# General Government and Planning (GGP) Committee - January 14, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · January 14, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6313 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6313?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-01-14 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 28, 2026 - **Length**: 16,320 words - **Speakers**: Chair > ⚠️ **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 General Government & Planning (GGP) Committee met on January 14, 2025, at 1:00 P.M., with Vice Mayor Dan Wu presiding. The meeting covered six agenda items, including two action items and four informational presentations. The committee took 6 votes during the session, approving the election of a Committee Chair and selection of a Vice Chair, as well as the October 15, 2024 Committee Summary. No public comments were heard during the meeting. The four informational items addressed a range of planning and legislative topics, including an Urban Growth Master Plan Update, a review of Lexington's Growth Management Program, a discussion of House Bill 443, and an Annual Review of Items in Committee. These presentations were informational in nature and did not result in votes or formal actions by the committee. ## Attendance The following 15 members were present at the January 14, 2025 Committee meeting: - Dan Wu - James Brown - Chuck Ellinger II - Shayla Lynch - Hannah LeGris - Emma Curtis - Liz Sheehan - Whitey Elliott Baxter - Dave Sevigny - Jennifer Reynolds - Tyler Morton - Denise Gray - Joseph Hale - Amy Beasley - Hil Boone No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took six votes during the January 14, 2025 meeting, all of which passed unanimously. - **Election of Committee Chair** [timestamp: 00:02]: Shayla Lynch nominated Liz Sheehan as committee chair, seconded by Whitey Elliott Baxter. The motion passed unanimously. - **Approval of October 15, 2024 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:04]: Chuck Ellinger II moved to approve the October 15, 2024 Committee Summary, seconded by Dan Wu. The motion passed unanimously. - **Removal of Shared Use Paths Item**: Chuck Ellinger II moved to remove "Recommendations for Ensuring the Continuous Operations for Shared Use Paths" from the committee's agenda, seconded by Emma Curtis. The motion passed unanimously. - **Removal of Office/Residential Conversions Item**: Dan Wu moved to remove "Office/Residential Conversions" from the committee, seconded by Chuck Ellinger II. The motion passed unanimously. - **Removal of Two-Way Street Conversions Item**: Dan Wu moved to remove "Two-Way Street Conversions" from the committee, seconded by Dave Sevigny. The motion passed unanimously. - **Removal of Division and Program Review Item**: Liz Sheehan moved to remove "Division and Program Review" from the committee, seconded by Jennifer Reynolds. The motion passed unanimously. No roll call votes were recorded; all six motions were decided by unanimous consent. No votes were cast in opposition or abstention on any item. ## Appointments The committee took action on two leadership appointments during the January 14, 2025 meeting. - **Liz Sheehan** was appointed as **Chair** of the General Government & Planning Committee. - **Shayla Lynch** was appointed as **Vice Chair** of the General Government & Planning Committee. These appointments establish the leadership structure for the General Government & Planning Committee, with Sheehan taking the top leadership role and Lynch serving in a supporting capacity as second-in-command. ## Election of Committee Chair/Selection of Vice Chair [timestamp: 0:02:30] The committee opened its January 14, 2025 meeting by conducting the election of a committee chair and the selection of a vice chair. - **Nomination and Election of Chair:** Liz Sheehan was nominated for the position of committee chair. The nomination was approved, and Sheehan was elected to serve as chair. - **Appointment of Vice Chair:** Following her election, Chair Sheehan appointed Shayla Lynch to serve as vice chair. Key speakers during this agenda item included Dan Wu, Shayla Lynch, and Liz Sheehan. ## Approval of October 15, 2024 Committee Summary [timestamp: 04:03] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its October 15, 2024 meeting. The item was addressed by Chuck Ellinger II and Dan Wu. No significant debate or concerns were noted regarding the contents of the summary, and the committee moved to approve it. The summary was approved. ## Urban Growth Master Plan Update [timestamp: 04:34] Sam Castro presented an update on the Urban Growth Master Plan during this agenda item. The presentation was informational in nature and covered the plan's design principles as well as upcoming action items. Key items highlighted in the update included: - **Complete Streets Design Manual** — identified as an upcoming action item connected to the Master Plan's implementation - **Infrastructure Funding Plan** — also noted as a forthcoming deliverable tied to the plan's progress The presentation was informational, with no vote or formal action taken by the Committee at this time. ## Lexington's Growth Management Program Hal Baillie delivered a presentation on Lexington's Growth Management Program, which is grounded in Theme E, Goal 4 of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. The presentation focused on guiding future decisions related to growth and preservation in the community. The item was informational in nature, with Baillie walking the Committee through the framework established by the Comprehensive Plan for managing how and where Lexington grows. The 2045 Comprehensive Plan's Theme E, Goal 4 serves as the foundational policy basis for the program, connecting long-range planning priorities to on-the-ground growth and preservation decisions. No specific outcome or action was taken as a result of this agenda item, as it was presented for the Committee's information and awareness. ## House Bill 443 Traci Wade presented to the committee on House Bill 443, which would require local laws governing subdivision plats and development plans to be established through objective standards and applied ministerially. The bill's core requirement is that local governments set out clear, objective criteria when enacting laws related to subdivision plats and development plans, and that those standards be applied ministerially — meaning officials would be required to approve applications that meet the stated criteria without discretionary judgment. This agenda item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken by the committee. ## Annual Review of Items in Committee The committee conducted its annual review of items currently held in committee during the January 14, 2025 meeting. Committee member Liz Sheehan was the key speaker during this agenda item. During the review, the committee examined the current list of items in committee, made changes to sponsorships for certain items, and removed several items from the list. No additional details were provided in the available record regarding which specific items were affected, which sponsorships were modified, or the reasons for the removals. The item was informational in nature, and no formal vote or binding outcome was recorded as a result of the discussion. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Nominate Liz Sheehan as committee chair - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve the October 15, 2024 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Recommendations for Ensuring the Continuous Operations for Shared Use Paths from the committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Office/Residential Conversions from the committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Two-Way Street Conversions from the committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Division and Program Review from the committee --- ## Full transcript ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Good afternoon, everybody. I'm calling to order the January 14th, 2025, meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Sorry, we did that one, didn't we? Redact from the record. I would like to call to order the January 14th, 2025, meeting of the General Government and Planning Committee. Our first item of business is to elect a committee chair, just as the last two meetings. You may nominate yourself or someone else to serve as the chair of this committee. At this time, I will open the floor up for nominations for chair. Please sign in to speak. Council Member Litch. Thank you. I would like to nominate Council Member Liz Sheehan for chair of General Government and Planning. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. All right, we have a second from Council Member Baxter. Council Member Sheehan, are you willing to serve as committee chair if elected? Yes, I am. Thank you very much. Are there any other nominations? Is there any discussion on this motion? All right, all those in favor of this motion to nominate Council Member Sheehan as chair of GGP, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. Congratulations, Council Member Sheehan. Your first responsibility as chair is to appoint a vice chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you committee members for electing me as chair. I look forward to working with you over the next two years. I would like to ask Council Member Lynch to serve as my vice chair. I enjoyed working with you throughout our last term. You bring passion, intentionality, and persistence in all you do, and I'm looking forward to partnering with you for this committee. Will you accept this nomination? I surely will. All right, thank you, and congratulations to you both. Now, Council Member Sheehan, I will turn the chair over to you to conduct the remaining business for GGP. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This will be a little bit longer than our other two committee meetings today. Our first item on our agenda, well, after the appointment of the chair, is approval of the October 15, 2024 Committee Summary. I have a motion from Council Member Ellinger, a second from Vice Mayor Wu. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. The next item on our agenda is the Urban Growth Master Plan update. This will be our first presentation today. We have Sam Castro from TSW to provide the most recent update on this plan. I'll turn it over to you. Good afternoon, and this is very exciting, getting to be the first presentation in front of a new council. So thank you very much for having me. As Council Member Sheehan said, my name is Samantha Castro. I'm with Tonell Spangler Walsh & Associates. We're a planning, architecture, and landscape architecture firm with an office here in Lexington, Kentucky. We got started on this project in November of 2023, so not that long ago. For those of you that don't know, the Planning Commission identified five areas along the edges of the existing urban service area, and that totaled, in the end, around 2,840 acres of new land that is being brought into the urban service area. These areas are along our sort of major corridors, and they act as gateways to the city. What's really important to remember about this is that these are very long-term visions. I have 20 years of growth on here, but really, based on our previous expansion, it's more like 20 to 50 years of growth, if we're thinking about it in those terms. So to get us started, we really needed to put guardrails on what we were thinking about, and that first starts with engagement. And so because we only had a year to complete this project, we really had to get it out on as many platforms as possible, but also do a series of traditional meetings as well, including a very successful design workshop, an open house, an urban growth fest that we had back in the spring of last year. But it wasn't just about, you know, sort of those formal events. We also ended up having a lot of sort of on-call requests to meet with certain areas. And then one thing that's really unique about this process is that planning staff created a group of the developers and property owners and worked directly with them to gain feedback on what they saw as the vision as well of their areas, because it doesn't do us any good to plan for areas that the city doesn't own. So we needed feedback on what