21st, and this is the work session of the lecture series, and this is the work session of the Lexington Urban County Government's Planning Commission. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Thank you for Mr. Davis. The first item on our agenda today is the downtown master plan update. Mr. Knight or Boyd. Thank you. Okay. We are working on the downtown area master plan, and this was initiated by council on May 16th. We signed a contract with MKSK for one year project where they are going to update our downtown master plan. And today we get to introduce our consultant MKSK to the planning commission and talk more about the project and about MKSK's Andy Knight. All right. Thank you all. Try to make this fairly quick. I know several people have a convention or a conference to go to, but I'm excited to be here. I'm Andy Knight with MKSK. I'm a principal. I'm out of our Louisville office. I actually live in Lexington, though. I'm followed with Andrew Overbeck and Luis Calvo. They're the principal in charge and the project manager on the project. They're not in Lexington today, so I'm filling in to give the update on the on the project. We don't have recommendations yet. We're still early in the process, and we'll go over the calendar, the project calendar here in a few minutes. But we've got some exciting stuff to share that we have been doing. We've been working really hard on setting up engagement, having a lot of conversations with the community. We're really mobilizing for our first full public engagement here in early October. So looking forward to that. So without any further ado, I'll go ahead and get started on this. So today, what we want to talk about is just, you know, welcoming the planning commission to the process. We've got some questions at the end. We'd love to get some input from you all early on. We want to share our analysis and engagement so far, introduce our team. MKSK is not doing all the work. We've got some really great partners on the team that we want to introduce to you all. Talk about what's coming next. And then, like I said, we want to discuss some of the priorities for the downtown. Hear some thoughts from you all. So I mentioned the project team. Some of these logos on the screen you all will be familiar with. But these are all teammates that we've worked with on multiple projects before. Us, MKSK, we're the prime. We do a lot of planning and urban design work. We have 12 offices across the country. We're about 130 people. We have a planning studio, landscape architecture and urban design, and we do a lot of downtown plans. Development Strategies is a firm that we work with on a lot of these types of projects. They're out of St. Louis. You may see Matt Wetley and some of his colleagues and some of the stakeholder engagements, or maybe even some future work sessions or meetings. And like I said, we've been working with them for about 20 years on these types of projects. WSP, we're working with their local office. They're going to be working on transportation and mobility. We've got EHI, another familiar name, working with Ed Holmes and his team on neighborhood engagement and engagement at the ground level. We've got CivicLEX. We've got them on the team for more innovative and creative engagement throughout the process. We've been working with them on our website and different ways to engage the community and try to drum up as many people as we can to talk to. And then Urban Canopy, they've started their assessment. They've been working on the inventory of all the trees, the green canopy through downtown, and we'll have some future results to share with you all on that. So that's the full team that we've been working with in tandem with Boyd's talented team as well. So about the process. So the downtown master plan, again, what we like to say is it's community-driven and data-driven, and we're in the process of doing both of those right now. So doing a lot of community engagement. We've started some of the market analysis. We've been doing tours with various leaders and planning staff around town. We've had some stakeholder engagement. We've done quite a few things to this point. We're in the process of putting together and formalizing that assessment and a lot of that summary. So as I think about a week and a half ago, we had a series of stakeholder engagements, and so we're putting a lot of that summary together right now, getting the notes from everyone and making sure we put that together. And those are things that we'll continue to share with you all. Plan outcomes. So, again, community-supported. That's, you know, one of the key elements to a community plan is ensuring that we get a good cross-section of voices heard. The housing market and conditions analysis report. It's in process. That's being researched right now. Data collected. Meetings with developers and folks like yourselves to understand the current market and also how it compares nationally. Looking at recommendations for zoning regulations. This plan won't have new language written, but we will provide recommendations for new language to the downtown area. Mobility and connectivity. We've talked about that with WSP leading that. MKSK will be in tandem working with them on that as well. We've heard a lot about things in terms of connectivity and mobility, so we're excited to kind of see how that starts to unpack. Opportunities for funding and then actual implementable plan is another item that, you know, we want to plan that's actually going to be useful for you all. And it's action-oriented, and there are steps and prerequisites and things to do in order to make that useful for you all. So project schedule. You can see if this works. Right in here, end of August, we are we've concluded a lot of our advisory committee meetings. We've done a lot of stakeholder interviews. We had a marathon two day series of stakeholder meetings with food and beverage community with local developers, with some of the LFCC staff and others as well. I think it was a total of maybe nine meetings. And there's still others to occur as well. And so that's about the point where we are. You see there in August, we're on target. The housing and market analysis has started. So some of you all may be contacted through that process. And then we're starting to begin our community engagement meetings. You can see that one in October there. I think it's October 3rd where we're lining up. Now, we did do a soft opening to the project, a soft kickoff, which I'll cover here in just a second. But the whole engagement suite for the project, we've got a series of community workshops. We've got three spread out during different phases of the project. One is to solicit and learn. Two is to begin to test ideas. And then the third one is more of a celebration. Here's what we did together. Targeted neighborhood engagement, EHI, we'll be working with them. But they've already identified some churches and local communities, local neighborhoods to go out and reach out to, and starting to get a lot of traction there. Stakeholder interviews already happened this first round. We'll have some follow-up rounds later on. Pop-ups and creative engagement, CivicLEX, they're going to be leading that effort. Some of those will be in conjunction with the public engagement that we're doing. But we also want to be nimble and understand that there are events that happen in the downtown area. And we want to take advantage of people while they're there. Gatton Park opening up soon, it's a perfect opportunity to engage the public. Project website, is that what the QR code is there? No. Okay, so we've got a project website that's up and running now. You can find a lot of this information on there, schedules and when you can expect to see us and engage with us and talk to us. What is a downtown plan, those kind of things. And then interactive digital engagement also. We've got some tools like Mentimeter and other things like that we're taking advantage of during this process. Not everybody can come to all the meetings that we have, so we want to give people the opportunity to participate. So on July 4th, if you all didn't see the booth that we had set up, right in the fifth, third pavilion, we had two tables facing different directions and we had an opportunity to have an introduction to the project. And it was quite exciting to see the amount of participation that we had. I believe we had over, based on that engagement event, we had a QR code to our online survey. We had about 500 responses to that. It was ongoing after it, so we attribute the successes partially to this exposure. We had 350 people participate, which was great. I think I was there for a couple of hours and other folks were as well. And people were really engaged. They were really excited. We had this bead sort of exercise, and I think we have the next slide here, what we learned. So we had a series of trends or opportunities or ideas to share with the community, like open space and parks or better connectivity, more housing, affordable, and that sort of thing. And so people were able to use those five beads and distribute those however they feel, however they wanted to invest in downtown. And so we got several people to 315 to participate in that. And you can see here from the tallies at the bottom, the more parks and plazas and open spaces, I think people were eager for Phoenix Park and Gatton to come online and be open. So that will certainly satisfy a lot of that. But there was a big desire for more of that. More things to do and destinations, better connectivity to neighborhoods, more places to live, more places to shop and dine, and more jobs and employment opportunities. So you can kind of see where the people that we engaged there, where their interests and priorities were. I mentioned stakeholder roundtables. This is the group of nine that we met with. And so we tried to group those in like interests or themes. So from food and beverage employee owners, we did that late one Sunday evening just because that is the time when they're the most free or that was the consensus for the larger group. Transportation specialists on down to neighborhoods. And so we're summarizing a lot of that information now. There's a lot of threads. I sat in probably half of those meetings and there's some really good content to come out of that. That'll be useful for us definitely as we move forward in the plan. So what's next in engagement? We've got October the 8th. We've got the community meeting there. And where's the location for that, Boyd? The Lyric Theater? I think it's already been reserved. And so we're really excited about that. We're starting to plan for the activities that are there. We'll likely have multiple booths. We'll have a little bit of announcement about the plan itself, but we want it to be interactive and have multiple opportunities for people to give various types of feedback. Planning team led by EHI will attend neighborhood and community events. And then we'll continue to update the website. So it's not going to be static. There will be constant updates to that as we get things to share with the community. One of the activities, debated whether or not to keep this slide in here because it's a little dry, but I think it's important. The content is that we're doing a plan review. Lexington has had a ton of plans done over the last 20-plus years, and we want to make sure we understand what that conversation has been over time. And so we're going through each of these and extracting takeaways from those. Certainly would appreciate any input that you all may have on some of those plans if you all are involved with those. All right. So discussion. Got a few prompting questions up here. I don't know, Boyd, if you're able to take some notes. I can as well and grab my notebook. But would love to hear some thoughts from you all about the downtown boundary. That was one of the things that was advertised in the RFP is determining what that boundary is. And through our stakeholder meetings, we gave them an exercise where we had the downtown area much broader than the downtown area with the tall buildings, but asked people to draw what they thought the downtown boundary was. And I would say as many people as we'd ask, that was probably that many differences. And so what we want to do throughout the process is come to some kind of consensus on what that downtown boundary is. Likely it flexes during times, too. But in terms of regulations and things like that, it would be good to kind of determine what that boundary is. I'll start there. That's a big