# Planning Commission Work Session - February 20, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · February 20, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6343 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6343?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-02-20 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: March 28, 2026 - **Length**: 32,581 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Commission met on February 20, 2025, at 1:30 p.m. in the Phoenix Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. The meeting covered two agenda items, both informational in nature: an update on the Downtown Area Master Plan and a briefing on House Bill 443. No votes were taken and no public comments were heard during the session. ## Contested Items Two items generated notable debate during the February 20, 2025 Commission meeting. **Downtown Area Master Plan Boundaries** Discussion over the proposed boundaries for the Downtown Area Master Plan became heated, with concerns raised that the mapped area was drawn too broadly and encompassed suburban areas not typically considered part of downtown. Commissioners questioned whether including these outlying areas was appropriate for a plan intended to guide downtown development. The structured data does not identify specific individuals by name or record a final outcome for this item. **House Bill 443 Implementation** Commissioners also engaged in a contentious discussion regarding the implementation of House Bill 443. The central concern was that the bill's requirements would remove existing opportunities for public input during the development plan review process, potentially diminishing neighborhood engagement in land use decisions. Participants raised questions about the impact this change would have on residents' ability to weigh in on projects affecting their communities. As with the boundary discussion, the available data does not specify which commissioners led the debate or record a definitive resolution reached during the meeting. ## Downtown Area Master Plan [timestamp: 0:01:05] Boyd O. Sewe presented an overview of the Downtown Area Master Plan, an initiative developed in response to Lexington's 2024 comprehensive plan. The presentation was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken by the Commission. Sewe outlined the purpose of the master plan as an effort to update the existing downtown plan so that it aligns with Lexington's long-term vision for a vibrant downtown. The update is intended to bring downtown planning guidance into conformance with the broader goals and priorities established in the 2024 comprehensive plan. No additional speakers, debates, or specific concerns were recorded in connection with this agenda item. The item was received by the Commission as a presentation only. ## House Bill 443 Update [timestamp: 27:29] Traci Wade presented an informational update on House Bill 443, which impacts local zoning ordinances and development plan processes. According to Wade, the bill necessitates several changes, including updates to clarify definitions, modifications to existing processes, and the implementation of objective criteria within the relevant regulatory framework. No vote or formal action was taken on this item, as it was presented for informational purposes only. --- ## Full transcript to everyone. It is now 1 30 February 20th 2025. I'd like to call this meeting to order and first on the agenda. Downtown area master plan boy. Good afternoon planning commission. My name is Boyd. I'm here to present on the downtown area master plan. The downtown area master plan is a direct response to the 2024 comprehensive plan, specifically placemaking policy 13, which calls for an update to the downtown master plan. The 2045 comprehensive plan was shaped by extensive public outreach where the community identified a new downtown master plan as a key priority. Recognizing this need, council member Legree led efforts to secure funds to develop a downtown area master plan. Once completed, the plan will be considered by the planning commission as an amendment to the 2045 comprehensive plan ensuring it aligns with Lexington's long-term vision for a vibrant, livable and well-designed downtown. This framework will guide future land use decisions, reinforcing a strategic and sustainable approach to downtown development for generations to come. The last adopted downtown master plan came from the 1965 urban renewal project incorporated into the 1973 comprehensive plan. Like many renewal efforts in that era, this plan prioritized large-scale redevelopment, often at the expense of existing communities and historic urban fabric. Urban renewal in the 60s drastically reshaped downtowns across the country, frequently favoring new infrastructure and commercial expansions over neighborhood preservation. In Lexington, one of the more ambitious proposals included a highway cutting through the city center, an idea that was ultimately never realized but reflected the era's disregard for existing urban communities. As you can see, that was Winchester Road that came through downtown. On the other side, that was Newton Park that came through downtown and proceeded to Vassell Road. That would have been a highway coming through downtown. Luckily, that was not done. The defined downtown area almost exclusively designated for commercial and retail use, reinforcing a business-first approach that left little room for other types of development, public green space or a more balanced human-centered urban environment. If you can see the blue line, that's where the proposed downtown area was, and the red and blue infills, all that is general commercial and retail costs. The only part that was designed for residential within the downtown area is that small piece there, which is behind this building. Since the last adopted master plan, Lexington has added roughly 170,000 residents. Without a defined area or framework, downtown has evolved organically but lacks a cohesive strategy for future growth. The 2007 downtown master plan envisioning the future was not formally adopted. This limited its use as a basis for development or policies. A successful downtown plan requires input from residents, businesses and institutions, each voice shaping a more connected, livable urban fabric. Engaging the public in meaningful, inclusive ways will be central, ensuring that every stakeholder has a seat at the table. Once a consultant is brought on board, they will guide outreach efforts, working closely with planning staff to cultivate a shared vision for downtown future. The engagement process will capture the diverse perspective needs and aspirations for the community, creating a plan rooted in local identity and long-term sustainability. Investment will be focused on fostering growth that enhances rather than displaces, ensuring that improvements serve current and future residents. Neighborhoods with H1 overlays will be supported to remain vibrant, not static, balancing preservation with economic vitality. Some of the key objectives in the master plan will include building on successful projects like Garden Park and Town Branch, encouraging stronger public-private collaborations, prioritizing investment strategies that promote long-term stability and opportunity for everyone in the downtown and surrounding areas, promote a sense of belonging while encouraging thoughtful investments that benefit both current and future residents, strengthen partnerships between downtown and key institutions like UK and Transylvania, which anchor opposite ends of the urban core, promote connections to surrounding neighborhoods, making downtown a more accessible, through walkable, pedestrian-friendly design, ensure the future of development welcomes people from all backgrounds by supporting a mix of housing, businesses, and public space, create a thriving, people-focused downtown that enhances quality of life and economic opportunity for all. The City Council will play a key role, particularly in securing funding for infrastructure and capital projects. This map provides a starting point to define the downtown study area. The infill and redevelopment area map was developed using the 1934 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. It outlines preliminary areas the consultant will work with. The selected consultant will define this area based on data, community input, and planning best practices. It's important to note this map is a framework, not a final designation. We anticipate adjustments to create a downtown area map as the planning process unfolds. As we move to the next phase, selecting the right consultant will be essential to bring our shared vision to life. Engaging with the City Council will ensure that the design approach aligns with funding opportunities and broader policy goals. Community input and collaboration are the heart of this process. We invite Lexingtonians, especially those from around and within the downtown area, to stay involved and help shape a vibrant, sustainable future for downtown Lexington. We look forward to working closely with the Planning Commission at every step of the way to create a plan that reflects both our aspirations and practical needs. Thank you. Your insight and participation will be invaluable as we embark on the transformative journey for our downtown landscape. Questions? Thank you, Boyd. I've been actually kind of excited about this particular study because I have an affinity for downtown. I am concerned about the map. I think it's way too big. And I know that that's just kind of a starting point, the map that you showed maybe two slides ago. Because I think if we give a consultant that map and say this is your starting point for downtown, it's downtown plus 80%. I mean, I think it's way too big. So is there any discussion about redefining the borders of downtown other than just this map? So we don't have, as I say, the last... That's the last downtown map we have from 1965. And that's way too small. So the map that we're looking at, how were those tentative boundaries established? So this is the infill and redevelopment map which we have. As I said, this is from the 1934 Sanborn map. And we're not telling the consultant that this is what you use. It's draw from this. It's the public input that will determine where the boundary is. We don't want to pick it. We don't have the data to support whatever we say. It's why we are hiring a consultant to do the public outreach and see the neighborhoods that will put us in, leave us out, or the neighborhoods that will need anything to do with downtown. So that's part of the process, defining where the downtown is. Okay. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. I thought that that map was going to be given to the consultants as a starting point for downtown, when in reality it has quite a bit of suburbia in it. It's the starting point. So are you concerned the picture is what establishes the- I'm concerned that if you have a consultant who's not from around here and we give them that map, they're going to be studying a lot of neighborhoods that are not downtown or aspects of Lexington that has nothing to do with downtown. The RFP specifically mentioned it, that this is a starting point. They can either use this or if they determine there's some areas that will qualify as downtown and not on this map, they can be brought in. So it's not set in stone. So, Mr. Davis, I think the important aspect of this is that we don't start too small and that we allow for the public engagement process to really inform how this works. This is also very important for us to be talking about how the downtown connects with our surrounding neighborhoods, especially within the densest part of our community, which is that infill and redevelopment area. So it gives that starting point. It is not going to be the whole of it. We didn't anticipate it to be that way. But since we haven't done this since the 60s, I think it's pretty important that we go ahead and start broad and work our way in. That allows us to talk about those connections between the surrounding neighborhoods, the surrounding community anchors like University of Kentucky, Transylvania, and then also many of the districts that Boyd has brought up within the RFP process, like our distillery district, our national avenues, those things that really support the connections into a downtown area. No, certainly connections are everything. I just don't want to miss the core of what we're trying to accomplish by drinking from the firehose. That's all. So this is just curiosity on my part. You mentioned they would be looking at data to help them define the boundaries. What kind of data? Will they be just population location? Population, transportation. There's so much that goes into it. It's not just one specific thing. Data is one of the things I mentioned. And things that affect downtown include retail. It includes population, as you mentioned. It includes transportation. It includes housing. All that, they have to look at all that before they determine what will work and what will not work. One quick question as it relates to it. I understand my colleague's position about it being too big, but once you get before the community, if you ask a question, you've got to be willing to live with the answer. What if they said it was too small? Are you willing to go bigger than that? This is the starting point. You can go bigger, you can go smaller. They just have to justify why they are picking what they are picking. Because, as I said, we hope you guys are involved, so all these comments will be directed to the consultant who will have better answers than me. Boyd, what I'm seeing, you know, you're talking about consultants, council involvement, stakeholders, which is good and is needed and so forth. But how do we bring that group together to create the incentives that we really need to get people downtown to live or get more businesses downtown? So, let me read exactly what it was. Part of the study is, we've had downtown for so long. I'll take myself as an example. I don't live in downtown, but once I get off work, I'm gone. If you ask me why I don't come downtown, I don't have a solid reason. So, the consultant maybe will do something that will bring me back downtown. I know on Thursdays, I come back downtown during the summer for a reason, and some other people might do the same, like Thursday Night Live. So, those are some of the things that can bring people back downtown, maybe shopping, maybe retail or hospitality. That's part of the master plan, knowing what will bring people back downtown and make our downtown more active and vibrant. Okay. You know, somehow, you know, whoever, consultants or whoever, you know, need to really work on incentives is the best way that I can put it to, you know, make it appealing to get these people to come back. And incentivizing, I guess, is one way to do it. You know, maybe that's more council involvement. I'm not for sure. Just having an active downtown, like the nightlife or weekend activities or after-work programs. I normally give my fellow co-workers at planning an example of downtown Cincinnati. They have the fountain square that is programmed for lunch and after work. Keeps people downtown all the time. That's just one example of something that can work. The consultant will look at Lexington and figure out what is it that will bring people downtown. So, it's, there's no one answer that fits all, but it's part of the study to know what we can do to bring people back downtown and keep people downtown after work. Mr. Chairman, if I may. I'm so glad you brought up Cincinnati. I was there last week and I had to explain to my kids why we were going from one place to another place that was a four-minute drive downtown Cincinnati, but we had to get on the interstate to do it. We had to get on the interstate and then immediately exit. So, I'm so grateful that in the 60s, Lexington said no against the advice of professional consultants who said you have to do this or else your city will die. But, you know, Cincinnati, I think everything has to be balanced and you're right. I mean, they have that great programming, but you have to get on the interstate to go three streets over and downtown. There's a whole history behind the urban renewal. Cincinnati is one of the cities that you can see the effects of urban renewal. Totally. I think it's hard for us, I mean, you know, early on the original pitches about Town Branch Park and the focus on other communities that had a major water feature downtown, I think it's hard for us to imagine how much impact that's going to have, not just in good weather, but there are structures there that are going to bring people downtown when the weather is not great. And I think that, you know, it was sold to us as a key to making downtown more vibrant and to me that's just a starting point. Yeah, I'm just having trouble reconciling sort of a little bit the what the goals are with what the problems were. I mean, I guess I'm having a few questions. One, I'm not, it's not 100% clear to me. I mean, I understand that by all practical purposes, there is no downtown plan. So essentially, what there is, is a downtown zone, which essentially allows development to look like and take shape in different ways than is allowed outside of the downtown zone with density setback, lack of green space, building to building allowances. So we say right now we don't have a plan, we have an area where we allow development to look different and more flexibility for uses than we allow outside of that area. So is the point of the plan, I mean, I don't, I mean, if the point of the plan is for how to convert a public square like Fountain Square into a corporate entertainment zone, I mean, I don't think that's really what the point of the plan is, is the point of the plan to expand the area that development looks different, because essentially that's what downtown is now, is an area where development looks different. Are we saying we want development to look different in a bigger area? Or if we're not saying that, I mean, you know, we're not just focused on the downtown core, so this is, it's not like New Circle Road where we have kind of a nexus and we're looking at New Circle or Nicholasville Road where we're looking at a road, how do we redesign this road, how do we put transit stops on it, how would that shape development? It seems like these other small area plans have come back to how they actually shape development, so are we saying this downtown type development, I mean, I guess that's not super clear, but I'm going to jump off, because I think I've covered too many questions there. I think I understand, Mr. Mickler, what you're asking, and I believe, if I do understand, you'll see that that downtown zone that you're speaking of has been applied without a plan, and some people think that's all right, that it worked out okay, and then maybe others don't think that's okay, so that's part of what we want this to do, is define what is downtown, and then in that, where, what do we want that to look like, and if so, if that just stays, you know, Vine and Main kind of thing, then we've got our answer, we continue marching on with what we've done, but if we see that through this process, through the public engagement, through the data research and all of that, we see that there are sort of, you think National Avenue to Distillery, Gray Line to UK, is there something in there that's also downtown, and maybe it doesn't look exactly like Main and Vine, but there's another step that it can look like, that it looks different than what it is now, functions more like a downtown, because you're connecting these pieces, but it's not considered the suburbs that it was a hundred years ago, when they were moving out, so I think those are not predetermined, but those are questions, because we have enough data now to know the zone changes that have taken place on Midland Avenue and Maxwell and Newtown Pike, to know there's pressure to have a downtown look that is not areas that are not considered downtown, so let's get that a little more unified if we can. I'd like to suggest that part of the planning process is to start with the question, not what do we want it to look like, but what needs to be happening down there, what do we want to happen downtown, and if that's people living there, 24 hours a day, if that's access to grocery stores, if that's access to the arts, if that's schools, like the new technology center going into the Harold Leder building, that that drives what it's going to look like, and that has to be fundamental, I think we have to answer that question. I think we're also going to see from this process, it may be driven by identifying new connections which can promote the type of development that can make us have a more vibrant downtown, connectivity is going to be a big piece of this, and I think taking a look at a larger, well, they're going to determine what they look at, but I would imagine if we put the infrastructure in place to meet needs that the community desires, that could be beneficial. So connectivity is going to be key to program downtown in the way that the community wants that to happen. So this will be a real interesting process that's starting now. That kind of gets me into my question about scheduling this. We're starting now, we've determined that there are funds available to hire a consultant. Can you walk me through the steps from funds available to hire the consultants, time period to select a consultant, and then maybe skip through to when we're looking at a plan that could be actionable to us as a committee to make, to review, and then start our process? So first things first, seems like we think alike. The title of the master plan was reconnecting to our downtown. So connections is very important. The time schedule is the RFP went out on last Thursday, the 13th. It's a one-month process, so on the 14th of March it closes, and then consultants, we should have one on board by May, and the first public engagement project we're expecting from them is to coincide with the Lex 250 Lex on July 4th. That will be the first public engagement we expect from the consultant. That way they can see what a vibrant downtown is, they can engage with the public and see what people