Yes. Can I? answer that? Uh-huh. No? Okay. Well, I can't give you a whole lot more details. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. And welcome to the May 6th General Government and Planning Committee meeting. It is one o'clock, and we have a packed agenda, so I will call this meeting to order. Our first item of business is the May 4th, 2025 meeting summary approval. Are there any additions or corrections? I will take a motion to approve. Second. Who has a motion to approve? Baxter? And then second by Councilmember Ellinger. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to our first presentation, we have Daniel Crum, Planner Principal in our Division of Planning, here to present the Ministerial Review of Development Plans, which is the ZOTA that brings us into compliance with House Bill 443. As most of you know, this legislation will go into effect on July 1st this year. Councilmember Brown is the item sponsor. Do you have any opening remarks before the presentation? Thank you, Chair. I will say that, you know, there are several items that we can look at in regards to our development process to improve efficiency, and the fact that House Bill 443 is on our work copy docket today, and we have to discuss it at work session, prompts this conversation in committee. So with, and I think that's just one element that we have to continue looking at it. But I would like to give the Commissioner Horne an opportunity to speak on this and some of the work and process that has already taken place to get us to this point. Commissioner? Thank you. I'm Keith Horne, Commissioner for the Department of Planning and Preservation, and I appreciate the opportunity to introduce this and make a couple of comments before I do. And over the past little bit, I've been feeling some heat over this topic, and I've struggled with whether to say this or not. Maybe it goes without saying. But it's starting to feel like this us-versus-them type issue, and it shouldn't feel that way. It certainly isn't the perspective of the government staff on this. There's no secret or personal agenda on the part of staff. If anything, what staff could be accused of across the government is having an aspirational view for the community, a view that is informed by years of experience, individual and collective. Years of complaints, comments, concerns, voiced by the community, by the council, by other groups, informed by master plans, comprehensive plans, small area plans, initiatives like Complete Streets and Vision Zero, imagining a growing and an all-inclusive Lexington. So staff is simply presenting their best recommendation for complying with the law as it was forwarded to you by the Planning Commission. And before I introduce Daniel, I do have a couple of other comments. You will recall that the proposed zoning ordinance text amendment is directly responsive to House Bill 443. The state law passed last year in effect of July 1st of this year, basically giving us one year to come into compliance with the law. It's short, two paragraphs long, primarily requiring two things, objective standards applied ministerially. You will also recall that Lexington City Government did not create, support or request this law. Lexington has always valued and will always value public input, but public input that can shape decision making. Under the new law, public input cannot be taken into consideration as part of the decision making process. Objective standard means no debate or discretion. An applicant either qualifies to check the boxes or they do not. The law does not explicitly prohibit public comment, but it essentially nullifies it. Public comment is not part of an objective ministerial process. Take for example the addition of a room or a deck on a single family residence. To obtain the necessary permits, somebody comes in with the required drawings or information and if they check the boxes, they get their permit. That's the nature of a ministerial process. A term like applied ministerially does not accidentally appear in legislation. It has meaning and it has consequence. That being said, there are still many opportunities for meaningful public engagement on development plans. At any point in the process, anybody from the public, anyone can contact staff, email, call, schedule a meeting. Always happy to meet and discuss any development plans that are filed, any applications. And that's not new. You all know that staff is always receptive to discussing things with anybody. Additionally, any requested waiver of a standard will have a public hearing, much like the process that everyone's used to. And notice of the request under this proposal would also have to be provided for adjacent property owners of a waiver request. Presently, there is no notice requirement for development plans, but if someone requests a waiver, then adjacent property owners would receive notice of that. Public input remains very important for the comprehensive plan, master plans, and small area plans. And that is where standards arise. New standards, altered standards, come from the information provided by the goals, the comprehensive plan, small area plans, master plans. Very importantly, the adoption of standards for which you, the council, have final authority expresses the expectation of the community on how land should generally be developed in Lexington. Also importantly, the zone change process remains the same. Preliminary development plans filed, public hearings at the Planning Commission, and, as you all know, if you choose to have another public hearing, but you have the final say on zone changes. There have been some who have said that this zoning ordinance text amendment will result in more red tape and lengthen the process for approval of development plans. The standards in question either already exist and are not objective, for example, appropriate, reasonable, sufficient are subjective terms, or they've been applied to development plans over the past several years. As I said, the standards are an important part of how the public, through its appointed Planning Commission body, and its elected officials, the City Council, have input on development plans. If an applicant files a complete development plan, the plan could be approved within thirty days under this objective ministerial process. If a waiver is requested, it would be on the Planning Commission agenda for hearing two weeks later, again, assuming there's a complete plan filed. Though thrust upon us by House Bill 443, the ZOTA addresses the complaints and concerns raised over the years and in the planning process study about the efficiency, the timing, and subjectivity of the development plan review process. Standards are now definitive and objective. The proposed ZOTA will result in a more efficient and timely process for approval of development plans. Now, Daniel Crum, Principal Planner for Planning Process, will go into the details and the history of the ZOTA. Good afternoon, everyone. Daniel Crum, Planning Staff. So, Keith covered a lot of the basic history behind the House Bill 443. This is something that was approved as a part of the 2024 legislative session and takes effect July 1st, 2025. He set out the basics behind this, that it sets these new criteria, this new lens in which local governments are required to review their development plans, as well as their subdivision plats. That July 1st date is especially important because regardless of what we do at a local level, that is the date in which the requirements that the state is imposing on us will take effect. So, regardless if we have fixed our zoning ordinance, created objective standards or not, whatever is in effect at that date is what we will have to deal with. Keith mentioned it earlier as well, but really the three main concepts behind this are the creation of objective standards that are going to be measurable, specific, unbiased, and equitable so that there's consistency in how these development plans are being reviewed and that regardless of who is reviewing the development plans, you are getting a consistent outcome. Once again, increasing efficiency and giving developers an expectation of what we as a local community are going to require. This is an example of an objective standard would be something to the effect of a five foot sidewalk is required along all public road frontage. Now, the majority of our zoning ordinance is objective standards. Things like setbacks are usually in feet and it's a measurable, direct, unbiased standard. Contrast, there are some places in our zoning ordinance currently that are less objective. Things that rely on either interpretation of staff, things like an appropriate pedestrian plan should be provided. On July 1st, those provisions would no longer be able to take effect. We have the requirement to go through and address these objective standards where they're found in our ordinance and make sure that they are able to be applied. Once again, Keith mentioned the ministerial process. Once again, this is really reading as a staff level review. This is no longer going to the planning commission where they can exercise discretion. The standard is going to be if you meet all of our objective standards, you are going to be approved at a staff level within an expedited time frame. So once again, a more efficient process. And the discretion that we are kind of accustomed to under the current process is only going to really come out when there is a waiver. So an applicant is either unable to meet a particular standard or is seeking to do something that is different than the standard. The planning commission has discretion and is able to do their public process with public feedback in order to weigh in on that particular request for discretion. Staff can also raise an issue of health, safety, and welfare. However, that is going to be sort of in the minority and is a rather high bar to clear. So the majority of these plans are going to be applied with objective standards ministerially, and the exception would be for those who are seeking a waiver. Now this does have implications on our current development plan process. So on the screen is a general flow chart on how kind of development plans flow today. So the first step is a preliminary development plan. These are the development plans often associated with a zone change request. It's conceptual in nature. They're showing the general idea behind what they are wanting to do, the concept behind them. In the case of a zone change, they're using it to explain how a particular request is meeting the comprehensive plan. But lacks some of the specific finer engineering points, such as grading, storm water calculations, etc., that come in at a later stage. These flow from being submitted to planning staff. Staff makes a recommendation to the planning commission. The planning commission then would either disapprove the plan or grant it a conditional approval and it would flow on to the next step. It's worth noting that the preliminary development plan, you cannot build off of it. Once again, it's a conceptual plan that gives you an idea of how that development is going to occur. There are no changes to this portion of the plan. So no changes with respect to zone changes or the preliminary initial steps, discretion, and the planning commission's ability to consider them, as well as the ability of the public to comment is being retained. The differences today are coming through with the final development plan. So under the current standards, a development plan has to go through the planning commission. It goes through that same exact process all over again. Application, staff review, consideration by the planning commission, and then granted a conditional approval. The change under House Bill 443 is that this now becomes ministerial, staff level review. Do you meet all of the objective standards? If so, you are approved in the planning commission process, and the opportunity for public engagement that occurred there is no longer applicable. But if there is a waiver requested, or if there is a health, safety, and welfare issue raised, then the planning commission would review that and they would have the ability to weigh in on that one particular option. So once again, no changes to the preliminary aspects, but the final development plan is going to see essentially a significant change relative to how we as a community have expected our development to occur. In order to comply with House Bill 443, we had to make kind of a host of changes. We had to address definitions, we had to address clarity and consistency across the document. We had to really take a look to make sure that we weren't leaving any subjective criteria. Anything that had discretion