["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] It's one o'clock, so. All right, colleagues. It's 1 p.m. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome. Thank you. I'll now call to order the March 11, 2025, meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Thank you all so much for being here. We'll start with our first item on the agenda, and that's approval of the February 11, 2025, committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Okay, hearing none, I hear a move to approve from Councilmember Savigny, seconded by Councilmember Beasley. Is there any discussion on that motion? Okay. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes. The first presentation on our agenda is an update on energy initiatives. James Bush, Energy Initiative Section Manager, is here to provide that update. Thank you, Mr. Bush, and welcome. Thank you. We're set to go. James Bush, Environmental Services, Program Manager for Energy Initiatives with the city. This is an annual update, so the outline is somewhat patterned. Per the list there, we'll jump right in. High level then on the utilities that we track of natural gas, water, and electricity. Annual spend in fiscal year 24, 21.4 million. The largest piece is, of course, related to our lease services for fire hydrants and street lights. The expenses we have across all three for transporting, collecting, and processing wastewater is at 3.5 million. And then the remaining three pieces of that pie are across all government operations. Police stations, fire stations, the building you're in, parks and rec, et cetera. James, could you speak a little closer to the mic? I'll do my best. In the upper corner, we are noting in effect already, we've got rate increases on 19% was approved by the Public Service Commission for water, so those are just hitting our bills now and will fully impact 2025, as well as a smaller increase related to the delivery of natural gas. The volumetric portion we have under a fixed price agreement through the next year, so we at least had some inhibition on that. But the delivery costs are going to go up. Electric is our wild card. We couldn't forecast that in our modeling for budgets because a rate case has not been submitted, though KU is eligible for a rate case as soon as July, so to be determined on that. Project-wise, under energy initiatives in 2025, we have a new solar PV install at Fire Station 22. Fire Station 19 kicked off last week. Solar Shares, which is a partnership with KU to lease solar panels at one of their farm, and it's an on-bill credit. We did that at four different sites. These are the sites where it's not amenable to install a system ourselves, the classic being too much shading from adjacent trees. The addition capacity there was 49 kilowatts. Our total is a little over 200. We've got 10 installations, six of which are that on-bill solar share. Investment, respectable, but a little low just due to limitations on resource. Cost estimate, a little under $8,000 a year in savings on the energy side. Doing some math on those, you should see returns coming in around 17 years for these type of projects. So they're a step up from energy efficiency, which tends to have a little better pro forma than on the power production side. Now, there's still a few months left in this fiscal year. I'm anticipating releasing an RFP for an install at Police East. That one I'm a little excited about because that was a facility that was designed with solar in mind, so we have proper south-facing slopes. It's the sizing. I'm trying to get some more information on that, but you may see that RFP pass through. I've been working with Parks and Rec. They have a very antiquated system out at the Tate Street Ballroom, and the early estimates were very high, so working on a cost share project with them, that would draw down our budget quite a bit. Outside of that, we can certainly do more of the solar share program. All of these, though, we're not sure how cooperative the federal government will be, but they did open a rebate program for this type of work, so we're hoping for some compensation on that side that's just above and beyond. We weren't anticipating it, but we continue to at least go through the process. Lighting has been more de minimis in my field of late. A photo. That's the install at Station 22. We used two of the orientations, both east and south. A little bit on the return expected on that particular project. Then I'm noting there, this is an example of a facility that never had solar in mind when it was designed, so that large surface area of that one roof, it's great for putting on a panel, but it faces the east, so that reduces your performance impact. It's an example of just how when you incorporate in your design on the front end, you might be able to do something as simple as rotating that building to maximize where your south-facing surfaces are. This one, I decided to put in a flashback of the prior year, because I don't think a lot of people are aware of this, because you can't see the panels. They're up on a second-story roof on a flat system. This is a ballasted. It's our largest solar array on install. It well exceeded expectations. You know, an example, the contractors tend to be fairly conservative in their modeling, and I fact-checked that, but just did incredible. Of the energy it produces, 71% in that first year was used on site, and that reduced our purchased electricity from KU by 30%, which is of interest to a lot of people, because they often come to me like, can I just wipe away my entire bill with solar? It takes a lot of glass, typically, given the amount of energy a facility uses. Here you see the size of this system, and it's 30% of the bill. You have to have a very efficient building and a lot of foresight in terms of solar design if you're talking want-to-talk net-zero type design. Funding-wise, we're in good shape, though these numbers are a little misleading, so I want to walk through them. At the end of last year, 1101 monies, we fully expended it, and from my perspective, that was the end of a 12-year run, I think, of year after year doing projects and trying to keep balance of requests versus what we needed. So we went down to where we had to borrow a little money from another budget just to supplement a project we had in the works, but we took it all the way to zero, and then the numbers you see here, the allocation that I'm working through on the year, plus there was an earmark from council specific for solar projects. Now, of that 272, easily half of that could be reduced with just the Police East that I plan on issuing RFP and that project with Parks and Rec at Tate's Creek. So we moved through this quickly, the importance being that it's through a capital program, just given the timeline of developing and keeping these projects moving. In 26, and this one I'm hoping I don't shoot myself in the foot, but I asked for a smaller allocation next year than our normal spend down, and that was in anticipation of the IRA money from the federal government, which is a direct allocation to the city of Lexington, Kentucky. We followed all the rules and applied for it. That's a two-year funding cycle of 323,000, I think. And I was like, that's perfect. We'd have plenty for continuity. And then, of course, the administration change has really put