want. There will be a larger participation in the downtown area, and they can engage with those people and start from there. And then the whole thing is supposed to take a maximum of 18 months. Hopefully they do it faster than that. They just have to be very thorough with this, and as I said, planning commission will be a part of this, hopefully step-by-step throughout, and with the public engagements, hope to see faces there in every event that they hold. So just to build on that, I'm assuming what it sounds like you're saying is it's really going to follow the same kind of process that we used for the master plan we just completed, that there will be multiple stakeholder groups, there will be general public groups, there will be business people, and there will be iterations of what comes out of this that we can react to before we get to the final plan. Is that a fair assumption? It's fair because public engagement is, I can't stress that enough, making a plan that is done in a closed room, then show it to the public and be like, this is what we came up with. I don't think that's beneficial to the community. We have to hear what everyone wants to see, what everyone wants done before we come up with a plan. So there will be a lot of public engagement. And we've talked to a few people in the community, and some of the things are out there, or people have contacted us, asking us what is in the RFP, telling us what they want to see. So information, we've been collecting information for a while now, since this was announced by council. People have been very active in wanting to find out more. Boyd, you may have answered this, and if so, I apologize. Will the consultants also, I saw they certainly will consider bicycle and pedestrian safety. Will they also reconsider traffic patterns, like one-way streets going back to perhaps two ways, or blinking red lights where we currently have traffic signals that maybe aren't entirely necessary at that particular location? That will be something that the consultant will bring to us, to make recommendations about a whole complete street process, and how that works with the complete streets program that is going through now. Thank you, Boyd. Thank you. All righty. Tracy Wade, House Bill 443 update. So I anticipated that maybe a few of you would bring the paper we gave you last time. I think Mr. Owens gets the gold star, because he brought back his paper, but you're so close. Okay, so we did print out, and again, trying not to waste paper for you all, so that if you have questions, comments, that you can mark them on there, and or maybe it'll jog your memory about a question you had when you read it through. So I don't, I honestly do not want to go through every page with you, because I think that would not be a productive use of our time. But I do want to hit a few highlights, and I have put every piece of text into this presentation so that we can collectively look at it if we need to, a particular page or topic. I do want to, just as a refresher, House Bill 443 went into, or it was passed last year and goes into effect this July, and so that has really created our timeline for commission review and then ultimately council review. And then there, it doesn't touch every article of the Zoning Ordinance, but it does touch, I would say, about a third of our different articles in the Zoning Ordinance. And just in terms of highlighting, these are the kind of generically six things we're hoping to do. We want to update the ordinance to clarify for definitions, we want to make sure that that's consistent, and to also address some process changes that we are implementing thanks to 443. We want to update the ZOTA filing process, we've talked about that a little bit last fall. We want to remove our discretionary criteria related to development and processes and replace them with objective criteria. And then we want to create some standards in the Zoning Ordinance that have been requested by a few of our divisions, but have not been in the text. So that often happens during our sign-off process, from traffic engineering, bike and ped, DES, and then, yes, sir? Tracy, real quick. Yeah. Can you just tell us, so that we know what we're reading, what the difference is between the red and the blue? Oh, sure. So black is existing text, red is what we handed you at initiation day, and the blue are small tweaks that we, in starting to review the text with people, found that either corrected a typo or made something a little bit clearer. So the blue are changes since you saw this last. Okay. Thank you. Very minor. If you want a copy, Daniel, we'll still give you a copy. We're going to reduce the number of items that are coming to the Planning Commission for a public meeting, and then I think probably key to most of this is implementing revisions to the development plan process. So I'm going to highlight two particular articles that I think you might have the most questions about and that we might get the most comments about. So I'm going to go to those quickly, and again, remember I told you I put everything in here. Okay. So we're skipping forward to Article 16. So Article 16 is the section of the Zoning Ordinance that relates to regulations for vehicular use areas. This is the section of the ordinance that was updated two years ago related to parking standards. So it did get an overhaul recently, but with this text, we are doing a few things. We're bringing in some newer bike parking and storage requirements. We're bringing in some standards, more specific standards for drive-thrus and drive-up windows, and then we're also bringing in commercial access standards. So some of those things are, all of those things are things that our sign-offs have been asking for, and this is the effort to make those objective standards in the Zoning Ordinance so that anyone that applies is clear about what the standard is. And then in 21, we'll talk about what the process is if you can't meet a standard. One of the areas of concern has been when a car parks, sometimes that car overhangs. And so in this section of the ordinance related to our commercial parking, if a car is going to overhang a sidewalk, that sidewalk needs to be a little bit bigger to ensure that it has ADA compliance. So that's getting addressed in Section A3A1. We're also adding two more requirements to our, these are for our business zones. One has to do with, and I know we've seen this recently on development plans, and I'm going to use an example of a grocery store. We've had a few grocery stores lately. Grocery stores like to have a wider drive aisle in front of their structure. Sometimes that's for fire access, just vehicular movement in front of the store. What we've seen is when there's that longer distance that a pedestrian has to cross, that there should be, make sure that we have it marked, but also have a raised crossing. If that distance between the parking and the building is, or the driveway, is more than 24 feet. So 24 feet is a 12-foot lane going in both directions, but our grocery stores like to get up to about 30 feet. So when that's the case, we have been asking for raised medians. That slows traffic. It identifies an area where pedestrians are supposed to be and cars are slowing down. So this puts that in an objective standard where there are internal walkways that are needed and it's crossing. The distance you're crossing is 24 feet, well more than 24 feet. It should be a raised pedestrian crossing and it gives the specifics of that. And then the third addition in this section is, has related to parking islands. So when a walkway goes through there, it has to be not just markings on the road, but actually a raised sidewalk. I'm going to skip that one because it's probably not going to come up too much. So we do have some standards currently, very minimal, related to drive-throughs and stacking. And so this text proposes to delete that paragraph and then add quite a bit of information about drive-throughs. It objectively tells an applicant how big or how long your drive-through stacking has to be. So sometimes a vehicle might be 12 feet long, small, to 20 feet long. So this uses a distance for each vehicle of 22 feet that gives spacing between vehicles and it gives, again, an applicant a known quantity in order to design their drive-through and its stacking. This also really doesn't apply the same standard of five spaces to every drive-through. It starts to divide them up into different land uses and takes out the requirement that right now we don't count the space where you order. This would take that away. Now we can count the space that you order, but we're adjusting for that. So instead of five, it's six. And then for drive up windows, three. So that's the general standard we're hoping for. And then I think car wash is in there too. If an applicant wants to modify the required stacking, they would go to the planning commission and ask for a change to that. For drive up windows and drive-throughs, there'd be a requested spacing of at least 100 feet from a residential area. And then also that those drive up windows and the stacking associated with them be screened by landscaping. And then for drive-through lanes with a single lane, there's a bit more information about if a pedestrian is crossing, that that would be a marked location at least five foot wide. Again, we're objectifying these standards for the person designing the site. Let's see if there's anything else that I think... Drive-through lanes, 10 to 12 feet wide. So it's specific there. And then when we first drafted this, we identified the multi-lane drive-throughs as needing to just go to the planning commission. That's something that we've been discussing with some of our stakeholders and might be something that needs to go in the first list here of just what's the standard for making the double drive-through work as opposed to sending it to the commission for any reason. For bike parking and storage, again, we have one section of a standard right now. This would expand that to clarify when you have a bike rack, make sure that it's big enough and located in a place where the bike can attach to it. You can't put it right next to the building or you can't get as many bikes on it. Ensuring that for our multi-family developments, we disperse bike racks and storage throughout the development and within a parking structure, putting your parking spaces for bikes near the entrance and or the elevator shafts and that sort of thing. And then commercial access standards, these are things that are coming from traffic engineering. And again, we're starting to hear some concerns about some of the language. So we're acknowledging those, again, stakeholder comments and then we'll circle back to traffic engineering to have those conversations and ensure that the language is adequate and objective but still serving our needs. I would say, I'm trying to think which one of these might cause the most concern. Some of them are things that you've heard lately, like Chick-fil-A wanting to have a wider access point than 30 feet. So this, again, objectively puts in there a 20 to 30 foot window of how wide your access point can be. And then if someone needs something larger, they would come to the commission for that. This does provide some information about gating and not allowing gates for primary access but only for a secondary access that's emergency only. I think that's probably it for the Article 16 stuff. Before I go to 21, does anyone have questions or concerns that we need to chat about today? Robin? Yeah, just a couple of clarifications. So the way that this just broadly would work would be that the preliminary development plan would be reviewed at the time at the public hearing with the zone change if there is one. Yes, I was just going to get to that. Oh, okay. Sorry, I was just, in terms of 16, does anyone have questions about 16? Oh, in terms of 16? Yeah, just the vehicular use stuff. The question that I have with that would be, what does the process look like if someone is essentially trying to meet the spirit and the goals of what, you know, these are trying to achieve but is doing so in a way that doesn't meet the checklist? So for example, you know, you might see things like pedestrian safety or slow vehicular traffic being achieved with, you know, use of natural stone or different elements or you might even see drive aisles that are wide enough for a grocery store with, you know, but the side of those aisles is maybe a stone or a grid with grass because they're not typically used. You know, these are not common things in Lexington that we would want to necessarily codify for every development, but we, I think, would also not want to ban them. Right. So that's kind of, I guess, my question. And I think that gets to Article 21 in terms of process, so if there is a way to meet it and meet the letter of the law, it wouldn't need to come to the commission, but if there's something that's, and it's not meant to be a time, you know, demand for the applicant, but if it's outside of the standard that's adopted, it would come to the commission for action. Even if it's a unique, you know, positive. And so I guess my question with that is right now when we do a waiver, we say why the current standard is inappropriate rather than, right, it has to, if I'm not mistaken, it usually has to say, like, why the current standard is inappropriate and why the, like, waiver makes sense in the context. In examples like I'm thinking about, the standard might not be inappropriate, they just want to do something different for, in some cases, positive reasons. Right. So I think that's something we can address in Article 21 in terms of waivers as a reason for the commission to consider them and potentially approve them so that they are meeting the intent, as you said, but in a way different than the standard that exists. So we can ensure that that language allows for that kind of flexibility or uniqueness, but it would still be something that came to the commission. So the idea would be that, in my mind, 90%, that these standards would hit 90% of our applications, right? Are things we are already asking for, so they shouldn't be new or different than what we have already been doing. And then we only have about 10% that say, yeah, that standard doesn't work for me, or I have a different approach, can I have the commission approve this instead? That will mean your meetings are shorter. Does everybody agree with that? I think there are going to be so many unintended consequences with this. I mean, as I'm hearing you, Tracy, explain everything, my guess is that we're going to be seeing just as many plans, because if, I don't know, if something does come and it meets every single standard, great, but if it doesn't, if it meets 99 out of 100, then it comes to the Planning Commission, correct? Yes. That's my guess, is that our volume probably is not going to change. So Article 21 is the section of our zoning ordinance that addresses development plans, what is required on a development plan, and then the process for development plan review. It addresses major versus minor, which major development plans are what the Planning Commission acts on, minor development plans are, for the most part, not something that you all have seen. We've had a few lately for Chick-fil-A, but typically those are handled by staff because they meet a certain threshold in the ordinance, they're not adding square footage, they're not moving access points more than 25 feet, so we've given them limits, and the minor development plans would remain the same. So we're not changing it so that all development plans come to the commission. The kind of the highlights of what the staff is suggesting in terms of implementing House Bill 443 would be now to ask that all major development plans have a pre-application meeting, and that may be something that can be 15 minutes, not onerous for the applicant, and can be on teams, it doesn't have to be an in-person meeting, but just a discussion about the process and the requirements and how that can be handled. Also addressing some of the filing requirements that have not been codified, but we want to make sure that we are continuing to get the correct information, but then of most importance I think is the process. So what this would do is put more emphasis on our Technical Review Committee, and again, that's made up of representatives from each of the divisions that deal with development, as well as members of Fayette County Public Schools, Soil Conservation, all the utilities, there's probably a few other outside agencies that participate, and they have the ability to come and voice their requests for the development. It would make the Technical Committee really the primary place where you would present your plan, or we would present the plan, and the objective criterias are being identified of you filed 30 days ago, here's what you meet, or here's what you don't meet. Do you want to postpone and fix these things and come back next month and get it approved, and then never go to the Commission? Or do you want to potentially file for a waiver and move to the Subdivision Committee and the Planning Commission? And originally we had included some text about disapproval, we understand that might not be the best way to do that, so allowing someone to continue to postpone at the Technical Committee for really as long as they want to to solve the problems that might have been identified. Maybe we have a deadline of six months or a year, I don't know, but at this point we wanted to take out kind of the disapproval language, but allow someone to continue to postpone if they are choosing not to go to the Commission for a waiver. If someone does want to go to the Planning Commission for a full review, they would continue to come to the Subdivision Committee first for a review, but this identifies a number of types of plans or criteria where those plans would have to go to the Planning Commission. The first is where other ordinances stipulate that the Planning Commission receives a recommendation, and that's the Royal Springs Aquifer Committee, we see that from time to time, Paris Pike Corridor Commission, and then the other one we mention here is the Board of Architectural Review. Sometimes they will require the Planning Commission take a particular action if there's a development plan associated with it, so we don't want to undermine those other ordinances that are in effect that require Planning Commission action, so if Paris Pike is making a recommendation to the Planning Commission, we want it to be to the Planning Commission as opposed to a committee or a, yes sir? Tracy, should we not include the Rural Land Management Board as well? We certainly can. I think that's been a discussion and, you know, kind of a, I don't want to say point of contention, but they've certainly would appreciate, I think, a voice. Secondly, if the developer requests a waiver, that would go to the Planning Commission for action. Third, the division, if the Division of Planning refers a plan because there is a public health, safety, or welfare issue, and that is addressed by House Bill 443 specifically, or if the development plan is filed in conjunction with a zone change, so the Planning Commission is evaluating the, whether a plan is consistent with or in agreement with the comprehensive plan, so as part of that process, we'll continue to review those. And then, if a, that might be the last one, yeah. Tracy, when you're, I want to make sure that we, some developments require, via the ordinance, to have a recommendation from, let's say, the Paris Pike Corridor or the Rural Land Management. We need to make sure that we don't, that those recommendations are not, the necessity for those recommendations are not broadened through this process. As in, we need to have a strong definition for, which we do, for the Royal Springs Aquifer, and we do as well for the Paris Pike Corridor. We need to also have that for anyone else that's going to be considered, such as the Rural Land Management, because we have seen in our hearings where there has been a, maybe misunderstanding of the area in which these recommendations are required. So we need to make sure it's well-defined, and those requirements are not broadened through anything we do here. So, just for clarification, sort of building on what Bruce is saying, we had two cases last time that involved development in the floodplain, and there was a separate process even though we'd given approvals, they were going to go to a different group. Does that need to be stated in here somewhere, because that's a huge, they've got the ability to deny the plan, and I don't know whether that should happen earlier, whether it has to happen later, but does it need to be explicitly addressed? That's a good question. I think historically it's been after the Planning Commission takes action, or if it's related to another process that doesn't even require Planning Commission action, but I can certainly talk to the Division of Engineering about whether they would want the appeal process first before it goes to the Commission. To me that seems more logical than what we did the last two times, but they may have some reasons to want to do it otherwise. I think that's a great suggestion, because we don't want to draw the process out for the applicant, where they need to spend the time and the money to get an approval from us if they will be most likely denied from a different group. If there's a way we could work with those organizations to help speed up the process and reduce the amount of cost that would be associated to the applicant. Here's a question about existing ordinance language. I mean, I know that the Rural Land Management Plan has been codified over the years into the ordinance. Can we, I guess, research how does that existing relationship relate to what we're looking at here? Stuff that has been codified years ago as the Rural Land Management Plan or the Rural Land Management Board, or if the Paris Pike Corridor Commission says no initially to something. I just want to see how all of that relates to current language, a legal implication, I mean. Okay. We can look at that. The fifth thing up here, I guess I'll, whoops, yeah, go back. The preliminary development plan associated with the MAP amendment