question. Yeah. No, that's a great question. Thank you, Mr. Knight. Do we have any just immediate commission thoughts or questions? Yes. I was going to say that was a question I was going to ask you. Mr. Penn. I'm doing too much assuming here. I assume the reason for a boundary is that you're going to make the rules and regulations for downtown different from outside that boundary to inside that boundary. Is that the reason for the boundary? That's likely one of the reasons. I'll put it back on staff. That was one of the questions that they had in the RFP. Yeah. So, as you all know from the development of place builder, it has place types. And so having not having a downtown master plan that clearly defines what we consider downtown is something that has been identified as a gap in our comprehensive planning toolbox to have and making recommendations for some changes. And so part of this exercise is to have a community driven and adopted policy on what we consider downtown to help inform those land use recommendations that the staff makes through the zone change process. So, yes, we want this community process to help inform what the public decision makers as part of the adoption process, the public hearing of adopting this plan. Just like anything else that we bring forward in terms of text amendments, we try to route that in the comprehensive plan. So, having this be amended and adopted as an element of the comprehensive plan. Makes it part of it, and so having a high level of community engagement to determine that that everybody's bought into, or at least it's been well documented and well publicized and discussed helps decision makers in those land use decisions. So, this is in accordance to the complex. Correct. Thank you. Well, when you do your plan review, you'll notice that the downtown master plan from 2000, I guess, 7. That wasn't ratified sort of handled it by districts and. I kind of think that that was probably a good way to handle it because. Almost certainly, you're going to end up looking at an area. We're going to end up looking at an area larger than the central business district. And 1 of the things we've seen as a problem piecemeal is as the, these applications for downtown zoning come into. Those urban neighborhoods that are residential, and I honestly think some of the recommendations in that old downtown master plan are pretty good. That wasn't sort of carried through very well and. I think the flexibility of the downtown zones for these redevelopment projects has been beneficial, but it also brings through elements like 0 lot lines. Basically. No greenery requirements. No, none of this urban sort of canopy that we expect in these surrounding neighborhoods that we want to see continue and. To be green, and so I think I think. The answer really, to a certain extent is. Broader provided that. There is a clear discussion. About this central business district versus. These historic greener neighborhoods surrounding that. Yeah, that makes sense. And 1 of the things that. That we had in our proposal, and in our discussions was that connectivity. Between those urban adjacent core adjacent neighborhoods and the downtown core central business district. You know, how do they relate? How do they physically and emotionally connect? And those are things that that we're really interested in and sensitive to as well. All right, Mr. Wilson, did you have a question? Yeah. So, 1st of all, I applaud the community engagement piece. The question I had was, did you all have a goal as to how many people would be participating in or should participate in the, in order to get a representative sample from the community? We got 320,000 people that live in Lexington. So did you have a goal saying. 3% of the people, 5% of the people, or you're just going to try to get as many as you can obviously going to do that. Yeah. You know, there's always the opportunity to do a statistically valid survey. We don't have 1 of those in our scope of work right now. And in most downtown plans, we don't do that for a lot of parks and rec plans. We do. But for this 1, I would assume we're going to get in the 4 digits, maybe a couple of 1000, if not a little bit more through all of our online engagement. That's sort of typical and honestly, a lot of the feedback we get from our sort of grassroots engagement where we reach out to as many people as possible versus the statistically valid. A lot of results are the same in both of those. We're just not sending out letters and knocking on doors. Although is going to be doing some of that in our immediately adjacent neighborhoods to downtown. But, you know, we're looking for a good, solid population of folks who interact with downtown. Maybe tangential, but we talked about, you talked to Chris about the place builder stuff in the zoning piece. Are there funding considerations in terms of dollars that come through for from federal government from the state government? Things that are geared toward downtown as opposed to other parts of the community? Yeah, I mean, this might also want to be supplemented by the staff, but of course, all of those options we're going to be looking into, and we haven't gotten to recommendations, which might trigger some of those funding opportunities and partnerships and all the things that are in a sort of typical financial approach to development. So, that's forthcoming. It'll evolve as the project goes on. We've got development strategies on the team, for example. We'll start to identify a lot of those as we start to think about what types of developments as we work with WSP on transportation, mobility, finding funding sources for some of those recommendations as well. So, it'll be a team effort, and we haven't started identifying any of those just yet. All right, do we have any more commission questions or comments for Mr. Knight? If not, we, we can entertain brief public if there's any public comment or question for Mr. Knight. Okay. Okay. Again, we just keep it, please, to 3 minutes. I'm Amy Clark of 628 Castle Road, and I'd like to begin by thanking the chair for allowing this. It hasn't been allowed. I'm coming from a position. I'm very interested in the downtown area. I'd like to know if I'm in it or not, and how the plan may impact me. If you look at downtownlexplan.com, the very last thing you find as you scroll down is the tasks and the rough dates, these events and tasks are to be addressed and take place. And there aren't any dates. They're sort of for these 3 months, for these 2 months, at this point, at that point, and it would help enormously to have a website that was very informative and encouraged engagement. The only date I saw on any of this published stuff was the July 4th thing, which was open to everyone. I don't know if there's one for Saturday at Gatton Park or not. I would like to know who's on the advisory committee. I wish that were on the website or just openly published. I'd like to know who the stakeholders are, and that was the first notice after the stakeholder meetings are over. I would like to have been invited to the neighborhoods one. That was one of the stakeholder groups. Maybe I missed a memo or something, but I think I communicated with the planning coordinator here, and I'm disappointed. Beyond that, I will just say very briefly, and I didn't prepare anything because I didn't know I could speak. I would like to see conservation of affordable housing and homeownership a key aspect of this. We are seeing new housing built, but sometimes at the cost of clearing a whole block of occupied housing at an affordable rate. I would like to see a new recognition, a carefully, a thoughtful recognition of the historical significance of both of historic fabric, and I welcome the new idea of also historic communities, residential communities, persons, generations. I think the elephant in the room is UK. If they are charging $1,100 and $1,200 a month per person, that's got to be double or triple any sort of usual rental rate. I think it has an effect on the whole downtown, the rental rate for a residential unit. I was glad to see that it looks as though the downtown team is planning to come to neighborhoods or various civic associations that might invite them, and if that's so, I'd like to take that up. I appreciate that. So, thank you. Okay, thank you. Do we have it? Sure. If you would just state your name and. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Trish Smith. I'm with Belcourt neighborhood downtown, and I just want to second that. I think the conversation we're most interested in is the central business district versus the historic neighborhoods and how that's going to interface and the opportunities for the conversations about that. And thank you for having this engagement. All right, thank you very much. Yes, Molly. I just wanted to add that Robin Mickler and I were invited to kind of represent the planning commission for the advisory committee. So, that these are those are two of them. And there were about three. Larry, sorry. I didn't see you there at that meeting there, buddy. And there are about 20 other people, including UK representatives, multiple on that advisory committee. Thank you. It'd be lovely to know who they are. We might want to contact them. What I wanted to add was there's talk of place builder. Every amendment to the comprehensive plan as a small area plan or a quarter plan, I believe, has defined boundaries lines in land. I'd like to see those. Thank you. All right. Anything else for Ms. Smith? Seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Knight. Thank you, Boyd. Our next item on the agenda, number two, is the Imagine Lexington Analytic Research Center content update. I'd like to see the host. Thank you. All right. Anything else for Mr. Knight before we conclude this item? Seeing none. Thank you, Mr. Knight. Thank you, Boyd. Our next item on the agenda, number two, is the Imagine Lexington Analytic Research Center content update. Do you have another question for Mr. Knight? Sure. What I like about downtown, I happened to hear a presentation on this, so it's something I consider important. I love that we incorporated our downtown landscaping and our stormwater management system into a combined approach downtown. I think a lot of people don't know that. My garden club had somebody come and talk about that and found out, for example, we don't cut the grass because in the winter, it keeps water and snow and salt from hitting people who are on the sidewalk. So there's a lot of good stuff about what we've done downtown with our landscaping. Okay. Thank you, Judy. Do we have anything else on this item? Seeing none. Now we will move on to number two. Okay. Sorry, we had to see if the mouse would work up here. Hello, my name is SV Stroh, if I've never met any of you. I'm the digital content admin for Imagine Lexington slash Office of Growth Management. And I'm here to update about the Analytic Research Center. So the first couple changes might be very obvious just from looking at it, but we've switched the name from Data Research Center to Analytic Research Center. After some feedback from a few offices, we really didn't want to get mixed up with the data hub. So we just switched the one word. It also has a nicer ring to call it the arc now. That's what we call it around the office. And then I'm always saying that. And then we switched the colors and some of the sub-branding to make it more obvious that it was part of the comprehensive plan. After some feedback that people were a little bit confused. So in terms of actual data updates, the vacant land map is now filterable by zone. You can select multiple at the same time or just have one that you're looking for. It's a teeny bit cumbersome, but we're working with the limitations of the program that we're using. And then the only other update is that we are currently in the process of waiting for the 2024 ACS updates to update a lot of the census data. Other than that, we also provide a QR code so you guys don't have to remember any of the acronyms anymore. Hopefully. That's all I got. I'm ready for any questions if you have them, but. Thank you, SB. Do we have any questions on this particular item? Yes, sir. Real quick. Just as a example to help clarify. What are we looking at there? What is that one slide telling us? This is the vacant land within our county lines. The orange represents the parcels. If you go in and actually click on them. It will give you more information and then the filter just gives you like you can filter it by what zone. So if you don't have anything. I love