Music Thank you. Thank you. How lucky can one guy be I kissed her and she kissed me Like the fella once said, ain't that a kick in the head? The room was completely black I hugged her and she hugged back Like the sailor said, ain't that a hole in the boat? If we could, the first item on the work session agenda is public comment on issues that are on the agenda. Does anyone wish to address the council? Seeing none, we'll move along. There's no docket approval. There is, however, a summary to be approved. Move approval. I have a motion by Council Member Gordon. Second. Second by Council Member Beard. Any discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The summary is approved. We have some budget amendments today. Is there a motion? Move approval. I'm glad Council Member Gordon is here today. Is there a second? I second. I have a second by Council Member Henson. I do have some questions about the budget amendment. All right. The last few items are offset purchase orders being rolled over into fiscal year 2009, and that starts with item to be determined. I guess there's no number on it yet. But I added up those budget amendments and they amount to $1,990,000 which is pretty significant. And I believe a documentation of the various things would be helpful at least to me before I voted on them. And I don't think they can quite come up with that probably today. But I wondered why we have a list of $2 million worth of budget amendments without any iteration. The best source of that information would be Commissioner Coe and I do not see her in the back just yet. Tell you what, Commissioner Bennett if you could track that down, track her down, ask her to head on down in this direction. If there's no objection, we can table this matter until she arrives. Seeing no objection, we'll table the budget amendments and move on to the new business items if we could. Second. Second. Council Member Beard has moved the approval of the new business items. Council Member Gorton has seconded. Is there any discussion on those items? Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. Just have a quick question. I see Bob Baird here on items B and C under new business. Is that the Cadentown Liberty Road Sanitary Seer Project, not the for sales road? So do we need to fix those typos? These are some of the Cadentown Project does pick up some properties along Liberty Road, And these are a couple of those Liberty Road properties that will be sewered by this project. I understand that, but the way we have it worded here, it says the Cadentown-Versales Road sanitary sewer project. Yes, we've also been able to lump in three properties from Versales Road that are unsewered into this Cadentown package. So it'll be two separate project areas. So it is correct, as shown. It is correct? Okay, very good. Thank you. And then, Mayor, I have a question on item E. Is Max here? On the services agreement for the $120,000 with Wilburn and Associates for the transportation study from Limestone to Cooper Drive, I believe it is, or Cooper to Maxwell, the Lexington area MPO recommended this. I'm just curious as to, was this the number one project that they recommend to spend $120,000? Or in other words, is this the most pressing issue that you all had during this committee to spend the money on? Well, this actually came out from several actions with UK Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan and several other committee priorities with BPAC, Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, and several areas pointed to a need for making pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicular transit all work together in that traffic, given the UK master plan and all that new development that would require thousands more students to walk across that corridor daily. So that's basically where it originated from. So we're footing the entire bill? Is UK putting any money into this? No, actually that's PL reserve money from our, we compete with all the other MPOs to get that from the state funds. And UK is matching it. UK is doing the match. Okay, so it is a match in there. Right, right. And so the match is dollar for dollar? It's 80-20, 80-20. And this is part of our SLX funds, you said? Yes, it's called an SLX reserve. It's held back by the Transportation Cabinet for good projects for all the MPOs to compete for. So they thought it was very valid and justified, so they awarded us that. So the funds don't just have to be used on road work. It could be, this type of work would be like sidewalks and moving the pedestrian volumes. Is that what we're looking at? Or the actual road itself? This is mainly for study money. It's called PL, so it's for planning work. So it'll be more recommendations, like a first step to getting to those implementation of those things you need to do in the corridor. Okay, because I guess we just had the streetscape discussions. I didn't know if that ever came up in deciding this project versus our streetscape project that we're looking to do over the next two years. Right. The streetscape would be more towards the downtown area. They do merge because we elected to bring it all the way to Main Street. You're right. So they do merge, and there's going to be good coordination there. All right. Very good. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Any further questions? Council Member Henson. There needs to be a correction to item E. It should read from South Limestone from Cooper Drive to Vine Street rather than Maxwell Street. You wish to move to amend that item E to substitute Vine for Maxwell? Yes. The motion is to amend item E to substitute Vine for Maxwell Street. Is there a second? Second. Second with Council Member Ellinger. Any discussion? All in favor of that amendment, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Any further discussion on the items of new business? Yes, I had a question regarding item D, Citation Boulevard. And I presume that this will complete the design of citation from Georgetown Road to Lees Town Pike. It does. This design contract picks it up where it stops just east of the railroad tracks, goes over the tracks, crosses Lees Town, ties in with Alexandria Drive near the Mary Haven subdivision. So that is what this design contract is doing. So that will complete the design of the road so it can proceed along the orderly procession of right-of-way and all that sort of stuff. Yes. Who is financing Citation Boulevard? Is that our responsibility, the city of the Lexington Urban County government, or is it partly state, or what's the deal on it? The design right-of-way and utility phases have all been STP with local match. The construction phase will be SP money, which is a state project, so the state will be picking up the construction cost. And do you have any guess about the timeline on it? The... I know there's a lot of utility work to be done in the Leestown corridor in conjunction with the Leestown project, The Leastown project is picking up a certain piece of the Citation Boulevard project because it logically falls out that way. That section, I suspect they're probably on the order of two years away from building. Citation, we may be able to bid and build a little before that. Well, that's encouraging. Thank you very much, Mr. Byron. Any more questions? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Bob, could you come back here a second? I have that same question. What's our timeline on this? On Citation Boulevard? Yes, sir. This change will enable us to complete the design changes that have been forced due to the development in the area, which will in turn enable us to go to the property owners that we need to buy the right-of-way from and start purchasing and negotiating for the right-of-way acquisition. There is some utility relocation to be done, and then finally we'll be at the construction phase. So we are probably right now on the order of a year out from being able to bid the project. And then the final phase to be completed by, when you're out, how long does it take then? This, they will both probably, our contract will be a one-year construction contract. The state's contract for Lee's Town and their piece of citation will probably be more like an 18-month construction contract because it's a bigger project. So we're looking at somewhere on the order of three to three and a half years for the final piece to be completed. Thank you. And Mayor, number P, please. Thanks, Commissioner Bennett. While you're walking up here, if you would just kind of give me an overview of what's this agreement that we have with the state police for the anti-gang law enforcement. I'm sorry, which one? Council Member Ellinger? P. P. The anti-gang. Hold up. Anti-gang grant? Yes, sir. Other than what's here, frankly, I don't have a lot of additional detail. But it looks like from the description it's for overtime funds as well as some surveillance equipment, grant money coming from the state police. You want some additional detail? I'm sorry? Additional detail, I'll be glad to get that. Yeah, I would just like to know what they're going to be doing. What areas? I've heard we didn't have gangs, but I think that's probably been proved otherwise, and I was just curious what they're going to be doing here. Okay, I'll get some additional detail for you on that between now and the next meeting. Thank you. That's all, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Any further items? Those then in favor of approving the items of new business as amended, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. I see that Commissioner Coe is now here, so if we can back up to the budget amendments. Council Member Stevens had a couple questions with regard to the change orders that were detailed there. And, Council Member Stevens, I'll let you specify the questions again. Thank you. Commissioner, there are 13 budget amendments there which relate to carryovers from fiscal year 2008. And a total of about $2 million. And I was curious about the schedule of what those various things might be. I don't have specific purchase orders that I can tell you, but they are all purchase orders that were established in 2008 but have spending in 2009. And this is something I'm not sure the government has done much of in the past, and it's because of the way things work in PeopleSoft, that one of the very last things we do when we're closing out the year, when the auditors are getting ready to complete their work, is that we roll forward the purchase orders that were open in 2008 but will continue to have spending in 2009. If we don't do this, then the way the reports are written and everything, there's going to be some spending that's kind of off the books. So this is really a technical issue, and the only way to make it happen and all the financial reporting be appropriate is to roll forward these purchase orders. I'm not objecting to that. I'm just curious what they are. I'd be happy. There are hundreds of them, but I'd be happy to get you a list of the purchase orders. Well, some of them, like the second one on the list is for various divisions, but the family care center for $2,900. I'm not concerned about that or curious about that, but I would be curious about the general fund, which is over a million dollars. And I don't know, probably a lot of them, but I don't know why. There are 13 different things here. We did them by fund. And this is using money that is in reserve, in the reserve for encumbrances. I mean, it doesn't change our bottom line at all. It just moves the budget forward with these. And a lot of them are contracts that start out spending in one year but don't completely spend out, and they spend out in the next year. But we want that to show that it actually spent in 2009 and not 2008. And is there a reason why there's no number on them? No number. A journal number, because it's a different process than we do for a journal. It's, I'm sorry, it's just one of those technical things, the way that the system works. I'd be happy to get you a list of the purchase orders, though, and what they're for. Maybe if you've got them someplace, I can go look at them. You don't have to make a list. The Division of Purchasing, Candy Wofford, can help you with that. She can show you every one of them. Okay. Okay. Because it won't be voted on until a week from Thursday. Right. Thank you. Any further questions with regard to the budget amendments? We had a motion to approve those items on the table a few moments ago, so we're ready to vote to approve the budget amendments. All those in favor of approving them, please indicate by saying aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. All right. That takes us down to the presentations. Dr. Stevens, Corridors Committee. Thank you. The Corridors Committee met in its regular session last Tuesday. We have several items that are importance to our community that you'd be interested in. One is related to the grant which was received to construct sidewalks on Tate's Creek Road from Lakewood to New Circle Road. So there is strong opposition from some people who do not want the sidewalk placed in front of their property, even though it would be in the right-of-way and even though it won't cost them any money. That opposition, we plan to schedule a community meeting. The date has not been set, but to schedule a community meeting where those people will have an opportunity to come and tell us about their objections and what might be done to ameliorate some of their difficulties. There's enough money in the grant, we believe, to put a sidewalk on both sides of the street. We need to review the right-of-way and be certain about some of the details of placing the sidewalk, and the Department of Public Works is undergoing that now. When they can give us an idea of when that might be done, we can go ahead and set the date for the meeting, plan to advertise it as we would most meetings, but we also plan to write a letter to everyone who lives on Tate's Creek Pike and some of the adjoining side streets for a few houses at least so people in the neighborhood will have an opportunity to review the ideas and the plan and make their pertinent