# Planning Commission Work Session - September 18, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Commission · September 18, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6573 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6573?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-09-18 - **Body**: Commission - **Last revised**: February 15, 2026 - **Length**: 29,974 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Planning Commission met on September 18, 2025, at 1:30 p.m. in the Phoenix Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. The meeting included two agenda items, both informational in nature: an MS4 Annual Update and an Affordable Housing Round Table. No votes were taken during the session, reflecting the informational and discussion-focused character of the meeting. One public comment was heard over the course of the meeting. ## Attendance All eight Commission members were present at the September 18, 2025 meeting. No members were absent or late. **Present:** - Bailee Young - Todd Johnson - Austin Simms - P.G. Peeples - Ed Holmes - Johan Graham - Josh Robinson - Darryl Neher ## Public Comment One member of the public addressed the Commission during the public comment period. [timestamp: 56:38] The speaker shared personal experiences related to affordable housing challenges, describing the difficulty of finding affordable housing and the circumstances of living with family members as a result of local housing shortages. No additional speakers are recorded as having addressed the Commission during this period. ## Contested Items - **Affordable Housing Solutions**: The Commission engaged in a heated discussion regarding approaches to addressing the local housing shortage. The debate centered on several interconnected issues, including the appropriate funding mechanisms to support affordable housing development, questions of land use and how available land should be allocated or rezoned, and the respective roles that government entities and private developers should play in expanding affordable housing supply. The discussion reflected differing perspectives on how responsibility for solving the housing shortage should be distributed between the public and private sectors. No outcome, vote result, or specific participants are noted in the available record for this item. ## MS4 Annual Update [timestamp: 00:30] Bailee Young from the Division of Water Quality presented the MS4 (Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System) Annual Update to the Commission. Young's presentation covered several key areas of the MS4 program: - **Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination:** Young discussed changes to the program's approach to identifying and addressing illicit discharges entering the stormwater system. - **Post-Construction Stormwater Management:** Updates were provided regarding post-construction stormwater management practices and any changes to how these are being handled under the program. - **Water Quality Monitoring:** Young reviewed the status of water quality monitoring efforts associated with the MS4 program. The item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken by the Commission. ## Affordable Housing Round Table [timestamp: 11:00] The Commission convened a panel discussion focused on the challenges and potential solutions surrounding affordable housing in Lexington. The session was informational in nature, bringing together a range of voices to examine the issue from multiple perspectives. Key speakers participating in the round table included Todd Johnson, Austin Simms, P.G. Peeples, Ed Holmes, Johan Graham, Josh Robinson, and Darryl Neher. The panel addressed several core themes: - **Funding** — Panelists discussed the financial barriers to developing and sustaining affordable housing, including the availability and adequacy of funding sources. - **Land availability** — The discussion touched on challenges related to securing suitable land for affordable housing development within Lexington. - **Policy recommendations** — Speakers offered recommendations aimed at addressing systemic obstacles to affordable housing production and preservation. The round table was structured as a discussion rather than a decision-making item, and no formal action was taken. The outcome was informational, intended to inform commissioners and the public about the current landscape of affordable housing needs and the range of strategies being considered to address them. --- ## Full transcript Now we can start. Thanks B, we were in recess. All righty. Good afternoon. Today is September 18th, and this is a work session of the Lex and Fader McKenna Governments Planning Commission. First item on the agenda is the MS4 annual update from Ms. Young. I'm Bailey Young, and so I'm here from Water Quality, and I'm going to do a quick overview of just MS4, the background definition, and then what changes have been made in the last year. So MS4 stands for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System, and so the state authorizes us with a permit to discharge our stormwater runoff into waters of the Commonwealth. Since Lexington sits on a hill and we drain away into our creeks and rivers without any treatment of our stormwater, we're permitted by the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection. So Lexington is one of two phase one communities in Kentucky, so we have over 250,000 people, and our permit is written specifically to us, so us in Louisville have special permits tailored directly to us. Why it matters? Being an urban area, we have way more people who are engaging in activities that can produce pollution and get washed directly into the storm system, which then goes directly into creeks and streams. So you can see from the infographic, anything from oil and grease to pet waste, et cetera, can just wash whenever a rain event happens. So MS4's purpose is to maintain and improve water quality, and we do that through 10 program elements. And I'm just going to hit the four that we modified, or not modified, but we had changes over the last year. Our first one is illicit discharge detection and elimination. So since 2009, we've been doing this dry weather screening outfall program, and it's part of our permit requirements. So with that, any outfall that's 36 inches or more, we go and we sample it after a 72 hour dry period if it's flowing. So it's been dry for three days. We run out and take a sample if there's anything, and we check to see if any of our benchmarks are exceeded. If our benchmarks are exceeded, we run out and try to find the source and prevent that non-stormwater discharge from entering the system. Since we've been doing this for around 15 years, we're not seeing that many hits. So we have been working with Tetra Tech to develop a new program based on illicit discharge screening factors. So we're developing criteria like sanitary sewer repairs, sanitary sewer defects, sheer population density, and the number of outfalls, and prioritizing sub-watersheds based on those criteria. This way, we can go inspect pipes that are smaller than 36 inches based on the priority area. So we'd go down to potentially 18 inches for high priority, 24 for medium, and 36 inch for low. This lets us go to new sites that we haven't been seeing before, and so we're hoping to catch more hits based on this and eliminate non-stormwater from entering the system. We plan to submit this to the state before the end of the year, and so with the hopes upon their approval of rolling it out in 2026. And SD1 does this, they're about five years in, so we've been talking with other communities that are a little bit further along in developing their program. Another important program element is post-construction stormwater management. We have just under 2, ooh, more than I thought. We have just under 2,800 stormwater control facilities in Lexington and Fayette County. We inspect those based on varying frequency according to the type of stormwater control facility, and we do just under 5,200 inspections annually. This year we've been working to create a maintenance manual. We get a lot of property owner calls asking what their responsibility is and how that's defined versus our responsibility. And so we've created with Tetra Tech this maintenance manual that will delineate those responsibilities really clearly, and we want it to be a one-stop shop where they can see what they're held to. It'll also have inspection checklists and planning lists, and so our goal is to publish that in January of 2026. We've also worked on our water quality monitoring program mainly over 2024. So we wrapped up the watershed-focused monitoring program in 2023 with Wolf Run, and we took 2024 to develop a new program. With the new program, we're focusing countywide and not just one watershed, and that'll allow us to see trends more. So we're doing 64 sites, and you can see the little yellow dots. We submitted the program to the state in December of 2024. We received their approval in January of this year. We'll do quarterly grab sampling. We'll do wet weather sampling, fish sampling, macro, geomorphs, all at different frequencies, but this will have some volunteer participation, which is fun and gets the community engaged, and they're really interested in just seeing the performance of their stormwater. We're currently working on developing the quality assurance program for this, and so with Third Rock, we've been developing that and plan to submit that to the state before the end of the year, and then we'll implement the program once we have their approval. So hopefully 2026 early as well. We've also been working on manual updates, so I mentioned the maintenance manual, and we've also been reviewing the stormwater and procedures manual. We held a stakeholder group last month that was really well attended to discuss potential changes. We had about 30 folks, you can see in the picture, and we had some heated discussion on manufactured treatment device protocol, on constructed wetland design, on green infrastructure, plan certification insurities, and on building temporary stormwater controls before the regional downstream facility has been built. We're continuing to iterate with our stakeholders on those things, and so we'll have more work groups. Another part of responsibility of MS4 is to do post-construction final inspections, so the procedures manual notes that water quality goes out and inspects the stormwater control facility before the surety is released or before it's added to our inventory. With that, we're really paying attention to what was in the design and seeing if what's in the field matches what was in the design, because we care about quantity and quality, and that the minimum requirements are being met. Some things that we have been seeing recently are improperly planted green infrastructure. We've also been seeing lack of vegetation and stabilized soil, and detention basin grading issues where either they're not meeting the stage storage requirements, or the detention basin isn't graded to drain, so it's holding water upstream of the outlet. We've also noticed some invert elevation differences of what was designed versus what's out in the field. All these things really matter, like the first two for quality and the second two for quantity. We report our findings to engineering, they report them to the contractor, etc., but I think it's very important that we all hold to the design standard. We have had a recent stormwater stakeholder engagement asking questions about the expansion areas, and so they're very interested in what stormwater looks like for those areas. We've had some reach out about quantity concerns, and some reach out about quality concerns, and so I'm sure we'll continue to hear from them as the process unfolds. Are there any questions? Thank you, Bailey. Do we have any questions? With the green infrastructure, there's planting plans that are normally included in the contract documents, and so we're seeing that contractors aren't installing plants per the planting plan. All right. Do we have anything else? If not, thank you, Bailey, and thank you to everybody in the division. Just one quick question. Mr. Wilson. One quick question. I'm going to incriminate myself on this. For those people who are using things like chemicals on their yards and all that, when it rains, that washes into the storm sewer and then washes into the rivers. What are we doing to educate people like myself that that's not perhaps the best thing to do, and what are the alternatives to that? We do have a YouTube channel called Stormwater and Water Quality, and so I would say that's one way. Greg has an answer. Greg Lubeck, Deputy Director of Water Quality. Another thing is that Environmental Services, they have a group, and they have put together all sorts of documents and things that are on their website about fertilizer and other lawn chemicals, how to use them, when to use them, things like that. So we've got a lot of stuff scattered across the internet for that. Based on what you've observed so far, is this really a serious issue in Lexington? We don't see much of it in the sampling, do we? I don't know if we look for chemicals, like you're mentioning, we do see a ton of nutrients. So fertilizer is a major issue, and we're seeing really high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Thank you. Ms. Worth, do you have a follow-up? I think we got it. I used to be a water quality tester for when they had the Kentucky River Watershed Watch. West Hickman, by the way, used to be the third worst redline stream in the state. It is now much better, thanks to the work you all are doing. Thank you, Bailey. Thank you, Greg. All right. Our next item on the agenda is the Affordable Housing Roundtable. This was initiated at the request of the Planning Commission. Let's see here, let me get my notes. Mr. Chair, while you're getting that, I'm going to pass the clipboard around because both Bailey's presentation and what we're doing with the roundtable qualifies as training, so we want everybody to get credit for that this afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. So in our packet, we have some questions that were submitted to Mr. Duncan in advance of today's meeting by Mr. Owens. I know we all will have questions today. At this point, I would, again, like to thank our panelists for being here, and if you could each introduce yourselves, beginning maybe with the Honorable Mr. Peoples. The Honorable PG Peoples, I'm President of Lexington Urban League. Ed Holmes, President of the EHI Consultants. Austin Sims, Executive Director of the Lexington Housing Authority. Josh Robinson, Director of Development and In-House Counsel at Winterwood Development. Johan Graham, the owner of AU Associates. Daryl Neer, I'm the CEO for Lexington Habitat for Humanity. Todd Johnson, Executive Vice President for the Building Industry Association of Central Kentucky. All righty, thank you, gentlemen. Now, we have questions that we have answers to. We all have questions ourselves. I'd like Mr. Wilson maybe to begin our discussions today with any questions you may have. Yes, sir. Let me first of all ask you all, what definition are you all using for the concept of affordable housing? Are we all on the same page is what I'm trying to find out here. We use 80% of everything that we do must be for a person's income is 80% of the median income. Lexington Habitat for Humanity, we utilize HUD standards at 30% to 80% of AMI. 30% to 60% is where our focus has been almost entirely, but what we've seen in our applications has been this increase in need between the 60% and 80% of income. If you want to extend that, the words workforce housing get used quite often, and that tends to be viewed at 80% to 120% of area median income. For our community, we're looking at a family of four. The 100% of AMI is $102,400, and you can break that out accordingly based on the percentage of income at that point. Sure. For a family of four, the area median income is $102,400. I would only add that I think maybe one of the answers you're looking for in this, Mr. Wilson, is I believe that all these guys, and they can confirm it, are also looking at the percentage of income spent on housing monthly, and we, I think, like Daryl said, we're looking at a HUD standard of about 30%, no more than. Is that after taxes? That is pre-tax income. Pre-tax income. Thank you. Is this? Okay. There we go. And one thing we're seeing is that citizens are paying a lot more than 30% of their income for housing affordability issues because it's just costing a lot more for rental or homeownership. Would it be fair to say that you're seeing individuals spending 50% of their income for their housing needs? Kentucky Housing Corporation, in their recent studies, identifies within our community people who are in rental situations, one in four are paying more than 50% or more on housing. I think that's what we've seen. Yes. May I ask a question? Mr. Neer, you mentioned workforce housing. Is that an alternative term to affordable housing? Think about it on a continuum, right? So affordable housing tends to operate low income, 30 to 60%, modern income, 60 to 80%. And as Mr. Sims pointed out, that 80% and below is where we, I think, most of us tend to operate with affordable housing. 