [timestamp: 02:12:00] H. LeGris also motioned to approve Ordinance 17B-2024, which amends Chapter 17B relating to street trees. This ordinance similarly passed by voice vote with no second recorded and no opposition. All three votes were conducted as voice votes rather than formal roll call votes, with no individual member votes recorded for or against any of the measures. No abstentions were noted for any of the items considered. ## Approval of the March 12, 2024 Committee Summary [timestamp: 00:45] The committee reviewed the summary of their March 12, 2024 meeting for approval. H. LeGris led the discussion of this agenda item. The committee members examined the written summary of the previous meeting without identifying any additions or corrections needed to the document. No concerns were raised regarding the accuracy or completeness of the March 12, 2024 meeting summary. Following the review, the committee approved the March 12, 2024 Committee Summary without amendments. ## Review of Urban Services Fund [timestamp: 05:00] Commissioner Erin Hensley presented an overview of the Urban Services Fund during the April 30, 2024 meeting. The presentation provided a comprehensive examination of the fund's structure, financial components, and current status. The Urban Services Fund operates primarily through ad valorem tax revenue, which serves as its main funding source. Hensley detailed how these tax dollars are allocated across three core service areas: • Street lighting maintenance and operations • Street cleaning services • Refuse collection programs The presentation focused on explaining the fund's financial mechanisms and how it supports these essential municipal services. Hensley outlined the current financial status of the fund, providing commissioners and the public with insight into its operational capacity and sustainability. D. Sevigny also participated in the discussion, contributing to the review of the fund's operations and financial structure. The agenda item was classified as informational, meaning no formal action was required from the commission. The presentation served to update commissioners on the fund's performance and ensure transparency regarding how ad valorem tax revenue is utilized for urban services within the municipality. The review highlighted the fund's role in maintaining critical infrastructure and services that directly impact residents' daily lives, including street maintenance, waste management, and public lighting systems. This type of regular financial review helps ensure accountability in municipal spending and provides commissioners with the information needed for future budgetary decisions related to urban services. ## Urban Forestry/Street Trees Update [timestamp: 01:00:00] Heather Wilson presented an update on the city's urban forestry and street tree initiatives during the meeting. The presentation covered two main areas: the Hazard Street Tree Cost-Share Program and proposed changes to municipal ordinances. Wilson provided details on the Hazard Street Tree Cost-Share Program, which appears to be designed to address problematic street trees that pose safety or infrastructure risks. The program likely involves shared financial responsibility between the city and property owners for tree removal or maintenance. The presentation also addressed proposed amendments to Chapters 16 and 17B of the municipal code. These ordinance changes relate to urban forestry management and street tree regulations, though the specific details of the proposed modifications were not elaborated in the available information. Jennifer Carey also participated in the discussion as a key speaker, contributing to the urban forestry update alongside Wilson. This agenda item was informational in nature, serving to keep council members and the public informed about ongoing urban forestry initiatives and regulatory developments. No formal action was taken during this presentation, as it functioned as a status update on the city's tree management programs and related policy considerations. The update reflects the city's ongoing efforts to manage its urban forest canopy and address street tree-related issues through both programmatic solutions like the cost-share initiative and regulatory frameworks through ordinance updates. ## Pavement Management Plan [timestamp: 02:20:00] Commissioner Nancy Albright presented the Pavement Management Plan during the April 30, 2024 meeting, providing a comprehensive overview of the municipality's road maintenance strategy and budget framework. The presentation covered three primary areas: budget allocations for pavement projects, the methodology for prioritizing road improvement initiatives, and planned future programs for ongoing road maintenance. Commissioner Albright detailed how the plan systematically addresses the community's infrastructure needs through strategic planning and resource allocation. The agenda item was structured as an informational presentation, allowing Commissioner Albright to share the technical aspects of pavement management with the governing body and public. The plan outlined the criteria used to evaluate road conditions and determine which projects receive priority funding, ensuring that limited resources are directed toward the most critical infrastructure needs. As part of the future initiatives discussion, the presentation addressed long-term planning strategies designed to maintain and improve the overall condition of the road network. This forward-looking approach aims to balance immediate repair needs with preventive maintenance programs that can extend pavement life and provide cost-effective solutions. The agenda item concluded as an informational session, with no formal action required from the governing body. The presentation served to update officials and residents on the current state of pavement management efforts and the strategic approach being taken to address ongoing infrastructure challenges within the community's transportation network. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the March 12, 2024 Committee Summary - **Ordinance 16-203-2024** — passed (0-0): Amending Section 16-203 to update division titles and remove penalty reduction for failing to contest citations - **Ordinance 17B-2024** — passed (0-0): Amending Chapter 17B relating to street trees --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. As you all may notice, Councilmember Sheehan is not with us. She regrets that she's unable to be here today and therefore I'll be chairing. So good afternoon and welcome everybody. I will now call to order the April 30th, 2024 meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Thank you all for being here and we're looking forward to our time together. The first item on our agenda is approval of the March 12, 2024 committee summary. Second. Okay. Before we make our motions, I just want to ask quickly if there are any additions or corrections. All right. Hearing none, is there a motion to approve? Second. Second. Excellent. Motion from Councilmember Sevigny, second from Councilmember Gray. Is there any discussion on the motion? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. All right. If you all want to turn to your agenda, you'll see that the next item on our agenda is a review of the Urban Services Fund. Hensley from the Department of Finance will be providing us with this presentation and I want to go ahead and turn it over to Councilmember Sevigny to provide a background and any introductions. Councilmember, go ahead. Thank you, Chair. While we focus a lot of time and energy on the general fund, which is about a 500 million dollar fund, our city budget includes other income sources that bring us to about a $900 million budget. This item focuses on the Urban Services Fund, which supports street lights, street sweeping, and solid waste, which are about $50 million of our total revenue. Last summer when I put this item into committee because this body ended up approving a tax increase for street lights that was subject to a recall and it created a second tax bill, which made me more aware during the discussion that our tax revenue for these items seemed to fall short of our cost of service to perform the services. So I wanted to do a bit of a deeper dive. So Commissioner Hensley and her team have been great to work with, and now I have a better understanding of how these city services work and what it takes to make them self-supported. I wanted to specifically share this conversation before we approve the budget so we understand the fiscal responsibility of this body, approving them, and our approval ends up triggering some events that take place later in August when we talk about tax rates. So without further ado, I just really wanted to thank you again, you and your team, for all your work, and I really look forward to the presentation. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. As Councilmember Savigny mentioned, when we talk, the majority of our conversations revolve around the General Services Fund. That is the $500 million budget that he's referring to, but today we're going to be talking about the Urban Services Fund, which is the little orange section of our budget that's 7%. That activity is reported for your all's informational purposes as a whole. So the Urban Services Fund collections are through ad valorem, and they're reported regardless of activity in our ACFER, in our audited financial statements. But we do track each item individually. Sorry. Those items include street lights, the refuse collection, and street cleaning services. And the idea is that the money that's generated from citizens paying for those services, those funds only go to the activity for which they are generated. So it's really, in accounting terms, it's a restricted fund. There are special service districts within this fund, and I'm sure everybody's aware we get very confused sometimes between the difference between a council district and a taxing district. They're not quite the same thing, but we do get about $59 million for the purposes of the streetlights, street cleaning, and refuse collection. Our taxing districts, just in case anybody had any questions, we've listed them. There actually is an eighth taxing district that Council Member Gray noted today. I didn't even catch it. it is taxing district 8 and it doesn't actually even show up on the map because it includes a couple of parking lots for churches. So you won't actually see those, but it's a state mandated taxing entity. But just in case you're wondering where you fall, any of our residents can look at this map and see where their taxing district is. They also can look outside their window and see if they have streetlights or if their garbage is picked up and often they will see street sweep. sweepers coming by. So as far as the streetlights activity goes, the driver on the ad valorem is the .027 on each $100 of assessed value, and the primary driver of cost for that activity is the utility cost. We do have a little bit that goes into, you know, new streetlights in in different areas, but the vast majority of this cost is our electric cost. GIS was very kind as well as traffic engineering, and we've actually completed an updated streetlight census this year. And so we take a look at all of the different streetlights. They don't all actually charge the same. Some of them are more energy efficient, some are less, some are historical, and they actually have different fees. they were able to go through and map each and every streetlight, there's a little zoomed in look for you, each and every streetlight in the city. And those that are servicing neighborhoods or areas of a population where they live are charged through ad valorem. Those that are general, that are downtown or for common areas, those get charged to the general services fund. So there actually is a split based on the individual lights and everywhere they live is how that gets charged out for the year. For the streetlight financials, you will notice, as you all recall, we did an adjustment to this