technology. You don't have anything filtered. It'll show you just all of the vacant land. However, clicking the filter lets you view by zone and stuff. So building on that, does it define what we mean by vacant? As in there's nothing on it, is that? Yeah, do you understand what I'm? That's what I'm asking. Does it cover both of those? We have. We have a defined methodology that we've used for decades, and we are. Looking to include that metadata and that methodology on the page. We're looking for the right way to do that. It's also part of the discussion with the council process. That's ongoing. And so it may well be part of the ordinance, even that the methodology is defined. And we would probably include that. So, the goal here is to, as is often the case, the vacant land number is a hotly debated. How much is available? How much is actually vacant vacant is very well defined account. Well, it's available is not. So, our goal is to be very transparent about what has a principle permitted use on it. What's inside the service area. To put a little narrative to it and explain to people so they can follow it along. So my intent is not to be a pain in the butt here. It's, it's a, a, it's a, it's a consistent approach to the process. And intent to maybe not, not, not really, but that for people who don't live in this area. And so then a related question, because of other things we're dealing with downtown. And the rest of the community is asking, is there a way to connect with this area? And so, I think it's important to be able to have a little more time to contextualize put a little narrative to it and explain to people so they can follow it along. So my intent is not to be a pain in the butt here. It's although sometimes I am. And intent to maybe not, not, not really. And so then a related question, because of other things we're dealing with downtown. And the rest of the county is, do we have a map anywhere of defined brownfields? I feel like environmental services has 1 and I'll make a note. We have a long list of items and a roadmap for this site of data to go on there. And part of this presentation is so that is built into the rotation of giving you all updates, big and small and what new data sources are added. I'll take a look and check with environmental services that they have that map and it's up to date and how it's updated. We're trying to be very judicious about items we put on here. They're updated with some sort of regularity and what that process is. So we'll look into that and I'll let you know. All right. Do we have any other questions for SB or 1st? Mr. Just out of curiosity. Is there a reason that. This and the data hub wouldn't be housed under the same. Like, what roof because essentially. Like, I mean, this vacant land map, it's, it's worth pulling out and sort of having a separate tab, but. It would also just be possible to. Have is a layer in the same data hub, right? Yeah, the data hub is. The maintained website that is my understanding is largely just raw data sets that people can pull down. And this website is intended to be more visual and available to the members of the public in a way that the data hub is not. It's it has obviously applications on it for the public to use, but a lot of it is just the raw data sources. So that it's publicly available. This is meant to largely be contextualizing planning related data. Okay. And that, again, that exact question is why we were asked to sort of clearly differentiate the purposes between the 2. It's also part of the comprehensive plan. I don't have 1 with me. I should have brought 1, but there's the beginning 11 pages. This. Is that data. Okay. That's very helpful. The internal 1 that for the host, it's for the public, it's for anybody in the public who wants to work with some of the government's large data sets. So you're pulling down. Big raw files, and then there's a few applications on there that are maintained by the office of various divisions. And, like, the map program for people to pull things from and things like that. So those are supported applications. We're working with, but this is a planning application. Yeah, okay. Nothing else. Thank you very much. Do we have any other items on the agenda today or any other business? Yes, sir. Mr chair, thank you. What's I think. Going to slowly become a favorite subject would be affordable housing. I know we've talked about it a little bit and. More information to come seeing a. An agenda like this, I think our time could be utilized even better. And while we're together have opportunity to. To talk about affordable housing. This may be a good opportunity for us to us as a planning commission to flush out a little bit as to. What we would like to see. Who we'd like to talk to who we'd like to hear from. And we've got plenty of time here. We might as well take advantage of it. And coming up with a little bit more of a schedule. I understand that the staff is saying that. They've got a lot on the plate and so forth, which is understandable. However, when we're here for 35 minutes or so, I think. We, if we can get things going where. We don't have to have this affordable housing discussion and 1 fail large work session, but do it incrementally. I think it'd be very beneficial for everybody. So I'm just like, throw it out there and see what people think. Thank you, Mr. Owens. Mr. Wilson, you've commented on it in the past and. Do you have any thoughts always? This is an opportunity with a microphone and a chicken leg to make a comment of 1 kind or another. I think Mike's point is well taken. I think the key issue for us, and the only thing that I've had an interest in is trying to determine. What policies and what applications we could do to make it easier for people to get involved in affordable housing, including, including incentives. It's not as though we're going to go out and build anything or anything like that, but the idea of policy development is why we're here. And there may be some things, and I've been told there are some things that we could make it easier for developers to get involved with. And especially if we were able to think through the types of incentives that were necessary to do that. I think 1 of the 1st things that just as a kind of a. Offhand kind of thing, I'd like to spend some time trying to find out what the committee members would like to know about affordable housing, and that would direct then. Help the staff to determine who we'd like to hear from, because there's lots of stuff going on. I don't know who's coordinating it, but it's lots of stuff going on. There's money, but I don't know how the application process works in order to get into the flow of the money. So, those are the kinds of things that I'm interested in. To follow up on what Bill is talking about. It all boils down, and this is an oversimplification, but it all boils down to getting affordable houses built. It's not the question of how do you finance them? It's not the question of how do you incentivize developers? Just throwing more land out there doesn't incentivize. There's got to be something there, and when the council has decided that 1% of the budget is going to go into an affordable housing trust fund. That's a lot of money every year. Just for instance, $5 million will bond $100 million if you have the right situation to do it. If the council is really serious about developing affordable housing, they'll bond that money. Because guess what? One council can't overrule the other when you do that. That's the way PDR was done. It was bonded money. Now, the question becomes is how do we incentivize developers to want to build that product? They say they can't make any money on houses less than, and we want to hear from them. We want them to tell us, why don't you build houses like that? And the finance piece, Larry's exactly right on that. That comes after you find someone to get the product built. You're not going to finance something that isn't built. So, you know, we don't need to do all this at one time, but we need to have people who have done it. And we can name some people that have done it. We can name people that are doing it now. We can name people that have done it historically. But we need to hear from them. And the question becomes, who's going to lead this train? And you're sitting here with a lot of experience and a lot of frustration. And I will be the first to tell you that Kent never did anything. And saying that you're going to have $5 million this year, and you're going to have, every time the budget goes up 1%, it's a lot of money. And just to put that in a trust fund with no really vision of how to spend it. Now, maybe I'm being unfair to some of the people that are doing some of these houses, but we're not doing it on a scale we need to do it. You know, Habitat for Humanity can only build so many houses. And if we don't get our people that know how to build houses, if we don't get them to buy into this and make, they're not going to do it because they don't make any money. We want to incentivize it to where they can do it. But we don't know what that takes. So, I mean, I can put a list of names out there. We all can. But if the planning staff is going to serve the planning commission, they've got to have a plan. We just can't have a meeting and all of a sudden we talk about it and it's over with. We've got to have the people that are the stakeholders. Start with Todd Johnson. Bring in Dennis Anderson. I'll just keep on naming people. Bring in people that have done it. The Mike Cravens of the world. I won't continue to name people. But the main thing is we've got to have a plan. We've got to hear from people that have done it. They've got to tell us what does it take to get us to build these houses. Now, that takes care of what I like to call the people that can afford to buy a home and pay for it. And Ivy has a good idea about that. The other thing is how do we get people to build apartment housing that's not market rate? Because market rate's too high for what the income is in the city. Those are the kind of questions that somebody needs to answer or help us get people together. Because a train doesn't drive itself. You've got to have an engineer. Whether we're the caboose or we're the engineer, we're only going to get what we expect. And so that's where I am on this. I had a question to Commissioner Pence's point. I'm new to this process, and I was curious. You said that the council puts aside $5 million a year into a trust fund without any kind of a plan. Well, I'm sorry. That was the preamble. I didn't mean it like that. Well, we want to hear the plan and what they want to do with it. Well, that was to my point, was that what is the mechanism now? If a developer said, I've got a plan, I want to do something, and there's $5 million here, how does a developer now access that money? We don't have any idea. Oh, okay. That's what I was curious about. That's the question. I can answer that question. Okay, yes. Thank you. If the developer wants to access the money that's been set aside, it's with the Affordable Housing Governing Board, which you heard from Rick McQuadey, I believe, at one of your work sessions, and he's the manager of the Office of Affordable Housing. And so there would be an application process and loan guidelines that are set up through the office to apply for those fundings and be approved. And how many houses are we doing a year with that fund? Well, it's predominantly because of leveraging the public fund with private funds. It's supposed to be gap financing. Most of the housing that's done is rental. They're wanting to expand homeownership. Most of it is rental housing. So there's no workforce development money? Oh, I wouldn't say that, no. Homeownership is one of the models that they're wanting to expand in. It's just hard to, when you only have a limited amount of funding and lots of people that want to access it, the best pay per unit has always been multifamily housing, if that answers your question. Well, what always been doesn't have to be what's going on. Oh, I understand that, especially with more funding coming into it by virtue of that mortgage range. If you don't dream big, you'll never get there. If we just say, well, they'll do this much this year, we'll do 20 next year, we'll do 15 next year, next year we'll never fill the gap. You've got, this city has to make a conscientious effort to make this happen. And it's got to be led by the mayor. And it's got to be, I mean, just having one man decide whether he's going to pass the money out or not. I don't have anything to say about