the brakes on that. So at this point, I don't know what my FY26 is going to look like, but there's at least immediate needs are being met, but I'm not sure where we'll land depending on that federal funding. Urban service, sanitary sewers, we've kept those. Those capital budgets are available for projects, but right now it's like staffing in those areas have been just kind of tied up with their own initiatives, so we're more in hold there. Conclusions and comments? I mean, obviously, very heavy emphasis on solar photovoltaics. I tend to be chasing our roofers, the Police East sector I've already mentioned, and then the new roofs at Police West Roll Call, Technical, and the Black & Williams Community Building. If they're not done, those roofs will be complete within the next month or two. So, again, I've got ample real estate to work with. It's just a resource and timing issue at this point. Above code, these high-performance buildings, net-zero buildings, we still have, it's an optional approach. I mean, we build to code, minimum code. The Senior Therapeutic Center became an outlier. That's going to be our first building with photovoltaics at the time of construction, but it was just fortune that bids came in low, and solar, which was an alternate on the project, was allowed to be included. So, I just want to emphasize, that happened kind of by circumstance, but not because of a direct policy or initiative. So, any high-performance buildings, if that's what we're looking for, they do need something besides being an alternate, is my message. And that is my sprint. Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Bush. And you had four and a half minutes remaining, which is impressive. And we do have a couple of questions, starting with Councilmember Sheehan. I can take all of his remaining time. Thank you for this presentation. I am happy to see that the new Senior and Therapeutic Center will have the solar at construction, because I knew that it was going to be solar-ready, but I thought there was still discussion about whether it would be installed at the start. So, I'm pleased to see that moving forward. And I think you've told us this before, but can you remind us what the general lifespan of the panels are when they're installed? Right now, the out-of-the-box warranty is typically 20 to 30 years. The industry wants to move that to 40 or 50, to be compatible with the lifespan of a roof. But these systems, all my modeling is predicated on 20-year lifespans, which is full for the panel modules, and anticipating then you'll probably have one turnover on your inverters. And then, especially with all the storms that we've had recently, have you had to do any repair or replacement on any of the panels in our system? Knock on wood, no. We had an electrical fault we've been dealing with at Station 22 that's impacting one of the many modules, but everything else, we have not had a replacement yet. So, I've been very pleased. We have remote monitoring systems on these, and I do hands-on monitoring for the first three years, and after that it gets kind of embedded in our expectations for building consumption, so we'll pick it up in our normal procedures of looking for outliers on electricity use. Okay, thank you. And then, for the code, like you mentioned that we build to code, and then any of the work that we're doing like this is above code, that we don't have like a policy around our sustainability for our buildings with new construction or even renovation. Do you have an example of maybe another municipality that does that we could look at as a model for how we might think about that? Yes, not offhand, but other municipalities do incorporate, some call it green construction, others high performance, but the emphasis on an energy target, so it's a performance-based approach to what you're asking your design contractors. We did embed this in the Senior Therapeutic Center, but it was only kind of a wish list. It was like, what would you like to see? I'd like to see a high-performance building, and here's an energy target. Fortunately, the design group we have and we selected, this is not foreign to them. They're cutting edge in that regard, and they were receptive. We were actually having our side conversations in terms of, can we do this? Oh, absolutely, in budget and all. So a performance-based target and sometimes utilizing USGBC lead standards, things like that, but those one-offs come to mind. In terms of a specific jurisdiction, I'd have to look what their recent policies are. Yeah, I might check in with you about that after the meeting. I know some of my colleagues and I have had some conversation about having LFUCG-specific building policy, and I know LEED's standard is the one that a lot of people point to in the community. It's pretty well known, but I also know that there is a middle where you can be because the LEED standard is also very expensive, and we're trying to be fiscally responsible too. So somewhere between the two might be where we could fall. Yeah, LEED energy is a subcomponent of LEED. I'm very focused simply on the energy performance, but LEED is more encompassing than just energy. It gets to the sustainability and recycling and material content. Those are where things get harder for contractors to work with, especially when you're sourcing domestic and local materials for construction. Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate your presentation, and I'll follow up. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Great. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Janice, for that presentation. I just wanted to go back to one slide where you showed the different components. You had water basically on it, I think. Keep going back. The pie slide? Yeah, the pie slide, yeah. So I just wanted to call attention to the fact that our water company did raise the rates. If you're not aware, we actually do pay for hydrants. My community is a private community, and we pay for hydrants, and it's a lot of money. Hydrants are a lot of money. So the 19 percent increase in water, my guess is our hydrant, you know, it costs us about a million dollars in hydrants a year, I would imagine, extra. That increase, I do say water, but 19 percent will apply to the hydrants as well. Yeah. And we did embed that in our budget forecast for FY26. But you're right, it's significant. It's significant. It's not insignificant. So does that come out of the property tax on a house? Is that part of that calculation typically, or is that just a general fund? Is that basically going to be a million-dollar general fund item? It is out of 1101 budget, yes, general fund. Okay. All right. That was one of my questions. Thank you. And I just wanted our council to be aware of that particular one. And then you mentioned on another slide federal rebates, I think, and the possibility that they still might be out there or they're up in the air. Can a public sector entity get federal rebates, or do we have to basically privatize the deal? No, that was the change in the IRA. So that Investment Reduction Act of 24, I think, they made the change so that nonprofits and public entities could apply for these, while we call them rebates, it's common vernacular. It's technically a direct payment from the IRS. The City of Lexington submitted its first application sometime last fall, but I don't believe we've received a dime yet. But we at least went through the process, and it's significant. It's 30% of eligible projects. Right. Right. Okay. That's what I had. Thank you so much again for the presentation. Always enlightening, and I appreciate the work that you're doing. And I do agree with Council Member Sheehan. It's nice when projects, new projects, it works out, and that we're doing it like it all comes out right. But I do think there, I just want to make sure we're asking the questions when we're putting out bids, and we're looking for those options, because I do think it's more important. We have to lead by example, especially if our plan is carbon neutrality by 2050, as stated in our comp plan. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Boone. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation, sir. As far as, like, the technology change with these panels, I guess there were some articles about some transparent panels that have come to market. Is that something that you all are kind of exploring? And I guess, is there a huge price difference? Or, you know, is the building, you know, what does it take to kind of use those? Those specific panels, the transparent ones, no, we're not investigating those. Their niche is agrophotovoltaics, so they're tweaking the panels to generate electricity on the non-visible spectrum so that you can grow crops underneath them. That's, you know, more in the research realm than what we need, since I prefer a roof mount. There is a bifacing on that one, the ballasted project I showed with that aerial photo. So where those are tipped up, you can do a reflection off a white roof and get a bump of 5% or 10%, but whether, you know, you're really optimizing at that point. I'm fine with just a front-facing on a dark roof. That's your high-volume, cheapest product. That's all I had. Thank you, sir. Okay. All right, thank you. Any other questions from other members of the committee? I have one quick question. I just wanted to verify some information that you shared during the presentation and that you touched upon in your response to Council Member Savigny. So what I heard you say is that we had $323,000 of potential IRA federal funding from that 2024 allocation that we applied for, and that would be a direct... Is that correct? Can you clarify what's on hold and the budgetary impact? Thank you. Okay. The $323,000 I mentioned, is a direct allocation from the federal government to the city of Lexington. It does require an application, which we've done, and there it sits with the Department of Energy, and we have not heard back from them. And with the change of the administration and staffing levels and all, the money was supposed to be available for spend in the first quarter of this year. We're almost through that. Then they said maybe May or June, and our contacts have gone silent on us. So you did answer my question, exactly. So that was my line of inquiry, and you had said that you had changed your budget or your budget was smaller in anticipation of that funding. That's correct. And now we're not exactly certain what is or is not going to happen with that anticipated funding. That's correct. Completely independent of the rebates that you see up there. That's a separate item. Okay, excellent. Thank you for that clarification. And I just want to bring attention to that because if for some reason that funding did not come through as anticipated, then I imagine that that would, again, cause us to revisit the budget that we have for initiatives of this type, and perhaps we may need to increase that budget so that we can continue forward with some of these solar projects. You read that correctly, yes. Okay. Thank you for that. And then I just had one other question, and this is because I get questions from my constituents about this. They're interested in kind of the order of projects, how you prioritize certain projects, how they get chosen. Would you be able to share is there a master plan, is there kind of an annual plan? I just get kind of inquiries along those lines, and I want to share that out here. To simplify, the two largest components I'm looking for are compatibility of solar with the use of electricity by the facility. So there I'm reviewing our electrical accounts to find ones that are compatible. Not all are created equal. It depends on the rate structure that the utility counts on and the amount of electricity it's using. Then separately is the physical nature of the facility. Does it have a good roof that's facing south and seeing sunshine? The latter is often a limiting factor, which is why I point you back to the slide about new roofs. It also doesn't make sense to put a solar system on an old roof that you're going to need to remove all the components to lay new shingles or such. Those are broad buckets, but still those are the two things I'm looking for. I've got a list. Here's all our facilities with good electrical profiles. I can do aerial reviews, Google Maps, things like that. So we very much have that list. Then it's which facility has got the newest roof and which division has the bandwidth to support my efforts. So I'm chasing people who are ready. They've got the capacity to do some work because they do have to tolerate my intrusions and field work on site and such. But right now I'm more of a limiting factor than they are by all regards. Thank you for that information. That information is very helpful. I don't see any other questions. Colleagues, thank you so much for your questions, and thank you, Mr. Bush, for your presentation. That brings us to our next item on the agenda, which is our pavement management plan. Very exciting. We have Commissioner Albright here today to provide this presentation. Welcome, Commissioner. Thank you. I appreciate being the insides of a solar sandwich today. So with that, and with the exciting topic of blacktop. So with that, we will dive in, and I will try to remember how to do this well. And I've got my water because my spring allergies have woken up. I don't know about you guys. So again, here's just a brief outline of what we'll cover this afternoon. And just a brief look back as to how this program has evolved in the last dozen or almost years now. Prior to 2014, we relied very heavily on visual inspections, whether it was our project managers and our staff at Streets and Roads and sometimes summer help, to be honest, going out and evaluating things. That worked. That had a lot of subjectivity in it. And it also worked because we had a lower budget amount we were working with and trying to make sure we were prepared for each year. In 2014, we started the move to try to come up with a more data-driven process for both how we collected our information on pavement condition around the county and how we determined what got paved and when. So that took a couple of years to put together. There was a couple of resolutions passed in 2016 that set us in motion for where we are today, really, with the data collection that happens on a three-year cycle from a third party. The picture there in the vendor is the company that we've been used until this past cycle. In 2024, we just finished another round of collection, had a new RFP out, and got a new vendor. You'll be kind of curious to see how the program has evolved over time. So we're