past year. Our actuals were running that activity even with a transfer from general fund in the deficit, meaning it cost us more than we were bringing in for that activity. And so the general fund was having to assist with that. With the rebalancing from the ad valorem conversations this last fall, we are looking to be on more solid footing and we're keeping up with the increased cost for electricity for those lights. In the mayor's proposed budget next year, we have revenue of about $8.9 million and expenses that are just over that. But we are bringing in a beginning fund balance of just over half a million dollars to make that work. As far as street cleaning goes, the revenue driver again is on ad valorem. All of these are going to be on ad valorem .009 on each $100 of assessed value of property. And we have expense drivers, which are our vehicle fuel and repairs, as well as vehicle replacements as you guys can imagine. Those are not cheap vehicles to purchase. So when we have to replace them or keep up with our fleet, that's rather expensive. And then also the personnel that are included that are actually driving the trucks. So those are the major drivers for expenses there. In our street cleaning, we have actually had a couple of really good years. Our fund balances and our revenues have carried us through the last several years, so we haven't really looked at that one and targeted that one for a readjustment or realignment. But we are moving in a direction where we've been kind of spending that down. We have made some investments in our fleet, done capital improvements, and made the decision to do that. And then also, just as a kind of frame of reference for this one, when we start seeing funds that are not supporting themselves or not supporting the activities, we really try and be thoughtful about the activities that we're performing. So if we are running behind, we may stretch out street sweeping and not have as many folks doing in streets as often, or we may make sure that we don't have anybody that's on overtime that's causing additional costs. So we really try and manage within the function of the activity to try and make sure that they remain in good standing. The last one is refuse collection. It's .139 on each $100 of assessed value. The expense drivers are the vehicle fuels and repairs, again, as well as the replacements, those are very expensive. Our facility expenses and capital improvements are quite extensive in this fund. And then personnel is also a huge driver in here. We have a significant number of personnel that are staffing our facilities as well as driving our trucks, and that is a big driver for this activity. For this current year, we are expecting to have revenue of about $47.5 million. This one has had a pretty decent fund balance. is also declining due to the investments and the increases that we've made in personnel but then next year you'll see that we're expecting 48 million dollars with about 50 51 million dollars worth of expenses so that is kind of an overview of the activities that live within the urban services fund again as councilmember civigny mentioned this isn't one that we talk about a whole lot it's one that you'll see come back at your August meeting almost as soon as you come back when we ask you all to evaluate the ad valorem and where the rates are going to be. But this is kind of how all of these pieces work together as far as revenue and expenses go in that fund. And I'm happy to take any questions that you have. I have an entire team full of actual experts on this activity that are going to be here to help me because the numbers are one thing and the operations are a totally different thing. So, I'm happy to take whatever questions you have. All right, excellent. Thank you, Commissioner. We have a couple of colleagues signed in for questions. We appreciate the presentation. So in order to begin, Council Member Lynch, what questions do you have? Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, for your presentation. I just have one question. I have some neighbors that don't have streetlights yet, so they're not being charged for that currently, correct? If they don't have the streetlights yet? I believe that is correct unless there's something that anybody has to share with me. I don't think that they get charged until they actually have them. Okay. Perhaps Nancy has a different answer. It can be timed based on when they move into the tax district. And if they move into the tax district before the streetlights are installed, they're eligible for a refund. If they move into the taxing district before the streetlights. Right. If it gets out of sync based on when the streetlights get installed, and we actually move them into the tax district before the streetlights are installed, then they become eligible for a refund. Do they have to apply for that themselves, or do we send them something in the mail to let them know? Generally, it helps if they apply for it, if they reach out to Nathan and ask. Okay. I will share that with Nathan, because I have several neighbors that don't have streetlights yet. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair. Vice Chair. LaGree. Thank you, Commissioner, for your thorough follow-up with me with those questions. But I think this may be a question for Nathan Dickerson or for the Commissioner. Just for those who are in one tax district, how would they, if they don't receive sanitation, for example, or waste collection, And how do residents reach out or whom do they contact in order to move into another tax district? So the process in that situation is petitioning. And so they can reach out to me. They can email urbanservices at lexingtonky.gov. We can kind of set them up, see kind of what their district is. If they're outside the urban services boundary, we don't do that petitioning. But as long as you're inside the boundary, then you can petition to add wage services or streetlights or similar. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Legree, or Chair Legree. You're welcome, Council Member Gray. Council Member Menardez. My question is also for Nathan. Good afternoon. So as you know, one of my streets just petitioned for streetlights. They didn't have streetlights, and they were successful to actually have the petition with me. What happens now moving forward because the petition was successful? When do they get installed? When do they start getting billed? So once the petition is submitted, August 1st is the deadline and we have that timeline annually because of the legal process that follows. And so there needs to be a public hearing to resolution readings to ordinance readings that usually occur by the end of the calendar year. And so their fiscal year would be when the change takes effect or the next fiscal year, July 1, and so for this would be July 1, 2025, I believe. And so we would go ahead and put the streetlights in motion, you know, once we kind of see that it's happening, but the actual change to the district wouldn't take effect until July 1 of the next fiscal year. And how do you go about determining the placement of the new streetlights? Typically there is, you know, I think Jeff Neal with traffic engineering could probably speak a little bit better to this, but essentially they're kind of placed kind of a certain distance apart according to the light cone and so you'll find them at certain places within the neighborhood streets. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thanks. I just appreciate once again the presentation and Nathan you might want to come back real quick. So just a couple of quick things. Is it published somewhere easily found that a neighbor neighborhood knows how to do the petition process? It is, I believe it is lexingtonky.gov slash urban-services. Let me check, but if you google lexingtonky.gov and urban services, it should take you to the pages that include a sidebar that says petition for urban services. Okay, thank you. And then on the street, on street lights themselves, I know it's kind of a pass through like that so basically the electric company is the expense piece of it. Do they, how do they take direction from us on moving towards LEDs or moving towards less expensive methods of lighting our streets? I'm gonna let the commissioner take that one. Wouldn't it be fantastic if they took direction from us? The way that we are switching to LEDs are either the light reaches the end of its useful service life and that's when we make the switch. If we petition to move it in earlier, if we ask KU or Bluegrass Energy to convert it to LED earlier than that, then we have to pay the cost of conversion. If they pay it because it's at the end of its useful life, then it becomes just a part of our regular bill. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And then my last one is for Commissioner Hensley. Could you just explain if the, is the fund balance of those three, are they totaled up because there's one that's negative, one that's positive, or there's two that are negative. And so I'm wondering if we actually track them really separately and if we actually have a restriction on those accounts or if it's trying to just group together and we're tracking one lump? So for our reporting purposes, for our audit, they are aggregated because they're just one fee for service and the activities are all combined. We actually track them by activity, both revenue and expense, to make sure that we're not overburdening one or the other. government we have this fancy thing called due to do from which means that temporarily some of the funds are able to accommodate other purposes but we cannot leave them that way if they get to the point where they're not offsetting their revenue their cost you will see things like the subsidy for e911 or the subsidy for the pfc fund come forward we actually had a subsidy for streetlights for a long time before the rebalancing this past year, and the general fund is covering those portions. Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. So it's really hard to justify to the community all of the taxes, property tax increase. streets, lights, parks. So my question is, and I was looking at the amount that the 311 services is given. I think we need to increase that council because I know they're getting a lot of calls from my district with street lights. So I can't justify the taxes that they need to pay with the lights out, and they don't work in our district. So they're flooding 311 with calls. What is that time frame? Is there a time frame to repair those lights since they're paying taxes anyway, but the streets are dark? I'm not sure about the answer. Where does that go? Does that go to KU? Probably would go to KU. I will say the 3-1-1 allocation they actually do a study of how many calls they receive for what activity and we charge out their time as the calls are received. We do get a lot of calls my trash wasn't picked up could I have an extra you know delivery streetlights that kind of thing. And so their activity is actually based on a study of the calls that they're receiving so that's why they're allocated differently per activity. I don't know if Nancy may know as far as the process for getting a streetlight fixed or somebody else. Richard. Thank you, Richard. Richard Dugas from the commissioner's office. But prior to that, I worked in the energy section with James Bush, and I actually did a lot of the streetlights. So, yes, you can call 311, and that gets relayed to KU. KU says that they report to the PSC that they do like 99.9% of the repairs within 48 hours of receiving it. However, we met monthly with KU, and one of the largest problems KU has is accurately reporting what light is out. So if they don't get an accurate address, then the techs go out. If they can't find it, they mark it closed and repaired. So what is the most critical thing when you report a street light out is to report an accurate location like third light north of the intersection of Martin Luther King and fourth. Or go out and put a ribbon around the pole or something like that because the techs go out during the day and they can't tell which one of the three or four lights is out. So that is why lights stay out for so long. Does that answer your question? That answers my question, and I will take that back to the Negrete Association. And you can also contact KU directly on their number to report, which actually cuts 311 out, and then KU creates their ticket themselves. So you can report directly to KU. And is there, Big Brother is watching them? How do we know that 48 hours, and we'll give them a little bit longer? KU self-reports that. Big Brother is not watching them. and if you've seen us the last couple times in the PSC hearings, we've challenged them on that. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Fogel. A very helpful question. Colleagues, any other inquiries, statements, questions on that item? Okay, I don't see anybody signed in. So thank you, Council Member Sivigny, and thank you, Commissioner Hensley. We appreciate this information. It's very useful. The next item, colleagues, is my item in committee. That's the annual urban forestry and street trees update, and that's inclusive of proposed changes to chapters 16 and 17B in the Code of Ordinances. And you all will see those changes included in your packet for your review and for your questions, if any. We have Heather Wilson, our urban forestry section manager. who's going to be here to provide the presentation. And then Director Carey will be here, as you can see up front, to assist with questions. Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me join you all today. I'll be talking about, as Councilman Rilligree mentioned, our urban forestry program and some updates on our street tree programs. I have a lot to go through. So just quickly on this first slide, just kind of looking through what we'll go over today. I'm going to spend a minute on this slide just to kind of go over our organizational chart within our division. Trees touch all aspects of the city, infrastructure, roads, water, all of it. And so while most of the care of that is housed within urban and community forestry, within environmental services, there are also pieces within natural resource protection as well as over in the division of streets and roads. As Council Member Legere mentioned, I am the Program Manager Senior for Urban and Community Forestry. Under my supervision, I have our city arborist, Nathan Skinner, which most of you are familiar with. He has a team of arborists that does work on our publicly owned trees, which includes publicly owned street trees, our right-of-ways, our medians, our around our buildings. I also have our urban forester, Eric Sutherland, who is more involved with compliance of maintenance of our privately owned areas, also with development, making sure that trees are protected. And then in natural resource protection, also within our division, program manager senior is Dimitri Melhorn. Her environmental specialist is over making sure that new developments and old developments have the required screening and the required canopy on their sites. And then over on streets and roads, we also have a tree crew that helps us manage emergencies and rural roads. This is a quick background on street trees in Lexington. This should be overview for most of you, though I know some of it was heard a long time ago. But in general, the street trees, which are the trees that are located between the street and the sidewalk, the majority of those in Lexington are privately owned, which means that the maintenance, care, pruning, removal, replacement is under the purview of that adjacent property owner, whether that's private citizen or a business. Roughly 10% of the street trees in Lexington are owned and maintained by the city of Lexington, so our staff. We have a couple programs that are available to private property owners to help with the cost of the care of these trees. But really one of the things I want you all to consider and think about today and moving forward is do we really know the numbers, do we really know what our tree canopy is, how healthy it is, how many stems are out there, how much it is giving us back monetarily, and how much it's costing us to maintain it, and how much we could be saving if we were maintaining a healthy forest across the board. Again, this is just a brief overview of the hazardous street tree cost share program. Most of you are familiar with this. Any homeowner, resident's owner, is able to apply to our urban forestry for help with covering the cost of half of the removal and replacement of a hazardous street tree located adjacent to their property. If you fall under a certain economic threshold, you can qualify for 100% assistance with that removal and replacement. And this slide is really just to kind of show you our budget over the past roughly five years. In 2020, we were allocated $150,000. After that, we were hit with the pandemic, and so our funds were reduced. I think we had a lot going on monetarily, and so it went down to $50,000 for the next two years. Luckily, in spring of 2022, the funds that had been allocated to what we knew then as a tree ad hoc committee, the 1.5 million buffered our street our hazardous cost share program by a hundred fifty thousand to clear the backlog we run out our funds really quickly every year as soon as this program opens and so we always have a backlog so the hundred and fifty thousand enabled us to erase that backlog for the most part and then an extra fifty thousand was allocated to update our program after the new guidelines were put in place in 2024 to date, I want to notice that we were allocated $150,000 this year. To date, as of a couple weeks ago, we had spent out $130,000, so that still gives us about two months. We will have that all spent. It's encumbered. It's just waiting for the vendors to be able to complete their services. This is to show where we have been with this project or this program, really where participants are taking advantage or where it's being utilized the most. And I want you to kind of think of this through a couple different lenses, but the big one is noticing where most of our funds, where our participants were this past year. Five, six, nine, eleven, or twelve, and well, nine was the three. And just keep that in mind for a second. In the bottom graph there, it shows you how many participants in each area there were. And do note that there were seven that received 100% assistance. It makes sense that the districts that are receiving most of participation are receiving that. And this map is kind of to help you understand why. If you remember from my last presentation, this map is showing where our highest need for tree canopy coverage is. And so what I've got highlighted here is the districts that didn't really have high participation. And it makes sense because these are also the districts that don't have a whole lot of old trees, right? So our canopy coverage in these districts is lower. So it makes sense there's not hazardous trees there that have to be managed. A couple of those areas are green. I feel like those are kind of outliers, and we're seeing that because potentially that the wrong trees are planted in those smaller easements. And so we're probably having issues with sidewalks based upon the wrong tree being put into the wrong place. This is just one more way to look at that in terms of funding as far as how those expenses are being allocated. We've had 116 trees removed and replaced this year. It lines out with previously years. We have those two blips in the middle. Those were the pandemic years when our allocation funded was lower at the 50,000 rate. And then just to see how we basically trended along the same lines over the years. The price for the trees has increased a little bit, but again, I think it's pretty consistent. There's been no drastic jumps. This was to show how our species is changing in Lexington. We basically are removing roughly eight different species, and I'm happy to talk about this in questions after, like why these make sense to me, because they do. And that we're replacing with a much broader range, so increasing our species diversity, which is incredibly important for any healthy ecosystem. My one concern is that we are showing a lot of one species going back as a suggested replacement, and I'll talk about that in a second, how we are hoping to address that. general rule of thumb is you should never have more than 30% of any one species in a system. This doesn't cover an entire city, but if it continues on this trend, then our city will be mostly this black gum species. Some of our successes from this program, it's been in place for a long time. One of the greatest things about that is that we are getting fewer calls about dead and dying trees. They're being addressed on the front end, and so we're having fewer hazardous trees out there for our public and affecting our roadways and our movement throughout the city. So we've got a lot of really great comments from citizens about how helpful this program is. These are ways I feel like we can improve. We could ideally get more participation from the districts that haven't had a whole lot of participation, but that said, I really don't want more hazardous trees in those districts, so hopefully they never have to. I mean, in all honesty. But if they wind up with them, those funds are available, and I hope that they know how to reach out. And also to encourage vendors to increase the diversity of trees that they are offering participants. The next program I want to go over really quick is our clearance pruning program. This is a newer program to the city. Prior to this year we were only able to focus in areas of Lexington that were receiving city garbage collection. This past year is the first year that we were able to expand that to incorporate the entire city. This is a postcard that goes out to neighborhoods prior to their pruning coming to their neighborhoods letting them know kind of what to expect, what their other prunings are going to happen, and roughly what seven foot and what 12 foot looks like for their trees and those easements. This is where we have been and what's really great about this map or this graph I think is that it shows that we've basically been throughout the entire city. The only district that doesn't really seem to have received any services for this is district number three. I again think that I can explain this so I'm happy to talk about that later with questions if that's something anybody wants to talk more about. Also to pull away from this, $13 a tree basically, 13 and a half, that's pretty awesome. If any of you have ever hired a company to come prune your tree, they're doing a little bit more in your canopy, but they're hundreds of dollars. So if we're able to reach thousands of trees for basically $13.50 a tree, that's pretty impressive. This is the map as it goes out to our vendors. Prior to requesting bids, our arborist technician, Rob Ballard, goes throughout the city, kind of seeing where that need is. This year we were able again to expand to beyond just the areas that receive city garbage collection. Initially we thought that we were going to be overwhelmed with trees that were in high need, but what we luckily found out was that we had target areas that we could really focus in to kind of bring the entire city up to speed. So these maps go out to our members when we ask for bids, highlighting the roads that actually have trees. Rob has already done a count, so they kind of know an estimate of trees to be addressed. The districts we were in this year were 1, 5, 8, 12, 9, 10, and 11. and again this makes sense to me and I will explain this a little bit more in the next map and again with questions at the end if there's time. But again this map, this time I'm showing the districts that we were actually in for the pruning and again it makes sense to me those areas that are of higher need, sometimes it's because trees don't exist, other times it's because the canopies of the trees