him. I don't know him. He learned a lot from his presentation. But I also can tell you a story about a statewide program that helps young farmers buy land of their own. That's been a 20-year program. It started out at $20 million. It's now $120 million. It's because it was an evolving loan fund. Private equity, private banks started the process. They came to us. We bought it down 2% and put a fixed rate for 15 years. That makes housing affordable. We're not even close to that place right now. We need to find out why developers are not building affordable housing. You know, what does it take to get it to do it? And we don't know the answer to that. Mr. Owens. I'd like to just follow up on one thing that Frank mentioned. Even though I kind of started this discussion, I'm not going to say I'm one of the ones who want to drive the train, fly the plane. Most of you all know I don't mind poking the pig from time to time, though. But trying to move this forward, who do we want to hear from? Right now, I don't want to hear from somebody that says we can't do it. I want to hear from somebody that says we're doing it this way. This is how we have been doing it. I don't know who that is. Is that Habitat for Humanity? Is it others? I don't know what he's pointing to. But that would be a starting point for me. Yeah, we need to hear from the home builders, the Todd Johnson's and so forth. But right now, like I said, they're going to say we can't do it. I want to hear those that are successful in doing it one way or another. Yes, Molly. I missed that presentation by Mr. McQuadey. Could someone tell me what was discussed and what is he, what is, I guess, what's the status with, does he manage the program? Is he head of the board? Tell me what's going on, because I don't know. I'm sure we have it archived on LexTV, that presentation, if you want to watch it. It was informative. Mr. Forrester? Yeah. He's head of affordable housing. Yeah, trust fund. So, he's who the applications go to and decision. So, I'm going to go back to Mike, Mr. Owens, when we had this conversation, we gave names. Remember? Yeah. We actually gave names, but I think, I can't remember this, but something came up and said we had a workload, and that's what you were alluding to. Mr. Penn also mentioned, you mentioned there's a program through the farming community, there's a program through the state of Kentucky for small businesses that would secure up to 20% of cash collateral for certain businesses, as long as they meet these criterias, and that 20% is typically invested into a CD, so they can make, the state still makes money off of it. So, there's programs, but as Mr. Penn was saying, and Mr. Owens, and everybody else, somebody's got to lead it, and then, Mr. Owens, do you think we should do like a subcommittee to determine the names? It shouldn't take long. I know Ivy knows some names. I do, Mr. Penn knows some, I'm sure. We do. Yeah, there's a lot. That would be fine with me, yeah. I'm just looking at this, like today, and, you know, come October, if we've got a work session that has an hour on it, I think we should say, okay, we've got extra time, let's schedule something affordable housing-wise, and start, as I said, and I think everybody would agree, we don't have to, you know, slay this thing in one meeting alone, you know, we can start to Bob Rowan and do it over several work sessions. Well, if you bring people in that are building the current majority of our houses, and ask them why they can't build affordable housing, what does it take to get them to do it, that may answer a lot of questions, and it also may trigger where we need to go from here. We don't know the answer to that, and, you know, what's what broke the bridge down? You know, you have one, and then you get into the holidays, and then maybe next April you have another one, you never get there. You know, I want this staff, and I'll just say it on the record, I want this staff to plan a program that gets us the answers that we need to see if there is a solution. This is happening all over the country. This is not just in Lexington, and it only takes one or two good ideas for things to start happening. You know, I have sat through, in 17 years of planning commission, I sat through three expansions, and every one of them said, well, if we just had more land, we'd build affordable housing. That's the greatest lie that's ever been told in Lexington, because I've been through three of those, and we don't have any affordable housing now that we did when we started 17 years ago. We've just grown and have more need, but we're not meeting the need, and it's time to ask the developers what they need and why they can't build. Can I build on what Frank was saying here, too? We're not the only community that's had this challenge or has this particular challenge. One of the things I'd like to know is, what are other communities doing to approach the problem? Now, thanks to you all, I get this little magazine called Planning Every Now and Then. In there, the last time I read, Omaha, Nebraska, was talking about how they faced this affordable housing thing and how much progress they'd made. One of the things I think hopefully we would do is to look around the landscape, you normally do that anyhow, to figure out what's going on in these other communities. You don't have to call every community, but there are some that are highlighted. Find out what they're doing and see if we can learn something from them. I think that's a very good point, Mr. Wilson, and my ears are wide open. If the Planning Commission, if it's the desire of the Planning Commission, I'm happy to continue this conversation with the Director of Planning. If the Planning Commission desires, I'm happy to constitute an affordable housing committee, as Mr. Owens said, or Frank, a Planning Commission. The question was, do we have to have those meetings in here? If we're going to ask people to come, a lot of folks don't, I mean, it's at 1.30. A lot of folks, they own their own business, can they do it via Zoom? And it may help out the planning staff, that they don't have to get everything set up in here, they can do the thing via Zoom. Is that doable, or we can't do Zoom? Because the world has changed. Yeah, no, I agree. In-person is not feasible all the time. I'm 100% open to that. I would just defer to legal on, can we do a work session on Zoom, since it's a work session? We have done a work session on Zoom, but you just have to be more careful in the meetings where you're going to take votes. And we've also created task force that have met outside, or subcommittees that have met outside of what you normally do. You know, since, I mean, Chris is here, but since Jim's not here, I just, from a staff perspective, because I know what we're doing, and I'm not trying to minimize what you all are asking, but I guess, you know, there's a difference in having, asking people to come in and make presentations to you all about information that you're asking for, versus having some kind of round table discussion, or having people come in that you think have information or knowledge about something, and you all just being able to have a free conversation with them and ask them questions. Because obviously, one requires a lot more preparation on the part of staff and the person you're asking versus the other. So I guess maybe some clarification as to that would be helpful to us to know what we can do legally, how we can set it up, and then what is the expectation. Because, you know, if you say, I'd like a presentation about what other jurisdictions and other places are doing, well, that's a presentation that's going to take some time. And, you know, we have, I'm not trying to discount that this is an important issue. We have a lot coming on our plate and a lot more that just came. So we, you know, to know the difference in what you want, because it sounds like to me, but I don't want to misstate what you're saying, that a lot of what you want to hear first is just a conversation about questions and answers about, we think you're doing this, but how are you doing this? Or how are you not doing it? Or why can you not do it? And then maybe back that up with then what additional information you want about how you could address what information you find out from that. But if that's not right, tell us so we know, because I'm not, I'm not sure to be honest where we're headed. It will help us if we know. Thank you, Tracy, for that clarification, Mr. Penn. Yeah. Here's the dilemma, Willie. Mike, Bill, three or four of us could go see Todd Johnson in his office. We could go see Larry in his office. We could go see Luther Deaton in his office. But we're just getting the information. Now, we can do that. We can assign different people to go see different people, and we can come back and have a share of the information. What we were trying to do is create a situation where the information is shared with all of us so we don't have to interpret what we hear. Now, I can understand why some developers would be hesitant to talk on the record about why they don't build affordable houses. But if we don't ask that question, we're never going to know. And the question is, what's the best form to answer that question? We can go do it. I mean, I can get a phone with Bill Wilson and talk to anybody who likes him. He can talk to me. And probably has. The point is, is this the best way to not only use our time, but to share it with the rest of us? And that's why we haven't been doing this on our own. I don't know whether that answers it or not. Well, let me ask you directly, Frank, if we could get as many of us as could be available for a Zoom meeting with developers, and that gets to be a large group, depending on number of us and number of them. Do you think we could get a conversation that would be useful out of that kind of format? I know, but I don't know how they would react and open, you know, whether they even want to talk about this or not. But, you know, I've never been afraid to fail. And if they don't want to come into this situation, we'll go see them. But it would be a whole lot better if it could be led by the staff. If the staff doesn't want to, we'll do it. But we need to be on the same page. We need to know what we're trying to accomplish. And I don't know the answer to that. And maybe the staff's not ready to tell us what they want us to do. But I don't think one work session between now and next year is going to accomplish much unless you can get some really good answers. That's just my opinion. OK. All right. Well, I guess the question is, where do we go from here? And is the majority of the planning commission, what are the thoughts of the majority? Mr. Davis. Without making more work for everybody involved, like we're not busy enough, I think that, you know, the affordable housing issue needs to be at the forefront of the list of myriad of things we already have going on. And we've got to figure out a way to carve out time for this on an ongoing, continuous basis. It can't be a one-off. It can't be just, oh, yeah, we've got to talk about this thing. We didn't go back to that. It's got to be systematic. How systematic? I don't know how much time we devote to this. I don't know. But something has to be baked into the cake where it's intentional. I think intentionality is what we missed on this issue. It's just too hodgepodge for me to get behind it right now. I would agree. Charles, could we commit as a commission to say, OK, yeah, we're going to commit one hour of our work session going forward towards affordable housing and, you know, continue that way and come up with a structure as to, OK, we've blocked this time off. So who we're bringing in here and we'll go from there. Well, I mean, the question becomes is we don't know what they have for work sessions going forward, but they need to be intentional about this, too. And when they set up their agenda, they need to be intentional about the fact that we want to continue to have a dialogue going about this, because until you hear the answer to some of those questions, you're not going to know what to do. All right. Well, I'm getting an overwhelming consensus that that is the desire of the commission, that they want intentionality. And so I will, I'll work with the director of planning, the commissioner of planning and preservation to make this make this happen. And I have I don't really know what that looks like yet, but. Well, I but I appreciate the fact that the the planning commission has made this a priority and something will happen. Mr. Wilson. Well, first