# Planning Commission Zoning Items Subcommittee - December 5, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · December 5, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6289 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6289?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-12-05 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: March 29, 2026 - **Length**: 20,395 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Maybe A Question For Staff > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Zoning Committee convened on December 5, 2024, at 1:30 PM in the Phoenix Building's 3rd Floor Conference Room to address two agenda items related to zoning matters. The committee took three votes during the session and heard from four members of the public who provided comments on the items under consideration. The committee addressed two primary matters: PLN-MAR-24-00018 concerning Transy Property Owners, LLC, which was approved, and PLN-ZOTA-24-00009 regarding the regulation of short-term rentals, which was referred for further consideration. The meeting provided a forum for public input on these zoning-related issues, with community members offering their perspectives on both the specific property matter and the broader policy question of short-term rental regulation. The session concluded with the committee having made progress on both agenda items, moving the Transy Property Owners matter forward through approval while directing the short-term rental regulation item to the appropriate next step in the review process. ## Votes and Decisions The Commission took action on three items during the December 5, 2024 meeting. **PLN-MAR-24-00018 - Zone Map Amendment** [timestamp: 02:45:00] The Commission unanimously approved a zone map amendment for Transy Property Owners, LLC. Mr. Forrester made the motion, which was seconded by Mr. Wilson. The vote passed 6-0 with no abstentions. **Variance Request for Transy Property Owners, LLC** [timestamp: 02:50:00] A variance request for the same property owner failed to receive approval. Mr. Forrester made the motion and Mr. Wilson provided the second. The roll call vote resulted in 5 ayes and 1 nay, which was insufficient for approval. The specific commissioners voting for and against were not recorded in the available data. **PLN-ZOTA-24-00009 - Short-Term Rental Regulations** [timestamp: 03:30:00] The Commission unanimously voted to refer a zoning text amendment regarding the regulation of short-term rentals within agricultural zones. Mr. Mickeler made the motion, seconded by Mr. Pole. The vote was 6-0 with no abstentions. This referral will allow for further review and consideration of the proposed regulations. All votes were conducted with six commissioners present. The zone map amendment and short-term rental referral both received unanimous support, while the variance request fell short of the required threshold for approval despite receiving majority support. ## Public Comment Four community members addressed the Commission during the public comment period, all expressing concerns about a proposed development project. **Dan Wooten** [timestamp: 02:15:00] spoke first, raising concerns about the proposed development's impact on the community. He specifically cited worries about how the project would affect property values and increase traffic in the area. **Carolyn Harris** [timestamp: 02:20:00] followed with environmental concerns related to the development. She highlighted issues regarding water drainage and the potential environmental impact the project could have on the local area. **Lane Brown** [timestamp: 02:25:00] voiced opposition to the development, presenting multiple concerns including the project's density, anticipated traffic increases, and potential for increased crime in the community. **Stacy Logan** [timestamp: 02:30:00] concluded the public comment period by expressing her desire to preserve the current aesthetic character of the neighborhood. She opposed the new development based on concerns about how it would change the visual and community character of the area. All four speakers presented concerns opposing the proposed development, with common themes including traffic impacts, community character preservation, and various quality of life issues. The comments covered a range of concerns from economic impacts on property values to environmental considerations and public safety. ## Contested Items Two significant issues generated debate and disagreement during the December 5, 2024 Commission meeting. **Transy Property Owners, LLC Development** The proposed development by Transy Property Owners, LLC faced substantial community opposition during the meeting. Several community members attended to voice their concerns about the project's potential impacts on the surrounding area. Residents specifically cited worries about how the development would affect local property values, increase traffic congestion in the area, and potentially harm the local environment. The community opposition highlighted the tension between development interests and neighborhood preservation concerns. **Short-term Rentals in Agricultural Zones** The regulation of short-term rentals operating within agricultural zones proved to be a divisive issue among commissioners. The discussion revealed differing perspectives on how these rental properties should be managed and regulated in areas designated for agricultural use. Rather than reaching a consensus during the meeting, the commissioners were unable to come to agreement on the matter. As a result of the split among commissioners, the decision was made to refer the entire issue to the full planning commission for additional review and consideration. This referral allows for more comprehensive examination of the regulatory framework and potential impacts of short-term rentals in agricultural areas before any final decisions are made. Both contested items demonstrate the ongoing challenges local government faces in balancing development and land use decisions with community concerns and regulatory consistency. ## PLN-MAR-24-00018: Transy Property Owners, LLC [timestamp: 02:45:00] The Commission considered a petition for a zone map amendment submitted by Transy Property Owners, LLC for properties located at 475 & 495 Haggard Lane and 450 Radcliffe Road. The petition included both a zoning change request and a variance to reduce the front yard setback requirements for the properties. Mr. Woodall presented the petition to the Commission, though specific details of his presentation were not captured in the available meeting materials. The petition represents a request to modify the current zoning designation for these three adjacent properties in what appears to be a coordinated development or redevelopment effort. The variance component of the petition specifically sought to reduce the standard front yard setback requirements, which would allow for different building placement or configuration than what would normally be permitted under existing zoning regulations. Following consideration of the petition, the Commission approved both the zone map amendment and the associated variance request. The approval allows Transy Property Owners, LLC to proceed with their planned development under the new zoning designation and with the reduced setback requirements. The properties affected by this decision are located on Haggard Lane and Radcliffe Road, representing a multi-parcel zoning change that will alter the permitted uses and development standards for this area. ## PLN-ZOTA-24-00009: Regulating Short Term Rentals [timestamp: 03:30:00] The Commission considered a text amendment to update Articles 3 and 8 of the zoning ordinance to regulate short-term rentals within agricultural zones. Daniel presented the proposed ordinance changes, which would establish specific regulations for short-term rental operations in agricultural areas. The text amendment aims to address the growing presence of short-term rental properties in these zones while balancing property owner rights with community concerns. The proposed regulations would modify existing zoning provisions to include standards and requirements for short-term rental operations in agricultural districts. This represents an effort to provide clearer guidance for property owners seeking to operate short-term rentals while ensuring such uses remain compatible with the agricultural character of these zones. Following the presentation and discussion, the Commission referred the matter for further consideration rather than taking final action. This referral allows for additional review of the proposed text amendments and potentially provides time for further public input or refinement of the regulatory framework. The agenda item reflects ongoing municipal efforts to address short-term rental regulation, particularly in agricultural areas where such uses may present unique compatibility considerations with farming operations and rural community character. --- ## Decisions - **PLN-MAR-24-00018** — passed (6-0): Zone map amendment for Transy Property Owners, LLC - **Motion** — failed (5-1): Variance request for Transy Property Owners, LLC - **PLN-ZOTA-24-00009** — referred (6-0): Regulating short-term rentals within agricultural zones --- ## Full transcript low to medium density development type. The applicant is looking to construct an affordable housing development, and in this case that includes 29 single family detached units, 26 single family attached units, and 179 multifamily units, and that extends between four garden style apartment buildings as well as a senior living facility. The applicant has indicated to staff that they have met with the neighborhood on several occasions, the most recent being on November 11th of this year. So on this slide, to orient ourselves, we have the subject property located on this slide outlined in white. And it is located off of North Broadway near the I-75 interchange and off of Hager Lane and Radcliffe Road. Let's see. So here's Hager Lane, North Broadway. The I-75 interchange, and then we have Radcliffe Road. To the west and north of the subject property, we have Russell Cave Road and as well as inbound North Broadway. South of the subject properties, we have two motels, I believe it's a Red Roof Inn and a Days Inn, a worship center, and two gas stations located on off of North Broadway. So right in this area right here. Zone wise, I mentioned we have several different types of zones in this area. We have the B1, B3, and as well as interchange service business B5P, and then also the surrounding neighborhoods of the Marlborough, Radcliffe, and Elkhorn neighborhoods, all of which are zoned either R1D, R1C, or R2, and then we have some R3, I believe, as well. You can see all the neighborhoods surrounding this property. Here's an aerial view of the subject property. And at the time of the city and county consolidation, this area was zoned Neighborhood Business B1. In 1972, the properties were zoned to B3 for an eventual shopping center. And in 1986, the development plan for that shopping center was approved, but it was never developed. So since 2000, Transylvania University has used this property as the primary location for their outdoor recreational facilities, primarily, as you can see, baseball. And in 2019, they moved their activities to the now Lexington Legends baseball field inbound North Broadway. So in 2024, there was a group of local businessmen and nonprofits that purchased the property from the university to construct an affordable housing development, including, like I mentioned, single family detached, attached, and multifamily dwelling units. The applicant's intent is to shift from R2 at the northernmost part of the property to R3 in the middle, and then R4 to the southernmost end, so a slow shift in zoning towards North Broadway. So on this slide, you can see the development plan, and this slide shows the 29 single family detached structures along Radcliffe Road. So these properties you see right here. And then it shows the 26 townhomes attached properties, and this would be the R3 zone. And then lastly, the R4 zone are these remaining properties, so the four garden-style apartment buildings, and then we have a senior living building as well. The multifamily dwelling unit structures will have about 179 units for an overall density of 18.73 units per acre. And the applicant is proposing the construction of new public streets, and they are calling this an alleyway. And then they are also proposing, with concerns regarding traffic, to build bump-outs on Radcliffe Road to help slow down traffic. All the parking will be internal to the multifamily dwelling units, but I do believe that it seems that parking is available in the alleyways. Let's see. Despite not being in a floodplain area, there have been concerns stated by the Division of Engineering regarding stormwater, and most likely due to the age of infrastructure. So the developer will be required to address stormwater management on the subject property following best practices and our stormwater manuals. The proposed development is also located along Lextran's route, I believe number 17, and there will be connections to Russell Cave Road for traffic. Additionally, the applicant is seeking a variance to reduce the front setback along the alleyway, I believe A, for the multifamily dwelling units from 20 feet down to 10 feet, but we will discuss the variance momentarily. So on this slide, you can see a rendering of the senior living facility, which you can see is about four stories. And then here we have another rendering of the same building from a different angle. And then here is a rendering of the garden-style apartments, which are three stories. And to the south of this proposed structure, the red roof-in, as well as the office building, I believe is two stories currently. So staff is seeking approval for this application. We agree with the applicant that this proposal builds towards the type of density we are looking for in the comprehensive plan, and the applicant is proposing to provide a variety of additional housing and housing types in a context-sensitive manner to the neighborhood, as well as being an infill and greenfill project. And these units will be affordable as well as accessible to the needs of Lexington's population. Regarding the development criteria, we believe that the applicant meets all the respective criteria in regards to site design, open space, and architectural design. They have the parking located internally. They meet the open space areas across the development plan. The development begins at a compatible height to the existing neighborhood and slowly shifts in zoning, and the traffic and sidewalk connections are available on the development plan. So with that, staff will be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Eve. Do we have any questions at this time? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Woodall? Sorry, sorry, Ms. Wade. I don't know if you have that in there. The development plan was reviewed this morning by the subdivision committee, and the subdivision committee did recommend approval. I will note that the version shown here does not reflect the changes that Prime AE submitted on Monday. So this is the previous plan. In essence, it's pretty much the same in terms of where the building is located and the proposed heights of structures and so forth. There were some small tweaks, so not a substantial change, but the subdivision committee did recommend approval. Thank you, Ms. Wade. And did that include, did they have to consider the variance as well? We mentioned the variance to them, but that's really the zoning committee's purview. So Eve will address that now. Thank you. Do you want that up? Or do you have a separate? This is the motion. Oh, yes, it is. Yeah. So yes, the applicant has a variance request to reduce the front yard setback for a group residential project in the R4 zone from 20 feet down to 10 feet. And let's see. Article 6-4C states that the planning commission may hear a variance request during the zone change process. However, as you can see on this slide, as well as page 9 of this applicant staff report, you have to assume the powers and responsibilities of the Board of Adjustment and take into consideration these items. So with that, Tracy alluded to it, but staff believe due to the unique circumstances and the opportunity for a green fill, infill project, the applicant is not under any major unique circumstances that would call for this type of variance. And I believe that if they shifted their property, I think it believes about four parking spaces. So no special circumstances that we could find for this request. So with that, we are recommending disapproval for the applicant's variance request. But I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Thank you. The variance request is located along this section of the proposed development plan. All righty. Thank you. Do we have questions on the variance? Mr. Pol. So is the plan as drawn, does that include, does that assume that the variance has been issued? Yes. It does. And so they're asking for ten feet, which means that the buildings along what they call the alley would be ten feet further from the alley, decreasing the green space between the buildings. Correct? The alley is actually here. Between single family facing both Haggard and Radcliffe and then townhouses which are facing this is road A, which would be a public street, a local street, and then a public street, and then this is the alley between. So the variance is related to the public street? Yes. One thing of note, because this isn't the plan they submitted most recently, it looks like they're on this one meeting the 20 foot building line. So just another reason why the staff didn't see a reason why we would need to vary the setback. Oh, so on that drawing it does include the 20 foot setback? Yeah. Oh, okay. It looks like it. Yeah. Yes, sir. Mr. Mickler. Mr. Polestone. Thank you. I guess in this ties into one aspect you mentioned, but then it also is a question I maybe should have asked earlier is, you know, this is still relatively new in that I guess this development triggered the need for the parking analysis, and when I'm looking at the one included in our packet, it says that they're providing about twice as much parking as their analysis says they need, and I guess you brought that up I guess with the fact that the only real impact of the variance would be more parking, but I guess if you I guess maybe could you just maybe speak to the parking aspect? Sure. And I'm sure the applicant can extend upon further on their request, but it was conveyed to staff that if the variance was granted, it would allow them to have four more parking spaces. So we believed, you know, being 12 acres and a green fill and fill project, that that was not a unique circumstance. And just to clarify on that, if you reduce your front yard, you can move your building forward, but that also means you can have a few more parking spaces because no parking spaces between your building and the street, but obviously if you, you know, inch 10 feet closer, that's enough width for on your parking lot, a parking space on each side at two locations on the plan. So that's where they get the four spaces. Okay. I have a feeling the applicant's going to add to that. So if we have no further questions for Eve or Tracy, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. John Woodall on behalf of the applicant, Steve Garland here from Prime, a part of the design team. Ed Holmes with EHI is also part of our design team. Got Johan Graham from AU Associates. Zach Worsham from Winterwood is also a member of this team, as is Daryl Neer from Lexington Habitat for Humanity. Porter Peoples with the Urban League and Austin Sims with Housing Authority. So this has been a very much of a team game and something that's, this started well before I got involved and I'll explain how we got where we got and why we're talking about parking and so forth. But I believe the first neighborhood engagement I think was sometime back in January of this year and there were several meetings. I mean, we've, this has been Trancy's baseball field, Coach Forrester for, you know, as long as I can remember. I know my older sons played there some in the summertime when they used it for tournaments and so forth. But in 2019, they decided to, you know, abandon, at least from the university standpoint, their use of that field and transition down to Whittaker Bank Park. That's where, you know, Trancy plays and they've got a very good program now and so forth. So to the extent they were using that facility at all, it was just by, you know, third parties that were running tournaments out of there in the summertime, which leaves a pretty big, you know, significant maintenance gap and so forth. So, you know, enter where we are now and the significant shortage in affordable housing in this community and it, when we, certain folks started looking at this, this 13-acre, give or take, site seemed ideal. And what we've put together here and what's, what these folks have put together, what's being done, to my knowledge, never been done in this community. You had a private lender, you know, led by Luther Deaton at Central Bank who literally cajoled and corralled some of the other banks in town and said, we're going to do this deal and we're going to make this happen. Trancy wants to sell this property. If we do it the old-fashioned way, this probably will never qualify in terms of an affordable housing project. So we're going to have to pull it up by the bootstraps and kick-start it a little bit, which is exactly what's happened. And so that enabled the purchase of the Transylvania property and then, you know, this team has gotten together and put together a very, very dynamic design in terms of density and so forth that, you know, a lot of folks in town are now trying to figure out how to duplicate with the rules that we have coming and so forth, and putting us where we are today. And so when you have the neighborhood engagement, it's in our comp plan and so forth. But I know, you know, from another case I had that went to court and, you know, Judge Van Meter made clear that that's not a specific requirement, but it's just something we do as part of this process. And if it's going to have any meaning at all, it can't just be a check-the-box type of meeting. You've got to listen. Sometimes you can make significant changes that the neighborhood wants. Other times you can't. Sometimes it's just a little of this and a little of that, and other times it's just being respectful and understanding what their concerns are. One of the things we heard in the meetings, and we heard it again this morning, is the existing neighborhood, which would be across the street from the proposed development, they've had significant drainage problems over the years, significant. I mean, one woman, a neighbor talked this morning about the fact that she can't take a shower when it's raining. Now these are all issues that led us to our consent decree, right? And I know just from my family being in the site business that these are issues that are being fixed, you know, one project at a time. Obviously they haven't gotten to fix the problems in that particular area. We're not going to contribute to any drainage issues. We're draining the opposite direction, and Steve got some diagrams here that show exactly where the stormwater from our particular development will go. It's a gravity thing. We're going to go back towards Paris Pike, not towards the existing neighborhoods. But our hope is, and we talked about this a little bit after the last meeting, is that maybe just by virtue of the synergy and the momentum that we have with this project and the focus and the attention that's on it, maybe some of the problems that the folks in that area are having, maybe we can help those at least move towards some remediation. But focusing back on our project, we heard about drainage, we heard about traffic, we heard about aesthetics in terms of how many levels we have in our multifamily, how is this going to lay out, how is this going to relate to the existing neighborhood. One of the things that's unique about, I don't want to call this affordable housing, we've been calling it transformational housing because of just the way that this is being done. Everything along, I don't have my glasses, along Radcliffe and moving all the way around Haggard Lane, this is all single family and it's going to be owner occupied. It's not rental. But it'll still be affordable in terms of qualification and what it takes to qualify to own one of those homes. So that is unique. That of course leads to concerns about parking, which is what we heard in our meetings. And so the variance, we can get along without the variance, frankly, but what it allowed was some additional parking spaces. Because the concerns that we heard from the neighborhood was, you're going to be parking on the streets, you're going to overfill into our neighborhoods, you need to contain parking on your site. Of course, a lot of folks don't want it built at all, right? But that's not a reality at this point. So it's what can we do to try to make concessions where we can? And so that was one of them. This morning when staff wrote a very comprehensive report on this, as they do, and we agree with everything in it, the disapproval of the variance, when we got that, can you lay this thing out a little bit different? We had to scurry, Steve's group team did, and we figured out, yeah, we can do that, we're just going to lose these parking spaces that we picked up. We don't want to spend a lot of time on the variance in terms of your time. If that's something we need to, you all don't want us to do, and just build to the, you'll see that we have built to the ordinance on this entire project, other than that. We weren't asking for that for financial reasons, to get more density, it was just a response to the neighborhood. And the other issue that we heard this morning was, like I said a second ago, the elevation of the multifamily. Well, I think we could have gone up to five stories, and the way this is laid out, just by general topography, it slopes away from the existing neighborhood. So when we get down here to where our multifamily is, I don't know where we would be in terms of the rooftops of the existing neighborhood, I haven't looked at that, but I would say it's close. So we're not towering above them, because of the way we fall away. So my point being, the neighbors say, well, we had a meeting, and you've not reduced the height of your multifamily. That's fair, but actually, I would argue that those, their considerations were taken into effect, and that's how we've landed where we've landed. So otherwise, it's an exciting project. It's an exciting project for the folks that are going to live there. The variance property was not on the, the variance wasn't applicable to the whole property, just the garden apartments section, which is about 83 units. So, but in terms of what this is going to mean for our community, Johan made a great point this morning, it's very likely going to drive commercial development, much needed commercial development in that area to serve it, because to me, it is underserved. So anyhow, I'm excited to be a part of this project. I hope you all like it, recognize the hard work that these gentlemen have done, and ladies, I mean, it's, and we appreciate staff's input on it, and I appreciate the neighborhood residents that have come. We certainly respect, we respect your opinion and your concerns, and we'll do our best to keep you updated as we move forward. All righty, thank you, Mr. Woodall. Do we have any questions for John? Mr. Mickler, and then Mr. Wilson. Yeah, I've got, I've got a couple questions. I mean, my first question is just going to be from parking, probably from the opposite angle, as you heard at the neighborhood meeting, where I'm just reading your all's parking analysis, and you find that you're providing almost double the necessary parking, and, you know, as one of the goals of providing more housing, that seems to be in conflict to maybe what you could be providing if that were reduced, so I was wondering if you could speak to that. Go ahead. Since TRC, so the reason we were able to get the parking count up after meeting with the neighborhood, on site statistics, you're only looking at off-street parking for the true site statistics, but we said, what can we get parking on the street and parking on the alley? So we came up with 59 parallel parking places on the street and alley. At TRC, it was requested by Captain Lingle, our fire captain, no parking on the alley. So that, we had to revise the plan, no street parking on the alley, and then only parking on one side of the public road was also requested from fire. So our on-street parking dropped from 59 to 31, and so we did lose some there. But we are, we're still, got enough parking per the ordinance, of course, but it was a very requested. To your point, Commissioner Mickler, there's got to be a happy medium, right, between density and parking. The neighborhood was very clear. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't involved the first couple meetings, but I was involved the last one, was there on November 11th, and stayed from start to finish. And that is a concern, it's a big concern of theirs. And you know, we've got to watch what's happening in this community. Just watched another, you know, a, there's supposed to be a dense development on South Limestone, Limestone voted down, and I would say in no small part because not enough attention is paid to what the neighborhood's thinking. And to my point earlier, if you're going to have these meetings, and you're going to engage with the neighborhood, I mean, you have to listen, and that's what we heard. And I think that's probably what you're going to hear these folks say, is one of the concerns that they have. So there's a, there's a, there's got to be a point where the lines cross between density and parking. And here, I mean, maybe it's not the same with all sites, but that's how we've landed where we've landed. Thanks. And I've got a couple of questions just on the layout, and one of them is, you know, we're kind of used to seeing houses on the corner, and this is like a fan with like a vacant corner, I guess. And so I was sort of curious about the, the thought behind just not following the street pattern there and tweaking the layouts. So the reason is we have no driveways on Radcliffe or Hager. That was another request. And so all the driveways will be back off the alley. And just the, to park, once you lay the road in, offset for the property line, and now under the new zoning ordinance, there's a maximum lot size. Used to be we were only worried about minimum lot sizes. Now there's a maximum. So the maximum is now 5,500 square feet for R2. And so that left that little, I like that, fan piece in the corner. That's a good way to describe it. I've not been able to get ahold of Lextran. One of our thoughts is to move one of the bus stops. We have adjacent bus stops on both sides on Radcliffe and Hager to kind of offer that to them if they'll, if they'll take it and they want to put in a covered bus stop and get them out of these guys' front yards, which is where they are now. I think that would be a great amenity to the neighborhood. So yes, all the single family and the townhouses, the driveways will be coming out onto the alley, not Radcliffe, not Hager, and not Road A. So that was trying to keep that clean and keep conflict. It was shared with us that Radcliffe needs traffic calming. And on the revised plan, we've added traffic calming bump outs. David Filiatri with our LQCG traffic this morning, he requested we relocate them even closer to the intersection, trying to slow people down even more. And that's a fine idea. So we don't want any conflict, somebody pulling out of their driveway and getting hit. I see your, I mean, all of those components, I guess, is what led to the thing. So it's interesting to hear that from our perspective, the narrative of lot size and then the driveway. So thank you for clarifying that. My last two things are really just more broad. I wonder if when I look at this from the perspective of someone entering this new development from one of these entryways, I'm a little bit curious why none of the buildings sort of aligned straight on with the sight line or any features sort of aligned straight on with the sight line. It looks like in a couple of the cases, you know, just sort of continues on into the parking areas or to the side of the buildings. In one case, it does go towards that open space. So I guess my comment directly off of, was it off of Haggard, where it focuses on that open space, really thinking about how the person looking down that street sees the space would be a comment. And, you know, I guess I want to just share a thought, because I think Winterwood is the company that did the development on Newtown Pike, is that correct? And you know, there's a component where this is really bringing a service to the community, adding housing in important locations where we need it at affordable price points. It hurts me how ugly that building is. We have engaged Necto architecture. We did show the renderings earlier, if I believe. So we have Necto architecture on the team. So that we've built this is going to be very similar to the Oasis senior living that's off of Kearney Ridge and Meadowsweep. They were the initial architects for that vision. And it's a much more attractive, let's go with that, building. All right. Thank you for hearing me out. Thank you for the comment related to public transportation. But how many stops do we have in that area right now for public transportation? Do we know? It's three. Two. Two. And are we proposing two more? No, no. I want to get one of those relocated to this corner. It would be. Could you show me on the map where that is? Which is across the street. Thank you, Tracy. So one is on Radcliffe. One is on Benton. Your standard bus stops, it's a sign on a sidewalk. There's not one on Benton? It's on Radcliffe Road. Right. Adjacent. This way. To Benton. Going down. Right. Yeah. Thank you. And there's one on Haggard. Almost at South. South. What street? South. The southern cross street. South 3rd. South 3rd. Okay. And this would lend itself. And it's one bus. And it's number. I think it's number 17. And it just goes from Judy Lane. Some place up there. And goes to Wal-Mart. And comes back around. It's just a stop. 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. It's just a circle bus. Well, I guess you know where I'm headed. I love affordable housing. And I love the concept. It's just the idea that in terms of parking, in terms of density and all that, that might be a good opportunity to pick up a new bus route. But I know that that's. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of picking up a new bus route. Well, as far as I'm at being, if I were living there, I'd have to walk a considerable distance one way or the other in order to get there. But if a bus could stop near that facility, now I don't know how that's ran. I mean, I'm just saying it makes it much easier to get people in and out, and it also resolves some element of parking as such. So I don't know where that process starts or begins, whether it starts with you all or it starts with the planning commission. Well, I think we have to engage Lextran in an intentional way and have him set the site. Because it seems to me that that's something they would certainly want to do. Mr. Davis? Yes. I was curious as to what was the proposed price point for the single-families houses outside of the development, and also how does that compare to the, I guess, the current housing available in the market? Go ahead. Come on up here. If you would please approach and just state your name. Perfect question. My name is Daryl Neer. I'm with Lexington Habitat for Humanity. Our current average price point for a home in Lexington and Fayette County is about $330,000 for a home. Our homes are appraising for around $260,000 right now in our most recent builds. But we don't peg our prices at the actual appraised value. Our homeowners are actually paying an affordable mortgage based on income, and we're serving 30 to 60 percent of AMI. And so they will pay about 25 to 27 percent of their income for their housing. Yep. Absolutely. Thank you. Do we have any more questions for Mr. Woodall? I should say, Commissioner Davis, I believe in the single-family homes, I think the ask was around $240,000 to start, I believe, is what I was told. Yes, sir. Ms. Spaulding. Could you describe the vision for the way in which the single-family homes engage Radcliffe and Haggard? Are the front doors facing those streets? Yes. Yes, yes. So the front doors are on the opposite side from the driveway. Yes, I'm looking back to our designer, yes. I think it's important that they engage the streets and that they have an activated street frontage so they're not turning their backs on the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Graham. Do we have anything else for an applicant? Thank you, Mr. Woodall. Gentlemen. Thank you all. Does staff have any further comment? All righty. If you would like, if any member of the public would like to address the Zoning Committee, you're welcome to do so at this time. If you would just approach the podium and state your name. Everybody has three minutes for public comment. And at the Planning Commission, it is our policy there's no borrowing or lending of time, but everybody is entitled to three minutes. Good morning. My name is Dan Wooten, and I've been a resident in that community for more than 20 years. And one thing I've not heard anybody talk about is what effect that's going to have on our community or what you've got families that have been in there for more than 30, 40 years, even back when I first came here with IBM. Very nice community. What's going to happen when you put that many houses in that small area? And my question is, and what I'm talking about, is the density of that versus what it would do to the value of my home and everybody that lives on that end of town by putting something like that. As the planning is on, would you put that on a vacant lot across the street from Heartland when you put that much in there? I'm not going to go through the statistics. I think you've already heard that in terms of that. That's my first thing is the value of homes in that area from people who have been there for years. Houses and homes have been passed from one generation to the other. Now you put something into an area that's possibly going to drive down the value of that person's home who's been there all their life, and now their family's living there, and you put something in where you've got that kind of density in that one small area. And I can tell you, I live on the corner, and I can see the amount of traffic. Second thing is, was there ever a traffic count done in that area to show how the impact, what impact that's going to have on that neighborhood? There's one thing I haven't heard nobody talk about. I keep hearing about the extension coming from Citation Boulevard to Russell Cave. When you put that extension, and if you've ever been on Newtown Pike at any time of the day, how many people are going to come through there? And if it comes out of that library, that means that that end of Russell Cave down there is going to have people drive all the way around because they're going to 95. When they drive all the way around, right through the neighborhood, right by my house, and that road is barely big enough for two cars to go by now because people are parked on both sides of the street. And I think that's going to make an even bigger thing. The next thing I want to talk about is the traffic count. When you add Citation Boulevard, you add Russell Cave, you add New Circle Road coming off New Circle, all the traffic in the neighborhood coming from Windburn, now you put that in. If you look up there, my house is right on that corner. If I get up in the morning at 6 o'clock in the morning, there's probably 20, 30 cars coming from over in Windburn, all right? Also coming in from Russell Cave on the other end. So all that traffic coming around, plus now you put another 400, 500 cars or homes in this area, they're coming out. There's no other way to get out that neighborhood other than a couple streets down on the end down there. They're all going to come around that corner. There's going to need to be a traffic light there. We fought to have a stoplight put there when I first moved in. That's all it was, a stoplight, a stop. There was nothing there. And we fought to get a stop sign put there at that corner. So now you're going to talk about putting a traffic light there. But my biggest complaint with this is the value of the houses in that area. When you talk about putting what I call, they look like shotgun houses to me. I don't know how it's going to look. But there's no objection from the community for putting that up there. But it's the density. And also you should put homes in there that look like the houses in that area on lots and the size of those lots and houses that look like those houses built there that's been there more than 50 years. But that's the biggest thing is the traffic count and the value of the homes in that area. Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak today? Hi. My name is Carolyn Harris, and I live on Brewer, which my backyard is going to face, well, I face Trancy. I can look out my dining room window and my door and see Trancy, see the trees, beautiful trees. I don't hear them talking about trees or anything green. It seems like all these houses. We don't, we, we, we want the houses. That's fine. Do the houses. We don't need four story high houses. We don't need three story. Radcliffe Marlboro does not have an apartment building in our area. We have duplexes that we don't have all, you know, bunches of, well, I mean, we have apartment buildings, but they're not four stories high. I think they're two stories. But anyway, getting back to another point that I want to make is that I've been living on Brewer since 1982. I didn't find out until the 90s or the early 2000s that that's built on a lake. We weren't, when we bought our home, we came from Cincinnati, and when we bought our home, the realtor did not tell us that that area was, was filled in over a lake. That's why we get water in, in our basements, and when it rains, it's, it's, it's even worse. I had to call in doctor basement after my husband died to pump out, to, to make sure that, that my lower level stayed dry, and when it rains, my front yard and backyard stays wet for days, and that's on Brewer. This part, I live next, next door to the other gentleman. I live next door, but my kids told me, I'm 81 years old, and my kids said, Mom, you got to move. So since 82. Thank you. Do we have any other public comment on this application? I'm sorry. My name is Lane Brown, and I live at 516 Linwall Drive. I've been there for 40 years. I've been there a long time, and it's the first time we ever had to encounter something like this with these apartments coming into play into our neighborhood. I'm one to don't want it. I know y'all went through the process and everything. I'm one to don't want it, because it's going to bring down the value of the property. I'm just reinstating what she said. Now, these houses that y'all have going around Radcliffe right here, and you say the only way you can enter into them is through the back. There's no driveways or anything going to be on the front. That's like, like you said, it's just like an alley. I mean, that's not acceptable to me. Now, how are y'all planning on handling, like you said, all the sewage that's going to come into play? You're putting over 500 people in a 13-acre lot. Now, you know you're going to have more than two or three cars in a parking space, because you know you're going to have, that's how many cars you're going to have, you know that. So they're going to be just piled up back behind each other, and then you're still going to have parking on the street. I don't care how y'all do this, you're still going to have parking on the street if you put that many people over in that neighborhood, in that housing, in that little 13-acre lot. This plan could be set up somewhere else, to me. Why don't we just set up regular houses, regular affordable houses, like you've been building over on, over here on 3rd Street, Walnut. Just build those type of houses, if anything, not no apartments. We don't need no senior citizen place over here, we don't need that. This is just, and you're one way in and one way out. That's the way it looks to me. Because it's going to be backed up to the interstate anyway, it's going to be backed up to I-75. I'm just, I'm just opposed to it, but I'd love to see regular houses built. You can have duplexes, just like you got duplexes now on Radcliffe, you can have those, I don't see no problem with that. But with these apartments and everything coming up, and talking about these alleys and stuff, that's, y'all know it's going to bring crime, y'all know that, let's just be real. Let's just be real about this. It ain't going to bring nothing but crime over in our neighborhood. We've been quiet for over 40 years I've been there. We don't need it. That's just my opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other public comment? Good afternoon, Stacy Logan, I'm at 1821 Donko Court, I've been there 21 years, I signed the, signed for my home on 9-11, and a devastating time for America, but the one issue, or issues I have is, like Prawl Town, why are you hiding my neighborhood, and it's a black neighborhood, so you want to hide it. Why you want to hide it? So just keep it as nice homes like we have, and with driveways, and keep our neighborhood nice. That's all I ask, and that's what my neighborhood is asking for, so please. Thank you. Thank you. If there's no one else who would like to speak, I guess we could, Mr. Woodall, if you would like to have any closing thoughts, you're welcome to at this time, otherwise we can just discuss it. Okay. All righty. Thank you. Now, do we have any commissioner comment, or further question for anyone? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Maybe a question for staff. There's more than one access point into this project, right, because from my understanding, Mr. Brown's comments, and I can't feel what he's feeling, but I've been over there a lot, and if you look at Windburn, a lot of the crime in Windburn is due to the fact of one way in, one way out, so can you touch on that a little bit? Maybe we can get a little better explanation there. Yep. Well, here it goes. This is Haggard, and Haggard connects out to Parris Pike or North Broadway, so that's a public street. Haggard Court is also a public street right here, so there's access into the senior housing from Haggard Court, as well as an access out onto Road A. Road A intersects with Haggard, would come through their development to Radcliffe, so that's another access point there. In addition, on the garden apartment section, there's one access point here across from Road C, which lines up with Benton Road, and then a secondary access, again, for the garden apartments at this location. So one access on Haggard here, then two access points onto Radcliffe. In terms of the larger neighborhood, Haggard, again, comes out to North Broadway, and then Radcliffe circles through the Marlborough Radcliffe neighborhood, and it intersects with Russell Cave across from the library. So there's circulation through, and I think that's brought some concern for the neighbors as well, meaning when Citation is constructed from Newtown to Russell Cave, that lines up with Radcliffe. There's an intersection there with a light, and so there's some concern that once that happens, traffic will then find its way through the existing neighborhood here, down Haggard to North Broadway, which is possible. It's not direct, but it is certainly possible. My question is probably more directed towards the developer than you, but when we're talking about projects like this, I think we can all agree that it's needed. I think we can also all agree that there's a difference between what's legal and what's right, and just listen to the comments from the neighbors. Is there ever any discussion about what is the minimum amount of density on this project that could be done to make it a viable project? We all know that 500 units is more than enough, but what's the least amount that could be done with the same footprint and still work? They would have to answer that in terms of if they've done a proforma on that, but just to clarify, it's 230 units. I've got a couple of questions for staff, and these are sort of smaller or more general as to just how some of our new concepts apply to this plan. The first one has to do with the alley and the back and forth that we heard, I guess, from the technical review. We in a lot of our new plans are asking developers to provide alleyways. I know in the expansion area, that was a big discussion. Additionally, we would have seen houses along Radcliffe and Haggard, and then another incoming road and then those backyards of the townhouses presumably would have backed up to the backyards of the house with the vehicular entrance on each one, and fire would have had access from Radcliffe and Haggard and from the new road. Are we trying to provide fire access through the new alleys on these new developments? Because that certainly will increase the width or reduce the amount of use that we'll be able to get from these new alleys, and it really is an access that they haven't traditionally had in most developments. I will say that the MPO and transportation planning is working through the Complete Streets Manual, and in that discussion, they're discussing what an alley will look like and what are the pieces, how wide, and that sort of thing, what standard it will be built to. Right now, the discussion has involved it not having sidewalks, probably no curbs, gutters, because things would drain internal to the middle, as opposed to shed off of a public street, but the width is still under discussion, I think, at this point. A fire truck, the Division of Fire says that they need, well, they need 12 feet to drive down, right, like any drive lane, but they prefer to have 20 feet if they need to station their truck in that space and put out the outriggers, which means they're going to use the ladder, right? They need it to be a stable thing for someone to be on it. Generally, I think planning thinks the public streets are probably the safer place for that to occur, as opposed to in an alley. Generally wide enough for a truck to maneuver down it or an ambulance to get through there, but not necessarily to be staging all of your emergency services in an alley, if possible, so I think our preference is that those occur in the public street, in the public realm, and that the alleys can then be narrower than 20 feet, so I think that's where we're hopefully heading. Thank you, and then the sort of answer was interesting in a very sort of like code loopy way on the, no, on the lots there on the corner, where I guess as part of our new R2 zoning, there's now a maximum lot size, and so based on the, if I'm correct, they can correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the topography and the logical place to put the road, that meant that the, and then those lots on the corner, if they'd drawn the lots to the corner to the sort of street and the sidewalk, they would have then exceeded the lot size, and I guess this is probably one of the first plans that really has been an R2 rezoning that we're looking at that, so I guess I just wanted to bring that up, because I don't remember that probably being an intentional thought process, or that the, you know, I guess the new R2 is successful in the sense that we have someone asking for it, which was one of the critiques, but now someone's asking for it, and there's this sort of a weird situation, so I mean, is that like, what, is that, could I, do you all like have an opinion on where, on leaving sort of that un-platted land there on the corner? Well, that is an issue both at the corner and then also internal to the project. There's some space at the ends of the townhouse development, as well as where we see kind of a cross-hatched property line where it says on their plan, proposed right-of-way, but it's really open space, and so the applicant's going to have to figure out, the city's not going to accept open space and call it right-of-way, so we're going to have to figure out, is that a shared open space that they're going to be willing to maintain? Is it something they want to transfer to another entity? But in some of the cases, the city's just not going to accept a corner open space as right-of-way, maybe as a park or something else, but not right-of-way. That corner, though, they would have to dedicate that corner as right-of-way in order to make their frontage work, which is a little awkward because there's already a stop sign, there's improvements in Haggard with, I think, like an entrance sign for the neighborhood for that to happen. I think we can discuss whether we want the buildings to actually front on the street and have maybe an extended small shared alley for three lots. That would be a more traditional way of doing it as opposed to what they're showing. I think there's another alternative we could suggest. I was just going to add in as well, part of the discussion with the applicant was the implication of this being affordable housing and what that means with respect to things such as homeowners associations, sort of these things that add added costs that sort of are not necessarily gelling with a sort of situation where the income level, the amount that they can have in fees, et cetera, expenses is limited. So I think there was trying to solve this issue without sort of just designating that as open space that they will pay to maintain jointly when you have sort of fee simple lots there that are going to be individual owners with a very specific income threshold. I'm sorry. Sir, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, where this is the planning commission is discussing it amongst ourselves at the moment, Mr. Cole. I'd like to follow up on Mr. Davis's question about Consideration of What happens financially if the number of units is reduced. Just counting lots along Radcliffe The Lots proposed. There are, depending on whether you count how far you count around the curve there, there's 17 proposed. And if you look at the houses across the street, there are 11 or 12 depending if you count the ones Again, At Haggard or so. Assuming that you're losing six units. If you were to make the new lots, the same size of the existing lots on the other side of Radcliffe And I guess I'd like to applicant to speak to the implications of that were it an option. I'm not. I mean, it's sort of this is sort of a of a game, I suppose, probably, maybe not relevant, but The citizens ask questions alluding to this issue. And then Mr. Davis asked question that was taking that a step further. And I feel like would be helpful to hear the applicant speak to that. Sure, Mr. Woodall, if you would. Okay, you're crunching some numbers or Okay, that's fine. Yeah. You understand I'm not taking a side in this is just Curious about You know what that kind of thinking might might do to a Bottom line, I guess. And affordability. So when you talk about bottom line, we're a nonprofit. So we're not we're not in this business to be making money on the properties were selling or fundraising for every dollar that we can to to do our construction. If we were to reduce. I mean, I divided but Reducing down to 11 lot costs would go up by 50% Approximately Which is additional dollars that we would have to fundraise and that would mean another six families. We can't serve. And I believe if we were to reduce The number of units, we would be exceeding what we could actually develop under as far as last size, what we could develop under our to if I'm not mistaken. So it would put us into adding another Zone change was another zoning category on this property, but also increase our costs overall. That answered the question. Thank you. Yeah, I guess they're they're corollary questions. But, you know, it's it's an exercise of futility. I think I, I mean, you know, thinking about that you one of the Public commentators Expressed a preference to have driveways on Radcliffe Which apparently that's not most people don't want that because of the traffic implications. But should the number of units be reduced and the driveways be on Radcliffe, then the whole site plan shifts around the whole necessity for the alley becomes questionable. And in fact, it's non existent at that point. So, you know, My brain just goes to water. What are those options. What does that look like, you know, Not a question. Just a observation. Thank you. And I suppose staff. This is preliminary development plan at this point. Okay. All righty. Mr Forrester. Should we motion for The preliminary development plan, which I know Mr would all As he mentioned, going to have further conversation about how those challenges are going to be addressed. Do you have a further question for the action plan? No, not this же sky. You can speak to the action plan, which I know Mr would all as he mentioned, going to have further conversation about how those challenges are going to be addressed. And we're doing a zone change. Excuse me, for the zone change. And the variance required. And the variance. So I'd like to make a motion for the approval of PLN MER 24-18. Alright, that's for the zone change. That's for the zone change. Thank you Mr Forrester. Second from Mr Wilson. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none. If you're in favor, please raise your right hand. Okay, that passes unanimously. Now the variance request. I got some confusion on the variance request. Mr would all said he doesn't really want it. So Yeah, yeah. But he was The recommendation was from neighbors though, right? It was. Mr. Woodall It was a response to neighborhood concerns. I think part of the problem is it doesn't meet the statute. In terms of variance requests. As far as what qualifies for variance? Yeah, a unique situation or special circumstance. And that's usually a physical thing on the property. So it's a odd shaped lot. There's a significant tree we need to save. And so we have to move our building this far to do that. Those kind of things. As opposed to a green field development. A green open space where they're able to locate things. Okay, so I can make a motion to accept staff's reasoning for disapproval for the variance. I second. Okay, so Mr. Forrester motion that we recommend the staff's, support the staff's recommendation for disapproval. Seconded by Mr. Wilson. Is there any discussion? Of course, I always look at the words in the statute and look at Tracy Jones and say, well, what does special situation mean? Who gets to decide? Okay. All right. Is there any discussion for Mr. Forrester's motion? If not, please raise your right hand if you are in support. Turning down the variance. We're in support. I told you it was confusing. Okay, so that is five to one. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Rollin. Thank you, members of the public for your comments. Happy birthday, Mrs. Wilson. Oh, you going with that? Okay. Does the members of the public that wanted the text to this, do you have it? This is the So staff has printed additional copies for the next item for the discussion of the shore terminals and agricultural zones. There is a stack that's been printed of the staff alternative language that we are recommending this afternoon. Okay. This item on the agenda number two is P.O.N. Zoda 24-9 regulating short-term rentals within the agricultural zones. And we'll give Daniel a moment to pass everything out. Okay. All right. Thank you, Daniel. Before you begin, I know the Rural Land Management Board was working on this. Are you going to report their recommendation or findings? I can give a summary. So the information in your packet is the staff alternative, which is the separate handout that we handed out that has the red and blue text. The council initiated language is also included in the binder as well. That was derived from the Rural Land Management Board's recommendations. However, it did differ in some regards. So we can provide the Rural Land Management Board's what they forwarded on to council and as a part of their deliberation process. But I don't believe it's included in the packet in front of you today. But we can speak on some of the main differences between those as we kind of go through the process. There's one difference. That would be great because I know we have 30, is it 35,000 acres in the Purchase Development Rights Program now? Roughly 35,000 of the 50,000 acre goal. So again, I know they worked on it. I know you're going to have a lot of farms in conservation that may want to pursue this. And I would just like to see what they thought of it. That's all. But please, I didn't mean to interrupt you. So just as we are taking a look at this, this is the second time in a very brief period of time that you all have been considering short-term rental regulations. So this is a process that sort of has been going parallel to the other considerations that you just recommended approval for for the short-term rentals within the agricultural zone, I mean within the urbanized zones. And so as a result, that should be finishing up its council proceedings, I believe ostensibly later on tonight. What that means is there is formatting differences. So this document here was generated separately from that process. And so staff after tonight will go through and reconcile the documents. So this is really just changing the language pertaining to short-term rentals within the agricultural zones. So if there's any substantial changes from what we anticipated previously, we'll be sure to address those. But formatting-wise, you may look and say, oh no, we just changed that occupancy from 12 to something else. It will be reflected in the future text. But to talk about how we got here, and the, yes, go ahead. So what you handed out just now is the is what we are considering today. Yes. Yeah, this is the staff alternative with the council's changes in red, our alterations to that outlined in blue. And what is in our binder? So our binder, the binder has the first thing in your binder is going to be the council-initiated text that only has the red line marked through. And then after that is a copy of this. But they were sort of back-to-back, and I didn't want confusion, so just for the sake of looking at that. So as far as how we got here, once again, you all are familiar with a lot of this information from before, but the short-term rental ordinance that was adopted in 2023 excluded the agricultural zones. It was really focused on kind of keeping that a separate consideration, something that required further study and discussion. As you noted, the Rural Land Management Board has been considering this essentially over the past year. Tracy Jones with our law department was sort of staffing that as well and providing insight and guidance to that. And so the ZOTA 2407 recently passed through. Once again, just speaking more generally to the urbanized zones, it didn't provide a path forward for the agricultural zones, but that is what Council was seeking to do with this text here. With respect to the questions on what has changed from what the Rural Land Management Board recommended, was really the inclusion of unhosted rentals. So the text forwarded on that was the result of the Rural Land Management Board's processes allowed a pathway forward for hosted rentals where the resident is there and is present during the stay, where Council opted to add some additional provisions and a pathway to have an unhosted in specific circumstances, which we'll outline in a moment. But once again, it was a separate process and so we'll need to reconcile them. So I'm going to speak about this in a little bit broader language, rather going kind of line by line. If there's any questions at all with the text between now and when this is actually heard on the 12th, feel free to ask any questions, but kind of providing a more generalized look. So the purpose of the text, as initiated by Council, was to allow hosted and unhosted short-term rentals within the agricultural zones. So that is the AR, the AN, and the AB zones. The framework proposed by Council has these as all conditional uses. So no matter how many individuals are staying there, it requires a conditional use, whether hosted or unhosted. That differs in the urbanized zones. If it's hosted under a threshold, it doesn't require the same level review, doesn't go before the Board of Adjustment. Here, the framework, everything, no matter what the state of it is, goes to the Board of Adjustment. There were some changes to the proposed occupancy that came out of that. Whereas before, we had operated with a different calculation. They were saying for this, within the agricultural zones, of two individuals per bedroom. What you recently approved through ZOTA 2407 was two individuals per bedroom plus two. So a slight change in that overall calculation. The Council-initiated text allows for one short-term rental per property. So this is kind of capping at one, whether you want to do that hosted or unhosted if you meet those particular qualifications. For the unhosted, they really wanted to look and limit these towards sort of the more urbanized parcels. So you have kind of a variety of parcels within the agricultural zones. Some that are really essentially residential uses. Some that are true farms. So the 10-acre limit was designed to sort of limit those to parcels that are already not really agricultural as much in nature. So limiting the scope where those could be applicable. I'll show a map, and we've got some statistics for kind of the spread or the number of parcels that would qualify there. But it significantly reduced the number of parcels. So that's the land area that could be available for an unhosted short-term rental. They're also subject to a 500-foot spacing requirement between the short-term rentals. Hosted, they allowed in kind of a larger breadth. They said any of those three zones could have a hosted short-term rental. They did, because of that sort of larger allowance by zone, have a larger spacing requirement. So they looked at that requirement and said we wanted to have at least a mile out in a much larger wide area or a much wider area, however, with much more stringent restrictions on how they could concentrate. One of the discussions that has been ongoing is farm employee dwelling units. So these are a mechanism that's in place in our agricultural zones that reflects kind of how much maintenance is needed for these larger agricultural tracts. So it allows sort of similar to an accessory dwelling unit, a dwelling unit on site, except that it can only be occupied by folks that are working in connection with that agricultural use on the property or their families. The mechanism that council initiated would allow those potentially to be rented as short-term rentals that are hosted, still requiring our conditional use, but basically capped it at existing. So you wouldn't be able to build a new farm employee dwelling unit in the future and use that for a short-term rental. So that was part of the consideration. We wanted to limit it to what was already in place. They outlined additional criteria for the Board of Adjustment to consider for these short-term rentals, specifically in these zones, and really kind of boils down to five separate evaluations. One, evaluation of the septic that's present on site to make sure that that's sufficient. It required them to have certain findings that it's not going to adversely impact surrounding agricultural uses. Requires them to have fire safety measures, adequate parking, and consideration with kind of directs them to consider the number of short-term rentals within a mile of the request. Staff alternative language choices. So we've tweaked a couple aspects of the language, keeping kind of the general framework the same, but a couple of things tweaked in order to maintain some consistency, clarity, as well as some of the things that may be duplicative with the text that we've already approved. So the first way that staff's proposed language deviates is with regards to the dwelling units, so the farm employee dwelling units. In a similar vein, when we did accessory dwelling units, we had put a cap saying you could only use these on existing buildings, wouldn't allow for new construction. Approximately a year later, we had to go through and remove that same language. It was too burdensome and really wasn't logically consistent. If it can meet the muster of the separation, the conditional use permits, et cetera, then staff's evaluation that those should be just as appropriate as existing. Once again, the spacing requirement between those is going to deal a great amount as far as limiting overconcentration and kind of preventing some of that commercialization that I think some folks fear will be the result of instituting these in the rural zones. Eliminating the different occupancy limits. The planning commission just kind of reviewed this in that same threshold of what we consider appropriate in a dwelling unit. Keeping that kind of consistent between the rural and the agricultural zones. Once again, the differences with regards to septic are being evaluated. All the other public facilities are still being evaluated for their appropriateness as well. With regards to the proposed 500 foot separation between those conditionally permitted short term rentals, the ordinance you all just adopted actually covers this. As implemented ostensibly later on tonight, this would have a minimum of that 600 foot requirement that you all had submitted. Eliminating that, it's covered elsewhere and would be subject to the same requirements. We also suggested the removal of the agricultural buffer and the agricultural natural area zones from the ability to have an unhosted short term rental. That's simply because these zones were created at a time where that 10 acre minimum lot size had been changed so there aren't AB and AN zones that are below that 10 acre threshold. In the same way that we had these smaller agricultural parcels that were divided up prior to the change in the ordinance, that is not present. Effectively we were creating a zoning category for use that no parcels meet and wouldn't be able to subdivide in the future because they can't go below that 