that do exist are young and so the need is in those areas with younger trees that have branches lower to the ground so to raise those especially in areas that maybe didn't see for city services before and then in those other neighborhoods the greener ones my best guess for those is that those are neighborhoods that were not on those city service routes before and so we're able to actually get into those this time some of our successes from that one of the great things with being able to do this is that it reduces the incidences for our trucks hitting trees that have branches that are low to the to the ground over the roadways or along sidewalks not only does this save the trees but it also keeps damage from the vehicles buses have an easier time making their routes it decreases the amount of dead and dying branches that are in these canopies and it also decreases the amount of branches that wind up on the ground after storms also monetarily it's pretty expensive to bring your trees and so in general residents really appreciate having the service as an option. Ways that we can improve this, continue to be proactive. Again, I mentioned before this is the first year that we were able to expand our services. And so a way to be proactive is to get this on a three-year cycle, or ideally three, but likely four, to include the whole city and be able to kind of work around the city to maintain trees at what's considered best management practices for how often you should prune a tree to make sure that those branches, as they grow, don't droop and become problems again as far as heights over the sidewalk and the street. And then just, you know, noting again, initially last year we came to you suggesting that we would do an eight-year cycle and work for the city in these pies. And then we found that that didn't really fit with what we were finding on the ground. So we've been able to hopefully adjust our cycle to a four-year cycle, again, more in line with our proper management best practices. And we'll just kind of see how that goes. You know, trees, again, they grow, branches become low, They sprout low and so they're always growing and changing and so the need will always be there to address this Path forward continue our street tree clearance program I think this is going to become a more vital thing as we move forward into a greater older canopy continuing that has a district to cost share program trees become hazardous for lots of different reasons they get hit by vehicles sidewalk Replacements damage their roots all kinds of reasons That funding from the Tree Canopy Ad Hoc Committee is now known as X-Grow Trees. We just finished through our first round of applications for programs. We'll have another one of those in the fall and ideally we'll be able to continue this into the future because I feel like we'll see that many people want to continue this. Back to those questions I had at the beginning, street tree inventory and the software for that, that is the only way we're going to really understand what our tree canopy is, what services it's providing, how much it's costing us and how much it's giving back to our community. And then, of course, redoing our urban and community forest master plan is a long-term goal. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer Carey to talk about our updates. Thank you, Heather. And I appreciate Heather letting me tag on at the end of her presentation. We introduced this topic at the last meeting and said that we would be bringing forward the actual proposed changes at today's meeting for your all's consideration. So I just want to quickly remind you what we had proposed changing in chapters 16 and 17b. In chapter 16 we are trying to create enforcement that is similar for chapter 17b as it is for all the provisions that are in chapter 16 of the code of ordinances. We also had offered originally a carrot of a one-third fine reduction for entities who were out of compliance, brought their site into compliance, and did not appeal. However, we were just seeing people send in checks that were one-third less and remaining out of compliance, so that really wasn't creating the effect that we had hoped for. And then in 17B, our hope was to clean up language throughout and update some of the definitions. We wanted to align the street tree distance requirements with traffic engineering requirements that they follow as well as what is in the land subdivision regulations because currently the three of them are not synced up. We also wanted to, again like I said, propose changes to align enforcement of 17B with Chapter 16, address gaps in enforcement. For example, it wasn't clear that the removal of a street tree also requires grinding of the stump that remains. One thing that we had thought we would include is a reordering of the sections, but in discussions with law, we thought that that might be something we will bring forward at a future date. Just because it is not a change in any of the particular sections of this ordinance, It just would put them in a more chronological order. So again, we've added a definition for root zone. We have talked about not keeping the requirement of spacing between the different sizes of trees just because it's too prescriptive with all the other requirements that are involved in the new development process. Speaker 1 Director Carey and colleagues, would you all mind if we added three more minutes onto the presentation? Thank you. Okay. All right. Sounds good. And then in Section 17B-3, tree removal, there was some gender language that needed to be corrected. One of the maids in there needs to be a shall, and then added the associated stump as part of what is considered full tree removal. In Section 17B-4, we have added language that addresses when folks park or drive over the roots or within the drip zone of the tree. It damages the roots, which then creates a hazardous tree situation. So including that as one of the items that can be considered as abuse or damage of street trees. We have repealed the penalty because we've incorporated that language into section 17b-12 about the violations. So that was a whole prescriptive thing about number of previous violations, but we have cleaned that up so that it mirrors back to chapter 16. And with that, Heather and I are happy to take any questions you might have. Excellent. Thank you. I know there's a lot to cover in 17 minutes. Council Member Gray. Thank you. So I understand, by the way, thank you for this wonderful presentation. I know that regarding the update in the ordinance, I know you spoke with us on the corridors commission, and I understand why. But I have a question regarding, I guess, your tree canopy maps that are color-coded. Is there any rationale in why certain areas are yellow? Is it color-coded for any particular reason? Yes. So this map was pulled out of that canopy plot, that tree plotter, showing where the highest need for tree canopy improvement is. You can change those parameters when you pull up the maps if we ever want to in the future, but what I asked it to show was by district where the lowest tree canopy coverage is. And so red are the districts that have the lowest tree canopy cover. Conversely, also the districts that have the highest need of increasing tree canopy. The greener they get, I believe the bright green are the most heavily treed. And this reflects all trees within the council district, not just street trees. And yellow means? Yellow is somewhere in the middle. So it's kind of a scale of red to green. So red being highest priority for increasing tree canopy, orange being second priority, yellow being third, and then like the yellower greens all the way up to the bright green being the heaviest tree. So let's just say, I can't remember what each district is, but let's say that District 2 has a candidate coverage of, let's say, 10%. And then let's say orange would be 18%. And then the bright green would be 30%. That's kind of how that range. Okay. And I guess it's the same for the other with the other map similar, the hazard cost share. Yep. It is the same map. Okay. It just has, make sure I'm going the right way, I'm going the wrong way. It's the same map, I just have different districts highlighted, and these are the ones in this map, the districts that are highlighted are the districts that did not have heavy participation with the hazardous street tree cost share program. And again, that kind of makes sense. If District 2 and District 1 have the lowest canopy coverage, they're going to have the fewest hazardous trees because canopy coverage is based off of square inch of canopy, so looking down on top of a tree. And so if you have 10 really big trees, older, potentially hazardous, but big canopies, and you have 20 small trees, the canopy of those 10 big ones is going to be bigger than the 10 small ones. If that makes sense. It does. So, yeah. And so finally, you mentioned about District 3. It's the slide that has street tree clearance pruning program, and District 3 has zero versus my district that has 5,715. So my theory on that one is that District 3 has a lot of our older trees, and so those have been pruned over the years either by their homeowners or their canopy is closed. and I'm just going to caveat this with being a tree person, it took me a little bit to wrap my head around this concept, is that as a tree grows, those branches that are low on a tree never move unless they are pruned away, or the tree decides to let them go. And so as those trees' canopies close, sunlight does not get to those lower branches, and so they've either let them go on their own or they've been pruned away over time. And so 3 has most of our older trees in that street tree location. And so there's going to be less need for us to do that pruning for them. Also, there's just a lot of, I feel like a lot of tree companies kind of focus around that District 3 area. You know, and so they've been working with them for a lot longer. And so those trees have been pruned. That's my theory. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Wilson and Director Carey for the presentation. I have a few questions about hazardous trees removal. How is hazardous determined? What is the criteria or gauge for that? Sure. So the way that happens is a homeowner contacts our office with a concern about their tree. We will go out and assess the tree, either Eric or Rob, and has a couple different caveats. Hazardous could be that the tree is losing its bark and the branches and the canopy are dead and dying and that makes it a hazard to the public right away, to the road or to the sidewalk. We can do what's called a track or a tree risk assessment. Most of us in the department are qualified in that and it is an extra, it's not a certification, but a qualification that you have to have and assesses the health of the tree looking at the roots up to the crown. So trees can fall into that category and some that are not obviously hazardous can then qualify for that assessment and we'll go around and assess the tree and if we determine based on our the form that we have to fill out that it's dangerous then that definitely qualifies for hazardous. If a tree has been impacted by a sidewalk replacement or a road expansion and the tree roots have been cut and the tree is potentially hazardous that can fall under that as well. Red maples can fall under that sometimes as they're heaving sidewalks especially if it's done multiple times when maples are not a tree that we recommend particularly planting in that space because they are what's called surface rooted and so they will they will just inherently have roots on the surface and then it makes a tripping hazard trees we considered hazardous as well include the pear trees and that's really because during our winter storms they break apart they cause a lot of hazard in the roadways i mean so those are three main categories for when we consider something an actual hazard. Thank you. One of the slides talked about our removal costs over the years, and they've definitely shot up