pretty excited about that. The paving subcommittee, you can read, that was originally formed by this group in 2014 and then was reformed in 2022 to kind of update the paving plan. That's what we operate off of today. So since that time, the recommendation of aiming for $15 million a year, you can see we try to always get the adopted budget as the blue line and then what we've expensed every year. We've come much closer to that here in recent times. Right around COVID, of course, everybody kind of panicked about what the impact was going to be to the income stream for the city, so stepped down a little bit, but now we're right back up around the target. The fluctuation between the red line and the blue line, a lot of that is attributed to kind of the timing with our contractor, especially for major projects like Man O' War or Tate's Creek or alumni that are $1 million projects and may swing on one side or the other of July 1st as to when we either do the work or get the bill, and then also the fact that paving is a calendar year base and budgeting is a fiscal year base, and those are almost exactly opposite each other. But as I mentioned, the pavement management plan that we present every spring that is based off of the work that was done most recently in 2022 sets kind of the tone for how we will make the decisions based on the budget number that we're presented with so that everybody's working from the same foundation as far as how we score the roads, how the data's collected, and then how the decisions are made within the road classification network. And again, I'll jump ahead just a little because this only applies to the LFUCG-owned and maintained streets, which is the largest set potentially in Fayette County, but not the only set. So we get some questions about that. And then one of the things I'll mention as a change in 2022 before I get there is the creation of the service industrial roads category. We can speak to that a little more as we walk through it. Every district probably has at least one of those roads where there's not necessarily a neighborhood association that's going to worry about that road. It's largely commercial, industrial, retail addresses there, and yet sometimes the pavement can get pretty rough before one of us, whether it's through your contacts or through ours, somebody finally goes, hey, this road's looking pretty rough. So that's just an adoption for a new category that was created that we've been working from since last year. And again, the yellow column here is just to kind of call attention that we're only discussing the roads owned and maintained by LFUCG proper. There is the county network that is maintained still primarily technically through the fiscal court system. It gets run with our paving program, but it's run kind of adjacent to that. And then, of course, we have KYTC-owned streets and a number of private streets still out there. And the service industrial roads, the collectors and the arterials require a little more of a Fayette County-wide focus. So those are generally made out of our department. We receive a lot of input. When you all get a complaint or a comment or even just notice it on your commute, we are happy to include that in the things that we look at every year. But a lot of that we have to weigh the condition of, you know, Tate's Creek Road versus Loudoun Avenue versus Angliana. So those are the kind of decisions that we may be looking at. And again, based on those categories of roads, this is the split of the funding within the budget every year that was adopted through the pavement management plan. There was an update to this percent split made in the 2022 subcommittee that increased some of the percentages, and it decreased, honestly, the preventive maintenance budget. You may remember that before the last update to the plan, it was actually 25%. And what we kind of determined through the subcommittee process was as the budget grew, that number, of course, grew, and it kind of exceeded the amount of road that we could gracefully cover in a given year. We kind of decided we'd reached a point where we were steadier at 10%. With that amount of funding, we can keep up with the road demands for the preventive maintenance program based on what's outlined in the plan. So since we're still pretty early in the budget process this year, just leaning back on the current budget funding for how we, what the paving budget speaks to when you get down to the dollars and how they're allocated. So this is the big bucket split, so to speak, of the $14 million. And then when you go to the, within that local, that 40%, that's how those apply to each council district. And the local lane miles, the first half of that column is important all by itself because some council districts have higher percentage or numbers of local road lane miles than others. You may have a higher percentage. of private miles, county miles, UK owned miles that may alter how many road miles you actually have at the beginning. And then the number of those lane miles that have an OCI below 60 also kind of may, if you have newer subdivisions, they may not yet have deteriorated enough to qualify for consideration for repaving. So those are sort of how we get to the 5.6 million divided up among the 12 districts. And then the far right column there is, hopefully at this point most of you are familiar with the 200% list that we ask for on an annual basis, which is basically double whatever your allocation was so that if roads get paused for one reason or another, we have additional prioritized needs to look at. So again, as those funds get applied to the paving calendar for this fiscal year, where we are today, as you've probably seen or heard, the paving plant opens up in a couple of weeks. So in advance of that, we are working to finish up the FY25 funding amount that was provided. So right now we are working through the lists that we had from calendar year 24 that didn't get finished for any of a variety of reasons. We've gone back and revisited those lists. We're now sending that out to our utility partners to make sure we are not getting ready to pave something that they're getting ready to dig up. We'll get that list back in another week or so and put it back together and then have it ready to go to our paving contractor in time for them to start scheduling work in early April. And then they will work through the remainder of the neighborhood streets and then the collectors and arterials that we still have on the list for this fiscal year. And then about the time they run through that list, magically enough, we get new money. And so we'll start working on prioritizing the next round of lists that actually starts before July 1st so that we can be ready for July 1st. We will start working on the arterials and collectors, we're already working on those now to start putting together our recommended list so that when we get the budget amount we'll know which roads we can advance. And then starting in May, Nathan Dickerson in our office will start working with you and your aides to determine the roads that you would also like to have done. That May 31st optional early bird deadline, I thought about renaming that the Fred Brown deadline, but in honor of Councilmember Brown, that we could say if there's roads you really want to get done this calendar year, we