they would also like to see there. So to think about the pieces and parts that we were going to include in these plans, we really needed to look at a market analysis, and this was a holistic approach. In terms of retail, we already are covered by sort of major retail centers across the city, so it's really more about neighborhood-serving retail. I think we all know what's happened to the office market post-COVID. And then in terms of industrial, you know, really we're seeing that as more of a regional growth opportunity. What really became evident is, and it's no surprise to all of you, is that residential. Residential was of key importance, but it's more about a variety, a wider variety of residential than the development style that we've been seeing to date. So a wider variety and a greater number of price points. And included in that is also this idea of having these communities be walkable and have a sense of place. And so we achieved those on our end through what we're calling our Principles of Good Design, but we also wanted to tie those into the Imagine Lexington 2045 Comprehensive Plan. As you can see, all of our Principles of Good Design that we use as designers and planners tie very much into the pillars that are established in our city's Comprehensive Plan. So I want to run through these very quickly. So for a mix of housing types, we want to acknowledge that there's this desire for increased variety in our housing market, and that's getting us back to that sort of variety that we're used to seeing in our up-close, like downtown neighborhoods, but people want to see that everywhere. Diversity of uses. So, you know, we can make, it makes for a more interesting and walkable community if we have more things to look at, more places to go to. What we call gentle density, which is density that exists, but that is a little bit harder to perceive, so it's not a super tall building, but you're still getting a lot of people and units and activity going on, and it helps maintain that healthy mix of uses that we talked about. Connectivity. So building in flexibility and options for all users for how they move around their community, rather than trying to sort of isolate neighborhoods like we've done in the past, really. Multimodal transportation. This is huge, and this is really an equity issue, a transportation equity issue, especially because a lot of these areas are much further afield than our existing LexTrans service works to today, so we had to build them so that they could be almost self-sufficient on their own until the point when we can get transit out there to reach them. So these principles were then applied to the design of each area. This is an example of Area 2. So this is off of Winchester Road, right where Polo Club intersects into Winchester Road outside of the highway there, near the new Baptist Health site. And, you know, what I want to talk about, these are very similar, they look very similar to what you might have seen in small area plans or corridor studies that we've done in the past, and what they do is they really help to establish a community vision, and it's meant to outlast, you know, all of us in the room. It's meant to help serve the planning staff, planning commission members, and council members, you know, decades into the future so that they know what we were trying to accomplish with this master plan. The other thing that it really helps to establish that's maybe a little bit different than some of the small area plans we've had in the past is that this is giving, like, a locationality and it's giving actual dimensions and places to these villages and town centers that we've called out. That way we can ensure that there are these, like, centers and nexus of these communities. It also helps to establish the street network and where those major investments should be made. It lays out future connections so that we are no longer sort of blocking off these developments just in case we ever decide to move beyond the bounds that we've looked at now. And most importantly, it gives us minimum densities. So the city had tasked us with setting a minimum density of seven dwelling units per acre. This is fairly revolutionary in the fact that that is not the standard that we've set for our suburban development, but it is something that we are very comfortable with in our in-town neighborhoods. Seven dwelling units per acre is pretty standard for Kenwick, for Ashland, for the neighborhoods that we know and love. It also established typical street sections, and I say that because it helped us figure out what the dimensions should be, what those pieces and parts should be in the street sections. But really now it's been handed off to the Complete Streets team to create their Complete Street Design Manual, which you all will, I'm sure, hear about in the not-so-distant future. Some interesting things that I'm sure you all may have heard of are what's really great about this plan is that it tied the design to regulatory changes. And so, for instance, one of the big ones was talking about concurrency, which is really just a fancy way of saying it's requiring mixed use. So at a certain point, you've built a certain number of single-family houses. You are then required to build what we are calling retail-ready space. That doesn't mean you have to put a business in there right away. I'm showing this example because all of those units on the ground floor are retail-ready, but they can be used as residential until the market deems otherwise. But the idea is that, you know, we are trying to push for the mix of uses. Some other sort of revolutionary things in the plan is we tried to design everything, you know, we were given this opportunity because pretty much every single one of these areas had some really great natural features, whether that was streams or existing tree stands that we got to work off of and use those as open space and green fingers throughout, which really helped us achieve a goal of getting everyone within a 5-minute walk of some form of potential open space, which is even further exceeding, you know, Parks and Rec's current standards of getting everyone within a 10-minute walk of parks. So this would really be setting a very high bar. In terms of circulation, you know, just some good best planning practices about access management, bicycle parking, loading and unloading zones, you know, I'm sure we all know the, you know, the trucks and ride shares, all that, how we deal with those. Promoting alleys, the idea of going back to using alleys so that we can keep our main streets for other users, so focusing on bicycles and pedestrians and people using those streets like that. And then, finally, street trees and the importance of street trees in neighborhoods and how that adds to what we are doing. So in conclusion, I just kind of want to say, you know, so Planning Commission voted unanimously to include the Urban Growth Master Plan as a part of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan on October 31, 2024, so that was exactly one year after we began the project. But I really wanted to hit again on what set this project apart. You know, I've worked all over the Southeast as a planner, and what is really unique and is actually starting to get national coverage based on this plan, that Lexington is getting national coverage, is the fact that, again, the regulatory groundwork that was laid before we even started by planning staff in terms of all of the amazing zoning ordinance text amendments that were done, the ZOTAs, that really helped our team move forward very quickly with this idea. Also the fact that the city, you know, didn't let up on their ideas of minimum density, of walkability, of connectivity, of sustainability. You know, that is not true across the board in every city that we work in. So this has been a really unique and great process for us. Also this two-tiered engagement approach of working with the neighbors and the community, but then also working with the developers and the property owners at the same time, it's kind of a checks and balances system that we were working with to make sure that we were planning for something that was realistic, but that was also going to match what the community saw as their vision. And then again, tying that urban design features to the regulatory elements is so important. You know, that's how you move from the design into actually getting it approved and done like you show in the pretty picture. That's how you actually get it built. So kind of as a final, these are sort of the follow-up items that come off of this. Like I said, the Complete Streets design team is working moving forward, and that's for the entirety of the city. They're also working on the infrastructure funding plan. And so like I said, you know, this is a lot of land. This is 2,800 acres, which is the size of most, well, it's larger than most of the small towns everywhere else in Kentucky. So when we put it into that perspective, we need to think about how is that going to get paid for. Same thing with Parkland Dedication Ordinance. That's sort of in the mix right now. And then, of course, all of the ZOTUS that will come off of this project that, like I said, will help ensure that the design matches. Thank you very much. Thank you. Colleagues, just so we lay some ground rules for this committee, I will call on committee members first for their first speaking time. You have five minutes. And then I will look for folks that are signed in that are not on the committee, and then people who are signed in for the second time. So first we have, and I do want to say that for this, the urban growth plan, this was something, particularly for our new folks, this was something that we discussed as a part of our comprehensive plan. But it isn't something that we are taking action on at this point. It was approved by the Planning Commission and put into the comp plan, adopted with the comp plan by the Planning Commission. So it is as it is for us, but this is a time to get questions answered about the process or going forward, all those kinds of things. So first I have Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. On the 2,800, is that gross or is that... It's gross. That's gross. So how much net acreage is available then of that 2,800? It's approximately 2,300. 2,300? Yeah. Okay. And when you met with all the stakeholders, and there's a finite amount of people who actually own the land, and it's a pretty small number, I'm sure. How many landowners are there that own the bulk of it? Yeah, it was less than 100. Yeah. So with that, when we set this up, you met with them, you met with the neighbors. So they basically, you have set the development plans for these areas. Is that what... So when they go to do, if they want to develop, they have to follow whatever is in this plan now going forward? Would this be kind of like a zone change and it's already been set and this is what they can do in those areas then? So it still requires them to come in for a zone change, and that helps ensure that their development plan matches the vision. So some of those pieces, like the town centers and the major roadways, are set. They can move somewhat based on environmental features and things that they run into, but those are pretty well set. Yeah. I guess that's so, but you got buy-in from everybody that with the landowners that this is what you can do and this is what you shall do? I think buy-in from 100% of landowners is not something we would probably ever achieve. However, we mailed notice to every property owner and property owners around it. We offered and took meetings with any property owner that wanted to discuss. Some were in a position to want to discuss and others were not. So to anyone that wanted to meet throughout that year-long process, we met with. Okay. All right. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Sam, for the work and a really pretty and easy-to-understand presentation and slide deck for such a complicated subject. You know, the last couple of years, we've gone through with comp plan, goals and objectives, and, of course, the expansion of the USB. It was not an easy process. It was contentious. But I think coming out of it now into this plan, no matter how you felt or where you stood on the expansion question of should we expand, should we expand it this way, I think you all, with this plan, have really made the best of it because one of the things that we realize is infill and redevelopment can be really difficult and can be really contentious when it comes to, you know, neighbors versus developers or all these, you know, elements in here. And so when we're able to have the opportunity for this new development, to be able to bake in all these best practices in terms of multimodal transport, sustainability, density, multiuse, all the things that we as a government and as a city have said that we wanted, and now to see kind of these elements being put into action, take this philosophy and kind of translate it into practice, I think is really, really great. So I'm coming into this very optimistic in that, you know, everybody knows we need housing in Lexington, but to be able to think about it, not the what, but the how of it, and this plan gives me a lot of hope and confidence, so I appreciate your work on it. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savicny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I just, I was pretty active. I was in a neighborhood that was pretty active in some of the discussions, or a few neighborhoods that were pretty active in them, and I do want to thank you guys. You did a great job at being available, like being at a meeting, if someone asked you to come to a meeting that was not on the schedule, and then also when the neighbors came, you managed it really well. So that I want to thank you for, because I don't want people to say that they didn't, their voices were not heard, and I do think after each meeting there were some tweaks that I saw that took place, so I feel like you did at least listen to some of what they said, and maybe even agreed at times. So thank you for that, and then I also appreciate the density. You generally are going denser, even around surrounding neighborhoods, and I kept kind of carrying that torch, saying, you know, folks, it isn't going to look like your neighborhood as much as it's going to be, you know, there's going to be more places for people to live because every one of you have asked for more places for people to live, people can't afford to live here, blah, blah, blah. So I just want to thank you for being very conscientious, and now it's going to be exciting to see the next steps of how some of this infrastructure may need to get expanded. So thank you so much. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan, and thank you, Samantha, for the presentation and your work on this, and I just wanted to add my thanks to the planning department. I know we put you all under a clock and gave you a big monumental task, and I think you all were up for the challenge, and I remember reaching out to you with groups that felt like their voices weren't heard and that they hadn't been engaged, and you all engaged them and gave them an opportunity to weigh in. Looking at the action items and the follow-up, I think the complete streets design manual, I think we all understand what that is and know that there's efforts working that way. I think we also know how the infrastructure funding plan is going to be a huge piece of all of this going forward, and that's going to be a lot of work. Tell me a little bit about the parkland dedication ordinance. What all does that entail? Well, so one of the issues that was identified from the 96 expansion that we have had some trouble acquiring the recommended parkland to maintain just even the existing level of service. So there's sort of a national standard for how you determine what the appropriate level of service for parkland is in a given area based off of population and things like that, and so the expansion area in 96 is sort of at this point notable in its lack of parkland that we're still attempting to get through the processes we have available. Doing the research for this master plan, it became clear to us that there's been evolution in that nationally in terms of other cities our size, smaller, bigger, doing what's called a parkland dedication ordinance, and it's like an impact fee, but in the form of dedication of land. Part of the infrastructure funding program or plan that the commissioner's office is working through will help identify some of the cost of infrastructure, but in terms of the provision of the parkland to ensure we maintain the same level of service that the rest of the city enjoys, may need to look at a method of including that as part of the overall infrastructure process because we do consider, again, the park infrastructure on par with the other infrastructure elements that are needed in this plan, and it's discussed that way in the master plan. So it is a piece of infrastructure, but something that the city would probably coordinate, and we are just at the very beginning stages, again, taking this recommendation, doing some exploration of that with some other groups that have done it, sort of putting together some best practices. We're going to have some conversations. We've had conversations with parks already. That recommendation did not go into this plan without their discussion as well, and so we're going to start the education process sort of internally with the government on that over the course of the next year. I would doubt that you would see anything on that from us in terms of a draft until at least at the very earliest, the end of this coming year and probably into the following year. Okay, okay. I think that makes sense. My concern was all the work that we've done with the Greenway Ordinance and putting more of a burden on developers to make sure that those are desirable places and that they're green and accessible, that we just don't add another layer of burden on them in regards to parks because I think in a lot of instances, you know, I think that responsibility falls on us with the Park Acquisition Fund and looking for community spaces like that. Okay. And then the Zoning Ordinance text amendments, that kind of speaks for itself. We won't tell. All right, thank you. Thank you for that, Chris. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lickery. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Ms. Castro, for this presentation and for all of the hard work. It seems like many people had to work kind of day and night to meet some of these pressing deadlines, and I'm really impressed with what you brought forward and with some of the elements involved, especially, like, gentle density, the walkability, the focus on multimodal, the integration of complete streets, and all of these different aspects that are so valued, proximate to downtown in some of the areas that I represent that I know will bring a high quality of life to people in these new areas of town. I had just two kind of clarifying questions that I think will be pretty simple, and forgive me if you covered this and I missed it, but on the market analysis page, you have a graphic that includes vacancy rates, square footage vacancy rates, and I just wanted to clarify, is that office vacancy? Is it retail? Is it a combination? Could you talk to me more about that? That particular graphic was talking about retail vacancy rates and just talking about the fact that our major retail centers actually have, you know, pretty decent, but they don't have that much vacancy in them at the moment, and so that's why there wasn't that drive for another regional center like a Hamburg or a Summit to go out in one of these areas. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then the other question I had had to do with the difference between a town center and a village center. Could you tell me a little bit about that in more detail? Sure. When we think about that town center, we're thinking about mixed use, but it's sort of a vertical mixed use, so think about sort of a commercial, so, you know, bars, restaurants, maybe some offices, retail on the ground floor, and then residential, you know, two, three stories up above that, so it feels a little bit more urban, and then a village center is what we call more of a horizontal mixed use, so that would be your sort of single-story, you know, bar or restaurant or coffee shop mixed in with, you know, a more neighborhood-scale feel, so there's sort of a difference in intensity, I would say, with those. Thank you. That's very helpful. Well, thank you again for everything, and I'm also really impressed with the walkability in terms of open space, green space, some of the things that we've been talking about in terms of quality of life, and I look forward to learning more. Thanks. Vice Chair Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Sam, for the presentation. I just have one question. I want to make sure I understand what gentle density is. What is an example of gentle density that we have already here in Lexington, just to make sure I can grasp it? Sure. Gentle density is really just the idea of, in some cases, you can still get gentle density with single-family lots, but they're just smaller lots. They're narrower lots, and so you get a surprising amount of density when you sort of can put houses a little bit closer together. Same thing with if you can use an alley instead of having a driveway next to a house, then you can get houses in a little bit closer together, and that's sort of the lowest example of gentle density. When we talk about missing middle housing, that's another great example, too, of thinking about the idea of townhouses instead of your traditional detached single-family. And then up to quads, like the quads that we have in Ashland and on the north side, those are great gentle density because you're fitting four people in a single or four households in a single lot. So it doesn't even have to be all the way up to, these are a little bit more extreme, some of the top ones, but that's more of like a loft conversion of an existing building or what's supposed to look like a loft, but it's really only four to five stories high. But you're really focusing on the walkability of it, keeping the blocks small so it doesn't feel like this monolith, and making sure that you still have those open spaces and those communal areas, so you're using that density to create community space with the rest of that land. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Samantha, for the presentation. I feel like we all just need to take a really big deep breath because we did it, and I'm so excited and so proud of you. I feel like very motherly saying that, but I am very proud of you guys and all the work that you've put in. I know that it's been a lot, so thank you so much. A few questions. Samantha, this is on concurrency. So when we say retail-ready space, how does that differ from it just being a residential unit? Sure. That really has to do with building code. So it's just small changes that you would make. So the height of the ceiling, how you sprinkle the building inside, how your access is, making sure that you can get ADA access into some of those buildings. But the idea is that you can use that as residential up until the point when it's ready to be market rate. In a lot of cases where we've used it in other places, they'll use that as the leasing office for a long time until the rest of the development is built, and then they change that over to be a lawyer's office or a coffee shop or a dry cleaner. Okay. Thank you. I know we had a lot of conversation about ratios and things, and I just wanted to make sure that I understood the difference. As we were engaging landowners and just kind of talking about the process, and this may be a planning staff question, too, but have we seen any immediate interest from landowners, and do we expect to see anyone apply for zone changes quickly? Yes. We know there is interest. There was tremendous interest from the development community through this process. I think to some extent there's going to be a little bit of waiting and seeing on what the infrastructure funding plan comes from that. They have the ability to file for a zone change now, but they would have to have the ability to provide all the infrastructure themselves and have adequate frontage and things. So there's coordination that can occur once there is an infrastructure funding plan in place where some of these things can be shared and timed between property owners, developers, through the city acting as sort