We have a scheduled meeting of the General Government Planning Committee of the Urban County Council. Our first item on the agenda is approval of the September 10th Committee Summary. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Thank you. The next item on our agenda is an update on the Urban Growth Master Plan. I think Mr. Taylor is going to handle this and give us a brief update. And I think, if you will, please highlight in the process the importance of today's update to us precedes a public hearing with the Planning Commission later this week, correct or not? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think Mr. Taylor is going to handle this and give us a brief update this afternoon or this week correct or next week. Yes. Yes. So, thank you very much, Mr. Taylor. Thank you. Good afternoon. Sort of give you all a fall update. We're reaching the conclusion of the master planning process. Just as a reminder, this was an outcome of the 2045, Imagine Lexington 2045 Comprehensive Plan and particularly as it relates to Uril's action at the June adoption of the goals and objectives in goal three, there was a process identified to do a master plan for an expansion. It began really August 2023 with a goal of finishing up this master plan by December 1st, 2024. Throughout the development plan, the staff and TSW design, the lead consultant on the project has used the goals and objectives as identified in the comp plan to develop the recommendations that the planning commission will be considering this week. So there's sort of three parts to the master plan. We are in the phase three of sort of the reviewing and the checking. This is the part where the plan is available for public review on urbangrowthlex.com. The plan is available for downloading. You can make comments directly on the plan or you can send us emails back to the planning staff and the consultant team. As far as timeline goes, through last year, August through October, just sort of a review here. The planning commission and an advisory committee identified areas for expansion. The staff finalized the contract with the consultants in November, started working with them sort of behind the scenes to get them the information that they needed to get started. Then in January was the first planning commission work session on this master plan. As you can see, pretty much every month except June, there was a planning commission work session on some element of the master plan. In April, in May, late April, early May, was sort of the first round of intense public engagement that was out at the Hamburg YMCA, as well as a number of other tabling events that we've done sort of throughout the community to try to get in front of as many people as possible and talk about sort of the concepts that were going to be baked into the plan. The initial concepts were done in May and carried through until the July planning commission work session where we sort of touched on infrastructure funding. But in July, we had another public outreach meeting at the senior center. We had over 170 people attend to talk to us about sort of the refined versions of the concept plans and the regulating plans that are in the master plan. Then we summarized that public input back to the planning commission in July, just after that public input opportunity. In August and September, we carried forward with infrastructure costs, capital improvements, some rough estimates on what the cost of infrastructure would be, both to the private development community as well as to the government's ongoing budgets and operating and maintenance costs. Then in September, it's not on here, the September 19th planning commission work session was sort of the regulatory framework element of the master plan. Just a few takeaways from where we're at with this master plan. It has density recommendations for the five areas throughout Fayette County to range between 17,000 to 26,000 dwelling units. Obviously, there's density ranges provided in those regulating plans. So there could be variation in some of these. That's why there's a wide range in those projections. Specifically, it calls for a different development pattern than what Lexington has typically seen. These are shorter, more walkable blocks, denser, mixed use town centers with lower density sort of radiating out as you get a little further away from those town centers. That's been a concept that we've had to have a lot of discussion with the development community about, trying to provide a regulatory framework that is flexible enough to ensure the development can take place in a timely fashion, because that's important to provide the housing, but also that it gets the things that are identified in the comprehensive plan in the goal and objective for this plan to meet those objectives, particularly more walkable, mixed use type developments. It does add some flexibility and language to support job creation, identifies the green space, the civic spaces that are needed, so the parks and greenways. And then our transportation, it leans heavily on the transportation network that's identified. And I'll get to some of the next steps involved in that in just a second. And then it doesn't identify specific signalized traffic intersections. We're talking about newer, more innovative traffic management that is not your traditional traffic signals that we know of. And so some of the key things here, and I'll come back to the transportation piece in just a second, but there's some implementation steps that are recommended to be completed as part of this plan. One is that the Blue Sky Rural Activity Center that was included in the expansion is going to have its own small area plan. It's an already developed industrial site. The time and the expertise that we contracted for this master plan is different than what we would do for an existing built environment for an industrial area. And so we are working on an RFP to start that process. It's budgeted in the next year, starting in January. There are recommendations in the master plan for additional zoning ordinance text amendments to implement some of those recommendations and some of the regulatory framework. That will follow the typical legislative process that we do with Outreach Planning Commission and then to this body. And then the plan leans heavily for transportation on the integration with the Complete Streets Manual and the work that's ongoing there. We coordinated a lot with that project team to make sure that language, verbiage, cross-sections, all sorts of things match up and don't get in the way of, and we don't put something out that's going to be contradictory with what the Complete Streets project is going to be doing. So we feel like coordination on those two projects is going well. And then another key piece, this master plan, unlike the 96 expansion which laid out an exaction formula for covering infrastructure costs, this master plan is a land use plan and it makes a recommendation for additional steps that are needed for infrastructure funding. It does not go so far as to define a share, a cost to the government for the provision of the initial infrastructure. It identifies some estimates, but right now under this plan if a developer wants to go and build, they shoulder the cost and the burden for building the necessary infrastructure. And so the follow-up to how we handle infrastructure development is something that we're hoping to address in early 2025 through a separate process on identifying what that type of infrastructure funding program might be, and that's spelled out a little more detailed