will work to get them. The quicker you get us the list, the more likely they are to get done in the same calendar year as the new fiscal year starts. And then again, come December, once we'll have hopefully all the lists back, they kind of come and go, there's a lot of decision making gets involved and we know a lot of demands on time, so some people will have us their list in June, some people will have us their list in December. And we'll work through those and we'll get as far as we can and anything we don't finish, we'll roll around to next March and April as the calendar year 26 begins. Give you an update on the paving sharing program and as you may remember, this started in earnest really last calendar year with the adoption of all the agreements with our utilities that dig in the street basically. So we have agreements with each of them to share in the costs whenever possible within the guidelines that we developed last year. Last year was a little bit of a pilot year. We actually started it the fall before but with one or two streets that kind of got thrown in at the end. This was the first full year of being able to work on it a little more programmatically and now this year we've kind of used the winter to look at the lessons learned from that first full season and how we may adopt things differently as we get ready for spring paving. And I would like to take a moment to ask Ryan Wade in the back here to stand up and wave. He is our new administrative officer that is largely going to be responsible for herding the cats involved in the paving sharing program. That's one of his major responsibilities is to help try to pull together the priorities for the paving budget and the priorities for the utilities so that we can align as much as possible. And then again as we look forward into the future with the pavement management plan itself, continuing to look for those wins, Nathan Dickerson again has done a lot of work in the last three or four years of being able to take us from Excel spreadsheets and word lists into a map that's color coded to be able to identify cohesive priorities that may bias the benefit of scheduling. And then also we have the new paving scores, we have the new software, the new updates should be available within the next couple of months so that we can hopefully apply that for the new seasons, the new budget years, prioritized lists. And then we're still looking at some benchmarks and performance metrics of how we might be able to better manage our budget based on road condition instead of kind of what still may be perceived as a random dollar figure, if we can connect actual performance metrics to our paving program. With that, I didn't do as well as James, but I have about a minute left. I'll take any questions. Thank you, Commissioner. Colleagues, if you'll log in with any questions, now would be the time. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. Speaking of utility projects, could you talk a little bit more about how those work in conjunction with our paving planning? Do you have, could you provide some information about maybe like how long we would place a hold on a particular road based on how far out a utility project might occur? Like if it's three years from now or four years from now, are we still holding paving here if we feel like we need it? What are the timeline considerations there when we're working with the utilities? That's still a little bit subjective, kind of case by case. The saddest example that comes to my mind is North Limestone, because that road has been degrading for two or three years while we have continued to wait for one project and then another project and then another project. But we also still know that there are two more projects out there. So we're trying to hold that together, waiting for these last two projects to come through. But it is a rough sea for those people for sure, those people that use that every day. What I would normally think is if we don't know that there's anything coming in the next two years, which we are getting better communication with our utilities so that we have a better handle on whether or not somebody's going to be there in the next two years, then we would be more inclined to go on and consider it. And again, there's certain areas of town where we know one more utility is coming most likely this calendar year. So we're not going to pave it, but then of course Murphy's Law may well apply and all of a sudden for one reason or another they don't get there and then we're stuck in the same conversation next year. So despite our best intent, we don't always have all of the awareness that we need to. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much for the presentation. The new industrial commercial kind of road and then the collectors, you said like you have some council input on those. Is there actually a formal process for that? Because it seems, that one seems a little haphazard, but I don't necessarily know, I don't think I know the plan for those roads and what's identified as those roads. And I just sometimes say, hey, can we do something here and all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, we'll do that one. And to be fair, it is still somewhat haphazard is not a horrible description of it. It is, you hear a complaint, you're out going to the dentist or something and you see that this road that largely serves a strip mall or an office complex has fallen into disrepair and hey, is this a local road that we need, is this an LFUCG road that we need to pay attention to? That does still frequently happen. We are still kind of wrapping our heads around which ones are industrial roads or service roads because that category didn't exist two years ago. They were all just sort of lumped into the local road, so they will appear as one of your priorities even though they don't have a lot of traffic, because they don't have a lot of traffic on them, that will be why. So we are still sort of, we're talking about one of our improvements this year will hopefully be to try to programmatically move those into their own category for evaluation. Okay. Thanks. And then tagging on to Councilmember Sheehan's, like I've done a few of those shared projects. I would say at this point it's a lot on the Councilmember to, like there's a ton of follow-up. There's a, like your neighbors complain, like when's the other half of the street going to get done? I tried to do it at the same time. I couldn't get it done. I did it later. And then honestly, it's a little bit difficult to understand the cost share piece of it, because what I, when I was kind of doing calculations just based on spreadsheets, I was kind of expecting a certain amount to come back, and then it took a while for the amount to come back, so I don't know necessarily how much money I had left and where it was going. So I would just say it is, I think it's a good thing to have it. I still think it's a little cumbersome to figure out. I would agree with you. Unfortunately, we're still kind of going through the maturation process of the paving sharing program and what it should look like, so I think there's still a lot of room to improve that. Yeah, and if you need any help, I'd be happy to help with that. Thank you. Thank you. That's all, Chair. Thank you. Colleagues, anybody else before I ask a