comments we do have work on for sales road which is being undertaken per the transportation Hanson grant which is received for that however the contractors having some negotiations with the state and he would like to meet with some representatives of the corridors Committee, which we plan to have a meeting with him, and regarding the incursion permits for the state, which have some specifications in them which were different than what he had originally planned, so we plan on doing that. We also underway on Newtown Pike, and that's coming along okay. I've been meeting with the Department of Public Works, the Department of Environmental quality as well as neighbors along Richmond Road and we still would like to sometime next month to clean out the ditch that goes along Richmond Road from in front of the Adler Country Club down to Shriners Lane then across to the other side of the road and down to the firehouse this the neighbors are all very cooperative and all parties who own part of the land along there have have been willing to agree that they will maintain it if we can get it cleaned up. I do have volunteers who are willing to help, and we're looking for ways to, we have some financing, and we're looking for ways to increase that financing. There is an issue about what the city or the government can do on property that doesn't belong to the government, but belongs to the property owners, so we're trying to resolve that. And our day for the big cleanup when our volunteers will be there, if we can work it out, would be November 22nd. I wish I had a grant to put sidewalks down that area, too, because there are no sidewalks from the Shriners Hospital until you get to the sidewalk that has just been put underneath the New Circle Road to get people underneath that overpass to get them on the other side. So we're working on that. This would be a project of the Corridors Committee. I'd be happy to answer any questions concerning those various projects if anyone has one. Council Member Beard. Thank you for the report, Dr. Stevens. Do you have any idea about when, roughly when, the public meetings will be held, the public hearing will be held? Yes, I think it would be near the end of November. So it is more immediate than, it's not going to be after the first of the year. It will be sooner than that. Yes, no, I think that, of course, I won't be here after the first year since I'm going off to the sunset. You're not going away. Which I'm looking forward to in some ways. Well, as a gift, I will be glad to donate the 4th District sidewalks on Tate's Creek for your Richmond Road project. Well, I understand that some of your constituents are not too happy with the thought of sidewalks. All of my constituents that have e-mails and telephones. Well, I hear some who feel otherwise. but this project has been ongoing for 10 years almost. I know. And we had a project before Carter's plan for Richmond Road, which I mean for Tates Creek, which included sidewalks. And when we brought it up before, it would have required the homeowners to pay for it, and that appeared to be an impossibility. So we abandoned that idea. But we did get the trees done. And some of your constituents have told me to want it in particular. The trees were a bad idea because it took away some of the green. We hope they will grow. And then they complained because some of them died. Some of them were dead when they were planted. But I think most people, now that they've had a chance to live with it for a while, like the trees and like the idea. Yeah, well, I think that if the sidewalks were in, they would probably be happy because I don't think they will be quite as objectionable as they think they might be. But that's their decision to make. Right. We'll hear about that then, I guess, sometime at the end of November. We'll hear about their ideas sometime at the end of November then. Well, they've been bombarding us ever since this notion came up 10 years ago, and they haven't stopped. They're very persistent, I do know. Thank you. Any further questions for Council Member Stevens? All right. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Mayor. The Planning Committee met October 21st for its regular monthly meeting, and the first item on our agenda was the mobile home park quality of life. And I did distribute to each of you a copy of the draft ordinance. this issue has been in our committee and has been discussed at two different monthly meetings and I wanted to just read the preamble to the ordinance this is a new program that is being established it is an ordinance creating article 7 in chapter 5 of the code of ordinances of the LFUCG to create the Relocation Assistance Program for tenants to provide relocation assistance to eligible low-income tenants displaced by rezoning, redevelopment, or change in the use of the property. This issue came about as a direct result of what happened at Ingleside Mobile Home Park, which displaced many low-income citizens, and there was no program in place to help those folks, many of whom lost their asset when they had to move out. And so the gist of this ordinance is that it would put into place this program, which would have money to allocate specifically when the relocation involves redevelopment, rezoning, or a change in the use of the property. This is separate from the program that is already in place in social services for emergency funding for housing. That's totally separate. And the heart of the discussion is on the back page of the ordinance, Section 5-107. And I want to thank our committee members for working through this in a very thoughtful way. This Section 5-107 involves the funding. And the ordinance started out with a mandate that $50,000 be put in the annual budget for this program. And the planning committee worked through this to respect the budget process and not mandate money go in via an ordinance. So it would be each year up to the commissioner and the division director to request money for funding for this. But as you will see from the motions that come forward, we do want to provide seed money for this program. So the motions coming out of committee are a motion by Dr. Stevens that the planning committee recommend to the full council the adoption of this ordinance as amended. And this was seconded by Council Member James, who brought the issue to our committee. And this passed without dissent. And so I bring that as a motion. Second. Let me just raise a question here about the process. It seems like that is an action by the committee that's already taken place, that you're bringing a recommendation this ordinance be approved. Yes, to put this ordinance on the docket. That I understand. Okay, I'm with you now. So the motion is to put the proposed ordinance on the docket for the next council meeting. Yes, November 6th, I believe. Is there a second? Dr. Stevens seconded the motion. Any discussion? All in favor, Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Here's my thought. There are federal laws that cover the relocation of people from property that's being rezoned or redeveloped. And there's no, nothing in here addresses that under those programs. Just for example, where the Newtown Pike Extend is going, there's a program where we've relocated the people from their homes who are providing temporary housing under the federal regulations. And these types of ordinances would apply to many of the cases, if not most of them. There's no reference in this ordinance saying that if somebody gets reimbursed by the federal or state government for relocation, that would they still receive money under this program? It appears that it would. It seems to me that this ought to be more limited in the scope because the way this is written, it would appear that anybody that gets relocated would be eligible to get the money. First of all, these funds do not go to the residents. They go directly to vendors. If you, and I apologize for not getting the draft ordinance to you before, but if you look on the second page, Section 5-105B, these funds are specifically to help eligible persons with their first month rent and their moving expenses, and those monies do not go to the tenants, they go directly to vendors, if that answers part of your question. And then Council Member James may have another part. Yes, on Section 5105C, it talks about that with regard to the monetary assistance combined with any other relocation, and it talks about the limits that it cannot exceed $1,000 combined with other relocation. See that in Section 5105C. You're saying that the payment does not go to the family being relocated. it goes to their first rent if they have a landlord where they're moving or a vendor who a moving company or someone who will be helping them move for those expenses well so are we going to hire the the moving company to verify that or how do we I mean I don't see how you implement a program like that it's very vague we have programs already in place for other emergency needs and this is It's similar to what the Division of Adult Services already runs a similar type of program with their emergency housing program. So this is, it's a similar program but except it's a little different in that this program is for relocation assistance for this specific group. So they actually already have things in place as far as how they run it, as far as how they pay the vendors directly themselves, and how they check things as far as income and how they check to make sure that they're paying people and all of those procedures, they have all of those already in place. So they don't have to recreate the will. They're already doing this. It's just for a special group now instead of the people they're already assisting. I'm not saying that I'm opposed to helping people that need help. I feel that this is very vague and needs some tightening up on the writing on this so that we know what we're voting for. It appears the way this is written that anybody that gets relocated will be eligible for $1,000 for moving and relocation, even though they may have already been compensated fully by the state or federal government on a project they're working on. Or maybe the local developer has paid them to relocate as part of the deal of making the real estate deal go. You know, this is just, you know, to me, sort of a pork barrel type thing the way it's written. I'm not saying we couldn't tighten it up and make it a little bit more control over how the money is expended. That's my concern. I think this is loosely constructed. What the Division of Adult and Tenant Services, they currently have protocol and a guide that helps to determine how the funds are paid and what the qualifications are, what is needed, what the proof is. And, you know, so we have that in place. If you would like to see that as a part of this, we certainly can bring that forward. But this is something that the division has been doing for a while and feels pretty comfortable that the process is pretty tight and is one that has a lot of checks and balances to it. Okay, well, I take your word for that. I'm just saying the way the ordinance is presented, there's no specificity about that. I just feel like it's a bad thing. I mean, this is a brand new program. We're in a recessionary period. If we're going to put the program in, I think it ought to be, we need to cross our T's and dot our I's on it. That's my only concern. I'll be more than happy to share with you the guidelines that are currently in place. Those guidelines would pretty much be the same process that we would use with this program. Do you feel like we could incorporate those guidelines into the ordinance so that we know what we're voting on? That would be fine. Okay. That would make me happy. Thank you. Well, and just one other comment is that some of you will remember the BUILD organization which brought us this issue last year. it's part of that issue of the Ingleside folks getting relocated without any assistance. And Bill asked the mayor and the council to look at this. And so this is one of the direct results from their work to assist those low-income folks. And I felt comfortable through the committee, and I think the committee did, that you have mechanisms in place already to work this under some strict guidelines. So anyway. Mayor Redekop, Council Member Lane, maybe to the degree it would heighten your comfort level and perhaps that of others, maybe you can get with Commissioner Helm, take a look at what the protocols are and then if appropriate get the Department of Law to prepare an amendment that we can consider? Yes, Mayor, I'd be happy to do that. Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. Let's see, the motion currently on the floor is the motion by Council Member Gordon to put this ordinance on the docket at the November 6 meeting. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. On the last page under section 5-107 there's a statement that says any amount of funding available to the program in excess of $200,000 that has been appropriated to the program by LFUCG may be reappropriated to other programs and services provided by the LFUCG. I guess I'd start by maybe if you want to explain that statement, but I would think that that statement could be removed. The idea with the fund is that money could be appropriated each year and then it would remain in the fund until it's used. And the committee and the folks who drafted this thought that that was a pretty, the $200,000 was a pretty high level to have in the fund. Of course, we don't know how much we might really truly need if something huge comes down the pike. But so the thinking was to avoid having more than $200,000 sitting in the fund, that anything over that could roll into the other programs. I guess I have a couple of concerns. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable allowing $200,000 to sit there year after year after year if it's not being used. It seems like the intent of this was to cap the program at $200,000. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with leaving $200,000 in there if it's not being utilized, the first thing. The second thing is that the way this reads, it seems to me to say that then the Division of Social Services could take any excess and move it to wherever they wanted to move it. And I would think that if the intent is to cap it at $200,000 that any excess would go, would just not go in there and would stay in the general fund. I think to the point of social services, the council would be the reappropriating agency. Okay, that's the intent, but that doesn't seem that clear to me in this language. Reappropriations come before the council for approval. So I'm not sure how you would reappropriate it without the council's approval. Then would you have a problem with that being stricken from the ordinance? Because it seems like the intent there is to cap it at $200,000. So it seems like that statement can be removed and doesn't affect your ordinance in a negative way. Okay. Okay. So if it's an open fund, you're proposing that a cap not be placed on it. Is that, am I understanding? Is that? I'm not saying that a cap wouldn't be put on there. I'm saying that this whole language about it being reappropriated, I mean, the easiest way to do that then is just to say that the fund would be capped at $200,000 of LFECG contributions. If that's what the intent is. Which build up over time. So that... Do you want to propose some language? I think we're open to... Well, my proposal would be to just remove the statement. Which would leave no cap. And just for clarification, when you say your proposal is to delete the statement, exactly which statement are you talking about? That entire sentence with $200,000 in it? Correct. Okay. And I also would maybe look to put some language in here that would have us look back at this, you know, a year or two down the road. And if we've got $200,000 sitting there and it hasn't been utilized, that we look at doing something different with that money. I understand the need for the emergency, but if we just have $200,000 sitting there year after year after year, and it's not being utilized, in a tight budget that we're in right now, that's problematic to me. Proposing an amendment. So I guess I would make a move to strike this sentence from the ordinance, and I'll read it again. any amount of funding available to the program in excess of $200,000 that's been appropriated to the program by LFCCG may be re-appropriated to other programs or services provided by the LFCCG. So I move to strike that statement. And then if I could get some help from, you have anybody in the law department here? Mr. Askew, if we could get some language that would help us not put a sunset on this, I don't want to end the program, but put some language in there that we look back at the program in a couple of years to see if it's been utilized. And if not, then look at doing something different with part of that funding. To me that's the problem with this ordinance. That's the whole problem with putting up to $200,000 in a fund that we don't really have any history on what we need, what needs out there, what needs coming down the pike. And I know that was discussed at length in the committee meeting, and I understand that we want to do something to protect our citizens in time of emergency. It almost doesn't seem to make sense to me to put language in here. I don't even know if we can do that, put language in here that would cause us to look back at this, say, three years from now and decrease the fund to $100,000 if it hasn't been utilized. Is that even... All right, let's deal with the motion, make sure we got a clear understanding about the proposed motion to amend the ordinance. Council Member Myers has moved to delete that sentence in Section 5-107 that begins any amount of funding. Is there a second? Second. Okay, I have a second by Council Member Ellinger. Now, the discussion is on that motion, and to the degree we want to come up with some alternative language with the Department of Law later on. I guess we've got the work session next week, plus we've got the council meeting on the 6th, which you could bring that forward. Okay. Commissioner Helm, did you have something? I was just wanting to get clarification because if you put $50,000 in to start the program, and then the requirement is that the Department of Social Services request in following years funds through the budget process, it seems to me that that's a way that you could monitor the building up because you've already stricken the $200,000. So I think it's going to take care of itself on an annual basis through the budget process. I think you're correct. All right. I have Commissioner Lane, Council Member Lane. Thank you for the promotion, Mayor. I was just going to suggest that I would be delighted to work with Council Member Myers. Maybe the two of us could meet with the Commissioner and work out some of the nuances on this with the legal. and bring it back the ordinance for approval by council. This could be on an ad hoc basis, but if you'd be willing, I'd be happy to work with you on that. I think just generally the notion was that Council Member Lane and Council Member Myers might work together to come up with some amendment prior to November 6th. Are you suggesting if this motion fails or even if it... Okay. All right. So the question now is on the amendment proposed by Council Member Myers. Any further discussion? Yeah. Council Member Myers has moved to amend section 5-107 to delete the second third sentence which begins any amount of funding. Anybody with me? All in favor of that amendment, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Now we're on, did I hear no? Councilmember Stephens, Blues and Beard dissented. Now we're ready to vote on the motion as amended which is to place the ordinance, the draft ordinance on the DACA for November 6th as now amended. Any further discussion? in favor of that motion then please let it be known by saying aye. Aye. All opposed no? No. All right let's vote here. Madam Clerk if you could set the screen. Those in favor please vote aye electronically. Those opposed vote nay electronically. It appears Councilmember Gray wants, Vice Mayor Gray wants to vote yes, so the motion carries. Councilmember Gordon. Thank you very much. And I just want to, before we move to the next motion, thank Keith Horn from the Law Department, who did a lot of work on this with council members and the commissioner and different folks to bring it forward. The second motion is a motion by Dr. Stevens that the Planning Committee recommend to the full council to appropriate funding starting at $50,000 for the remaining fiscal year, that this funding be appropriated. This isn't exactly reading right, but for the remaining fiscal year, $50,000 be appropriated to go into this program to fund it, and it was seconded by Council Member James and passed without dissent. So moved. Perfect. The motion is from Councilmember Gordon and second by Councilmember Beard that we appropriate $50,000 for the fund. Yes, that's it. All right. Any discussion? Councilmember Blavitts. I'd just like to know where it's going to come from. The discussion in committee was from fund balance. Okay, so let's make sure the motion is to come from fund balance, correct? I will amend it to include from the fund balance. We have a friendly amendment to that effect. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll proceed to vote. Those in favor of appropriating $50,000, I guess the appropriate thing to do is to place on the docket a resolution appropriating $50,000 from fund balance on the November 6 meeting. Any further discussion? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. The next item on the planning committee was the Newtown Pike status. and Andrew Grunewald was unable to be at our meeting and Council Member Blues has actually toured the temporary housing and reported that everyone seems to be pleased with it and the council is going to ask our council administrator and Andrew Grunewald to set up a workshop so that council members can see the actual progress and have a report and an update on the Newtown Pike status. We had Liberty Road status and Loudoun Avenue Road status in written reports for the committee, although there was no discussion. And then the final item in committee was the management audit. This came to the committee from Dr. Stevens, who recommended we discuss this, and to discuss some of the discrepancies that have been brought out about the management audit and different divisions. And we began having sort of a report out by Mr. Joe Kelly about the management audit, and council members asked that we go ahead, and this was done by motion within the committee, so it's not actually coming to the council right now, but the committee is going to, has created a small working group. This is made up of Council Member Crosby, who will chair the group, Council Member Beard, and Vice Mayor Gray, who will work with division directors and Joe Kelly to actually work through these management audit questions and issues and report back to planning committee. So that completes my report. Thank you very much. Any questions for Council Member Gordon? Very well. We'll proceed with the Manowar Boulevard presentation and turn the floor over to our folks from Traffic Engineering. Good afternoon. 20 of me this afternoon are Steve Cummins from the Division of Traffic Engineering, Bob Baird with the Division of Engineering, and Max Conyers with the Division of Planning. We'll be talking about that section of man-of-war from I-75 to Nicholsville Road. Steve will lead off with a discussion of the current operating conditions. Bob will talk about construction projects that have begun since the traffic study of last year, and Max will talk to us about capital projects, recommended improvements, and funding. Each man will take about three to five minutes of your time. At the end, we will be welcoming any questions, and if you could hold them until that time, it would be appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. As Rob mentioned, my name is Steve Cummins. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Traffic Signal Systems Manager for the City of Lexington. I'd like to draw your attention to some current conditions and some things that you might want to remember about Manwar Boulevard. First and foremost, please remember that all operation conditions are safety first. Those are the things that we'd like to draw your attention to, and efficiency second. In the current day of gas prices, and even though we're seeing some of those things come down now, safety is always first and paramount in our minds when we do things in operations, and then efficiency does come second. The next thing that I want you to remember, and as your constituents call in and as they call me, most of the time they want to complain about signal timing and things of those nature relative to congestion. But if you'll note from this national study that's been done and recognized across the nation, poor signal timing is only accounted for about 5% of all congestion resources attributed to congestion. If you can look at 40% attributed to bottlenecks, 25% traffic incidents, those are collisions, installed vehicles, things of that nature that are impeding the flow of traffic, and 10% work zones. That's almost three-fourths of all the things that contribute to everyday congestion along the roadways. Some safety concerns that we have. This is taken out of the 2007 congestion management report that was updated for us. This is across about five years. This is the section of Manowar Boulevard from Nicholsville Road to I-75, as Ron mentioned. This accounts for about 2,700 reported collisions. We work very closely with the police department and traffic analysts with them. As you can see, 67% of the rear end collisions occur on this route. That means primarily these are not angle collisions, these are not at intersections, these are more between street collisions. That's more indicative of congestion and not necessarily traffic signals and things along this route. route, these are more congestion related. Traffic volumes. This is something that is pretty remarkable. Since 2004, this is a graph of the PM peak volumes. To draw your attention to the middle of this graph, if you can look at Richmond Road, and these should be in your handouts. In 2004, the volumes in the intersection of all the approaches added together attributed attributed about 5,000 vehicles per hour were entering Manowar Boulevard and Richmond Road. 5,000 vehicles per hour. In just four years, we added another 1,000 vehicles into that intersection. Each of the last five years, Richmond Road hits about the top five of the collisions reported in this county. We've had a lot of different safety measures and countermeasures relative to the police department in trying to offset some of those things, and we're holding our own on trying to reduce the number of collisions, but you can see with 6,000 vehicles coming in the PM Peaks, it's very difficult to hold your own on collisions with that many vehicles entering that intersection. Traffic volume increases. These are percent increases over that same period of time. 20 to 25 percent in many of these intersections. Increases over that period of time. Blazer Parkway, you might want to think, where is that or maybe why is that so significant in that particular area? just up the road from Richmond Road. Well, you have St. Joseph East and a lot of the development back in that area relative to hospitals and different commercial developments, Beaver Creek and East Hills, and mainly the corridor trying to get from Richmond Road over to Alumni and New Circle. That whole corridor has jumped dramatically over the last four years. These are some of the operational trends that we're having to deal with and trying to offset relative to some of the signal timing, and we're trying to take care of those problems without any real improvements to that corridor. These are some photos that you may recognize if you drive along this route. The top right is Maple Leaf Drive, and I've noted some of those with some highlights, most of which were mentioned. The bottom right corner is a backup on Blazer Parkway towards St. Joseph