built into it, anything that included sort of not objective language that weren't dimensional would leave room for interpretation. Those would need to be either replaced with a firm number, a firm requirement, or removed entirely. We had to create standards for items that were traditionally a part of the sign off processes. So when a, under the current process, the planning commission approves a plan with conditions. So they will tell the applicant, yes, we can approve this plan as long as you can go to the division of traffic engineering and resolve the layout or the site access. At that point, the respective divisions would draw upon their own adopted manuals, their own guidelines, industry best practices, their own expertise to work with the applicant to resolve those conditions. Moving forward, in order for us to review and hold an applicant to a particular standard, it needs to be codified. It needs to be objective, and it needs to be included. And so we had to create standards for aspects that we had been legislating to for decades, but otherwise would not be incorporated. An example of this is currently within the zoning ordinance, there is no requirement to separate your access point from an at grade railroad crossing. But if you came with a development plan, you would go before traffic engineering under the current standard or the current system. That would be negotiated, and they would say, yeah, this is not a safe place for this, we need to move this. That negotiation, that sort of context sensitive change and tweaks to development plans are not possible moving forward. So in absence of creating a standard for that, the applicant would be able to locate that access point wherever they pushed. So those are the sort of the things that we want to create a floor that is ensuring that the level of development that we have expected as a community is being upheld. Other proposed changes that we have to the zoning ordinance here is eliminating anything that required a hearing outside of that waiver process. So once again, House Bill 443 is telling us objective standards, it is telling us ministerial process. So if you're submitting a plan and it meets the requirements, you do not have to go through for that further hearing. And once again, the pure fact of updating our development plan process to reflect the changes in state law is necessary. Now, one of the single biggest impacts to all of this under House Bill 443 is sort of the impact of the ministerial process. So this requirement that the state has placed on us to have this ministerial process removes the ability for us to use discretion. So we have to use the objective standards that we as a community set forth as the lens in which we review plans. It's going to be a staff level review where the subject matter experts in the particular divisions looking at this, seeing if they comply with the standards, if so, that is the end of their particular review. Now, that being said, there are still a number of avenues for public participation that are not touched by House Bill 443. That's the plan making stage, so both at the largest level with the comprehensive plan, corridor studies, small area plans, things at a local neighborhood level. The policy making stage, when we're talking about text amendments and other legislative changes we are making as a community, still have the same ability to weigh in for that. The zone change process and the preliminary development plan process still remain the same. Those are discretionary items that the planning commission still has the ability to hear. You as a body still have the ability to hear zone change requests and schedule hearings for those as well. And then baked into this process are two new avenues for review by the public in the waiver review process. As a part of the process, there will be, as Keith noted earlier, a notice for the adjoining property owners. So along with the other standard requirements for posting the agenda, other public notice requirements that go with any regularly scheduled planning commission hearing. And then once again, staff has the ability to raise a particular plan due to an aspect that would pose a health, safety, or welfare concern. In that instance, it goes to the planning commission and is subject to the ability for the public to comment and make a meaningful impact. However, once again, the staff level issues where you're meeting the requirements, that is precluded by House Bill 443. With respect to what we've done as far as public engagement, so this was initiated in 2024. The end portions of 2024 were really mostly internal. Staff was meeting with our respective divisions, getting an idea of what kind of changes were needed, helping them guide through the process, and generating the text. However, once January, February, and March rolled around, we started to meet with stakeholder groups, including the Commercial Property Association of Lexington, the Building Industry Association, Fayette Alliance, land use attorneys, engineers that work with the planning commission items. To discuss the proposals, meeting with them and exchanging information, giving them a look at the text and responding there. We also provide public notice with any ZOTA, that's a standard process. So over 280 active neighborhood associations received notice of the proposed changes. And then we received some written citizen comment through email in association with that. Now, I have provided with you all a sort of a chart that is titled Summary of Staff Changes Based on Public Feedback and Comment. That is an outline essentially of various aspects in which the comments and the feedback from the public, from the developers, from the planning commission spurred changes to the documents. So from the initial text that we generated really before initiating the planning commission phase, going all the way through the planning commission's recommended text, there was about four iterations where we made changes, coded those changes, provided those to the public, and then based on further feedback, made further changes. But the big kind of ideas behind the changes is we wanted to eliminate things that were making changes, but weren't really super necessary or didn't have a direct bearing to House Bill 443. We took a look at our standards and made sure that what we were asking for here was accurate to the sign-offs, to the level of review that we had been incorporating. And in the instances where we went back to our, based on the feedback we received from these entities, went back to the respective divisions and asked, is this something that is being implemented now and part of the negotiations now, or is this something that we would just like to see in the future? For the things that we would just like to see in the future, we've removed those from the text and really were focused on maintaining kind of the status quo of development as we expect it now. We also went through and further streamlined a review process by eliminating some aspects, such as a pre-application meeting that we had required previously with staff. Once again, if they are going to submit a complete plan, we want to make sure that we are removing these barriers, that we are making that process efficient. Staff, as always, is able to address comments, concerns, questions that come up from developers. But we wanted to remove those barriers and keep it a streamlined process, a ministerial process that is sort of mandated by House Bill 443. And then also made edits to the text for consistency and clarity. So those were all iterative processes that were done over a number of months, starting once again in essentially early February to kind of where we are now. The Planning Commission heard this item twice. So first on the 27th of March, and then continued the item on to 4-10. Both of the times allowed for public comment. And the public comment was really concerned with two aspects. One was the changes that this is going to have to public input, as well as portions that were the text that were kind of codifying those sign offs. So those areas that we were previously utilizing in our review of plans, but were not codified. We need to codify that in order to make them compliant with House Bill 443. So there was some general concerns about including those and including additional regulations. But staff thinks that those are necessary to uphold this particular standard that we have come to expect as a community. The Planning Commission themselves recommended approval of the staff's alternative language. They did make some minor clarification and tweaks, but those whole concepts remain the same. The biggest thing for the Planning Commission was public comment. They urged the council to consider any opportunities for public comment and participation. The understanding that House Bill 443 and its specific mandate of a ministerial process dramatically impacts the ability to implement meaningful public engagement. So they recommended approval of that staff alternative text. And so at this point, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you all have about the process or how we got here as far as House Bill 443 is concerned. Thank you, Mr. Crum, for the presentation. Colleagues, please log in with any questions or comments that you would like to make. And just a reminder that this is not a time where we'll be able to make amendments to the document, because the House Bill 443 ZOTA doesn't officially come to us until work session. It'll be on that docket approval portion of our work session today. That is the place where we'll be able to actually make motions about the text. So here we can discuss our thoughts and any potential motions we might want to present later. But now we can't actually make those motions, just to be clear for us and the public about what's happening here today. Council Member Savigny, you are signed in first. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation, Mr. Crum. Just a few questions for you. I just want to confirm on the zone change, public feedback still takes place public, it has a developer ask for a zone change, it goes through the standard process. And there's even a process for us to have public feedback if we decide that we want that in a zone change meeting, correct? Yes, that is correct. Okay, thank you. And the final development plan, because we normally are doing that on the preliminary development plan. The final development plan, that's the piece that has a slightly different process. Yes, yes, and that was the piece that you all never saw as the Planning Commission. We never saw that, but the Planning Commission had. Okay, so just trying to make sure I understand this. If a piece of land is zoned correctly and someone wants to wipe out what's there and put something new in its place, but uses the same zone, okay. They now can basically just submit that plan to you guys and you would approve that. There isn't public input on that, but if it was a B3, it's still a B3, but it would have to go through. They would have to, if they were wiping out the whole project, they would have to work towards the new B3, whatever's new in B3, is that correct? Yes, so if a development plan is required, all that would be is a staff level review unless the applicant needed a waiver. If there's no zone change involved, once again, that opportunity for public input is no longer present, so, yes. Thank you. I understand you met regularly with developers and lawyers and stuff, I saw that in the presentation. About how many of those folks showed up typically? Yes, so the most well attended meeting, we went to the realtor's offices in Lexington when we met with CPAL, and it was a full room of people. I'm not entirely sure of the number off the top of my head, but that was a very productive meeting where we got a lot of sort of line by line criticisms of, or comments, rather, about the text, and we were able to use that. I'm not sure how many we met with for BIA, but generally that was the largest. So the CPAL meeting was the most largest and well attended, and then smaller groups as it related to land use attorneys, engineers, and the like there. Generally going from February 25th to the middle of March is when most of those took place. Okay, and so you did use that input and made some changes. Yes, and that's reflected in, once again, the table in front of you, largely driven by the comments at those types of meetings in response to the developer feedback. Thanks. Did you have any of those regular meetings with neighborhood and neighborhood leaders? Yeah, so we received comments from FCNC, the neighborhood council. They opted, once again, because of the size of the text, they opted to send in written comments. But as far as meeting with individual neighborhoods, there's 280 or so that received notice. And other than FCNC sort of operating as an umbrella organization, didn't really receive comments from those. So it was sent out and applies across the county. But otherwise, just the folks that attended the planning commission hearings that occurred twice. So we did get comment from that, but otherwise not in organized with any particular neighborhoods. Thanks, and then last thing is, so I'm just curious. Like I kind of want your, and you don't represent all of planning, I guess, but you're up here right now. Will this ZOTA allow a developer to speed up their project if it's done the way it's described in the ZOTA? Yes, objectively. So under the current process, if you have a final development plan that you need to get approved, you have to go to the planning commission here if you're able to produce a complete plan. The time from filing to technical review when that review occurs and that approval would be granted is about three weeks. So you're shaving the extra handful of weeks that normally you would have to wait, even if you had a perfect plan, to go before planning commission and get that certified. So staff thinks that this is going to create a more streamlined process, a one that is clearer for developers, and is more objective in how it's applied. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Daniel, for the presentation. Some of the questions I'm going to ask, I've already asked you privately, but now we're in our separate meetings, but now I'm going to ask them publicly. Okay, so there are just a lot of new numbers in this document overall, which numbers equal objectivity, which is great, but can you clarify where numbers came from? I'm specifically looking at measurements, distances, are they industry standards, can you kind of give a brief overview on that? So, once again, the initial part of the process where staff was generating this text or responding to the state's House Bill 443 was a process of us getting together, not just with planning services, but with engineering, solid waste, environmental services, traffic engineering, and so those particular subject matter, I mean subject matter experts were the ones that helped drive and create those standards. So, for instance, with traffic engineering, they have a traffic engineering manual. However, it hasn't been adopted by this body. And so, if they have a range of requirements that they have been utilizing as part of their best practices that are in line with national standards, but they have never been ratified by this body. So, in order for them to be objective, in order for them to be applicable moving forward, they are coming to you from there. So, this ZOTA hits a lot of different angles and a lot of different divisions. And so, the subject matter experts for those were kind of crucial in creating those particular standards for any given particular item. But once again, industry best practices as well as their own internal documents that may or may not have been adopted by you all. Okay, and I guess that leads me to my next question is, if it was a manual or a policy that had been adopted by this government otherwise, what was the purpose, I guess, of spelling those out specifically in this ZOTA? Versus just referring to that document. Yeah, so for instance, the engineering manuals are adopted. So, we can just say, refer to the division of engineering manuals for those items. It's the items that, once again, were a part of their informal or their staff level review that suddenly have to be codified there. So, that's really where that's being lifted there. Okay, thank you. Now, I'm going through to just the process, and I guess you could pull up the flow chart of the steps. So, I guess I just want clarification on, if staff approves a development plan, does it ever go back before the planning commission? Do they have to have a final vote on that and agree with staff, or the developer is done with staff? Yeah, so for under the new House Bill 443, and we're talking for final development plans, correct? Yeah, so, I'll use my highlighter here. So, the first step is the applicant files. Staff reviews this internally, and the committee here that would be relevant is the technical review committee. So, that is not a committee of the planning commission. That is the subject matter experts from the various divisions that review the plans, and in the current process, make a recommendation to the planning commission. Now, under a plan that meets all requirements, that's the last stop. So, a plan that is turned in three weeks later or so would go to the technical review committee here. If it meets all objective standards, it would be approved, and it would be free to kind of go forward and develop from there. It would not go to the planning commission except for waivers and health safety welfare. Okay, great, thank you. I'm going to try to get through this one real quick. Okay, so on the next page, the overview of proposed changes. There are some in the community who could probably say that the first two bullet points are all that is needed for us to be in compliance with state law. So, what do you feel, or why did we feel like the rest of it was as important as just taking out subjective criteria and clarifying definitions? Sure, sure. I think that has to deal with the expectations that we've had as a community in the way that we've set up planning. So, there are aspects that were never codified because they were already, as a part of the existing process, that are important. The safety of our traffic flow, the safety of our intersections, safety of pedestrians, all of those are aspects that typically were so site specific were being designated to individual sign offs. Because it is tricky to create an overarching language that works for every site. And so, in the interest of maintaining flexibility, being able to negotiate with developers to create the greatest outcome of the site, historically had been left to the sign off phase. This, moving forward, would, if we just took what is in the existing ordinance, carved out the subjective parts, and then left it be, would leave a number of gaps that the public, that our communities, that our planning staff, that the planning commission, and you all as the urban county council have come to expect and help make Lexington the great place that it is. So, it's upholding the standards to what we have been applying and making them compliant with the current process. So, staff filings that the additions are necessary to make sure that we don't have a gap in coverage. And that for six months or so, we don't have any regulations pertaining to where you shouldn't put a driveway or something that may have some huge health safety implications. Thank you, I'm out of time. I'll come back. Thanks, Chair. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair. So, I'll be up front with you. I've got a heck of a lot of questions and I'm going to get through them as quickly as I can. If I need to log back in, I will. So, first of all, I was wondering if you could talk to me about the waiver process. So, talk to me about how does that work? How long do you anticipate it taking for projects to get a waiver? And is that going to potentially incur additional delays or costs for the petitioner of a particular plan? Yeah, so the waiver process is a significantly expanded process relative to what we have currently. So, currently the planning commission does have an existing waiver process. That deals exclusively with our subdivision regulations. There's a very limited number of things and the planning commission handles that. Moving forward under House Bill 443, the applicant would have a much greater freedom in asking relief from provisions of the zoning ordinance. So, an applicant would file a plan. They would go through the process at technical review committee. If there was an aspect that staff flagged as this is still deficient or not able to be met. Or if the applicant indicates ahead of time, this is something that we want to seek a waiver for, it advances to the next step in the process. That meeting, which occurs on a Wednesday, the applicant would then have to provide the staff with the required notice. So, once again, for the property in question, all adjacent property owners would receive notice that this was going to have a waiver requested. It would spell out the specific waivers that they were asking relief from. Those would be mailed out, and then approximately two weeks later, it would go to the subdivision zoning. I mean, it would go to the subdivision planning committee meeting, which is the exact same timeline that occurs under the current plan. So, under the current requirements, all plans go to that subdivision meeting here only if you've requested a waiver, so it's no additional time. But that's a public hearing, so once again, you have the ability to have discretion again, but it's limited. So, in the instance that, I'll just make up an example. Say an applicant has a piece of property, and one side of that property has some topography issues that makes putting a sidewalk in that location impossible. Or so cost prohibitive that it isn't feasible. The zoning ordinance says, in this location, you need to have the sidewalk. They would say, we can't meet it due to this specific condition, and this is what we are going to do instead. The planning commission evaluates that, and they're able to make a subjective read on if that's appropriate. There's set findings that they have to put forth, but have the ability to grant that. The neighbors would be notified. They would receive a notice that says, this applicant is wanting to request a waiver for this provision. At this meeting, you are able to submit comment, you are able to attend. The planning commission can hear the public comment and use that as they weigh their decision on whether to grant the waiver. What they wouldn't be able to do is show up at a meeting regarding a waiver for a sidewalk and say, I don't like the use that's there. So you can't use that to spin off into larger. It's a more targeted look, as opposed to the more open public hearings that occur now, where just about any aspect of that development plan can be discussed and subjectively viewed by the commission. Great, thank you so much. I appreciate the clarification there. Another area where I'm concerned about is just the general timing of all of this. And so again, this bill was passed in 2024, this was before I was on this body. So I was wondering if you could work me through the timeline of this, because from what I gathered, and correct me if I heard wrong, this sort of started in earnest in February. So the parts where we were involving the community. So before we could go to the neighborhoods, before we could go to the planning commission, before we could go to the developers, we had to synthesize and get together as a body and kind of create that text. So the back part of 2024 was getting that all together and in a state that we were comfortable putting it together as a first draft. Knowing, of course, that there would be revisions, there would be further comment, but we wanted to start off from as good a place as possible. From the beginning of 2025, though, is where we started to send that text out, started to meet with the constituents and the stakeholders. And then the planning commission process follows the standard issue where a application is submitted. We make a recommendation, it goes to the committees, the planning commission holds. In this case, they opted to hold a hearing and then continued it into a second date, and so two opportunities for feedback there. And then it was forwarded on to you in a slightly unconventional manner. Once again, you all getting it before you receive it at work session. But during that time, we sent the text out to the individual council members and had those discussions knowing that this is a lot of information to process and wanting to make sure that everyone felt comfortable with kind of proceeding and being knowledgeable on what we're talking about. Thank you, and that's my time for now, so I'll log back in. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you. Lost my microphone. Thank you, Mr. Crumb, for the presentation, all the detailed work on this. It's a lot of work, and I know it's a big change for us. I am going to start with some questions. I also might have to sign back in in a little bit. I would like to kind of start where we just left off about the timeline. So, help me understand why this process didn't start sooner and involve more people. Obviously, we're the ones that have to, in the end, make this decision about this legislation. And it feels really like a lot in a short amount of time. And I just wonder why it wasn't started a little sooner and involved more folks. I think that's just a testament to sort of how much time it takes to come through the zoning ordinance, through the engineering manuals, through the traffic manuals, and coordinate that along with the daily processes. Once again, we understand that it is sort of an expedited timeline on that, but this is sort of the timeline that we have kind of in front of us now. So essentially, we wanted to start on the best foot as possible. That way, we were being consistent when we were coming to developers and the rest of the community, and we weren't being unreasonable. Essentially, with where we started, we wanted to make sure we had a firm grasp on that. But obviously, there were still revisions and things that came from that as we iterated through that process. And so, I'm going to ask some broader questions before I go into more detailed things, possibly later. But when we're talking about some of the things that had to be codified, I know some of my colleagues have echoed this. But how, usually with the ZOTA, we incorporate stakeholders to try to come up with metrics and things like that. How was that done? There's a lot of stuff in here, and there's a lot of things that are written down that weren't written down before. And now might need a waiver if we veer from that. And we have maybe existing developments in our community that don't match these standards. And so, if our goal is to have infill, and our goal is to provide a process that is fair for everyone. How can we do that with all of these little things when they're big changes? Because they are codified. Yeah, so once again, the stakeholder process in the three or months so preceding this, as we were building towards the text, we were taking to planning commission. And then once we were even in the planning commission process, we notified the planning commission of these, we've proposed some changes that are outside what you all have requested. But developers have reached out, the communities have reached out, and think that this particular phrasing may be problematic. So once again, we've got some really great feedback from the developers, from the rest of the stakeholder community. And it led to kind of the excisions you see in the chart there. Speaking kind of broadly, it is sort of the difficulty or the trade off from the current system to now. Our current system is subjective, but it gets to be more flexible. They have the ability to, on a case by case basis, kind of help negotiate that. Now we are tasked from the state with creating objective standards. So we have to create standards that will apply across the board. And in the corner cases, rely on the waiver process to help get us through that. So we were cognizant that in creating these standards of what implications these may have, but ultimately they were kind of necessary in order to get that baseline down to ensure that we still had that floor, that level of review that we've come to expect as a community. And we wanted to, especially with the waiver process, make sure that that was going to be something that was reasonable, that was not going to be something that was going to be impossible for an applicant to navigate, say, without an attorney or something to that effect. So we wanted to make that approachable, but give the planning commission the information they need to make an informed decision. So then, if we're talking about waivers like this, there's the possibility, sorry, I don't have much time left. There's the possibility that everyone could file a waiver every time they file a plan. It's certainly true, but I want to make sure everyone understands time-flying-wise, and I'll try not to come up here very often during this discussion. This work started last year, because internally, as Daniel was saying, all the divisions had to scrub the zoning ordinance to see what needed to be objectified, if I can use that word in that context. And so it took time to get that draft prepared, and then this half of the year, it's been out there for comment, consideration, going through the planning commission process. I will say that some people decided not to engage on the standards. They decided that the approach to it would be, get the council to take them out. And so there wasn't a lot of heavy engagement by some portions of the community on those standards. But the answer to the waiver question is yes, it is possible. But another benefit of the waiver, in my opinion, is for neighborhood context, you have to lay a floor of standards. There's no way to build them otherwise. And if, for some reason, those don't fit into a neighborhood context, they would request a waiver and justify it based on existing conditions, design of neighborhood, etc., etc. So it's a fairly open waiver process, and neighbors get to have input on that waiver process. Thank you, Chair. I'll sign back in. Colleagues, just so you are aware, I'm going to call on committee members for their first speaking time. Then council members who aren't on the committee for their first time. And then I'll get the people who are signed in for a second time. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Crum, do the applicants know exactly what the standards are, or what I think in my head is check boxes, do they know what these objective standards are before they even apply? Yes, yes, so that information will be applied and provided to them, yes. Okay, I'm going to kind of jump back and forth between a bunch of different points. Planning Commission, in their recommendation, had a strong recommendation for us to find opportunities for public input in this process. Why didn't they make an amendment to add in public input into this process? That's a good question. So essentially, the ministerial aspect of this, during early and often, staff weighed in on this is going to be one of the most significant changes, especially relative to the Planning Commission and what they see and the number of hearings that they provide. But as far as, and during the Planning Commission hearing, they were looking to see if there were any other avenues. I think law has weighed in on this, planning staff has weighed on this. If there was an opportunity or an avenue to provide that meaningful public engagement, where the neighborhoods can come in and have an actual impact on the outcomes that are before them, rather than just token participation or involvement, then we would have recommended so. So they did not have a solution to that problem. That was a recommendation on their part to recommend that the council take a look at that and if they can find any avenues to explore those. But once again, they were very in favor of keeping the neighborhoods as involved as possible with the understanding that House Bill 443 mandates a very particular type of process and very particular outcomes. Yeah, so to your point about this public input being impactful, right? So if we were to add in an opportunity for public comment or engagement or input into the ministerial process, what would that even look like and how would it impact the approval process? So my example would be if the applicant has checked all the boxes and normally the planning staff would approve it and you have a whole bunch of folks come out and say we don't like this development for these reasons. Does that have any impact on your approval process at that point? The way that this statute is written, we are required to guide those based off the objective standards only. So the neighborhood comment, the neighborhood concern, whether they agree with the development. If it checks those boxes, then they wouldn't have an ability to impact that plan. Now, we as a staff are always available to answer questions and comments from the public. And one aspect that the public can somewhat be involved is in the sense of alerting staff of a potential health, safety, or welfare concern during our initial review. So if someone was to, for instance, say, hey, there's a development that's planned out near the farm that I have. There's sinkholes on that property. I've lived here for 60 years. Staff can take a look at that information and evaluate that and build that into our understanding of, is there something special about this site that is going to rise to an actionable health, safety, and welfare concern that applying the normal standards would not leave addressed. So that avenue is still there, but that is not really even in the same realm of what we had before. Where neighborhoods could come out, specify their concerns or their comments, be heard, and the planning commission respond accordingly. If you had a public hearing under the current process, we would listen to those folks. But we would be based, we would have our hands tied and have to apply the objective standards without personal discretion. Okay, thank you for that. In terms of a timeline, if under this new process, if all the standards are met, if all the check boxes are checked, how long would you say that approval process might take? So yeah, it varies from month to month as far as the actual date of the technical review committee. But you're looking at about three weeks, whereas the current process is about a month and a half. At the absolute earliest, you could be done. Okay, and do you know what, I know what the hypothetical timelines are. Do you know currently what is our average approval time? I do not. I know there was the planning study, or the planning process study that you all received within the past couple of years. But unfortunately, off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you. And as I think Commissioner Horne said, the word ministerial doesn't get thrown around just as a vague word. It has very specific meaning. So we're applying a ministerial approval process to development to the final development plan in a way that we haven't done before. Can you give us some other examples of ministerial approval processes in any other parts of this government? Yes, yes, so once again, Commissioner Horne mentioned building permits. So if I want to build a shed in the back of my property, I go down to building inspection. I give them all of the required documentation. I pay my application fee. Some building inspection member staff takes a look at that, checks the blend, checks their boxes that doesn't meet all applicable codes, stamps it, and you are on your way. It doesn't have a public comment. You as a neighbor can't weigh in and say, I don't want my neighbor to have that shed there if it meets requirements. So that is an example of ministerial processes. Much of what the government does, when we sign off on a liquor license, we are acting ministerially based on whether or not the zone and the use allows for a liquor license, and then applying that at a staff level. Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. Grum. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for the detailed overview and for sharing how you all have worked to come into compliance with this state house bill. And sharing a little bit of your timeline, and especially for the additional intro and context from the commissioner. I think Vice Mayor Wu brought up some really good questions about the process and about public input and how this measures against other ministerial processes. And I know that I've shared with some of the third district residents in the room, which it seems like there are quite a few people from the third district in here right now, that as Chair of the Public Input Subcommittee, I know there are many members of that subcommittee here in this room. I know that many of us care about how to receive public input and where that can occur in a meaningful way and in an impactful way. So I am curious, because even with this new ministerial process, which has been kind of mandated to us, you've shared some of the additional places for public engagement. You talked about the plan making stage, the policy making stage, the zone change process, and then with the preliminary development plan process, and then in conversations with staff. You also talked about some special spaces in relation to this particular ministerial process, like the waiver. Do you mind to go into a little bit more detail about the health, safety, or welfare threat or concern? What would that look like, or can you provide some examples? And what would the public input process or public engagement process look like in a case such as that? Yes, so in the language for House Bill 443. mandates that it is a specific health, safety, and welfare concern. So, that is the ability for staff to take a look at the plan and essentially identify for one reason or another that applying this standard or not applying this standard would cause a specific health, safety, and welfare concern. So, something as general as this is going to add extra traffic to a neighborhood or something to that effect isn't really specific. It is, if we implement the zoning ordinance as written, it is going to cause an issue. So, for instance, as I mentioned in my earlier example, we've recommended a separation from railroad crossings for access drives. If that wasn't, for instance, included in this text, staff could theoretically have the ability for a particular plan to say, we understand that this isn't a written regulation, but we think this particular provision here is going to cause a health, safety, welfare concern. We would like the planning commission to look at that. Once again, highlighting that this is supposed to be the absolute exception to how these processes go. Generally speaking, we want to create robust standards that reflect the development today, so that we don't have the onus on staff having to catch some of these items in order to make sure we have a safe community. So, some of the common sense, safety, and provisions have been kind of incorporated into this. But if there was such a hearing or staff raised that, it would go to the planning commission. Once again, it would be open for public comment on that particular item, and they would be able to advise discretion on that particular aspect there. So, but once again, highlighting that this is really intended to be the exception, and it's sort of the release valve, if nothing else. And we know that there's going to be a specific, actionable issue there. We can raise that. All right, thank you so much for that response. Those are my original statements and questions, so thank you, Chair. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Daniel, for the presentation, and council members for all the good questions. I think this is a big change, and I think us trying to wrap our minds around it and get a greater understanding is what we need to do. I'm going to circle back to the thoughts and comments around public input, and kind of share, and you tell me if I'm stating this correctly. So not only did the House bill, even though it wasn't the intent, eliminated not just meaningful public input and engagement, but just practical. Public input and engagement, but then also eliminated the opportunity for council's input engagement in the approval process of final development plans. Is that correct? So yeah, once again, council doesn't specifically weigh in on development plans, but yes. Otherwise, the ministerial aspect of this does preclude that being a consideration as a part of the development plan. So, yes, to the rest of that. So, and I do understand and see the benefit and think this will be productive with helping development plans move through the process with set standards. But with the lack of the opportunity for neighborhoods and neighbors and council members, even the neighborhoods elected representatives to weigh into the development plan. I do see and understand the need to develop a floor for setting some standards. The waiver process is what I'm really hearing concerns about, is that we're making or setting the standards so high that every development plan is going to have to request a waiver. And then, so I'm hearing that from the development side. The other concern that I'm hearing from the neighborhood side is even if they do have to apply for a waiver, that the notification isn't sufficient or it's not what it is now. Can you speak to the notification of a waiver process and the possibilities or the challenge with expanding that? Yeah, yeah, so the current waiver process mandates that you notify the adjoining property owners. So that is just the singular properties around that, so it's a handful. And that's relevant really due to just logistical constraints of how the process functions. So when they go to technical review committee, if they didn't know they needed a waiver before, they would be told then. And then in order to meet the deadlines and for the folks to actually receive the notice in a timely fashion to attend said meeting, you would essentially be providing those materials to staff that Friday in order for us to verify and check that everything's in line. And so part of the consideration is sort of who is most impacted by a waiver, so the immediately adjoining property owners. And just reflecting that this is sort of a more limited process than the public hearings of today, essentially in that if you received a waiver notice, you would be going to a meeting to hear about that one particular issue. It wouldn't be the same way that when you get a zoning notification letter, this is to discuss the whole zone and potential future redevelopment of this whole parcel, a much larger kind of conversation. So the staff initiated by text, the text initiated by staff is oriented towards the adjoining property owners who would be most impacted by those kind of decisions. But ultimately, a larger notification area could be provided. It just, it does impose some logistical difficulties with staying on that same track for the applicants potentially. Okay, so right now it just goes to the adjoining properties and not the adjoining properties and the neighborhood association or HOA? Yeah, it would just be sent to the adjoining property owners. Right now, make sure that right now there is no- Yes, so let me clarify that this is under the proposed process. Right now there is not a requirement for notifying development plans under our current statute today, so thank you. Okay, so that is an addition. So would it be too much of a stretch to add neighborhood associations or HOAs or any other organized group to that list in addition to adjoining neighbors? That could be done. And then the other challenge that you said is, if we expanded the notification process too much, it puts additional burden on the developer to send those out. But then it would also add an additional burden onto our staff to verify that expanded area in notification. Yes, that is accurate. Okay. All right, that's all I have, Chair, right now. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. So, and this is just for some clarification. So if I understand correctly, even if there was a way or if we decided a way to put some type of public input in or public comment about the development plan, there's not really a mechanism for these comments to be taken into account. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay, let's see. So, and it's been mentioned a little bit. So the only main recommendation from the planning commission was tied to public comment, other than the minor things. That's the only main recommendation? Yes, yes. Okay, so, and as everyone knows, I strongly believe in public comment. But also, I believe that the people living in the existing neighborhoods and in those communities are experts to their existing community. They know things that are taking place that maybe our staff don't know, maybe the developers don't know. So with that being said, while maybe it's not meaningful or impactful, have we considered getting input or just community contacts to make sure that we're not missing anything, the staff's not missing anything regarding these areas or regarding the development? Yes, so as a part of just the day to day operations, we kind of highlighted earlier in the presentation. If we received calls, input from a community about a particular plan, we have the ability to kind of investigate some of those aspects. Once again, being constricted by the objective standards, unless something raised, say, by a neighborhood member would be something that's a health safety and welfare, a specific health safety and welfare concern, that staff can then investigate and incorporate that at the decision for the technical review committee. So that would be really the lone way under this process for someone who's got knowledge of an area to kind of interface there. Now, this is specific to the development plan process. We have an entire strategic and outreach planning that is designed to kind of interface with neighborhoods. We want to stay involved through all of those other laundry lists of other processes as well and create these relationships so that the public knows about these processes, knows how the changes are going to be kind of moving forward, but also has the comfort to call in to staff and to kind of have those conversations. Okay, all right, I'll come back to the community input. So regarding notification, I do have some concerns related to the transparency piece and notifications tied to this specifically related just when the existing property's already zoned and when there's a waiver process needed. And just so for the community transparency, I want to talk about just through the process. So for instance, we know about St. Martin Village where in the previous that there was a zone change for that space between St. Martin Village and the mobile park home. Right now it's zoned R1. So if this is adopted, when this is adopted, technically the developers just come, if they wanted to develop R1 in that area, they come before the staff, they put their request in, and that's the streamline request we're talking about, right? Yes, so that would be, yeah, if they met the objective standards without needing a zone change, they could go through those processes, yes, with a streamline. Okay, and then St. Martin Village is not notified about that, correct? No, as long as they're meeting the requirements. Right, so the way they figure out is dirt's moved within a certain amount of weeks. I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you there. The way that, if they're not in the weeds or know what's going on down here, the way that St. Martin Village or the surrounding community figures out that development's coming is that dirt is moved, at some point, that they see development. So yeah, under our current process, it's much of the same way. But yes, there's not a notification to initiate a filing for development plan. There's not a required signposting. And if it isn't in a public hearing, then it wouldn't show up on an agenda or other written document. Okay, so can you tell, and I think Councilman Brown hit on this a little bit. So can you tell me why the notices only go out to adjacent properties, I guess? And I'm just thinking, it's the balance of, well, we don't inform them now, but we're streamlining development. So right now, there's a process so they can, you almost either hear word of mouth. Some folks are still engaged, so they kind of figure it out. But with streamlined development, that just takes that all away. So have we thought about that in any way? Yeah, and in consideration of kind of how we arrived at the adjoining property owners, is the understanding that the public hearing is just going to look a little different than it does currently. Once again, weighing in, it's a much different hearing to send a notice out to 300 folks. And all that we're going to be able to, as a body, deliberate is whether or not it's okay to have a four foot wide sidewalk instead of a five foot wide sidewalk. Versus the current process where, with a zone change, you're talking about all the potential uses of the site. The current process, you have the ability for the planning commission to exercise discretion to disapprove a plan. So the immediately adjoining property owners standard that we are proposing here was really reflective of making changes that are notifying the most immediate folks. But that could be changed. That was the sound for the time being. Now we know. Council Member Morton, you can sign back in if you have further questions. Council Member Beasley. Thank you, Chair, and thanks for recognizing me since I don't serve on this board. I just have a real quick question about how we're notifying people. So you said that we notify 280 neighborhood associations. Where did we get those addresses? Because I want the people who are watching this at home or sitting in this audience to know that they need to be checking somewhere to make sure their address is correct in case they're not getting those notifications. Yeah, yeah, so the division of planning maintains a list of active neighborhood associations. And so when we send out mailings, and sometimes that information is not accurate. We get return addresses. We get addresses that are no longer valid. We update those and keep those in our system. So if a neighborhood has a change in contact, then they reach out to us. We update that. It's a fairly simple process, but it is initiated just by reaching out the division of planning. So if they didn't get a notice, the best thing for them to do is just call down to your office and say, this is our current president or whoever our representative is, and change their address. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Or email, yeah, email is just as good. Or email, sorry. Please don't blow their phones up. Somebody email down there. Thank you. Council Member Gray. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentation. First of all, just for clarification's sake for myself, so if the zone is the same, the only thing that the developer would do is just submit the form, it would automatically go through the process. Is that correct? Yes, so if the development required a final development plan, they submitted that. It didn't require a zone change, didn't require them to waive or change any standards. If there wasn't a health, safety, welfare issue identified by staff, then it would have that streamlined, simplified process where within three weeks or so, they could get approved. Okay. For a compliant plan. Excellent. And that's the best scenario that we can think of, the quickest at this point. So, say, scenario is this. Say we have a historically African American neighborhood. Does it constitute as an erasure or would it kick into the, would it constitute an issue of health, safety, and welfare, which would kick into the waiver process? Is that making sense? I don't know whether that would rise to the, so there's a lot of case law across the United States dealing with health, safety, and welfare and the extent of that. I think the statute with its, and I can lean on law if need be, but a specific health, safety, or welfare concern. I'm not sure whether that would rise to the level of meeting that standard, but I would happily defer to law if need be, if that makes sense. You're not law anymore, but you have a law degree. I can say this, the idea tied to House Bill 443 is that that safety health welfare is related to the objective standards. So that if there was no, if they're meeting the objective standards and the zone exists, which means someone has a right to put whatever qualifies under that zone on there. If the objective standards are met, is what would be looked at for the development plan. So, you're looking at me. I'm trying to see if that makes sense to you or if it answered your question. Well, I don't know if it makes sense. Maybe after time at a sink in, but so regarding that element, it's subjective, so there's not a legal definition of what that is? Or. Well. Am I? Okay, go ahead. I think that you're potentially overlaying definitions that are not applicable to this process in a different context. What I'm trying to explain, and Jim may be able to explain better. If there is an existing zone, there are principal uses, conditional uses, etc. And they do not have to get permission to have that use there. The objective standards, if they have to have a development plan, would explain these are the things you have to show on your plan in order to get approval without requesting a waiver. Now, given the context, it may be necessary for them to request a waiver, in which case that prior process kicks in in terms of having a public hearing on their waiver. Does that help? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Chair. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Okay, rapid fire. I'm getting in details now. I'm going to build on what Council Member Gray just said about, well, I'm just going to build on it. Okay, so I'm taking us all the way back to the comprehensive plan, right? And I'm looking at definitions, and we're talking about sub streets. And I'm trying to see the correlation between our comp plan and this ZOTA, and how the two talk to each other, okay? So this is where I'm headed. So the sub street definition says, they shall only be used when a future continuation is planned. So in theme A, pillar one design, policy 13, development should connect to adjacent sub streets to maximize the street network. So, if we're saying the definition is only when a future continuation is planned, and then in the comp plan we're saying they have to connect. Like where does it, I want to make sure that one is not, they both make sense together, is what I'm trying to say. Does that, do you see that? It's like the chicken or the egg kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, and so I think where this is trying to get at is, you know, you sort of know it when you see it. Like if we have a large undeveloped track next to that, next to a particular piece of property, you're constructing a roadway that goes to the end of the property, your options are two things. Either you make a cul-de-sac and you end it there, or we stub out for the plan to anticipate a future development. At the end of the day, they're only going to be held as far as development is concerned, to the actual zoning ordinance itself and the subdivision regulations. So the comprehensive plan helps dictate, especially within the lens of say a zone change, on what would be expected there in the future context, but really they're only being held to the zoning ordinance and the subdivision regulations. Okay, well and I think, and to kind of further Council Member Gray's conversation is, you know, if the comprehensive plan is what we aspire to be as a community, how do our aspirations talk to our regulations? So, just put that off to the side, I got way more to go. Okay, I'm looking at section, or article 12.9. This is Design Standards for Big Box Retail Establishments, and I'm looking at item B. And this is where it's talking about entrances. So I just want to make sure that I understand this. So currently, or so the proposal says that they should be customer entrances required on all walls that face a public or private street. So I'm thinking about something that sits on the corner. And if a Walmart sits on the corner of Man O' War and Nicholasville Road, but that Walmart wants to have a pharmacy and a garden center or a liquor store, how do we account for those two entrances on the frontage of two main roads in this standard? Yeah, so when we talk about standards and getting down to the individual boots on the ground in a particular property, what we're looking at here is the standards are calling for having a, it's a corner lot, having two entrances. However, the applicant in this instance that wants to develop a Walmart says, due to how our business operates, how it organizationally makes sense to orient our business, how it makes sense as far as accommodating a pharmacy element. Drive-throughs associated with that, etc. We think that this makes the most sense, and we are still preserving access to this site and meeting the other design considerations. That's how that would play out in the form of, say, a waiver if they were unable to meet or didn't make sense with their business model or etc. And these are existing just as to kind of give a primer behind the design guidelines. These are being proposed as standards. Right now, they're guidelines that apply to the B6P zone, one particular zone. And so it encourages, but it's not an objective standard. So in order to implement that, we have to create a standard that then if the applicant does not seek to meet, they can waive or otherwise meet. Okay. And then on F, item F, maximum of one crosswalk allowed to make a connection. Why did we put a maximum and not a minimum there? Just to ensure that there is a measure of sort of direct connectivity. So the intention behind these developments is to create development that not only works for the developer, but also functions for all modes of transportation, so including pedestrians. So I believe that was included in order to kind of reflect the conversations that we've had with B6P development relative to their pedestrian system. So once again, understanding that you've got to cross a parking lot or something at some point, but that we should try to simplify that where possible and kind of make sure that there's direct routes for the pedestrians to access these developments. Okay, I'm out of time again. I'll come back in work session, I guess. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to try to move quickly. So one of the things that we've talked about so far has been that this is intended to codify sort of the goals and intentions of other documents that we have that guide our development and planning process, like our comprehensive plan. I got to be honest that to my eyes, some of these regulations seem to be putting up more barriers to infill and redevelopment projects, which are a high priority for us as a city. And so I just want to know if that was something you all took into consideration or whether you performed any analysis on the potential impact of these new regulations on that. Yes, so developing in the infill area is tricky. And we have set infill and redevelopment standards in the zoning ordinance to address exactly those types of considerations. So some of that is already present in the zoning ordinance with respect to kind of establishing any kind of new standard. There's most certainly going to be corner cases where this is going to create more friction than others. Staff was trying to be cognizant of any of these that were sort of self appealing. But noting that as we kind of go through this process and navigate it post July 1st, that it'll be crucial to understand if we are seeing waivers for the same thing again and again. And again, it may be more appropriate to take a look at that and re-evaluate whether we got the standard right on the front end. So that was part of the intention of the outreach and the engagement with the development community was, what portions of this do you think are workable or are accurately reflecting now and kind of where those come up. So it is something that we've tried to be cognizant of, but understanding that more revisions to this may be necessary. And in the interim, there's a waiver process to adjust it so that no one's left with an unusable piece of property. No, thank you, I appreciate that. And so I'm going to move back quickly because I don't have a ton of time to the process behind this and go all the way back to the 2024 session of the General Assembly. When this law was being written and being passed, did any members of Lexington's delegation to the General Assembly consult with LFUCG planning staff or anybody in your office? I'm going to defer that one to folks that may be a little more plugged in. They didn't call the senior zoning planner. Council Member Curtis, Jim Duncan, the Division of Planning. We were not consulted by the legislature about this. We were aware of it through the ordinary process when bills were released publicly. And so, just to be clear, and you might not have the full answer on this, but was anybody within LFUCG consulted by members of the legislature? because I know that my colleagues who were here at the time, to my knowledge, were not consulted by our delegation to the General Assembly about this policy and its potential impacts on Lexington. To your all's knowledge, did the General Assembly, our specific delegation representing Lexington, consult with LFUCG? Council Member Curtis, I could not say. I can tell you that the Division of Planning was not consulted about that. Thank you, I appreciate that because I do think it's worth noting that we've had members of the General Assembly who were involved with this legislation say that this bill does certain things and impacts Lexington in certain ways. But they have not been in consultation with the people responsible for implementing this policy. So, I just want that reflected and noted. So, as we're talking about all of this and the potential liabilities that we face, again, July 1st is the date that we've been given. Can you all talk to me, and this might be more of a law question, for what happens if we don't implement some clean up language, for lack of a better term, by July 1st and we become out of compliance with state statute? Sure, sure. So, once again, kind of two parts. The objective standards come July 1st. If there is a standard that is not objective, it doesn't meet that threshold. We, as a body, cannot apply it. The second implication is that we would then have a zoning ordinance that is out of sync with what state law is requiring. And is requiring them not to go through a ministerial process. So, I'm not entirely sure of whether we would just adopt a process that meets the intent of the state or how we would proceed there. But it would create a definite disconnect in a way that would open us to litigation and challenge in the courts on multiple fronts, I think it's safe to say. And I appreciate that clarification, because I think we all can agree that we want to avoid possible litigation. So, thank you, Chair, and I will have more to say about this later. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. When you all were setting the standards, did you all look at peer series or best practices? They were using similar processes on this, or were unique just to Lexington? So, with respect to how we were setting up the development plan process. Yes, sir. So, in a large sense, the bill applies to the entire state, but it really reflects sort of the fact that Lexington has had somewhat of a unique development process. For instance, Louisville, their current process meets a lot of the state bill 443. I previously, on a personal note, worked in Owensboro, where this was always done ministerially at a staff level in the span of about a week. So really, we are looking at legislation that in a process that more or less Lexington, to my knowledge, was sort of the lone entity in Kentucky that had sort of operated this way. Okay, thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. I think one of the biggest concerns that the public has, and many of us have in the planning commission, is around this idea of public input and comment. I wonder, you mentioned they could send their feedback, they could meet with staff. Could we make something a little more formal that states you can send a letter with your concerns, especially in relation to safety, welfare, and then also if you would like to meet with a member of our staff, maybe the person with the new position, to express any concerns that they're welcome to do that, and make that a, we want you to have this opportunity to be able to do that. For like many of us have said, in case something comes up that they're aware of, that the developer's not aware of, that the staff is not aware of. Yes, we know it's not a hearing. We know it's not the same, but that it is something that will be looked at. Yeah, I think this gets at sort of a separate aspect from kind of, there's adopting the standards, adopting the ordinance, bringing us into compliance. But there's a whole nother piece that's more or less at the staff level of how do we communicate that to the communities? How do we create the checklists and information for developers? How are we interfacing with all of that? So I think as far as how folks know where and when they are still able to comment and what not, I think is going to fall within our staff to generate materials and then be in connection with the neighborhoods on making sure that information's out there. A lot of that is going to be sort of determined as we kind of move further along in the process and ultimately base this on what council opts to kind of adopt. But we do think that it's important, but just getting back to the core kind of consideration of, you can give us information, but the objective standards is sort of the threshold and the standard that we have to kind of look at. But encouraging that information share and then keeping the communities plugged into what's happening, I think is also important. And I think, I know we don't want to cause any extra work for staff or for the developers, but I do think, and I know that some of my colleagues feel the same, that maybe expanding who we're making aware, just because what we don't want, or I'll speak for myself. What I don't want to happen is a development is taking place. And as Council Member Morton said, the only way they find out is because they see it happening. I think we have a responsibility, especially right now with the way that our process is changing, we still have a responsibility to let folks know what's happening and allow them to say something. Because it could be that they have information about welfare or safety that we don't have. And what I don't want to do is this whole process that could in the end be better for a lot of people shut out everybody in their comments. So anyway, I want to, I mean, I'm not comfortable moving this forward unless we have something more solid around this particular item of public comment. And I think that as we're talking, it's important that we realize that folks have different views of what HB 433, what the outcome of it was. We know what it says, but it did not say, therefore, you have to do these things. It did not say that. So therefore, everyone has a different opinion of what that's supposed to look like. And I think that's what some of us are struggling with, is we want this to be a process that is objective, but we also have to realize that not all of the details, we might not agree on all of the details of how to do that. So, I have 40 seconds left. I just wanted to start asking, and I can continue later, about some of the specifics. When we're talking about area 16-7, about parking and loading in front or side yards other than in residential zones. That is something that we wrote down, right, and that we made a rule about that hadn't been written before. Is that correct? So, well, 16-7 specifically has a, this is an example of a piece of our zoning ordinance that had basically subjective language. So, it read exactly as it does today, except it said sufficient depth instead of a dimension. So this is going through and taking something that was subjective and would be unenforceable and providing a distance that meets the standards of House Bill 443. That's how something like that would have come about. Okay, I'm out of time, and I'll be respectful to my colleagues, but I'll circle back in work section. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you. To follow on Council Member Morton's point about how neighbors find out about developments. Currently, do developers generally engage with neighbors during the development and approval process now? So there's no formal requirement during the final development plan process. And even during the initial portions of, say, a zone change with a preliminary, it is encouraged. There's comprehensive plan goals, objectives. Staff always ask about it. Planning Commission always ask about it. Auburn County Council always ask about it, but there is no set requirement. You have to meet with this group prior to filing. It is most certainly a best practice. It gives us our best outcomes. Community involvement and community engagement, all of that wrapped into one. But under the current process, no, it is not required, and under a final development plan, they can just show up on filing day with the application, no pre-application or otherwise meeting beforehand. I feel like what we're trying to do right now is kind of take a lot of our best practices that haven't been written down and kind of codify them into this set of objective standards. So could we also require some level of engagement from the developers as one of the objective standards when they come and apply? You could. The one aspect of that is there's not necessarily a mechanism that it's meaningful or otherwise well orchestrated. Within, say, the realm of a discretionary process, you can ask, hey, how was that neighborhood meeting? What were their concerns? How did the plans change? Is there dialogue on this issue in the future? What would be under House Bill 443, you could theoretically mandate that they meet with the neighborhood beforehand. There would be no way to verify that that was meaningful, that that was, the qualitative aspect of that would be absent, but you could ask the developers to do that. And if they wanted to incorporate those comments voluntarily, they could. Okay, thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. As a follow back, so before my time ran out, we talked about the notice of adjacent properties. And you had mentioned the example with the sidewalk, for instance, just as an example for a waiver. Is it fair to say that there are some possible waivers that could impact the existing community, the entire community, rather than just those adjacent properties? Yes, so the waiver process opens up. Now, there's certain things that they're not allowed to say, ask for new uses that are not in the zone. But the extent of the waivers could vary from something very minor to something more significant in size and scope. Which would mean that basically the existing community, and it's in full, could, well, possibly would need or could need that information, that notification about that waiver. It could be, yeah. Thank you. So then moving on, just for my sake, can you just give me, tell me the requirements for the notice for a zone change right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So currently, the notification for a zone change is 500 feet from the rezoning area. Typically, that's more or less the entire boundary of the property going out to the center line of the road. If you're in an ag zone, it's even further increased, but the standard there is 500 feet. They receive mailed notice. There's a sign posted on the property. It's included in a legal ad posted on the website, the full gamut of notice for that, as required by state law and other applicable things. Okay, thank you. And then, so you wouldn't be, planning staff's not opposed to expanding the radius of notification, are they? Other than the concerns that were highlighted by Council Member James Brown's question? Yes, just it is a logistical question. Whatever council opts as the appropriate waiver notification, planning staff would administer. Okay, cool. Thank you. Then, so when we talk about existing communities as a whole, they tend to get the rough end of the stick when it comes to development and growth. And in certain cases, especially when it comes to community input, in this case, the community is essentially being told that there's not much we could do regarding being meaningful and impactful. So, I actually have a lot of active neighborhood associations in the first district, specifically the majority of the historic African-American communities that Council Member Gray mentioned earlier. And although we see the neighborhood associations tend to be a strong voice for our communities, they're not always the full voice, and they don't always represent the entire community. So, I guess, and then on top of that, always at our neighborhood association meetings, they say when it comes to development and planning and things, notices they get, they're like, what is this? I have no clue. Can you tell me, can you talk me through this? So, the information piece tied to these notices, I have concerns with that as well. So, then my follow-up question to those would be, what other ways do we seek input from the community and constituents throughout Lexington other than the mail notices to the neighborhood association? And the follow-up with that would be, how do we inform these communities regarding HB 443 and that notice? So, as far as how we actually, once implemented, I think that is going to be a larger process. Once again, outside the bounds of setting forth the actual rules and standards. That's engagement with our long range and strategic planning divisions, having those conversations. Making sure that there's ways to monitor these applications. It's worth noting that these plans are, from filing through the entirety of the process, are available online. So, once again, there's an educational component, there is a staying connected to the neighborhoods and component. With respect, we do get questions all the time of, I received this mailing, what does it actually mean? Within, I guess, since the 2018 comprehensive plan, we've tried in various steps to kind of make that easier to digest. So, for zone changes, for instance, we do what's called a development snapshot that basically tries to simplify everything down. Provides a map of what they're wanting to do with the property. But knowing that, once again, some of these concepts are very, very specific, especially as it would relate to a waiver process moving forward. So, they would receive a mail notice that would say, they are asking for this provision, which to a lay person may not mean much or may have questions. So, once again, establishing those relationships, taking a look at our internal processes, sort of external to this, and making sure that we're reaching the folks we need to and that we're being accessible and truly serving the community. So, and then, just as a follow up, so basically, other than the emails that were, I mean, excuse me, the mail notices, there was no other input from the other notifications to the community about this. And then there was no information relayed to our communities about HB443 and where we are up till now. Other than just the planning commission process, which once again, that's televised, that's open to the public. But for a ZOTA, that mailed notice on the initial thing is what's required and what gets sent out. But we did have conversations, once again, with the FCNC as a group and provided that information to them. They provided comments back. But yeah, it's the struggle of a ZOTA impacting 280, more than 280, that's just the number that are registered. It impacts the whole community. How do we get buy-in and input from all of those sources as well? So, yeah, thank you. Council Member Gray. Yes, Chair. Thank you. So, you stated something earlier, and I can't remember which of my colleagues asked you the question. But it was regarding, basically, there was an editorial that was written that where it was claimed that Lexington is the only jurisdiction, or the only city, county, that is putting together these steps. And you, earlier, said something. So, you worked in a different area, and there you had those ministerial steps already proposed or established in that jurisdiction. And as of right now, Lexington does not have those steps, correct? That is correct. And so, most other locations in the Commonwealth of Kentucky already have these steps established in their planning process. Is that correct? Yes, and some don't even have planning. So, yes, it's the other. Correct. And therefore, if Lexington is the only one that does not already have these ministerial steps in writing, and therefore, this law was passed stating that this process has to be done, since Lexington is the only location that does not have these steps done. Therefore, Lexington would be the only one going through this process. Is that correct? Just say yes. Just say yes. Only ask questions. So, thank you, that's it. I just wanted to state that on the record. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Daniel, for standing in the line of fire today, so to speak. So, after July 1, whenever this body passes whatever version of this proposed draft, we pass. Just for clarification purposes, if we're seeing a lot of waivers regarding particular sections in the proposed ordinance, if we're seeing that it's not meeting the needs of our community, of our neighborhoods, of our development community, we can then revisit this in six months or a year. Or maybe before then, to go back and make some tweaks to the ordinance so that we make sure that it's accomplishing what we hope it's accomplishing. Yes, I think that is absolutely the best practice for something like this. And we monitor in a very similar way that we implemented short term rental legislation. Monitored that for performance, found issues where it was lacking, and then revisited that in a similar manner here. This is an opportunity for us to once again set that floor, do as best a job as possible, be very methodical in tracking what we are getting, why we are seeing waivers for particular things. And then being responsive to that. But ultimately, and once again, just to harp on the waiver process, in a way that wasn't present or available prior to now, applicants have a release valve or a way to utilize their property. Even if they don't meet the regulation in a way that was not really possible before for a lot of our zoning requirements. So being understanding, listening to the feedback from the community and what we are getting on our day to day basis. And then implementing that into whatever review period that we would like to implement to kind of take a look at those provisions, if any. Thank you. I just want to confirm that so that our community and neighbors know that if it's not working, we can come back and fix it at a later time. So that option is available to us. Thank you. Council Member Hale. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Danny, just for being up here this long. I just want to clarify, ask a question for clarification. So if an applicant does seek a waiver, how long will that add to the process? Really, you're looking at a couple of weeks. So generally, the pattern for this is you would have, you would file, maybe you would go to technical review committee, which is where all the technical staff level reviews being done. We're going to let you know, hey, you don't meet this particular section, you need a waiver. Our subdivision meeting is essentially, Thursday is two weeks away on a Thursday. So basically, we want to make sure that there's enough time between those that if they need a waiver, that notice goes out and received by the folks. But it follows our standard schedule. So no longer than it would take them under our current process that we have in place today to go through a normal plan that would be required for anything. So like a two week hard stop or two week minimum? Yeah, so it's a regularly scheduled meeting. So it's two weeks, but if they needed more time to work on a particular application, they could postpone it further. But it's a regularly scheduled meeting that is set out, yeah. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I just want to follow up what Council Member Lynch said. So do we have something in right now, or can we add in, like we did with the STRs, that after six months or a year, that we can look at, review it, and see. And if we have a number of waivers on one area that we might have to make some changes or some amendments or whatever. I think if we could do a review to see how the process is working, it would be helpful. Yes, once again, whatever timeline that council finds appropriate to kind of evaluate those. Alternatively, under our current process, the applicants and individual members of the community also have the ability to request zoning ordinance text amendments through their standard process. So that outlet is also available independent of what the urban county council sort of initiates or the timelines that you set. There's also ways that the public can kind of weigh in on that earlier than that period. Could you say that again? Because I thought we changed how we can go through the ZOTA. It has to either be started by the plan commissioner or the council's, my understanding, not the public anymore. So the zoning ordinance as written allows for anyone in Fayette County to file a text amendment. We had originally, as a part of this text actually, originally proposed to remove that portion in line with an attorney general opinion, as well as sort of the advice from our law staff. But that was one of the items that as we were having this discussion, folks were like, why is this being included here? It doesn't really have a direct bearing on House Bill 443. And so we removed that, and it would go through its own process to initiate. But as it stands, any member of the public can pay the fee and have a text amendment initiated. But it'll be something we'll be looking at in the future, but right now it's still on the books. Okay, thank you, Chair. I'm looking at the questions that I had on my list as we're wrapping up. We don't have anyone else signed in, but most of my things have been answered. I have a few small things. But considering our time, I'm going to hold my things. But I do want to pass the mic over to Council Member Brown for closing remarks on this item. Thank you, Chair. And I'll just say, Council Members, I think you all made a lot of good points. And I think these are still a lot of conversation topics that we need to discuss and make decisions on. But I would just ask the Chair, and I don't think it needs a motion, is that we do get an update on the impact of House Bill 443 at a six month time period, and then plan to review in a year. And then I'll also share that at the work session, I do plan to make at least one amendment to the ZOTA. And I think we can continue to have this conversation in our work sessions going forward, depending on what motions are made going forward. I would just encourage stakeholders to contact our planning staff and council members about potential concerns or amendments that they may want to see to the ZOTA. So thank you, Chair. Thank you all for all of the good conversation that we've had on this item. I do know that it has significant impact on our processes and a lot of community interest. So I appreciate everyone doing their homework, because you know I'm a teacher and I like that. So coming prepared with questions and being ready for discussion, and we'll have some continued discussion at the work session on this item. We have two other items on our agenda today. We never know how long our questions are going to go and our discussion is going to go, so I just want to give a quick update. We have our Lexington's Preservation and Growth Management Program sponsored by Vice Mayor Wu, and he's going to make a quick comment for that. To give us an update of where we are and what to look for, for the public. And then we also have our solar energy systems item, and I will turn it over to Council Member Savigny for comments on that before we close out the agenda, I'm going to pass it to Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you Chair, I had a whole intro written for this and it's in the trash now. But, so the Lexington Preservation and Growth Management Program is a really important topic. I had actually, knowing that we had a really busy agenda today, I had scheduled this for an item for our quarterly cal, which is usually in our caucus room. But also knowing how important this item is and the fact that we might get pushed, we are actually going to have our quarterly cal on Thursday at 4.30 in chambers. So we're going to move this presentation in full to chambers and have that discussion then. So we'll send out a meeting notice about that as well, and I have more to say on that day. So, Hal, you can sit down. Thank you, Chair. And I didn't thank Mr. Cram for your presentation and standing up there for all the questions. I apologize for that. Thank you. And then, Council Member Savigny, we are co-sponsors of this item. I know you have some remarks prepared for the solar energy systems, SOTA. So I want to turn it over to you so you can kind of give our colleagues an update on that item as well. Thank you, Chair. But we're not going to listen to their presentation in this today. Okay. Yeah, I- That will be at the Committee of the Whole meeting on Thursday. Yeah, I just want to share with the colleagues a few things about this particular SOTA and today that we're now going to hear probably in a few months. Just remember, in 2023, I proposed and the council unanimously supported the addition of carbon neutrality goals for 2050 to the comprehensive plan goals and objectives that we passed. Then, more recently, the Empower Lexington plan, since we've approved that, had a 40% of our carbon footprint is based on the amount in form of electricity that we use as a community. That being said, there will be no way for us to meet this goal organically, but to use alternative carbon neutral methods for electrical generation. And solar is just one of them, and there will undoubtedly be more methods in the future. Fayette County citizens and businesses currently use about 5,000 megawatts of energy per year. And it would roughly take about 15 to 20% of the land mass of Fayette County to actually do that in solar. This is really not attainable, and even likely, it's not attainable without promotion of a variety of alternative energy generation. On a variety of land tops, from rooftops to ground mounted solar. And even looking at new innovative technologies. So, with that, I look forward to, in a few months, we're going to have a lovely presentation. I believe that we will see Mr. Crum again, and he'll have another probably nice long presentation with a lot of questions, which I'm looking forward to. And I am sure that there will be some sort of amendments and changes to that ZOTA. And I look forward to a good discussion amongst council to do this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. So just to be clear for the items on our agenda, just to repeat for the public. Lexington's Preservation and Growth Management Program, that presentation and discussion will take place during our quarterly committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, May 8th at 4.30 PM. And then our item for solar energy systems will be the first thing on our agenda on July 1st at our general government and planning committee meeting. That is at 1 o'clock in this room. Let's see. The last item on our agenda is our items referred to committee. Does anybody have any changes that need to be made to that list at this time? Okay, seeing none. That is the end of our agenda for today. I appreciate everyone's time and patience with all of this and for your interest in these items. And I will call this meeting adjourned. Thank you.