in the master plan. As far as next steps, as Councilmember Orley mentioned, this Thursday in this room the Planning Commission will have, will convert their work session to a public hearing to take public comment, public input and feedback on the master plan. Typically the way these sorts of things work with small area plans or the comprehensive plan is we take that feedback, the Planning Commission gives us some direction at the end of that, staff takes a couple weeks, prepares revisions, and then we'll come back on the 31st to continue that public hearing, go through any changes that are proposed to be made, and there will be some to that, and then the Planning Commission should move for action on the plan at that time. And so that is sort of where we're at right now. We've been advertising that through our social media. We've tried to get that to you all earlier so that you could get it into your newsletters, and we've seen, we've done our press release and things like that, and our mail notice or public notice on these things. So we expect a good turnout at the meeting based off the public engagement that we've been receiving. But at this point if you all have any questions on process and timing, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you, Chris. Councilmembers, are there any questions? Councilmember Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I know you guys have been working so hard, so thank you so, so much. Just procedurally, after the public hearing and adoption on October 31st, what does it look like going forward? Like, will you guys come back and present, like, a full plan, like, what's our role in it going forward? Yeah, I think we have set aside funding in the scope of the work with the consultant for them to come back and give the Council a full presentation I think just after New Year's, because once we get into November, schedules are really tight with the holidays, and so we've scheduled, I think, a January time for the consultants to come and give the Council a full presentation on it. But technically, once the Planning Commission has adopted the plan as an element of the comprehensive plan, we could see a zone change for a property in one of these areas. There's other infrastructure concerns that may slow that development down, but the zone change process could occur. The actual development in most of these areas is still probably a few years away. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Next, Mayor Woo. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chris, and your team for all the work that you've done on this. One of the slides referenced identifying between 17,000 and 26,000 dwelling units. Do we have an idea right now of how many dwelling units in Lexington and Fayette County were short? Is that a number you all keep? I know we have a number that was back from the 2017 Housing Demand Study, and I don't know that. I couldn't give it to you off the top of my head, so no, I don't have that number right off. Okay. I'd just say it's at least that many. Yeah. On your timeline, or in terms of next steps, you talked about kind of looking into the infrastructure funding next year. At this point, is there a ballpark for what that infrastructure funding or how much that would cost us? I believe we've had some conversation with the administration, and I believe that there is a staff person that's been identified that could probably better answer those questions, and I would defer that to Mr. Denny in the commissioner's office. Okay. And then you also touched on the idea of developers, you know, picking up a lot of that cost. Do you have a sense of, either from past experience or kind of projecting forward, like what proportion of these infrastructure costs are borne by developers versus the city? Well, that varies. Again, part of the infrastructure funding program in most cities, there is a split, and it varies widely. So that's part of why that process needs to take place, and that's part of the recommendation of the master plan, and I can speak pretty clearly on the need for that, because determining what that split should be is highly dependent upon the government wanting to incentivize the type of development that we've seen in this master plan, and so that can change the type of fee structure that you might set up, plus the type of options that the government may want to have at its disposal if it wants to build into the infrastructure itself and then recoup those costs through later development. So the split could be a wide-ranging number, but as it sits right now, without some sort of mechanism in place for the developers to share that and the government to share that, the developers pay pretty much all of the initial upfront cost. So the costs that were identified in the master plan, those are costs that are passed to the developer and then passed to the consumer later on, obviously, but then the other part that was identified was sort of the operations and maintenance piece annually in terms of budget impact, and those were things that we thought was important in this master plan to have the consultants give us some range and ballpark on those two aspects. Thank you for that. I've been seeing sort of out in the public realm people throwing numbers around and people throwing not just numbers around, but how much the government and LFUCG would be bearing of the infrastructure, so I wanted to get a little more clarity, and it sounds like at this point we haven't done enough studying on getting that full clarity, and that's what we're looking at next year. That's true. Yeah. Good afternoon, Councilmembers. If I may remove, I think I can clarify, as a part of that next step, in the next couple of weeks, you all will be hearing in the mayor's recommendation for a fund balance request and ask for hiring a consultant to bring them on to help us develop this infrastructure funding plan. They would get more detailed cost estimates. They would help us develop a project prioritization system and then a selection timing and sequencing for the infrastructure buildout, so I do believe you'll hear more about that in the next couple of weeks, but the next phase, as Chris Taylor said, will help bring some more clear numbers to those estimates. Okay. Appreciate it, Mr. Kennedy. And, Mr. Taylor, one last question. You mentioned the possibility in terms of, you know, next steps once things get approved and moved on. We're looking at potential zone changes. Are those zone changes preemptive in terms of looking forward to what developments may be coming, and we're going to kind of change those zones ahead of time, or are we waiting for a particular development request before zone changes happen? No, at this point, the developers could bring in zone change proposals, and staff would review those and evaluate them against the master plan through the typical zone change process, so it would be sort of recommendations and development criteria similar to the place builder, the way we implement, but in terms of if there's a regulatory piece, something that we wanted to turn into regulation, it could come before that, but again, we've done a lot of expansionary development in the past that didn't necessarily come with specific regulations. So that's something that will take some time for staff to work through the legislative process, but it doesn't preclude development from coming in and having the review process in advance of those regulations. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And, Vice Mayor, if I could add on to what Mr. Taylor and Mr. Denny have said. I think the urban growth ZOTA that we recently passed was one of the most large-scale regulatory changes in zoning that we've seen in some 30 years, and I think that was not only intended for many of the purposes in that document, but also to lay the groundwork for what will likely be more zoning ordinance text amendments and regulatory changes that will be needed in the next year or so as we move into the expansionary and master plan and see what will be necessary. So I think to the extent the government sees need to incentivize or decentivize or change, that will be in place, and I know there's also already work in place to get more in compliance with House Bill 443 state law that regulates how we handle our zoning. So I think that the council will be well busy and involved in the next several months of helping to implement this expansionary and master plan. The next item on our agenda are rural short-term rentals. As we lead into this, Councilmember James Brown is not here, so I'd ask Councilmember Sheehan maybe to bring us into the next step. But I would say to the committee, for time purposes, the presentation of the packet is the same presentation that we saw at our last meeting, but if you'll remember, we didn't want to take action in the last meeting, partly because Councilmember Plowman was not here, and we wanted to take just a little more time to take a look at it. So I certainly don't want to discourage questions, comments, but I think we're now at the time to take some action and would like, if we can, to move this quickly given the time in our agenda. Thank you. Councilmember Sheehan or Plowman? Like you mentioned, Chair, we do have the recommendations from the Rural Land Management Board for the short-term rental ordinance for the ag areas in our packet. We've had some previous discussion and presentations on this, but I know that Councilmember Plowman has had some conversations with those in her district, so I'm going to actually turn it over to her to talk about the results of those conversations. Thank you. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Sheehan. I would like to start off by thanking the Rural Land Management Task Force that dealt with this. This was under the leadership of Margaret Graves, who's with us today. The committee has provided a blueprint for jurisdiction on how these short-term rentals should be governed moving forward. The RSA is unique in comparison to Inside the Boundary, and thus, the regulations that have come back for approval today are considerations that really were not applicable or needed to have been included in the STR urban service zone area. I do want to bring forward today two, actually, amendments, the first one, and that would be that it does impact a small portion of STR owners in the AR zone that are not large farms or acreage, but smaller parcels of land located in the RSA. These small STR operations could not or could possibly cease and desist because of the hosting requirement that would mean that an additional structure would need to be added so that the owner or designated host could live on that piece of land. That is not realistic due to the size of the parcel, and that in the proposed recommendation, no newly constructed STRs are allowed. The other hosted option is the owner slash host and guest would need to reside in the same house, which is not a desirable arrangement for a rental situation for the host or the guest. The likelihood is that the STR would not be rented and a possibility of going out of business. My office has heard from owners of STR in the AR zone that would face this situation with their STRs that have been operating, some for years, providing a rural experience that drew visitors that rent rural STRs in Lexington, that come to Lexington in the first place. I am bringing forward an amendment allowing STRs 10 acres and below to be unhosted for the reasons that I just shared. The motion reads as follows. I move to amend the proposal relating to short-term rentals in the rural service area. Table in section 3-13B to permit a conditional, with a conditional use permit, unhosted short-term rentals on parcels 10 acres or less. So moved. Second. We have a motion to second and a discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. Council Member Plowman. Yes, I have a second a motion. Many of these existing small parcels are located close to each other in proximity and the one recommendation that is for the rest of the remaining over 10 is not practical for these small parcels. Therefore, I am bringing forward a second amendment to lower the spacing requirement from one mile to 500 feet only for the unhosted short-term rentals that were just approved on property 10 acres or less. My motion reads, I move to amend the proposal relating to the short-term rentals in the area, section 3-13GV, to change the spacing requirements from one mile to 500 feet for unhosted short-term rentals with a conditional use permit on parcels of 10 acres or less. So moved. Second. Thank you. There's a motion to second. Any discussion on that motion? Council Member Allinger. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Plowman. We had this discussion last time and I brought up that I don't think everything always fits the same because there are some differences out there in some areas where we've had some residents contact us because they live close to the horse park and they're not horse farms per se and I appreciate you bringing these amendments forward because I think this does help out some but it also protects the others. So thank you for bringing this and I will support it. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. Council Member Plowman, do you have anything else? Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other motions to amend the proposed Zoning Orders text amendment? All right. If there are no other motions to amend, Council Member Baxter, do you have a motion to amend? Yes. Okay, I didn't think so. If there are no other motions to amend, then I would entertain a motion to report this out to the full council as a recommendation or a council initiated Zoning Orders text amendment to the Planning Commission. So moved. Second. The motion is second. Are there any other, any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I would also like to make a motion to go ahead and report this out today at today's work session if my colleagues would oblige. So moved. We have a motion to second. Any discussion on the motion for an early report out? Council Member Reynolds. Yes. Could you explain why you feel like it's necessary to go ahead and do that today? Yeah, I think Council Member Plowman has spent a significant amount of time working with the Rural Aid Management Board to draft these recommendations and I think there's really nothing holding us back from moving it forward. Okay. I'm fine with that. I just want to make sure that when other things come up and we ask for a double reading that we're open to those as well. Thank you. Or I mean an early readout. Thank you. I just want to say that as someone who's similarly situated to Council Member Plowman, a Zoning Orders text amendment initiated by the Council can be with the Planning Commission for up to 60 days. The Planning Commission may take this up sooner, but if they take their full time, then it's likely that Council Member Plowman and I may or may not get an opportunity to vote on the ultimate ordinance change just given the time frame, so. Council Member Allegre. Thank you, Chair. I would say we postponed this really another month, so we have had ample amount of time, I