80 to 120, workforce housing gets used as a term. It's not a space that we directly work in. But when you're looking at and trying to think about economic development issues, 80 to 120, it tends to be where the focus lies with workforce housing. Have any of you heard of the term attainable housing? And obviously you have, Mr. Neer. What's your experience been with that? Attainable housing is a vocabulary that's been utilized to highlight affordability with little A, right? So you've got little A affordability, then you have the spaces that we tend to work with are big A affordability. And so when you look across the housing spectrum, and I think this is something they pointed out in the KHC study, is that affordability is something that people are experiencing across the housing spectrum. And when you start looking at individuals who may be in housing, currently in a home ownership situation, but their families are increasing and they need to increase the size or perhaps move, they have the need for attainable housing, which is a differentiator. It allows us to have a conversation about the housing market as a whole, rather than that big A affordability conversation that we're here talking about today. The only thing I might add, if I could, is that just to point out the, to your last question, affordability is the term that we use in our industry when we're talking about the ability to afford a house or not. So are you able, is the affordability in the market equal to where any income, 30 to wherever on the spectrum? Are there, is there housing available that you can meet affordably based on your income? The other thing I'd like to delineate is that the gentlemen, I want to make sure there wasn't a lady there. All the gentlemen that are here today working with affordable housing, as Johan stated, it's kind of 80% is their cap that they work in. I would, I would assume that that's because there's very little to no subsidy for anything under 80% AMI and, and being able to bring housing to market for those income earners at or below 80% requires subsidy in just about every case. Ms. Worth? I just want to push us out a little bit because we've got to figure, I think, for the immediate need, projecting five, 10 years out, what are we, what are we projecting for affordable housing needs here? If I recall, when we did the affordable housing study, I think you're currently at about 17,000 units and 10 years out, unless something's done drastically, you're going to be pushing 20,000, 25,000 affordable housing units need. I have a question for the table. What policy things could we enact as a community with a tax base to alleviate, or I should say to augment, you mentioned that there currently needs to be a subsidy attached to a project if it's below, you said it was 80% threshold. What things would, what things could we do as a community that could be put forth to, I guess, fill that gap financially? We have just completed the construction of nine single family homes on Shropshire Avenue that are for sale. We must deal with 80%. We cannot sell to anyone above the 80%, and when you do the numbers, the income just will not deal with the mortgage, and we even have a bank who's agreed to do 1% less. We still need subsidy, but we're working with the mayor's fund, REACH, and right now we're looking at $100,000 subsidy, and it's still going to be tight. We have to be very careful because if we use home dollars, sometimes you have to, it's 60%. And also, we're talking about, we bid those, the construction of those houses, and basically we had three bidders, so when we talk about an average of $300,000 per house in Lexington, that's a real number right now. Sure, you can get someone to build, we don't, if we're dealing with affordable housing, we don't want just to build a block building, so if we're going to build houses that people can really live in and gain equity as you do in any neighborhood, today, basically $300,000 is it. So if you're dealing with 80%, you've got to have subsidy. So as we continue, even as we finish those and we talk about the Transylvania problem, we're going to need a lot of subsidy to get people into home ownership. Thank you, Mr. Stanton. Maybe I'll be probably specific, so forgive me if I just speak about what I think the five things are policy-wise that we could do here in Lexington that would increase the supply of affordable housing in the near term, some of which we can control. So I think all of us here are specifically developers of housing under 80% AMI, either rental or home ownership, but some of these things are universally true in this housing space, and none of us are really market rate developers who are developing housing for sale for rent above the 80% AMI. One, we have recently committed as a community to put $4 to $5 million in our affordable housing fund, which is almost two and a half times what we've been doing in the past. It is a very progressive Kentucky idea. Louisville has a much bigger per capita affordable housing fund than we do, but we're basically the only other city who has one in Kentucky. However, on a lot of the Chamber of Trips we've taken to Madison, to Salt Lake City, to other cities, we are way below per capita what they are investing in their affordable housing fund in their community, and that is the primary vehicle that many of us are using to increase the supply of affordable housing, is our gap financing, is one of the tools in our toolbox. Second, it's more of a political lobbying sort of thing at the state level. We are the only state that borders us that does not have a state housing tax credit, and I always ask Lexington to help us push that agenda-wise at the state level. So every state around us has that tool in their toolbox that we do not have, which probably would lead to a 30 percent increase in the quantity of 80 percent and below rental housing in the state in terms of production. Third, things we've learned as we've traveled in other states as well, we don't address the cost for infrastructure for affordable housing projects at the city level or at the state level. There are a lot of tools that other communities use to help buffer the infrastructure cost for affordable housing projects that we could look into, and that could include, you know, a lot of the times in the Hamburg expansion area, there was exaction fees, there's water quality fees, there's sewer fees, a lot of those type of fees that are added to affordable housing projects, we're having to turn around because they're extra to what would normally be done and ask the city to help us, you know, pay for them with affordable housing dollars. So we're basically just billing, the city's billing themselves for a lot of these fees. So looking at creative ways to help bring the cost down so we can spread those dollars farther, which would be the goal. I mean, it wouldn't create hundreds and hundreds of new units, but it would bring the marginal cost down for all of us that may allow, you know, Darrell Habitat to produce one or two more homes a year or something like that. So those kind of things that we do have in our control. And then something we're also dealing with in the affordability realm is land availability. So as affordable housing providers, we have somewhat of a stigma, you know, when I build affordable senior housing, it's a little easier to rezone and do a development plan on with neighborhood cooperation. But whenever they hear the word family affordable housing, I mean, they in terms of potentially neighbors, we do get a lot of pushback. And I do think the city of Lexington in the last 20 years has been fairly progressive about saying our policy goals are we need more affordable housing. But oftentimes it makes it hard to build family housing when the public process fights so hard against that. So I think that's one thing to be cognizant about during all the rezoning changes and things like that. A lot of times we can get senior housing done easier, but it's just impossible to propose, you know, a 60-unit multifamily project that's affordable because of the resistance from the neighborhood. And that makes it much more difficult to produce the quantity you need in all 12 council districts. I missed, I've got four listed here. Oh, was it available in five cities? No, sorry. I kind of put infrastructure and then permits and fees under two different ones in my notes, but I kind of combined them in one when I did that. Sorry. Can I ask a follow-up question? Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Somebody else ahead of me. No, go ahead. This is ahead of where I thought we'd be today, but Kentucky Tonight did a program on housing in Kentucky last week, I believe, and I recommend it to everybody if you haven't seen it, including a member of the legislature who was talking about agenda for housing-related issues. And a couple of people on that program mentioned the Residential Infrastructure Fund and specifically the Indiana model. Anybody familiar with that and can you tell us about that? So in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee, in the last couple of years, they've passed bills in both all three of those states that help from the state level with infrastructure to bring more housing in general to market. The Indiana fund, if I'm not mistaken, put $75 million into a fund that developers could apply for to help with those upfront infrastructure costs in a revolving low-interest loan fund, I believe is the way they did it. Tennessee, we've met with the developer that was kind of leading the charge from the industry side in Tennessee to put their program in place. It was called an Infrastructure Development District. It's where you work with your local government. The authority is given from the state through legislation to establish districts in agreement with the developer for housing that basically the municipality can bond cost of infrastructure, again, low interest. And the way it's set up in Tennessee is those bonds do not go against the city's normal revenue bond type ratings. So they set it up in a very thoughtful way, and it seems to be working really good down there. And those two things are what our industry is most interested in going into this next session in Kentucky is to try to get something that kind of looks like that for us to have at our disposal. None of them are enough to really move the needle all the way to where it needs to go, but the more options and the more tools and toolbox you have, the more you can work on. Okay, Mr. Davis had a direct follow up to that question. The bonding issue. And then Mr. Nichols. First of all, thank you for bringing that up. That was the first part of my question. The second part of it was that, you know, why are we, why have we here before been so slow to develop a bond issue? Like you say, even $75 or $100 million, that won't solve all the problem, but it could at least, you know, make a dent in it. What is the issue that we have right now? Well, two things. One, Indiana had the $75 million. There's really no limit. I think the only constraint on the Tennessee bill is it has to be a five acres or more. There's no dollar figure attached to that. I don't, I can't answer that question. I'm not in the legislature. We talked about it last year. Both of those were revenue related and it wasn't a budget year. Senator Robbie Mills and a couple of others, Josh Bray, Representative Josh Bray, worked on some bills that were around that and Chairman Petrie worked on a bill that was kind of like some of that, but there was no appetite in the legislature to do anything that dealt with the budget. So, we're hopeful and having these early conversations with them about that going into the next session where they will be working on budget items. Sorry, a direct follow up on that. Todd, are you talking about state bonding or are you talking about city bonding? On the bond, it's the local government that's involved with that. There's enabling legislation, I believe is what you would call it in Tennessee, that allows the local governments to act on those bonds. That's not from the state, but in Tennessee and I believe in Kentucky, it requires enabling legislation to do that. Well, just rough number back the envelope, I had some figures running $5 million at 6% will bond $72 million. So if that is the issue, and I don't know that it is or isn't, to solve this problem going down the road, you're never going to get the product built if you don't get it built by, well, I'm saying market rate builders, because the need is going to be greater than what these people can provide. So I don't see how you keep, I don't see how you keep taking 1% out of the budget. Next year, it's 5.8 million and you put that in the housing trust fund. The next year, it could be 600 million, the budget could be set. So my question to you all is to do this on the scale that needs to be done, will state legislation make that happen or does it take the city legislation to make that happen or both? I think the first thing I'd like to clarify is you brought like three different things into that is what I heard. We started out on the bond and then we went to the state funding and then we kind of went to the affordable housing trust fund. Let's stay on the bond then. On the bond, I mean, no, that $75 million in Indiana wasn't enough, but it helped how many ever projects that it helped. I don't know, I don't know that there's enough money in the state or at the local level to put toward this problem, to solve the problem, but anything helps. It can help. Well, my question then, let me follow up with this. Will market rate builders build affordable housing if there's enough subsidy? I don't think I've got an answer to that. Well, I mean, that's... The answer I think is no. So with the currently available subsidy, it's not a limitation on the number of developers who can build it. It's on the resources that are available. So the five, six of us at this table working all out, and we'd love to do more work here in Lexington, do as much as we could. Right now with the available resources, probably all together, we're able to produce in a banner year between single family and multifamily, we may get to 350 units a year, maybe. And that's utilizing all the subsidies we have in town. So not that we couldn't do more work, it's just, there's no more resources available from the affordable housing fund, from everywhere else we're tapping, from the single family, from your nations, from HUD, from everything we're doing. That is probably the maximum amount of units we can produce given the current climate. And that's probably close to the maximum. I don't know if you guys agree with that, there's just not a lot of other resources out there, but we'd love to do more with more resources. Yeah, Mr. Penn, as you talked about the builders, as the housing authority, we are a developer. We do consider ourselves a developer of affordable housing. And so all of the subsidy that we could get, we could build more. If we look at the 22,000 units that are an objective, or what we're short of, it'd be about $6.7 billion to build it. So I'm not sure where we'd ever get that kind of dollars. So what we're looking for is just give us a small amount each year. And let me just give you a couple of examples. The city years ago, and Scotty Basler gave us property. The city owned that property, and they gave us the property there at Thoroughbred Park, Short and Eastern Avenue. So the fact that the land was given to us, the infrastructure was provided for us, we were able to build about 30 some units there. Then under Mayor Miller, when we did the urban renewal over at Dewey Street and Third, she gave us and asked us to develop that strip of land between 4th and 5th with an understanding that the housing authority was the developer, and we were going to include the Urban League with PG, and Daryl was not here, but with his agency, Habitat. So if you drive through there on Elm Tree Lane today, I think it compares to anything the private developer would do, and you wouldn't know whether it was the Urban League, House, or the Housing Authority, but under Newberry, they gave us land off of Georgetown Street. They did all of the infrastructure with the understanding that we would have Habitat, the Urban League, and the Housing Authority build those houses. So we built them. We're able to sell them to citizens. So what we're looking for is the land from the city, if you've got it, that's inventory, the land that the city has that's buildable and work with us on the infrastructure. I think we will, similar to what Luther Deaton did with the transit project, and then give us the land, and we can build, but we've got to have that. That's on the front end. The back end, we've got to have some subsidy to get people into it. The critic would say you're putting too much money into affordable housing for people to buy, but if you look at the question view that we built back in 2005, and look at the amount of taxes that were paid on land that was just government land, if you look at the equity on those people who were able to build, not build, but buy, and in 15 years sell and move up and out of poverty, it works, but it's got to be a partnership with a lot of subsidy. I understand that. What I'm trying to get at is, number one, is you're getting budget item every year. That can change from council to council. If you bonded that money, the next council can't change it. That's one issue. The other issue is that if we don't get more built, how do you ever think you can solve this problem? Looking back, I can give one concrete example from the last couple of years that you're all familiar with. With the $20 million of ARPA funds and the federal government that came through the city that we used for affordable housing, we probably, I think, projects that were produced, actual housing units, 24, 25, and probably coming up in 26, we probably tripled the amount per year that we were doing with that ARPA money, but you'll see in 27, 28, and 29, when that money has run out now, that we're going to shrink back down to what we were doing before that. You can see the amount of units that the extra money creates, but there's really, from our developer perspective, there's no, it's not a bandwidth issue in terms of creating housing, it's an actual money resource issue. I don't, without additional ways to create subsidy dollars for gap financing for low and moderate income home buyers or for renters at 80% and below, there is probably no way to significantly jumpstart the number of units to meet this 20,000 housing need. We're going to be kind of ticking along on what we are now. There's nothing that's going to bring a market rate developer down to the 80% AMI