has expired and a new plan is necessary. So part of the ordinance today is that preliminary development plans expire after two years, and they are deemed disapproved. Historically, our division has allowed someone to apply for their final development plan even though their preliminary has been, in essence, expired and disapproved. This would kind of change that so the expiration would still occur, but now ask them to come back with a plan, and for that plan, if it's preliminary or final, has to go to the Commission so that we can make sure that you all are evaluating the notes and or any commitments that came from that preliminary development plan to ensure that they don't just skip ahead to the final, only go to tech committee, change, completely change the development. This would require them to come back to the Commission for review to make sure that we're all in agreement that, yes, this is consistent with what we talked about previously in terms of in agreement, the comprehensive plan or a small area plan that might have been considered. I guess, in essence, we don't want someone to completely change their plan without your all's acceptance of that and knowledge, so moving on to development plan procedures. These were pretty minor changes. This has mentioned late filings for a long time that we haven't done since probably 2018, so taking that out, ensuring that our certifications are correct. Currently on our major development plans, it says this plan was approved by the Planning Commission on this date. Well, that might not always be the case, so making sure that they have an option of, if it was approved by the Planning Commission, signed like this. If it was tech committee, it would say something different. Here's the timing restriction, so if a preliminary development plan expires, they would come back with a new plan for Commission consideration before they move on to the next step. And then this is kind of embedded in there right now, a final development plan lasts for five years, all buildings are supposed to be constructed off that plan within the five years. If they haven't been, they expire, and they do need to refile a new plan to meet all the current standards. Contents of development plans, so a lot of times you've heard us say, hey, we want you to put that new site statistics table we like on there, so we've probably heard that over the past year quite a bit. We are codifying those things to ensure that everybody has access to the same information and knows what information needs to be on the development plan. So it does look like we're making quite a few changes, we're just kind of beefing up so everybody is aware that they need to show pedestrian access ways and crosswalks and that sort of stuff on the plan. Tracy, in regards to that, just kind of as an addendum that you all can provide, maybe an example of the format you want that in, so it can be adopted by the engineers to have the proper information and the proper format that makes it easier for you all, and it also makes it easier for us when it's time for us to see it. So for example, this is the table that is appropriate, and hopefully they adopt it. So updating what information is on the plans, and then the next section here is ensuring that we get our standard notes on there. So to date, only two of the standard notes are in the ordinance, but yet other divisions are asking for standard notes, so we'll get those included as well. And then ensuring that we have the right certifications, whether it's you went to the commission or you went to tech committee, so they have those two options. For a final development plan, you may not know this, but everything that appears on a preliminary should also be on the final, plus a few things. So the plus a few things are instead of five foot contours, now we need two foot contours, so it's more detailed information. We need a tree protection plan, not just an inventory. And then I guess those are the only two things. So this adds something that DES has asked for, which is an environmentally sensitive and geologic hazard area supplemental plan. They would like for the environmental information to be pulled off the development plan onto a separate plan, so that it does, because currently sometimes it conflicts, not conflicts in a bad way, but makes the plan harder to read. So they're asking for that supplemental, to be on a supplemental plan sheet as opposed to on the main development plan. A couple changes there. Requirements to development plans shall follow the established process. All development plans have to meet requirements established by the ordinance, so that's kind of some standard language. Minor amendment tweaks to what we require in terms of submittal, and ensuring that if there is a question about compliance, that the Division of Planning refers that, the proposed amendment, to first the technical committee, or if it's something that would require full commission action, because it doesn't meet the ordinance, then the commission, and then they would follow the other process. This is something that actually Ms. Clark brought up, amendments to development plans. Currently the text there says that the commission can disapprove a development plan if you find that the amendment will adversely affect public health, safety, welfare, or alter the essential character of the development as originally approved. Consistent with House Bill 443, the essential character change isn't really part of what they're asking you to consider. They're asking you to look at public health, safety, welfare. Now a significant change may fall under welfare, but we thought it best to strike this text since it wasn't kind of outside of what House Bill 443 wants us to be working towards. Yes, sir? I got trapped on one thing. In the amendment portion, or maybe somewhere else, we've had an instance when people wanted to postpone, and they wanted to postpone, and they wanted to postpone, and they wanted to postpone. Is there any way that we can indicate that after a certain number of postponements that that would be an automatically disqualifier or disapproval process, or do we legally abound to allow them to do whatever they want to do? You know, I think other communities do have a limit on how many times someone can ask for the Planning Commission to postpone, and after a certain period of time, it just kind of dies or goes away or is deemed disapproved. I think we could consider that if that's something that you... It's not how we've operated, but could certainly change that. Almost like with the tech committee saying, hey, you can only postpone your plan a year. And really, the idea is for that, for limiting it, is once I apply, I'm under those standards, right? So, whatever the ordinance said on June 1st, I'm going to get those standards. The longer someone postpones, and if we're updating our ordinance, we start to hit conflicts. And so, after a certain period of time, you'd say, okay, enough, you all didn't address the issues, now you're disapproved and you start over. We can certainly put that in the ordinance. Well, you know, I hate to put things in the ordinance for just one person, but we do have one person that has been taking advantage of that, and of course, what we did was, as a commission, I think we just made a motion to disapprove. I wasn't sure whether that was legal or not, because they wouldn't have anything in here. So, from my perspective, as a cover for us, to cut that off at some stage would be good. Yeah, usually I think we have you indefinitely postpone something, so then it pulls it off the agenda, and they're able to bring it back if they want to, and they don't repay, they don't pay a new filing fee, but I don't... It doesn't hurt my feelings to make them pay again. It's only $500, it's not $5,000, our filing fees are very low. Let's raise it to $5,000. The Bill Wilson rule. Yeah, the Bill Wilson amendment. So Tracy, here's just a hypothetical, which I hate, but say you have a development plan that checks 99 out of 100 requirements, comes to the planning commission, planning commission says we're fine with it, it looks good, and then there is a substantial major amendment proposed afterwards. This is a discussion for the long term, and certainly for Tracy Jones, but I wouldn't be so quick to strike the end of that last sentence. I think it actually can fall under 443, I just think we need to leave that maybe a little more open, that's all. Let's walk through a specific example that we've dealt with and see how it applies. If we're talking about Maxwell Street and what we saw the first time and what we approved, and then we had essentially substantial changes, whether those would fit under the health, safety and welfare or not, how would, going forward, how can we deal with a situation like that? So I think if the staff feels there's, again, the language from House Bill 443 is evidence of a substantial impact, and I would assume that kind of means a negative impact, to the public health, safety, or welfare, then it can be referred to the commission for action. So it might behoove us to develop some criteria, boundaries, by which the staff would say this is enough to trigger us to send it to the commission. For instance, somebody changing density. If we have a subdivision that, you know, when they came for a zone change, they showed 100 units, and then they came back with 102. To me, that's not enough that would trigger me saying, oh, that's changed the character of the development, we need the commission to review. But if they're doubling their density, that absolutely would change the impact of the development on the roads, you know, the road network, how does it look, lot size, infrastructure changes would likely be necessary. So yes, we should send that. But what's the threshold, right? 100% yes, you know, 2% no, there's a lot of space in between. So I think, you know, we probably need to develop some guidance for ourselves as to when we would refer something and Jim looks. Which would help with consistency. Ms. Worth, I think you raised an interesting, familiar example, because we've just been through that. And I'm going to kind of put Tracy on the spot. How would something like the multifamily design standards apply to that development? And then what kind of guidance would they give us for them to bring it back? So if we're talking about window style versus density, those are completely different things. But the argument that was before the planning commission was the style of the windows, not the density. Well, there was also the setback, the difference in the setback that occurred because the utility easement, which according to some people should have been investigated before the plan came to us, and it totally changed the furniture of the buildings. And leading to the change in the style of the buildings. So that's, and historically, you know, we've had trouble when we try to regulate the style of something if it's not in the H1 overlay. And we've been able to use the multifamily design standards to a certain extent. But I'd like for Tracy to comment on that. I think when an applicant agrees to something at the preliminary development plan stage, we're on much more solid ground, right? We can ask them, hey, are you going to come back with multifamily buildings that meet these recommendations of the comprehensive plan? And they say, yes, we agree to that. And we put a note on the development plan that says they've agreed to it. Then we can hold them to those multifamily design standards. I think we probably need to be pretty specific as to what we think they aren't meeting ahead at the preliminary stage so that they know what they need to meet next time and or if they, yeah, if they need to make changes. It unfortunately, our design standards for multifamily are not part of the ordinance. A lot of the pieces are open space configuration. That's been codified. Access from a structure to the street. That's been codified. So some of those things have been. But I would say the design elements of like articulation or some of those other things are not. So we would need to do another text amendment to get the things that aren't in that appendix to the comp plan into measurable objective standards. So to your point, Judy, I think the difference is on Maxwell, which is both a good example and not a good example for this discussion. The initial renderings were brought to us in the beginning as a selling point. And so I think the staff was perfectly within reason to say we had to take this back. So there will probably be a lot of instances where a developer brings us something initially, this is what I'm going to do, and doing that, it would give you all a perfectly legitimate reason to say, oh, you've changed so substantially, we have to go back. And I think it's okay for us to make that a condition of the preliminary development plan say if the structure is changing, if the layout is changing, again, to what extent I think is probably where the rubber meets the road. But then they agree. Yes, I'm doing this. I promised you. And if it changes, I will come back to the commission for further discussion. And I think part of that is, you know, in the comprehensive plan, we talk about context sensitivity. So how does your structure remain context sensitive if you've now, you know, most of the neighborhood is brick, and, oh, I chose not to do any brick, I just want to do something more modern? Well, now we've lost that context sensitivity of materials that you were responsive to early on and now have maybe gone a different direction, so. I'm thinking through unintended consequences here because I may be wrong, but it seems to me in my time on the commission, we're seeing more renderings earlier in the process, and I personally find that very helpful in trying to make decisions on this. I'm concerned that we're going to discourage the developers from submitting renderings because we're going to hold them more accountable to what we're saying, we're going to hold you more accountable. And I hate to see us lose that. I don't know how to fix that problem. I'm just raising it. That's fair. I'd like to make a comment on that. I don't, please clarify whether or not renderings are required in the development plan process. They are not required. Okay. I'm reluctant to expand requirements of the development plan process. I think what I'm hearing, though, is when they're offered and people say, this is what I'm going to build, and we make findings that it's in agreement with the comprehensive plan, in some regard based on that information, are we getting the, and I hate this, the bait and switch, right? Yeah, I promised a six-foot brick building, but the ordinance really allowed 10. So now I'm going to go 10 and it's not going to be brick and, you know, but what changes? And does that impact the, it does impact the physical form of our development and how our community is growing, so. Understood. But that'll be at the discretion of the developer to provide that information, and if they provide that information, they will then, it looks like by the committee, or they may, they need to understand they may be bound to whatever renderings they provide. They are not, it's not necessary to provide renderings, but if they do, they need to understand that by providing those renderings, they are now bound by the discretion of the committee as it relates to the, as it relates to those renderings. Then we get into the, they will end up in a slippery slope of possibly design modifications to the building based upon the discretion of the planning commission. I think what you might see is more, we saw for a recent zone change, more of a model, like a, it's literally just a form of a building. It doesn't have any information about even where doors and windows are, materials at all, which isn't necessarily as pretty of a picture, but it at least gives the commission and the public an understanding of what's the form of the proposal without getting into those, you know, material details that can be very, very subjective, right? My preference is not your preference kind of thing, so, yeah. I want to, I guess, add a slightly different perspective on the, and this is what I hope we're not losing, because using that Maxwell Street example, although I think you could also use the Newtown Pike example because there are some parallels, you know, one of the advantages that you all sort of have put in place with PlaceBuilder is these are properties that probably would not have been on the map or were not on the map earlier as downtown, and, you know, there's substantially different requirements with these downtown zones or some of the other new zones we've created, like the corridor node or things like that. So you're, they're coming further than anyone's ever been approved for downtown. They've already gotten rejected for the zone in the past. They're applying for a zone that requires no green space basically whatsoever in a neighborhood that's traditionally probably at least a third, if not two-thirds of the property is green space, and, you know, part of the case that they're making is they're adding things to the application that aren't part of the requirement because they're trying to say, hey, this plan is meeting, we're doing these things that aren't in the ordinance, like adding townhouses along Stone, we're doing things that aren't conceivably in the ordinance, like adding green space on it or open space on another level or things like that, and then in turn they get an approval for a zone change that was denied just a few years ago. And so, and, you know, if and when they build it, they will have been successful and I feel like the planning process would have been successful in allowing flexibility to achieve something that you wouldn't necessarily want to allow all development from a B-2 perspective in a second-tier urban neighborhood. And I think the same could be said on Midland, where we have this thing, this is the zone that we need to achieve this. Here is what we're trying to achieve. Can we have this zone? I guess is, and I mean, it could be used in, and that, you know, I guess that flexibility has helped those projects go through. And I guess how do you, to some extent, I think, you know, the, where you might feel like that was, or, you know, you might feel like, you know, we're commenting too much on the details, from my perspective, it's like we're actually allowing a zone that probably without details would, I wouldn't have supported. Does that make sense? You're addressing me on this? To some extent, yeah. Okay. My concern is this body overstepping its ability to regulate. And I think we're talking about development plans here, and development plans do not require renderings and do not require anything more than the example that was provided by Ms. Wade, such as massing. But if the applicant believes that providing renderings and agreeing to meet the renderings requirements would help benefit their case as it applies to a zone change, that's at the discretion, that's at the discretion of the applicant. But we as a body should be able to make decisions based upon what is required by law. I've got a couple of, like, super specific elements of those, because I was just sitting here thinking, and I probably should have gone back and looked at some actual plans, but what are some of the things that have come up in the final development plan, sort of hearings that have gotten put on as conditions? And just a couple of themes seem to come up, and a lot of that has to do with when developments are being put in sort of existing neighborhoods. And a lot of them have to do with impact on the neighbors in those sort of context sensitive ways with, you know, notes that I recollect are not infrequently added pertaining to lighting location or sound, you know, and those are, so I guess, or trash location, like where the trash compactor, you know, is located. Those so much have to do with the neighboring properties and who's there, and especially when it's being done in an infill way. I guess just a follow-up is how to keep, I mean, what, does this eliminate, I guess, that neighbor's ability, does this eliminate not hearing the final development plan to some extent eliminates that neighbor's ability to come say, hey, all these HVAC units are going to be lined up right next to my house? And I guess what concerns me is that in cases like what we just saw or in cases where sometimes they've said it, the applicant is often willing to move them, but those dialogues while they should happen maybe outside or in conversation often don't happen until the hearing, and then they say, yeah, we'll move that or add a note, that kind of thing. Sure, and in that situation, a lot of times the neighbors that do come have a bit of leverage, right, because now the plan is in front of a body that has some ability to say no, and so if I come in and ask for something that seems reasonable and, you know, the developer thinks, well, there might be a few people on the planning commission who would say no to this if I don't do that. So again, they have a little bit of incentive to agree to those neighborhood requests in order to get their development approved and through the process. So yes, it will take some of that off the table. One of the things, though, I mean, you mentioned trash. Our preliminary projects don't often have locations for dumpsters identified yet. They just oftentimes don't do that until the final, and it's more of a logistic kind of thing as opposed to a conceptual level of detail, but it might be something that we want to encourage them to put on there earlier. So I'm wearing my I live in the neighborhood hat now rather than planning commission member, and so a lot of the leverage people in neighborhoods have had have been at the public hearings. Are we moving in a direction of suggesting that if people want to have some input, they should go to the technical committee meeting? Well, that's a good question. Generally, it's an open meeting, so people can attend the technical committee, but historically we've told neighbors, you know, this isn't the decision-making body, that we're discussing just technical issues, not whether something is a good policy or not. But if they want to get their I'm concerned about X on the table