East. That occurs every afternoon, and it actually goes much further than that in the afternoon. Richmond Road in the top left. And the one in the very center there is very indicative of what happens coming from the interstate area or from St. Joseph's trying to turn left onto Manowar Boulevard toward Alumni Drive and New Circle. That left turn, the two left turn lanes, is very difficult to clear in the afternoon rush hour. It's about 600 feet each of those turn lanes, and we cannot simply clear those turn lanes. So can supply meet that demand? Can we do something through operations and traffic signal timing to offset some of these things? Those of you who have come and visited our traffic management center understand some of these things. If you haven't had an opportunity, I encourage you to do that. We've got all the traffic signals controlled through a centralized traffic system. All those are not only hooked and communicating through various components, but we've got traffic surveillance cameras as well as traffic signals all connected through that central system that operate from our traffic management center. So when incidents do occur, we can pull up a traffic monitoring camera, and we can add green time to Manowar Boulevard or take time away from side streets to help offset some of those incidents. Again, when you take from one, you have to borrow from another. So what we do is by giving more green time to Manowar Boulevard, we're going to take it from the side streets. So you have to beg and borrow sometimes to be able to move traffic. And that's where congestion occurs on some of the side streets. So what's our operation strategy relative to how we can offset some of these things? You've seen some of the dual reds in the top right picture there. We've been able to offset some of the collisions at Richmond Road and Sir Barton and Manowar Boulevard and some of these other areas where we've had some high incidents where red light running. We've been able to add those dual red indicators. Flashing yellow arrow traffic signals. These are things across the nation that we've gotten approval for here in Lexington. We're the first in Kentucky to do that. Those are coming in the spring of 2009. We've gotten approval from the state and from the federal governments to do those. Those are going to be very helpful in helping with the safety of this corridor. 2070 traffic controllers. These are, to put it quite simply, much better, more efficient traffic controllers that we're going to be putting in this corridor. Those are coming in January of 2009. Different ways we're going to be signal phasing. Fiber optic communications. That's something we've expanded from Sir Barton all the way around to Tate's Creek. That's going to allow us to expand the traffic monitoring cameras so that we can see. We have more eyes in the sky. When we can see incidents occur, we can change traffic signal timing to help move traffic more efficiently. Use of video detection. Instead of in-ground loops, we have video detection cameras where we can obtain traffic volume counts and things of that nature, as well as when work zones are there, we don't get the pavement dug up because we're watching that with a video detection camera. So, again, operationally we've done a lot of good things in this area, But one thing you have to keep in mind when you take away from one thing to move traffic, you have to take it from another area. So the side streets do suffer in this corridor, and I'm sure that your constituents have called you relative to maybe some delays on those side streets when we give more time to Manor Boulevard just trying to offset some of those congestion levels, especially in the PMPs. But what I want to do is turn this over to Bob Bayer from Engineering and let him kind of give you an explanation as to some of the construction projects that we've had ongoing since this congestion management study has been completed last year. Okay, from operations to construction, you can see the map here that shows the Liberty-Todds corridor and the Starshoot Parkway. So I hope everyone's had a chance to get out Liberty Road and see the improved operation through there, having eliminated that dogleg intersection. It definitely improves that situation. The further connection of the Starshoot Parkway with Liberty Road has, between the two, has allowed some alternative movements within the area so that people don't necessarily have to get out on Man of War. to get around the area, around Hamburg. So I think that's definitely helping. This slide is showing some of the improvements in the top left Osborne Way at Manowar Boulevard. This is a new intersection to Manowar. It's been constructed by Ball Homes. It's roughly midway between Victoria Way and Haversham to the west, and Clearwater Way and Bella Woods to the east. Left and right turn lanes will be provided as well as the signal, and those are being provided by the developer. In the top right at Helmsdale and Manowar, Traffic Engineering installed this signal and took it live last week. so it should help eliminate some of the delays that people on Helmsdale have been experiencing and make that movement safer for those folks. Lower left, Todd's Road, Phase 1A, near Man of War, talked about that a little bit. phase 1B, which will add lanes to each leg on the intersection. That's due to be bid in March of next year. And lower right, Starshoot Bridge, Starshoot Parkway, we have the bridge over the creek. We have a trail under the bridge. The trail, of course, is going to help with getting pedestrian traffic to and from the school, recreational uses, and generally just getting around Hamburg, which may take some of the load off of the streets of itself. I'd like to turn this over now to Max Connors to talk about some of the things that are on the books for Man of War. Thank you. Good afternoon. So I'm going to finish up with just talking about programmed and planned projects. And I had a slide that was a little bit hard to see, a lot of text, so Charles is handing it out so you can refer to it. But let me get to the next slide. So in the transportation planning process, we have our three processes, basically. The Transportation Improvement Program is our implementation document. Basically, that has dedicated funding and currently updating that. The 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan, it picks up from there and is a listing of our planned desired projects. Both documents are kind of an ongoing updating process. And then last, we have the unscheduled project list. This is a much better refinement of the wish lists of the past that were just mega lists of projects. This is much more prioritized, much more defined. Projects are costed better, and it's a much better process to draw projects from. The transportation improvement program and the long-range plan have to be fiscally constrained. The federal government is very adamant about that, meaning that you can only put projects in with valid cost estimates and match those with the revenue estimates you have coming in based on valid methodologies, trends, and so forth. And also, last, we have a lot of good opportunities in our area that we've taken advantage of to make improvements during regular maintenance, operational safety, ongoing programs. We've done very well in that area. So I mentioned the – I'm just going to spend a little time with the TIP. It's the dedicated funding. We have programmed funds, and I think most of you are aware of the – it's called SLX funding. planning funds that is allocated to our area by population formula, the urbanized area. And these are what we say we are going to do, and Bob has mentioned several of these projects, and we are doing them. And the good news is we're implementing these quite quickly, especially with all the complexities of buying right away and moving utilities and getting good participation, public participation and input, and I think we're doing quite well with those projects. I won't go over each project, but we even include, we know we're not building our way out of congestion these days, so we've got to include alternative modes of travel facilities also to help with that. Then I mentioned where the long-range plan picks up where the implementation document leaves off. Of course, the TIP agrees with the Kentucky State six-year plan also, which leaves off in about currently 2014. And then we list in the plan our desires and our visions and our needs and priorities based on all of our input, all of our committee processes, all of our modeling, all of our data collection and performance measuring. And all this goes into making these decisions on where we need to make projects happen for our near future and long term for the future 20 to 30 years. And there's the projects along Man of War in the corridor listed. I won't go over each one. And then Liberty Road, which will definitely affect, and Todd's Road, that will affect this corridor in a positive way as far as congestion. And then I mentioned the unscheduled project list. This is something we do jointly with the state. All MPOs, all ads do this across the state. And this is how you draw projects and get your input to the state, along with your ongoing process and coordination. And I've listed the Man of War projects. And then Armstrong Mill has some projects listed there. You see, I think we have it right in our prioritization. And Man of War is ranked pretty high in that list of 133 unscheduled project lists. It's falling only short of roads such as New Circle Road, our expressway, and Nicholasville Road, our main arterials on the National Highway System, and Harrisburg Road, and so forth. So I think we're getting it right. We're recognizing our policy committee is very astute and very knowledgeable about their constituents in the area, and so they do a good job with ranking these. And then I wanted to end up with what we do as kind of a first and very important step in our planning process, a planning and programming process, and that is to take a comprehensive look at where the problems are to help mitigate congestion and make our area safer for mobility along the corridor. So we do this congestion management process ongoing, and this basically does two things. It starts to identify all the locations where our recurring traffic congestion and safety deficiencies are currently existing, and then also develops a list of recommendations that can be incorporated into our planning process. And as I said, I think this represents a very important first step. You have to identify and you have to find solutions, and then you can start to implement and develop good projects to help mitigate. And I did pass out that list that you can peruse. I'm not sure if that's on the last. There it is, right, and that's why I passed out a hard copy for you because that's pretty hard to see. But this is a list of recommended projects from our congestion management study. that we update on a continual basis, and it's divided into two types of projects, low-build projects, which are high-impact, low-cost projects, often within the existing right-of-way. These can be done, so we don't have to purchase right-of-way, pretty much to kind of do a design-build type of process. And they help hold the line with congestion. And these are good projects. Like I said, they could probably be implemented in some of our regular maintenance safety operations programs. But we understand we've done projections, traffic projections, out with our travel demand model. We know that there's going to be a need for a major capacity building with all our comprehensive land use plan and all the traffic that's generated by that in the area. So we do recommend some high-build projects in our plan, plus in the congestion management study. And these are the major capital expenditure-type projects that have to be planned and programmed over a longer time, such as a Newtown Pike extension or Parris Pike, those types of projects that really require some early and long work to reach implementation. and that is where I'll end up and just leave time for any of your questions for all of us let me compliment you all on the job that you did giving us an overview of all of the different components of the man of war issues, it was nicely done and I think it was the first time I've seen a presentation by everybody in traffic engineering and it was well done, so thank you Several people have questions. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, want to thank Steve and Ron and Max, of course, Jim's here, and everyone who worked on putting this presentation together. I think it's, as I said a couple work sessions ago, long overdue, because I don't think we're talking enough about Man of War. And, you know, what really surprised me the most, you know, and listen to Steve, and I realize you sugarcoat a lot of this to me, because I know it's a lot worse than what you presented. I know you deal with it on a daily basis. We're sitting here debating on who has a harder job. Counselor, you, and I think I give the hat to you on this deal because traffic alone in a war is terrible. It's an overutilized road, underbuilt. I mean, it opened in 88 with, what, 13 stoplights, and you just installed, what, number 23? Is that right, 23? How many stoplights do we have now? Well, there's 23 from Nicholsville to I-75, but there's over 40 from Versailles to I-75. So 13 to 40. So we realize that this is a heavily utilized road. And I guess the first thing that surprises me the most, when we're talking about planning and the MPO and the TIP money, SLX money, is how in the world could there be 15 other projects more important than this road right now? I mean, who is prioritizing these projects? I guess, Max, if you want to take a stab at that, I think the planning issue, we've got to address this. Manowar is not going to wait. The last list I saw this summer had Manowar at 2030 or 2032, and now I see it. We broke it in half 2016 for the first phase. And these phases, help me understand it because they're a little bit different than what the study showed that we got back. I think the original study showed from I-75 to alumni, then alumni to take Screek and then take Screek on. I think we've broken it up differently in this presentation today. So help me understand why it looks different today and how it jumped up the list to 2016. I mean, that's better news than what I've heard. Right. I'll take a stab at it. It's, like I said, it's an ongoing process. I know that we work together continuously in talking over time. Steve is a traffic engineer, basically said that we have to look at from I-75 to alumni at least, include that whole quarter because that is such an integrated movement. So breaking it as we did in the last plan just to reach fiscal constraint and so forth, I think we're breaking it more logically phasing it as we go. That's an ongoing process. So did the NPO vote on changing those phases? Who changed the phasing? We actually haven't changed the phases yet. We're in the process of a new plan update and we will ask the policy committee to vote on that. So they will be and they did have a lot of input but as we give them more information such as Steve and we have with the development that's occurring out there, now we have more complete picture and we can say now we have more information to bring you and you can vote on these better phasing, much like we had to do with Todd's Road and Clay's Mill and these types of projects to make progress on these. But to get back to your first question, I think that we all know that all the big high capital projects, we look to the state and the federal government for those types of monies, given that we only receive like probably $4.5 million in SLX, that we have total say-so over, which we put towards Clay's Mill and Leastown. We do it very efficiently, I think, and very good priorities. But we have to work with the state in the six-year plan to get those high-capital projects in there. And we've got to show in our long-range plan that these are priorities that we give, because they work very closely with us through our documents and through our unscheduled project list and in our ongoing meetings and coordination. So we've got to emphasize that this is a high priority in our local area. We know New Circle Road needs some work at some of the substandard interchanges, and that's, quite frankly, a state priority because those are state routes and federal routes, and they look to those as their job to maintain and operate those facilities for the federal government. So I guess I tried to answer the question, but we will definitely, with this next long-range plan and tip, be looking at reprioritizing and then emphasizing where we need projects. And Manowar is definitely a congested area. There's no doubt about it. And when will that process begin? Well, we're already into it right now. We've had two public meetings. Let me interject something here that I think might be helpful to all concerned, Max. If you could just sort of give an overview of how projects go through the planning process, I think that would be helpful because there are multiple projects that people are interested in. Yes, yes. As I mentioned, you know, they can start out being put onto the unscheduled project list or the plan and then come through to our implementation document, the TIP. And in our long-range plan, we identify funding sources. We basically say SLX or non-SLX. There's so many programs, federal programs, that we can qualify for, high-priority project money, bridge money, safety money, all types that we try to tap, and then those can go towards our implementation documents. And who puts them on those plans? Yes, that is our committees and technical committees and so forth. It could be all kinds of subcommittees with bicycle and pedestrian, with congestion, with all kinds of safety and public safety input. it, we form these projects to put into the plans, and that's where they go. And then they get into the transportation improvement program as the priority increases and the need is identified and the funding is identified. And then that's where we have projects that, you know, are programmed in the four phases, the design, right-of-way, utility, and construction. Right away in utilities, sometimes delay. Construction, you know, can go on, especially with rising costs. But we keep at them, and we work together very closely, and we end up with projects. I know when I first started, there was people that said we'd never get done with certain projects, and they're out there right now. So they do happen. And it's just working towards them in a continual planning process and also operations and maintenance and trying to get that low-hanging fruit, that term, is pretty good to try to get turn lanes and safety improvements that we can, say, hold the line with. Well, you know, and I understand the difficulty of the job, and the committee makes a lot of these decisions in terms of what roads get a priority. but I guess a couple things that I'm really concerned about is one of the SLX funds, you said we get about $4.5 million a year. What can they be used for and what are we using for? Do you all have a breakdown of that? Is that gas tax money? Is that where that is? Yes, yes, and that's a portion to us by our population in our urbanized area. It's always based on that population formula. So it's one, no matter how large your area grows, as far as the planning area, area that you still are on that formula. It's one piece of pie that you would have to slice up. And can you use that money once we get it on trails? Yes. And are we doing that? Yes, we are. We're funding several bicycle trails and lanes and projects that we're using SLX. More than ever before, when I first started, that wasn't done. And right now it's being done very prevalently. I know Councilman McCord is going to shoot me or elbow me here in a second, but I think we've reached a real critical point as to what's the priority, trails and these bike paths through parks and stuff or these roads. And I think that's the mission or the problem your committee is going to have to start really looking at. I appreciate trails. I understand the healthy community. But at the end of the day, people travel, man, are frustrated. Our fire and police are frustrated. Our streets and roads in the winter are frustrated with it. It's a very frustrating road. And to me, the priority should be on roads. And, again, I appreciate the trails being utilized in the SLX funds, but we may have to get back to basics on some of these roads. You know, I know Councilman Blues has worked hard on Lee's Town, you know, but how much of that other money is out there? Can we really start putting towards roads? And, you know, thinking outside the box, are there other matching we can use with this SLX money? I know there is on trails. We've done that. We're doing a great job of multiplying our dollars. But, you know, given this presentation today, Manowar is a critical artery in Lexington. And to top it off, it's our road. It's not the state's going to come in and fix it. They don't maintain it. It's going to be ours to make a final decision on. And, again, I appreciate the job you have to do. It's a tough job. I don't envy it. But I think we need to, as a body, start making some tougher decisions on some of our major roads here in the city because traffic is still everyone's number one concern. Steve, I have one more question for you on your presentation. in terms of congestion what percentage is man of war are we at 100% capacity would you guess are we at well over that a long time ago I know I saw the first side we increased 1,000 cars in the last four years some of those intersections where are we at percentage wise well one thing to keep in mind at different times of the day in the PM peak one thing you look at is the PM peaks have expanded I guess more so than what people are accustomed to You think of the PM rush as maybe 4.15, 4.20 to maybe quarter to six. A lot of times people think that's about when people get off work and they get home and that sort of thing. And driver expectancy or driver reliability is how long does it take them to get home from work. Well, what we've noticed along this corridor, primarily from the Alumni and New Circle area down through the Hamburg area and the Richmond Road from New Circle down through Manor Boulevard, is that has expanded. That time frame has expanded all the way from 315 really to about 615. And so that has pushed us to have to operate PM peak plans, which delays side streets more and gives more time to those main roads really for about three hours instead of about an hour and 45 minutes to two hours. And some would argue the fact that when gas goes up, the prices go up, and maybe people stay home more. But what happens is, and what we've found, is that people choose their travel times more. And when they choose their travel times more, maybe they don't run their errands at lunchtime or maybe they don't run in the afternoon or something. What they'll do is they'll wait until they get ready to go home. And so that puts more pressure on that p.m. time, and that expands that even further. So when the gas was $4 a gallon, that pushed that even further across the evening. So we ran into 6.30 at night instead of 6 o'clock at night for a p.m. rush. So to answer your question, the pressures on the system are immense, and the p.m. rush especially. And what we're seeing is, especially in the morning rush, it's starting to progressively get worse, too, especially around the main arteries like Richmond Road and Manowar, the alumni Manowar. Your main intersections are getting to be very congested and really reach the peaks of what they can handle. Well, and, you know, I thank you for the job you're doing, especially in the Hamburg area, and some of the major changes your group and everyone in traffic engineering has done here recently, and you're getting ready to do next week or this week. Yeah, Thursday. You know, I can't say enough of these cross streets. You know, that's where our congestions, you know, we get the calls from citizens saying, you know, we can't get across from an award, you know, because, again, the cross streets are having no way. But I do thank you all, everyone, for your efforts. They're well noticed, but we've got a long way to go, and I appreciate you being on board with us. Thank you. Council Member Stevens. I had one question. I had a complaint from a sleep-deprived citizen who said that there was excessive semi-truck traffic on Manowar from Nicholasville Road on out to the interstate and that when they were braking at these various stoplights, they would use the engine and not necessarily their brakes and it caused a lot of noise. I found out that Manowar is closed to truck traffic and I was wondering if you knew anything about the enforcement of that. Two trucks are not supposed to go on Manowar. I just know the ordinance that says, yes, you shouldn't, trucks should not use that facility. They should use New Circle Road, you know, to get to the main, where they're going, if they don't have an origin or destination in the area. So that's pretty tough because there's a lot of, you know, origins and destinations in that area for trucks. So I don't know. I know I've been told by enforcement that it would be very, very difficult to enforce. But that's all I know about it. Dr. Stevenson. I doubt if there are many local deliveries at 3 or 4 a.m., but there might be. No, unless there could be. So you don't know if the police are enforcing that or not? I don't know their stand on that. I haven't heard any opinion of theirs in that matter. I saw the e-mail chain, but I didn't see them. Did you all? It is responsibility of the police force to enforce it. Yes, I believe it would be. Not the traffic engineers. Right. Okay, thank you, Mayor. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. And let me just start out by saying that probably nobody is more interested in transportation, all transportation, than I am. It's not just trails. And a couple of clarifying points for those that are watching and those on council. The MPO is actually comprised of Fayette and Jessamine counties. So it is a joint body, much like this council, that has representation of both those counties. And so you have roughly $4.5 million a year of federal funds, those SLX funds, and you have to prioritize lists based on two counties' needs. And for a long time, it was big Lexington, little Nicholasville, And the organization kind of was at a point of dysfunction and almost blowing up until about four years ago. And then there became a real sense of coordination and communication. And I think we're a whole lot better than we were. And as the council member whose district backs right up to Jessamine County, I think it is extremely important that we coordinate transportation with them. The funded and unfunded list for everybody watching is also akin to the six-year road plan that the state has, that you have to be on that list. And so while there's a very small list that is funded and a very large list, multiple pages, that is unfunded, you do have to be on the list to even have any kind of shot at being done. So as far as folks here watching or folks up here want to see a project done, that's how it goes into the process. But let's talk about Man of War for just a second. You know, here's a road, I agree with Council Members standing at 100%, that probably affects as many of us up here as anything else other than New Circle. Ten Council Members are affected, seven district folks, three at largest. But it was built in a way to do a lot of what it's doing. It was actually built as a neighborhood connector. It has curb and gutter, and so nobody can pull over. It was designed to get folks out of neighborhoods and move them down the line. The elephant in the room that nobody really likes to talk about was the second part of what was supposed to happen, which was a limited-access highway, freeway, that would go basically from Jessamine County, Garrett County, over to Madison County. And what I find very interesting is here's a classic example of how certain folks block that from happening because, oh, that's going to