level to have them want to do those deals because it just doesn't create, and I can walk through a little bit of that maybe later in my PowerPoint, about what an 80% rental deal does for a market rate developer. It just isn't profitable for them. At that scale, at 40 to 50 units on the infill land we have available, it doesn't make sense for them to do that. It only makes sense for us because we are working with the federal tax incentives, we're working with the Affordable Housing Fund, we're working with all these different things to try to, I mean, that's our specialty, we're not jack-of-all-trades, we are really masters in the affordable housing realm with all the tax policy. Without those resources, it just doesn't make sense for a market rate developer to come down and do that. And then to that point, market rate, there's a lot of bureaucratic behind-the-scenes movement with regard to working with the federal tax credit program that it takes a skill set that has been gained over a number of years of everybody that's sitting here that I just don't know that you're going to see from market rate developers. I don't think they're willing to take the step into that realm when they're not used to dealing with the processes that go on. I had to ask the question. Thank you. Okay. If we are good on that front, Mr. Nichols has been remarkably patient. What I was looking at is I pulled up a text that I received, this was from December of last year. And I just want to talk about the magnitude of that overall housing problem that we have here in Lexington. And so we're referencing some data. This is, I'm referencing a text from December of 24. And at that point, the most recent KHC data said that we need a total of 30,823 new units by 2029. And of that, there is the affordable housing number that they indicated was 17,000. So that's kind of how we have that 20,000 number and 30,000 overall. So this is a huge gap that we're trying to overcome. Because with the need of 30,000 units, that's the demand and the supply. What is our supply that we're delivering on an annual basis, on average, all housing types So we can understand what we're dealing with here. So I don't want to say this, in secure numbers, I pulled this up based off of our permitting data. So some of them have received COs, some of them have not. I'd have to get into the data a little bit further to give you the rock solid. But based off the permitting numbers, we are averaging about 1,500 dwelling units permitted annually since 2017. That also includes quite a big dip in 2020 with the hit of COVID. And then we had another dip in 2023. Thank you. I think that we're just talking in kind of big numbers here. So we've got a need for 6,000 house dwelling units on an annual basis until 2029 per KHC's report. And we're delivering 1,700. So this is gonna be a hard problem for us to solve no matter what. What I'm hearing Johan talk about is that the limiting factor with the affordable housing is the amount of federal funding available to provide the gap financing through a low-income housing tax credit to deliver housing. And the housing, we're over here talking about 80% AMI, but a lot of the projects that are being done here are 60% AMI and 50% AMI. So there is a huge gap that needs to be filled. So we're talking a large problem that we're trying to deal with. And I love the fact that Johan has come with some real points that we can study and come up maybe with some sort of recommendation that we can give to council so council can try to enact whatever we can do. But I think a strong statement from us to council identifying the needs, I'm sure Johan, everybody here is already doing this on a daily basis speaking with state, city, and federal to find the funding available. But maybe a recommendation from us out of this meeting could be helpful to promote the legislation that we need. So once again, I just want to say we are dealing with a tremendous problem here with housing on all aspects and with a great demand and a low supply equals increased rental rates. Also, Hal, on your numbers, that's all the permitted, that doesn't factor in the ones that are being built for subsidized units, is that correct? That's correct. And that also includes not just residential zones, but also commercial and next to your cells. So it's even worse. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Daryl, did you have anything? Mr. Nichol brings up the tax credits and Johan's talked about this as well. I think this is an important point to make. Those of us who are working in single family home ownership, single family home ownership does not have similar tax credits available for development. And so we can talk about the pressures of housing in general, but we talk about the gap in single family housing within communities across the Commonwealth and the country. Those resources that are available for us to do this work are very limited to local affordable housing funds. What we are seeing is an increasing limited number of federal funds that are available. And that makes sense because people are looking at, okay, how can we get to the quickest scale as possible, right? But we need to acknowledge if this is the way we chase the solutions for affordable housing, looking for the quickest scale, and that's going to be through multifamily rental, what are the implications for single family home ownerships in the communities that we live? And so finding those mechanisms to help that funding exist, and it is a supply and demand, can market rate, build market rate where some, maybe some of the lower end on the housing spectrum fall into affordable? That is a different challenge altogether. And just wanted to point that out in the conversation. Ms. Worth and then, okay. Thank you. I have a question about four paragraphs ago. Did I understand you to say you, together, you build about 350 units, affordable units per year, something like that-ish? I think that's pretty close. Okay. I mean, all of us together, I'm kind of, I mean, some years it's lower than that. Sure, sure. During the ARPA years, it was a little bit bigger, but it's still, I mean, all of us together, single family and multifamily, that's about what the resources will get us in town. Okay. So, that's a big figure. Yeah. And I gather you presented to council yesterday, and just a quick calculation looks like it would take about 48 and a half years to get the number of units you need, the 17,000. Well, my first question is, did you put that to council and was there any response? And then the second part is that when Hal figured out the number of units permitted per year, it was about 1,500. But then Mr. Nicol, I heard you say 6,000 were needed per year, and I got lost. I was referencing a study by KHC saying we need 30,000 housing units of all type by 2029. And because that data came from last year, I just was judicious and divided by five. So, I just did some back of the napkin math, and that's what we came out with. So, we are at a deficit of, I don't know, call it 4,000 units a year? Yes. Would you believe I thought you said 2099? So, I was like, how could I? Oh, sorry. 2029, which makes it even scarier. Yes. It makes it scarier. Okay. Ms. Worth. So, this is just educate me. Earlier, you talked about the fact that the NIMBY problem is not as big a problem when you're talking about building senior housing. And I know nothing about the specifics of the funding mechanisms. Are those less, in terms of getting market rate builders involved in doing this or working with you all to do this, are the funding mechanisms less complicated for building senior housing than they are for family housing? Unfortunately, they're not. They're just easier to rezone, to be frankly honest. But the financial structure and the amount of resources is fairly similar. Oftentimes, it takes a little more resources because when you're building one-bedroom units, you don't get the same ramp up you do for a three-bedroom. So, it's a little less efficient to build senior at the interior hallways and things like that. The issue, oftentimes, when you talk about NIMBY issues, you will hear language such as those people and trying to classify what that means. And if you are dealing with a habitat home or multifamily rental, those are the conversations that often will arise. Ms. Davis, you had mentioned earlier about attainable housing. Oftentimes, attainable housing came out of the concern of the stigma that came with affordable housing as a piece of vocabulary. And so, if you could shift the vocabulary, can you shift sentiment? And we have not seen that happen. All right. B and then Robin. Yeah. I got a quick question now that we're kind of on the cost. Kind of from my experience, when you're dealing with low-income housing tax credits, you're building to a different standard than – you're building to a federal standard rather than our local standard. So, my question to you all, are we – what percentage increase are we looking at to build affordable housing above – let's just call it workforce housing? So, let's just say the lower end of the little A affordable versus the big A affordable cost per square foot. My understanding is that the cost per square foot is greater for affordable housing because of the requirements of the low-income housing tax credit. Is that accurate? Probably. It is accurate. And I think that probably applies to single-family. Anything that involves federal funds or technically the city's affordable housing fund comes with those same requirements per their manual for Kentucky Housing – MEERS, Kentucky Housing Corporation's manual. So, we're often building to higher energy-efficient requirements and energy-efficiency requirements because they want to keep the tenants' utility costs low. So, we are being held as a steward of federal dollars. It sort of forces us to spend a little bit more money. I mean, I would say less than 10 percent. But our building costs for three-story garden walk-ups are now approaching $150 a square foot. I think our – I mean, the other problem we have is we're all – as much as we like to think of ourselves as experts in our field, we are still pretty small fish in the state development field. You know, we're not the size of Ball Homes. We're not the size of Dennis Anderson. They have efficiencies that we can't possibly have at our size and scale. So, I would suspect they're building, you know, 10 percent below us in terms of their cost per square foot on single-family, on their multifamily. And so, that's due to their size and buying power. And so, that's due to the federal regulations that we have. With the tax credit deal, you're dealing with federal regulations. You're dealing with investors' requirements. And you're dealing with KHC and then anything that's local. So, you have a lot of masters to respond to. And that's costly. I was bringing that up not to disparage any of the requirements that are placed upon you, but just to point out that what you all are doing is extremely difficult to make the numbers work. Okay. Mr. McClure. Yeah. I want to bring back a comment that Johan made a minute ago with the unit size between the family and the senior because we've, I mean, broadly in the community and on the census data, I think it's been brought up before that we're in a multi-decade trend of lower average number of people per unit. And we're throwing out numbers of units needed. But I guess I was wondering if, I guess I'm wondering how the sort of size of a lot of our families or people looking for housing is both impacted the affordability in terms of consuming more units, but then also how the sort of industry is sort of responding to changes in sort of market. Probably from a, I mean, this may be too global of an answer, but if the number of units that we are that we're short, this group of affordable housing developers, the group of market rate developers, we could build senior, family, one, two, three, and four bedroom units all day long and not be able to catch up with demand. So it's kind of choose your own adventure. I mean, we can build one bedroom units and they fill up. We can build four bedroom units and they fill up. We can build market rate units and they fill up. We're so short across all the different platforms. Maybe we haven't gotten to that level of discussion yet because we haven't seen a demand problem in any of those at any income level or bedroom size level. So there's just such a need everywhere that if a project dictates, if the zoning dictates we should do senior because it's easier, it's still going to lease up and there's no demand problem anywhere. It just kind of affects what may be the right use for that site. But we've, there's no demand problem across, probably across the board at any income level or any type, single family, multi-family. If we can build it, it will lease. I know that when you apologize for a question before you ask it, it's like you shouldn't apologize for that, but it just occurs to me. If we are so short of housing units, where are those people living? Is this for people who are coming into the community? Is it for those who want to improve their lot and get something else? So where, what are they doing in the meantime? Do you know? I can give some maybe incidental data to that. My wife's the middle school teacher at Tate's Creek Middle. The number of kids that she had that I would say are under house. So living with multiple generations or multiple families in one, one unit is probably more than ever. So they're kind of the hidden homeless. So they're housed, but not independent. And so that's one, I think that's how a lot of people are dealing with it in overcrowding situations. I think the topic of our neighboring counties are seeing population growth well in excess of us due to some of this. So the workforce here is living, maybe not here, is part of the answer. There's many more parts, I'm sure, but those are two things I'm pretty certain of. The only thing I would add is in recent years, we've lost population in Fayette County as well. And our population growth has not met projections that were set years ago by the data center. And the folks that we partnered with to build houses at Equestrian View with Austin several years ago, who've now lived in those houses since what, 2005, 2006? There's not housing really available for them to move up to in our market because we're so short and under built on the market rate. I think Austin said yesterday, there's over 50% of the original residents are there. So there's a whole lot of things going on that is kind of impacting the answer to your question in our market right now with housing. Hold on, just one second, man, hold on, just one second. Without objection from the Planning Commission, we'll hear a public comment. I can answer that question. I'm a young mother, but my kids are grown, but my daughter's still home with a baby. And she lives with me, I live in the three bedroom, and she is there looking actively for an apartment. And it is really, really tough to find out what the waiting list is, what's available. I've been in Glen Eagles for eight years. I've worked, and you can't find a home, and you can't get finance. And we go through all the classes, and we go through the Housing Authority classes, and we go to United Way and go to classes, and we come to things like this, and it's not available. And the people who get in, you're like, well, wait a minute, how'd they get in? So it's also a lack of information, and it's a lack of funding to get into the homes. So you stay where you're at, and you deal with your kids that are grown with babies, or they're not going to college, they're working, so everybody's just kind of just crammed in together trying to make it work. It is a lack of funding. We can go through all the classes, we can go to United Way, we can go through the Housing Authority, and it's no fix. And you're lucky if you get into Habitat and get a home, maybe in a neighborhood you may not like, but you're going to take it due to home ownership to kind of get ahead. But there's nowhere to go now. So home ownership seems a little bit impossible right now. So you just deal with the circumstances you got, and you got to make groceries work, and you got to go to work, and you got to work together, and you come to these meetings to give back to other people. So what I take here, I plan to take to other people, but it ain't no good news. So you can build, and it's always going to be a need, you just don't know how to get into those homes because nobody's moving out. We're just moving in with each other. And so I do want to say thank you to the ones who do try. And then when we're in the homes, getting upgrades is hard too. To get sustainable stoves and refrigerators to kind of be efficient, now the Kentucky Utilities is going up another 11.5%. So nobody's working together, we're working apart, and then trying to make it function when there's no connection. So it makes it hard for everybody to kind of, you know, be happy about moving to something or somewhere. And you know, ownership of land, you see these apartments being built out of Hamburg, but it's no affordable home. And then, like, if you work a decent job, you're going to pay full rent, right? Like Winderwood, you're going to pay full rent out to Gleneagles, which is $1,300. Which is what your neighbor's paying for another apartment down the street. So what is affordable housing? You understand what I'm saying? So when you go to Sales Road and the city did the apartments, they have them based on your income, but that's why in between, you're like, oh my God, how'd it get in? So there's no connection. So that's what we need is a pipeline to understand where the new homes are coming. And we know for real, there ain't no financing. You work making $15 an hour, you're not getting a $250,000 loan to go out to Red Cliff, which is the only cheap home in Lexington. So we need to work together and figure it out. Be here in a meeting and there's no solution because the land is costing so