question? All right. Commissioner, I have a question that's connected to Councilmember Savigny's inquiry, and that's like a situation, I'll just use a real example. So sometimes we have roads within our district that are not local roads, but there are big projects going on on them, like a stormwater project, and then utilities will come in, and you want to coordinate all of the work, but then what happens if a Councilmember also wants to do a traffic calming or a raised crosswalk initiative while all of the rest of that work is going on? Because I know that we're trying to look at places where we have maybe ongoing construction and we could do improvements. So how would all of those different offices coordinate to do something, an intervention of some type connected to a pavement project? That's still somewhat of a special case in my belief, because it's going to end up being about four different cooks in that kitchen, and so there will be more than likely someone in Streets and Roads and Rob Allen's group will play a key role in kind of making sure all of that comes together appropriately. But that said, it still takes the work of Mr. Wade and Mr. Dickerson and Traffic Engineering to all make sure that they've got their piece of funding lined up and that we're all got our contractors lined up at the same time. Okay. I know sometimes when we go to present at neighborhood meetings, you know, neighbors will have additional questions. They'll say, oh, can we do this? Can we try something new here? If our road's going to be torn up, can we do something different? And so I'm interested in figuring out, as Councilmember Savigny noted, you know, how we could be helpful with communicating accurate information and coordinating and helping to streamline that process. I appreciate that. So thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, if we don't have any additional questions, then we'll allow our next item to move forward. And thank you so much, Commissioner Albright, for your update about the pavement management plan. Our final item today is an update on the Haley Pike Solar Study. Richard Dugas with Environmental Quality and Public Works is going to provide this update. Welcome. Thank you. So this, I'm going to go through the slides, but just a reminder, this was the executive summary that was part of your packet. So this is kind of what I'll be working off from. So... There we go. So the agenda for today is, I'm going to kind of give a brief history on what's going on with the Haley Pike, I'll go over the assumptions for the various studies that we talk about. Phase 0 study, going back to 2021, which was when we did an initial summary of, is it feasible? The majority of the discussion today is going to be on Phase 1. The Phase 1 study, which was an external study, we hired some external outside engineers to do that, and then conclusion and next steps. So, just a brief history of the Haley Pike landfill. We started operating it in the mid-70s, it operated through the mid-90s. It currently has two active operations that are ongoing out there, Creech Incorporated, which uses horse muck to create organic compost, as well as our contractor for yard waste, which is Red River Ranch, they're the ones that do the yard waste to mulch. So we do have two creative alternative recycling reuse programs that are going out there. Additionally, it has two closed and capped landfills cells, as well as three additional landfill cells that are permitted, but have never been used. And so, in 2020 and 2021, the old Frankfort Pike and the Haley Pike landfills were both identified on the U.S. EPA's Repowering America website. So during that time frame, the administration started to get a lot of cold calls. They started to get a lot of cold calls about, you know, what do we want to do, private equity. So at that time, we started to move forward with what became the Phase Zero study. And when we did that Phase Zero study, before we even started it, we came up with these assumptions. And these assumptions are pretty much that if we were to do any sort of solar redevelopment or repurposing at the Haley Pike landfill, the Lexington-Fayette-Earn County government, we didn't want to be the financier, we didn't want to guarantee those loans, we didn't want to use our bonding capacity, that ultimately we just wanted to be the lessor and give us a check at the end of the day for using our landfill. And then, because we're still, at the end of the day, we're still going to be the landfill permittee and we're going to be responsible for that landfill until forever, essentially. So there's a lot of things to know there. Additionally, we felt that there needs to be a clear and measurable benefit to the citizens of Fayette-Earn County government. So any urban scale, any utility scale project out there would also, we want to make sure that they reuse the capped landfills, because what we don't want them to do is just do the low-hanging fruit. Come out there and say, oh, there's 100 acres of uncapped landfills that we've never used, it's essentially virgin soil, and that's the low-hanging fruit, they can just come out there and put a solar field on that. That doesn't really meet the intent of reusing the landfill, you're basically just using land that has been reserved for potential future landfill. So those are the assumptions we've used ongoing. So in 2021, when I was a member of the Energy Initiative Section, working for James, we did this initial study, and really this was just a, we started to get a lot of calls, the mayor's office called up and said, hey, can somebody take a look at this and see, you know, is this feasible? So we did a little bit of research, the economics of it, does it meet the criteria? So the economy's a scale, in order to be considered for a utility scale solar, it's pretty much, you've got to be in the 100 acre ballpark, well we're over the 100 acres. Development you've got to kind of look at, okay, is it the right type of land, you know, is it low rolling hills, do you not have, it's not wetlands, all those different considerations. So there are some challenges out there, whenever you're redeveloping on a landfill, there's, we have the methane vents, you have some settlement, you have some slopes that can be over 15%, which is really the limit for using ballasted systems. So there are some challenges doing a redevelopment on a landfill, but even as far back as the first study we did in 2021, we realized that with the amount of land that we have out there, there's still plenty, and those were not insurmountable hurdles. One big bonus for Haley Pike Landfill, it doesn't show up on this map, but this Haley Pike Landfill actually sits right at the dividing line between Kentucky Utilities jurisdiction and Eastern Kentucky Powers jurisdiction. And as such, on the east side you have East Kentucky Power, well they have high voltage transmission service and interconnection points, and you also then on the other side, on the west side, you have high voltage interconnection points for Kentucky Utilities. So within just a few miles, you actually have what every utility scale solar site is looking for, which is you have that interconnection to be able to get to the bigger grid to be able to dump all this power that they're going to generate. So from that standpoint, while we do have