of all, Mr. Chairman, I think you've got the right approach. Talk to Mr. Duncan. Sit down and do it. Now, what he's going to turn around and ask you is what do you want to know? All right. Here's what we want to know. We want to know if you can get the developers in here or some format where the developers can tell us what would help them to incentivize them to do what's what. We don't know how many people show if they didn't show that would become their concern. But we want to know that we want to know who in Lexington is involved in affordable housing today to we want to know who is leading this train. Now, I heard Mr. McQuadey. I am very familiar with him. In fact, he just gave five hundred thousand dollars to the Lexington Housing Authority for building some buildings over there on Schwab. Beautiful places and what have you. There's all kinds of little things like that. But specifically, would you be able to get the developers in so we can talk with them to find out what it is that they need, what do they want? And maybe we can digest that a little bit at the time. I mean, that's just one. I'm glad that's on tape. Can I clarify that? We've had some somewhere in some world I've lived in. We've had some presentations from people doing affordable housing now, developers. So I want to clarify that we're talking maybe some of those folks, but we're also talking about Dennis Anderson is building housing for seniors. I'm assuming some of that may be affordable housing. I don't know what he's doing that for, but that developers who typically don't develop affordable housing, that we want some of that constituency in there as well, not just the people that are our current developers, affordable housing. You OK with that? I think that's a good suggestion. Let them self-select in some ways. And I don't know what the format would be. I don't know how that would get out. But that's one of the key issues is to listen to what's going on and then make some determinations from that. Mr. Davis. Sure. Ms. Worth is correct. We have had some of the affordable housing providers, the builders, the developers of that product in here to talk in the past. So I know Director Duncan is working on an agenda for the September 18th work session related to affordable housing, but this is a very important distinction. Are you, you are specifically asking for market rate builders in this discussion? Yes. Do we need to have any of the previous folks who do only do affordable housing as part of that? Tell us now or because they're part of the agenda that we're putting together. So you want them both? Absolutely. Even though they've been in here and they've talked before, we want to bring them in with the market rate developers on that. OK, thank you. Yes. That may be an opportunity for the market rate developers to learn some things from those folks. I want to make one comment. I think we have to be OK with not knowing what vehicle would get us from point A to point B. I think we're in agreement upon what we want to see, and that is to close that gap of that, what was it, 22 or 24,000 units of affordable housing that we currently don't have. And all of us probably have an idea in our head of what we think is going to get us from here to there, but none of us actually know, and that's OK. I think as long as we're OK with the end goal being the, I guess, the North Star we're looking for, whatever happens that gets us from here to there, we don't know what that's going to look like, but it's got to be OK going forward. You got to take that first step. The journey of a thousand miles starts with that one first step. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to still have the same result five years from now. I'm going to just maybe add, because I'm genuinely interested in the, I mean, my, and this might be a little bit cynical, but my gut is that it's impossible to build our way out of the affordability of that crisis in the housing. And when we're seeing apartment complex after apartment complex turn over to real estate investment trust, the rents go skyrocket. When we see every affordable house on the market be bought immediately within 24 hours for cash by someone that's either going to flip it or convert it to different units, higher price points, the rate that the housing and the cost have been changing in the rest of the city just seems so much faster than anybody could go through the process of building new affordable housing. And I can't, I mean, I want to just make sure that, that how we, I know there's been some lawsuits from the attorney general recently about some of the apartment complexes price fixing, but what are things we can do broadly in the community to look at our housing stock? Because if we've got a housing stock across the city, that's all going up and you're looking at building a hundred units here, 30 units there, those are going to help those people. And I'm certainly in support of that, but broadly, we're still going to be, the crisis is just going to be getting worse and worse no matter how much new housing is built. I hear what you're saying, you know, but I think that's, that's the issue to be resolved is how do we do it? I mean, it's kind of like if we think in the same terms that we're thinking today about building, yeah, you're right, we'll never get there, but we've got to look at more of a holistic approach. It's not just in the building, you know, it's also in, you know, any subsidies or whatever that might help a person, you know, become a homeowner or, you know, a small investor have, you know, a duplex or fourplex or something like that. It's got to be, it's got to be a holistic approach to it and how do you maintain that affordability? Do we do more Davis Park types of, you know, land grant kinds of situations or what? I mean, you know, I think it's a big question mark. It's just not, if it was that easy for us to go from point A to point B, I think we would have already gotten there and it's just going to take this discussion and a little bit of thinking outside of the box to get us to figure this thing out. And building on that, I'd like to go back to Mr. Wilson's point because I think this is where, back to your point about looking at the APA publications and think people, experiments people are trying in other places and having success with, and in some cases it may be helping people rehabilitate their credit writings. You know, there are a lot of different ways to tackle this, but I think whether that's planning staff or whether it's all of us on the planning staff, go back and read our APA magazines and start putting together a list of innovative things that we've read about that we want to know more about. I think there are ways to not just dump all this on the planning staff. And with that. May I? Yes, sir, Mr. Wilson. First of all, I agree with that, Judy. I think, and let me say this. I also agree with Robin in the sense that we should be looking at the broader perspective of housing. What I'm trying to encourage people to do is to put a priority on low income housing. And then, I mean, the rest of it, because most people who have some subsidy or some means of getting a house will be able to get one. It's the people who are stuck and can't do that. And that goes back to credit ratings. It goes back to doing some other kinds of things. I, maybe I'm the most optimistic fool around, but I think we can do this. I'm going to give you a pep talk. And the reason I'm going to do is I lived it. This is the exact same thing that I was told when we decided to try to do PDR. I was told by the realtors it wouldn't work. I was told by the developers it wouldn't work. And I was told by the people that were against it wouldn't work. But guess what? In 22 years, we're at 34,000 acres. And we did it with bonded money and people who love their land and wanted to continue to be a farm. Now that's a dream, but it's not unlike the dream we have right here. It's just the fact that you don't know what you can't do if you don't try to do it. And I'm not belittling what anybody's doing today, did yesterday, or did 10 years ago. I'm just telling you that the need is greater. And until we ask the right questions and hear the right answers, we don't know what's possible. I should, I might live to regret it, but Mr. Owens, do you have anything else? Does that, does that capture your sentiment? I think it does. And I think everybody's saying the same thing. Let's take something from my childhood days came to light here. You know, if you're going to build a snowman, you got to start with pushing that little snowball and it's going to build. So we've just got to, that's just getting it started. I have a question about a different topic. If we're ready to move on from affordable housing. Anything else? Okay. I would like to see the 2007 downtown master plan. And I'd like to know why it wasn't ratified or accepted or whatever the right terminology is. I'd have to look back at the minutes and figure out the history on why it wasn't adopted. I don't, I would not want to give you a poorly informed answer. Is it possible to see a copy? Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. The plan, the planet, we, we host the plan online. It's, it's available. It just wasn't an adopted plan as a, as an element of the comprehensive plan at the time. And I'd have to look into why that was exactly. And Chris, my, I guess my first question is how often does that happen that something not be adopted? What's the typical reason? Typical. I mean, I go back to Mr. Penn probably remembers the red mile development plan that we did. That's a good example where we worked with the developer, but it was developer led. And so it just became a, an information tool that became something that was used for implementation by certain elements, whether it's the community or whether it was the developer the downtown master, or the, those elements of the downtown plans that were done before were used for various things, they just weren't either broad enough to encompass everything that would go into something adopted with a comp plan, or its focus was very specific on something in some way. Those are often reasons it's either hyper-focused or it's got private involvement and it's not a totally government run thing. Sometimes some of the private downtown development groups may have been more in charge of it than something that the city government itself was leading. There's, there could be any number of reasons like that. The main thing on the red mile, excuse me, Chris, was the fact that we, the plan that we wanted to get adopted, we didn't, we didn't factor in the gambling because that was not, that was not seen at that time. And as soon as Keenan and the red mile went together and built that gambling place over there and the state got gambling, it made that plan pretty well. I mean, they were, they were talking about doing it, but at the time we did the plan and we spent a lot of time on that plan, I mean months, and what we have today doesn't look at all like what the plan was and it could have been a real, real neat place, but the gambling interest got involved and that kind of blew it up. Okay. Do we have anything else today? All right. Yeah. All righty. Thank you, Mr. Forrester, my predecessor. Without objection, we are adjourned. Thank you. Because she loves you, and you know that can't be bad, she loves you and you know you should be glad, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, with a love like that, you know, you should be glad, with a love like that, you know, you should be glad, with a love like that, you know, you should be glad, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That may not wait for the day to say go, yeah. Once you see your nights are clear, hey, even the sky's so very dear, yeah, you shine a star, no matter who you are, shining bright to see what you can truly be, what you can truly be. You shine a star, no matter who you are, shining bright to see what you can truly be, what you can truly be, yeah, you shine a star, no matter who you are, oh, and all of the sun, yeah, yeah, so my work has just begun, yeah, my words are still alone, yeah, that's it, now I got my own love, yeah. So if you find yourself in need, why don't you listen to her, she's worth the most of you, be your giant grain of sand, with some reason, yes, I can, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, shining bright to see, what you can truly be, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are, you're a shining star, no matter who you are. I got a