much. So what we need to do is just work to get people better appliances and better land living where you're at. So we just have to fix the problem about where can people go with babies and make it affordable. So that's my take on it. Thank you so much. All right, Mr. Owens. Thank you. And thank everyone here. Listening to this, my head is spinning with these numbers. A couple of questions. Johan, just a couple of direct questions. One for Johan. I think 330 Newtown Pike is your project? No? Oh, sorry, Josh. Hi, Josh. Yes. Hey, how are you? Sorry. Okay. I'm just curious. Johan was saying that you build it, it gets filled up and so forth. Where's the occupancy on that now? I don't have the exact number with me, but I know that in the last three months, it's been over 90%. So I can't give you the exact as of today, but the last three months has been over 90%. Is the building built out ready for full occupancy? It is. It is. And it could be higher than 90%. That's great. It didn't look like it was 50% full. No, no. Yeah. I know the exact numbers don't have, but I know last three months, 90%, and it could be higher. Okay. Thank you. And then I guess, Ed, you touched on it early on, and we've been bouncing around with it, with numbers and so forth. As far as the 22,500, B's mentioned possibly up to 30,000 and so forth. We know that it's over a period of time. What's the immediate need right now, though? I think the total need was the 17,000, if I'm correct, what the need is for housing currently in the community. The KHC study that Mr. Nickel referenced is the immediate need that KHC had, and I think it was 22,549 B's. 22,549 units total. Yeah. And Mr. McCrady, when he was here in June, that number was presented, and he said, yeah, there's an immediate need there, but that also includes over the next five years, seven years, including workforce. So I'm just trying to really drill down a real number. And one thing I would add as we talk about numbers, we really don't talk about land availability. Correct. And I'm just wondering what steps you want to take to build that number of units. I'm not sure you get that much land available within the urban areas that exist today. We have, if we're talking, Mr. Owens, about Lexington, we have about 4,000 people on the Section 8 wait list that have been on there for two to three years. We close it because we don't want it to extend to 10,000 or whatever. So we open it and close it as units. And so what that says is that we need 3,000 units on the voucher program. We're talking about private landlords. So if, in fact, the government would give us the 3,000 vouchers, then we've got to look for, well, not necessarily 3,000 landlords, but we've got to look for units that would facilitate the use of those vouchers on the public housing side. We have about 500 people on the wait list. And on the elderly, we still have another 350 on that wait list. So that's saying immediate, that's what we need in terms of housing that we just don't have. Right. Okay. Thank you. And I need to clarify with Mr. Duncan first, I guess. The transi development, that's already done and council's approved and we can discuss and not get in any trouble. Yes, that's been approved. All right. It was brought up and I've read a little bit about it and I don't know if I'm correct in saying it this way or not. But the way I read it, it was like the city paid for the land $3 million or something and got more money coming from the state for infrastructure. Developers are going to pay back for the land costs so that that money can be used again. Can someone explain that? Sure. I'll give it a go first and you guys can add on for me. So the primary challenge was that 12 and a half acre site. I'll give you a little bit of history of that is it's too big for any one of us to do together. It's been available for a little while in the market for roughly $3 million. So we've all been looking at it separately but unable to do anything with it by ourselves. So we approached Luther Dean and Central Bank and some of their banking friends to figure out, hey, if we want to take a chunk out of this housing supply problem, our biggest issue is how do we buy and sell this site while we're trying to put together a project? So they put together a banking fund which was not city money originally at all. They put $3 million into it, bought the land and are holding it interest free for this group of developers. There's a group of five. One, two, three, all of us are here. Yeah. So there's a group of five of us, all of us together. So they're holding that land right now while we went through the rezoning process, we went through the development plan process, the financing on the single family pieces, the multifamily pieces. Normally, if we had to buy a piece of land, we'd be accruing interest on it the whole time and it makes it really hard for any of us to develop something that far out in advance to kind of do that kind of master planning. So the banks holding that land interest free for us really helped us time to master plan and think. So right now, we've gotten through our development plan process or in the certification process. We're beginning the process of dividing up that land between the developers for single family, for multifamily, kind of as the development plan shows. And each of us will pursue our own individual pieces of that project with different parts of financing. Some of those pieces will include the affordable housing fund with the city, will include state and federal tax credits that will include home money for the single family, affordable housing trust fund money, all the different vehicles we use to produce housing. But when we consummate that transaction and buy the individual properties, we'll pay back that banking fund with the goal of them revolving that money and helping us do that somewhere else in the community. But that's really the only way we can participate on that scale that far in advance because usually we need to buy land, do something quick because we can't hold it that long. So it's allowing us to hold it from two to three, four years while we put together this larger project. Did I forget anything in there? OK. Oh, the 10 million. Yes. Sorry about that. So the 10 million was a state allocation of infrastructure money. So we talked a little about the challenges of infrastructure, land and infrastructure. Yes. So they allocated 10 million out of their general fund to basically help us jumpstart this project. So even though the banking fund bought the money or bought the land and are holding it interest free, obviously a 12 and a half acre site, the costs are quite incredible to produce. You know, we're producing maybe the same number of units we produce every year at one project. So that 10 million is going towards site purchase to help pay the banks back and for all the infrastructure. So we get land. We get that land individually with our parcels. It's coming pad ready, which means instead of 150 dollars a square foot in construction costs for a three story garden apartment, we may be in the 125 dollar range. So we're hopefully using less of other resources because the state's helping us with the infrastructure. So that's kind of the advantage of the infrastructure financing. It brings the total cost to each one of the developers, the total project costs down by that amount, which means that the state resources and the federal resources and the other tax credits all go a little bit further than they would have before that. Ms. Worth. Just going to plug in from what I heard on KET on the Indiana model, which is that infrastructure funded that's bonded and they indicate that it's reducing the houses, the housing costs per unit 25 percent by having that fund pay for the infrastructure. I think that would roughly mirror what we're seeing with this 10 million dollar investment. If I'm going from 150 to 125, that's roughly in that range. So that's that's kind of what it's doing. I mean, it's a you know, when we visited Madison, Wisconsin, they're doing the same thing. So they're trying to expedite housing getting built by bringing the costs down to developers. And they're realizing it is a state expense. It is a line item in the budget they have to put forth. But if the if the overall goal is to produce all types of housing, market, affordable, single family, multifamily, there's plenty to do. That's one way to try to jumpstart as many projects as they can, because the other resources can go further. So the affordable housing fund money goes further that way. It just it's it's a state tool that they have in their toolbox. Actually, a tax policy question. So I think it's worth talking to legislatures and legislators about sales tax reduction, which I know is that's the key metric we're looking at to try to get the sales tax income tax, sorry, down every every year. And that is that is a primary focus. Can we do more than one thing at once is would be the question. Can we we look at it more broadly and say we have multiple goals. But that's that is definitely something I'm hearing is a impediment to some of these things is that that the sole priority to bring down that tax rate. If I may respond, the transit project is also been taken to HUD in Washington. They liked the plan and the local banks are saying that if this is successful, so they they initiated it, but they're watching it. And they can do it again and again and again. Some of the legislators are saying, if this is as successful as we think it will be, we may even take it statewide. So we're excited about this whole project. Mr. Wilson, just one final question for me. You all have been in this housing business quite some time, and it is very complex. You mentioned Indiana. We mentioned Wisconsin. Are there any other areas or states or any other communities that are tackling this problem that you all would recommend to us to look at with the understanding that everybody I've talked with has got the same issues that we have? And some people are dealing with it in some potential ways in a better way than others. Would you all have any ideas of people we should talk with or discuss with? I would take a look at the, I think it's the Phase 2 study from KHC. And there's also a presentation KHC did on what are other states doing to tackle this? And Montana is another example. What I can say is that many of the states that are doing it well are putting a significant amount of capital behind their efforts. Right? Excuse me. That is the driving vehicle behind, the dollars of the driving vehicle behind all of it. Montana is one. But there are communities, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention Cambridge, Massachusetts. I love the model that they've done. They set it up in such a way that if you were doing 100% affordable housing units on a development, they clear the way. There are density bonuses. There are, they basically step outside of the waiver system and do a consultation process with planning to be able to incent developers to move into that affordable housing space. They did this back, and I believe it was in 2019, 2020, they updated and they continued to follow that model. Just one quick follow-up. And everyone has mentioned subsidies. And yet at the same time as I read and talk and listen to other people around the country, it also comes to whether it's a local priority. For example, Omaha, Nebraska, they got $112 million from the Rescue Act. Now, everybody got rescue money, but no one put it into affordable housing. So in some instances, how would you address the issue of priorities related to local communities in addressing this problem? How would, Mr. Penn used the word, how do you solve the problem? Let's define the problem. What are the priorities that we are placing as a community to address the issue and set the parameters, right? And I think that gets to your point, Mr. Wilson. One of the council members yesterday made the point that what are the outcomes that we are looking to for our housing development, and how do you backwards engineer to get there? And I think that that is an important consideration in all this conversation. We can talk about zoning changes. We can talk about new subsidies. But what is the end and how are they working together to get that outcome? And I like that outcome-focused approach to be able to say, okay, this is what our community wants to do. And this is how we are going to commit to it over the next X number of years. With the low-income housing tax credits, and we'll get you all to elaborate on this. But the QAP, I believe, is where you submit your package to the federal agencies. There is a bonuses that are given based on location of the property. Is there a way on the zoning side that we can match up the state, the federal, and the pro, can we match up the state and the federal and the, let me back up. Can we match up the state incentives and the federal incentives on specific areas or parcels of land that score better for the affordable housing tax credit, which allows you all to win? Is that something that we can put into our comprehensive plan? Is this something that we can, how can we make your job easier by, on the zoning side, for parcels so that they score better with Kentucky Housing Corporation and the low-income housing tax credit? I'm going to sort of reverse engineer your question. I'm going to start from the perspective of when we move into the expansion area, how do we get affordable housing to be part of that conversation, if you want to be specific about maybe one policy outcome goal. There's not really a way to reverse engineer the score, but there is a way for the city to lobby in the planning process for those state plans. So when the state's putting together their qualified allocation plan, they want specific census tracts and parcels to be prioritized. So you can't really do it after the fact, and it's not really a planning and zoning sort of thing, but it is a legislative policy that we should be pushing harder at when the plans are being developed to say, hey, when you look at Lexington, we want these areas to be prioritized. This is where we want our affordable housing to be. Louisville does that pretty well. It is reaching into an area that lots of people haven't done before, but I think you have to have a seat at the table and tell Kentucky Housing when they're putting together their plan where you need housing. And so they're not arbitrarily coming up with census tracts and things that are impossible. For example, for years, the best scoring census tract in Lexington has been in Chevy Chase. Well, that's great, but there's no land, and that's a really difficult lift. But when we're moving into the expansion area, we don't have as many neighbors yet, and we have more of an open plan to work on, maybe we should be lobbying for those areas to score better so that they may pop out to the top of the list. But that's kind of in that sort of perspective from a planning and zoning, that's what I would encourage, like the participation in the planning process when those state plans are put together. Could that be us from the staff side or a representative from the planning commission themselves that can work with you all to identify what's the best land? And then you all give us that information, and then we can lobby on the front end? I think it's this group with the council through the mayor's office. I mean, direction has to come from the mayor's office, but this group can inform policy that helps her make the lobbying, you know, from what the city wants in their plan more effective. So we're more of an advisory group to the city leaders. But if that's what you want to have happen, if you want affordable housing in the expansion area, what are the tools to help make that happen? So one of those tools is what Austin talked about, which is this banking fund that has the revolver. Can we use that to work with the market rate developers to help make bigger deals in the expansion area where affordability is part of it? Can we work together, not necessarily intermingling projects, but can we work side by side to make sure we're bringing projects in through the development plan process that meet the affordability requirements and recommendations? Can we work together, and can we get the money up front to participate? And then two, okay, so maybe we can participate, the market rate developers. And then five, we have a great development plan. Can we get, can the city help prioritize that money at the state level from either home, from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, from KHC's perspective that, hey, we've put a lot of our own resources in making sure affordable housing happens in the expansion area. Can you help us prioritize those when you're making awards for single family housing, for all the different resources that we use? Can we make sure that we're asking for what we want to have happen instead of just waiting for it to happen and then being like, well, that's not where we want. That's not really where we want the housing. You know, that's oftentimes when people talk about why is everything on the north side? Well, sometimes that's where, one, the land's available, and two, the state housing plan says that's where the need's at. So things kind of end up to score-wise where those things happen. So if we want more housing in the expansion areas and other places, we've got to open up our voices and say, this is how we want Lexington scored on a state level, and this is why. We also want to be sure that we consider that the expansion area is not always conducive to those that we serve. Many of them still want to be in the inner city, downtown. And what we need to do, I think, is to look at available land that the government controls, available land that they could control, those properties that need to be demolished that are just a blighted area, empty, and have been empty for many, many years, and may need condemning. An example I would reference you to is the Georgetown property