in the last few years, and I think it's by tree, per tree. What do you attribute to those cost increases? Is it this? Yeah, yep, that one. So what I'm attributing to that is the replacement cost, actually, because trees, you know, across the board everything's gone up in cost, services as well as products. And so what I imagine is that what's happened is that the cost to pay the employees to do the work has increased as well as the tree itself that's going back into the ground. Thank you. Another slide talked about the number of residents and constituents that are getting 100% funding for their hazardous removal and that number is pretty small, looks like about 10% ish. And I don't know if this is necessarily the case but whenever I see that we have funding available for some sort of service and it seems either underused or not used very much, I'm always trying to wonder like what is it that we can do to kind of engage more of our constituents because these are the residents who need the help the most obviously. What things that we can do to kind of engage those communities to kind of take advantage of these kind of programs? Yeah, so one of the things we did last year was actually increase, decrease, which like decrease, we changed the qualification number for an individual to make more and still qualify for hundred percent. The cutoff is now 80% of the area median income. Where before it was 125% of the federal poverty guideline. Right, so we definitely increased that just in this past year. So what happens is that as someone follows through that application is assisted with grant services as to whether or not they actually qualify based on their income and then if they do, then they receive that 100% grant. I guess my question speaks more to how do we get more people calling in the first place? How do we get more people take away that barrier of people not knowing that there's this funding available so they're not going to call in the first place to get it done? How do we do that kind of outreach and get more people in the system? So internally we use our public information outreach group to send out community memos, we use our at your service calls. I'm hoping that you all across your board in your letters to community or your engagement with your community, your conversations with your constituents are helping to share that out as well. I know anytime I get the opportunity, I talk about that with people that I engage with. Going to community meetings, and again, we're happy to go to those and help those. I think part of that is that there's so much information out there, and there's so much work to do to get things that are available to you. How we streamline that and how we help people feel like they have the time to follow through with that, that's, I don't know how we do that. I will say that, you know, seven out of 84 doesn't seem like a lot of folks were able to take advantage of this, 100% grant opportunity, but the seven who participated, that's twice to three times as many who received 100% funding the previous year. So, you know, I know that we let you all know when we have remaining funds in that 100% pool, and thank you all for sharing that with your constituents. You know, it's sort of an incremental thing, but I do feel like we've gotten the word out a little better this year than we had in previous years. I appreciate that. I have more questions, but I'll sign back in. Thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you, Vice Mayor Wu. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to thank you all for all the help you've given me and information. At the start of 2023, you all gave me a whole stack of folders about the hazardous tree removal program, and every time that I table out of my district, I give away folders, so more people are learning about that program, so I'm excited. So thank you for providing information, And then thank you for being willing to partner with me on so many occasions to do projects, to brainstorm about ways to get the District 2 tree canopy up because it's so important. So I appreciate you all so much. I look forward to continuing to work with you because we're going to move from that great letter D to A. I'm confident. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lynch. Council Member Menarez. Thank you, Vice Chair. I had a question following up on what the vice mayor had asked about hazardous trees and the definition. Recently, I had a constituent reach out after the latest windstorm, and she was defining a hazardous tree, her neighbor's tree, which is very tall. So think of it as similar to the trees in Chevy Chase. and because there were so many Chevy Chase affected, she was afraid moving forward that her neighbor's tree, because it's so tall and mature, may be a hazard to her home. But that's not something that you define right now as a hazardous tree. No, and it really does take a certified arborist who has the qualification to do the tree risk assessment to go out there and work through that data sheet that gives you that sort of almost definitive answer that within the next number of years, whatever you've defined, there's X percent that this tree will come down or fall or cause a problem. And I can expand on that a little bit scientifically, a little bit as far as the way trees work biologically. So the top of a tree is regulated by the roots of the tree. And so if your roots are safe and you're not damaging the ground around them and they can grow in that space, Trees are designed to grow tall. We're designed to hit a certain height, right? And so if we got taller, we're not going to be worried that we're going to fall over. That's really how trees work. And trees also have wood that moves with the wind. That's how they're designed. Otherwise, they would be buildings in the wind, and that would be a problem. And so when a tree hits a height, it has grown with those winds throughout its whole lifetime. And so on one side, it has compression wood, and on one side, it has tension wood. And so it's designed to be able to move with those winds. And that canopy, again, going back to the pruning, making sure wind can move through that canopy if it's pruned and cared for correctly, it doesn't act like a sail then. And so just because a tree is tall does not mean it's hazardous, especially if the root system is safe and cared for. If we're cutting roots, and so those trees in Chevy Chase, if you think about it, they're grown in very small spaces. And roots of a tree grow two times, if given the space, two times what we see above ground. And so those trees in Chevy Chase are growing in, let's give them eight feet easement, and they have a 30-foot canopy. And they're doing amazing. But when those winds come at those great lengths and from the wrong direction, it's kind of like bending your elbow the wrong way. They're kind of a force to fall over. So just because a tree is tall is not a qualifier for being hazardous. Thank you. I'm always happy to go and if you have anyone that's concerned, I'm also more than willing to listen and try to hear through their story. But I'm happy to also try to make them feel better about what's going on. I will reach out to you about that one because she is very concerned about that one. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for your presentation. I have a 13-year-old. His name is Mason who lives on Marcellus. sell us and over in the oakwood area in our old subdivisions like oakwood and i see windburn on here but um we have a lot of old old old trees um that need some of your attention and we are once again inviting you to neighborhood associations look forward to you coming and explaining that to the citizens in the first district and first district looks forward to working with you all. So I want to just say Mason I have told them about the trees and he is really really concerned at 13 years of age of how old they are and he doesn't want them cut down but we see that they're dying So that's Marcella's drive. As you go up loud and turn left and that whole roll all the way to New Circle. Okay, thanks. If you want to give them a little bit of a hopefully calm thought, age in trees is not like age with people. Trees don't necessarily have an end of life like we do. It's all environmentally related. And so they also grow at different rates depending on species. And so just because it's big does not mean it's old. So maybe that will make them feel a little bit better, that they're still young and healthy. Well, I can tell you these trees are very old, and I'm pretty sure there's been plenty of dogs that have watered them. Well, that's okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Hopefully, Council Member Fogle Mason might be one of our future arborists, if his interest holds. I have a few more questions for you all. Are there any things that we as city government concerned about our arbor, are there any things that we can do when it comes to either big box stores like the Lowe's and the Home Depot's selling either invasive or non-native species or even some of the smaller nurseries and stuff? Are there any ways outside of legislation that we could sort of impact or influence the stock that people are buying for their yards? Yes, I think so. I think, honestly, the best way for each of us to do that is each individually to talk to the people running our local stores as well as reaching out to their corporate headquarters and really where we're spending our money, right? And so what that looks like is reaching out to your friends and neighbors and doing a little bit of education. where us as city government and us not as legislation but as an information drive, really sharing the reasons why that those invasives are a problem and why you shouldn't be buying that Vinca vine or that you want to mess and putting it in your ground. Because big box stores in particular are going to sell what's being bought. Our local nurseries are really pretty good about staying within the bounds of non-invasive, 100% native but non-invasive plants. But really it is the bigger box stores. There are nationwide invasive plant lists that you can access and I'm happy to share those links if you want to share it out with constituents. I think this is also something that's slowly being worked on with the tree board as well as the environmental commission. So this is a voice that's kind of broad spectrum. Really it's us as government sharing the information but but also us as individuals talking to our friends and our coworkers and our families and sharing that information in a way that's not like, you can't do that. You know, like in a way that's like, this would really be great if you chose this instead. And maybe that's the conversation. Like, I know you like this plant, but this is a better one and it's not problematic. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I like the implicit message in there as well to support local and locally owned businesses as well. In terms of the pruning program, can you talk a little bit about our relationship with KU? those issues have come up in the past about kind of our trees and our power lines. Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, so no arborist unless you are certified line clearance arborist is allowed to work within 10 foot of a power line. So that is for the safety of the person. And so they have to have a specific certification to be able to work within trees that are in that power line area. They have to clear those lines or else we don't have power. And I am a tree person. I work closely with the arborist with KU. And so we coordinate on a lot of things. They know if they're going through neighborhoods and they're going to have a high impact on trees that we communicate. This is with our local crews. With the transmission lines, they're gone for right now. I'm hoping they never come back because we kind of put it up. That's not really going to happen. So I work closely with our local KU arborists. They do send out notices. I got one not too long ago that they will be in my backyard. They are supposed to follow protocol which involves no spikes and doing best pruning practices. Do also remember that these guys are up there working around hot lines. And so it is very dangerous. And they have to run these lines. And we get behind with our city trees and they get behind with their big trees. I'm not trying to give them excuses for not doing best management practices, but they are in communication. They do send out notifications to homeowners when you're going to be in your neighborhoods. They are supposed to follow protocol. If they do not, call us, and I'm happy to reach out to KU and initiate those conversations and fix whatever needs to be fixed. They are working, I know, in the 40503 area right now, but they do have to keep our lines clear. They tend to do it on a three-year cycle. management don't plant trees that aren't appropriate under power lines. You know, we're dealing with a lot of trees that were planted there prior to those suggestions because they're not actually a law. So we are still dealing with that and we will be. Thank you for that. In my last 30 seconds, my last question, I remember seeing a stat before that, you know, we're at about 25 percent canopy. We're shooting for 30 and that Fayette County Public Schools is around 11, 12 percent, something like that. Have we tried to build any sort of relationship to kind of really nudge, push, pull them into kind of getting with the program? Yes. I coordinate with Trezine Logsdon on a regular basis. Trezine is probably our best voice for Fayette County Public Schools and increasing tree canopy. They also deal with a very limited staff, and their top priority is mowing, and that comes from our community, from parents with children at schools that are really worried about tall grasses, and that's understandable. And so with their staff, that is their first focus. Increasing tree canopy adds another layer. I'm 100% for it. It's a mind shift for them and their management to build that into their management practices and their priorities. They are slowly pushing for that. They brought in the National Schools Network for green cities and they're working through a whole plan that increases outdoor learning spaces for children. We are part of that conversation talking about trees. I do work closely with a lot of the individual teachers different schools to help them increase Canopy. It's a big conversation that gives a lot of voices in it. Yeah I'm glad we're having it. Thank you Miss Wilson for all of your answers. I always learn something new when you're up there. Great clear answers and thank you all for all your work. Thank you chair. Thank you Vice Mayor. Colleagues before I ask my questions is there anybody else who'd like to sign in with any inquiries at this moment? Okay. I just have, before we go on to, Council Member Gray, before we go on to the motions, I have a follow-up question about the cost share program, the hazardous street tree cost share program. I know that we really care about right tree, right place and viability. And I'm really happy that more people are taking advantage of this initiative. And as council members, I know we want to help spread the word about it. I'm interested in the survival rate of the trees that are planted. Is there a follow-up that's done after these new species are integrated into people's properties or the right-of-way? Can you talk a little bit about that part of the equation? I know we do a follow-up after the planting has happened, but I don't know that we've really done a follow-up in years after that. It is one of the reasons that we work only with ISA-certified vendors is because the tree will be planted properly. And then beyond that, it's on that homeowner to make sure that it is watered and maintained moving forward. I don't really know of many instances when we've had anyone call us back, and say that a tree hasn't made it. It also has a one year, I guess it has that one year warranty once it's put in the ground. Yeah, that's a great question. It's not something that we have followed up on beyond that one year. My intuition is that they grow into maturity, but again, this program's only probably been with us, I can't say more than 20 years. So at the oldest, those new trees are 20 years old. And yeah, hopefully they've all made it there. It sounds like a great research opportunity for an intern. So maybe Mason, when he gets a couple years on him, would like to come and do that work for us. That would be great. Well, that sounds like a conversation maybe we could have in the future about even piloting like a spot check. I think it would be really positive for us to reinforce the return on investment that we're making in these properties in our tree canopy writ large, and to be able to tell some success stories and make sure that all of the plantings are working the way we intend. So I'd be glad to work on that with you. I just had one last thought on that. That would be an ideal reason for having a street tree inventory. I mean, that is our way to know what is out there, what year it was planted, how it's doing, because it's not just a one-time inventory. It's inventorying what we have, where it is, and then being able to follow up with that over the years. When we talk about a street tree inventory, as you've mentioned, would you like to share a little bit about the difference between something like that and the tree plotter that you have talked about previously? Yeah, so tree plotter shows us our canopy. And again, that is just square inch leaf surface coverage. And that's a top down look. And that doesn't tell us how many stems, again, are here. You can have 10 big trees and 20 small trees, same canopy coverage, but you don't really know how many trees or what those species are. just leaf coverage. An inventory tells us what tree is where, how healthy that is, and so what that looks like is an individual going to each tree on public space, inventorying it for species, size, health, damage, any kind of other issues it's having, and putting that into an inventory system. And that way what we can do is we can track that over time, and if we get to a tree and it says it needs pruning, and we're in the middle of the summer, and winter is the ideal to prune that, we put that in our calendar to then be pruned in the winter. That would also help us with our street tree pruning program for helping us know where we need to send our vendors, like we've done this pie in this year, we go to this pie next year, and then when we get back around. So that inventory is really an on the ground assessment. It involves an arborist or trained people that we could train in neighborhoods or interns to go out and learn how to look at a tree, identify that tree, identify problems, needs, any of those things. It would also help us track with any diseases or pest insects that we have, like the emerald ash borer. We've been working with the emerald ash borer for many, many years now, but we have other ones that are on the horizon, like the Asian longhorn beetle and the gypsy moth and the spotted lantern fly, which are big, big pests coming into our region. Three of them are here. One of them is not yet, but it's been in Cincinnati. So those are big things to kind of catch and be able to have eyes on the ground looking at what we have and what that economic impact is if we lose what we have right now. That's a very helpful context. It sounds like the street tree inventory could be a helpful tool for us to assess and protect our investments that we've made via the hazardous street tree cost share program over time as well as engage in a larger inventory and help with the efficacy and efficiency of our pruning initiatives. So thank you for bringing that up as a potential future step. Colleagues, I am going to hand the chair over to the Vice Mayor so that I can make the associated motions connected with the legislation you see in your packet for Chapter 16 and for Chapter 17B. Councilmember Sheehan had pre-circulated these to you all and I know that you've read them and you've seen the areas of coverage for them. So, Vice Mayor, if you would. Thank you. Councilmember Legree, it's all yours. Okay, thank you. I move to approve an ordinance amending section 16-203 of the Lexington-Fayette urban county code of ordinances to update division titles and remove the penalty reduction for failing to contest citations. So moved. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. Thank you. For 17B, I move to approve the proposed amendments to Chapter 17B of the Code of Ordinances relating to Street Trees as presented to the committee and set forth in the committee packet. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Chair is yours. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Finally, thank you all for your presentation. I really appreciate it and this brings us on to our next item, the pavement management plan. Another hot topic here. Colleagues, Commissioner Albright is here to present on the pavement management plan and we also have Mr. Rob Allen, director of Streets and Roads, and Mr. Nathan Dickerson who you've heard from already this afternoon, our administrative officer and expert in paving to assist with questions. Commissioner, the presentation floor is yours. Thank you, Vice Chair. Good afternoon everyone. Happy to walk through kind of the overview of the pavement management plan and as we're looking at it for the paving season that recently began and the upcoming budget cycle. So with that, we'll jump into just a brief history. I tried to consolidate the history a little bit in this presentation because every year I've been here, we've just tacked on new bullets at the end as we've continued to grow this program. So So as some of you may recall, 2015 and before, we actually did this with just interns doing a review. And there is a lot of value to eyes on the ground. But that became very subjective as interns changed from year to year. And what is bad cracking to one person may not be as bad to another person. So back in 2015, we were switching to a more data-driven process that we've been implementing ever since. And that has allowed us to have a little bit more objective collection of data as to that degree of severity. And we've been able to update the data every three years ever since. So that is a great allowance that has allowed us to maintain that data over time. In 2022, the paving subcommittee reconvened. We reviewed the plan. We made a lot of changes in what the budget should look like was one of the primary things that we looked at. And then those were presented to council in 2023 for approval. And they applied to this current fiscal year. This is a reflection of how we've been spending our money over the year that has been set up for paving. as you, there was a couple of low years in there, as was mentioned in the previous presentation where we went through some real concerns about the overall health of the city budget. Obviously, we've managed to recover from that and been able to make sure that we're spending all of the budget that has been given to the paving program over the years. As you likely already recall, Our roads are scored through that data-driven process every year. Every three years, we collect data on all of the city streets. There is a conglomeration of all that data that puts it on a zero to 100 scale so that we can look at one street and one district and how it compares to another district. And then the plan also divides the budget over the different types of roadways, and I'll get into more than that a little bit in the next slide. And then, of course, within the largest group of roads, the local roads, it defines how we divide that money up among the council districts. So, and again, there's the ideas that were put forward with the FY24 update of the pavement management plan. And we've had a lot of success, we feel like, of continuing to submit those 200 percent lists. We give everybody a funding amount, and then what we request back is a list worth 200% of