think, to discuss this, so it's not like we are rushing this because it's the same what we had before, so I'm supportive. Thank you. All those in favor of the motion for the early report, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That motion carries. Thank you all for all your hard work on that issue. Thank you again, if anyone is here, from the Rural Land Management Board for all the work that you all did to help guide us through that way. Council Member Savigny, I know you serve on that board. Next up on our agenda, we have a report and update from the Lexington History Museum. I see my good friend Mandy Higgins coming to the podium. Looking forward to hearing it. Before we get started, Council Member Plowman, is there anything you'd like to say by way of lead in? Chair, I could not hear you, I'm sorry. Is there anything you'd like to say about the item? This is your item in committee, about the History Museum, before Mandy gets started. Sure, sure. And also, former Council Member Susan Lamb was also very involved in this, and I think we must have said it ad nauseum that we cannot believe a city historical as Lexington, Kentucky does not have a History Museum. And because we all came together and recognized that, and awarded them ARPA money, we were able to get it up and going, and I think today you're going to hear about all the successes, and where they're going, where they are now, and where they're going to go next. So thank you, Chair. Thank you. Ms. Higgins. Thank you, Council Member Worley, and Council, so many of you who have had the joy of working with this year. As Council Member Worley said, I'm Mandy Higgins, I'm the Executive Director of the Lexington History Museum, and we are so excited to share the progress we've made with your support. Since opening our doors in August of 2023, we've enjoyed much success, thanks to the generous financial support of the City of Lexington and our donors. In our report last year, we focused on the behind-the-scenes work that made the pictures above possible, gaining intellectual control of our collection, writing and creating the permanent exhibit in the auditorium of the Thomas Hunt Morgan House, and the many other day-to-day activities that make a museum possible. This year, we are thrilled to share with you all the ways we've been able to build on that momentum on the momentum of that opening weekend. Since August of last year, we have welcomed more than 2,500 people through our doors, from 38 states, 18 foreign countries, and every Fayette County zip code. Visitors, both out-of-town guests and people who have lived in Lexington their entire lives, consistently remark that they learned something new about Lexington. They ask us follow-up questions, and we help guide them to other resources in the community. Most importantly for us, they share with us a piece of their family's history or their own interests, which we use to inform our own collecting needs and future design plans. We have also begun a membership program that has thus far attracted more than 50 paid members and continues to grow each month. Membership benefits include complimentary admission to the museum and events at the museum, discounted admission for non-member guests, and the benefits associated with the Time Travelers Network. Through Time Travelers, Lex History members receive reciprocal museum benefits, including free or discounted admission, free or discounted parking, and much more to more than 400 historic sites and museums throughout the country. Partnerships like Time Travelers are wonderful for Lexingtonians who travel, but we are also proud to have partnered with other organizations like LexArts to participate in Gallery Hop and Bites of the Bluegrass to welcome visitors and tourists into the museum. Since last August, more than 400 people have attended these special opportunities. Through these partnerships, we've been able to host diverse artists and show how history and art can work together. We've also been able to enhance a successful tour business through our partnership with Bites of the Bluegrass and have benefited from a strong partnership with VisitLex, who continually sends visitors our way. These partnerships have also opened new audiences for us, bringing in visitors and residents who may not know about the museum or who may otherwise skip the museum on their tours. Of course, we want people in our physical museum, that's why we exist, but we understand that not everyone can make it downtown. Our mission is to tell the stories of Lexington's history, and we're doing so through a variety of ways, including our newsletters, which we publish twice a year to more than 2,200 people. The newsletters allow us to dive deeper into lesser-known histories, like that of Ella Pepper, who saved not only the Pepper Distillery, but also her own Thoroughbreds and Meadowthorpe Farm, to highlight new acquisitions, like our late 19th Century Morning Dress, and to inspire our readers to continue to engage with us as we tell all of Lexington's history. Additionally, we preview upcoming content and share news from our collaborations with partners throughout the region. There will be a little news about a veterans project coming. We have received numerous compliments for our professional and accessible newsletter. Additionally, its consistent funding message has helped us to better share opportunities to support the museum. We know that telling our stories in our newsletters motivates return visitors to the museum to see updates to our permanent exhibit during our regular business hours, Thursdays and Fridays, noon to four, and Saturdays, ten to four, as well as pre-scheduled group tours Monday through Saturday. The exhibit itself is designed to be flexible, moving visitors from pre-European settlement through Lexington's years as a major IBM manufacturer and into the 21st century. The permanent exhibit grounds visitors and residents alike in an inclusive, overarching story of Lexington's developments, its triumphs, and its tragedies, so that no matter where they go after the museum, visitors are able to better understand the great city they're experiencing today. And, excitingly, we tell our stories through sponsored and special exhibits, such as the one that is currently on display in our rotating gallery, entitled Among Women, 130 Years of the Women's Club of Central Kentucky, which will be on display until February 15th, 2025. We are especially proud of the materials we were able to bring into this exhibit and to be able to highlight many Lexington women who, through their membership in the Women's Club and elsewhere, contributed to Lexington's history. Working closely with the officers of the Women's Club, this exhibit showcases the ways we can bring lesser-known or whimsical pieces of our past into a meaningful and well-rounded exhibit. When you visit, not only will you learn about important advancements in the city, like the founding of the Carnegie Library or the implementation and enforcement of anti-spitting ordinances, but also the ways that fashion, bridge, and cookbooks helped sustain friendships, organizational influence, and Lexington's culture throughout the 20th century. We also tell our stories through speaking engagements and a podcast series in partnership with WUKY, known as Lex Talk History, co-hosted by Lex History board member Alan Lytle, the news director at WUKY. The podcast has been especially fun, as Vice Mayor Wu might tell you, as, like our partnerships with LexArts, we can highlight parts of Lexington's history that are not currently represented in our