where we built 17 units. It was a strip mall that, when built, was a very popular mall. But over the years, it was really run down. Empty units, and we took control over that property and built 17 units that sort of cleansed that area, and I think still is very attractive. But I think we need to look at where can we in downtown, and not downtown, meaning Main Street, but downtown Lexington, where can we go? And I think there's a lot of available land that could be created with serious concentration of that. Mr. Penn? I just have to ask this question, when you talk about the expansion area, have you seen the cost of infrastructure for the expansion area? And you think that's where you're going to put affordable housing? And the cost of that land in the expansion area? You see, what's happened in the past, so we look at past expansion areas, Masterson, Hamburg, we've always been really, really late to the party. We're picking up the scraps of land coming through at Polo Club with 24 units, or in Citation with 12 units. We're coming through late, picking up the scraps, because we can't afford to produce any housing units. And if they can't afford it, we're never going to be able to afford it. So I think the infrastructure is a global problem that is going to affect all of us. I think it's probably the number one problem in the expansion area that will keep housing, it'll be a decade before we're ready to really get that going if we can't get that address soon. I think Austin made the key point there. If you can go out and find out what he's talking about, there's some infrastructure already there. And you're rehabbing, you're reusing, you're redeveloping. I'm telling you, gentlemen, I've been on this planning commission for 17 years, and I've been through three expansions. I don't think that's going to happen anymore. The cost of infrastructure in that land is going to keep it from being affordable. Even the 2,800 acres we took in, I mean, I've seen a figure, and I'm sure the council has a figure of what the estimate that is. You throw that on top of that, it ain't going to be affordable land. And to piggyback on that is that when we are expanding, we must expand the minimum. And the minimum doesn't meet all of our needs. So the land cost is a problem. I heard Mr. Holmes talk about land. I've heard everybody here talk about land. We heard one of our citizens talk about land. So that's a big problem that we've got to solve. The land that we have included in the expansion area is going to take up a lot of space. Maybe that will relieve some of the pressure, some of the demand, which can then maybe free up some of the space where we have services, transportation, and infrastructure in the urban kind of downtown core. So that's kind of the hope with that. But we're going to have to start solving this problem by increasing supply, period. Mr. Wilson. I would say connected with that, that according to, and Mr. Duncan has the actual figures, we had about 17,000 acres of underutilized or available land. Back in 1996, we did an expansion, and we still haven't used any more than 50% of that land. It's still sitting there. And now we added another 2,800 acres to it, which is going to take us another five years or some to get that under control as such. So looking at what we already have would be, in my mind's eye, a real good strategy in terms of trying to address the affordable housing issue. Well, does anybody have the Overbrook Farm number for me to call? I mean, that's a lot. There's a lot of, I mean, there is land in the urban service area. But to be candid, a lot of it's not accessible or available to our richer market rate developers, but not to us for sure. The White Family Farm, the Overbrook Farm, the bigger pieces are sort of tied up in ways that I don't know how to get to. I would love to try to figure it out. But we're scrapping for like an acre here, an acre there, trying to I mean, you're seeing some of the plans we're bringing through. I'm going four stories in Palomar in a senior apartment. We're trying, Daryl's trying to find two lots. I mean, it's tough sledding looking for sort of fillable land. There is some out there. We're working really hard to repurpose some parking lots and do all that. But it's not easy to find it. or looked, it's also the process to zone that land when it does come to that is a factor. And we have trouble with that more often than not. And so to Johan's point, if we had a set aside in the excess areas, then maybe that wouldn't be as big of a barrier. I see both sides, but there are a ton of hurdles in the downtown area too. And not that we're not looking here, we all are and we all want that, but the zoning process is also tough. Mr. Penn? We're looking at each other because Mr. Penn and I made a visit to Mr. Young to talk with him about that Oberbo thing. That's right. And well, he had his issues with the city related and what he wanted out of it. It was one of those kinds of things that he wanted a little negotiations on behalf of the city. I'm gonna let Mr. Penn take it from there because he's a better diplomat than I am. Well, what you all have a hard time understanding is land outside the urban service, they're not all waiting to be developed. It has become a very good hedge against deflation and it's being bought for cash. Just ask the realtor out of how many farms they're selling for cash. Money is coming everywhere out of these high tax states, out of these high inflationary states, and they're looking for a place to put it. And they're buying land because historically the value of our land has followed the stock market. From 1971 all the way through, it pretty much follows the stock market. So land is a tremendous investment, it's a finite resource. And no matter how much you holler about it's not available, people are buying it for a reason. And the reason is not to subdivide. So that makes what Austin and them are talking about and Ed, you just can't keep expanding their urban service plan because you're gonna run out of places where people's gonna say they wanna develop. And then the cost of that development, when you saw what the figure was to do that 2,800 acres, you just can't say, well, let's go do another one. The backup point to that is if you don't bond this money, when they start putting the infrastructure in, do you think there's gonna be 5.8 million for affordable housing when they gotta step up for close to a billion dollars? So if you're gonna fund this thing and you're gonna make it work, and I did this with the PDR program, we bonded it. That way one council can't overrule the other one. So, I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but I will tell you that the competition for that money is gonna get tight. I think we put in place with our comprehensive plan that we have the ability to include land into the urban service area if it meets all the requirements of the comprehensive plan. I'll let you all better explain that, but if we have someone that comes to, number one, not all the 2,800 acres is going to be developed. It's not, they're not willing sellers. So if we do have a willing seller and a willing buyer that's associated with affordable housing, I would assume that our group would think critically about acting in a way that allows us to provide more housing. But then again, if we're looking at these areas on the outside of town, they're not gonna score well for any of the affordable housing projects, I wouldn't think. Mr. Bailey, do you have anything on that as far as context or just what Mr. Deckel led with regarding the comprehensive plan? And if there is, B, did you mention land outside of the USB that someone wanted to? Right, so you all may recall that the council is working on a project right now, the Lexington Preservation and Growth Management Program. And I believe that's what you're talking about. And that's very much a work in progress. There was a public input meeting on it earlier this week, and that does lay out how future councils will address the expansion of the urban service area. Right now, the way the ordinance is written, there will be a growth trends report that's prepared every five years, and then an evaluation as to what decisions need to be made. And that keeps it on a cycle. The part that is special about that, it's called a special economic development need. That's not for housing, that is for jobs. And then that can be considered at any time, but that would be something that the Urban County Council or the mayor would propose to do and then take the process from there. So the process, the program that we're working on with the council has a review every five years of the growth trends, and that would be considered for housing, and then a provision for at any time if any economic development need presents itself, then we could address that. But that's just a draft in discussion still? Yes, it's still in discussion, and the next report out on that will be in early December with the Urban County Council. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Okay, do we have any other questions for our guest today? Mr. Chair? Yes, sir. If I may, let me just use the transit project as an example, 12 and a half acres. We know that everybody, I think, wants land where it's most usable and most convenient for the people living there, i.e. groceries, medical, whatever, which, hey, it's in town. We've said that. Is the transit project a doable thing to say, okay, it's not 12 and a half acres, it's six acres? Can it be scaled down to that level? And that's what you all would, I think it sounds like, do again with the available money and so forth. In the initial conversations with the banks, I remember there was a conversation about a parcel that was much smaller that ended up being sold in the process before we were able to get to it. And the whole idea was the issue is the dollars to be able to purchase the land and have that be basically silent capital that allows us to be able to do the work. So once that money is repaid, and Mr. Sims brought this up, the ability to then redeploy those dollars and into another project, it doesn't have to be 12 and a half acres, but where there are partnerships. And I wanna highlight that. I mean, this is a very unique situation where you have multiple developers within the space working together. You have five banks who came together in a competitive space to say, we want to participate together. The power of collaboration to make something like this happen, it wouldn't have happened any other way. And so, yes, it can happen. I think it happens through the powers of partnership and that ability to... Don't think that just because this is the way we've done it, there aren't other ways we can tackle it because this certainly is unique and different enough that if you would have told me that we could go from putting an offer on the project to having $10 million in a matter of four months, it's unheard of. And so, being able to think that creatively about how we can do this work is really going to be the key to moving the needle because we can't do it the same way. It's not working and it's stagnated. I mean, just to give you a point of reference, in 2015, we went and identified a home, a sale of the home. In 2015, it was $153,000. I think this is what they had presented at the regional summit that Commerce Lexington held last year. 10 years later, that home is almost twice the value, right? Five years, we're going to keep multiplying that. We're not seeing more land, we're not seeing more house, we're not seeing more inventory. That's going to... We're fighting against that trend. And so, how do we think differently in how we... Mr. Penny, right. It's the idea of identifying how do we find land in the urban service boundary. We can't continue to think about it in the same way. So, and that's... I find that exciting and the ability to try to break down what those barriers have been for us to do the work, so. Yeah, I'd just like to say thank you all in the fact that five of you all came together and found a way to put something to happen that, I don't know if that's occurred in the past, but by the same token with what you just said, five different banks came together to help make it work. I don't know if that's happened in the past. This is information that needs to be known because the best I knew there was one source for the money at that time. So, I applaud you all for that and getting the word out and coming here today. I just have a quick question. Does affordable housing always mean owner, inhabitor owned? Does it also include rental units within it? Yeah, okay. And then I guess the other question is, were any of you involved, I guess, peripherally with the housing on Tate's Creek Road where several big houses were bought and it was much densified to hold more people in the same amount of space? No, I, yeah. Okay, all righty. Well, I can speak on behalf of the Planning Commission and say, sorry, okay. Real quick, yeah, sorry. Darrell discussed something about Cambridge, Massachusetts offering a concierge service from the planning staff or planning committee to help affordable housing developers. Is that something that we can offer to you all? Yes, we've had this conversation about how to manage development plans, plats getting through the process and being able to getting those sign-offs and having a liaison in place to be able to help facilitate that. I do not know if Cambridge has that as part of their model, but I know certainly Todd and I think all of us can talk about some of the different challenges that we may have faced in that process, but having a point person to be able to navigate through that process would certainly be something that I could say for us would be beneficial. Yeah, to that point real quick, the last thing is land's expensive and we always need more funds, but there are processes and barriers that I think we can break down that will allow us to save money and time from a planning standpoint and zoning standpoint that could be addressed as well. And it goes to the point of time from a concierge or whatever they have there. I think that would be a very helpful as well. Okay, gentlemen, thank you so much. I do speak on behalf of the Planning Commission when I say thank you. We are indebted to your experience and your expertise and we will be calling you on you again because this is not a question that the Planning Commission is going to let go unanswered or unaddressed. We really want to lean into it, so we appreciate it. Mr. Duncan, do you have any staff items today? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do express my gratitude also to the panel. Hal Bailey did all the coordination for this, so I appreciate all the work Hal and Rick McQuadey did on putting the answers together to Mike's questions and to Rachel for coming up with a clever way of getting us to have a meeting today. So good support from the panel and the staff. A couple of other things, Mr. Chair, I want to say if you all are hanging around downtown this evening, Phoenix Park is reopening this afternoon and we are actually going to set up a table there, our offices, to take public comment on the downtown master plan. So feel free if you're around in the next hour or so to walk through Phoenix Park. And then I want to introduce you to our newest staff member, Iris Dooling in the very back here. Iris is a new planner senior in long range planning and she'll be working ultimately on the comprehensive plan once we get to that. Iris comes with a professional experience with Habitat for Humanity in both Indiana and at the international level, so a great deal of knowledge and understanding from Iris on that, with a master's degree from NYU and she went to undergraduate at DePaul, so we are delighted to have Iris join our team. Mr. Chair, we are scheduled for a zoning hearing next Thursday, so right now we plan to see you all at the council chambers next week. Thank you, Mr. Duncan and thank you staff and welcome, Iris. And before we adjourn, do we have any remaining commissioner items or anything else while we're still on the topic? Do we have a plan for what's next? That's a good question, okay. I would like to follow up on the, we appreciate you all talking to us and we've talked about the possibility of maybe bringing in some other folks who've tried to incorporate affordable housing into a regular development, Delaware Avenue, a church, some other places, so I'm wondering if we could sort of think about that in terms of a follow-up meeting with that group, whether some of you all may have some input into those as well. We're not talking about scale projects there, it's with, yeah, so if we're looking at a set, we've talked about, in this group, we've talked about talking about a meeting on financing, but before we do that, I'm wondering if we could have an interim meeting where we talk to some of the other folks who've been involved with you all or in some other way about what's going on. Mr. Wilson. I guess my question is, I hope that would include a time and opportunity to discuss with some of the developers get their impressions and input. In market rate development. Yes, market rate development. Okay. I agree. All righty, well, what I will do, or I can do, I should say, is work with Mr. Duncan looking at the calendar for work sessions or Thursdays that perhaps our typical agenda is not terribly heavy and see what works best for the continuance of this conversation. And I will promise to send everybody that information about the KET broadcast on housing in Kentucky. So if you're interested in watching it. Okay. All righty. Do we have any other items? Seeing none, without objection, we're adjourned. Thank you very much. ♪ Do you love me, do you wanna be my friend, if you do. ♪ ♪ Do you love me, do you wanna be my friend, if you do. ♪ ♪ Well then don't be afraid to take me by the hand, if you want to. ♪ ♪ I think this is how love goes, check yes or no. ♪ ♪ Check yes or no. Check yes or no. Check yes or no. ♪ ♪ Check yes or no. Check yes or no. Check yes or no. Check yes or no. ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Well my name's Tom Lee Pettimore. Same as my daddy and his daddy before. ♪ ♪ You hardly ever saw a granddaddy down here. ♪ ♪ He only come to town about twice a year. ♪ ♪ He'd buy a hundred pounds of yeast and some copper lime. ♪ ♪ Everybody knew it would make money shine. ♪ ♪ Like a revolving man on a granddaddy bed. He'd lift the holler of everything he had. ♪ ♪ Before my time's a lot been told. He'd never come back from Copperhead Road. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Granddaddy ran a whiskey and a big black dye. Cheese. ♪ ♪ His father had an auction at the Mason's. Like cheese. ♪ ♪ Chops of candy syrup painted on the side. Just a shot coat of primer and a look inside. ♪ ♪ Well him and my uncle tore that engine down. I still remember that rumbling sound. ♪ ♪ And then a sheriff came around in the middle of the night. Heard Mama crying that something wasn't right. ♪ ♪ He's headed down to Knoxville with a weekly load. You can smell a whiskey burning down Copperhead Road. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I volunteered for the Army on my birthday. The draft of white trash first draft ran away. ♪ ♪ I done two tours of duty in Vietnam. I came home with a brand new plan. ♪ ♪ I take the seat from Columbia, Mexico. I just planted up a holler down Copperhead Road. ♪ ♪ I'm out of D.A.s, got a chopper in the air. We got a stream of light back over there. ♪ ♪ I learned a thing or two from Charlie, don't you know? You better stay away from Copperhead Road. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Copperhead Road. Copperhead Road. Copperhead Road. ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Girl, I'm crazy for your love. Out of my head for you. My mind just can't believe what you're making my body do. ♪ ♪ I'm delirious over you and I just can't get enough. You're driving me mad, making me crazy for your love. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Thought I heard a knocking on the door. I guess it was wishful thinking. When I closed my eyes, I could see your face. Feel you touching me. ♪ ♪ Oh, darling, don't you know I need to find a real way to make you see that I'm crazy for your love. Out of my head for you. My mind just can't believe what you're making my body do. ♪ ♪ I'm delirious over you and I just can't get enough. You're driving me mad, making me crazy for your love. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ When I closed my eyes, I could see your face. Feel you touching me. Oh, darling, don't you know I need to find a real way to make you see that I'm crazy for your love. Out of my head for you. ♪ ♪ You're driving me mad, making me crazy for your love. Driving me mad, making me crazy. Making me crazy for your love. ♪ ♪ Making me crazy. Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh. ♪ ♪ Making me crazy. Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh. ♪ Last night I dug your picture out from my old dresser drawer. I set it on the table and I talked to it till four. I read some old love letters right up till the break of dawn. Yeah, I've been sitting alone digging up bone. Then I went through the jewelry and I found our wedding rings. I put mine on my finger and I gave yours a fling. Across this lonely bedroom of our recent broken home. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. Exhuming things that's better left alone. But I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. Then I went through the closet and I found some things in there. Like that pretty negligee that I bought you to wear. And I recall how good you looked each time you had it on. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. Exhuming things that's better left alone. But I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. Exhuming things that's better left alone. I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Yeah, tonight I'm sitting alone digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. I'm digging up bones. Exhuming things that's better left alone. I'm resurrecting memories of a love that's dead and gone. Do you know the way to San Jose? I've been away so long, I may go wrong and lose my way. Do you know the way to San Jose? I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose. L.A. is a great big freeway. Put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star. Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass. And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas. You can really breathe in San Jose. They've got a lot of space. There'll be a place where I can stay. I was born and raised in San Jose. I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose. Fame and fortune is a magnet. It can pull you far away from home. With a dream in your heart, you're never alone. Dreams turn into dust and blow away. And there you are without a friend. You pack your car and ride away. I've got lots of friends in San Jose. Do you know the way to San Jose? Do you know the way to San Jose? L.A. is a great big freeway. Put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star. Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass. And all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas. I've got lots of friends in San Jose. Do you know the way to San Jose? Can't wait to get back to San Jose. Woh-woh, woh-woh, woh-woh, woh-woh. Woh-woh, woh-woh, woh-woh, woh-woh. Woh-woh, woh-woh, woh-woh. Don't rock the jukebox, I wanna hear some jones. My heart ain't ready for the rolling stones. I don't feel like rocking since my baby's gone. So don't rock the jukebox, play me a country song. Before you drop that quarter, keep one thing in mind. You got a heartbroke hillbilly standing here in line. I've been down and lonely ever since she left. Before you punch that number, could I make one request? Don't rock the jukebox, I wanna hear some jones. My heart ain't ready for the rolling stones. I don't feel like rocking since my baby's gone. So don't rock the jukebox, play me a country song. Now I ain't got nothing against rock and roll. But when your heart's been broken, you need a song that's slow. There ain't nothing like a steel guitar, a crown of memories. Before you spend your money, baby, play a song for me. 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All my dreams fall like rain on the downtown train. All my dreams fall like rain on the downtown train. All my dreams fall like rain on the downtown train. All my dreams fall like rain on the downtown train. All my dreams fall like rain on the downtown train. I've just closed my eyes again. Climbed aboard the dream weaver train. Trying to take away my worries of today. And leave tomorrow behind. Dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the night. Dream weaver, I believe we can reach the morning light. Fly me high through the starry skies. Maybe to an astral plane. Cross the highways of fantasy. Help me to forget today's pain. Dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the night. Dream weaver, I believe we can reach the morning light. Though the dawn may be coming soon. There still may be some time. Fly me away to the bright side of the moon. Meet me on the other side. Dream weaver, I believe you can get me through the night. Dream weaver, I believe we can reach the morning light. Dream weaver. Dream weaver. Dream weaver. My love, there's only you in my life. The only thing that's right. My first love, you're every breath that I take. You're every step I make. And I, I want to share all my love with you. No one else with you. And your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, they tell me how much you care. Oh yes, you will always be my endless love. Two hearts, two hearts that beat as one. Our lives have just begun. Forever, I'll hold you close in my arms. I can't resist your charms. My love, I'll be a fool for you, I'm sure. You know I don't mind. Oh, you know I don't mind. Loving you, you mean the world to me. Oh, I know, I know, I found in you, my endless love. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. Endless love, oh love. I'll be there for you, I do. You know I don't mind. Oh, you know I don't mind. Yes. You'll be the only one. Cause no one can deny. This love I have inside. And I'll give it all to you. My love, my love, my love. My endless love. My love, my love, my love. You call and wake me up the way you always do. Say you miss me and you're sorry. Déjà vu. You push the button in the heart you know so well. The wall starts coming down and I remind myself. Every time I think you might have changed. Put aside the anger and the blame. Make myself believe that there's a way to work it out. Every time you say let's try again. Begging me to let you back in. Every time I do. Every time you lie. Every time I cry. If only promises could just erase the past. I could open up my heart enough to take you back. But we've been down this road time and time again. I've learned the hard way how the story always ends. Every time I think you might have changed. Put aside the anger and the blame. Make myself believe that there's a way to work it out. Every time you say let's try again. Begging me to let you back in. Every time I do. Every time you lie. Every time I cry. Every time I think you might have changed. Put aside the anger and the blame. Make myself believe that there's a way to work it out. Every time you say let's try again. Begging me to let you back in. Every time I do. Every time you lie. Every time I cry. Every time I do. Every time you lie. Every time I cry. Every time you lie. Every time you lie. Every time you lie. Who's gonna ride that chrome three wheel? Who's gonna make that first mistake? Who wants to wear gypsy leather? All the way to Miami. Who wants to break the news about Uncle Joe? You remember Uncle Joe? He was the one afraid to cut the cake. Who wants to tell poor Aunt Sarah? Joe's run off to violate. Joe's run off to violate. Who wants to brave those bronze beauties? Lying in the sun. With their long soft hair falling. Flying as they run. Oh they smile so shy and they flirt so well. And they lay you down so fast. Till you look straight up insane. Oh Lord. Am I really here at last? Who wants to play those eights and aces? Who needs a steak? Who wants to take that long shot gamble? And head out to violate. Head out who wants to go to violate. Head out who wants to go to violate. Head out who wants to go to violate. Who wants to go to violate. Who's gonna do it? Who's gonna do it? Who wants to go to violate? Who wants to do it? Who wants to go to violate? All of her days have gone soft and cloudy. All of her dreams have gone dry. All of her nights have gone sad and shady. She's getting ready to fly. Fly away. Fly away. Fly away. Life in the city can make you crazy. The sounds of the sand and the sea. Life in a high rise can make you hungry. For things that you can't even see. Fly away. Fly away. Fly away. In this whole world there's nobody as lonely as she. A voice that loves me. There's nowhere to go and there's nowhere that she'd rather be. She's looking for lovers and children playing. She's looking for signs of the spring. She listens for laughter and sounds of dancing. She listens for any old things. Fly away. Fly away. Fly away. In this whole world there's nobody as lonely as she. A voice that loves me. There's nowhere to go and there's nowhere that she'd rather be. All of her days have gone soft and cloudy. All of her dreams have gone dry. All of her nights have gone sad and shady. She's getting ready to fly. Fly away. Fly away. Fly away. Fly away. Where are my days? Where are my nights? Where is this place? I wanna fly. I wanna fly. I wanna fly. I wanna fly. Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words, hold my hand. In other words, baby, kiss me. Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore. You are all I long for, all I worship and adore. In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you. On this edition of Lexington Now, the 12 Lions Film Festival, Ag Tech and Celebrate Lexington. I'm Neal Noah, and welcome to Lexington Now for the week of September 15th, 2025. The third annual 12 Lions Film Festival is almost here. We caught up with the Kentucky Theater's Hayward Wilkerson, who filled us in on this growing film showcase. 12 Lions, it's the third year we're doing it. It is a juried international film festival here at the Kentucky Theater. This year, we will have 48 official selection films from 16 countries. So all those are free. A lot of wonderful narrative films, documentaries, shorts, animated films, and student films. We get hundreds of entries from all around the world. And we have a great team of volunteer jurors that watch every film. And we take this seriously, and we know the people that make the films take this very seriously. So we guarantee that any film that's submitted to 12 Lions, many, many people, roughly 10 different jurors will view that film. Our goal is to keep it within the Kentucky Theater because we think it's such a beautiful venue to screen films. Of course, that limits it, so it's a pretty exclusive festival. Three years ago, when we started working on this festival, you wouldn't believe how many meetings were devoted strictly to coming up with a name. And there were a lot of names. And we were going nowhere. We just didn't feel inspired. And then our board chair, Lisa Meek, was in our lobby. If you look up in our lobby, you will see in the plaster friezes that surround the lobby, there are 12 Lions. And so we thought that was a somewhat enigmatic, mysterious name, but also a name that has roots to the history of the Kentucky Theater. Every day, there's more and more going on here in Lexington to attract people. We do this a week before Keeneland, so if people want to come and see film, they can enjoy. So we just thought that time was ripe in Lexington to start an international film festival. And the Kentucky has always been dedicated to supporting local and regional filmmakers. And we screen a lot of regional filmmakers in the festival. Every year, we've done that. We want to bring more film to Kentucky. We want to support Kentucky filmmakers. And we want to show off the beautiful Kentucky Theater as an amazing venue to screen films. We try to do a variety of other things to make the festival fun. So we do filmmaking workshops. Those are free. We're continuing that tradition. We have four free filmmaking workshops this year. And then we have a number of special screenings. These are people that aren't within the competition, but we're doing this as special screenings. On Thursday night, we're partnering with Apple Shop to do a fundraiser for Kentucky Humanities. So we're going to be showing a groundbreaking documentary called Stranger with a Camera. Then we're kicking off that night with old-time Appalachian music by Chestnut Ridge. And we're going to donate 100% of the gate to Kentucky Humanities. Then on Saturday, Steve Zahn, who now is at Kentucky, who lives in Kentucky, we are debuting his film She Dances, which star Steven stars his daughter Audrey Zahn. They will be here. That's at 7 o'clock Saturday. We're going to show the film, debut the film. And then Steve, his daughter, and Haley Cish, who also acts in the film, will do a Q&A afterwards. The film was shot largely in this area within Lexington in the region. So many, many Lexingtonians and Kentuckians were involved in the production of the film. And we really hope to sell out. We really expect to see 800 people down here for that film. Then Sunday, another really, really special treat. Most folks will know Michael Shannon. Michael Shannon is from Lexington. He's a very, very well-known actor, and he's now a director. He's going to be doing a master class on filmmaking on Sunday at 12.15. And then later in the afternoon, we're doing the Lexington premiere of his first film as a director called Eric LaRue. So we rely heavily on volunteers. As I said, all the people that judge the films, they're volunteers. Our entire committee that organizes this festival, they are volunteers. And we use a lot of volunteers during the festival. If you're interested in volunteering, just send an e-mail to info at kentuckytheatre.org, and we will add you to a list, and we will be sending out a call for volunteers within the next few days. The festival starts Thursday, September the 25th. It runs through September the 28th. You can find out in a lot of different ways. If you go to kentuckytheatre.org, you will see more about the film festival. Or if you go to 12LionsFilmFestival.com, you will also find all the information. You'll find schedules of events, workshops, these special screenings, and all of the official selection films. If you love film, if you're a filmmaker, if you're a film lover, there's really nothing better this year in Kentucky than coming to 12 Lions Film Festival. You are going to see incredible films from all around the world by emerging and experienced filmmakers. There are workshops on production assistant work, on post-production, on production design. We've got Steve Zahn's going to be here. Michael Shannon is going to be here. So you do not want to miss this if you love film. Alltech has awarded three startups with Bluegrass Ag Tech Challenge grants. We were there for the serve. I'm excited about the mission of Bluegrass Ag Tech because I know it will provide growth and career opportunities that will keep my students connected to what I feel is our nation's most important industry. I'm honored to be here today and continue that work of providing opportunities in ag tech in this role. And we're thrilled to have you with us here today as we celebrate innovation in Kentucky agriculture. Our challenge grant program is designed to support entrepreneurs who are bringing new ideas and solutions to agriculture. Each year we invite companies to apply. We carefully review their projects. And the board chooses to invest in those that have the greatest potential to make an impact for