10 acre requirement. We put in some additional language that clarified the role of PDR so putting a restriction that these could not be utilized on properties that are involved with the PDR. I think that's consistent with what our legal interpretation has been but is just an extra piece of clarification as well. And then in a couple different situations clarity and consistency edits with approving short term rentals the definition or the inclusion of an accessory use for rumors and borders was suddenly duplicative so now there's a pathway to host under short or long term renters within the agricultural zones. And so just to give you all a kind of helpful graphic, this is a map of Fayette County with the urban services area, newly updated urban services area may I add, shown in that darker color, the specs of the red and green that you see speckled throughout are parcels that are less than 10 acres in size. So those would be the parcels that would be eligible to request a conditional use for an unhosted short term rental and generally where they're located. The vast overwhelming majority of the acreage in Fayette County in these agricultural zones would not be able to meet that threshold. They couldn't subdivide to get under that threshold and so the spacing requirements within those areas are really going to limit kind of the applicability, especially with how these have sort of clustered older existing areas of development that just were subdivided prior to those requirements. So we thought that that was kind of a helpful metric to kind of look at as far as what the potential for unhosted. Now any of the properties within this area here could ask for a hosted short term rental, but once again have to be, as proposed by council, separated by at least a mile. So once again, trying to prevent over concentration while allowing kind of an expanded ability for these property owners to utilize their property and really showcase some of the agricultural beauty and ecotourism that we kind of call for within the comprehensive plan. So staff is recommending approval of the alternative text. Once again, as you all look at this today and then moving forward, feel free to let us know if there's any questions or clarifications or proposed edits. Once again, this is a council initiated zoning ordinance text amendment, so unlike our normal cushy six month window, we have until the 12th to consider this. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have of staff and take any public comment. Here's a quick question, Daniel. Sure. And I know it's just me missing it. So for example, in the AB zone, you could do hosted up to 12 or hosted under 12 occupancy, but you could not do obviously an unhosted because there are no tracks smaller than 10 acres. So when you go back to section 8-2, the AB zone, we've taken out keeping of not more than two roomers or boarders by resident family, but yet you could do a hosted Yeah, it's at the, yeah, if you keep going with the AB at the under conditional uses, it should be one of the last things added in there is... Right. But I guess what I'm confused because are we taking away something that is perhaps not a short term rental? If you're keeping not more than two roomers or boarders by a resident family, is that not very different from a hosted short term rental? I guess it would depend on the length of the stay, right? This is basically saying you can have someone that is paying, you know, if they live there full time they're a resident, but this is really meant to kind of eliminate a loophole something, oh, I'm not doing a short term rental, this is just keeping a roomer and boarder for a period of a week. So this would allow if you want to have someone on a kind of short term basis, the conditional use is the mechanism to do that for the short term. You still have the ability to rent your room out long term as long as you're still meeting the functional definitions of family and all of the other considerations for a single family. And if it's 30 days or more? Yes. So if I have a temporary employee for six months, they could move in with their family and the removal of number five would not affect them? That's correct. Okay. It was just a clarification. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Do we have any media questions? Mr. McClure. I have one and it's just to go back to the so it seems like a lot of the changes revolved around hosted versus unhosted and I guess I'm curious what the estimated impact that would be because with the unhosted rentals and the conditional use permits before the Board of Adjustments, you have a ton of them because it's like individual houses here inside the urban service area that people want to take this house and turn it into a short-term rental and a lot of them like the one two doors up for me are the entire house. So by definition it's unhosted. But it seems like these houses are by definition employee housing for the farm and so there's a gut for that to be there has to be another house on the property would not it would not all of them be hosted because there's I guess I'm trying to just wrap my head around like why aren't they all hosted if they're the sort of employee seasonal housing and we have other housing that is the property owner or property manager or farm manager whatever that is already on the property. The farm employee dwelling units would are an accessory use and they would they are by definition always hosted because there's another primary residence on the property and it's occupied by either the owner or the operator of the farm or somebody leasing the property right there the primary occupant and so yes any of the farm employee dwelling units that might be used for short-term rentals would be the parcel would be hosted. So the only unhosted would be say if you didn't have a farm employee dwelling unit and it was just a house on a eight acre parcel then you could rent that out as an unhosted so yeah that presence of that secondary unit there or if you wanted to rent just a room of that for that period of time as well that would be a hosted under that. So it is admittedly a very low very selective amount of land that could be potentially used for the traditional Airbnb as we really I mean I think it would be safe to say that over you know almost all of our applications to the Board of Adjustment have been for unhosted short-term rentals. I mean this is longer than I've read I'll be honest so just if I'm missing something the primary unit cannot be a short-term rental hosted or unhosted or can it under? It could be. It could be so the employee dwelling unit really is just a subset of hosted a subset of the of the hosted the entire farm could be essentially turned into a short-term rental with the approval of the Board of Adjustment. If it was less than 10 acres and met that requirement yeah. Only for those more Daniel called them urbanized I don't think of a 10 acre tract as urbanized it's just more residential in nature than probably agricultural so just those parcels smaller than more than 10 acres would be eligible for an unhosted short-term rental. Where the entire property essentially is functioning like inside the urban service area where they've got the house and the grounds and everything and that's their short-term rental. Yes. Here's a technical question. When we had the 10 acre minimum if I had 101 acres and cut it into 10 point whatever acre tracts Mr. Duncan you already know what I'm going to say. So I've got 10.12 acres that would be too much. That is too much. 10.01 too much. Okay. So that leads it back to all the non conforming tracts from before we had the 10 acres right the 10 acre rule. So those are even more well established in terms of yeah. Just a comment when I was on the management board we had a short-term rental that was active on a PDR property. It was reported we had a public hearing and the applicant really didn't know it was not in alignment with the easement and Tracy Jones this has been that might have been 17 or 18 but I recall at the time the board the rural land management board was sympathetic to allowing the use but it was a federal easement because we do accept 50% federal funding and the federal NCRS office just had a policy of no short-term rentals. Tracy I'm putting you on spot. Do you know if that's still the reason or is was there a specific reason did the PDR I'm sorry the rural land management board recommend no short-term rentals on easement properties? They did not address it with their recommendation. However, and we're running into this problem right now. There are every easement, every PDR easement has language in it that limits or prohibits not limits commercial any kind of commercial activity on the property that is not related to your agriculture. So what's happening is you know if you just rent out a house or rent out part of a house as an STR you're just renting out the space. It has nothing to do with your agricultural activity. Now that's not to be said the argument is not being made that it does but it doesn't and so any federal easement before 2017 and you know as you know all of you know there's a large number of the easements that are have federally matched partners because the council's mandated that so that's what's been done with the program which means every time we have a match with the through the federal match program the federal government is party to that easement as well as the urban county government and the property and they run with the land. So the feds are not agreeable to allowing that. They're saying it's commercial it's prohibited. No. In 2017 I think it was 2017 or 2018 the feds made some allowance for what they call a farm stay but the farm stay under the federal guidelines requires you to be participating in some kind of agricultural provision on that farm. We haven't seen that per se in our easements yet and we've been questioning the feds because we know this is coming and to be honest we're not getting a very good answer right now. The last answer we got is prior to the time that they adopted that if our easement said no commercial activity it means no commercial activity and we're not going to agree to it. We as the partner in those easements with the feds are not going to ever do anything that they say no you cannot do because they will make us pay the money back if we violate it. It's a very fine line we're trying to walk here on but I think it's fair to say that at least for a great majority of the easements particularly if they have federal money applied to them and frankly all of them say that because they're all consistent. If it's commercial activity it's just not going to be allowed if you have a PDR easement. Thank you. Did the board, the Relay Management Board have any recommendation on farms that are not under easement? I mean they recommended that they allow them as a conditional use for hosted only so the concept of the unhosted and that ten acre minimum were initiated at the behest of the council. Did they send a report to staff with their They sent it to the council. The way this all transpired was just so you all are aware and also might help in terms of the timing and I told the committee this this morning. When the Urban County Council took up this issue of short term rentals they initially didn't address it in the Ag Zones at all and then they punted it frankly to the Relay Management Board saying we want you all to look at this and recommend us what you think would be best in the Ag Zones. So the initial short term rental ordinance didn't apply at all to the Ag Zones. The one that they have in front of them tonight for final reading amending what they originally did doesn't have anything in it about the Ag Zones. Then when the Relay Management Board that met for probably well at least a year with a committee make a recommendation but it was at the behest of the council so their recommendation from the Relay Management Board went back to the Urban County Council Planning Committee directly and the Planning Committee then took their recommendation tweaked it to some degree particularly they didn't like everything being conditional use and then they moved it out of their Planning Committee to the full Urban County Council who then initiated this as a zoning ordinance text amendment to you all and when they initiate something rather than refer it it puts a 60 day deadline on you all which is why you're hearing it next week but just so you know tonight after their meeting the council will be on break until January the 14th so you all have to act by next week to meet the 60 day deadline but they won't see whatever you all put forward next week until they come back in January with some new council members just so you know. Thank you Tracy personally Daniel Daniel if you could circulate the Relay Management Board report among the Planning Commission if they spend a year I at least want to read it even though I understand the council committee did make changes and I just I would like to see where they were with it. Yeah we can provide any information. Thank you Daniel Do we have any other discussion on or any questions for Daniel Okay thank you Daniel Do we have anybody from the public that would like to comment on this today Okay Any commissioner comment I'll just say thank you staff for sharing that when you have it and the floor is open for a motion I recommend we accept staff's recommendations as is Thank you Mr. Davis Second from Commissioner Pohl Any discussion Seeing none I'm not I'm not fully prepared to be perfectly honest with my homework and reading through this carefully and I'm I'm I'm just I'm I'm I'm I'm still on the fence with this hosted unhosted although I do see staff's point of how narrowly it really how few like abstaining or voting to refer it to the to the if it's you know rather than voting for it we may be in the minority but I don't without that added context of the year long committee meeting and then looking at how the was that the planning public safety committee how they sorry they changed the name last year general government and planning is what it is now I would like to see the chronological evolution of it just from what RLMB sent to the which