museum collections. Further, in the podcast format, we have the opportunity to have fuller discussions of events, peoples, and places that make Lexington special. The podcast and speaking engagements serve to introduce us to new audiences and deepen our engagement with established friends and partners, including Commerce Lexington, the school system, and local and regional professional groups. We know we are not the only people telling Lexington's history and believe it is important to share our space and our platforms with other groups doing history-minded work. We are fortunate to invite traveling exhibits into the museum, such as the one presented by Keeneland Library and our board member Rhoda Ferreira this past spring, entitled Heart of the Turf, Racing's Black Pioneers. Our space is flexible enough to allow for temporary traveling exhibits, and we continue to look for potential partners on traveling exhibits for the space. It is my profound belief that history is for everyone, and we are creating special resources for school-age children to inspire the next generation of Lexingtonians to know and understand Lexington's history. Working with a museum educator, we now offer three social studies standards-aligned field trip options for students aged preschool to high school. Recognizing that field trips are not always possible within our schools, we will also bring museum lessons into classrooms. As a recent podcast guest noted, local history is important for inspiring students in their own communities, and we take that charge seriously. We seek to meet educators and students where they are, whenever we can. And we continue to stimulate important conversations on meaningful and interesting topics through our LexTalk series, which over the past 12 months has attracted more than 200 attendees to the museum. You can join us for our next LexTalks conversation this Sunday, October 20th at 2 p.m. Dr. Carly Mutertes, a Tate's Creek grad and a UK grad, will discuss her book, Bluegrass Bold, Stories of Kentucky Women. Written for students and young readers, Bluegrass Bold highlights 36 diverse Kentucky women whose contributions to national and state history are often overlooked. And it complements our Women's Club exhibit. We are forging partnerships with community leaders through our Partnership Council, which meets at least twice a year, to provide us with counsel and advice on how best to achieve our mission and vision as part of the economic, educational, cultural, and tourism development of the city and the region. Through the Partnership Council, we have been able to join the University of Kentucky's Federal Work Study Program, allowing us to hire a work study-eligible graduate student to help us in the museum, find new funding opportunities, and join working groups to ensure Lexington's history is represented accurately in artwork and in commemoration efforts. We are building coalitions with 20 other history-minded organizations in Lexington, including, but not shown here, the Keeneland Library and the Musenich Museum at Transylvania University, to share resources and ensure that all of Lexington's history is being told in our museum, either through our own collections or through the collections of others. The History Collective meets at least four times a year and highlights the good work happening throughout the city. External work, of course, is extremely important, and we're proud of the ways we've been able to reintroduce ourselves to Lexington. Internally, with the guidance of a Blue Ribbon Board Development Committee chaired by former Lex History Board of Trustees and founding member Stephen Amato, we have been able to attract nine new board members, many of whom are here today, to bring new ideas and a fresh and diverse perspective to our work. This new board will be guiding the development of our new strategic plan, which will be approved in early 2025 for fiscal years 2026 through 2028. We've implemented new policies and procedures, updated bylaws, and reinforced governing best practices to provide the strong governance and fiduciary oversight expected of a professional nonprofit board. Through our board and community partners, we are continuing to work hard to generate philanthropic support from individuals, corporations, foundations, and organizations, and are starting to see results as our visibility and community awareness increases. These grants have helped us create the educational material I mentioned before, introduced digital materials into the museum via iPads, and helped us better care for our collections, among many other benefits. We are really excited to share with you that we've been able to expand our lease agreement with the Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation to occupy the entirety of the Thomas Hunt Morgan House, which allows us to locate our offices and storage on the upper floors and utilize all of the first floor for exhibit space. This expanded opportunity will increase our impact as Lexington's history museum and create new ways to serve the public and our members. With this move, we will be able to open the two new spaces for interpretation. The front two parlors, those arched windows on the first floor, will now be available for exhibit use, expanding our ability to tell Lexington's history in even more ways. One of our strategic plan goals was to consolidate our collection, which had been spread out over six storage units for a long time. We can now say that we will be able to put them all in a single, safe space at the Thomas Hunt Morgan House for the first time in more than a decade. The museum will be able to collect and preserve Lexington's history under one roof, not to get real technical and nerdy, but this allows us to have both physical and intellectual control of our collection, a major piece of best practices as put out by the American Alliance for Museums. And, as Vice Mayor knows well, we are very privileged to be working together as a key member of the Mayor's 250 Lex Commission to plan and prepare for Lexington's 250th anniversary next year. The museum will be a part of the celebration, and we look forward to welcoming all of you there to celebrate our 250 years of history. None of this would have been possible without the financial support of the City of Lexington, this committee, and all members of council. We are deeply grateful for all that you've done to bring the museum back to life, and we hope for more possibilities in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great presentation. Are there any questions, comments, anything from the committee? Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I first want to thank Councilmember Plowman and former Councilmember Lamb for being such big advocates of the History Museum in the most recent past. The progress that you all have made just over the last two years is immense, and it's amazing to be in the space. I do recommend people go see the exhibit focused on women of Lexington. It's pretty cool. And I also want to thank you on behalf of the Veterans Affairs Commission, because as you mentioned, we have a project that is going to be displayed in November around Veterans Day. We have created banners to honor veterans within our community who have been inducted into the Kentucky Veterans Hall of Fame, and that has been a lot of work. And you've also created an online exhibit to go with that to give a little bit more information about the veterans, and I'm very excited to see those banners be displayed and the potential of what that can turn into for later years. So I really thank you and want to definitely say publicly that you've been an amazing partner in that work, and I know it has taken a lot of time, so thanks. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Higgins, for the presentation and all your work. I'm echoing a lot of what Councilmember Sheehan had to say. The Among Women exhibit is really, really cool to see the depth of the history and some of the artifacts. And it's been a pleasure working with you as a co-chair of the Programming Committee for 250Lex. It's great to have somebody with that sort of historical context and historical focus working along, because 250Lex is about history, but also about the contextualizing where we are today and how we go forward to the future. So I'm very happy to have a very thoughtful partner in that planning. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Plowman. Thank you, Chair. And I'd like to thank the Lexington History Museum for using the picture that is almost 20 years old, 20 years ago, when I was formerly on the Board. And just look at that one, never any present pictures. But I also want to commend Mandy Higgins. She also serves on our Steering Committee for a Sense of Place, and is doing a lot of things to help us teach others how to tell their stories, and help us tell our stories. And Kelly Johns, who's also on the Board, did an excellent job on this presentation. Lots of times we'll get, I'm not putting down anybody else's presentation, lots of times we'll get a lot of words, and it was just so easy to read what is going on, what is happening with a few words there at the top. Great job, and congratulations on everything you are doing, and I look forward to coming back on the Board and being able to attend, because they're on Thursday nights up on our Council meetings right now. But I'll be back. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember LaGre. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Higgins, I just want to build on the positive sentiments that people have shared thus far. I remember sitting down with you to talk about your lens, your approach, your plan, and your vision, and talking with other Board members and champions for the museum, and feeling hopeful and optimistic as a result. You all have really made a lot of progress, and you've really delivered on those goals. I'm so excited to encourage people to visit the space and to learn about different facets of Lexington's history. It was so interesting. You took me around, and I got to learn about some of the continuous exhibits and some of your plans for the future, and I learned so much about Lexington during my time there. So I just want to commend you for all of the progress you've made and everything you've yet to do, especially with some of that behind the scenes work and consolidating everything into one place. I know that was a really heavy lift on top of kind of infusing the new space with exhibitions and inviting people into that current space. So congratulations and thank you, and I'm really appreciative that you have so many board members and supporters here behind you in chambers. Thank you, Councilmember. Then I'll just add, I think you all are doing fantastic work, and I'm really, really proud of where the History Museum is. Some people don't know, at one point I was the general counsel to the History Museum years and years ago. I think at the time, Jim Dickinson back there was the chair, and we were still meeting in the old courthouse before it was condemned and remodeled, and all of the exhibits had to be shuttered and moved to storage units. And so to see where we were then and then where we've come now, it's really, really impressive. And I think that's in large part when you look at the makeup of the board and how many dedicated people coming from a lot of different backgrounds that are bringing their expertise. And then, of course, I see a lot of friends. Of course, Steve's my law partner and great friend. Amelia and I went to high school together. Kelly's husband performed my wedding ceremony. Susan, Kathy, and I served together in the council. And then I'm not a super host like Chuck, but I did graduate with honors from the History Department of the University of Kentucky. And I put that- You're very welcome, council member. And I put that in large part because I sat next to Mandy in almost every class. So you all have got an A class team with you and you're doing a great job. So thank you very much. Thank you. All right, next on our agenda, we have the tenants on boards and commissions issue brought to us by Council Member Lynch. Council Member, would you like to lead us in? Sure, thank you, Chair. In 2023, Vice Mayor Wu and Council Member Sheehan and I began looking at ways to incorporate the tenant voice. And some of the housing related decisions that the city makes. And at the same time, Commissioner Lanter was kind of, had the same idea. To create two advisory groups, a landlord advisory group and a tenant advisory group. So it's like all perfect timing, we came together on this topic. And so he's going to come today for our annual report. I'm looking forward to hearing and you all to hear about how the tenants group and the landlord's group advisory groups have been meeting because it's been about a year. So I'm excited to hear this report. Thank you, Commissioner Lanter, for everything you've done and your team as well. Thank you, and I'm happy to be here and let you know what we've been working on. As Council Member Lynch said, you all may recall, we had Kentucky tenants have been in here. And they had their tenant bill of rights, which included requests that we improve tenant representation on boards and commissions. And that is not exactly what this is, but we'll walk through that. Because at the same time, and kind of unrelated to that, I was in the process of setting up our own offices, tenant and landlord and tenant advisory boards, which are two separate groups. So we started in 2023, following those requests. And what we found was that this was a popular way to engage both groups, because it's a little less time consuming than being on a full board or commission, which may meet every month, may have long hours, long meetings. What we try to do is keep things to hour, hour and a half, sometimes two hours if it's a robust discussion. And we try to meet the needs of that population. So the landlord group actually meets during the day, we provide lunch, we get really good turnout. The tenant group, I'll get to this, we've had a little bit more challenge finding what works for them. But our goal is to make it as convenient and easy as possible for people to participate. So what this does, it provides both groups a chance to have influence on our policy as an office, and also to get information. One thing that we do is we bring in different speakers at their request to talk to them about different functions of government. Just to clarify, make sure everybody understands this is not a formal board or commission. These are just basically informal groups operated, staffed out of my office. They're just in a review and advise capacity. They meet once a quarter. And our agendas are sort of fluid. They're dictated by what the group wants. So every meeting we meet with them and we say, what do you all want to talk about next week? What do you want to hear about next week? Or we try to base that on the nature of the conversation. Starting with our landlord advisory group, they've met six times since May of 23. It's actually, I would consider it a very successful group, a very large group, good participation, robust