some challenges with the landscape and it being, you also have the big bonus of having all that interconnection right there. Social and environmental conditions that we considered, reusing the landfill, it avoids, you know, nobody wants to see solar on prime land or state on prime agricultural land. Reused landfills, there's really not a whole lot you can do with those landfills. So one other item that came up in 2021 was that in 2018, I believe it identifies in the study, the leachate issues that the way they measured the leachate coming out of landfills, the statute changed. And because of that, the leachate that we were getting coming out of our landfill out there was above the new acceptable limits. So that's sort of what put the brakes on 2021. We realized, okay, we've got a problem. So we really don't want to do anything. So we basically tapped the brakes in 2021 because we're like, okay, we've got to make sure that we're addressing all these leachate issues. So fast forward to 2024, we have completed the design. We've issued the contract for the leachate system. Those upgrades are currently in the construction phase. And at the same time, we've also had resumed inquiries from developers. There were two similar projects that I'm sure everybody on the council is pretty aware of the Silicon Ranch, 800 acre development that was proposed, as well as Eastern Kentucky Powers. Both of those projects essentially are within miles of this site. And again, they're within miles of this site because of those high voltage interconnection points. So this is right where it's at. So there was a lot of interest. The administration asked us, can we go ahead and relook at this one more time? Now that we've got that leachate system, the design is ongoing. So when we were asked to look at that again, basically those of us internal, we looked at it, we sat down, we said, well, we probably have done everything that we can in house. We're now starting, if we're going to do this again, let's go ahead, let's hire some external experts. So we got a few requests for proposals from local engineering firms. CMTA was the firm out of, they have offices in Lexington and Louisville. They are subject matter experts on solar. They have done a bunch of solar projects, large scale. They've done a bunch of net zero school designs. They were the firm that was selected. They did a wonderful job on the study that you see the title of on the right hand side. And so we asked them a bunch of questions. We said, hey, you're more experts, so look at the site, look at it a little bit more in depth than we did. Look at the regulatory, look at the zoning, double check our numbers from a financial standpoint. And then this study was what we referred to as a desktop study. We wanted to do it, we didn't want to spend a lot of money because we didn't have a lot of money available at the time. So we said, just, you know, moving the project forward, second set of eyes, what can we do at a small economy? And so we just did a desktop study. So essentially, they didn't even, we didn't even require them to go out to the site, although they were so excited about it, they basically just ate the cost and they came out and did a couple site visits because they were so excited about the potential for this project. So they did come out, look at the site, but we didn't do much other than walk the site, take some photos, and then they went back and dug into the technical specs of everything. And so the results of their survey are in here. And so what they discovered was that from a zoning standpoint, utility scale solar, and again, some of the members that have been on the board, on the council for a while, know that there was some zone, a zone that came through, Silicon Ranch. So currently, the Haley Pike landfill is zoned EX1, which is exclusive use zone one for a landfill. I'm not going to get into that, but there is nothing from, currently it's not permitted, it couldn't be, there are some zoning changes that would have to be made in order to do that. Again, it doesn't appear like that would be something that would stop it moving forward. We've got to check some box and do some additional work. Economic feasibility. Looking beyond what we did in 2021, they have identified, CMTA identified 312 of the 687 acres out there that would be available, and they even went so far as to say, well, these acres, you're going to probably get this level of density, again, using their technical expertise. They're estimating you're going to have 110 megawatt capacity. And that would, based on those numbers, we would anticipate being somewhere in the $170,000 to $250,000, $265,000 per year lease payment coming back in revenue to LFUCG. What that number doesn't consider is there would also be an additional roughly $15,000 to $20,000 in savings, because once we lease that out, we then wouldn't have to maintain that, we wouldn't have to mow it. So, on top of that. Landfill regulatory issues. There is no history, no landfill has been redeveloped in the state of Kentucky. We did reach out to the Division of Waste, and while they don't have a process, big picture, they did not see any reason up front that would stop this redevelopment. They just said that they don't have the process in place, and so it might be a little bit slow because if we were to move forward with this process, they would have to essentially be developing some of their checks and balances as we're asking those questions. But they didn't say there's nothing in statute that would prohibit it. So, one of the other items that we had them identify, we had CMTA identify is, again, we looked at just doing a desktop study, the next thing would be an industrial grade audit. This is where we then have to turn, we have to spend a little bit more money and go out there and do the surveys, do site settlement studies, go out and, you know, the 312 acres is just based off of Google Maps. So, you're going to do that survey, you're going to go out there, and you're going to get a little bit more accurate measurements. What the industrial grade audit would do is it's going to basically give us the technical and specific information that would then be used to build a request for proposal for third party entities to come in and bid on that. Additionally, what we're calling phase 2B is a legal review. So, when you start talking about the type of lease that we have, you're talking about a 25 year lease, you're talking about having power purchase agreements, dealing with a lot of environmental law, dealing with a lot of energy and utility, interstate transfer of power, there's a lot of stuff in there. We just don't have the, our in-house legal staff doesn't have that level of technical. This is a very, very specialized field. So, we would have to do some outside legal review as well. So, that's where we're at, next steps. And I finished under 15 too, so, any questions? Excellent work. Thank you so much. Colleagues, any questions? Any inquiries about this presentation? All right. Go ahead, Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, for recognition since I don't serve on this committee. My only question is, if we wanted to move on to the next phase, is there funding for that? Or will we need to allot funding for that? Right now, there is not any funding that has been identified. So, basically, our next steps are, internally, we're looking at how do we get from today to those next steps. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. And I'm interested in what the next steps would be for the next phase of this study as well. But I have a question about the zoning. And maybe you've had these conversations with the planning staff already, but if it's a government project on government land, the zoning isn't, we can kind of do what we want with our zones. I'll say it like that. We don't do that very often, but I feel like that we have more allowance. Just like UK has different zoning allowances as an entity. If this is a private company, but on government land, how does the zoning work? So that's where the zone change would be required? Or zoning would matter? You're delving into the details of planning. So the answer is, yes, we did have conversations with Commissioner Horne and his staff. So they were involved. They reviewed the study. They were comfortable with the language that we put in there. And the language that is in there is like you identified. Since we still technically own the land, I believe we would be involved in that permitting process, in that plan review type of process. And so, yes, I think that as the government entity, what says in the report, that again, Commissioner Horne's staff approved, is that we could potentially use the immunity. Okay, and then this might be a conversation for a later phase of this, as you get a little bit deeper into the feasibility, but, you know, we use like what you have done with the RFP process for even hiring a contractor to do these studies. Would this be a project, if this land were feasible, that it would be an RFP process where people would submit proposals to use this space? Or, because I know you have gotten, had conversations with developers, so how would, what is your vision for how that would work? My understanding, and I don't think anybody from Purchasing is here, is yes, this would fall into an RFP, because we would set broad parameters for what we would require out there, and that would allow the bidders to, as long as their proposal was inside of those parameters, and so then we would set grading criteria, so we might get, for instance, developer A might come in and say, okay, I want to develop this many acres, and their rent payment might be less, because they might not want to do the whole thing, but they might have more creative, they might be a better developer, they might have a better history, so as part of that RFP process, they could potentially be scored higher, even though they might use less and we would get less payments back, versus developer B, whose proposal, again, assuming that the RFP has a bigger box that they can operate in, they might say, well, we're going to come in, we're going to use every square inch of that, but they might not have as good a history, they might not have ever developed on a landfill, so there might be part of their RFP process where they get scored down, so yes, it would be an RFP process with basically not a lump sum low cost, it would be best value. Thank you, and thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I've just got a few questions. At the beginning, right at the beginning, you said we made the decision to not, we're not going to finance it, we're not going to bond it, we're not going to operate it. I'm just curious, like, what process did we use to do that? I'm just curious. That was, that came down from the administration at the time, that basically, I believe at the same time, going back to 2021, was around one of the times that we were looking for a new government center, so bonding capacity was a big conversation at that time, so it was sort of, if we do this, it's like, we don't want to be financially involved, we just want to be a good partner with them and lease the land to them. Yeah, I would just ask that if you've not done the numbers all the way out to understand, you know, or looked at what best practices are, because other cities are doing things on their landfill, I would want to know why in more detail there, so I'm just going to ask you at some point, we can have a conversation offline, because I do think there's value to a 25-year agreement with someone, there's also value to, most solar farms aren't run by a ton of people, like, they're run by a few people running a solar farm, and I don't know exactly the power that would be generated from this solar farm. 110 megawatts, so it would be, I think. And what's our usage a year as a city, you know? 60 million kilowatt hours. 60 million kilowatt hours, so, but the, I think part of the other, on the bonding capacity is a project on this scale, you'd be talking tens of millions, if not close to 100 million development costs, so, you know, I don't, yeah, I get it. You also mentioned a couple of things, I've been out there, and the methane vents, like, a lot of landfills are capturing methane, are we not capturing methane out there currently? I do not believe that we have a methane capture system at the Haley Pike Landfill, I'm not an expert on that, we just have the vents so it doesn't build up, and we're at a very very low level of that, but when you talk about, there is a standoff distance that they have to consider that they can't put electrical components within those vents. Around the vents, yeah. And the other thing was you mentioned, and I might have missed it, 312 out of 687 acres, I think is what you said in almost the last slide, is that, 687 acres is including the unused landfill cells currently, right? 687 is the full acreage of the parcel that we own, and of that 687, 312 is what we, what the study identified as would be best used for solar. We have some ongoing activities out there that reduce that 687, and we have some potentially planned activities that we would want to reserve the land for. Yeah, what I wanted to make sure of is there's an opportunity cost and a value of that land that we're not using currently as landfill that the state has recognized and given us a permit to use as landfill, and I don't, I want to make sure that we comprehend the cost of using that land that could be a landfill, because right now, we're spending a lot of money on trucking our stuff out of Fayette County, and I just want to make sure that you're including calculations like that in your analysis. Those calculations weren't in, that is a deeper conversation of reopening those, those cells and operating a landfill on our, reopening and operating that landfill, there would be a tremendous amount of additional cost to operate that landfill. Right, I get it. That's all I have, but I do appreciate where this is going, so I do appreciate the work that you're doing, and I'm all for large-scale solar. I do think that over 25 years, the technology will change drastically, and there will be something different that shows up that could also provide very good value for that land, but I appreciate it, and I thank you, Chair. That's all I have. All right, thank you so much. I don't have any additional questions, and nobody else has logged in, so we appreciate that update and look forward to learning more. Colleagues, this brings us to the end of our agenda, and if there are no other comments or questions for the good of the order, then we stand adjourned. Thank you.