new life, you would hardly recognize me, I'm so bad, how can a person like me check on you? Why do I bother when you're not the one for me? Isn't love enough? I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, life is demanding without understanding. I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, no one's gonna drag you up to get into the life where you belong. But where do you belong? Ah, under the pale moon, for so many years I've wondered who you are, how could a person like you bring me joy? Under the pale moon, where I see a lot of stars. Isn't love enough? I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, life is demanding without understanding. I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, no one's gonna drag you up to get into the life where you belong. But where do you belong? I saw the sign, and it opened up my mind, and I am happy now living without you, I've left you, oh, oh, oh. I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign, no one's gonna drag you up to get into the life where you belong. I saw the sign, I saw the sign, I saw the sign, I saw the sign, I saw the sign. I saw the sign, I saw the sign, I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign. The sun is shining, there's plenty of light, a new day is dawning, sunny and bright. But after I've been crying all night, the sun is cold and the new day seems old, since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby. The boys are singing and the children are playing, there's plenty of work and the bosses are paying, not a sad word should a young heart be saying. But fun is a bore, and with money I'm poor, since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby. Next time I'll be kinder, won't you please help me find her, someone just remind me, all this love she left behind me. Till I find her I'll be trying, every day I'm going kinder, finder, and kinder, finder, and kinder, find my baby. I've been looking everywhere, baby, baby, I really, really care, oh determination is fading fast, oh yeah, desperation is a thing of the past, oh yeah. Can't see how my hope's gonna last, good things are bad, and what's happy is sad, since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby. Since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby, since I lost my baby. Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the fame. Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain. Alone in a crowd, four of us after work and I'm dreaming man. The guy next to me has a girl in his arms, my arms are empty. How does it feel when the girl next to you says she loves you? Seems so unfair when there's love everywhere but there's none for me. Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the fame. Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain. Someone to take on a walk by the lake, Lord let it be me. Someone who's shy, someone who'd cry at sad movies. I know I would die if I ever found out she was fooling me. You're just a dream and as real as it seems I ain't that lucky. Some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the fame. Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain. Some guys get all the breaks, some guys do nothing but complain. All of my friends have a ring on their finger, there's someone. Someone to care for them, it ain't fair, I got no one. You're just a dream and as real as it seems I ain't that lucky. Good afternoon everybody, my name is Jennifer Reynolds and I am the council member here in Lexington, Kentucky for the 11th district. And I am joined today by some of my friends from Columbia Gas. First we have Tim Vaughn, he is the executive director of Kentucky 811. And we also have Lisa Smith and she is the public affairs manager for Columbia Gas of Kentucky. So welcome and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Hello Lexington. First I wanted to ask off, what is the significance of 811 or August 11th? So, well that's two different questions. So let's take it, 811 is a call before you dig. It is a vital part of any kind of construction project. And I say that, but when I use the word construction that could be just somebody digging in their yard. Anytime you're digging, you're moving the ground for any reason, there could be utilities buried below that. So 811 is a way that you can contact us, we notify the utilities in the area who come out and locate your stuff. So that when you're digging, you know where that stuff's at. So that your weekend project doesn't turn into some kind of catastrophe. Right, so if you don't call before you dig, what could happen? Sure, you could get into a utility line. Some of them are enforced by different agencies throughout the state, particularly on the gas side. The Public Service Commission could issue citations and fines for people who failed to get things located prior to that, prior to digging. But, you know, you could cause an outage, you could get injured, which we certainly don't want that. It could cost you money. I mean, just think if you take out your own water line, you go inside and you don't have water in your house. And how inconvenient would that be? And things like the fiber, our whole house is run off of internet and fiber now. So if you cut the fiber line to you or to your neighborhood, you don't want to be that person. But just the inconvenience of the outages that could take place. So if somebody is going to do any sort of project at all in their yard, around their house, the first thing they should do is call 811. And can they report it online or is it just by phone? Yeah, so about 90% of the notifications that come into us now are done online. And that's Kentucky811.org, spelled out the word Kentucky. Yeah, and we'll take your phone call. We work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days. We're available. Obviously, the internet is the same way. But, yeah, you can go online to do it. It's very simple and easy to do. That's great. And so should we call 811 just for small house projects or should big development excavating projects as well? Anybody and everybody. Anybody and everybody. If you're digging, the law defines digging as moving dirt with any tools or by any kind of machinery or hand tools. So you're using a shovel, you need to call. The law requires it. And we're trying to prevent stuff like this from happening. This is a gas line where obviously it looks like a trencher maybe got into this or a backhoe tooth got into it. I mean, this is what we're trying to prevent. So what will happen is we work with utilities like Columbia Gas and all the major utilities around the state. They'll come out and above ground they'll paint with a color code system their line, the color of their lines. And you can determine what that is by going to our website and seeing like blue is water, yellow is gas. Funny that the gas pipe is yellow and that's what they locate it with is yellow. Right. So they'll locate where it's at. That way when you start your digging project, you move over away from it. That's great. That's great. Once someone, you know, contacts 8-1-1, how long do they have to wait before they can find out if they can dig? Sure. The law requires that you have to wait two full business days excluding the day that you make the request. So if you make that on a Monday, Monday doesn't count. You've got to wait Tuesday, Wednesday. You can dig on Thursday. So will they notify the person, yes, you're clear, or will they just not hear back or what happens? Yes, there's something called positive response, which is required by all the utilities who are notified when you call 8-1-1. And they'll send you a notification saying I've located my facility for you. I've marked it in paint or there's something funny about it. I need to meet you there. But it's that communication back and forth. So you'll know, you'll hear from all the utilities that are required to know what the status of it is. That's great. That's really wonderful. What is a tolerant zone? Okay, perfect. Good, good. So let's say that this gas line is located in your yard. Yes. A tolerant zone in Kentucky is 24 inches on each side of that that you can't use any kind of mechanized equipment. You have to use hand tools within that. And that's just a tolerant zone because although this that I'm holding is pretty straight, think of this as a fiber or a piece of cable. It could be snaking like that in the ground. So there's a 24 inches on each side tolerant zone to allow for the movement of that line when it was installed in the ditch. Interesting. And, you know, it's really dangerous to hit a gas line. So that's why we're emphasizing the importance of calling before you dig. So I just want to re-re-re-emphasize that. Is there anything else? You know, is there a penalty for not making sure where the utilities are before you dig? Yes, there is a penalty. It's outlined in the law. And it's a tiered structure based on how many times you've done it. If you're a homeowner, you probably don't do it frequently. But if you're a contractor, you could be involved with it multiple times where it can get pretty expensive, the penalties that you have to pay for not calling 8-1-1 and it results in a damage. And I want to say two more things about this. First one, we talked about 8-1-1 day. That's August the 11th. That's the 8th month, 11th day. Yeah. It's kind of our celebration day across the nation for all the 8-1-1 centers and for the utilities that we bring awareness to our 8-1-1 facilities, 8-1-1 processes. And the second thing is if you cause a damage, don't try to fix it. Call the people who own that facility. I mean, heaven forbid that you hit this gas line. But if you do, don't try to fix it. Because that could just complicate the matter even more. Sure. So you need to step back, and if you hit a gas line, you need to call 9-1-1. But contact the owners of the facilities, whether it's a water line, cable, whatever it is, and let them come out and fix it the right way. That's a great word. So we can remember the 8th month, the 11th day helps remind us the importance of contacting 8-1-1. So, Lisa, tell me a little bit. When people mark their utility lines, I know that Tim mentioned a little bit the different colors, but can you help explain that a little bit more? Sure. So red is electric. Blue is water. Green is sewer. There's a lot of sewer projects going around the city right now. Orange is telecommunications. And then yellow is gas. Very good. Very good. So if somebody, do you see these cool little flags? A lot of times, my constituents will see flags, and they will contact me and say, what big project is going on in our yard, in the front of our yard, or whatever. Can you explain why these show up in some different circumstances? Right. So it could be that a landscaper is doing a project nearby, and they've called to have their underground utility lines marked. So we would come out and mark our lines. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a Columbia Gas project that's going to be. It could be a city sewer project that's getting ready to start. It could be a landscaping project. It could be any number of things. But the important thing is, if you see these flags, don't remove them. Keep them there, because they're there for a very important reason. So they might just be marked. Maybe the city is doing some sort of project, and we need to know where the gas lines are or any other utility line are to do it. It could be your neighbor. It could be... you know, you're doing something right. So, but we don't want to pull them out, right? They're there for a reason. And it doesn't always mean they're going to just start, someone's going to start digging up your yard, right? And on our website, we have a search function that they can go to and put in their address and pop it up and they can see who's doing what in their area, or they can call us at 811. And the life of a locate request in Kentucky is 21 calendar days. So don't remove those lines, or those 21 days, leave them there, because that means the work is going to be done sometime within that 21 days. That's great. So I hope everyone heard that. You can contact 811 to find out what project, why utilities are being marked in your area. So I think this is one of the most important things. Lisa, if you smell gas, what do you do? And the odor is added. Yes. So that people can be aware if there's a problem. Right. Actually in its pure state, natural gas doesn't have an odor, but we add an odorant called mercaptan. And it gives it that very familiar sulfur light, rotten egg kind of smell. That's very recognizable. So if you do smell that smell, it's important that you leave the premises immediately. Don't turn on lights, don't use your cell phone, don't do anything, just leave. And then from a safe distance, call 9-1-1 as Tim said, and also call Columbia Gas, and we will come out no charge at all. We will come out immediately and investigate that and find the source of that odor. But don't assume that it'll go away. Don't try to ventilate the area. Don't do anything. Just get out and call us. And that's actually happened to me in my house. And then also being on other properties and then having that strong, strong sense. And so it's important to realize that that could be an emergency. And so please do call and get it checked out. And hopefully everything is okay. Is there anything else that you all would like to mention that you think is important? Yeah. So I want to make sure everybody understands that 8-1-1 is not for large contractors exclusively. It's for anybody. For instance, let's just say that on a weekend project, you want to replace your mailbox. That's about a foot off the edge of the road. Guess what else is a foot off the edge of the road? Could be this gas line. Some utility is about a foot off the edge of the road. So you're out there digging on a Saturday morning to do a project and replace your mailbox. The next thing you know, you've got a big problem on your hands. Call us and it's free to use us. It's absolutely free of charge to use the 8-1-1 system. Call us and we'll send people out that will locate that so that you know where you're digging. That's a really important reminder. And I don't know, Lisa, do you have something else you think is important for our viewers to know today? No, just again, you know, always call 8-1-1 or go online and request the utility lines be marked. And again, if you ever should smell gas, don't even hesitate to call. It doesn't cost a thing. We will come out 365 days a year. No problem. Very, very good. Thank you so much. It's a pretty day. It's not raining. You might want to do some yard work. So before you start digging around, dial 8-1-1. Thank you for joining us. Hello, District 2 neighbors. I am standing in front of the Black and Williams Gymnasium. The Black and Williams Neighborhood Center is our only neighborhood center in the district. You may remember from our prior council comment video that we took a tour inside the Black and Williams Center proper so you can learn about all the awesome resources that are offered in the center. Well, today we're talking about the newly renovated gymnasium. Won't you come inside with me and take a look at all the amazing things that are happening in this new renovated facility in the 2nd District. All right, we are inside the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center gymnasium that is newly renovated. And joining me are Director Sanders. She's the Director of the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center and Ray Thompson, who's the event coordinator. Thank you all for joining me for my council comment today. Absolutely. My first question is for you, Director Sanders. Now, why was reviving this gymnasium, this neighborhood center, so important to the community, in your opinion? Well, the gym was closed for seven years, and the gym was closed for seven years prior to the renovation. So the community has not had the gym. And even prior to that, it was really used kind of by one program. So being able to have the funds to bring the gym back to the neighborhood and then allow activities for the kids and activities for the adults in the neighborhood, I think that's why it was so important. Being able to offer free events, being able to offer a variety of events, and just allowing the community to come in here, especially the youth during the summer after school. In August, we'll be opening on Saturday morning. So just being able to offer the community something new and something to do positive is why it was so important. Yes, I agree. And Ray, tell us about the gym. What does the gym offer? When folks come in here for the first time, what can they do? I mean, we have a basketball court. We have a projector and a speaker. We have things that other community centers don't have. With all of our funds, we were able to have a kitchen. It's a new state-of-the-art gym. So like he said, we have the projector, we have the screens, we have the sound system, we have Bluetooth, and then we just have different programming. So we have fitness classes every Tuesday and Thursday. Chantella Whitfield does Soka Mi shirt on Tuesdays at six. Wonderful. And then we have Tracy Thompson does line dancing every Tuesday at seven. Something I've been meaning to come to. I love line dancing. I'm going to get you. Me too. And then on Thursdays, we have Zumba. And then, like I said, starting in August, we will have a Saturday morning class at 11 with Ignite. And then we'll also have open gym Saturday morning. That is wonderful. Yay. I know. We are excited. And let me ask, is this at any cost to the public? Does the public have to pay to come in here to do all these awesome activities? No, ma'am. It's completely free. Everything is free. Here at District 2 Neighbors, this facility is in your district, in your neighborhood, and it's completely free for you to utilize, which is wonderful. Talk to me, Director Sanders, about potential partnerships with local organizations if they want to come and utilize this space, rent the space. Is it open for rentals and things like that? So we don't do rentals. It doesn't cost people to utilize the space. It just depends on the activity. So especially if it's an activity that will benefit the community, it's free. That's why I'm always looking for partners who want to bring activities here. They can utilize the space. We have tables. We have chairs. Okay. So we have plenty of things to offer. The Y has partnered with us. They came and they did a fitness program for the adults. They did that for six weeks during the day. We have had Fayette County Public Schools. They have hosted a few events here. I believe that you had an event here a couple of weeks ago and you have one coming up so that people can be informed. So really, if it's an event that will benefit the community, they can just email BW Gymnasium. Okay. And then we can look. We have an activity form they complete. We look at what it aligns with. Now we're not doing like parties and baby showers, those types of events here. Those are more for like the shelters. But otherwise, if it's like I said, if it's an event that can benefit the community, youth, adults, older adults, seasoned adults, we're always looking forward to those partnerships. Wonderful. And again, what's the email address and the phone number people can email or call to contact you all to be able to utilize the facility? It's bwgymnasium at lexingtonky.gov. Okay. And the phone number is 859-353-08. Awesome. And as we see here today, some neighborhood youth are playing basketball. Is this open to basketball teams to come and have practices, Ray, or cheerleading teams to come have practices? Can they do that stuff here? Usually we try to stay away from things like that because we just want to keep it open to the community, the kids that are in this community. We don't want to tie ourselves down to where it's a certain, like they're taking up a certain slot all the time and it's only for specific kids. So watch the ball. We got balls flying. Nobody's safe here. Nobody's safe. But we do try to have open gym so that all ages can come. Like I said, we're looking at Saturday mornings, possibly letting adults do that. And then like I said, we're just trying to have after this, they're going to have pizza and we're going to have team talk today with Devon Karama. So they did open gym from three to five and then we will have pizza at 530 and then have a team talk. So that's something new that we started actually this month. The last Monday of every month, we will have a team talk that will focus on different topics that are important to these kids that, you know, a lot of times kids are talking to each other and getting information from each other. And now we are going to have, I don't want to say experts, but people who have lived, lived experience to come in and talk about mental health. What does that mean in our community? Suicide, you know, drugs, alcohol, careers, college, trades, different, really whatever the kids, we're hoping the kids will lead the talk, you know, whatever topics they want to talk about. We're just here to kind of provide some guided answers. That's great. And I know you all, my last question is the neighborhood center puts out a calendar of activities. How can the public access that calendar to see what you all have going on each day? So they can, they can still email that bwgymnasium at lexingtonky.gov and send an email request that says, Hey, can we find out about the calendar? They can also see events on Lexington KY's website. So for instance, this Wednesday, bingo, 1130 to 130, we'll have hot dogs and chips. And so they would be able to see that calendar a month at a time and see all of the different events that are taking place and find out and get the flyers as well. Thank you. I'm excited neighbors. I hope you're excited too. Thank you, Ray. Thank you director Sanders for joining me today. Neighbors, please come utilize, visit this beautiful gymnasium and experience all the awesome programming and activities that it offers you. Thanks so much. I'm honored to recognize the historic St. Paul AME church, a true pillar of Lexington's history and faith as they celebrate 205 years. I want to take a little time to reflect not just on what has been done recently, but to understand the full journey of this church from his powerful beginnings to where it stands today. This is a chance to walk through the timeline, learn more about the restoration process and uplift the work they continue to do for our community right here in the heart of the first district. We're sitting here at the historic St. Paul AME in the heart of the first district and I'm sitting with Priscilla Sullivan, Miss Priscilla Sullivan. And we're here to talk about all the great things happening at the historic St. Paul AME, both from the past, but all the way up to the present. So let's talk about a little bit about, as we talk about that history, let's talk a little bit about how it become a spiritual and historical landmark in Lexington. Okay. First off historic St. Paul was established when the members of Hill Street Methodist Church left and formed their own church. Okay. It was in 1820. They were able to purchase the land for $280. They built the building in 1826. And of course, they finally owned it in 1827 from a banker named Charles Wilkins, who was also a South Panther, a Mamakay, and a trustee at Transylvania University. It is our belief that their strategic location of where they placed this, that they were is purpose not only for a place of worship, but also a place where they can help the enslaved. The building itself has an enclosed hidden area above the ceiling. And that's where they were able to hide the enslaved. This was a well-kept secret. Okay. This area, the hidden room was not known to the community, I believe, until 1978. And that is when Sister Lillian Gentry, our historian at that time, was looking for grants to preserve the 20-foot windows that we have, because they are precious. And also, they were originally destroyed during that era. We believe that we were probably instrumental with the escape of Lewis Hayden and his family. Lewis Gerard Clark, who is the character George Harris in the Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin. He came here, I believe, twice, I do know, twice in his writings. One to get one of his brothers who had already escaped, and to get, and he did find his younger brother. And in his writings, he came to Lexington. Now, when his wife passed after the Civil War, he came back here and lived. And when he passed, his funeral was held here. He became the first man of color to be able to lie in state in the state of Kentucky. And so, those associations that we can clearly say that we were in the business of saving those who were enslaved. So, in this community, from pre-Civil War all the way through today, our church has been very involved in education, social justice, and that's basically what is founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Well, well, that is beautiful. That is beautiful. We are standing here in the sanctuary of the historic St. Paul