conversations. We intentionally try to diversify the types of landlords that are represented in the group. And you'll see those outlined here on this slide. We try to make sure there's everything from mom and pop landlords that may only have one or two units to large corporate landlords to landlords that run affordable housing developments. We do have representation from the Central Kentucky Apartment Association, which represents many hundreds, if not thousands, of units of rental throughout Lexington. And all of those groups are participating pretty regularly. We have had to speak to them, everyone from code enforcement to community resident services, to talk about the types of service we provide with excellent feedback. You know, at their next meeting, actually, we're going to ask waste management to come talk because they had a lot of questions about process during set outs and how do we get access to get things trashed. They want to help. They want to do things right. And this sort of helps give them the tools and information to do that. And because we have a diverse group and a representative group, whatever we cover with them can get disseminated out into their community. So, for example, we have Jim McKenzie. He represents the Downtown Landlord Association. I think many of y'all have probably been out to their meetings and spoken. He takes what we say and disseminates it to that group. Central Kentucky Apartment Association, same thing. So we're able to get that message out to a lot of the landlords in the community. And just recently, actually, we had a really successful presentation on the Urban Growth Management Zoda in which a couple of our landlords didn't know about it. And they got really excited about the new density bonus. And now one of them is actively working with our Office of Affordable Housing on an affordable housing development as a result of this meeting. Our tenant advisory group has been a little more challenging. They first met around the same time in 23. And we, again, tried to make sure we represented every type of tenant group. We've got families, people who pay market rate rents, people in affordable units, people in housing authority properties. We have invited members that represent all of those categories. The participation, however, has been limited. We have tried holding meetings in the evening. We tried providing meals. We provide offering child care. We've tried lunches. We've never gotten, with one exception, we had one really good meeting of about 10 or 12 people. We've never gotten more than about three people to show up for a meeting. And that is after asking the attendants to tell us if the meeting date and time works. And they say yes. So it's just been a lot of back and forth about trying to find something that works for that group. I will say that we sort of reconstituted it over the summer. And they held a meeting on September 11th this year and had a great turnout. We had good numbers. We had an excellent discussion that actually brought a problem property to our attention. And we were able to get it connected to code enforcement. So potentially, fingers crossed, we've got some good progress happening there. And we will try to meet with them again, I think, in December. That's all I have for you on this. I just wanted to give you a quick, brief overview of what those two groups are and what they do. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Commissioner. Council Members? Vice Mayor Woo. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for your work on this. I think we both agree, it is challenging to engage people who are historically less engaged. And it requires a lot of work. And we see this from the public input subcommittee and other work that we do on this council, too. Can you talk a little bit about your outreach to potential tenants for the advisory group? What avenues are you using? What kind of approaches are you doing to kind of recruit and get people interested? Sure. So we have a number of ways. One of the first ways we did, I sent you all some communications this summer asking you to promote it in our newsletters. We actually got a member or two off of that. When we go out in the community and we table at events, we do things, we're always asking people for interest levels in this. You know, if they express interest in board or commission, we tell them about this, make sure they know it's available. We have spoken to the different population groups. So Kentucky Tenants as an organization provides us with some representatives. And I'm talking about the tenant group. With regards to the tenant group, we put feelers out, basically, and our housing advocates are a big help because they're taking the calls for people who have problems and concerns. So we actually get them involved in that conversation about, hey, who's somebody you have a lot of engagement with who might be a positive member of this group? You know, we haven't, we're open to other suggestions because we obviously haven't found the perfect solution yet. But we're getting a little better every time. And I think we'll get there. Yeah, and I appreciate the efforts you're putting into, I mean, I think inherently tenants are less organized and less that there aren't existing constituent groups like homeowners associations or neighborhood associations. I'm sure tenants do attend neighborhood associations, but it's predominantly homeowners there, so. Yeah, what we've found is with tenants, you're more successful engaging when it's on their terms and on their turf and something that impacts them. So, for example, last Monday night, I went to an apartment complex in the community room and met with tenants who had concerns about that complex. We had great turnout. We had over a dozen people there. There were some people who needed interpreting services. We had that present. It was a very successful conversation. And so as I think towards more how we do our outreach, I think what we're looking at is instead of holding core events and say, hey, come to us and tell us what you think or what you need, we need to find out and see where they are and then we go there. And so we're trying to do more of that. And that's not just true with our tenant board. Also, with things like our fair housing information, our various landlord and fair housing forums that some of you all have attended, some of those have been great. Some have had very low attendance. What I've been trying to look at with the staff is where are the people and can we just go hold the event at their place, such as their church, as opposed to just hoping they'll come to our event? Yeah, and I really do appreciate that approach. And it's in line with what a lot of council members are thinking about when we put together, for example, our transportation expo this Saturday of going out into the community as opposed to waiting for people to come to us on our terms at our hour. So I do appreciate all that work and you all being creative. I like the idea that you said that you had great turnout going to a specific apartment complex to talk to a specific contingent of tenants. And maybe that might be a different way of thinking about the approach. Instead of thinking about this global advisory group of tenants writ large around the city, maybe it's these individualized, more localized, hyper localized little events. Because you're still going to get, I think, a lot of the same questions and concerns that you're going to get from tenants in other places. So that might be a really great approach, but I appreciate your work. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's excellent, and I agree. I think, for example, most people don't worry about code enforcement until they have a code enforcement problem. And it's not something they want to come to a meeting about unless they have a specific issue. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Lynch and everyone else that worked on this. I think it's so important to engage tenants. My district has a high population of tenants, and I've also found it challenging to how to reach out, when to have meetings, and things like that. And I appreciate that you're trying to work on that and go where people are. And one idea, and I don't know if this would work or if people would feel it working against them, but if we had the contact info for managers at an apartment complex. And having some sort of flyers from time to time if we are going to be in someone's neighborhood, and working to distribute them that way. I've found that successful, though it is costly, but to reach out to folks. And then, so it sounds like for both of these groups, you have the meetings, but it's not always the same people attending the meetings, correct? For the landlord group, it is the same for the most part. For the tenant group, it does change from meeting to meeting, for the most part. There's a few core people, but. So it's not like they sign up to be officially on it. It's just kind of a conversation with both groups of whoever is in attendance at that time, correct? Okay, and what is the agenda, what is the sample agenda, and how do people know what you're going to be talking about? So that maybe, how can we tell the public what's going to be discussed so that they might be interested in going? I'm actually glad you mentioned that, because when we had our meeting September 11th with the tenant group, we asked them, what do you need to, what do you think we need to do to increase attendance? What do you think we need to do to increase engagement? That was one of their recommendations, was develop the agenda in advance, and make that part of your communications that you're distributing, because maybe if something catches our eye as something that we want to hear about or talk about, we're more likely to attend. But it's not something we've done previously that we're going to start doing, is setting the agenda, which it's not that we went in there with no agenda, but we didn't promote the agenda. So we're going to actually have the topics on the promotional material and say, hey, come hear about waste management, or come hear about code enforcement, with the idea that that may help. For the landlord board, it's been a little bit different format in that usually it opens with some kind of presentation, and the presentation is driven by the conversation at the previous meeting. So like at our last meeting, we got into a really long conversation about appropriate ways to handle waste management when you have a set out. So we're going to have them come talk about what their options are for that. And then I always, both groups, I always end with just an open Q&A. Tell us what the city can do better for you, good, bad, and ugly, and we have a lot of great suggestions come out of that. That's good. So if council were looking at something that affected either of these groups, is that something that you could share, hey, just wanted you to know this is before council, and this is how you can have public comment on it and input? It is, and we have actually done that. When we were starting these groups, it was when council was handling the source of income discrimination ordinance, before there was any action taken on that, and we made sure both groups separately were informed on what was being proposed, what their opportunities were to be heard on that. And I felt like that worked because you all got a little bit of engagement on that issue. I'm sure some of that would have happened anyway, but we were able to help sort of, I think we did some myth busting, if you will, on that with both groups, explaining how it would work just from a purely legal standpoint. And it helped, I think, both of them feel more informed about what was coming. Great, thank you. And how do you see those groups interacting so that each other group knows kind of what's important to the other one? That's a good question. We keep them separate intentionally, mostly because we want each group to feel comfortable if they have concerns from the other population. And we don't want to start any arguments. However, I do see the opportunity for some cross-functional conversations, maybe even some joint meetings to talk about the areas that impact both together. Thank you, and I understand that trying to keep the peace just might be interesting to say, hey, this is something that your tenants are really concerned about, or hey, this is something that your landlords are concerned about. And maybe share that with other groups. Thank you so much for your work on this. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. If there are no other comments from my colleagues, I was just going to say that I want to continue to keep this on the annual report cycle, this item, just to see where we are in a year. I think we've made some, Commissioner Lanter has made some great strides with both advisory groups, and he shared with me that he thinks this model is a good one for these two groups. And so I would like to kind of keep it on an annual report basis for now, as we're still piloting the plane for the first time to continue to get some more momentum around both of these groups for more impact. Great, thank you, Council Member. Anything else? Commissioner, thank you. Thank you. Committee members, if we take a look to the items referred to committee and see if anyone has any items that they would like to remove, alter, change, or have questions about. All right, seeing none, we are at the end of our agenda. We'll stand adjourned. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just thought of something. Since my term is going to be up on council, Council Member Brown will be coming in on the sense of place. Is that something I need to tell you now? Yeah, we'll go ahead and do that so that it works. If we could, Council Member James Brown is going to take over for Council Member Plowman on the sense of place, and is that the item number four, Council Member Plowman? Yes, yes, and I mean, I'll still continue with the committee, but not as a council member. So if we could have that reflected so that at the beginning of next term, Council Member Brown can continue that work. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I would like to remove item number three. I have addressed that in other ways, so I move to remove item three, examine ways to evenly distribute social service facilities in neighborhoods. We have a motion, do I have a second? Second. Motion is second. Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Council Member, we'll have that removed. Any others? Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I just want to take a moment of personal privilege to thank you for your guidance in this committee since it's our last of the year. And yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that, and I jump quickly to adjournment because I like to keep our meetings very, very short. But since you mentioned it, thank you very much to all my colleagues for entrusting me with the leadership of this committee. It's been a pleasure, and I really think we've done a lot of great work over these past two years. So, thank you so much. All right, we stand adjourned.