Kentucky farmers, our economy, and the environment. Including today's awardees, we provided $925,000 in direct grant funding, which has and will continue to leverage more in private investment and create real opportunities for growth. As you heard, Alltech, along with the university, the city of Lexington, Fayette, and the Kentucky Department of Agriculture are partners in the Bluegrass Ag Tech Development Corp. We started with nothing. And we built this very intentionally and very purposely. And like so many initiatives in Lexington, from my point of view, partnerships are what make it work. Partnerships can make anything work. And we really discovered that big time in the pandemic. So we have results from our first round of challenge grants awarded in 2024 that show that this partnership is making progress. We have supported jobs. We've created new jobs. And we have engaged 36 farms in our first round of challenge grants. So we are having an impact not only on the farm, but on the economy. Agriculture is a growing part of Fayette County's economy. A new study just out about a month ago shows agriculture contributes $2.6 billion to Fayette County's economy every single year. That's pretty important for us. The goal of these grants is to grow the number by producing new jobs in ag tech. And I do want to reference back many, many years when I was on a council, as a council member on the council, and I used to have these conversations with Pierce Lyons. He'd say, Linda, we have all the parts. We have the land. We have the tech. We have the people. Let's do this. You can kind of hear him say this. And so we want Lexington, we want Kentucky, and the Bluegrass to become the international hub of ag tech business. This is why we are doing this, to raise ag tech to where it needs to be here. So I congratulate all of our first round winners, some of whom are here. And now we have our second round. And we're very excited to announce the three winners of our Bluegrass Ag Tech Challenge grants. And as I say the name of the company, I would like to invite a representative up to receive a plaque. First is Campbell Inc., which transforms byproducts of corn production into compostable food containers, which are alternatives to plastic packaging. Congratulations. Second, Orb Technologies, which produces building material from straw and grass crops. How awesome is that? And third, Centaire International, which is developing a process, I love this one too, that converts invasive carp into fertilizer. How awesome is that? Please come forward. When we come back, celebrate Lexington. Thank you. Welcome back to Lexington Now. Celebrate Lexington presented a special award this past week. Celebrate Lexington's vision is to create a community that actively participates in preserving and celebrating Lexington's unique character. Among our signature efforts, we have planted 8,000 daffodils across Lexington to honor our champions. We have a few pictures around the room that we've tried to place so you all can see them. We've created three book trails in Lexington parks, and we've helped create and actively promote our official city flower, the coneflower. So every year, and especially this year, it's very important to me to be here for the presentation of the Isabel Yates Community Champion Award. Isabel was a very dear friend of mine for many years, and when I first came on the council, she was the vice mayor. And what a role model I had as a brand new council member. She was just awesome. And this is such a wonderful way to remember Isabel and everything she did for our community. And Isabel would be so pleased and excited about today's announcement, Harry. The 2025 winner of the 9th Annual Isabel Yates Community Champion Award is Harry Clark. So Harry Clark retired as a professor at the University of Kentucky School of Music in 2011. After 43 years of service there and after a teaching career of over 50 years. He was the UK director of band for 21 of those years, which I found amazing. I love that. Beginning in 1968. In 1989, he was appointed as the director of School of Music, where the school grew into one of UK's prestigious areas of excellence. During those 43 years at UK, he taught instrumental music education and was director of student teaching in music. He was elected to the city council in 2012, during which time he was on the planning and public works, public safety, and general government committees, and the corridors commission. He has continued his work in public service, including many committees, boards, and commissions, such as Picnic with the Pops, Tree Board, Trees Lex, Water Quality Fees, the Moon Dance Foundation, Friends of the Arboretum, America in Bloom, Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation, and most recently as president of Opera Lex. In support of the internationally known UK opera program. During his career at UK, he was presented with two Kentucky Colonel Awards. He currently serves as a member of the Lexington Board of Adjustment. Before his appointment to the faculty, he served as director of Fine Arts Services and wrote the Sunday column, The Fine Arts, for the Lexington Herald Leader. Harry has been a member of the Kentucky Music Educators Association for 62 years, where he was awarded its Distinguished Service Award and served as chairman of its Futures Committee. He admits that the three most fun experiences in his life was his membership in the Lexington Philharmonic French Horn Section, his short time as director of the Calvary Baptist Church Choir, and 14 years as a Little League baseball coach, including several years coaching all-star tournament teams. Certainly a highlight in his life was being honored by UK for his work there and in public service with an honorary doctor's degree. Harry insists that the best of his life is his 46 years of marriage to Mary Beth Stevens Clark and the success of their son Matthew. I love this city. I love this city. I love its people. I love its energy. I love its opportunities. I love its land. Do you know what I mean? So, as far as I'm concerned, community service to this city is an absolute honor. And I'm so thankful to receive this award, and I want to thank you all so much for thinking of me to do this. I think of Lexington as the best place in the world to live, and if I had to live anyplace else, I think I'd be unhappy. This is the only place in the world I want to live. So, if I can do anything to help Lexington, I've always wanted to do that. And so, this is kind of the epitome of that kind of service, and I appreciate it so much. You've all been so good to me, and it's good to have met so many of you. And we go way back to Merrick and Blum a long time ago, don't we, Anne? So, it's kind of neat to say that I was at the beginning of this organization in a sense. So, again, thank you all so very much. 250 Lex Equinox Jazz Fest is this week, and there is a lineup of incredible musicians. Here's more. Today, we're here to talk about Equinox Jazz Fest, presented by Origins Jazz Series and 250 Lex. Equinox Jazz Fest is set to take place September 17th through the 21st, with several events taking place right here at the Kentucky Theatre. From intimate showcases to explosive headliner performances, the Jazz Fest embodies the spirit that has driven jazz forward for over a century. The events will offer audiences the chance to witness compelling jazz musicians in settings designed for genuine musical appreciation and community connection. We said we wanted to create events that were interesting, inclusive, and memorable. And I think if you come, and we encourage everybody to get that festival pass, as a matter of fact, so you don't miss a darn thing, you're going to see that. Equinox Jazz Fest, a five-day celebration of world-class jazz concerts, starting on September 17th through September 21st. That's nine events over a five-day period, with the majority of them being presented here in the historic Kentucky Theatre. Jazz is this country's most original art form. It is the music that is uniquely American, and its influence on the shaping of American culture is profound and indelible. Given Lex 250's commitment to the authentic telling of the story of our great city, it is only appropriate that jazz music be highlighted and uplifted by way of this wonderful festival. At the Equinox Jazz Fest, you will be able to witness the full spectrum of contemporary jazz, from established legends to rising stars, an amazing array of vocal artistry as well as instrumental virtuosity. You'll experience the intimacy of small groups as well as the explosive dynamism of the big band. Our performing artists will range from musicians of international renown to brilliant, emerging artists who are regional and local favorites. On Wednesday evening, the 17th of September, we have Brandon Meeks and his quintet from Indianapolis, an amazing blend of jazz with hip-hop and neo-soul and blues. Then on Thursday evening is another one that we're really excited about for its ability to call back to some of the most historic jazz musicians in Lexington. The Auslan Daily Jazztet is performing with a vocalist named Rose Colella from Los Angeles. The thing that strikes me about Rose is that she reminds me so much of Gail Winters, who is one of our stalwart jazz musicians here in Lexington who sadly is no longer with us. On Friday evening is my personal moment to shine as part of the OJS All-Stars. This is our all-star big band that we've performed in this very space, in the Kentucky Theater, twice now, performing the Duke Ellington Nutcracker. It's an augmentation of musicians from Lexington and the greater region, all folks who have performed as part of Origins Jazz Series in their careers. This concert is a special one where we're paying homage to the Narcotic Farm, which for those who are unfamiliar is what is now the Federal Medical Center on Leestown Road. In 1935, it opened as the Narcotic Farm and it was the first drug rehab prison in the entire country. As a result of the population they served and jazz's history with narcotics, some of the greatest musicians in jazz history ended up at the Narcotic Farm, including Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Ray Charles. That history, as well as the complex history of that facility, is something that's really worth telling the history of more often. I know some people will be very familiar, but many are still in the dark about that. This big band concert features all compositions that are associated with those performers in one way or another. We're joined by the amazing Camille Thurman on saxophone and voice for that performance, who had the most audacious press clipping of anyone on the festival. Downbeat said that, imagine if Sarah Vaughan could also play saxophone like Dexter Gordon. That takes us to Saturday, which is our biggest, fullest day. At 10 a.m. at the Farmer's Market, we'll have a group named Brazucas, who will bring the music of Brazil to us. Moving on, a collaboration with Outside the Spotlight at 3.30 in the State Theater here at the Kentucky Theater. Outside the Spotlight is one of our family of musical organizations here in Lexington that focuses on creative, spontaneous, improvised music. This is an awesome concert with Tim Daisy and Chris Corsano. Then we finish the night off with our two biggest headliners, NEA jazz master Kenny Garrett and drummer, producer, songwriter Nate Smith. And then on Sunday, we finish the festival out with two great performances. The Kentucky State University Generations Jazz Ensemble and Candice Springs, who I'll throw my own audacious press clipping out here now. Imagine if you blended Nora Jones and Alicia Keys into one artist. She's that good as a pianist and as a vocalist, and we're lucky to have her here in Lexington for a second time. She absolutely blew us away the last time. Lots of live meeting coverage is coming on LexTV and streaming online this week ahead of fall break. And remember, you can also find the most up-to-date information on non-televised city business at lexingtonky.gov. Here's this week's meeting coverage. That's all for now, but as always, you can keep up with us on social media, check out the latest traffic updates on X at Lexrex, or catch our live traffic cams on lexingtonky.com. For all of us at LexTV, I'm Neil Noah, and that's it for now. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time. We're a real tough cookie with a long history Of breaking little hearts like the one in me Before I put another notch in my lipstick case You better make sure you put me in my place Hit me with your best shot Come on, hit me with your best shot Hit me with your best shot Fire away Hit me with your best shot Why don't you hit me with your best shot Hit me with your best shot Fire away Everybody's talking to computers, they're all dancing to a drum machine I know I'm living on the outside, scared of Hit me with your best shot Hey, we are here with K-9 Supervisor Sergeant Rob Frazier and K-9 Raya. Thank you for joining us today. And we're going to talk a little bit about the K-9 unit here at the Lexington Police Department. I think you've already made a friend. I did. You did. So, Sergeant Frazier, you have inherited quite a bit of history when you came to this unit. How long have you been out here? Four years. Four years. So, and Lexington was one of the very first K-9 units in the country in this particular region. Back in 1962, then it was the Chief, E.C. Hale, chartered the first K-9 unit. That's when it was Lexington City Police Department. And he had sent an officer out to Missouri to receive weeks and weeks of training. And came back and started the unit with about six officers, I think, at the time. They built the first facility in 64, second one in 68. How long have you been in this particular building? This kennel was opened in 2020. Okay. And this is state of the art? Probably a little bit different from where you came from? We like to think so. Okay. All right. So, you've got all the dogs are housed here? Yes. Okay. All right. So, we're going to spend some time today talking with a couple of your officers. Can you tell us a little bit about who they are and what they do? Sure. I've got Officer Chaz Grider, who's our head trainer right now. He also can deploy in the street. And he operates a bomb K-9, so he can also run events and that kind of stuff. We've also got Officer Pat Murray, who used to be a trainer here, but he is also an officer on the street and handles a narcotics K-9. All right. We're looking forward to it. We are here with K-9 Officers Chaz Grider and Pat Murray. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Could you all tell us a little bit about how you came to be in the K-9 unit? Sure. Yeah. I came in in 2011 after I had been on the street for about five years, and I'm coming up on year 14 on my second dog, who's had a good long career, and it's been great. Yeah. I came to the police department in 2012. When I got here, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was K-9. So, I spent four years on patrol, went to K-9, and I've been here for, I don't know, probably ten years now. All right. So, Sergeant mentioned how many dogs we have. So, how do we use the dogs? What are the purposes, and what do we have? Patrol dogs, we have different types of dogs. What do we have? Yeah. So, our primary three things are going to be patrol dogs, narcotic dogs, and bomb dogs. Obviously, we use dogs because they smell better than us. So, the main breeds that you're going to see is, obviously, your typical German Shepherd. That's what everybody thinks about for a police dog. We also have Belgian Malinois. We have a Dutch Shepherd. And then, obviously, you saw Raya. We have a Lab Floppy Ears dog sometimes for single-purpose use. Okay. What is the difference between the three, the patrol, narcotics, and bomb? So, the patrol dogs, they're going to be used primarily whenever we need to find subjects who have committed crimes. Whether it's someone who's broken into a building, they've committed a violent crime, and we need to track their odor and find them for the sake of us and the public. Your explosive dogs, I'm sure Chaz can go into it more. This is going to be for your big events to make sure that we don't have any explosives hidden. And then, narcotics, primary use is going to be for vehicles that we suspect there's narcotics inside. So, I know we talked about the different types of dogs. Are they multipurpose, or do they just – if that's a narcotics dog, that's just a narcotics dog? Yeah. No, most of our dogs are dual-purpose. We'll have – I think we have two single-purpose dogs. One was Rhea, who you spoke with earlier. Yeah, I spoke with her. Yeah, spoke with her. She's an explosives dog. That's her only job. We have another narcotics detection dog, and he's with our narcotics unit. He's only narcotics. All the other dogs are dual-purpose, which means they'll do patrol, which is apprehension, finding people, finding evidence. And they're also either narcotics or explosives. My dog, Kato, is a dual-purpose patrol and bomb dog. So, he does both, and we're considered a regional asset. So, we go outside the county. We may go to the Derby. This year, we helped out with Derby. And anywhere they need us for explosives detection, we'll go when we're called. Well, I think that's a good point, too, to talk about how we assist other agencies, because having some of the resources that Lexington has, even with other units as well, smaller agencies that just don't have those capabilities, we can help out with that. And that's been very beneficial in a lot of different ways. So, tell us a little bit about how we get the dogs, how do we select the dogs, how do we train the dogs, and then I guess we've got to select the officers, too. So, tell us a little bit about the process. Super important processes. When we look for the dogs, we look for a dog that is environmentally sound. We need to make sure that they're comfortable in every environment, because it can be really