before things get into final form, which is one of the things I think you're concerned about, where is the avenue for them to do that now? Well, I would say the technical committee is not really the avenue for public input. The best would be for those interested citizens to contact the developer directly because we're not set up to negotiate a solution during the technical committee, if that makes sense. We're looking at the technical requirements, and do you meet this or not? I want to punctuate that, Ms. Worth. There's no, I mean, I'll be a little more direct. There's no negotiation anymore. House bill, I mean, they can negotiate privately if they want to, as Tracy suggested, but the planning, the neighborhood coming to the technical committee and saying I want that dumpster moved five feet. All right. If where the applicant is showing it meets the standard, nobody can tell them they have to move it. Yeah. I'm not really concerned so much about the negotiation as be heard, and I'm thinking about our last hearing where we were on Denton Farm and the height of the you know what I'm talking about? The height from the berm. Yeah. Yeah. So that negotiation was going to take place between the developer and the neighborhood, but it happened because it was articulated in an arena in which it wasn't going to get negotiated. So I'm just I'm trying to Well, I'm not sure that they'll address it either way. I'm not either. I'm not I'm not I'm not guaranteeing outcomes. I'm simply looking at the sequence of opportunities for people to provide information to each other. So let me be philosophical. The best opportunity is during the comprehensive plan. That's when the community needs to be involved and articulate what outcomes they want for the community in broad policy form. And then that gets translated into regulation. So that's when people need to show up, not when the bulldozers are pulling down the road. And I hope that we can continue to communicate that to the community through our partners out here and get people involved early on so that they make sure they say, what is it we want in the outcome of development? And then that gets translated to regulation. Jim, if you do have a citizen who owns a lives in a residential, say, R1 and next door is a pre pre existing kind of like Harrisburg Road, where we have some of those commercial lots fronting on Harrisburg, and then you have the residential adjoining. If somebody did come to either technical or contact the staff and say, hey, I've got an issue with this, and I do believe it affects public health, for example, I mean, is that then a case where staff would recommend to go to the commission? I certainly think staff would listen. We would absolutely listen to that. We'd look into it and see if we thought that it met that standard that the statute or that the bill says about health, safety and welfare. We might encourage them to reach out and give them the contact information for the applicant, for the developer, and see what they can work out. I think it's something certainly, Mr. Davis, we would look at. I can't promise that we would, but I think I can certainly say that we would listen to those kind of requests. Tracy? Yes, sir. I'm sitting here with my head spinning. Hearing a bunch, one, I'm kind of of the opinion that for the commission, more information usually proves to be better for everyone, including the developer. I don't want to go down that road, though. What I want to ask is, it sounds like to me with a final development plan, if all the boxes are checked, we're not going to see it. In essence, it's going to be a consent agenda item that we're not even going to see. Let's back up to preliminary zone change request. They are still required to have a preliminary development plan? Yes. With considering things moving forward, much like what Judy Worth asked or stated earlier, if we had had or if they had recognized easements better, I'm going to put it that way, then we might have had proper setbacks on Maxwell street and we could have had better information to move things forward. Does this, what we're seeing and doing, does this mean that the developer is going to have to supply more information? More accurate information? At the early stage, as far as a preliminary zone change request and preliminary? I do think they'll have to depict more information than they previously have been or that we have been verbally asking them to do or put in the, you know, all the sign-off requirements. But some of it is real basic, like you didn't put your north arrow on there, you know, things like that. I don't think the, well, part of the issue of a preliminary versus a final is that if I'm seeking a zone change, I do not want to invest too much, and I don't know what too much really is. I guess it varies based on the developer. Too much research, engineering, just all kinds of the additional work, designing the, you know, hiring the architect and designing the building. I don't want to invest in that if I don't even have the zone I need to develop this project. So to a certain degree, I understand why they don't supply all that information up front and that it is delayed to the next step, right? But if that will help them get through the initial process, it may be a situation where they have to provide more. I don't see this, what we're proposing, what is being proposed, I don't see much in the way of, well, we'll decide that at the time of final development plan. It's going to have to be decided early on. Which means I'm sorry, but they're going to have to put forth that information early on so that we can make a decision, you know. I'm trying to come to grips with everything. On a zone change and preliminary development plan, those type of items will still be brought to us as a discuss item? We're not doing a waiver at that time. Waivers, I guess, would be on a final development plan, presuming they can't come to grips with things. Right. I do think we're going to have to have more things resolved and not just questions hanging out there. So notes that might say discuss stormwater management at the final development plan, those might not be necessary anymore because they're, at the beginning, going to have to designate an area and have some idea. Oh, I agree with that. That's where I'm saying, unfortunately, they're going to have to supply more information early on to let us make that decision. Yeah, a lot of cases it's pretty clear for engineering where stormwater is going to go or maybe where the best access point is. But deferring decisions and saying, yeah, I'm going to come back with more information and convince the planning commission that this is the right thing, I think that'll go by the wayside. Yeah, that'll be available. I hate to pick on Maxwell Street, but I would think the setback, the change in the setback would be major enough for something that we've got to hear. With the waivers that you're mentioning, and I'm just going to use sidewalks as an example, the developer may say, well, because of these constraints, I can't put in a 10-foot sidewalk. I can only put in an 8-foot sidewalk. That's where I'm presuming we would need, we would see it as a waiver request. Yes. And those are the ones you get now, so that'll continue to be a waiver. Some of the newer waivers might be the ordinance requires me to put this pedestrian crosswalk here and I want to move it over here, and here's the reason why. So locational standards, or I don't want to provide six stacking spaces because my business is unique. I don't need six. I only need two. Well, they can ask for that from the commission. And that's at our discretion. Yes. Okay. All right, then. Oh, there's probably 15,000 more questions, but no, go ahead. Well, I was going to say the last part of 21 is waivers. So this is a whole new section adding in there that if someone is not meeting the objective standards of the ordinance, that they can make a request to the planning commission for a waiver. I would note, and I don't know if you know this, but we don't collect a fee currently when someone asks for a subdivision waiver. This would require a fee and a filing with that. So because we're, again, doing extra work as to what the justification is for that and the staff being prepared to probably write a report about it. We did think it was appropriate to require there be a fee there. We haven't set that fee and that's a separate process through council to establish fees. So we'll have to do that. One of the changes that we did make is acknowledging that maybe a finding that the request doesn't impact adjoining property owners is not necessarily the best bar to be set because generally any change would impact adjoining property owners. So really identifying the areas though that what is, why is a waiver important? And I think Mr. Mickler mentioned one of them could be that it incorporates, and I think that's under C1 maybe, incorporates other design measures that exceed the minimums of the zone or compensate for noncompliance that would have a beneficial effect. So maybe that addresses it or needs to be reworded slightly. But we have to provide reasons for the waiver, right? So how you're asking for the waiver, what's your justification for that? And sending it to the commission. We are going to provide notice to adjoining property owners. So again, that helps with the fee to ensure that, again, you're asking for something special. So we are going to actually notify the adjoining property owners so that they can attend the Planning Commission meeting and voice an opinion, have a public hearing, and then the findings and noting that the commission, like we do with waivers currently, can add conditions to that. So yes, we're granting you this relief, but we need you to do these two, three things. That's it for that. Let me ask two more things. Sure. Yeah. As far as subdivision committee, we're still got a subdivision committee, I guess. What's coming to a subdivision committee now? It would be anything that requested a waiver, or if it had a recommendation from one of those other bodies. So a Pearce-Pike or the Royal Spring. A zone change would still come if someone filed a, if their preliminary had expired and they had to file a new plan to come back, that would come too. A major change, and I don't want to get into specifics, but a major change. If we've seen a development plan, or if a development plan's been approved and the road gets changed, and you're not happy with it, it comes to us, I don't see that as being a waiver request, really, but. No, so shifting location of a road might not trigger something that would come to you, but if it now no longer meets the subreg requirement for geometry, that would come to the commission. Like for instance, instead of a 90 degree turn, they're doing a sharp 90 turn instead of an intersection. That might be something that clearly doesn't meet the subregs that we would bring to you to ask for approval. Okay. You know, most of this, you referred to, somebody referred to, I think you did, as beefing up, and I have no problem with that kind of language, you know. Make it be known that, you know, this is what's required. Right. The hope is that it is then clear to our applicants, you know, before they apply what's required and they can do their best to meet those standards. Yeah. Yeah. Someone mentioned it, I don't know if it was a month ago or something, not, but it was like, you know, and I tend to agree. I think the commission has been fairly reasonable over the years and heard the cases and allowed for some discretion and moved things forward pretty easily, and I don't know, I'm still wondering if this is going to make it more difficult for them, for the developers, you know. I'm, you know, just throwing it out there. I don't know. That's not our goal, obviously. No. No, it's not. But, you know, I don't know who started this, but, you know, I'm, you know, at any rate, it's going to be interesting. Yeah. For the most part, it should be. Mr. Owens, I just, and I think you're right. The Planning Commission has done its role and done what we were allowed to do up to that time. I think it's some of those conditions that said resolve, and then negotiation left with the staff and the applicant, and that's, that got attention also from that. So after it left your hands, it was still not complete. One thing that's going to be easier in this process for, from the developer's standpoint, is trying to meet substantial compliance. So with that language being eliminated, it provides more clarity, and it defines rules, and by having the rules defined and a process put in place, it's going to make this a more easily navigated process, and it will also ultimately speed up the time required to proceed with a development or not proceed with a development. So in the spirit of continuous improvement, I'm thinking that this is, we're going to try this, and in the course of maybe a year, we'll be collecting information about how well this is working, and as things, the unintended consequences arise, there will be a point at which we come back and revisit this and look at the unintended consequences and perhaps do some tweaking to what we've got here. Is that a reasonable assumption? Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I'm not sure the process will tweak much, but I do think that the objective standards might need to be updated or tweaked as we go forward. If there's a glaring loophole or hole in what we've done, obviously, that would get addressed, but yeah. I mean, the glaring thing to me is that it removes the public input in the public hearing, and I think that we've all cited some examples where the Planning Commission has tweaked this or added condition here to the development plan, but most of them are moved through without a lot of changes already by the time they get through technical review and all of those things. But, you know, there's nowhere now for someone who's a neighbor to go and err there. I guess what I'm wondering is, right now, when we have the cell tower hearing, it's in a similar sort of, does it meet the standard or does it not meet the standard, right? That hearing, what it does is it lets people go and give their public input, and that's not anywhere here, right? So I guess what I'm wondering, I mean, I guess that's kind of the glaring sort of thing in my mind is that at no point do people get to go say, I disagree with what's happening, even if it's ministerial. Does that make sense? It does. I think, you know, the time for that public input is, at least in Kentucky, mandated or required at the zoning change. And I encourage the commission, but also the council, to think, so I know they're showing retail today, but what else is available in that zone that could be built here? Because it will inevitably change. And so we have to think, again, we're planning for the future, right? So we're ensuring that that zone is in the right location, but we have to be okay with all of the options the zone provides. And I think that's where some of the developers are coming from of, well, just because I put retail on there day one, because I was, you know, estimating or guesstimating what I wanted to do there, doesn't mean that's the only thing that's possible. And we have to think, I think we have to remember broader that there's so much that's available in any given zone that could be built. And so is that zone the right zone? Unfortunately, by taking this step with the House Bill 443 implementation, you all know, maybe the rest of the community doesn't know, most of the plans you see are final development plans that have been through the process multiple times. And so that's where the glaring hole of public input is coming from, where I think some of the community will feel like now they don't have a voice. And I think that's unfortunate because I think public input is important in the planning process. But I also understand kind of, and Bruce is ready to go, the angst that some of that public input gives our developers, because some of it's not well-informed, you know, some of it is just nimbyism, you know, some of it is helpful. So I think hopefully this isn't seen as a negative all the way around, because we do still want development in our community in order for Lexington to thrive. But I understand what you're saying. I agree with that statement. But also what we're looking at is this is House Bill 443, which applies to the entire state. And this is a law, and we need to comply with the law. And we're in an era of deregulation. We're going to continue to see that in all aspects of government. And the fact of the matter is this is a law that was applied, and it is going to affect us as commissioners and how we interact with the law. So there is going to be a change on our side, digesting this new law, and we'll just have to do it to the best of our ability. But it is a law that does affect the entire state. So it's not just us looking at this here in Lexington. There's other communities that are having the same type of training right now. So I'm back to wearing my former Neighborhood Association president hat and thinking about development plans that don't involve a zone change and what kind of education we might give to neighborhoods. If somebody's going to put some sort of development in a neighborhood, no zone change involved, the neighbors will get a notification. Is that right? No notification. Only if there's a waiver. So now this can happen, and nobody living in that neighborhood is going to know that anything's going to happen? If it complies with all the boxes of the ordinance, yes. They don't get noticed now. That's true. They don't. We've been also trying to educate the public about the resources to identify the changes in their neighborhood with our different websites that talk about the development plans, the citizen portal, those types of things. But it has not been another element to notify people. I will also just plug, if people are really concerned about the land uses that are within different zones, they should really voice those things during comprehensive plans. That's what led to the urban growth management ZOTA, which we radically overhauled a lot of different areas. Those are very important things to voice every five years so that we can get working on those different elements of how people want to view their community, how people want to work in a strategy that can be more streamlined but can get those elements that they want to see. Involved. I'm conflicted by this. I hear both sides of the issue here as well. But the key thing that we have going for us right now is that, generally speaking, I think our community trusts us. And as long as they are able to think that we're listening to them, irrespective of what our limitations are, that would be really good. And I agree with you all when you say it should have come at this comprehensive plan. That ain't going to happen, folks. People don't look at things that way. They look at it at the moment at the time that it happens. And that's when they see the HBCU units sitting outside their door making a lot of noise, that's when they come, not at the end of the time. We have to just make sure that we are sensitive to people who do come in and respectfully reply to them as best we possibly can. If we lose the respect and the trust of the community, then all this is just horsepucky. Excuse my legal language there, for the most part. So I'm hoping that what we'll do is have the devices, the systems set up in such a way that people can come, people can still be heard, and we'll have to explain to them through an educational process what we can do and what we can't do. And to the other part, I've even had to make motions here recently where I terribly disagreed with the developer. But that developer met all the legal requirements. And therefore, the best I could do is to simply say, you know, you got it. You won on this particular case. But I felt so sorry for the community. They didn't understand why we were bound to do what we were doing, because they look at us as the final decision maker. So it's going to take an educational process, and I would hope that we work as hard as we can to maintain what level of trust that we have in the community today and tomorrow and in the future, irrespective of 443. Yeah, I agree with that. We can sing kumbaya now. I can agree with that. And then also, I do appreciate him using the horse analogy, since we are in Lexington. That generally, those two articles are what I wanted to cover in depth with you today. Obviously, as I mentioned early on, there's probably seven or eight other articles where changes are being made. So, yes, if you have questions. Well, I wasn't going to cover any of those other ones, because some of them are just Go ahead. I was just going to say, what's next for us? Oh, okay. Yeah. So for some zones, it says, follow this process. And now we're just all referring them to 21. So that should take some of the I would note in expansion areas, you're not going to have compliance statements anymore. They won't necessarily come to the commission. I know you're going to miss those. Next steps. Mixed use sounds, we're going to correct some of those. They're a little out of date because they refer to a comp plan map, which we don't have. So text amendment timing this week, by the end of the week, which I guess is tomorrow, we're going to send out mailings to the neighborhood associations. And then we'll be in front of the zoning committee, the first week of March, and then March 27th for a public hearing. And then those go on to the recommendation from the commission goes to the council. So we have started meeting with groups related to this change. So if there's someone else who wants to set up a meeting with Daniel and I to discuss, we're open to do that. We met with the Home Builders BIA this week. Next week, we're meeting with the CPAL group, Commercial Property Association of Lexington. We've offered Brittany a meeting and she's going to let us know when a time works for her. So there's other organizations that you think we need to reach out to. We're happy to do that as well. I think, I'm sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, I heard rumors that somebody was speaking at CPAL last week. Daniel and I are, and I think Jim's going to try to come. Yeah, but no, I'm saying last week. We didn't talk to CPAL last week. We did not talk to them last week, but we are planning to on Tuesday, so. Oh, yeah. Giving them the two cents. So Fayette County Neighborhood Council, but they don't represent all neighborhoods. I'm thinking a lot of neighborhood associations work their way to us through contact with their council members. And I think it would be helpful to have, through their newsletters, that kind of thing, it would be helpful perhaps to get the council members up to speed on what's going to happen here and let them communicate with their neighborhood associations. And we provided that information to them a couple of weeks ago. So yes, they're aware of this. Are they being asked to put this information out to their constituents? Yes, we have told them that we'd be happy to provide any information that they would like to put into their newsletters or websites or anything like that. Thank you, Ms. Wade. Thank you. That was a lot. And I was teasing Hal and Boyd about how they use pictures all the time, and I was like, I have no pictures. No pictures. You all, thank you for following along. Thank you. Mr. Duncan, do you have anything? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here. Nearly 100% on a frosty day like this. So that's impressive. And thank you. Must say somebody was tuning in. Okay, good. From Florida. Good, good, good. Then we were all there. The Planning Commission will meet again next week. Planning Commission zoning hearing back in the council chambers at 1.30. So we'll look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you. Can I ask one question? You can ask three. I just want one, I think. You know, it occurred to me when we were hearing the case on Manchester last week, and we were talking about the development of the floodplain and those changes. Is anybody looking at that whole span of water in terms of what happens on Manchester leading up to Town Branch Creek so that we're not designing the back end of a car and the front end of a car in the middle of a car, but somebody's looking at the whole thing? I think that would certainly be the consideration of the Floodplain Appeals Committee. They would be looking at all of that. Somebody is looking. Okay. I got to worrying about that because I'm thinking if we had gone a different direction, we might have been making a decision about this one little piece right here that clearly has impact for elsewhere. Okay, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So It was the 3rd of September The day I'll always remember Yes, I will Oh, never the day That my daddy died I never got a chance to see him Never heard nothing but bad things about him Mama, I'm depending on you Tell me the truth Mama just hung her head and said Mama, I'm depending on you Tell me the truth Mama just hung her head and said Mama, I'm depending on you Mama just hung her head and said Papa was a rolling stone Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left was alone Papa was a rolling stone My son, yeah Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left was alone Hey, mama Is it true what they say That papa never was your day In his life And mama Some bad talk going around town Saying that papa had three outside children And another wife And that ain't right Hey, some talk about papa Doing some so fun preaching Talking about saving souls And all the time Mama, I'm depending on you Talking about saving souls And all the time Stealing in debt And stealing in the name of the lord Mama just hung her head and said Papa was a rolling stone My son Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left was alone Hey Papa was a rolling stone My son Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left was alone Uh Uh Hey, mama I heard papa call himself a jack of all trades Tell me, is that what sent papa To an early grave Folks say papa would beg Borrow steel To pay his bill Hey, mama Folks say papa never was much on bacon Spent most of his time Chasing women and drinking Mama, I'm depending on you To tell me the truth Mama looked up with a tear in her eye And said, son Papa was a rolling stone Well, well, well, well Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left us was alone Alone, alone, alone Papa was a rolling stone My son Papa was a rolling stone Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left us was alone My son Papa was a rolling stone Wherever he laid his hat Was his home And when he died All he left us was alone My son Papa was a rolling stone Wherever he laid his hat Was his home . . . . . . . . . They come from the cities And they come from the smaller towns Beat up cars with guitars And drummers go Crack, boom, bam R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. Yeah Rockin' in the U.S.A. Said goodbye to the family Said goodbye to the friends With the pot rims in their heads And very little money in their hands Some are all black And some are all white And ain't you proud to sleep On your floor tonight Blind faith in Jesus You know that they just might Rockin' in the U.S.A. Hey Hey . . . . . . Voices from nowhere And voices from the larger town . . . Fill our head full of dreams And turn our world upside down . . . There was Frankie Lyman Bobby Fuller, Mitch Ryder Jackie Wilson, Shangri-La's young Rasky Spotlight on Martha Reeves Don't forget Jane Brown Rockin' in the U.S.A. Hey R-O-C-K in the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. R-O-C-K In the U.S.A. See how I'll leave with every piece of you Don't underestimate the things that I will do There's a fire startin' in my heart Reaching beyond fever pitch and it's bringing me out the door The scars of your love remind me Of us they keep Thinking that we almost Had it all The scars of your love They leave me breathless I can't help feelin' We could've had it all You should've let me You should've let me Until they're gone Gone again You have my heart and soul In your hands You should've let me Until they're gone Gone again Gone again Gone again Baby I have no story to be told But I've heard one Only when I'm gonna make your hair burn Think of me in the depths of your despair Make it all Now there's my choice there The scars of your love They leave me breathless I can't help feelin' You should've let me You should've let me Until they're gone Gone again Gone again Gone again Gone again Gone gone Gone gone gone gone gone gone You could've had it all Frozen in the deep You had my heart Instead of your hands But you played it We defeated Ready? Throw your soul through every open door Count your blessings Find what you look for Turn my sorrow Into treasured gold Baby Back in Canary Just watch your soul boil out the hole Thank you so much for making one of my dreams come true It's been amazing, thank you I want you to sing along with me I'm gonna do it and then the girls and then you and then we'll all do it together You're gonna wish you Never had my be Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You're gonna wish you Never had my be Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You're tired I'm gonna wish you Never had my be Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You're gonna wish you Never had my be It all It all It all We could have had it all Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You're gonna wish you Never had my be Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You could have had it all You could have had it all Rolling in the deep Tears are gonna fall Rolling in the deep You could have had it all You could have had it all You paid it, you paid it, paid it, you paid me to defeat you Thank you! What am I gonna do to make you love me? What am I gonna do to make you care? What do I do when lightning strikes me? And to wait to find that you're not there What do I do to make you want me? What have I gotta do to be heard? What do I say when it's all over? Sorry seems to be the hardest word It's sad, so sad, so sad With the sad, sad situation And it's getting more and more absurd It's sad, so sad, so sad Why can't we talk it over? Oh, it seems to me Sorry seems to be the hardest word It's sad, so sad, so sad With the sad, sad situation And it's getting more and more absurd It's sad, so sad, so sad Why can't we talk it over? Oh, it seems to me Sorry seems to be the hardest word What do I do to make you love me? Oh, what have I gotta do to be heard? What do I do when lightning strikes me? What have I gotta do? What have I gotta do? Sorry seems to be the hardest word Candyman Candyman Hey, Candyman All right, everybody Gather around, the Candyman is here Now, what kind of candy you want? Sweet chocolate, chocolate, malt, candy, gumdrops Anything you want You've come to the right man because I'm the Candyman Who can take a sunrise? Sprinkle it with you Cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two The Candyman Oh, the Candyman can The Candyman can Because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good Makes the world taste good Who can take a rainbow? Who can take a rainbow? Wrap it in a side Wrap it in a side Soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie The Candyman The Candyman The Candyman can The Candyman can The Candyman can Because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good Makes the world taste good The Candyman makes everything he makes Satisfying and delicious Now you talk about your childhood wishes You can even eat the dishes Oh, who can take tomorrow? Who can take tomorrow? Dip it in a dream Dip it in a dream Separate the salt and collect up all the cream The Candyman The Candyman Oh, the Candyman can The Candyman can The Candyman can Because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good Makes the world taste good The Candyman makes everything he makes Satisfying and delicious Now you talk about your childhood wishes You can even eat the dishes Yeah, yeah, yeah, who can take tomorrow? Who can take tomorrow? Dip it in a dream Dip it in a dream Separate the salt and collect up all the cream The Candyman The Candyman The Candyman can The Candyman can The Candyman can Because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good Makes the world taste good The Candyman can Because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good Makes the world taste good A candy man A candy man A candy man Makes the world taste good A candy man A candy man A candy man A candy man A candy man A Candyman Dum-Dum-Dum- cheeks Dumbing Dum-Dum-Dum- cheeks Dumbing Dum-Dum-Dum- cheeks Dumbing Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa I went laughing, darling The Candyman can Come with me Come on with me Baby, I'm to see I need you, darling So come go with me Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa Now come, come, come, come Come into my heart Come with me, darling We will never die I need you, darling So come go with me Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa Yes, I need you Yes, I really need you Please say you'll never leave me Well, say you'll never Yes, you'll really never You'll never give me a chance Come, come, come, come Come into my heart Come with me, darling We will never die I need you, darling So come go with me Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa You'll never give me a chance I love you, darling Come with me Come on with me Baby, I'm to see I need you, darling So come go with me Come on with me Come on with me Come on with me Ladies take to cowboys Like kids take to clowns They both love them Without asking why There's those come-on looks And laughter But when it's time for leaving town Seems nobody cares enough to cry Everybody loves cowboys and clowns You're everybody's hero For just a little while But when the goodbyes are said And the spotlight goes dead There's no one left who cares to hang around To love the cowboys and clowns Cowboys love candlelight And lacy things on ladies While kids love carousels And funny painted faces But there's no balloons No sweet perfume When midnight brings you down No one to hold you close When the morning comes around Everybody loves cowboys and clowns You're everybody's hero For just a little while But when the goodbyes are said And the spotlight goes dead There's no one left who cares to hang around To love the cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Cowboys and clowns Is there nothing I can say? Nothing I can do? Change your mind? So in love with you Too deep in? You can't get out You're just a poor girl in a rich man's house Yeah Baby I'm cryin' Out of you Your gentle promises were never meant to keep Just let the night disembowel me and sleep I'll be your savior Stay fast and true I'll come to your emotional rescue I'll come to your emotional rescue Ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh Yeah Another night Cryin' Cryin' Yeah I've got to tell you I've got to tell you I've got to tell you I've got to tell you Ooh You think you're one of a special breed You think that your mistakes Be credits I'll be your savior Stay fast and true I'll come to your emotional rescue I'll come to your emotional rescue Ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh Yeah I was dreamin' last night Tryin' to laugh it out Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine All mine They're mine They're mine They're mine All mine Mm Yes, you could be mine Tonight and every night I will be your knight in shining armor Coming to your emotional rescue You will be mine You will be mine All mine You will be mine You will be mine You will be mine All mine I will be your knight in shining armor Riding across the desert On a fine Arab charger All mine Riding along on my automobile My baby beside me at the wheel I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile My curiosity running wild Cruisin' and playin' the radio With no particular place to go Riding along on my automobile I was anxious to tell her the way I feel So I told her softly and sincere And she leaned and whispered in my ear Cuddlin' more and drivin' slow With no particular place to go . . . No particular place to go So we parked way out on the Kokomo The night was young and the moon was gold So we both decided to take a stroll Can you imagine the way I felt? I couldn't unfasten her safety belt Riding along in my Calaboose Still tryin' to get her belt to loose All the way home I held her grudge For the safety belt that wouldn't budge Cruisin' and playin' the radio With no particular place to go . . . . . . On this edition of Lexington Now, Lexington's snow plan, police roll call, and the Black and Williams Center. . . . I'm Neal Noah and welcome to Lexington Now for the week of February 17th, 2025. You probably know Lexington has a snow plan for dealing with winter weather's effects on our roads. But do you know how streets are selected for the plan? Rob Allen fills us in. I am Rob Allen. I am the director of the Division of Streets and Roads. The snow plan is the document that organizes how we treat winter precipitation. It talks about our road ranking system where a road is ranked a one based on traffic count and facilities. For example, Nicholasville Road has two hospitals so it's a one. Then we would go down to a minor arterial like Clays Mill Road and then into neighborhood roads and school bus routes. Not every street is intended to be plowed but we hope to get people within reasonable distance of a cleared road. We do a little over 1,100 miles of road. So when you think about it, you can double it because that's one lane up and one lane back for a lot of them. And then there's some like Nicholasville Road that are eight lanes wide. A plow should be going between 5 and 25 miles an hour. A little bit faster on faster speed roads but to be effective, especially if they are actually plowing versus plowing and salting. It's also a safety thing if you put 25 tons of salt in the back of a 25,000 pound vehicle that creates a big mass that takes longer to get stopped. So it's basically like table salt except it's mined and it's in bigger chunks. Sometimes you'll see agencies use it and it's blue. Well that's an anti-caking agent. People don't realize that salt can actually freeze so we try to keep ours indoors. And then we do a process called pre-wetting where we spray the salt as it's coming out of the truck and that prevents what's called scatter. Salt hitting the road and then bouncing off. I'm sorry, it doesn't prevent, it reduces scatter. And this has actually been scientifically studied to improve adhesion 25 to 30 percent plus the additive that we're adding. The commercial name is beet heat. It's a beet sugar molasses, not a beet byproduct. And that effectively lowers the freezing temperature of water. Salt goes to about the low 20s. When we add beet heat we can get down to about 12 degrees. Salt still works at lower ranges but it's much slower. And we need that thermal heating. We also need a little bit of traffic, some friction to cause that. And once the salt gets in solution it helps melt the ice or snow. The big thing in the name of the game is not letting that ice or snow pack down and bond to the road. So when the mayor asks people to not drive, not only is it a safety thing but it's a treatment thing. It's much harder to treat a road that's been driven on repeatedly and packed down. And a lot of times we have a big boost for Mother Nature. It's not just us. So we share with the Division of Water Quality. Between the two divisions we have 108 people working. But that also includes, we have volunteers from parks, code enforcement, environmental services, and waste management. So to be cliche, it does take a village. In the background we've got 311 and fleet services. If we go on 12-hour shifts they do too. So both those agencies are very important to us. And of course public safety, we get calls from police and fire. If there's a structure fire and it's frigid we need to go treat. If there's water on the road, if police are observing accidents at a particular spot they let us know. So our plan is designed to be executed within 48 hours of the precipitation ending. And a lot of times folks don't realize that, you know, the snow keeps coming and we need to work through those major roads and then get into the neighborhoods. So it does take a couple days. Usually we're pretty efficient. For example, Monday it was really cold but we had sunshine, we got salt on it and effectively it all melted in a day. So that worked out well. A big thing for folks is slow down at least 10 miles an hour below the posted speed limit. Sometimes the police will tell you if it's really slushy or slick, half the posted limit. If it's that dangerous you probably really shouldn't be out at all. And also be aware that these trucks have big blind spots and use caution when, especially when you're approaching an intersection and about passing. So they can go to lexingtonky.gov forward slash snow and ice control. Lexington police have a big job in protecting and serving residents and the job is split up into more manageable segments. We caught up with the folks at police to talk about how it's handled. I'm Jonathan Gist. I'm a police officer here with the Lexington Police Department. My name is Josh Troy. I'm a patrol officer for the Lexington Police Department. My name is Chase Henderlyke. I'm a police officer. I'm Taylor Mitchell. I'm a police officer with the Lexington Police Department. My name is Adam Servacio. I'm a police officer with the Lexington Police Department. My name is Officer Charles Davis. I'm with the Lexington Police Department. So the city's broken up into three sectors. You've got east, central, and west. All those sectors have a first, second, and third shift. I work central sector, first shift. So my hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. I work central sector, second shift. I start at 4 in the afternoon and work until 2 in the morning. I work third shift, which is between the hours of 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. Each sector has something called roll call. It's like a mini headquarters for us. From there, we go over the roster, what beat we're going to be assigned to for the day. From there, we can go over patrol briefing, which is essentially just a PowerPoint that kind of gives us persons of interest, vehicles of interest, events going on in the city that we should be aware of. It kind of lets us strategize on how we're going to be proactive and where we're going to be proactive. But once we leave there, we go to our assigned beats, patrol the area, and take our dispatch calls. Current events, things like that, will shape what we respond to in a day. So the only thing typical is about the first 20 minutes of our shift. My first call of the day can be someone shot, or it could be someone in a vehicle wreck. It could be a stolen vehicle. It could be all kinds of things. So your day is never the same. It always starts out different, and it always ends different. In law enforcement, there is no typical day. You never know what you're going to get. Every day is different. Sometimes we'll take five calls a night. Sometimes we'll take upwards to 15 to 20. It's really one or the other. So as a female officer, I work with a lot of males, and I've had nothing but great experiences here. I was the only female in my academy class, and I never felt any different. I love the guys that I work with and the supervisors that I've had. It's been nothing but a brother-sister relationship, and I can't say enough about how hard those guys work and how hard this department works. It's basically a gigantic family. I take care of her from all walks of life, all different places, across the state, across the country. We put this all together, and we expect to work with each other. We watch each other's backs. I go home to my family at the end of every night because of my family I have here. From my experience, it's more of a family experience. It's really a brotherhood, sisterhood, and I feel that family and that camaraderie with the people that I work with. They've been sort of like a second family to me. We're all very close. We all get together outside of work. We hang out. We do cookouts. We also like to back each other on calls. Anytime that one of us is in trouble, it's a spectacular sight to see a bunch of us show up and know that regardless of who I know, who I