that amount, so that as we find the utilities or other conflicts that interfere with completing some of that work, we're able to keep going and keep getting good things done. Our list of needs outpaces our budget almost by definition, So we're never at a loss to figure out how to find another place to spend resources, and it's good to have those priorities lined up. Again, just talking about the – we have four. It gets a little confusing kind of, again, we use local in more than one way. So we tried to put together this kind of matrix, but it's a very simple one of just saying that within the city responsibility, There's four types of roads, and within those four types of roads, we look at three of those from an overall citywide perspective, and we get input from the council based on what you're hearing and seeing, and then we have to make those hard decisions of which roads are most in need in the city. And then at the local level with those neighborhood roads, we rely very heavily on your all's input as to what you're seeing and hearing, and working with the eligibility, working with Mr. Dickerson on setting up those roads for paving throughout the summer. And this is another place where we modified the split of these funds and the pavement plan that recently was updated. The biggest thing was the 10% for preventive maintenance. We changed that last year, if you recall. We used to have 25%, and at that time it met more of the need with the budget that was available. Thankfully, the budget has grown, and when we continued to have that 25% in there, all of a sudden we were looking at $3 million in preventive maintenance, and that was higher than we probably really needed to be. So we're pulling that down as an exception to the pavement management plan and having it now a little more in line with what we think makes more sense in moving things forward, we are able to execute the preventive maintenance plan within that funding. So, again, this is the paving budget. As we understand, there's a couple of exceptions. I will say that the difference between the $14 million and the $15 million, but this is how the paving management plan is applied to the paving budget that's been set up this year. There are two things that aren't highlighted on this slide. One of them is the data collection, which is listed separately, and then the ADA ramps that have been set aside as a separate funding source, whereas historically that has always been a part of the paving budget for very good reason, but being able to fund it separately from this means we can put more of this money towards actual asphalt. So taking the local mile split, the 40% that is allocated out of $14 million, that gets us to $5.6 million. This is where that funding would line up by council district. Again, that is based on the local road needs within each council district to kind of make sure we're spreading the money around where it's needed. One of the things that we're changing a little bit this year, and as you can see they're highlighted there, we're asking for an optional list early next month if there's anything that we can change or carry forward. The spring is always, we've had a lot of historically anything we didn't finish in the fall carries around through the spring. And then we also use the winter to reassess everything, look at our paving balances, and look at where we have additional funds available. And so working with our council members to establish additional lists during this early spring, April, May timeframe gives our vendor time to execute that work within the current fiscal year potentially. So we're just kind of inserting that as a, if you have funds available and you would like to put them in there, that's a great time to get it done. We can get it vetted and get things moving through the summer. As opposed to, then we're going to, after the new year, we quickly start moving into the fall timeframe. timeframe. ATS, our vendor, gets busy with our heavy roads during the summer, and they have a lot of projects with the state this year. They are working all over the place. Good for Lexington long-term. No pain, no gain. We'll gain a lot at the end of it, but there's a lot of work going on this summer. So we'll quickly move into fall paving with the start of the new fiscal year. And then, of course, once the plant closes, we'll reassess everything again. Just a little bit of an overview of the paving sharing program. We presented, I believe, a little information about that earlier, that it is going pretty well. We have several requests that have been received this spring from both Columbia Gas and Kentucky American. We're working through those. We'll keep you posted, obviously, as they come into your district. Not every program, one of the things you'll see there in bold is so that the utility work doesn't dictate the paving work, it has to be kind of a mutual benefit. And then it is somewhat voluntary by the utility company, and we have to make sure we have funds available. So it's kind of where all of those things line up, but then we find that sweet spot of we get a lot more paving work done with everybody saving a little bit of money. Again, one of the things that we are looking at as we move into the new fiscal year, we have the $500,000 as a project set up, and that money, we are actually going to go back out to bid with a new data collection effort. And hopefully most of you have seen the new geospatial mapping that we've had, and that's been a huge leap forward, I feel like, as opposed to the lists and spreadsheets that we were working off of for several years. It's a great addition. And then working with our paving sharing program continues to be something that we hope will grow and we'll get a little more synced up on and it'll be more of a win-win. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions along with all of my subject matter experts. Excellent. Thank you, Commissioner Albright. And you finished early. Very impressive. Councilmember Gray. Thank you, Chair. Question. Do you think there's a correlation with, I guess, the new, whatever the new solvent that we use for our de-icing during the winter and the number of potholes that have occurred? I don't know that I feel like it's a direct correlation. If Director Allen wants to jump up, I'm happy to let him add to my thoughts. I don't know that I see a direct correlation in the solvent used as much as just there's maybe more water on the road, but I'll let Rob. Yeah, it's more of a factor. It's sugar. It's organic. It doesn't affect the pavement itself, per se, but we put more of it out. We have more melt water, and then it is subject to freeze thaw. However, the beet heat stays in solution and does not allow refreezing. It is more expensive than conventional salt, so we try to be good stewards of our funds when we use it. And usually it's something we reserve a lot of times for really extremely cold temperatures. And, of course, if we're preceded with a rain event, we cannot use that beet heat. But, no, it's actually probably better to use beet heat than salt. Excellent. So in relation to our collector roads and our, I guess, our artillery roads that the administration chooses, how closely do you take our suggestions to heart, such as, you know, I have roads such as Ogden, which I thought I was going to be able to pave. There's numerous potholes. And I know that on a star shoot, that's definitely not a road that I have any say so on. I believe Starshoot is one of your roads that you would, it's in Hamburg near where Meyer, you know what I'm talking about. I do. Excuse me? A collector. A collector of Dave. Councilmember Civigni has given me hints. I appreciate you, sir. So how close to heart do you take our suggestions? Because I know that we use data, always use data, as well as other input that you all receive. I'm happy to report we take it very seriously. If we get reports from any of our council about a specific collector or arterial road condition, we will generally send some of our project managers out to assess it and make sure that the data we have, because every once in a while we know whether it's utility cut or just the age of the road has allowed it to have more potholes, what's in the database may not reflect what's in the road. And so we will always send out, and then we'll have a true assessment of the pavement in each of those areas and compare them. So we definitely take it into consideration. So Ogden and Starshoot. Yes, ma'am. Got it. Thank you so much for always, for you, Nathan Dickerson, for always being ready to answer all of my many questions regarding paving. and you never, you're always so patient with me. So thank you so much. We appreciate those with an interest in paving. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gray. Council Member Menarez. Thank you. When can we expect the results from the next pavement condition scan? We will start the contract in July when the funds are available and then they generally show up in the fall. And so it would be, hopefully if all goes well, and last time we had it, we had a lot of issues. But so we'll hope for the best that it would be available for the spring of 25. So these next recommendations that we put in for this fiscal year are going to be based on our recommendations and not on that scan? Right. It'll still be based on, in part, on old data. I mean, the older collection is scaled down for time, and then we put in the new paving information so that we try to maintain a database over the three years in between scans, but it won't be reflected until after the spring of 25. And then another question following up on what Councilwoman Gray asked regarding collectors. There are some collectors, though, that have that part of it is a collector road and is not a local road. But then it also includes sections such as Wilson Downing. There's part of it that is your purview, your departments, but then other smaller sections that would be considered local and then fall under my district funds. Is that accurate? I'm surprised that any part of Wilson Downing would be local, but it could be, and yes, that would be something we would try to pair up on and see how we would, where road transitions can be tricky. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Councilmember Menares. Councilmember Sevigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. I just have a quick few questions. Is there a typical best practice for how often roads should be paved? Like is there something that we should be striving for? And I'm speaking mostly of the ones that we're responsible for, the 40% of the neighborhood roads. The local roads is a lot longer time because a lot of the research is done on the heavier traveled roads and those are more like in the 12 year range or so. The local roads can go much longer. I sense a presence behind me so I'll let him expand. You sense a presence. A lot of it has to do with traffic count and you know for example an arterial road could be five to seven years whereas a local road we're probably more in the 25 year range and collectors fall somewhere in between depending on traffic count. There could be a lot of variability within that road class range. A collector may have 5,000 cars a day or 10,000 and it really does. Those axle loads do make a difference. Sure. Thank you. I've got to follow up. The amount, when you looked at the amount over time for paving, like it seems relatively constant. I mean, it's like it has a little bit varies here and there. Is paving cost been relatively constant for the last 10 years? Are we paving less miles every year? Paving has not been constant for the last four or five years. Paving, like all things in the construction cost index, has continued to increase. Although interestingly, right now we actually just got a price adjustment that was a decrease. It's tied very heavily to the cost of liquid asphalt, which is very connected to the price of oil. So it's not the only factor. Salaries have gone up. Equipment has gone up. So generally the price goes up, but