lead to a lot of development, and we don't want any kind of growth or anything like that. And what we got was a lot of growth and no capacity, and everybody's frustrated. And so at the end of the day, I find it interesting that we never have enough money to do it right the first time, but we always can come back the second time and spend four to eight to ten times more to try and go back and make our fixes. But make no mistake, Manowar was built and designed to do what it's doing. It just never was designed to have that many homes with no other place to get people to other counties. And so that's part of our problem in this situation. In 2005, a group of us went to Washington to lobby our senators and congressmen for a federal earmark. Senator Bunning put in a half a million dollars to do a study about the connection, the limited access connection from northern Jessamine County all the way to Richmond Road, Richmond Road, to Madison County, the Claysbury Bridge around that area. That's being done as we speak. We also are looking at, the state is looking at in the next decade, a major bypass on U.S. 27 that will completely redo what we already know is a bad problem. It's going to increase that dramatically, those things. So this group definitely needs to be involved, and you need to know what's happening in the southern part of your county. But another piece of the equation that people aren't factoring yet is Brandon Road. When Brandon Crossing came online, what Brandon Road is going to do is, as the neighborhoods develop, it's going to eventually punch all the way over to Tates Creek Road. And so now folks may not have to come down Man of War to cut over. They'll just use Brandon Road. And what is that going to do to Tates Creek and so forth? So there is a huge reason to focus on this. I'm very glad Council Member Stenet brought this to our attention, and I think that it's incumbent upon this group to sit down and put the money necessary to look at designing this thing right and well, given all those parts and pieces. But let me speak to Council Member Stenet's comment about roads versus trails and other things. It is a national phenomenon that is a very real fact. You cannot build roads wide enough. You'll never build them wide enough. You cannot build capacity for cars. The bigger you build the road, the more cars go on it. And so just look at California and look at what they've done. So at the end of the day, you have that dynamic. You also have a dynamic that the gas tax, because gas shot up so high, people stopped traveling as much. So the revenues went down. And the bottom line is nobody really wants to admit this, but the state transportation budget is going broke right now as we speak. So there are no monies for roads coming up. They're just trying to keep the lights on right now, and that's a direct quote. And the federal money is moving away from infrastructure as well. So this government, we can sit here all day long and talk about we need more roads, roads, roads, roads. But at the end of the day, what's going to happen is that we actually need to look at getting people around in other ways than just expanding road capacity. Now this, Man of War is operating at 120%, and we need to redesign it yesterday. But what I find interesting is on the plan for Man of War to redesign it, the inside sidewalk, actually it's called to take that sidewalk out and make it a multi-use path. Well, when you do something like that and you incorporate a trail into this situation, then all of a sudden you take off car trips because people don't have to jump in their car to go down a couple of blocks or even down a little bit further. They can bike to it. But to Councilmember Stenit's point, there is a lot of ineffective use of our money all across this government. But what pains me is to see SLX money that goes towards trails go to trails to nowhere. And we've got a lot of those around here. And building things that don't make sense to residents. And I can give you some very specific examples of where we're doing that. And we're not coordinating this money well. So at the end of this talk, just know that this is federal money that can only be spent in Jessamyn and Fayette counties. It's only $4.5 million a year. Probably will go down over time. We as an MPO and you all as planners need to really look at how do we get the most out of this. But we as a council need to recognize you can't build rows big enough. There's no way we can build them big enough, and you're just inviting capacity. So we need to be smart about how we do this. And so in your districts, you need to look at the opportunities we have with Man of War. And we need to move very aggressively with a design plan that works. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank you all, too, for coming. It's obviously a pleasure to serve with you all on the NPO Committee. And I also want to thank Council Member Stenet because I know he and I work very closely because some of the issues we're addressing because all of the areas you mentioned throughout your presentation just happened to fall in the heart of the 7th District. And one thing that constantly comes up between the two of us with people traveling from the interstate or Hamburg trying to get home is because Man of War tends to be kind of a nightmare for people to travel is we're putting a huge strain on our neighborhoods now because people are at all costs avoiding Man of War. So going back to a waste of services, we're putting a huge strain on our division of police because we're having to call in extra patrols because we have people now traveling anywhere from 45 to 60 miles per hour through our neighborhood streets trying to cut through to avoid man-of-war. So we're putting extra strain on our Division of Police, also on traffic engineering because we're having to do traffic studies now in neighborhoods that truly should not be cut-throughs for people trying to avoid man-of-war. So I'm glad that we're going to make this a priority on the MPO committee. The other thing that I would like to just ask, I don't know how, but I know that Councilmember Myers, Councilmember Stinnett, with some of the projects we've done regarding Liberty Road and some of the state streets, I know we've tried to call on Blazer Parkway as well, that when we're dealing with the state on certain issues, for example, on Richmond Road when people are trying to turn out a blazer and we're just trying to prevent that from being blocked so people can keep a flow going off blazer. when it's getting blocked up, we can't seem to get a response from the state, or when there's construction going on and there's huge potholes and people are calling our offices to complain, and we can't seem to get a response from the state. Is there any type of coordination between you all? Because I know when we're trying to work with them, we get the frustration from the constituents, and then when we're calling, we don't really seem to get much resolve. Can you all address that, please? Yes. We have a bi-monthly coordination group for these very kinds of issues that we usually go out to the district office, District 7, and talk about these kind of issues that pop up. Traffic engineering is there. All the state highway engineers are there and district engineer, which is now James Ballinger, very attentive and knowledgeable person to talk to about things and coordination such as this. We have one coming up, I believe, if not next week, it's the week after. I have to look up the date, but this would be probably a good time to talk about that. Well, maybe perhaps a few of us could get together, because we've been trying for probably a good year to particularly one issue to get addressed through the state that would help keep some traffic flowing, and we really just can't seem to get that through with them. So maybe if we have you all behind us on that, that might be helpful. Sure will, and you're welcome to come to those meetings, too, and make it known they really listen. We tried during the MPO meetings to discuss it with them. So maybe if we could get you all support, that would be wonderful. I sure will. Thank you. Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to echo everything that Councilman Stenet said and Council Member Crosby, because I've got the same issues with Armstrong Mill and Kennesaw and Heartland Parkway, and I've got people cutting through, trying to avoid traffic on Manowar. But I also have another issue, and that is this list that you have that has the low build and the high build on it. Could you come up? Just a second. How is this list going to be prioritized? Because my understanding of L1 through L7 is not necessarily the priority. It's just that's the way they're listed on the page. Right. That's not a prioritized list. I think we have traffic engineering have a good idea to tell you how to prioritize that list, mainly towards the high-volume areas and some of the pictures areas that you saw. Let me stop there for a second. Let me ask you then, if you have an idea how to prioritize that, where Mount McKinley Way stands, because this group is one of the unique areas of town where there's only one entrance into that neighborhood off of Manowar. And it's been suggested that they do. Right now what people are doing is they're turning right onto Manowar, heading towards Richmond Road, going down to Pimmacle, taking a right, doing a U-turn, coming back out that light, and then going all the way back down towards Nickelsville Road. And I think Mr. Cummins suggested that we do a curb cut there right in front of Park Hill Shopping Center. You've got $175,000 listed for three such improvements. And I talked to him earlier, and he said that Mount McKinley Way is the bulk of that $175,000. So my question is, where is that prioritized? We have talked about that in several meetings where we get together. We're in an effort linking planning and operations. That's one of our major emphasis areas these days. It's very effective. And so we've been in these meetings and talked about that very intersection and these very things several times. But we haven't talked about prioritization as of yet in order. Council Member Myers? Yes, sir. We really didn't prepare that loose as far as priority. And I would like to stay away from trying to set the priority right here because we didn't prepare for that. Sure. But that's something that we can sit down and get together and work on that priority and get it back out to what we feel the priority is. Okay. And I understand that it's not been prioritized. I didn't mean for them to try to do that here. But I would like you to look at that. And then also, when you bring that back to us, if you would bring back your recommendations for funding sources and maybe a timeline on when that might happen. Because, again, we've got a situation where the residents back there have one way in and one way out. And if there's an accident there, then they're out of luck. I understand that, but I think it bears a very thorough discussion of all the priorities on that list with the parties who can give us good information on those before we prioritize it. Just don't want that to happen. Right, right. I'm not asking them to do it here. And not in a proper form. Right. I'm not asking them to do it here. But my second question to that is, is it a situation where our staff makes that priority list, or is that our MPO representatives or the combined work between the two? How does that happen? Because I guess the next thing is once the priority list is made, it's got to go back to the MPO to try to find the funding. Is that correct? Really, these can be made locally, too. These kind of projects, it doesn't have to be made by the policy committee unless it goes into the tip, federal monies and those kind of things. We can make totally independent as LFUCG and make our priority list, but you want the two to coordinate and be together. So all divisions and departments and sections are represented in the technical committee, so we can tackle this and then make recommendations to the policy committee based on all of our analysis, I think. Okay, so let me approach from this angle. What would be your, and this goes to anybody who wants to answer it, what would be your druthers for how to get the proper people together to prioritize this list and then look for appropriate funding for each project? And when can that happen? You guys want to tackle that? We can always use our committees that are formed, the technical committee, and put forward the list. That's one idea I have. I guess what I'm trying to move to is that we make that happen. And I don't know the appropriate way to do it. I'm not sure who all the appropriate people are to have around the table when it's done. But I want that to start, that process to start. As part of that, Council Member Myers, as part of that process, the group here basically that we're represented here for this presentation, we can prioritize that list and bring it back to Council if you all want to discuss that list. and then we can use the other processes that are available too in other groups. But we could start by that. It's just setting a priority internally and sharing that with you first. Okay. And then could I ask if the members of the MPO, because not every council district is represented, but we don't have 15 people on there. I think we have, I think there's one person represents three districts. Does that group meet in and of itself and with the staff prior to going to MPO meetings so that there are internal discussions, if you will, with LFUCG on what we want to see our priorities to be before you go to the MPO and then meet with Jasmine County to determine what theirs are and then what combined the priorities would be? There's a lot of discussion with the staff before the meetings between policy committee members, And I know there's been discussions with the council members of the aggregated regions. I know in the past there's been many discussions. I don't know how you probably know that better than I, how much you all talk amongst each other to bring forward the issues with your appointed representatives. I know a lot of times one will act if one can't make it, the other one will come and be very knowledgeable and engaged. And that just shows you that the regional concept is working pretty well, I believe. And I think that's what Mr. McCord referred to is when we were looking at it district by district, Jessamine County and everything was saying, well, this is just a council meeting. This is not a regional MPO transportation planning process. So now I think we've solved that issue and are looking at it more regional, central Lexington, eastern, western, northern, southern. and those discussions should just continue and be a very big part and feel free at any time to engage the staff before the meeting to be prepared for it. Okay, and then I have one final thing that I'd like you to bring before the state, and I know Mr. Ballinger has just taken over the position that he has now, so this may be a great time to touch him on this, but on Tate's Creek, it's not really a bridge, but there's on the right side just inside of Armstrong Mill, or not Armstrong Mill, but Appian Way, there's what looks like a bridge where you've got a drop-off on the right if you're in town. And there's a guardrail that keeps people from falling over that's been broken for at least two years. And we have sent letters and phone calls and e-mails and tried to get the state to fix that, and we've got absolutely no response and no luck getting that fixed. So now that we have Mr. Ballinger in place, maybe we could see if they could get that fixed. We will definitely bring that up at our next coordination meeting next week. And I'm very familiar. I go back to take my kids to school a lot, and I know exactly what you're talking about. And, yeah, we can bring that up and see if we can get them to at least voice their knowledge of that. Okay. I guess that's it. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Mayor. Manowar Boulevard, of course, runs across the north side of the southeast portion of the 12th District, and I received the most complaints on traffic on Manowar Boulevard. I just want to let all of you all hear that. And of course, I'm very supportive of all the other council members who have Manowar serving their districts too, because I do think it's our top problem as far as traffic in the residential areas. I also supported the bypass running from Jessamine County over to Madison County. And I think this is important. If there's anything you could do to get the priority on that moved up, because what has happened, because there's no way to get to I-75 and I-64, people living in Boyle County, Garrett County, Jessamine County, many of the counties south have to use Nicholasville Road, Tates Creek, and Harrisburg Road to commute in to get up to the interstates. And that did make me think of a question. Have you all done any study to determine if that bypass goes in, what it might do to reduce the traffic flow coming into Fayette County from the south? Could you have any estimates on that at all? Yes, I think you'll see that study is going to be coming out probably within a month, the final document. And it had very extensive travel demand modeling done with it. And you'll see those direct comparisons, you know, based on the with and without scenario and the different types of cross sections and so forth and connections. So that's coming soon. And you'll also see a preferred corridor. They narrowed it down. I think it was like over 20 corridors at first, and then now it's narrowed down to a very preferred corridor and connection points. And so we will definitely give that to you. You don't have even a wild guess of, I mean, you're talking about 20,000 cars a day or anything like that? I would hesitate to voice that. I know it does have significant impact, I can tell you that, but I just don't remember from the study the numbers. But you're right, there is a lot of traffic that comes north and south and uses that man-of-war to get there because that's the only route. Thank you all for your work. I'm going to try to keep it short. I've got one question, and I don't know whether any of the group knows right off hand, but are there any plans to complete the Polo Club Parkway section that's missing? And the question I've got is tied to Manowar because it helps move some of the traffic off of a very difficult, very busy part of Manowar. There are two different sections of Polo Club that aren't completed, the section between Mantamore and Winchester Road. We just this year signed an agreement, since that's an exactable road, part of our exaction program in the expansion area, and that will be constructed as part of the upcoming Central Baptist Hospital development. So that should be coming along fairly quickly. The other section is the missing link near Todd's Road. that is one I know the Division of Engineering and Planning have touted and asked councils for years to go ahead and fund that but at this point there have been no funds budgeted although there may have been some funds budgeted for design Bob this year I know you requested it I don't know it was in or out. Bob, would you step to the microphone, please? The funding for the design of that connection to the Todd's Road area is something that the Committee of the Whole will see in their next meeting to look at the capital improvement program. It was a late entry into that program. All right. Thank you all for that tidbit of information. Let me just make a couple of observations. No question of what Manowars had made your problem. But I recall vividly a conversation I had while I was sitting in a restaurant along Richmond Road about four or five years ago, shortly after Richmond Road had been reconfigured and widened and resurfaced. and I was commenting with the person with whom I was eating that day, what a nice improvement that was. And this is an individual that does a lot of urban planning, and he said, it is nice, but you know the only thing that wider road is going to get you? More traffic. And he was 100% right. And the point he was making in a backhand sort of way was, we have got to do a far better job of planning in advance so that we don't create these kinds of bottlenecks that are an inevitable consequence of some of the planning decisions we have made. So I just throw that out there. The other sobering fact is both the federal and state highway funds, as someone mentioned a moment ago, are seriously depleted, and the trends are very negative. As people decrease their driving, the amount of gas tax money that's coming in is going south. And the needs are severe all over the state for infrastructure improvement all over the country and certainly all over the state. So we are competing with a lot of other states for federal money and a lot of other cities and counties for state money, and it will be a very competitive process for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, you all did a great job laying out what the issues were, and I appreciate your coming today. If there's nothing further, we'll move along. Council Member Gorton, I'll call on you first here for the council report. Okay, thank you, Mayor. I have several issues on council report. First of all, I'd like to recognize Reverend Wayne Smith, who is here to speak to the Council. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. A couple months ago I was here to speak on an issue and the mayor said that would be three minutes. And I said, well, I need four. So he gave me four and then cut it off at the end of four. And while I didn't say anything negative, my body language, I think, spoke for itself. And I'm ashamed of that. Mr. Mayor, and I want to apologize to you. And I could have done it by mail or by phone. But since I did what I did openly, I wanted to apologize to you. I voted for you in the past, probably will in the future. And if I come down here on another issue, you don't have to tell me how long it'll be. And I thank you, and I'm sorry for what happened. Thank you very much, Reverend Smith. Your apology is certainly accepted. And the nature of this forum is such that I'm sort of saddled with the task of keeping things moving along, and I appreciate your understanding and that of everybody else who comes here. But thank you very much for your presence today. Councilmember Gordon. The first issue that I wanted to address is, and realizing that election day is in one week, so it will be over after that. Over the weekend, I had a couple of constituents contact me about the huge, gigantic campaign signs, some of which are on the corners. and one that was mentioned to me that is blocking vehicle drivers view is at the corner of taste creek road where billy's barbecue is and the person mentioned that unless you pull out into the crosswalk for your right turn on red you cannot see oncoming traffic because it's blocked by one of the giant campaign signs And so I see that CalPow is here, and I wondered if there's anything at this point that we can do. Some of those large signs are blocking the view of our drivers, and I think it's a safety hazard. And the fact that people called me this weekend about it, it's a worry to them. So can you address that? But I know that some of them are not in the public easement, but they're blocking the view of the driver. The large signs are under the vision of building inspection to get permits for. Those signs are not permitted, and if they are blocking the line of sight, we will remove those signs. And if they're in the right of way, we will remove those signs. So then a constituent or a citizen who had a concern should call. Sure. Lex call, I'm guessing. Sure. 3-1-1. That's absolutely correct. And that would get to code enforcement. That would get to code enforcement. And if it's something like that that's really going to affect safety, you know, we'll send an inspector immediately. Those signs will be removed. we take the signs and put them behind 200 East Main Street. They are there until a point in time that the crews, the cleaning crews come through and then they remove them. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. The second item is a fun item. And as all of government knows, we're now in our United Way campaign and the council is doing its part. And on Thursday, October 30th, the council will have a traveling cart of, I think it's mostly desserts and baked goods, going from around the government building, the Phoenix building, and the police headquarters. And the money that is raised from purchasing these baked goods will all go directly to the United Way. So look for the traveling card on October 30th. If you want to pre-order, there are some specialty cakes that can be made especially for you. And so you would call 258-3200 for those. And if anyone has a donation for the baked goods, bring it to the fifth floor on Thursday morning. The third item is also a really neat, fun one. We all know Officer Debbie Wagner from the police department. And the Today Show is having a Halloween house contest nationwide. They've picked some homes that are decorated for Halloween, and Debbie's house has been chosen as one of those homes. If you've never seen it during Halloween, you need to go past. It's quite impressive. So you can go on to www.todayshow.com and click on Halloween, and you can vote for Debbie Wagner's house to be recognized nationwide. And this would be kind of a fun thing, I think, and hers is number one on the list. The next item is I wanted to unveil, at the request of our Division of Fire, their new effort, which I think is fantastic. The Division of Fire, the firefighters, have joined forces with the Susan G. Komen affiliate to fight in the battle for breast cancer to find a solution. And so for the next two weeks, our firefighters who are on the front line are going to be wearing a new authorized fire shirt. And I'm going to hold it up here for a minute. It's just like the fire shirt that they wear, only it's pink. And on the back, it says Lexington Fire Department. And the reason I'm showing this is because citizens can buy one of these to help the cause for breast cancer. They cost $10, and they're sold in the community at Fire Station 1 and at Wildcat Warehouse and Fayette Mall and at Gulls and Kentucky Uniforms. uniforms. And then the other effort is with our battalion chiefs and our fire personnel who wear the white shirts. And we have a model here today. And I asked battalion chief David Aedes if he would come up so that the camera can show what you're doing. I think it's wonderful. And, you know, So almost every person in the world has been touched by someone in their family or a close friend who has died of breast cancer. And I want to congratulate the FIRE. Thank you, David. It's a beautiful effort to support a cause that needs to find a solution. So thank you all very much for that. And maybe they'll come back next year. We can do it again next year. And I wanted to announce for one more program that the Fayette County 4-H Livestock Club is starting their club. And it starts November the 10th at 630 at the county extension office over on off of Red Mile Road. This is for youth ages 9 through 18. and you do not have to own or have access to your own livestock. They have partnered with farms who can allow youth to learn about raising cattle, raising sheep. I don't know if there are any hogs involved, but many youth don't have a clue where our food comes from, and I think this is a really neat program that the Extension Service has. And so if you're a youth who wants to learn more about agriculture, this is a really good thing to sign up for. And Jennifer Hubbard is the contact, and she's at 257-5582. And then the last item is I wanted to ask Commissioner Helm if she could bring us a report at some time. several years ago we started an effort for the aging in place effort. And I have not heard anything about it lately. And so I think it would be really helpful for council members to have an update on that, maybe at a work session, just a brief update on aging in place as our community gets more older people. and we want retirees and older folks to live here, what we're doing to move that program along. So thank you. Commissioner Helm, we'll appreciate your following up on that, if you would, please. Thank you. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Mayor. I definitely know I've aged in place the last four years sitting up here, so I can appreciate the presentation coming up. Just a couple things. One, Mayor, thank you to yourself and all of your staff and administration, as well as the council office for the Neighborhood Summit on Saturday. I think it was well put on, some of the best information I've ever seen people being able to get and to coordinate with each other, different agencies. It was just a great morning for everyone, and I sincerely appreciate you all doing that, and maybe we can start a buy twice a year. It's so popular. And, again, thank you to your administration and everyone for getting that done. Thank you. I'd just say a special word of thanks to Miriam Blodgett, who did a superb job pulling all of that together for us. But thank you for your comments. Absolutely. And then, secondly, you know, we have the World Equestrian Games coming here in a little under two years now. And I'm getting a lot of phone calls about businesses. They want to get involved. They want to get involved in the celebration. They want to know how they can participate. and in talking with Penny Ebel, who has kind of been thrown into that role for this government since Mary Walthin moved to bigger and better pastures, I think we're going to have a presentation, Mayor, November 11th about what our current activities are with the World Equestrian Game and kind of give the council an update. I look forward to that, and thank you for going ahead and playing that in advance to my comments today. But a couple other things I wanted to throw out there if we could possibly look to do. One, I was given a gift last week, a clock that had the countdown on it. One thing I'd like to know, would it be possible to get one of those clocks mounted on the wall in here? Because, once again, every time someone comes in this room, they can look at our wall and see the countdown. That may or may not be something we may want to have. And also on GTV3, as one of our commercials, go to the clock. And, once again, it's bringing that awareness, bringing the celebration. Because this is a big event, and there's several ways for us to get involved. But those are just two ideas I would throw out there, Mayor. If we could look at doing one or two of those, again, keeping this in front of people because it's going to be here before we know it. And hopefully on November 11th we can look at how we can better participate as a council. Commissioner Cole, would you explore the clock options for us and see what we can do? Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Blevins. Thank you, Mayor. Fellow council members, you may recall last summer we had an interesting situation where in a residential area we had someone add on to a house. and consume the entire backyard with either new building construction or apron for driveway. I've been working with the planning division for the last few months since then, trying to come up with a solution to that. We have an idea that we'd like to bring before you. So I'd like to move the issue of backyard setbacks into the planning committee. So moved. I have a motion by Council Member Blevins, second by Council Member Blues, to move the issue of backyard setbacks into the planning committee. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. That's all I had. Thank you. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank you too for joining me yesterday, Uwinarati, touring some of the second district, looking at some places where we have opportunities for improvements, and also for meeting with some of the folks from the Highlands neighborhood and addressing their concerns about parks and the PSOC and so on. It was a very productive meeting and I thank you again for that tour and for driving. I don't get to ride in the hybrid every day, so I appreciate that. And then last night, we had a public meeting for folks to come together and learn about the plans for the proposed public safety operations center. It was a very good meeting, and I want to thank all those folks from our government who came out from Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Bennett. David Lucas was there, Charlie Millward, Jerry Hancock, Michelle Kosiniak. We had Pat Duggar, Pat Tatum, Marianne Blodgett was there. Nobody was left at Government Center, of course. we had the team from Omni Architects and Mesa Construction and the landscape architects. The presentation was excellent, thorough, and complete. Questions were good. The answers were very thorough. I think the public learned a lot about the proposed center. We learned a good deal about many of the neighbors' concerns, which we'll want to take into consideration as plans go forward for this facility. So once again, I want to thank all of you who came out last night. It was a wonderful meeting, and I really appreciate the cooperation in helping to bring that information to the public. a Couple of neighborhood association meetings to announce next Monday November 3rd at 6 p.m Georgetown Street neighborhood association will meet in the rear center in Douglas Park and at 7 o'clock Same evening the Green Acres Hollow Creek Breckenridge neighborhood association will meet at the community center in Green Acres Park Thank You mayor that's my report Let me respond on a couple of different fronts there. First of all, in visiting with some of the folks from the Highland Neighborhood Association yesterday, I told them a bit of information about the Emergency Operations Center that I've mentioned to some of you, but I wanted to make sure all of you were aware. A day or two after we had the presentation here about the Operations Center, I visited with Commissioner Bennett, and we talked about going back with architects and the construction manager and looking at all the technology that's involved. So that project is not on any big fast track. It doesn't have to be completed by a certain date. We're going to try to reevaluate it and see what we can do to lower the cost estimate on that. We've made a little headway. We've got some more work to do, but I shared that with the folks at the Neighborhood Association visit yesterday, and I just wanted to mention that to everybody else. Also, on the district tours, I've been working with Artie Green to try to come up with a way that we can do that a little better, where we can give you some feedback on what we understand the issues are and who's going to be dealing with them, and then some final feedback when it's ultimately done because I don't want those things to fall off the page when we talk about them. So I appreciate those of you who have shared your time with me and hopefully we'll do a little better job of making that a productive exercise for everybody. So I have enjoyed our visit and particularly enjoyed yesterday. Thanks. Council Member McCord. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. One, after seeing the MPOs and the Planning Departments issue on Manowar, what I'd like to do is make a motion that we put into the Budget and Finance Committee a report of the SLX funding, where it is, what it's gone towards, what it's going towards, how it's programmed in. I think that'd be a valuable exercise. So with that, I'll make the motion to put that into Budget and Finance. Second. I have a motion by Council Member McCord and a second by Council Member Myers to Refer the matter of SLX funding to the Budget and Finance Committee for presentation. Any discussion? All in favor, Council Member Myers. Mayor, is it possible to have the administration, they said that they would look at prioritizing that list. You think it's possible to have that ready so that it goes in at the same time? That I can't answer. I don't know how far along they are in that process, but we'll give it a shot. And if we can, we will. And if we can't, then we'll give you an idea about when we can. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor of referring that item, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you, Mayor. A couple other things. I would have loved to have been at the Neighborhood Summit, but was busy with the other event that took place that was very monumental. The Knight Foundation has adopted two projects as legacy projects for the World Equestrian Games, the East End Corridor, Third Street Revitalization, and the Legacy Trail from downtown to the Horse Park. And over the course of Thursday, Friday, Saturday of last week, we had the consultants in, and we ran a number of stakeholder meetings and a number of community meetings. And on Saturday, we had kind of the culmination of that, and 150 folks came out to the Coldstream Farm to give input as to what they'd like to see on this trail and how they'd like to see it programmed, how they'd like to see it look, what's the story we're telling with it. And I just appreciate Steve Austin and Beth Wilmot for all their hard work and Laura Williams at the Knight Foundation for making this possible. And that big clock that we see downtown and you want to put in here, that clock means a whole lot to myself and Council Member James as we're watching it tick down on these two projects. And we have a very strong deadline that we're up against to see these things in place. But I truly appreciate all the effort to bring the community around these two projects, and I do believe they'll be city changing and life changing. A couple other things. I wanted to congratulate Council Member Gorton on all of her efforts along with Janet Cowan with the dog park in the 9th District in Wellington Park. We got to cut the ribbon on Sunday at 2 o'clock and had a number of folks and their dogs there to – we see the pent-up demand in the South End for a dog park. And we're not done yet. There's another paddock coming. And the other thing that you mentioned that day that I thought was interesting, I piggybacked off. Council Member Gordon referred to a study that was done by our own Parks and Rec Department. And they asked folks, what do you use in the facilities we currently have and what do you want to see in our parks facilities? And dog parks were in the top five of both of those. But trails were also actually number one in those. And what I'm just so thrilled about, though, is to see the trail open up in Wellington Park. And it's extremely gratifying to drive by that every single day and see just numerous people during the daylight hours all over that place. And my hope is that that becomes a mini-arboretum and a real signature park for us. And we finally have seen 32 acres come online after sitting there for 12 years. The last thing I want to say is that as an economic development task force, Council Member Stenet and Vice Mayor Gray, one of the things that we have maybe an opportunity to do that I want to put on everybody's radar, over the last couple of years, Council Member Robin Engel from the 22nd District in Louisville and I have been looking for opportunities to put our councils together and talk about how Louisville and Lexington can work together. And one of the things that we've been talking about is looking at a date in March, late February, early March for us to go as an economic development task force us to go as a council and others from the community up to meet with them and to discuss a number of things but in particular as it relates to economic development their experience with the Ryder Cup and what the where they were two years out as we start to head into the World Equestrian Games what was their economic impact and if you remember 300,000 people in Louisville were without power during that event but the world never saw that And Council Member Lane in the Lane Report did a phenomenal article or set of articles about that. And so Council Member Engel and I are working on trying to put that together. And hopefully we can have that as a trip for this body and others in our community to go up and talk with them about that. That ends my report. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to move to refer the issue of dog tethering or chaining to the Services Committee. I was going to give a little description of why, but I appreciate your second, Council Member Morton. Unsafe conditions for dogs, in many cases with children, are attractive nuisances, and they approach these dogs as they're chained and the dogs don't like their situation and it's unsafe in those situations. And then also the more obvious, and that's the cruelty to the dogs themselves. So I thought maybe we'd just take a look at it in services and see what we might be able to do about it. We have a motion and a second to refer the matter of dog tethering to the services committee. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Does any other council member have a report? I only have one very brief thing since Mr. Powell is here. I do want to call to everyone's attention, especially since the matter of yard signs came up a few moments ago. the fact that our code enforcement folks received some recognition from the Environmental Commission last week and they were recognized and received an award for having collected in excess of 10,000 illegal signs last year. So Cal, please express our appreciation to everybody and code enforcement you all have done a great job on that front. I have nothing further. Does anyone wish to address the council on matters not on the agenda today. All right. We have a motion. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Mayor. I move that we go into a closed session pursuant to KRS 61.8101B NG in order to discuss an economic development matter involving real property. An open discussion would likely affect the value of a specific property to be acquired for public use and would jeopardize the siting, retention, expansion, or upgrading of a business. So moved. Councilmember Stenet is moved. Councilmember Gordon has seconded that we go into closed session. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries. Thank you.