don't know, whether I've worked with them for the last year and a half or if I've just met them that day, everyone's coming to help out. They preach that it's a fraternity, and it really is, and you don't really see the scope of that until you're actually in it and working with the same guys every day and then showing up to other sectors when they're busy and picking up with those guys like you've known them your whole life and working with them your whole career. That goes hand-in-hand with how we're able to jail with the community because if you jail with your partners, that'll usually translate over into any call you're on. I know myself and my partner, it's a big thing that we do in between calls sometimes is we go out to the park and we'll see kids playing basketball. If they're putting up hoops, then we're going to go and shoot some with them. I think for the community, the parents see that. They feel that they can approach us. The kids certainly approach us. They wave at us when we drive by and out. We try to do all types of community outreach. We try to talk to children. We try to give them experiences with police officers that aren't intimidating or aren't scary. I love that opportunity to be maybe the first police officer they've ever talked to, and it's a positive experience, and I hope it leaves them with a feeling that they can always call us if they need us. The majority of the time, we deal with people on their worst days, worst-case scenarios. We try to do what we can to bring a positive light to that and help people the best we can. It can be at a 10, and then if the right officer shows up, if they've made a connection with that person, whether they're going through a crisis or some kind of something else that's got them in whatever they're experiencing, if they see that officer and they can recognize that and they've made that connection, it can automatically change the pace. We like to build rapport with them, get to know our gas station owners, our store owners, and just develop a good rapport with them, so that way if a big crime were to happen in their store, if they were to be witnesses to those crimes, they're more open to give us information, and they won't be so wary of being like, oh, that's the police, yada, yada, yada. They know us as Josh instead of officer so-and-so. After this, the Black and Williams Center gets up. Hello, I'm Lieutenant Chris Van Brackle with the Lexington Police Department Traffic Unit. Today we are talking about disability accessible parking and the aisles between those parking places. Accessible parking is a valuable and necessary resource for people with disabilities, and that includes the striped area next to accessible parking spots. These are access aisles, and it is illegal to park here, even if you have an accessible parking permit. Police in Lex Park will write tickets when they see vehicles parked at an access aisle or parked in an accessible space without a placard, and the fine is $250. Know where and where not to park. Keep the access aisles clear. Thank you, and drive safe. Welcome back to Lexington Now. Mayor Linda Gorton joined other city officials for the ribbon-cutting on renovations at the Black and Williams Center. Here's more. As many of you know, this is a really huge day for the neighborhood. We are here to cut a ribbon to officially open this newly renovated gymnasium here at the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center. And neighborhood centers, as all of you, I think, know, play a really important role in people's lives and in the lives of neighborhoods. And this center is a pretty popular place. The Black and Williams Center has a long, rich history here in Lexington, and this center has served as a space for celebrations, community meetings, youth and adult activities, and more. So in 2017, think how long ago that was, this 5,000-square-foot gymnasium was closed due to unsafe conditions. And it has since gone, you can look around, gone through a total renovation. And we're really proud of this space. The scope of the renovations includes new roofing, window replacements, new heating, new cooling, multipurpose flooring. You can see the flooring is really great. And two new basketball goals. So we have new storage, a stage platform, a warming kitchenette, and ADA-accessible restrooms. They've all been added to allow this gym to serve not only as a community room for neighborhood residents, but a social services-based organization room for organizations that serve our community. Black and Williams was dedicated in honor of the late Evelyn Black and Alex Williams, trailblazers and local leaders in Lexington's African-American community. And I suspect they're smiling down on this space today. Frederick Douglass said that if there is no struggle, there is no progress. Douglass said this in an 1857 speech that was a landmark in the fight for abolition and the Civil War. This appropriate and poignant quote reminds me that progress can require not only effort, but also sacrifice. To arrive at this day, we are cutting the ribbon to officially open this newly renovated gymnasium, and it has taken a lot of effort and a lot of sacrifice. I just want to say as a longtime serving member of council, it's just an honor to be here today. This project I know has went through a lot of trials and tribulations. We talked about potentially demolishing this building and creating more parking for the space. But I think to Commissioner Ford, his team, the administration, listening and being responsive to the community and to the folks that use the space that we need to continue to invest in Black and Williams Center and this neighborhood to create facilities and spaces for the community to come together and to benefit. I never knew I would learn so much about architecture and renovation when I accepted this position four years ago. Membrane and insulation boards for rooftops, wood flooring infill, abatement, and so much more. Thanks to this project, I will be adding some titles to my resume. Mayor Gordon, Councilmember Lynch, all of the councilmembers past and present, thank you for approving the funds that allowed this gymnasium to be renovated. We know that there are numerous needs throughout the city, but after seven years of closure, this community is grateful for the completion of this LFUCG project. Many people drive by and wonder what is actually occurring inside of Black and Williams. I can tell you a whole lot more than most people realize and or recognize. There are a lot of dedicated staff who work tirelessly day in and day out for all of the residents of Fayette County. Not only my staff with Community and Resident Services, but social services staff with the Parent and Guardian Empowerment Program, staff and volunteers with NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, staff and volunteers with WESAP, West End Community Empowerment Project, United Way, Waypoint staff, and the unofficial staff of the building that keep us all in check, the distinguished ladies of ElderCrafters. ElderCrafters represent a satellite site here at Black and Williams as part of the Senior Center. This gym will allow all of these partners an opportunity to expand and enhance services that are already offered. This gymnasium will give the residents of this community, especially the youth, a place for recreation and a space for programming. It will be an outlet for organized fun, but also a site to bring educational opportunities on topics needed in today's world. I'm extremely proud and honored to join today's ceremony as we celebrate the rebirth of a special community space at the Black and Williams Center Gymnasium, a space that represents the best of black history in Lexington. Ready? Three, two, one. Woo! Mayor Gordon and officials at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, unveiled plans for a new artwork in honor and memory of those who were enslaved there. Today, the Ashland Estate is helping us kick off February, which is committed in our 250th birthday to black history. We know that part of our history was dark. It involves slavery, and it included, as you already know, slaves right here at the Ashland Estate. So Ashland has gone a step above so many others in recognizing this aspect of its past. We're doing something very different. We have created a special tour called When Reason Sleeps, Brutality Walks Free. This tour will be offered every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 11.30 and 2.30. $20 for adults, $10 for college students, and K-12 students are free. We are also here today to unveil the design for our new memorial for the enslaved called Breath of My Ancestors. Seven feet tall by nine feet across of cast bronze with a black patina. In the woman's skirt are images that deal with slavery at Ashland, from hemp, horses, and the individuals. In many respects, it's only fitting that it's a female figure because Ashland wouldn't be here were it not for the women, the Clay family and descendants who protected this place. Unfortunately, we have no physical trace of the people who were enslaved here. The slave quarters that were near the garden were demolished at some time after the Civil War. So there's no physical place to remember them. This memorial will do that. Black history is American history. It is a part of this estate and it must be told. When you talk about history, it could always be a touchy and sensitive subject for black Americans. So I think as we continue to celebrate our history and celebrate and recognize the truth, I think it's important that we continue to look for opportunities to share that history and that truth in a way that could be honest, but then also empowering for the folks that don't always see the beauty in it. There are a lot of places to learn history, a classroom, books, online, but this is a great place here at this park, at this museum home, a great place to learn that history, study that history. It's a template that we can use to serve us now and in the future. I'm going to come at this from a different point of view and talk about Henry Clay the man. I'm going to begin by saying that Henry Clay was one of the greatest statesmen in the history of America. We look at people who made a true difference in history. You have to put Henry Clay in the top 10. And so we should always honor Henry Clay for the work that still continues today in America that he began. And yes, Henry Clay was a slave owner. He owned slaves. And that just reflects the fact that life is complicated. And as mankind, we're full of contradictions. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't honor those things that are good and acknowledge that sometimes things that happen are not so good. So I'm here today to celebrate Henry Clay the man for what he gave to this country. And say going forward that we should always, as Jim indicated, recognize history. History should never be whitewashed. We should never go about the process of banning books and say we're going to stop reading things because we don't like them. I like what Jim said about history is knowledge based. And sometimes it's important to learn about those things that you don't like, that you don't accept, because those to inform you in terms of your value system, your morale. It's a shorter week due to the President's Day holiday, but there are still live meetings coming your way this week on LexTV and streaming online. But remember, you can also find the most up-to-date information on non-televised city business at LexingtonKY.gov. Here's this week's meeting cover. That's all for now, but as always, you can keep up with us on social media, check out the latest traffic updates on X at LexRex, or catch our live traffic cams on LexingtonKY.com. For all of us at LexTV, I'm Neil Noah, and that's it for now. Thanks for watching. And I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I just call to say I love you. I just call to say how much I care. I just call to say I love you. And I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Oh, my heart. Oh, my heart. Oh, my heart. A very old friend came by today because he was telling everyone in town of the love that he'd just found. And Marie's the name of his latest flame. He talked and talked, and I heard him say that she had the longest, blackest hair, the prettiest green eyes anywhere, and Marie's the name of his latest flame. Though I smiled, the tears inside were a-burning. I wished him luck, and then he said goodbye. He was gone, but still his words kept returning. What else was there for me to do but cry? Would you believe that yesterday this girl was in my arms and swore to me she'd be mine eternally? Marie's the name of his latest flame. Though I smiled, the tears inside were a-burning. I wished him luck, and then he said goodbye. He was gone, but still his words kept returning. What else was there for me to do but cry? Would you believe that yesterday this girl was in my arms and swore to me she'd be mine eternally? And Marie's the name of his latest flame. Yeah, Marie's the name of his latest flame. Oh, Marie's the name of his latest flame. Thank you. playing in bright rock rhythm I get out on the redneck side Every now and then Call up my baby, she comes over And the party begins Yeah, she's a slick nickel She's right on the money I wouldn't give her up For a thousand buckled bunnies I'm her big cat daddy She's my little miss honky-tonk She's got my number Knows my favorite songs On the jibons Goes to getting down like crazy And the whole place rocks Yeah, we'll have a few And get the feeling right She'll be my queen bee I'll be her neon knight Well, I'm her big cat daddy She's my little miss honky-tonk Oh, oh, I love her so Stand back, give her room, boys And watch her go playing in bright rock rhythm Yeah, she's a rocker Heads turn when she comes Through the door She'll drop her when she hits The coin out on the floor Oh, we leave all our troubles And cares way behind us I feel like a king When I'm out with her highness I'm her big cat daddy She's my little miss honky-tonk Oh, oh, I love her so Stand back, give her room, boys playing in bright rock rhythm Hey, it's Nicole with Your Lex PD. This is going to be our last episode for season one. And you're probably wondering where is my co-host? Well, Baj is on sunny. So we are out here at the Lexington Police Department Mounted Barn. How you doing up there, Baj? Well, they actually found one of the horses that I feel comfortable getting on. So far, staying calm, everything's good. So, but as you would expect, Lexington, Kentucky, horse capital of the world, you would expect us to have a mounted unit actually known all over the country. So this month, we're going to be looking at all about our mounted unit, going all the way back to the early 1900s, up until now, and what's going on on the streets of Lexington on horseback. Hey, we are here with Sergeant Byron Creekmore with the Lexington Police Department Mounted Unit. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having us. So can you tell us how you became the sergeant over the mounted unit? Funny story, actually. I was sitting in the office on patrol, and I was working with another sergeant at the time. He was an acting sergeant. We were working on some paperwork for that day, and he left. He called me about five minutes later and said, hey, I have a random question for you. I was like, all right. And he said, you like horses? I was like, this has nothing to do with what we were just talking about at all. So it kind of one thing led to another. I came out here and met with the sergeant that was retiring from this position, and the more information I learned about it, it seemed like a good fit for me. And so I put myself out there and interviewed and got lucky enough and got the spot. Well, you know, you think of Lexington, you think of horses, right? And how we got to where we are today goes all the way back to like 1905 is when they first started talking about having a mounted unit here in Lexington, and then 1907 it came about, started, and it was basically then because officers couldn't respond to things in outlying areas quickly, whether it would be livestock thieves or whatever, and then it was disbanded in 1909. 1973, they thought about bringing it back, but 1982 is where you're at today all started, correct? Right. Okay. And how many officers do you have in the unit? Now we have three officers and myself as a sergeant, so four total. And what kind of training goes into becoming a mounted officer here with Lexington? So there's no requirement of any prior horse experience at all. We've had a few that had no experience whatsoever, and we've had several that do have prior experience. Some of them have either horses of their own at home, or they've just grown up around horses and whatnot, but the general requirement is once the officer gets to the unit, the setup is there's a 10-week training program, and it kind of can also be adjusted a little bit based on their experience and their level of riding, but they go through that course, and once they can prove that they're ready and then test out, then we do have a skilled out portion where we'll bring in guest instructors as well, but then as long as they can prove themselves and test out on the horseback riding portion of it, then they're qualified on our end to show that they're safe and that they have the proper skill set, but they also have to train in driving the trailers and the trucks, too, because the horses, we don't just ride out from here. We can take them anywhere in the city, so we involve the trailering as well, and there's a lot of other components into it, but generally speaking, it's about a 10-week course, but again, that's based on their experience level coming in. So, what does the mounted, like, what are your daily routines, or sometimes we used to see them out at parades and stuff like that. What other events do you all attend? So, a lot of people out there don't know that we are a full-time unit. This is our full-time spot, so this is where we come to work every day, and this is a 365-day-a-year job. The horses are not going to take care of themselves. Somebody has to be here every day to take care of them, so depending on the day of the week, we could be turning the horses out first thing in the morning. They go out to graze in the fields, and then we're responsible for cleaning their stalls that they've been in overnight, making sure they have all the food, medications, and supplements and all that that they have at the end of the day, and then it kind of just depends on what our schedule looks like. We can either ride out here on patrol, and that would mean the officers just saddle up and ride the neighbor neighboring areas close to here, or they can put the horses in the trailers and go anywhere else in the city, and we like to try to get as many different places as we can, and when we're not doing that, we do get requested a lot for a lot of the public relations types of events. It is a lot of the parades, a lot of the city parks events, a lot of school events. The elementary kids love us, so we do that a lot, and then we also get a lot of requests for tours of our facility here, and then we'll usually try to throw a demonstration in our training arena so they can kind of see our facilities, and we can show them some of our skill set and whatnot. So you mentioned the facilities here, and 1986 I think is when this facility, which is very near to downtown Lexington, was built. Up until that point from the time I guess this current era started in 82, were you at the horse? Correct. We were out at Kentucky Horse Park. They let us keep our horses out there, so the one or two officers at the time would just go out there and get the horse and then kind of do things from there, but once we got our facility here, it has streamlined things so much for us and made it so much easier to where we can patrol downtown areas from here, and then we can also trailer out and go anywhere we need to go. So with that being fall, we have a lot of horse events. You have Keeneland, you have the colloquium. Do you all do anything out there at the horse park with the colloquium with our horses? Yes, so that's actually, we partner with them to host that event, and that one, this year we brought in 136 riders from I believe it was 41 different agencies across the country. So we had people, we had minor police officers from as far away as Canada, the Toronto guys. We had a couple from California, some from Florida. They come from all over to this training. We bring in outside instructors. We brought in a couple instructors from Toronto and a couple other places, so it's two days worth of training and then two days worth of competition for the officer side of it, and then on Saturday and Sunday we have two days worth of civilian clinics, so pretty much anybody that's mostly local, that they typically are people that just own their own horses and are looking for extra training opportunities, we bring them in. It's a different group on Saturday and Sunday, and we use those same instructors that we had all week for the police officers for those civilians as well, so they get to be exposed to a lot of things that they wouldn't normally be able to access without us having that training. And then that, it's also sponsored by our friends of the Lexington Mounted Police. That's our non-profit organization that they start off with the seed money for that, and then it's a really great fundraiser for us, and it's just great training for everybody else as well. We have a lot of officers that return year after year because they just constantly talk about the level of training is unmatched, and the facilities out there at the All Tech Arena are awesome as well. That's fantastic, and you would expect that in Kentucky, right? Right. So, what about, and some other things you've got to think about, it's not just you all. We have to think about better areas and care and so forth, so how do we do that? So, that mostly falls on my responsibilities, is I'm essentially managing a small farm out here. I never would have known it until I came out here, and most people don't realize it. We have almost 10 acres on the property here, but the facilities out here, we do all of the upkeep, a lot of the upkeep ourselves as far as just the mowing and general stuff like that, but then the veterinarian stuff, that falls on me any time we have an issue popping up. So, we do a lot of upkeep ourselves as far as just the mowing and general stuff like that, but then the veterinarian stuff, that falls on me any time we have an issue pop up, which is fairly regularly. If you have kids, you know, stuff just pops up and you can't really plan for that kind of stuff, but then also, their feet. We do have a farrier that comes out every six weeks to redo their shoes. We have to keep the hay stocked. We buy that every six months. He's ready to go riding. Yeah, he's ready to go. He's ready to work. We buy about 500 bales of hay every six months and stock it in the hay barn. That gets us through the year, and then we have a lot of other things that we have to do. So, we do a lot of upkeep ourselves as far as just the mowing and we use hallway feeds for our feed. So, it's a lot of the administrative side of it that most people just don't really realize until you've had the horses yourself. While we're here, we're going to talk to a couple of the mounted officers and also with your farrier? Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. Hostler. So, we are here with Ms. Ellie West. She is the hostler for the Lexington Mounted Unit. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, of course. So, Ellie, what is a hostler? It's pretty simple. I'm basically a horse and barn caretaker. So, bringing the horses in, feeding, turning out, making sure that they're healthy and happy, and assisting the officers. So, you're like a horse whisperer? Exactly. So, what does your daily routine consist of? I kind of have a I come in at six every morning and feed the horses their grain, make sure that they're doing well from the night in the stalls, and then turn them out. And they're out for most of the day until the officers need them for patrol. And then clean their stalls and make sure they're good for the day. Then bring them in at the end of the day and call it a night. So, we, you know, sometimes we don't think about all the care that goes into, because these are animals, right? We can't just leave them out. We have to take care of them. We have to take care of them. And we can't just leave them. So, it's a year-round job. Right. Somebody has to be here every day. Yep. And no days off. That's why we've got me to help the officers out on the weekends and everything. So, we do take days off, but... But somebody has to be here, right? Somebody's got to be here every day. Yep. Well, we appreciate you joining us today. We appreciate what you do for the Lexington Police Department as well. I'm happy to be here. It's a privilege. Thank you. Hey. And we are here at the Lexington Police Department Mounted Barn. And we are here with Officer Allison Winters and Jonathan Coyle. Thank you all for joining us today. Of course. So, can you all tell us a little bit about how... Because I remember both of you on patrol. How did you all get in the mounted unit? Yeah. So, there is an application process. After three years, patrol officers are eligible to put in for the unit if there is an opening. Once that opening is available, there is an interview process. And whoever is selected from the interview process gets to come to the unit. And there is a training process that takes place once they come to the unit to make sure they are able to ride and proficient in their skills. So, how long have you been in the unit? Four months. Four months. Alright. And what about you? Four years. Four years and four months. Okay. So, tell us a little bit about how does it... How is it different being a mounted officer from being... Both of you are in patrol. How is it different from being a patrol officer? Being in the mounted unit for me is... It helps bring me closer to the community in just a more pleasant way. Instead of seeing somebody on their worst day, you know, we get to see everybody on their best day and sometimes on their worst day and help make their day better if we can. I've had just tons of people that are scared of horses and sometimes scared of police officers even come up and come a lot closer to us and finally end up petting the horse. And being able to bridge a gap that I've noticed before. Being able to go to schools is a pretty cool deal. Having kids, getting to see horses and getting to see police officers. We also have barn cats that when we do tours around here, Smokey and Bandit are their name. And people half the time love the cats just as much as they love the horses. Barn cats. I've noticed them running around here. Oh yes. They seem to be popular. This is their house. They love it. So are you all assigned the horses? Yes. So I'm assigned to Bishop and Aiden. They're currently our two oldest horses as well. And I'm assigned to Bishop and Aiden. And I'm assigned to Bishop and Aiden horses as well. They both came from Asbury. And she is assigned to Houston who also has came from Asbury. All three of them are Percher on Thoroughbred Crosses. And we have two Clydesdales as well that are currently unassigned. But we take turns riding them to keep them up. Now I know beat partners and the officers you work with every single day have different personalities. Right? Do the horses have different personalities? Definitely. We call them horse analities. Okay. I like it. Yeah. He's a goober. He's tired right now. But he's very I would say personable. He's very horseanable. He loves his treats. And he loves people a whole lot. And he gets real lippy and plays with people a whole lot. Where some of the other horses are a little more just like a statue. Kind of some of them. Some of them are very sleepy. All right. Well we appreciate you talking with us this morning. So now we want to see what you got. Right? We're going to go over to the training barn. And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the skills and see some of the things that you can do on a horse. How's that sound? Let's go. All right. So episode 12. The last episode of season one of Your Lex PD. We were here at the horse barn. Sonny my new friend here. We had a great episode. So what is next? So starting off season two. Next month we are going to be talking to what we call the NROs. Which is the neighborhood resource officers. Which serve as kind of a liaison between patrol and the neighborhoods dealing with particular issues. So it should be interesting. Plus the holidays are coming up and we'll do some safety tips with that as well. So join us next month for another episode of Your Lex PD. We'll see you then. Tell me what to do, am I losing you? Tell me what to do, am I losing you? All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey I've been for a walk on a winter's day I could save the world if I was in L.A. California dreamin', California dreamin' On such a winter's day I stopped into a church, I passed along the way When I got down on my knees, I pretended to pray You know the preacher likes the cold He knows I'm gonna stay California dreamin', California dreamin' On such a winter's day All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey I've been for a walk on a winter's day I could save the world if I was in L.A. California dreamin', California dreamin' On such a winter's day California dreamin', California dreamin' On such a winter's day California dreamin', California dreamin' On such a winter's day California dreamin', California dreamin' Hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart We married and lost our love with you I knew, Mary Lou, we'd never part So hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart At the bar one Sunday, flashed those big brown eyes my way Who I wanted you for evermore I'm not the one that gets around Swear my feet stuck to the ground You know I never did meet you before I said hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart We married and lost our love with you I knew, Mary Lou, we'd never part So hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart All your lips I've heard before Believe me, I just had no choice My horses wouldn't make me stay away All about a new day now Arms around you, good and tight That's all I had to see for me to say Hey, hey, hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart We married and lost our love with you I knew, Mary Lou, we'd never part So hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart So hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart Yes, hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart There must be lights burning brighter somewhere Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue If I can dream of a better land Where all my brothers walk hand in hand Tell me why, oh why, oh why Can't my dream come true, oh why There must be peace and understanding sometime Strong winds of promise that will blow away The doubt and fear If I can dream of a warmer sun Where hope keeps shining on everyone Tell me why, oh why, oh why Won't that sun appear We're lost in a cloud with too much rain We're trapped in a world that's troubled with pain But as long as a man has the strength to dream He can redeem his soul at last Deep in my heart there's a trembling question Still I am sure that the answer's, answer's gonna come Somehow out there in the dark There's a beckoning candle, yeah And while I can think, while I can talk While I can stand, while I can walk While I can dream Please let my dream come true, oh Right now, let it come true right now Oh, yeah Right now Let's Dance Let's dance Let's dance for love Yes, it's my last chance For romance tonight I need you by me Beside me, to guide me So call me, just call me Cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad So let's dance, let's dance Let's dance, let's dance Let's dance, let's dance Tonight Let's dance, let's dance for love Yes, it's my last chance For romance tonight Oh, I need you by me Beside me, to guide me So hold me, just hold me Cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad So let's dance, let's dance Let's dance, let's dance Let's dance, let's dance Tonight Hey, ooh, ooh, ooh Oh, I need you by me Beside me, to guide me So hold me, just hold me Cause when I'm bad, I'm so, so bad So come on, baby Dance that dance Come on, baby Dance that dance Come on, baby Let's dance tonight Yeah I got sent home from school one day With a shiner on my eye Fighting was against the rules And it didn't matter why When dad got home, I told that story Just like I'd rehearsed Then stood there on those trembling knees And waited for the worst And he said, let me tell you a secret About a father's love A secret that my daddy said Was just between us He said daddies don't just love Their children every now and then It's a love without end, amen It's a love without end, amen When I became a father In the spring of 81 There was no doubt that stubborn boy Was just like my father's son And when I thought my patience Had been tested to the end I took my daddy's secret And I passed it on to him I said, let me tell you a secret About a father's love A secret that my daddy said Was just between us Hi, I'm Carrie Hyland with the Lexington Senior Center. I'm a personal trainer, instructor, and a board-certified health coach here at the Lexington Senior Center. And I'm getting ready to do a get-up-and-go class. This class is in and out of the chair. You are more than welcome to sit anytime, stand anytime, and certainly make modifications along the way. Today, I'm just using a variety of hand weights. I like to have two different sets, so if it seems too light, I can go a little heavier. If it gets too heavy, set it down. And remember, you can always use your own body weight. If you don't have hand weights at home, get some canned goods, fill up a milk jug. Just do whatever you can to just try to get a good workout. So let's just go ahead and get started. Stand up nice and tall, shoulders back and down. Just start to give me a nice little march. And I just want you to think about really picking up your feet. Often in times, we're walking along and we're not paying attention when we're going up the stairs. We're fine with that first step, but the second one will just hit that step. So think about picking up the feet. Have those shoulders back and down, tummies tight. Pump those arms right here. Let's go. And smile. Let's just exercise. It doesn't have to be anything serious if you're moving, you're improving. Tap your toes out in front. Open and close your arms. Think about waking up your back muscles. Right now, we're just working on raising up that body temperature. And just tap it. So as we're warming up, let's just think about that perceived exertion scale from one to ten. One, two, and three, we're warming up right now, raising that body temperature. And that's how you should feel. Four, five, six, starting to work. Flex your feet. That's when we really get going. Seven, pretty intense. Couldn't hold forever. Eight, nine, way too hard. I want you to back off. So just kind of be mindful of that as we move through class. You can activate more legs here now by starting getting a little more up and down. Oh, yeah. Feels good. Wake up those arms, the biceps, the legs, the feet. We will be teaching this interval style today, so we'll be sitting and standing. Take it back to a big march. Picking up the feet again, pumping the arms, pumping the legs. Nice and simple. Now, while you're at home, make sure your surroundings are clear. No trip hazards. Step touch. Right there. Nice side to side. Oh, yeah. You got it. Big steps, side to side. Unsure of your balance, feel free to stay right here or give me a little hamstring curl. And all that is is just your little foot to your hiney. Right there. If you can't get it there, maybe you need to go get something to eat, like a milkshake. Put some junk in the trunk. Or actually, it might be range of motion issues with your knees. That's okay, too. Feel free to stay right here or add a little squat in the middle. Are you breathing? You should start to be about a three now on that perceived exertion scale. Switching directions on you. Knees up. Now, be mindful of the balance. Feel free to always hold on to that chair. Nothing is ever worth a fall. But you are balancing, you are shifting your weight here. Engage your tummy and your core. And you got it. Oh, yeah. Knee issues, you might choose to stay right here. Or go ahead and give me a few kicks out. Just like that. Loosening up the back of the legs and the hamstrings. Nice little lean back. Come on, let's do a few more. Oh, yeah. Feeling good now. Two more. Three. Take it back to the knees up, please. Right there. Oh, yeah. Nice big knees up. Give me a nice big march right here. Come on. Oh, yeah. Knees up a little bit closer to my chair. Four knees. Nice big march. Do that again. Four knees. This is part A. Big march. Give me a little kick back. It's just a kick back. Squeezing those glutes. Little push with the arms. Push it out. Okay, nothing fancy. Nice march. Yeah. A little bit more. Pull the tummy tight. Shoulders back and down. So we're just going to work that back kick. Four kicks back. I don't care what leg goes. Doesn't matter. And a little march. When we put it together. I don't care which leg goes first. Kick back four. Little march. Four knees. So I'm going to teach it first in place. Big march. Maybe at home you don't have room to move. Kick back four. Or maybe you just want to stay close to the chair. Big march. Let's do that again. Four knees. March it. Kick back. Yeah. March it. You can do it in place one time. Watch me. Four knees up. Little march. Kick it back. Come on, big kick. You got it. March it. Now move it if you would like to. Or stay here. Nice little march. Put this in the memory bank for later. Kick back. March it. You can do a little jump rope. Knees up. March jump rope. Yeah. Take it back. March jump rope. One more time. Four knees up. March. Come on, circle those arms. Take it back. March it. Easy march. Easy. Give me some shoulder shrugs right here. Take a breath. Should be sweating a little bit. Yeah. Going back to that tippy tippy top. Just tap your toes. Nice and easy. If your heart rate got up a little bit, I'm bringing it down on purpose. Yeah. Come on, reach out there like you're going to smash a little spider. If I see one, I'm out of here. Yeah. A little bit more right there. And just go back to the little heels and flex. Super easy, right? Taking a breath. A little bit more. Good. Four, three. I just want a really nice big inhale up. Into the nose. Exhale down. Nice big shoulder circles back. Can I spit it out? Oh, yeah. Take it up. Bring it down. Shoulder rolls to the front. Oh, I like it. And now just few wrists circles here. This is for carpal tunnel. Arthritis in those wrists. Other way. Good job. Open and close your fingers. Sprinkle me with some love and kindness right there. Again, this is for the arthritis in those finger joints. Helps like with buttoning of the shirt. Fine motor skills. Maybe you like to paint or sew. Play the piano. And one finger to each thumb. Same little thing. Yeah. And I always like to kind of loosen up the hands because we're about to grip some hand weights. And I have a lot of clients that get arthritis right in here. And their thumb muscle. All right. Inhale up. Exhale down. Shoulder rolls to the back. Have a seat. Get a drink of water. And I want you to grab some hand weights that you might use for your legs and your back. So I'm going to go and start with my heavier weights because I can always drop down and go lighter. So I like sitting to the very front of my chair. Sit up nice and tall. Just make sure you've got a sturdy enough chair that it won't flip on you if you're to the front. Shoulders back and down. Abs in. And I'm placing my weights on the meaty part of my legs. Okay. You don't ever want to put anything like on your knee joints or your hip joints. So right here. And I'm going to work on my posture. So even though I'm in the chair, I can definitely still work my core, engage my abdominals, which is great for balance. You have to have leg strength, core strength, if you're worried about your balance. So I'm sitting up nice and tall, and I'm just going to start with some leg extensions where you lift, extend, in, and set it down. I lift my leg up off the chair, extend my leg out, in, and down. So what does this do for you? A, this is a great modification for squats and lunges. If you have any injuries anywhere and you're just not able to squat and lunge, great. If you've had, like, knee replacement or getting ready to go have knee surgery, it's actually strengthening the quadriceps here, front of the leg, and lengthening and strengthening the back of the leg, your hamstrings. These are the muscles that help you go up and down the stairs, lift your leg out of a bathtub. You've got a nice, tall bathtub. And try not to lean back too much. You want to sit up nice and tall. So any time during class you need to sit down and you want to still do something, here you go. Great modification. Any time. Still working your strength. Give me one more each way. Yeah. And then sit up nice and tall. This next is really important. I want you to draw your shoulders up, bring it back and down, and really pinch those shoulder blades together, holding your abs in nice and tight. I'm going to have you hinge forward just a little bit, not a whole lot. One arm out in front and the other. And all you're going to do is drive those elbows straight back, squeezing the shoulder blades together, and release. And I actually want you to try to keep your neck in alignment with your spine when you do this. So try not to look right up at the TV or down at your feet, just nice and neutral. Just listen if you need to. And take time to really squeeze those shoulder blades. Right there. Good. You've got four more right now. Last one. Sit up nice and tall. Leg extensions right there. Yeah. So let's talk about using weights for a moment. Always slower is better. Try not to go too fast. That uses momentum and not your muscle. I would always rather you go very light in your weights and work form than heavy and be sloppy. One more. Each leg extension here, each leg. Yeah. One more time. Shoulders back and down. Tummy's in. Hinge forward. Arms out. Let's work it. Squeeze the muscles. Squeeze the back shoulder blades together nice and tight. I just put a $100 bill back there. Go catch it. Keep it. Don't drop it. Yeah. Give me about four more if you can. And we're going to go back one more time to those leg extensions. Sitting up nice and tall. A little up, out, in, set it down. Beautiful. Getting strong, staying healthy. Exercise does a lot for you. All right. One more. Yes. And now I'm going to open up my legs just a little bit. Okay. If it felt better to you to stay with the back rows we just did a minute ago, stay with those. No problem. Or I'm going to hinge over this time. I'm going to start with one arm up and one arm down. And I want you to think of a little pulley. And I'm actually activating my waistline as well as I go. Oh, yeah. And I want you to think of a little pulley in the belly that helps support that spine and that lower back. Give me about four more. Three, two, one more. All right. Sit up nice and tall. I'm going to do that again except with a little surprise. You may stay right here in the chair or stand up. Hinge over shoulders back and down. Okay. I'm kind of in a little tiny squat here. And I'm just going to row. Push and pull this way. And I can really feel my shoulder blades working, my back working. Just like that. Good. Take a nice deep breath. Don't hold your breath. Give me about one more. Stand up nice and tall. Make sure your chair is there. Have a seat. Shoulder rolls. All right. One more little move. Readjust. Shoulders back and down. Belly in nice and tight. Hinge forward. You need to stay here. That's fine. Nice and center. You need to stay with that back row we did a minute ago. Fine. Or now I'm going to go side to side. Reaching almost like I'm reaching for my ankles. Boom. So, of course, here's the seated version for you. And sit up nice and tall. One more set, I promise. You can stay seated. Repeat that. Or come up. Shoulders back and down. Pulling in that belly. Hinge. Side to side this way. Again, think about keeping that neck in alignment with