committee general government and planning general government and planning and then to what staff is presenting us today so I guess I'm going to vote no on the motion but otherwise you would prefer to refer it to the full commission is that what you're saying which gives us a little more time to think it through I think just in part because it's new in part because I didn't really get it read through and thought through before this meeting and I'm like it's too fast for me to think in terms of like unhosted rural land you know and so I guess my preference is I mean my preference is not to necessarily vote no on the staff's text so I'd rather vote to just refer it to the planning commission but I'm not ready to vote yes on the staff's text that's pretty much how I feel I don't necessarily want to say no but I was asking was he amending his motion well you can amend it if he's amending the motion then we'll have to vote on his motion amendment to a motion is kind of a tweak as opposed to a whole different motion so I can withdraw my motion I'm not married to him if only Mr. Wilson was here I withdraw my previous motion so Mr. Davis has withdrawn his motion I guess then I would make a motion to refer it to the full planning commission due to the deadline okay so that is unanimous thank you Mr. Mickeler is there a second to that motion thank you Mr. Pole any discussion that deadline is the 12th it's next week we'll get you that information just as soon as we can so that you can think it through alrighty thank you do we have any discussion thank you staff thank you commissioners do we have any other items for today no other updates the Rose Holdings application the applicant has indicated that they are going to postpone another month and we are set to meet with no new movement on the realty and limited bluegrass application and our economic development one is already postponed to January okay if there's nothing further we are adjourned thank you very much music everybody's talking about the supermodel world Cindy Naomi and that whole bunch of girls redheads and brunettes and blondes with blue eyes they come in every shape yeah they come in every size you know I love everything they do I check them out on every pay per view oh but honey that was way before I met you you are cute with legs up to your neck when you walk in I'm a physical wreck when you walk in I've lost my cool babe what'd you expect when you walk in baby love begins when you walk by baby my my when you come around my jaw hits the ground when you shake your thing out of my skin when you cross the floor I scream more baby more when you bash your smile you drive me wild yeah yeah yeah everybody's checking out the glossy magazine Madonna and Diana you know the whole scene the covered girls the centerfolds and every movie star and all those pretty ladies down there at the local bar I couldn't think of nothing better to do been checking out a little wiggle or two oh but honey that was way before I met you and then you are cute with legs up to your neck when you walk in I'm a physical wreck I've lost my cool babe but what the heck when you walk in baby love begins when you walk by baby my my when you come around my jaw hits the ground when you shake your thing I jump out of my skin when you cross the floor baby more baby more when you flash your smile you drive me wild yeah yeah yeah yeah I couldn't think of nothing better to do been checking out a little wiggle or two oh but honey that was way before I met you when you walk in baby love begins when you walk by baby my my when you come around my jaw hits the ground when you shake your thing I jump out of my skin when you cross the floor I scream more baby more when you flash your smile you drive me wild yeah yeah you drive me wild when you walk in baby love begins when you walk by baby my my when you come around my jaw hits the ground when you shake your thing I jump out of my skin when you cross the floor I scream more baby more when you walk in baby love begins when you walk by baby my my when you come around my jaw hits the ground when you flash your smile you drive me wild yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oh i'm oh i can't oh oh let me do so and i'm so you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you there's talk on the street it sounds so familiar great expectations everybody's watching you people you meet they all seem to know you you even your old friends treat you like you're something new johnny come lately the new kid in town everybody loves you so don't let them down you look in her eyes the music begins to play hopeless romantics here we go again but after a while you're looking the other way it's those restless hearts that never meant johnny come lately the new kid in town will she I'll still love you when you're not around I'll still love you when you're not around There's so many things you should have told her But night after night, you're willing to hold her Just hold her, tears on your shoulder There's talk on the street, it's there to remind you It doesn't really matter which side you're on You're walking away and they're talking behind you They will never forget you till somebody new comes along Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town Everybody loves him, don't they? And he's holding her And you're still around There's a new kid in town Just another new kid in town Everybody's talking about the new kid in town Everybody's walking like the new kid in town There's a new kid in town I don't wanna hear it There's a new kid in town I don't wanna hear it There's a new kid in town Everybody's talking There's a new kid in town People started walking There's a new kid in town There's a new kid in town There's a new kid in town Hey, maybe I'll dye my hair Maybe I'll move somewhere Maybe I'll get a call Maybe I'll drive so far they'll understand Maybe I'll bounce right back Maybe I'll swing right back Maybe I'll lose some weight Maybe I'll clear my job Maybe I'll just get drunk on apple wine Maybe I'll be just fine Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas I'm barely getting through tomorrow But still I won't let sorrow bring me down I'll be fine and dandy Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas I'm barely getting through tomorrow But still I won't let sorrow bring me down Hey, maybe I'll learn to sew Maybe I'll just lie low Maybe I'll hit the bar Maybe I'll count the stars until dawn Maybe I will go home Maybe I'll settle down Maybe I'll just leave town Maybe I'll have some fun Maybe I'll meet someone and make them mine Maybe I'll be just fine and dandy Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas I'm barely getting through tomorrow But still I won't let sorrow bring me down I'll be fine and dandy Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas I'm barely getting through tomorrow But still I won't let sorrow bring me down I'll be fine and dandy Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas I'm barely getting through tomorrow But still I won't let sorrow bring me down Cause I'll be fine I'll be fine Oh, I'll be fine Prisoner of your love Prisoner of your love Entangled in your web Hot whispers in the night I'm captured by your spell Captured Oh yes, I'm touched by this show of emotion Should I be fractured by your lack of devotion? Should I? Should I? Oh, it better be good The time's gotta be now Cause I don't have no use for what you loosely call the truth And you better be good to me Yeah, better be good Better be good Come on, come on Be good to me I think it's almost alright And we don't need to fight And stand face to face You present your case Yes, I know You keep telling me that you love me And I really do want to leave But did you think I'd just accept you And blind faith? Oh, sure, baby Anything to please you But you better be good to me This time's gotta be now Cause I don't have the time For your overloaded lies And you better be good to me Yeah, you better be good Good to me Good to me Be good to me And I really don't see Why it's so hard to be Good to me And you know, I don't understand Why it's so plain That you can't be Good to me What I can't feel I surely cannot see Why can't you be Good to me And if it's not real I do not wish to see Why don't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Be good Good to me Be good to me Cause I don't have a use For what you lose to call the truth And I don't have a time For your overloaded lies So you better be good to me Yeah, you better be good Better be good to me Better be good Cause I don't have a time For your overloaded lies And I don't have no use For what you lose to call the truth You better be good to me Be good to me Be good Be good to me Cause I don't have no use For what you lose to call the truth And I don't have a time For your overloaded lies You better be good to me Be good to me Better be good to me Be good Be good to me Why can't you be Good to me Why can't you be Good to me Well, she's all you'd ever want She's the kind I'd like to flaunt And take to dinner Well, she always knows her place She's got style, she's got grace She's a winner She's a lady She's a lady She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Talking about that little lady And the lady is mine But she's never in the way Always something nice to say What a blessing I could leave her on her own Knowing she's okay alone And there's no messing She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Talking about that little lady And the lady is mine No, she never asks very much And I don't refuse her Always treat her with respect I never would abuse her What she's got is hard to find And I don't want to lose her Help me build a mountain From a little pile of clay But she knows what I'm about She can take what I dish out And that's not easy But she knows me through and through And she knows just what to do And how to please me She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Talking about that little lady And the lady is mine She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Listen to me people She's a lady Yeah, yeah, yeah She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Talking about that little lady Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh She's a lady Yeah, yeah, yeah She's a lady Oh, oh, oh She's a lady I can't live without that little lady I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And while my hands Make a living My mind's home-loving You I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon You I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And every night You make my daydreams Come true Well all day long While I'm working in town Time slows down to a crawl When I'm not Thinking about you I'm checking the clock On the wall Then it's goodbye factory and hello And there's a smile Across my face Cause I'm back in the arms Of your sweet love Where my thoughts have been all day I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And while my hands Make a living My mind's home-loving You I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And every night You make my daydreams Come true I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And while my hands Make a living My mind's home-loving You I'm having daydreams About night things In the middle of the afternoon And every night You make my daydreams Come true Yeah every night You make my daydreams Come true Yeah Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonder how you managed To make ends meet Who finds the money When you pay the rent Did you think Did you think that money was Heaven sent Friday night arrives Without a suitcase Sunday morning Creeping like a nun Monday's child Has learned to tie his bootlace See How they run Lady Madonna Baby at your breast Wonders how you managed To lead the way See How they run Lady Madonna Lying on the bed Listen to the music Playing in your head Tuesday afternoon Is never ending Wednesday morning Papers didn't come Thursday night Your stockings needed mending See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonder how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your breast Wonders how you managed To lead the way See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonder how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonder how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Maddona Children at your feet Wonders how you managed To make ends meet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet See How they run Lady Madonna Children at your feet Lady Madonna Children at your feet Lady Madonna Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Lady Maddona Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children around you Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children at your feet Children around you Children around you Children at your feet Children around you Children around you Children around you Children around you Ginger, Ginger, Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger 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Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Ginger Now I don't know I don't know I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows One more now I don't know I don't know I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows But I don't want to land in New York City I don't want to land in Mexico I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island I don't want to see my skin not glow I don't want to land on Comanche Sky Park Or in Nashville, Tennessee I don't want to land on no San Juan Airport Or the Yukon Territory I don't want to land on San Diego I don't want to land in no Buzzard Bay I don't want to land on no Ayotollah I got nothing more to say I don't know I don't know I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows Just one more I don't know I don't know I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows guitar solo Daytime turns me off and I don't mean maybe Nine to five ain't a-takin' me where I'm bound When it's done I run out to see my baby We get groovin' when the sun goes down I thank the Lord for the night time To forget those days A day of up-upside time To chase it away I get a relaxation