AME Church, and I'm here with Dr. Ragland. Good afternoon, and I'm honored and privileged to have this opportunity to share about historic St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to serve here as the pastor. I've been the pastor here since October of 2023, so not very long. I was appointed by the late Bishop E.N. Henning-Byfield, and since I've been here, I've been known that I'm the first female pastor of this church in its 206 years of existence, and so I count that an honor and a privilege to be able to serve such a great church. We are excited about the work that's being done here, and I come in with just a small sense of leadership skills to help lead this church and help it to grow to be who God has intended for it to be. You know, the AME Church itself has come out of an existence where its mission is to serve the community in whatever fashion that is needed, and we are a part of social justice movements, and so that's one of the things that I can say that we pride ourselves in is being a community partner, and so in essence, we have worked hard over the last year and a half working to serve individuals in the community, and one of the biggest pieces that we are looking at and have looked at over the last several years, and I just came into it and continuously moving it on, is the impact of incarceration on families, and so we've had several forums with the community, and then we just completed a community fair back in May where we brought a lot of community partners together to help bring resources to those individuals of families who are incarcerated and anybody else that just stopped by to gain information about services that are provided for them in this community, and so again, we are looking at celebrating our 205th year church anniversary coming up on August the 17th, and of course, it's open to the community, so you're more than welcome to come and visit with us. Our theme for that day is building on a firm foundation, which ties in with the theme that the pastor put out when I first came here about let's rebuild God's house God's way, and so in essence, we are working to not so much be just of help to those who serve in this church, but realizing and knowing that this church is a part of the community, and we're here to serve the people in the church. What are some of the current ministry and outreach efforts or programs that the church is leading in this community or plans to lead? Again, we go back to the community, the community fair, providing resources. We have also been able to help the New Life Day Center along with the district and providing items that they need over there. Our hope is to begin to have an outreach ministry where we're serving food to the community as well, and actually, we're already doing that. We want to make it where it's set in stone, but when people, we have homeless that walk past our campuses, sit on our properties, and whenever we have things left over, we always make sure that we take care of those that are in need in the community. So let's talk, let's bring it into the 205th anniversary and what that may look like, what it's going to look like on the day of the anniversary. Let's talk a little bit about that. Well, let's see. I believe that this church is going to be packed on that day. Actually, we're planning to have a prayer breakfast on that Saturday before, just again, bringing the members together. There'll be family members of the church members that will come back. We'll probably have a host of pastors from other churches that will come and help us to celebrate on that day. We are working on a souvenir booklet that will outline the history of the church from 1820 on up until now, listing pastors from then up until the present and the work that has been done, the history of the church as far as the Underground Railroad will be a part of that booklet. And then, so we'll have that along with, again, a lot of food, a lot of fellowship and worship. And then lastly, let's talk about what does the future look like for St. Paul AME from faith leadership to community impact? The one thing that I always try to do when I'm pastoring churches, this is my third charge in 19 years, is to empower folks to be the leaders that God has called us to be and not just leaders, but disciples. And one of the ways of doing that is learning to be a disciple. It's a difference between church membership and church discipleship. And so we've instituted discipleship programming that's going to take place. And we also are hoping to partner with Asbury Theological Seminary to do some mentored ministry. I'm a graduate of Asbury four times, along with being on their board of trustees. And so partnering with Asbury to do some ministry where we have those students to come in and help in areas which we lack in. St. Paul, our church doesn't have a lot of young people. And so in essence, the idea is to have individuals in place who have that skill set to help us to go out and canvas or pound the pavement, so to speak, to help win souls to Christ. We know that there is a lot of young people and people in general who are unchurched. And I think that COVID has played a major role with that. But being able to go out and not just send out flyers or send postcards in the mail, but be more relational in building those relationships, meeting people exactly where they are and ministering to their needs that way. And then hopefully, you know, to help to help build that relationship so that they can, too, know Christ as we know him. There you go. That's amazing. How's it going? We're standing here in the Byway Alley right outside the historic St. Paul AME Church, and I'm here with Mr. Clarence. And like Tyler said, we're standing here in the Byway, historic Byway, which plays a significant role in the Underground Railroad as well. So as you can see, this Byway leads all the way down to the courthouse, and you can see, you know, the top of the courthouse itself. And then as we move on down our way, just some significance of the church, you know, the original brick is on the church. The architecture is Gothic Revival. As you can see, the high arch ceilings, tall windows and things of that nature. So and like I said, you know, the original brick is here. Some of the mortar, like Priscilla had mentioned early, early on, a lot of the mortar is deteriorating. It's turning to sand, so it's going to have to be tuck pointed pretty much. So and then as we walk further on down the alleyway here, this is some of the, you can see some of the remnants of the foundation of the actual stable that it was built upon. As we come on down the alleyway, you can see the door where it was believed that they kept some of the slaves. They brought them through. Our thinking is they brought them to the church, brought them through this door here, and then up to the upper room. And then when the wagon itself had came to take the slaves away, they brought them down and back outside this door here and loaded them up and took them out to the limestone in order to take them to Maysville to cross over to the Ohio River to freedom. So we're back in the historic St. Paul AME Church. In the back of the pulpit, where the upper room, next to the upper room, you want to talk a little bit about where we are and just kind of that track towards freedom. Yeah. So this is part of the route that they would, they would take through the church upstairs to the upper room. And this is one of the rooms that they would come through basically. And then they will come through and behind this door are some hidden steps. Some hidden steps here that goes up to the upper room. Okay. And just be careful because it's, it's pretty narrow through here. And you could see where you think this might look at really trying to hide someone because he's not knowing it was here. Huh? Absolutely. Absolutely. And in front of this, this wall is a false wall. Oh, wow. Okay. So we're here in the upper room of the historic St. Paul AME. And I mean, this room is a lifesaver. I mean, there's so many different words we probably can use to describe this word, but at the least this was the room that led folks to freedom. And you can talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Like Tyler said, this is the, what we call the upper room to freedom, historic St. Paul AME church. And it was believed this is where they hid the slaves until they, the carts that came to pick them up to on their way to freedom. They would hide up here for, I'm not sure how long they kept them up here, but this room, basically everything's original, you know, the doors and everything, the window seals and all that is still the original wood. So nothing has basically been touched up here. So, wow. Wow. And as you can see outside this door here, you know, the false wall, which hides the actual steps that comes up to this room here. Wow. Wow. Everything's original. Wow. Wow. And like I said, this is just a lifesaver for so many. And I bet as soon as they got to this room or even got to the stairs or seen the church, it was just a relief. Yeah. I'd say it was probably a big relief for them. For me, I've been going to this church for almost 50 years and I learned about this in the last 10 years. Wow. And I mean, it was really astonishing. And it's amazing to be able to even stand here in this place where so many have been able to come through and make that journey to freedom. It's just a pleasure to be one and have to have it in the first district, but then also to know that the historic St. Paul AME just was part of that journey from way, way back to now and still doing the community work, still investing in the community and just doing what's right for social justice. And that, I think that's the perfect way to sum it up. Oh yeah. I'm not the hero will always save the day. Don't always wear the white hat, don't always know the way. I may not even be the dream you wanted to come true, but I'll always be the man in love with you. I'm not the king that opens every door. I don't have the power to give you all you want and more, but when you're needing something special, you can hold on to. I'll always be the man in love with you. I never could work miracles, but maybe others who can do what I can't do. No one else could be as good as me. So when the world won't turn the way you wish it would, and the dreams you have don't come alive as often as they should, remember that there's someone there whose heart is always true. I'll always be the man in love with you. Remember that there's someone there whose heart is always true. Someone there to help you make it through. I'll always be the man in love with you. I'll always be the man in love with you. It's getting early. Clocks are running late. Ain't my number morning sky. Looks so phony. Dawn is breaking everywhere. Light a candle, curse the glare. Draw the curtains, I don't care, cause it's alright. I will get by. I will get by. I will survive. I see you've got your list out. Say your piece and get out. Yes, I get the gist of it, but it's alright. Sorry that you feel that way. The only thing there is to say. Every silver lining's got a touch of gray. I will get by. I will get by. I will get by. I will survive. It's a lesson to me. The evils and the fakers and the seeds. The ABCs we all must face. Try to keep a little grace. I know the rabbit's in a fizz. The dog has not been fed in years. It's even worse than it appears, but it's alright. Cows give me kerosene. You get me at seventeen. Of course you know you're all I'll see, but it's alright. I will get by. I will get by. I will get by. I will survive. The shoe is on the handy bits. There's really nothing much to it. Whistle through your teeth and spit, cause it's alright. Oh, well, a touch of gray kinda suits you anyway. That was all I had to say. It's alright. I will get by. I will get by. I will get by. I will survive. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will survive. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. We will get by. 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Seems to me You don't wanna talk about it Seems to me You just turn your head And walk away Walk away Walk away Walk away Walk away Walk away Last night I waved goodbye Now it seems years I'm back in the city Where nothing is clear But thoughts of me holding you Bringing us near And tell me When will our eyes meet When can I touch you When will this strong yearning end And when will I hold you again Time in New England Took me away To long rocky beaches And you by the bay We started a story Whose end must now be known Must now end