of an agent in that, and that process is still to come. But there is some property owners and developers that are in a position where they could. The question is whether they will. And they may, you know, again, it takes time for them to develop some plans of their own in accordance with these guidelines and standards. And so by the time they're ready, the infrastructure funding plan may be providing additional guidance. So I think it's unlikely that we will see a lot, but it is possible that we will see some. Okay. And then my last question is, I know we may speak on this a little bit later on the agenda as well, but. Initially, what changes do you think we'll have to make to. Kind of our public input process. If we are kind of prescribing what these developments should look like, how do we, or will we have to change kind of the public perception of. Of how a zone change looks going forward. And are you referring to sort of the house bill? No, not necessarily. I'm even talking like on the front end when they're applying for just a zone change, you know, it's kind of like. If we have set forward, you know, there has to be a village center. There has to be this much density. This is kind of what it has to look like. How do we still make residents feel like their voice is valuable and, and necessary. When there's some parts of a zone change or a development plan that won't be able to change. If that makes sense. Yeah, that's a difficult question because once, once we're in the realm of the developers, it's on their timeline to propose something. A lot of the public engagement sort of on hold until they make an application. And then we start having discussions in that regard with the community. And that's, it's different. Once an application is filed, you're having a different conversation about process than you are about sort of goal setting and visioning. That's why we spent a considerable amount of time with as many neighborhoods as we could early on. And what we did was to make it clear that this was the opportunity to division this and set some, you know, established priorities and let, you know, let the neighbors and residents and particularly we, we heard about it in council members of Vigny's district. You know, this is the time to talk about vision, talk about connections, talk about priorities and things that are important, tie it back to the comprehensive plan. And we, we tried to make it very clear throughout that these plans were going to guide development. There was no intention to hide, hide the ball on, on what the goal was here. But we also made it clear that some of these areas may not develop for a long time. That's, that's an area that's out of our control also. So by the time some of these come in, I've imagined a lot of those conversations will have been forgotten and we'll, we'll need to have some of those conversations again. And hopefully, you know, through, through your office, as we can help set up some meetings with constituents and have those conversations. Thank you. My time's up. Thank you, chair. Council member Morton. Thank you, chair. And thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions and I'll start with, could you define attainable housing and then how does that differ from affordable housing and affordability? Yeah. So through the process of determining that we would be doing an expansion, I know director Duncan made it as clear as he possibly could, that our ability to dictate and require affordable housing would be very limited with the, with the statutes and regulations that we have at our disposal. So our goal in addressing attainable housing was to essentially try to address through supply and the zoning and the regulatory framework, and then the development standards to ensure that the volume of housing units would ensure that they would be more, more attainable for workforce housing. Again, workforce housing was the term given to us as part of the directive to move forward. So to us, making housing attainable was both a supply issue through the volume of housing that we needed to supply, as well as providing a mixture of housing types that would create more opportunities for more people to get into those units. So when we talk about attainability, we're just talking about as much variety in the marketplace and as many, as many units as we can support through the regulations. And that's again, why we brought a text amendment ahead of this, of this master plan process to make sure that we could, with our regulations achieve the densities that we were recommending. So again, attainability was more about supply and a variety of housing types. So I just know during this whole, the whole expansion conversation of portable housing was that, that main sticking point. And obviously there's more, you know, the need for multiple, multiple uses of houses and mixed use of housing and many other things, economic growth and all those things. But how does this align with the intentions for the expansion of emphasizing a fix in our affordable housing, housing crisis? Well, plenty of staff put forward a recommendation, put forward a recommendation in the urban growth text amendment for an affordable housing density bonus. That is truly as far as we're aware, one of a kind and we have had a lot of interest expressed to us for, for folks looking to take advantage of that. We've had meetings with, with housing and community development staff to ensure that how they track and monitor that sort of affordable housing and the deed restrictions and things that we can help work with them to create that supply of housing using that bonus that we created and that you all approved. It's, it's a really good opportunity for small micro site, affordable housing that did not exist in our zoning ordinance before. And that will take a little time, I think to show results, but there's a lot of interest from, from the community about doing and working through that, that option. But I think in terms of what planning can provide a fort through affordable housing, we're sort of limited to the zoning ordinance and creating incentives there. The next steps in terms of prioritizing are sort of budgetary aspects that really fall more to the council and the legislative body than what we're able to provide. But I know we worked hard to bring you all what we thought was a very ambitious density bonus under the zoning regulations that we felt we were, we were able to, to provide and we're very excited that you all were able to adopt that. And, and let's see where it goes. And then can you help me understand why the zoning I'm just within this presentation is mainly light and medium density for this project. But when we speak about infant redevelopment, we tend to kind of emphasize and even within any zone change, we tend to kind of emphasize density. Yeah. If you speak towards that. Yeah. The I think the developers would very much tell you that the low density recommendation you're seeing here is not low. In fact, it makes them pretty uncomfortable. And the bulk of our developer feedback was that the low density was too high. And so there's no question again, as Sam mentioned, this is unique in that the low density that we're recommending, the floor of density is seven units an acre and that seven units an acre still allows for single family, but it also requires you mixing in some more housing types. And so while we do call it low density, the policy goal that's coming out of the comprehensive plan and into this master plan is reestablishing what low density means to be something more than that. And then the conversations we have to have with the community about what that means to what low density means. Because obviously through neighborhoods and adjacent developments, they're going to want to see something more like what they have. And so we spent a lot of time, you know, trying to justify why low density needed to start at what used to traditionally be a medium density level in Lexington. And then just last follow-up. So I guess, what is the balance between emphasizing high density in existing neighborhoods and trying to work between, I mean, I guess doing low and medium density in our expansion areas. What's the balance? Are you suggesting that we're, I guess I'm not sure of the question. So I guess when it comes to a lot of our existing neighborhoods, we emphasize density. And then when I'm looking at this expansion conversation, this is talking about it. Just all I see is low and medium density. So what's the balance between that? We are, we, we, the comprehensive plan does provide opportunities to allow for increases in density. And the planning staff does generally support increases in density in accordance with the comprehensive plan. It doesn't suggest that we should do high density in these areas around existing neighborhoods, but it provides the opportunity to add additional density above and beyond what is there. But rarely will you see the comprehensive plan or the planning staff recommend high density directly adjacent to an existing lower density area. But it does, you know, and again, there's, there's, I'd say there's a discrepancy sometimes between what the plan defines and the company defines as high density versus what the communities and neighborhoods perceptions of high density are. So to, to some neighborhoods, a three story building is high density in terms of the comp, what the comprehensive plan recommends three stories is often what a single family home could be. So the conversations around density versus height and scale, those are the types of conversations we try to have with the neighborhoods through the zone change process to encourage additional density without it necessarily being tall, excessively tall, or, or a stress on additional infrastructure. So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but I'm attempting to say that the additional density is something that the comprehensive plan recommends, but it is often not high density in those locations. Thank you. Council member gray. Thank you chair. Thank you for everything you all done throughout the year. I actually attended one of them. I believe it was one of your first engagements over at gray line station. So yes, thank you all for all you did and your outreach. I'm a big believer in reaching out to the people and going where they are. And you did exactly that. So thank you. I just would like to reiterate what the council member James Brown brought up regarding the park land. The Winchester road area is a park. It's it's it's not existent in that area. So I want us to be diligent. When we plan for this area to ensure that we have adequate number of parks for the residents. That is very important. I need for that to be part of the planning for this area so that it won't be like the sixth district. It's a desert for parks. And I don't want that for the next areas that we do expand into. We need to ensure that there are adequate areas for people to come together. And also I mentioned I heard it was mentioned about the homes being closer together. And I'm just curious of what you're envisioning of close because I do believe there's such a thing as being too close. And I'm seeing that also in the old Paris neighborhood not old Paris. That is what it's called the old Paris neighborhood where the homes are extremely close. And we have short driveways where we have residents who now due to the past planning development plans for the neighborhood there's not adequate. The streets are smaller. I want to make sure that we are conscious about these neighborhoods the size of their driveways because it does affect the residents who do in the end reside there. So I want us to think about the living arrangements as we're planning. And that is all. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And this might be a segue into the next topic that we'll be on. But when we did the expansion back in 96 we still have how many acres that has not been developed in that? About a third. I'm sorry. About a third I believe has not been zoned or rezoned yet. Probably more than that. One of the big issues we hear is housing, affordable housing, affordability. How do we make sure that we actually get stuff built on this that it moves forward because we had the exaction program. We're tying that. We're rolling that back. And we're going to have a new funding system. I think we have RFP that's going out on Friday to look at. And that's going to take 12 to 18 months. We mentioned earlier about you could go ahead and do a zone change but you're not going to because of the infrastructure issues. How do we make sure that this continues and that we actually get stuff, houses built and stuff gets done? Because as we said, we set this plan up and it's going to outlive us. I've been here 18 years and I don't plan on being here 18 more years. Trust me, the constituents don't want it. So how do we go about making sure that this gets done, that we're not 96 and here we are 2025 and we still have a lot of it still hasn't been developed? I'm going to say a portion of that I think may be best addressed after Hal's presentation because it does get to the future and how we do this process that we just did in the future. But in terms of how we see this area, these five areas develop, I think again, the creation of the infrastructure funding plan is very critical to assisting in the timing and sequencing of development. And ultimately that's what this master plan is about is how we time and sequence future growth and development. And the government's role in infrastructure is a big part of that. And the development community in most cities, the city and the developers sort of work together to assist in the timing and sequencing. So the infrastructure funding plan is something that the development community, by our discussions with them, they are interested in seeing completed. They'll be a part of that process as well. And so I think that is a key piece to ensuring that over the normal cycle of time that would have happened anyway, we will likely see development very quickly, if not sooner than what we saw in 96. It took a few years before the first project happened in the 96 expansion. So I would suspect the completion of the infrastructure funding will probably get that ball rolling fairly quickly. Okay. And I guess just to follow up with that, when we look at, and I think what we've done here is a great opportunity that we've worked with the neighbors, we've worked with developers, and we've got this. What about the 96? Do we do something similar to that where we have, we've set these kind of areas up or are they just kind of sitting there and really not moving forward? Again, to the extent that the way we have typically done expansions in the past has led to a certain percentage of acreage not being developed, again, I think is going to illustrate some of the points that Mr. Bailey is going to make here in just a minute. We don't have the ability to identify willing developers and ensure that development happens at a timely basis when we bring in larger chunks and tracks all at once. So that's more of a procedural and structural element to how we do expansions than we're able to address through the master plan. We were tasked with coming up with 2,800 acres. Once that land comes in, it has to have a plan. At that point, it then falls to the private sector to bring that in as they wish, and that is not a schedule we often control, even when the infrastructure is there and ready. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, there's some supplemental information in your packet on the infrastructure funding plan that was mentioned today. So if you have questions about that, I will refer you to Commissioner Horne's office. We have allocated funding to hire a consultant to work with our planning staff to develop that plan, and I will refer you again to the Commissioner's office for that. Our next presentation is on the Lexington's Growth Management Program. We have Hal Bailey, a planning manager, to introduce us to the Growth Management Program and what that process would look like or could look like and how we get our conversations started around this. If you recall in our comprehensive planned discussions of the goals and objectives, we had asked for the urban growth master plan for the expansion areas, but then the next step for our planning and how we directed our planning staff was then to develop a process for how we make our future growth and preservation decisions. So this presentation is to get that conversation started. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Hal Bailey. I'm the long-range planning manager. Today I will be talking about that Theme E, Goal 4 of the comprehensive plan, which does call for the government to develop a new growth management program or process that is meant to establish a process for urban growth and preservation within Lexington. Just a bit of background for this topic. The Urban County Council adopted the goals and objectives of the Imagine Lexington 2045, the city's comprehensive plan, on June 15th, 2023. The goals and objectives called for that expansion that Sam just went over and included a fair amount of land specifically because of a housing need that was identified by the Urban County Council. The council also saw the need to update this process. So Theme E, Goal 4 calls for the community to build upon the work that the government has already conducted to create a new process to determine long-term land use decisions involving the urban service area. This process is meant to ensure sustainable use of the urban service area, preservation of significant agricultural areas, and a research based approach for future expansion. Included in the Theme E, Goal 4 is a specific reference to the start of this review or the review of creating the process to incorporate input from the Urban County Council in collaboration with the Planning Commission and a deadline specific. for the adoption of the process into the comprehensive plan. While the discussion revolving around the urban service area typically takes place during the review or the update of our comprehensive plan every five years, there have been also several other attempts to modernize the process that we expand and preserve land in the community outside of these updates. The most recent discussions occurred following the adoption of the goals and objectives of the 2018 comprehensive plan through the work of the sustainable growth task force and the goal four work group. Each provided substantial information regarding new approaches, but were unable to be finalized. Despite the inability to finalize a new process for review, each of the work groups highlighted challenges from the previous approaches to urban growth within our community. Specifically, these challenges are largely due to the complexity of projecting land use needs further than our ability to adequately forecast. Once we are 10, 15, 20 years outside of the establishment of an expansionary master plan, the pace of development and land use progression doesn't often stay on track with what we were projecting long term. This is illustrated by the slow rate of development of some of the areas that were brought into the urban service area. Speculative growth locations, changes in policy and land use, and the impact of market changes. This is highlighted by the statement in 1973 that the urban service area should be 116 acre square miles in order to accommodate our population by the year 2000. We are currently just south of 90 square miles and around that same population. This is not to say that our urban service area should be 116 square miles at this point in time. That represents a change in the mentality and regulation that our community has put forth on how we utilize our land and how we are planning for the future. The challenges of previous approaches are also what led to the initial recommendation in the 2018 comprehensive plan to improve our growth management processes. Despite the recent expansion, Lexington's urban growth will continue to be an important conversation for our community. But it does currently dominate the conversation for our comprehensive planning process, overshadowing very important aspects of our community's future, like equitable development, environmental sustainability and resiliency, and transportation improvements and connectivity. For these reasons, the Division of Planning supports the continued review of the process by which we expand our community. It is also important to recognize the recent work that has been done that will inform the discussion of this process as it goes forward. In 2020, the Sustainable Growth Task Force was established. This group specifically recognized the need for greater information regarding the availability of land within Lexington. The initial report provided a baseline of information regarding the development in the community and the vacancy of land through 2020. This plan was updated last year, bringing the numbers up to the 2022 level. Due in large part to the additional staff that has been added to the Division of Planning, long range planning has taken the responsibility for the production and reporting of the data originally associated with the Sustainable Growth Task Force. The information will be reported through the Imagine Lexington Data Research Center, which will serve as a transparent data source of ongoing development trends, land vacancy, demographic changes, and environmental impacts. The Division of Planning anticipates having the Data Research Center available in the coming weeks and updating the data from the Sustainable Growth Task Force through 2024. In addition to the work that was done by the Sustainable Growth Task Force, it was followed up with a program of the Goal 4 Work Group that was established by then Vice Mayor Steve Kaye. This work group proposed a map that identified areas of preservation and areas of future urban growth. It built upon the baseline data that was developed under the Sustainable Growth Task Force and developed multiple growth scenarios that would lead to decisions regarding whether to expand. Once put forth, a determination to expand would follow with calls for plans. And then it would be followed by a evaluation and public review process. The review process would lead to potential incorporation of specified locations into the urban service area. While both the Sustainable Growth and the Goal 4 Work Group provided important information that would guide the process of urban growth management, none were adopted as a formalized process of review. Theme E, Goal 4 of the comprehensive plan provided specific tasks to complete through collaboration with the Urban County Council. In the coming months, staff will be working with the Chair of the General Government and Planning Committee to refine the scope of the project, establish a framework for public input, schedule committee reports and updates, and collaborate with the planning commission in this process. This will build upon the prior work and establish an effective approach to urban growth and preservation within Lexington. If you have any questions about this very introductory aspect of this plan, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you for that presentation. Colleagues, please sign in if you would like to speak. I will just start the conversation by saying this item is going to be put into committee formally at the work session today. And Vice Mayor Wu has agreed to be the sponsor of that item. So he will be working with me and other council members, the planning staff, the planning commission to move this work forward. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Hal, for the presentation. I think for many of us, we've realized that the urban service boundary and its expansion, and therefore how Lexington grows and develops as a city, has been one of our most contentious issues that we've had in this city for decades and decades. Some of us are old enough to remember the Muppet Stickers. The current model, and I don't even want to call it a model, it's not really a model. The current way we're doing things when it comes to growth just doesn't work. It's the don't expand, don't expand, don't expand, and then expand in a arbitrary or less than ideal manner, and then don't expand, don't expand. And so it's this sort of, it's this pattern that hasn't really worked for us on either side of this debate. I think the idea of divorcing it from our goals and objectives and comp plan every five years is a great one, because it does really suck all the oxygen out of the room, where we have so many other issues to discuss during comp plan, like sustainability, like equity, all those other elements. So any attempt for us to create a new paradigm to do this, I think would be really, really helpful. And I think, to me, I have a lot of faith in the work that we're going to do, the work that's already been done by Sustainable Growth, by Goal 4. A lot of this work has, the groundwork is there, right? And I think we want to bring people to the table and make sure we get robust public input to make sure that we're aligned with what the people of Lexington want in terms of how we grow. And I'm very optimistic, I'm very excited about this process, because we absolutely have to find a new way of figuring out how we grow as a city. So I appreciate your work, and I look forward to working with you and your team. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. I just have a few quick questions. So can you describe what you think the order of approval is here? Do you feel like the council is going to have the final word on the way this thing rolls out? And should it be us, or do you think it should be the planning commission? because it looked like the planning commission there. So the way that this was set up, specifically, was that we would be working with this body, and then it would be added into the comprehensive plan. So there is an element for the planning commission to play a role. How that is done, I think that needs to be laid out in coordination with the chair of this committee. And working with the planning commission and the law department. Thank you. Appreciate that answer. And then, one thing with doing a, I would call it a more objective way of doing this. Creating a solid process. I would just like to make sure that we include in the process actually running it, the process, so that we can get the kinks out of it. We know kind of where the sticky, it's nice to be able to say, well, this is how it will work. But if you don't actually run it or test it, and say to this council, and this was the result, and have us say, okay, yep, we get it, we understand it. I think that's really important, is to make sure that we run it as part of the process. And then adopt, basically refine if we need to, and tweak. And then it's agreed on. Just my personal thoughts. Thank you, Chair. I don't see anyone else signed in to speak, but if anyone has other comments, please sign in. When I put this into committee, at the work session this afternoon, I do want to make sure that we are thinking holistically about this program and process. We oftentimes equate this, or some of the language that's used equates it with expansion. But the preservation parts are equally important. So in the documentation, in our process, I would like to see us using that language and incorporating those conversations just as much as the expansion process and growth process. So when I put this into committee, I will place preservation in the title. We can talk about preservation in a number of different ways, but I just want folks to know that that is the intent of this conversation as well. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Hal, for your, well, the whole planning department for their work on this. And Council Member Sheehan, I appreciate you adding the word preservation. I think when we talk about growth and development in our city, a lot of folks just focus on all the negatives, and we all know internally that we're also talking about preservation. But I think we need to be as clear as possible that that is just as much as a priority as growth. And when we're talking about preservation, I think we're talking about preservation of our rural farmland, our factory floor, so to speak. But then I think we could also be talking about preservation of existing and historical neighborhoods. So I think that term encompasses a lot of things, so I think it's only appropriate to add that to the title of this issue, or this item. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. I don't see anyone else signed in for comments or questions. Thank you. Thank you. Our last presentation for today is for House Bill 443. We have Tracy Wade, Program Planning Manager, to inform us on this House Bill and what changes we can anticipate to our development process. Thank you, Chair Sheehan and members of the council. Happy to be here today to talk about something that's not quite as high up as you've been hearing, but more what I deal with on a daily basis in the details of our ordinances. So House Bill 443 is a piece of legislation that was enacted last summer by our legislative body here in Kentucky. And that change is to KRS 100, and I'll briefly go over that in a minute. But the change was enacted in April of 2024, and it will become effective in July of this year. And that particular legislation is aimed at, again, KRS 100 to require that local laws dealing with subdivision plaques and development plans be set out by objective standards applied ministerially, and also set out conditions for any discretion that might occur within that. So KRS 100, I know some of you are probably familiar with that, and others may not be. It is part of our state law that is our enabling legislation for planning and zoning for the whole state of Kentucky. Now not every county in Kentucky plans, but Fayette County has been actively utilizing planning statutes since 1928 in terms of zoning. So we are really at the forefront of that in the state of Kentucky. So KRS 100 added a new section, and the specific language is on the overhead here. There were three terms that I think are very important as we move forward with implementing this new legislation, and I'll go over those in a second. So it created two new sections. One is to ensure that any ordinances, rules, regulations that are adopted related to subdivision plaques and development plans for any community in Kentucky, that they be of a form that is objective standards. And that they be applied ministerially. So I'll go over those two terms in a second where I've highlighted them in bold. And then it provides for some relief or discretion from those standards. Where those adopted ordinance rules and regulations are in place for development plans, there should be an allowance for discretion, or can be, maybe, an allowance for discretion for the decision making bodies by approving either some sort of deviation from the standard that the applicant seeks. Or if the government finds that there is substantial evidence that applying the strict standard to a particular piece of land would pose a specific threat to our public health, safety, or welfare, then that can be brought forward to the, in this case, the planning commission, our decision making body for further review and discretion. So in terms of the key terms in this legislation, objective standards. So objective standards means they are measurable, very specific, unbiased, and also equitable. And applied ministerially means that there is an administrative action occurring, that they're carried out in a prescriptive manner and not allowing for any personal discretion. And then lastly, what does setting out conditions for our application of discretion really mean? So right now, the planning commission does apply discretion when they review development plans. And they do so based on their process. And when they do that, it provides a bit of ambiguity or vagueness to our applicants. And so that, I think, is the reason we're seeing a change in the state law to ask for very specific objective standards that are applied equally across the board to everyone. And that there only be applied discretion when, under those two cases, when we have an applicant ask for discretion, discretionary review, or deviation from the objective standards, or if there's a specific public health, safety, and welfare concern. And so the planning commission, we think, would use their discretion only in those two cases. They currently do that when they receive, the example here is a waiver of our land subdivision regulations. And that's probably, again, a bit in the weeds for our discussion. But that applies when someone, for an example, says, I don't want to continue this street. I want it to be a dead end. That is not allowed by our subdivision regulations. You have to continue the street, or you have to build a cul-de-sac, some way to turn around. An applicant can ask for a waiver of that requirement. And they go to the planning commission and explain their justification for those reasons. And there are specific reasons established in our subregs that allow for a waiver to be requested, criteria, if you will. An example of how our current ordinance does not meet these standards is on the screen here. And this comes from our planned commercial center zone, basically, in essence, our shopping center areas. And currently, the standard established in this portion of the ordinance requires that transit facilities be provided. So a bus shelter, a bus stop, which is something that fulfills our needs in the community. But the way in which we are asking for that does not meet the objective standard portion of that. So again, the text here shows that we are asking for the local transit authority to approve the location of a transit stop. And then also a bit of leeway in terms of where the pedestrian facilities are accommodated to get to that transit stop. And unfortunately, the language established here gives a bit too much leeway to those entities. Both the MPO staff and then the LexTran, our local transit authority, to identify where the stop should be. So in our ordinance updates to comply with House Bill 443, our staff is looking at locations in our zoning ordinance currently where there is a vagueness, where it's not an objective standard, and then going through and creating updates to that text. And again, I'll mention here where it says, phrases like strongly encouraged or adequate facilities do not qualify as an objective standard. Because anyone could have, rational people could have a different perspective on what that really means. So in terms of our current development plan process, we do anticipate there will be a change. It is broken down into two phases, and actually a little bit of a third phase. Most land that comes in for a zone change has a preliminary development plan associated with that. Then the next step is for an applicant or a developer to come in with a final development plan. And I will tell you, although it's called a final development plan, they are never final, they always change. And we have lots and lots of amendments to our final development plans. So under the House Bill 443 and our anticipated text updates, there will need to be an amendment to our Article 21, which governs development plans. And we don't anticipate much change in terms of the process for the preliminary development plan, because that is or will remain a discretionary process. A zone change is still discretionary for planning commission and then ultimately the council. But we anticipate there will need to be changes for our final development plans. We'll still see applications come in, staff review, and our technical committee that meets on a monthly basis will review all applications. But what will change is whether or not an application will need to be reviewed by the planning commission. So if a development plan can meet all of the objective standards, there's really no reason for us to send it to the planning commission for further review. And so that will save time and hopefully effort and money for our development community, but also for our staff in terms of sending things to the planning commission. So again, planning commission review would only be necessary if there's a waiver of the standards or deviation. Or if we think that there's a possibility or there's substantial evidence provided that there would be a public health, safety, or welfare impact if the objective standard was followed. So, so far our staff has met internally to discuss, and internally I mean not just the division of planning, but with other divisions that are involved with development in Lexington. And discussed what the implications of House Bill 443 are for not just our zoning ordinance, but also for our manuals that are adopted and other guidelines that other divisions do adopt and follow because it did apply to not just ordinances, but rules and guidelines that each individual division might adopt and apply. And so they have been working, other divisions have been working to update their information as well. We have met with development stakeholders to review the legislation, trying to understand what maybe they anticipate the changes being. And then we've continued to have internal meetings with the other divisions to ensure that we're on track to update the zoning ordinance for development. So we will end up following up with our development stakeholders and then asking for the initiation of the zoning text amendment and also our subdivision regulations, which is a SRA, an abbreviation there. And just in terms of your understanding in terms of a text amendment, the timing is a little bit different than a lot of you have been involved or had hearings for zone changes. A text amendment is a legislative change, and so it doesn't have the same time limits established by KRS 100. We anticipate that this text amendment's related to implementing House Bill 443 would be initiated by the Planning Commission this month, they have their last meeting on January 30th. We would then move forward with moving or mailing notice letters to our neighborhood associations and anyone else that's registered on our neighborhood association database in February. Doing our zoning committee and planning commission hearings in March, and then allowing time to send that final report back to the council in April. And have the opportunity to have discussions here with you in May or June. And then lastly, the July 1st, 2025 is really our deadline for making changes, especially to the process that we ask our developers to go through. So, happy to answer any questions about what we're working on or timing. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in if you would like to ask a question or have a comment. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Wade, for the presentation. I have a question about the scope of HB 443 when it talks about applying to development plans. What kind of development plans, all the development plans, what is the scope, I guess? What does it cover? Well, we anticipate that it would cover final development plans and then amendments to those final development plans. Okay. Can you speak to a little bit, you gave one example of how sort of one of our processes doesn't align with this house bill. So when we start talking about things like objective standards, right? How nuanced and micro are we going to get with this stuff? Are we going to be literally talking about this has to be this many feet, this has to be this many rooms, you know what I mean? What level of detail are we talking about and how micro are we getting? Well, in some cases, I do think the distances and specific measurements might need to be applied. For instance, our subdivision regulations require a five foot sidewalk. We updated our zoning ordinance to also require that, even internally on a development for continuity. And so, in those situations, we do denote the specific width of the sidewalk. But what we don't do is dictate where on a piece of property that sidewalk should be located. And so there might need to be some clarity as to where a crosswalk is needed or how far the sidewalk could be from the building or getting to the right of way. So there may be some instances where we do provide specific distances or the detail in it and others where it's not necessary. Okay, and then it sounds like we've basically narrowed the range of what can be appealed, essentially, to planning commission if it doesn't align with these sort of objective standards that we have. But it's not every single thing, right? The developer says, we don't want to do it this particular way. We want to bring it to planning commission to kind of make our case. Are they able to do it with any sort of discrepancy with the standards, or is it a couple of specific types of discrepancies? Do you want to? Okay. Vice Mayor, we believe that, as Tracy described, of course, the staff can ask for changes or for deviations based on health, safety, welfare. The applicant can certainly make a case for a change because of something else that maybe is even beyond that, that just says discretion. But if we're going to put all these things specified in objective standards, and if the applicant wants to do something different from that, they're going to have to take that to the planning commission. So that doesn't really, that then keeps them essentially on the same timeline that they were before. The staff would then have to, we would likely give a staff report on the staff's opinion of that request. And then the planning commission would make that decision. Is it your opinion or Ms. Wade's that the intent of this legislation is to expedite and make potentially smoother and faster the development application process? I think that's one of the benefits, also just removing the discretion from, because we do have a conditional approval that the planning commission takes, so they will approve a plan, a final development plan with sometimes ten conditions, sometimes 20, and all of those conditions need to be met, but some of them are the sign off of a particular division. And almost nested within that sign off is a whole different set of requirements. And in some cases those are enumerated very well, like our engineering manuals, and in other cases they aren't. And so that's where we're asking for the additional, I guess, objective standards to be at least openly available for our developers. So I think that's where we've kind of maybe stumbled a bit. Timing has not been, yes, usually the biggest issue. Okay, and then finally, what actual, do you have a sense of what the actual impact would be when it comes to, let's say, planning commission's kind of workload of how many things are going to come before them in sort of the previous way that we're doing this, or under 443? I would like to say that their workload would decrease in terms of that second meeting that they have a month. I'm not sure that the planning staff's workload decreases at all, because we're still processing typically the same number of applications. I think at first there won't be much change, but as people get used to the objective standards and knowing that I can move forward much more quickly if I follow the rules in a very succinct way. I don't have to go to the planning commission, have a hearing, possibly have people come and object, and so forth, so. Great, thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member LaGrie. Thank you, Chair. I'm looking at the slide that says anticipated change to the development plan process. And just seeking a little bit of clarification via example. So sometimes when a zone change moves forward, we tell neighborhoods, you have a different point of engagement in the next step of the process, which I assume is step number nine, the final development plan. So if they want to give input about that final development plan, they do have that possibility to go and engage with the planning commission during that step in the process. That's my understanding at this current point. And I know that sometimes there are big changes between the preliminary development plan and the final development plan, and sometimes those are design elements like porches, like interface with the street, materials, things of that nature. So from what I'm seeing here with the slide with the big X over step nine, does that mean that that opportunity is no longer available or would no longer be available because of House Bill 443 for our neighborhoods? I think in some instances that will be the case. Especially if the final development plan matches precisely the preliminary development plan, then there wouldn't, and it matches the objective standards as well, then there wouldn't necessarily be that second hearing or meeting for public involvement. So if the final development plan matches the preliminary development plan, then there wouldn't be cause for the hearing. But what types of changes would need to be made, or would it be any change between the preliminary development plan and the final development plan? Because as you noted in your presentation, sometimes there can be some big changes. Or is that still uncertain? I think that's still uncertain at this point. I think a density increase might flag a request for that to change the welfare of the community. And the staff might ask that the planning commission review that. For instance, if we're doubling the density, that changes the whole development and its character, and whether it even would have met the comprehensive plan. So there will have to be some criteria as to what can trigger going to the planning commission other than the applicant just saying, hey, I don't want to follow the objective standards. Okay, so it sounds like as part of your next steps in your process, you all will be kind of working through what those triggers would be. And that, I assume, would be part of the communication with the neighborhoods in terms of expectation setting for any kind of changes in relation to this house bill. And in fact, at this point, we have not anticipated reaching out specifically to neighborhoods to talk about the potential impacts of the house bill. We're more in the process of just implementing changes so that we can meet the deadline. Okay, so with the text amendment timing with the notice mailed to registered neighborhood associations, would that just be for the ZOTA? Yes. I see. I do think that at some point in the process, as we have more clarity about what this looks like practically speaking, it would be really helpful for us when we're communicating with our neighborhoods to have some FAQs to share with them. Because I know that up until this point, prior to this house bill, the state legislation, we have had another space for them to engage, and that space might be changing form or frequency. So I look forward to getting more information about that, and also to learning more about, in the example that you all shared, like what that language looks like. I'll be very curious about how to change adequate or strongly encouraged things of that sort. Because I would love, for example, in this situation, for it to be stronger language even, but I know that we'll learn more about that moving forward. So thanks for this preview. Councilman would agree if I may add to that, I concur. And I think Tracy does too, that we, it may not be during the process of developing the new legislation that we do a lot of that outreach. But once we see, once we have the final version in place, we want to have that conversation with you. And we can do that in the coming months throughout the summer and the fall once this goes into place, so that neighbors can understand. Of course, this is different than the urban growth Zoda. This is something not of our creation, and we have to respond to it. So there's really, you can't say we don't want to do this, and we just not do it. We've got to do this. But communicating the outcome, I concur, is very important, and we will want to be a part of that. Thank you, I appreciate that additional commentary. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savicny. Thank you, Chair. And my comments are kind of along the same lines as Council Member Legree's. So it sounds like since it will be done, the final plan will be done ministerially, like if I were gaming the system, right? I would have a pretty looking building that might cost 30% more that I'm really willing to spend. And then I might substitute it with an ugly looking building that may have the same square footage. And I've got the neighbors kind of to go along at the beginning. And then basically, if I hit every box, if every box can be technically checked, materials and ugliness or whatever, conforming to the way that that community looks won't really matter. So I think it matters. So I don't want the perception that either the division of planning or the planning commission doesn't think that that matters, because it does. But I think it's possible that in some cases, the planning commission has overstepped and required things that the ordinance doesn't allow. And have made the development either slow down. Sure. Become more expensive. Those sorts of things. And how does this integrate with H1 overlays or neighborhood design overlays? Like- So in those cases, they are a second layer of review. And they do still need to be met. So if we have a case worth a zone change in a development plan, they still need to go to the appropriate body. And in H1, it's the BOAR. For ND1, it's a review with planning and building inspection to ensure those standards are met. So it would be harder to maybe do a switch in those neighborhoods. In those neighborhoods, absolutely. Got it. This seems like a fairly big ZOTA. Like is it, like are we going to see a lot, like a very long set of red lines like the urban growth management? Yes. ZOTA? Okay, great. Thank you. My next question is about you all. Do you feel like you have the staff, like this is a very tight window at this point. Do you have the resources that you need to make it happen? Well, now that the urban growth management plan is adopted, I'm going to start borrowing staff from long range planning. Okay, okay, great. And my last question is, if things get like, there's a loophole here. And so we pass everything, and it's like, here's two or three things that people are kind of slipping under the door. We have the ability to revisit and tighten the concept of what's administerial or whatever, right? Yes. In fact, the zoning ordinance can be, an amendment to the zoning ordinance can be initiated by the council or the planning commission at any time. Okay. I think it would be a great idea to review how it's going in 2026 and see where we can make changes to make it better. And then, I guess I have one more question. So, do you plan to engage with the development community at some point on this, or just neighborhoods, or is the schedule so tight that the level of engagement might be considered not as strong as it could have been? Yes, I would say not as strong as it could have been, because of the level of, yeah, time frame. Okay. Thank you so much, and thank you for all your work on this. Good luck in the next six months. Here comes someone. He's coming with a budget request. I just need that. In regards to engagement, we, as you all probably know, starting with the urban growth master plan, we started having first Friday open houses with developers to talk about their concerns. I've switched that over now to infrastructure funding, so the first Friday of every month is an open house to talk about infrastructure funding. But I can assure you that during those meetings, other topics go up, and we will certainly also be making sure they get drafts of whatever gets filed, so that there are opportunities to discuss how that's going to impact them. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Vice Chair Lynch. Thank you, Chair. And I'm not sure if I should ask this question or not, but I'm going to ask it. In the House bill, did they specifically define public health, safety, and welfare? Did they specifically define those three terms? No, in this amendment, no. And I don't even think KRS defines those terms. Those come from our other case law and enabling legislation about what that is. So zoning in general, planning in general, is in place to eliminate the public health threats and welfare threats. So that's really kind of at the heart of what a zoning ordinance does, is protect the public health and welfare of the community. Thank you. Pretty broad. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you. I agree with Council Member Savigny, it does look like a pig underdating. Okay, our last item on our agenda is the annual review of items in committee. Committee members, if you go to page 57 of your packet, we can review the items currently in committee. Staff worked with us ahead of this meeting, so the review should be pretty quick, but I will take motions to remove items. We will not need motions to change sponsors, and if anyone wants to add something to our committee, like our item that we had earlier today, we will do those through motions at the work session during council announcement time. You can make a motion to have it voted on, or you can ask me to just place it in committee without a vote. So, starting at the top of the list, we have review of short term rentals. This was Council Member Brown's item. We've had some discussions about moving this to an annual update, so we can get kind of regular updates about how the processes are going for registration, the numbers we're seeing, and all of that, so we'll go ahead and move that. And then the next item is also with Council Member Brown, it's short term rentals in the rural or ag zones. This one is a ZOTA that is returning to us today, so it will be within our docket approval for our work session. So we'll have further discussion today about that item that would determine what we might do with it in the committee. The next item is Council Member Ellinger, would you like to speak to that item? Yes, Chair. This is going to be taken up in the complete streets now with Brandy Peacher, so I will go ahead and make a motion to remove. So moved. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in, any discussion on the motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you, that passes. Then our next item is the item for assessment and historic preservation of Lexington's African-American Hamlets. This item is going to be taken by Council Member Brown as the new sponsor. Then flying through, the next item is my item. This is an item that I placed into committee following a past budget discussion. And I intend to keep it in committee today so that we can have an open dialogue with the administration about LFUCG structure. Particularly for the new folks, the mayor's office has historically been a place where administrations introduce programs based on their priorities and will incubate a concept. For instance, our homelessness prevention and intervention program started this way. With one person on grant funding in a previous mayor's office that has now evolved into a full office with multiple staff members in our housing advocacy and community development division. So, I'll leave this one here for now. Charter review is the next item. This one is going to be reassigned to Vice Mayor Liu. The next item is acquire investor owned or other properties. The former sponsor was former Council Member Worley. I believe, Council Member LaGrie, you're interested in taking this one? Okay, thank you. The next item is the disparity study, Council Member Ellinger. We do have this item may be presented at a future BFED, Budget Finance and Economic Development Committee. Do you have anything else you want to add for this particular item? No, Chair. Okay, we'll leave it here for now. The Boards and Commissions Comprehensive Review, we are working on getting that scheduled for the spring. Council Member Lynch, you are the sponsor of this one. Do you have anything you want to add? No. Planning and Development Study, there are two items here. The first is recommendation number eight, Titan Certification to lock in requirements. Council Member Reynolds, you have this item? Yes, and actually started working on it, pressed pause, and I'm working on it again. So I think it will be ready to present in this year. I'm just not sure exactly when. Okay, so you would like to keep this in committee? Yes, please. What about the next item that's yours? Both of those, yep, I'm working on them together, thank you. We'll keep those and have them scheduled for presentation when you are ready. Electronic billboards is the next one. Council Member Whirly had this item as well, so it does need a new sponsor. Council Member Baxter, you were interested in this one? Okay, we got that, so changing the sponsor there. The next item is the Homelessness Needs Assessment, RFP. This item was sponsored by former Council Member Whirly as well. This one is an item that needs a new sponsor. Is there anyone interested in taking this item? Council Member Ellinger? And then Council Member Gray indicated some interest, so if you want to work together. We do know that from the RFP that we're expecting to hear back in the summer of this year, and Commissioner Lanter is the one that's overseeing. Commissioner Lanter's office is the one that's overseeing that, so you would work with him to get that presentation ready. Flying along, the next one on our list is the Comprehensive Plan Theme A. Vice Mayor Wu, this item is under, you're the current sponsor for this. Do you have any changes or updates for this for us for now? No, we're hoping to do a report out this year. Thank you. Okay, then the next two items are also yours. Do you want to speak to those? Yeah, I would like to move to remove office and residential conversions. Okay, we need a second. Second. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. And I would also like to move to remove two-way street conversions. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes as well. The next item on our list is Bring Back the Bluegrass. The sponsor is Council Member Gray. Do you have any updates or actions for this item? No. Okay, so do you want to leave it here for now? Yes. Okay, and the next item is also yours. It's absentee landlords. Do you want to leave this in? I plan to present this this year. Okay, so then we'll work together to get your presentation on the calendar. Yes, ma'am. Okay, the next item is the Solar Energy Systems Zoning Ordinance. This was a zoning ordinance text amendment that was initiated outside of LFUCG that has gone through the planning commission and has now come back to us and The former sponsor was Council Member Whirly. I was planning to take this item as the sponsor, but if anyone else is interested in working on it with me, Council Member Savigny, we'll work together on this. Thank you. And then, Efficiencies in our Development Processes in Compliance with HB 443. This was, again, former Council Member Whirly's item. Council Member Brown, are you still interested in taking this one over? Okay. Okay, then we have our Annual and Periodic Updates. Our Lexington Global Engagement Center, Global Lex. Council Member Reynolds, you're the item sponsor for this one. Yes, we were actually going to present very soon, but with the director leaving, we're probably going to wait a little bit before we do the annual update. Yes, so we can work together to get that scheduled, that update scheduled when that person is in place and ready for that. Yes, thank you. Great. We also have the annual status report for the Purchase of Development Rights Program. The sponsor of this is the committee chair, so that's me. We will work on getting that scheduled. I saw Beth Overly in the back there, so we'll work with her on that. Okay, the next item is Division and Program Review. The committee chair is the sponsor of this item. I actually, this was an item in all of our committees, and it's already been removed from the other one. So we're going to, I'm going to make the motion to remove this item. Second. Got a few seconds here. Any discussion on the item? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. The next item is Lexington History Museum. This was former Kathy Plowman's item, former council member, Kathy Plowman's item. And Council Member Curtis, you were interested in taking this? Yes. Okay, so we'll mark you as the new sponsor for this annual update. Thank you. And then we have, the last annual update is the Landlord and Tenant Advisory Boards. The current sponsor is Council Member Lynch. Do you have any updates or actions you want to take on this item? Not this one. Okay, so we'll leave that one in, and we'll work on getting that presentation on the schedule as well. And then, finally, we have our subcommittee section at the very bottom, which is the only one that we have currently, is the Public Input Subcommittee. Council Member LaGrie, you're the sponsor for this item. Do you have any updates or actions that you want to let us know about? No, Chair, we'll keep it going. We've had two partial report outs, and our work continues, so thank you. Okay, told you that would be quick. I felt a little bit like our council clerk, Abby, reading through all of that so fast. But thank you all for your work today. I know we have a lot to take on in this committee for this year and in this term. So I am looking forward to working together with all of you. I'm going to call us adjourned now that we're at the end of our agenda. Thank you everyone.