we are experiencing the bliss of a price decrease right now. So if it's tied to the price of oil, is it kind of the spot price, or are we usually getting a fixed price for per paving mile for a whole season or is it, does it vary by month depending on the way the oil prices are? They are allowed to ask for an adjustment once a month. They generally ask for one about twice a year unless it's really volatile. And the contract specifies that it is based on the average monthly index for asphalt and And there's an index that's listed on the Transportation Cabinet's website that we reference as the foundation of the price adjustment. Okay. And then I kind of have a bit of a financial question. Oh, no. Because this, and I see Commissioner Hensley is there. So I know that I'd like to just kind of understand the past funding of how we've done paving. I know we've done it as bond issues in previous years, and I know it's recommended this year as a bond issue. But I kind of would like to understand maybe the last six to seven years, because I personally kind of view it as a non-capital item. I view it as a repair item, and I just kind of want to get a sense for how we've done it in the past. Yep, so for the last six or seven years, we've relied heavily on bonding as a mechanism for paying for paving. The mayor's first year, the year that we had the budget that was rolling into COVID, was very, very low, and we got behind. We did have a little bit of paving. I think 2022, we had a $1.5 million pre-fund that helped with that. And then we I think maybe I can't remember if the ADA ramps where they fell, but I don't think they're bonded So we do try and hit them a little bit with some extra cash if we have that available we actually tend to capitalize our paving over Or we would we would bond it based on a 10-year cycle Again based on the life of how long we think it's going to live But if we are paving a road that already exists It's not an additional asset to the government. Only a brand new road would become a new asset. Accounting-wise, it functions as a repair and maintenance, but the cost is so significant we don't have an extra $14 million lying around in operational cash to be able to include that in our operating dollars. Thank you. Yes, sir. That's all I have, Chair. Thanks so much. Thank you, Councilmember Sevigny. Councilmember Fogel. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. First, let me start off by saying thank you for 7th Street and Maple and Shropshire and Brackenridge and part of Loudoun. Let me start off with the good stuff. And I think this is a financial question too. And I know that 1st District office doesn't take care. How do you deduct, how do I know how much money I spent on Loudon as I'm looking at my budget and I'm trying to do side streets? How will I know when I get to zero balance or how much I have left to pave a certain street? How do I know that? It is technically a financial question, but that's not actually something the Department of Finance maintains. That is done over in the next week. Do you just keep increasing it? Yeah, that's one of the things. So I can pick my priorities. Yeah, that's one of the things that Nathan gets very involved in every week is the balance of what roads were paved using council dollars and what roads may have been skipped because of a utility repair. And then kind of keeping track of all that with your requested projects. So that is something that Nathan works to maintain as we pave all year. We don't have to worry about if I'm going to hit zero balance or will you just say slow down, Council Fogel? Technically, what we will do is we will take your list and we will work with our contractor to execute as many projects on there as you have funds available. So we will monitor when those funds run out. All right. Thank you. And how do you all determine patching a road versus paving the entire road? Like I've seen some of that in the first district. Well, a lot of what you see like a square patch, that is generally utility. And so a lot of that is based on just how big of a cut they're making. And the Division of Engineering will work with the utility company and also with our group to make sure that at what point does it trip into needing to do a whole lane or a whole road? Okay. And so I know that we're playing catch up. And I know if we were in the emergency room, I would have all the doctors in First District working on the patient, the road. And so what I need to know is and what I need to tell the constituents, Greenacres versus the east side of town or down Georgetown Street, thank God I share that with Council Member Lynch because she knows those technical terms and she'll get that done and I'll benefit from what she does. And so I think my question right here, I was listening to like 12 years, 25 years. So we must be in the 12th year and the 25 years in the first district. So does that mean that we have floated toward the top now? Are we almost at the top? If I can, if I can figure out how. you all do have a little higher percentage of lane miles than some others, but not extraordinarily so. Okay. So I do think there's a lot of utility work going on in the first district. A lot. And there has been for the last year or two, and that has contributed to the accelerated decline of some of the road conditions. All right. You will also benefit, I think, one of our big paving sharing refunds that we got back this summer or this spring was in the first district. So there will be more funds available this summer for you to select more roads. So here's that million dollar question. Uh-oh. Limestone. I know. I know. I know. Limestone is painful for everyone, but not probably nearly as it is for you. because all of your constituents, I'm sure, are very frustrated. And believe me that we share that when we heard there is one more water quality slash Columbia gas conflict to be worked out in the next, hopefully, few, we're measuring in weeks. It is on our radar to pave this summer, if at all possible. We start pining them if they don't get it right the first time. Here they come back, they dig up again. We do actually make them repair it. This is one that I don't know that it was on anybody's radar, so it's hard to find someone for something we just found out about. But if the utility cuts fail, it is on them to fix the utility cuts. And our utilities group within the Division of Engineering does work on that. Thank you, because Silver Maple has dug up. We're ready for paving. Here they come back. I know. And that whole silver maple cannot park on the street at all. So they have to park blocks away to get home with their groceries and everything. So that's one of the biggest concern, I just want to play that for you. So thank you so much, and thank you for the presentation. Thank you, Councilmember Fogel. We know it can be frustrating for residents to navigate all of these paving and utility projects. So thanks for those questions. Councilmember Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. One question I have, and you didn't mention anything about it, I think most council members know that Manowar is city-owned. Is it included in this budgetary amount in the arterial? Because we generally try to do a million dollars a year on Manowar. Yes, sir. You are right on all counts, and thank you for highlighting that. Yes, we will always set aside funds. I've compared it to the Golden Gate Bridge over the years of we will just keep doing the next section, and we do have a section lined up for Manowar for this summer. What section is that that you're talking about? The problem looks like he's ready to stand up. I'm hoping he remembers. This summer? Nicholasville Road to Seren Drive. Okay. Both sides. Okay. And we've just recently completed sidewalks. Probably a million dollar budget in that item. Okay. And then the next, this is basically a statement, than what i've done for years and i would encourage council members to incorporate their streets by neighborhood if you can do it by neighborhood you get more for your dollars and uh in a contiguous area and also if you can do that in relationship to a collector street so if you've got a collector street that's close to your neighborhood area right there and it has you know all this is due to the rating of course but you can find most of the neighborhoods kind of have the same paving problems I think so I would encourage you you look at that you'll get more you know you get more for your dollars and so I encourage that thank you I thank you councilmember Brown That's excellent advice. Council Member Gray, you're back. I'm back. Thank you, Chair. And Council Member Fred Brown, I do exactly what you just said. So I'll sit next to you and I learn often. A quick question that I forgot to ask. How closely do you all work with Fayette County Public Schools regarding the paving? I know that in my district that has a high number of Fayette County Public Schools properties, that we have an area such as near Bryan Station High School, where there's a large number of potholes that needs to be repaired. But turns out, guess what? That is Fayette County Public Schools property in certain parts of that area. So I'm just curious how you communicate. We do coordinate with them, especially if we know we're on or near an entrance. Was it Crawford last year that we ended up matching up with them so that their entrance and the connecting street all got repaved at the same time? So we do try to work with them, and if we know we're going to be in or near a school area, we'll coordinate with them. And then there's other times, of course, we prefer to do it while they're out of school in general and do that coordination with them. if we are in an area where there's a school, during the school year, we'll coordinate with them to make sure we know either during a break or like when we did Richardson back over spring break, we made sure to coordinate. We did the milling before the spring break and we coordinated dismissal times to make sure we were minimally invasive. Wonderful. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilwoman. Colleagues I have one quick question before we wrap up this item. We've touched on this a little bit, but you all had that project prioritization responsibility slide and I know that it states administration with council input in terms of the decision making process. What form is council input meant to take and what is the most streamlined way for us to pass on requests about roads that are not classified as local but may need attention? I think the one I see the most often is it comes up through Mr. Dickerson and then it gets shared from there and I know a lot of aides are very used to and council members are very used to engaging with Nathan about paving and so I think that's a very comfortable way to include that there's also this other concern. So I would encourage anybody to just include that with a, in the conversation with Mr. Dickerson and he will share that with the rest of the team. Okay, and should that be via email or is there like a form or a standardized way beyond email that you'd prefer? The short answer is what's ever as easiest for the council member and their style. Some folks prefer to be more technological. I know there's some shared folders where folks just keep a list of everything and then that's something I'll relay when we have our meetings on Wednesdays. But also if you're more comfortable with paper or another different approach, that works as well. So emailing me is a good way to keep it accounted for and I like a shared drive so I keep all the emails and stuff there. Okay, excellent. That's helpful for me to know and hopefully for others. Well, thank you all. We appreciate this update. useful information, excellent questions per usual. And I am going to forego our discussion about any items referred to committee unless there are objections. And therefore, that concludes our business for today. If there are no objections, then you'll find this meeting adjourned. Thank you, colleagues. .