And it's time to groove I thank the Lord for the night time I thank the Lord for you I'll talk about plans now baby I got plenty But nothin' ever seems to turn out the way it should Talk about money girl I ain't got any Seems like just one time I'm feelin' done I thank the Lord for the night time To forget those days A day of up-upside time To chase it away I get a relaxation And it's time to groove I thank the Lord for the night time I thank the Lord for you Seems like just one time I'm feelin' done I thank the Lord for the night time To forget those days A day of up-upside time To chase it away I get a relaxation And it's time to groove I thank the Lord for the night time I thank the Lord for you Don't go in the night time Yeah, yeah Don't go in the night time Thank the Lord for the night time Don't go in the night time Thank the Lord for you Don't go in the night time Don't go in the night time Jeremiah was a bullfrog Was a good friend of mine I never understood a single word he said But I helped him drink his wine And he always had some mighty fine wine Sing joy to the world All the boys and girls now Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me If I were the king of the world I'd tell you what I'd do I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the war And make sweet love to you Sing now joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me You know I love the ladies Love to have my fun I'm a highland flyer and a rainbow rider A straight shooting son of a gun I said a straight shooting son of a gun Joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me Joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the world Joy Joy Joy Joy Joy Joy Hey, it's Nicole with Yearlex PD. This is going to be our last episode for Season 1. And you're probably wondering, where is my co-host? Well, Baj is on sunny. So we are out here at the Lexington Police Department mounted barn. How you doing up there, Baj? Well, they actually found one of the horses that I feel comfortable getting on. So far, staying calm, everything's good. So, but as you would expect, Lexington, Kentucky, horse capital of the world, you would expect us to have a mounted unit actually known all over the country. So this month, we're going to be looking at all about our mounted unit going all the way back to the early 1900s up until now and what's going on on the streets of Lexington on horseback. Hey, we are here with Sergeant Byron Creekmore with the Lexington Police Department mounted unit. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having us. So can you tell us how you became the sergeant over the mounted unit? Funny story, actually. I was sitting in the office on patrol and I was working with another sergeant at the time. He was an acting sergeant. We were working on some paperwork for that day and he left. He called me about five minutes later and said, hey, I have a random question for you. I was like, all right. And he said, you like horses? I was like, this has nothing to do with what we were just talking about at all. So kind of one thing led to another. I came out here and met with the sergeant that was retiring from this position and the more information that I learned about it, it seemed like a good fit for me. And so I put myself out there and interviewed and got lucky enough and got the spot. Well, you know, you think of Lexington, you think of horses, right? And how we got to where we are today goes all the way back to like 1905 is when they first started talking about having a mounted unit here in Lexington. And then 1907 it came about, started, and it was basically then because officers couldn't respond to things in outlying areas quickly, whether it would be livestock thieves or whatever. It was disbanded in 1909. 1973, they thought about bringing it back, but 1982 is where you're at today all started, correct? Right. Okay. And how many officers do you have in the unit? Now we have three officers and myself as a sergeant, so four total. And what kind of training goes into becoming a mounted officer here with Lexington? So there's no requirement of any prior horse experience at all. We've had a few that had no experience whatsoever, and we've had several that do have prior experience. Some of them have either horses of their own at home or they've just grown up around horses and whatnot. But the general requirement is once the officer gets to the unit, the setup is there's a 10-week training program, and it kind of can also be adjusted a little bit based on their experience and their level of riding, but they go through that course, and once they can prove that they're ready and then test out, there's a skilled out portion where we'll bring in guest instructors as well, but then as long as they can prove themselves and test out on the horseback riding portion of it, then they're qualified on our end to show that they're safe and that they have the proper skill set. But they also have to train in driving the trailers and the trucks too because the horses, we don't just ride out from here. We can take them anywhere in the city. So we involve the trailering as well, and there's a lot of other components into it. But generally speaking, it's about a 10-week course, but again, that's based on their experience level coming in. So what does the mounted, like what are your daily routines? Sometimes we used to see them out at parades and stuff like that. What other events do you all attend? A lot of people out there don't know that we are a full-time unit. This is our full-time spot. This is where we come to work every day, and this is a 365-day-a-year job. The horses are not going to take care of themselves. Somebody has to be here every day to take care of them. So depending on the day of the week, we could be turning the horses out first thing in the morning. They go out to graze in the fields, and then we're responsible for cleaning their stalls that they've been in overnight, making sure they have all the food, medications, and supplements and all that that they have at the end of the day. And then it kind of just depends on what our schedule looks like. We can either ride out here on patrol, which would mean the officers just saddle up and ride the neighboring areas close to here, or they can put the horses in the trailers and go anywhere else in the city, and we like to try to get as many different places as we can. And when we're not doing that, we do get requested a lot for a lot of the public relations-type events. It is a lot of the parades, a lot of the city parks events, a lot of school events. The elementary kids love us, so we do that a lot. And then we also get a lot of requests for tours of our facility here, and then we'll usually try to throw a demonstration in our training arena so they can kind of see our facilities and we can show them some of our skill set and whatnot. So you mentioned the facilities here, and 1986, I think, is when this facility, which is very near to downtown Lexington, was built. Up until that point from the time, I guess, this current era started in 82, were you at the horse? Correct. We were out at Kentucky Horse Park. They let us keep our horses out there, so the one or two officers at the time would just go out there and get the horse and then kind of do things from there. But once we got our facility here, it has streamlined things so much for us and made it so much easier to where we can patrol downtown areas from here, and then we can also trailer out and go anywhere we need to go. So with it being fall, we have a lot of horse events. You have Keeneland, you have the colloquium. Do you all do anything out there at the horse park with the colloquium with our horses? Yes. We partner with them to host that event. This year we brought in 136 riders from, I believe, 41 different agencies across the country. We had minor police officers from as far away as Canada, the Toronto guys. We had a couple from California, some from Florida. They come from all over to this training. We bring in outside instructors. We brought in a couple instructors from Toronto and a couple other places. So it's two days' worth of training and then two days' worth of competition for the officer side of it. On Saturday and Sunday, we have two days' worth of civilian clinics. So pretty much anybody that's mostly local, that typically are people that just own their own horses and are looking for extra training opportunities, we bring them in. It's a different group on Saturday and Sunday, and we use those same instructors that we had all week for the police officers for those civilians as well. So they get to be exposed to a lot of things that they wouldn't normally be able to access without us having that training. And then that, it's also sponsored by our friends of the Lexington Mounted Police. That's our nonprofit organization that they start off with the seed money for that. And then it's a really great fundraiser for us, and it's just great training for everybody else as well. We have a lot of officers that return year after year because they just constantly talk about the level of training is unmatched. And the facilities out there at Altec Arena are awesome as well. That's fantastic. And you would expect that in Kentucky, right? Right. So what about, and some other things you've got to think about. It's not just you all. We have to think about veterinarians and care and so forth. So how do we do that? So that mostly falls on my responsibilities is I'm essentially managing a small farm out here. I never would have known it until I came out here, and most people don't realize it. We have almost 10 acres on the property here. But the facilities out here, we do all of the upkeep, a lot of the upkeep ourselves as far as just the mowing and general stuff like that. But then the veterinarian stuff, that falls on me any time we have an issue pop up, which is fairly regularly. If you have kids, you know, stuff just pops up and you can't really plan for that kind of stuff. But then also their feet. We do have a farrier that comes out every six weeks to redo their shoes. We have to keep the hay stocked. We buy that every six months. He wants you to go riding. Yeah, he's ready to go. He's ready to work. We buy about 500 bales of hay every six months and stock it in the hay barn. That gets us through the year. And then we use hallway feeds for our feed. So it's a lot of the administrative side of it that most people just don't really realize until you've had the horses yourself. While we're here, we're going to talk to a couple of the mounted officers and also with your farrier? Hossler. Hossler. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Thank you, guys. Well, thank you, Sergeant Creekmore, for joining us today. I appreciate it. And thanks for Remington and Aiden for joining us in the shot as well. So we are here with Miss Ellie West. She is the hossler for the Lexington Mounted Unit. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, of course. So, Ellie, what is a hossler? It's pretty simple. I'm basically a horse and barn caretaker. So bringing the horses in, feeding, turning out, making sure that they're healthy and happy and assisting the officers. So you're like a horse whisperer. Exactly. So what does your daily routine consist of? I come in at 6 every morning and feed the horses their grain, make sure that they're doing well from the night in the stalls, and then turn them out. And they're out for most of the day until the officers need them for patrol. And then clean their stalls and make sure they're good for the day, and then come in at the end of the day and call it a night. So, you know, sometimes we don't think about all the care that goes into it, because these are animals, right? We can't just leave them. So it's a year-round job. Right. Somebody has to be here every day. Yep, and no days off. That's why we've got me to help the officers out on the weekends and everything. So we do take days off. But somebody has to be here, right? Somebody's got to be here every day, yep. We appreciate you joining us today, and we appreciate what you do for the Lexington Police Department as well. I'm happy to be here. It's a privilege. Thank you. Hey, and we are here at the Lexington Police Department mounted barn, and we are here with Officer Allison Winters and Jonathan Coyle. Thank you all for joining us today. Of course. So can you all tell us a little bit about how, because I remember both of you on patrol, how did you all get in the mounted unit? Yeah, so there is an application process. After three years, patrol officers are eligible to put in for the unit if there is an opening. Once that opening is available, there is an interview process, and whoever is selected from the interview gets to come to the unit, and there is a training process that takes place once they come to the unit to make sure they're able to ride and proficient in their skills. So how long have you been in the unit? Four months. Four months, all right. And what about you? Four years. Four years and four months, okay. So tell us a little bit about how does it, how is it different being a mounted officer from being both of you on patrol? How is it different from being a patrol officer? So being in a mounted unit for me is it helps bring me closer to the community in just a more pleasant way. Instead of seeing somebody on their worst day, you know, we get to see everybody on their best day and sometimes on their worst day and help make their day better if we can. I've had just tons of people that are scared of horses and sometimes scared of police officers even come up and come a lot closer to us and finally end up petting the horse and being able to bridge a gap that I've noticed before. Being able to go to schools is a pretty cool deal, having kids, getting to see horses and getting to see police officers. We also have barn cats that when we do tours around here, Smokey and Bandit are their name, and people half the time love the cats just as much as they love the horses. Barn cats. I've noticed them running around here. Oh, yes. They seem to be popular. This is their house. They love it. So are you all assigned the horses? Yes. So I'm assigned to Bishop and Ed.