the spine. Getting the back, the lats, your waistline stronger, healthier you today. Four, three, two, one. Come on up. Have a seat. Go ahead. Take your hand weights. Tuck them out of the way. Underneath the chair. On the counter. Whatever it might be. Get a quick drink of water. And we're going to stand up and move again. Come on up. Oh, yeah. Told you to put the little warm-up in your memory bank. Okay. I'll start very easy, but I'm going to increase the intensity. It's up to you whether you do it or not. Okay. You remember the four knees. I'm teaching it in place first. March and jump rope. Easy march. Kick back four. Yeah. Easy jump rope. You want to stay here? Fine. Four knees. Yep. Again. High knees to make it a little more intense. Kick back four. Jump rope. High knees. Four knees. Are you ready for it? You can skip it. Kick it back. I love to skip. Skip it. So one more time in place. Four knees. It can be easy, medium, or skip. Kick back. It can be easy, medium, or skip it. Four knees up. Your way. Skip it. March it. Take it back. Take it back. Your way. Four knees up. Yes. March it. Easy. Knees up. Skip it. Take it back. Work it. I think you get the idea. Anyway, you're moving, you're improving. That's my motto. I don't care if you were itty bitty. You're moving. You're not eating a bag of Doritos right now. Yes. One more up. One more up. One more back. Go. Yes. Take it back. Take it back. Hold here. Come on. Let me see what you got. Work it. I don't care. What do you got this day? How are we feeling? Yes. Make it easy. Easy. Take a breath. On that perceived exertion scale from one to ten, what did you get to? I want a seven. Not sure you could have kept going. Six, still working. Good. Tap your toes. Yeah. Let that heart rate come down a little bit. Taking a breath. Why do I do that? Why do I want you to bring the heart rate down before we go into muscle work? Or before you sit down? It's because I don't want you getting dizzy. I want you to take some breaths. Medications can have a big effect on that. Dehydration. It doesn't have anything to do always with your fitness level. Just wiggle a little bit. Inhale up. Exhale down. Roll it out. I want you to think about what you might use for a little shoulder and for your legs. I'm only getting one hand weight. I want you to get a drink of water, but I need you to squat to pick it up, trying to keep your head above your heart. Again, dizziness thing. Get a drink of water. I'm actually picking my lighter weight right now. I'm just going to place that weight in one hand. In the weightlifting world, we kind of call this rat. It's not resting on my shoulder. It's just right here. I've got a little isometric hold right here on my bicep. I'm just going to stand up nice and tall right now. You're going to turn that opposite foot in. I'm going to progress this. You just pick where you need to go. Again, has to do with a lot of issues with hips and joints and back and knees and feet and this and that, do you? I turn my opposite toe in, and I lift and lower, trying to target my outer thigh. If you feel extremely unsure of your balance, here's the chair. That's fine. You can choose to stay there the whole time. Try to be nice and tall. Try not to lean. I can stay right here because maybe my shoulder bothers me. Maybe I have rotator issues. I'm not supposed to go up overhead. I could squat and lift right there. Now take your time. I'm sitting back in my heels, tummy in, chest proud. I can take it down, come up. Opposite arm, opposite leg. Just like that. Down, up, down, up. Just give me eight more. Take a break. All is good. Four more. Three. Just a nice little march. Switching sides. Nice and tall. Do you know everybody has a natural body imbalance? Maybe this side, you don't balance well. Remember, hold on to the chair. Turn that opposite toe in and lift. Here is fine. And just a reminder, here again. And I'm tall. Working my core. I could do the fingertip. I could hover. I could let go, but it's there, right? Right here. Four. I'm going to add that little squat. Take it down and lift. Notice that my arm is not going up. Shoulder issue this side. Sit back in the heels. Drive up through the heels. Chest proud. Add the arm if you wish. You got a lot going on here. Multiple body parts. Multiple joints going. And you want the good news. Last set of eight right here. Let's do eight. One. Just four more and you get to sit. How's that? Three. Two. Last one. Good job. Easy march. Have a seat. Definitely get a drink of water. I'm going to get two hand weights now. I want you to think about what you might use for your biceps. I'm just going to grab my other weight. I'm sitting up nice and tall, kind of giving you a little break. Maybe you're feeling about five or six, maybe. Remember, when you do weights, you really want to go to muscle fatigue. That's what really helps you get stronger. And the older we get, we need to do weights so much more than cardio. Sit up tall. I say that a lot. I say shoulders back and down a lot. I say pull your abs in a lot. It's really important to do. I'm just going to give a little hammer curl. And I want you to kind of keep it kind of slow for me, please. Just a little up, a little down. And when you do your hammer curl, I actually want you to stop about a fist distance or two from the top. People are like, well, why? Well, if I go all the way to my shoulder, that releases my bicep. We're trying to work that muscle, so let's just keep it under resistance. Nice little hammer. And remember, if this feels best for you for any reason, you can always stay right here. And just give me about four more here. Three. Yeah. And then, once again, I'm going to kind of open my legs up. I'm going to show you the seated version first, and then you can join me standing if you want to. It won't be for everybody. Arms come front right here, palms out, shoulders back and down. I'm just going to do a little bicep curl. Think slow. Don't think anything fast and jerky. Nice and slow. Yeah. Sweating. So you could choose to stay right here. Or I'm going to come up. And if you notice, my legs are kind of wide, so it's more of a wide squat that I'm going to go into. My toes and my knees go in the same direction when I go down. Again, I'm pulling the abs in, chest is proud. So let's just start with the squat first. So you just kind of take it down and up. Same direction. Almost like you're pulling a piece of paper apart with your legs. Rip that paper. You don't want the knees to come in. Take everything nice and tight. And, again, you need to drop this part. Drop it. And I'm going to add. I'm going to squat. I'm going to curl and stand up. I squat, curl, stand up. Feel free to sit back down and just work the curls. A little down. Yes. Good job. Down, curl. Working your legs. Working your upper body. You're getting low to pick something up, like a heavy box or something. Make it functional for you. Take it down. Squeeze. Don't lean forward. Let's just do several more. Right there. Just so you got it, take a break anytime. Two more, two more. Last one. Come on up. Shake it out. Good job. Tuck in underneath. Get a nice little drink of water. Let's get ready to move one more time. Let's go. Start with a little march. Oh, yeah. How much water should you have during the day? Everybody always says eight eight-ounce glasses. But really, take your body weight and divide it by half. Unless you have a medical reason, of course. A little march. Start to exercise. You need more water. Hot outside, you need more water. Step touch, right and left. Right there. Nice big steps. Feet nice and flat. Again, check your surroundings a little bit, because I'm going to have you step two to the right and bring it back. Oh, yeah. You can swing your arms if you wish. Notice that my feet are nice and flat. Oh, yeah. I'm sure of your feet and your balance. You're going to stay right here with the step touch, too. Or you can make it a grapevine. Right there. Out behind, out together. You can make it a little funky if you want. This is about as dancey as I get. I have no groove. Oh, yeah. Let's go. Give me about eight of them. Seven. You have four more. Three, and we're going back to that single touch. Single touch. You can stay tall, or you can give me more of a scoop. Scoop it. Let's raise that heart rate a little bit. How about it? Four, three, two. Step touch two or grapevine. Come on. Have fun with it. Laugh a little bit at yourself. It's all good. Four more. Three. Are you ready? Single touch. Scoop it. Down and up. Get that heart rate up. More in the legs. Not sure? Here. A little bit easier. Catch your breath. Four, three. Let's grapevine. Come on. Splish splash. Going to need to jump in the pool after this. One more each way. Scoop it. Come on. Do it for you. Do it for a good day. Oh, yeah. Almost. Just make it easy. Step touch. Easy. Catching your breath. Oh, yeah. Large. Okay. Just to kind of make the mind think a little bit. Right foot V, slow. It's out, out, back, back. V step, V step. Back, back. Again, slow. Out, out, in, in. One more. Take it up to tempo. Out and back. Swing it if you want. Oh, yeah. Moving and approving. Four more here. I don't care if you're exactly with me or not. Come on. Easy marge. We're just going to practice. That left side. Slow V step first. Out, out, back, back. Little out, out, back. You can stay right here if you didn't want to pick it up. I'm doing one more slow. Pick it up. Get the legs going. I'm changing the arms. Are you ready? It is. Double, double. Clap, two. Want a little more leg action? Down and up. Come on. We're almost through class today. You can work it now. Four more. Yeah. Tap your right toe. And breathe. Other side. Take a breath. Pump your heels. Oh, yeah. Heart rate coming down just a little bit. Nice deep breaths. Easy marge. Easy. Oh, yeah. We're going to practice a little bit of balance. Remember, you can sit down if you need to. Don't let go of anything. If you're not sure you're balanced. And if you're home alone, maybe take a minute to get a drink of water. And make sure you're okay with it. Maybe skip the balance for just a minute. I'm going back to my chair. And I'm going to hold on. And I'm going to stand up nice and tall. And I'm just going to take my outside leg out and open up. Shoulders back and down. And right now I'm holding on to the chair. Remember, do you. Don't worry about anybody else. I will progress this so I can let go. But I'm keeping my toe down. And I'm just going to kind of take a look around. Take some breaths. Everybody wants to hold their breath when they balance. Changing the direction of your head, even when walking, can really throw you off balance. If you need to stay here for safety reasons, stay here. Or hand on. And I'm going to lift that leg up. Okay. So both sides of my heel, big toe, little toe are touching the ground. I'm lighting the knee. Don't lock that knee joint out. Engage right here in your glutes and your core and tall. Unsure? Hold on. Hold on to that countertop or that chair. Wherever you are, I could do the fingertip. I could let go. When you balance, you work every muscle in your body. And if you're getting frustrated because you have to catch yourself, don't. That can give you muscle memory, we hope, if you're walking along and kind of trip to catch yourself. So all is good. You're feeling it right here in this thigh. You're strengthening that thigh. It's normal. Wiggle it out. Just go to the other side. I'm going to start again just checking in. Don't assume that one side is as good as the other. Take a breath. Shoulders back down. I'm engaging my core. My foot is still down, and I'm going to change the direction of my head. Just nice and slow. You don't want to be jerky or anything. And I'm going to come back. Now, if you really want to challenge, sometimes looking up can really affect your balance. And I don't mean just the eyeballs. I know we can get our eyeballs up there. Really tilt the head. Take a breath. I'm holding on, and I'm going to lift off. Now, wherever you're challenged, just stay wherever that is. Everybody's different. So many things can affect your balance. Eye sight, hearing, sinuses, lack of sleep, dehydration, neuropathy, arthritis in the feet, probably a thousand more things. And just hold. Yes. Beautiful. Ideally, you should be able to try and hold your balance 20 to 30 seconds if you can. Wiggle it out. Good job. Come on down. Have a seat. We're at the very edge of the chair. We're just going to work our abdominals for just a minute, and then we're going to stretch. And you've got the whole day ahead of you, or evening, or whatever time of day it is when you watch this. Just taking the weight. Shoulders, again, for the thousandth time, back and down. Arms nice and long, and I'm just going to rotate. One hand on top, nice and slow, like you're driving a car. And I want you to take me to the beach, please. That's where I always want to go. To the beach or the farm. One hand on top of the other. So you're working your little deltoid muscles right here in the front of that arm. And, of course, if that's too much for you, bring it in. That's a lot easier. So just rotate. I'm sitting at the very edge of my chair, and I'm going to hold center. And I'm just going to go back until I feel my abdominals engaged, not touching the back of the chair, and I rotate. And then using these stomach muscles right here, sit up and drive the car. So that's all we're doing, just a couple. Here we go. Take it back, two, three, four, and drive. Sit up nice and slow. And drive. How about just two more? Can we do it? This is great for the core and the abs. Yes. And then just sit up. You got one more to do. Make it your best one yet. Just take it back, back. Keep that neck nice and neutral. Just give me a hug. I didn't tell you we were going to do that. Drive it. Use those abs. Sit up, sit up, sit up. Thank goodness. Set that weight down. Just roll it out. Give me a nice big inhale up. Exhale down. One more time, roll it out. Big inhale up. As you bring your arms down, extend one foot out. Reach out past your toe about 45 degrees. Just feeling the back of the legs there. That hamstring stretch. And I'm going to bring it in. Inhale up. Exhale down. Take that other leg and just extend out about 45 degrees. And I'm just sitting up nice and tall. I'm just going to cross at the ankle. So I'm going to do three different sets here. Sometimes it just depends on your hips and your knees and your lower back where you can go. Put the knees together. Give yourself a nice hug. So if you feel all that in your hips and your lower back and it's intense, just stay there. Or I'm going to sit like a lady and lean in. Try not to round out that back. Just kind of lean in nice and natural. Then I'm going to sit up nice and tall. The number four, this is the one that everybody can do. And if you take a look, if you are able to do this, if your knee is up, you've got tight hips. I'm somewhere in the middle. Sit up nice and tall. Lean in. Gently press down on that leg. Now that's going to make it a little deeper, active stretch for you. On that perceived exertion scale, you should be about back to normal. One, two. Maybe three if you're new to exercise. Just switch sides. Back in first. Feet together. Sit like the lady. You can stay with whatever feels best for your body today. And the number four. Tall, lean in, gently press down. Come see us at the Lexington Senior Center. We have a lot of fun here. We have all kinds of classes. Something for everybody. Inhale up. Exhale down. Pat yourself on the back. Good job, everybody. See you soon. I'm Jack Patty, and this is the Senior Minute. Successfully serving seniors. Welcome to the Senior Minute. I'm Christy Stambaugh, Director of Aging and Disability Services, and a member of the Senior Services Commission. Today with us we have Sue Michael, a board member with ITM Bluegrass. Welcome. Thank you. Tell us about ITM Bluegrass. Well, ITM Bluegrass offers rides for seniors and visually impaired individuals. You join us like you would join Uber. When you register as a rider, you tell us, I have a walker, I have oxygen, I have a companion, so that when you call for a ride, your driver knows exactly what your needs are. You could have dementia, you could have trouble getting down your stairs, and we do door-to-door. So we make sure that you get out and in our car safely, and then we get you to where you need to go and make sure you are where you need to be, not just on a street corner, but right where you need to be. Good. Is ITM Bluegrass a nonprofit? Yes, we are a nonprofit. Good. And how are you defining a senior? A senior is anyone over 60. Okay. And companions ride together? Yes, they can. If you have a companion that assists you while you're out and about, then that companion, you register them when you register yourself so we know and we'll have room for you in the car for both of them. Good. You told me earlier that you've been on the board for quite some time. What's the number one ride request destination? Well, typically it's a senior center or the Y or a doctor's appointment. Okay, good. Those are the big key ones. I think you also give rides to members to the airport. Yes, we do go to the airport. We go to the park. We go to the grocery store. So anywhere that you tell us you need to be, and then you tell us when to pick you up. We also have a dispatcher, which is very handy. So if you're there, and typically, you know, doctor's appointments are really hard to judge exactly. When am I going to be ready to go? You just call the dispatcher and we'll finagle things around and get that driver over there to you quickly. Is the dispatcher a person or is it automation? Oh, no, it's a person. Cynthia, Elizabeth, or Joe, and they're quite sweet. Great. So if I need a ride, I'm a member, so I've joined. I've paid a fee, presumably. What is the fee? Yeah, so it's about $50. It kind of fluctuates a little bit. But you pay a fee annually, and then you call and book your rides. And the fee for a ride is about $0.10 a mile. So we adjust a little bit as we need to. But, yeah, that covers it. It's quite, our members seem to find the rides quite refreshing and helpful. Good. Is there any exchange of money with the drivers? Because I think the drivers are volunteers, right? All the drivers, most of the drivers are volunteers. There's no money exchange. So you register, and it's all handled online away from the actual ride itself. So the rider never gets involved, and the drivers don't handle any cash or anything. Good. So we don't have to tip our driver. There would be no tipping, no. Okay, good. Do you all have any needs as an organization? Right now we're really hoping to beef up our volunteer drivers. If we can get more drivers, we can do more service, and we want to really increase our services. So our goal is to find drivers that would register with us. We will do a background check. We do a license check to make sure you check your driving record. And then once you're accepted, then what happens for a driver is that you tell us your preferred dates and times of when you'd like to drive. I drive on Tuesday mornings. And then the week before, the dispatcher will contact you and say, Is that still good? And you say, Yeah, I can do it. Or, No, I need to switch a little bit like this. And then the day before, I get a manifest or a list of, Be here for this person, and they have these needs. So I know. And then the rider also knows it's me that's coming. I have a sticker in my window. It's ITN. So everybody knows it's all good. And then I deliver them, and I tell the dispatch, All's good. And everybody's taken care of. Great. So if a person wants to get in touch with ITN Bluegrass because they're interested in volunteering or signing up for services, can you tell us the best way to do that? Really, the easiest way is either Facebook or just look us up, itnbluegrass.org. And we're there. You'll find us easily. Or you can call us. You'll find our phone number there. And Joe or Elizabeth will walk you through what to do. Good. If there's any of our people who are out there watching on behalf of their parents today, isn't there a pretty great program about banking your volunteer time? I'm so glad you asked that. Because if you're a driver, you have three choices. You can either bank your hours, and then you can say, I want to donate those hours to a family, friend, or neighbor, a family or friend or neighbor. You can save the hours for yourself. So if you anticipate, I'm going to need this service at some point. So you can save those hours, and then those would be free rides for you later. Or you can donate, I'm sorry, you can get paid to your mileage, reimbursed for your mileage. So you can choose those, and you switch it around as you need to. You know, today I found this new person, I really want to donate my hours. You just call Joe and Elizabeth, and they'll switch it up for you. Oh, that's such a great program to give back to the community, to plan for us as we age, or to take care of a family member. That's great. So IDM Bluegrass started how many years ago? Well, the Bluegrass started 16 years ago. Gail Reese founded us. We're a part of a larger organization that's been around for about 30 years. There are about eight affiliates in the country, so we're lucky and blessed to have one here in Lexington. And we feel such a need here, and it's so fun with our riders. I have this visually impaired gentleman I take to work. I have a lady that's a senior that continues to work and loves working every day, and we get her there and back. I have a dementia gentleman that I take to friends and make sure that he's all safe. Each one is so interesting, and they're so happy that someone is helping them. And you become friends with these people. Someone you see regularly, someone you can check on regularly. They enjoy the interaction, so it's quite rewarding. That's great. Do you have any idea? I think recently you celebrated a big milestone. We had 125,000 miles, so that is, in 16 years, a lot of rides. And we really want to push that number more. Right. That's great. And in order to push that number more, you need more volunteers. We do. We need drivers. We need drivers. And it's easy. It's flexible. You can drive as much or as little. We have some drivers that drive 30 hours a week.