weird out there in the world, right, and you're dealing with something with the mentality of a toddler. So, you want them to be very environmentally sound so they don't get afraid of things. We look for dogs that have great noses. Pat mentioned their best feature for us is their nose. It helps us locate what we need to find, whether it's missing people, criminals, narcotics, explosives. So, we always look to make sure that they have a really good hunt drive and that they hunt and that they have really good changes and they can find things. First, it's just the ball, because they know what a ball is. It's easy to see. So, we make sure they have a lot of ball drive and that they hunt methodically. So, they're always checking and looking and hopeful that they're going to discover something, because that makes the training take a lot better than if they didn't care. Well, as far as the training process, I know when we talked a little bit about the history of the unit, I know it was at the time it was Patrolman Kenny Watson had gone out to St. Louis and received weeks and weeks of training. He actually retired as assistant chief. But he was the first one that brought a lot of that back from another department. So, I'm assuming that we have to train the officers and the dogs. So, we do. We have two in-house trainers as of now, myself and Officer Joey Lasardi. Joey has just stepped into that role. I've received training from a place called Tar Heel Canine in North Carolina, a certified trainer there. So, we train all the dogs in-house. So, we'll go get these dogs green. They don't know their name. They don't know anything. We bring them back, and we teach them everything there is to know about how to do their job here for this city. And that's it. It's pretty efficient. It can take a little longer, but sometimes you want a good product, right? You don't want a mass-produced product. So, we pride ourselves on that here. We have excellent dogs, and we have excellent handlers. When we go into the handler selection, we want to see a good cop first. Were they good on the street? Were they active? Did they get along with the community? Are they professional? Did they have a good head on their shoulders? And then we have an interview process by which they come down. They have an interview, a selection, and that's how we select our offs. You're obviously getting the right ones because I noticed when we walked in out here, we noticed a lot of trophies and a lot of things that the unit has fared well over the years as far as competitions and things like that. And I know we depend on patrol. We depend on K-9 a lot. As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago, there was an abandoned building that we got an alarm at, and it was empty. We knew no one was in there, but K-9 went in, and they were able to clear it so quick. And I remember years ago when we talked to K-9, they were talking about how quickly a K-9 could clear a building looking for someone compared to multiple officers. And the success rate of them finding suspects that the officers would have missed, they're spending way more time. The suspects, the officers spend way more time to search, and their success of finding all the suspects is rarely 100%. The K-9s, it's a fraction of the time, and they have almost 100% success rate. So for officers that want to put in for the K-9 unit and get selected, how do you pair the officer with the K-9 personality-wise? Right. And so typically what we'll do is we'll just say, And we can just pair it with anyone. If we do see, like, a personality conflict, we might say, this dog might need a senior handler, somebody that's going to be getting another dog, their second dog or third dog. And so we just kind of play it by ear and just see what works best. But we make sure that everyone gets the most out of the training and that we have a good team that goes on the street to make sure everybody's safe in the community and at the play day, like the dogs and the handler. Outstanding. You all do great work. And I know everybody on the police department appreciates you, and I'm sure the citizens of Lexington certainly appreciate you being there too. And everybody loves to see it. When they see the vehicle pull up, it says K-9 on it, they just don't want to come over and pet you, right, and pet the dog because that's probably not the kind of dog you want to pet. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all very much for joining us this month and educating the community a little bit about our K-9 unit and what a stellar unit it is and the good work that you do. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. So, Bajie, it was so nice learning more about the K-9 unit here at the Lexington Police Department and what they provide to us on patrol and just the community. Outstanding resource and so much history behind it. And as you mentioned when we first started the episode, we are at the Roy H. Martis K-9 Center. That's the name of the facility. A lot of history on that. A very sad story. Officer Martis, he was a 13-year veteran with the Lexington Police Department. And the officers earlier had talked about how we help other agencies. And Martis and his bloodhound, he had a bloodhound at the time, her name was Amanda. She was actually pregnant. And they were actually searching and assisting with a manhunt for a suspect that had escaped jail and was also a murder suspect. And they actually located the suspect. And unfortunately, they were struck by a gunfire during the event in Mercer County. And that was on August 23, 1985. And it was a very sad day in the history of the Lexington Police Department. But his legacy carries on. And now the building is named after him. And every officer that's ever worked for K-9 certainly is very aware of his contributions and what he did to the unit. There's also a street named after him where the old facility before this one was built. So join us next month for another episode of Your Lex PD as we continue to explore specialized units here with the Lexington Police Department. Your Lex PD. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Jenny. Welcome to the Lexington Senior Center. I am going to teach a beginning yoga, mostly deep stretches. Do what you can when you can. Take a pause whenever you need to. And if you have a block, we use yoga blocks. You can use one or two. And we will be on our knees a few times, so if you know your knees need a little extra pad, we have thick pads. You might have something at home. If not, a pillow. I always double up my mat, so if you need that also. All right. First, let's just sit up nice and tall. Get comfortable. If this crisscross is not comfy for you, you can always stick out one leg. Sit on a pillow, blanket, whatever you feel there. But right now, we're just going to kind of close our eyes, think about elongating our spine, and take some deep inhales through the nose. And you can either exhale through your nose or soft opening of the mouth. Just kind of quiets the body, gets us ready for our little practice here. So deep inhale. Exhale. Let's take a couple more. Exhale. On this next inhale, think about lifting that spine again. Inhale deeply. We're just going to lower left of your left shoulder. Take your time. Maybe a little tweak forward, tweak back. Lifting the head up again. Take a deep inhalation. Exhale. Right ear, right shoulder. Gentle stretch. And good. Lifting the head up, nice and tall. Lowering chin to chest. Exhale deeply. And let's get these half circles. Ear to shoulder. Chin to chest. Ear to shoulder. Lifting the head up. Let's reach the chin to the sky. Let the head rest back. You may open your mouth here. Take a little jaw stretch, neck, whatever you feel like. Good. And now, bringing everything back to center, let's go ahead and get these wrists moving. Put any direction you like to feel here. We are on our palms a lot. You can also flick the water. Finger movements going. Sweeping up. While we're here, let's interlace the fingers. Press palms to the ceiling. Gaze up. Take a big inhale. And slowly lower left hand as you're reaching upright. And let's hold this stretch for about three long breaths. And one. Good. Sweep up. This time just point the fingers to the sky. Inhale. And sway to the other side. Three long breaths. And good. One more. And push off. Reaching high again. Take a deep inhale. This time we're just going to take a gentle stretch to your left. Maybe one hand goes in back, the other one in front. This time just your first twist. Ease into it. And inhale. Rise. Every time we rise, think lengthening the spine. Inhale. Exhale. Twisting to the other side. Relax your shoulders. And good. Coming center. Let's take our fingertips way behind us. Opening our chin and our chest. Take a inhale. Exhale. Wrap forward. Palms touch. And draw your navel in, your chest in, and a big stretch of the spine away from you. Doing that twice more. Big opening of the chin and the chest. Lift with inhale. Exhale. Contract. One more. Exhale. Round. And palms together. Really reach, reach, reach forward with your fingers as your spine presses away. And good. Let's open it up. Shake it out. Left arm. Just going to reach across. Going to stretch the back of the shoulder. And while you're here, you can give your fingers another little tap, stretch, thumb circles. Inhaling and exhaling. And open again. Take a inhale. Your right arm's coming across this time. Just going to take a nice stretch. Thumbs, fingers if you need that, wrist. And good. All right, one more while we're seated here. We're going to turn towards our right thigh. Just kind of lay your chest down. Maybe fingertips in front, whatever you're feeling. What you should feel is that left hip taking that nice stretch. Take some long breaths. Feel that nice stretch. Walk yourself back up. Turn to your left thigh. Walk your fingers out. Let the chest lower. Hold the stretch. And good. Rising up. And now the last one here. We're going to spider walk our fingers out as far as they'll go. And enjoy the stretch coming up from the pelvis. And now this is going to help us come all the way to tabletop, we call it. I'll turn sideways for you. So take your time. Get up on your hands and knees. I'm going to double up the mat here for my knees. Knees are going to be right underneath your hips. Palms are flat. Or if you want to make a fist here, everything's in line. Shoulders, elbows, wrist. Let's continue the curving of the spine, which is called cat pose. Think about shoulder blades to the ceiling, tailbone tucks. Take a big exhale while you're here. Inhale, you want to just let a little bit of the sway of that lower C curve. As the chin lifts, the tail lifts a little. There's your inhale. Let's give ourselves two more flows of these. Rounding, contracting, exhaling. Inhaling, small lift of the chin and the tail. Once more. And cow pose. So that was cat and cow. We'll flow into spinal balance now, getting the spine completely straight. Let's extend the right leg back first. Press the toes into your mat. Pressing through that heel. Nice stretch of the Achilles. And then from there, we're just going to lift that leg up. Just your leg for right now. Make some ankle circles. Your eyes are gazing down at your mat. Your shoulders are gazing down. Now taking the left hand, which is the opposite of your foot, touch your mat with your pinky finger. And if you can, reach it up. Eyes are looking straight down. This is spinal balance, so you may feel a little unstable. Now I want you to go for a big reach. Fingertips and heels or toes. Reach with the inhale. Exhale. Let's bring it all back down to your tabletop. Other side. Left toes. Press into the mat to stretch the heel. Lift that leg up. Ankle circles. Reaching out. Right hand reaches out. Pinky finger down first just to find stability. And then see if you can lift off. And then go for the reach. Fingers reach. Heels reach. And tabletop. Now we're going to flow that. Take your time if I go too fast. One breath as you reach out. That's your inhale. Reach out with the opposite. Come back to your tabletop. Reach out with the right hand, left foot. Long reach with an inhale. Tabletop. Two more. Last one. And good. Now what we do is just send our hips back to our heels. It's called Child's Pose. Now if you've had a knee replacement, your knees don't bend that much, you can keep these hips high. If you can, send it back. Hips touch your heels. Forehead can go on a block. Hands come down by your feet. And this is your resting pose. If anything gets difficult, this is where you will fold to. Let's take five long breaths here. Just kind of check in. Extended Child's from here. Extend your hands all the way to the top of the mat. Maybe the knees open up a little bit more for comfort. You can curl your toes or flatten them. Just go for a big reach. Really walk those fingers up. Pressing your armpits down. And rise back up to that tabletop where we started. We're going to make this into a little twist now, which is also called Thread the Needle. We're going to take our left arm, rise it up, and thread it through. So your palm of your hand will be up. Your left ear is going to go to the mat. Hips can be high or hips can be low. Enjoy that spinal twist. And good. We're going to unwind there. Oh, that felt good. And left hand down. The other side. Right arm opens up. The twist first. And spins that spine. Ear to mat. Reach through with the palm of your hand. And rise up. Hopefully that got a few little vertebrae loosened up. Now the big plank. Hands are flat. We extend our legs straight back. I'll show you modified. Push into the earth. Arms are straight. Now if you need a modification, just lower the knees and still push. And stretch. And stretch. If you need a modification, just lower the knees. And still pushing out of the shoulders there. Maybe you want to stretch your feet a little more. I shift heels to the front, to the back. Doing good, doing good. Give yourself one more breath there. And now, everyone lower the knees. Let's walk to our knees. Curl our toes because we're going to pop those knees up. Now if this is uncomfortable, come on up. We're going to be coming up in just a second. But it's a great stretch for the feet. So with that said, lift your hips. Now for ragdoll, you want your knees deeply bent. You want your upper body feeling like a loosey-goosey ragdoll. Hold on to something. Your shins, your feet, your thighs. And you want your head just to relax. Take some deep breaths here. As we come up, we're coming up super-duper slow. Take your hands to your thighs. Your spine is rounded. When you get to the top, roll the shoulders up, back, and down. We're just going to kind of check out here. It's called Mountain Pose. You're straight up. Your palms are open. Just kind of bringing the blood flow back up. Take in some good mornings. Going to warm up these hips. Feet are hip-width apart. Grab your waist. Give it a good tuck. You're going to send your hips way back. Bend your knees and just send your body over parallel where your spine is parallel with the earth. You're not touching your thighs yet. Now the energy is going to come from the legs to the hamstrings to the hips to the mid-body, which is your core. Lift up nice and tall. This just kind of warms up the hamstrings, the hips, folding over, and then bring yourself back up using all of those muscles to lift up. Take an inhale at the top. Exhale, send the hips back. Bend the knees. Push from the heels to the hams to the hips to the core. Up. Okay, we're going one more, and then we're going to fold into Ragdoll again. Bend the knees, send the hips back, lengthen the spine, and now go back to your Ragdoll where we were before. Shake it all out. Things should be a little loosened up now. Rolling up super-duper slow again one more time, and then we're going to get into a little movement here of a small flow. So I'll show you side view and front view. First to start, let's go back to that Mountain Pose, nice and strong. Sweep your arms all the way up, nice straight line. Then we're going to fold again, but the arms circle around. Lengthen the body. Bend the knees on the first few. Hands go behind the calves, and if you can, your nose towards your knees. This is called Forward Fold. Then Monkey Pose. We take our hands to our shin and lengthen our spine. So you've got straight arms, straight legs, straight spine. Monkey Pose. Then bend the knees again. Chair Pose, arms by the ears. Pulse those knees out, warm them up. Now push from the legs again to the center of your body. Just maybe ease back a little. A little back bend. Feel free to go deeper. I don't want you to get too dizzy. Let's do this about three more times. Reach high first, straight lines. Arms circle around, which are called Swan Dive. Into a Forward Fold. Your knees can be bent. They can start to straighten, your choice. Deep breaths here, it's a deeper stretch. One more. Slide your hands in front of your shins, lengthen the spine, Monkey Pose. Bend the knees, sweep the arms by the ears. Chair Pose. Rise straight up, inhale breath. Back bend option. Inhale tall. Swan Dive. We're doing two more. Hands behind. Nose to knees. One more. Monkey Pose. Lengthen, belly's in. Chair Pose. It's a strengthening pose. Feel it in the legs. Power up. Exhale back. Let's go one more time. Everything feels good. Stretch out, lengthen down. Forward Fold. Three breaths. Monkey Pose. Lengthening, belly's in. Chair Pose. Strengthening. And we rest. Open up Mountain. So this is your check-in spot. For this pose, usually you want to maybe grab your water. Shake off your tension. And do a little few side bends and then the fun balance pose. So with a side, I want you to think about taking the curve out of your back. We call it a tilted pelvis. So you try to get the curve out by zipping that belly up, tucking that tailbone under. Let's take your left arm up. Think about lifting up through the ribs and grounding down with the side of the body. And we're going to take a nice little side bend over. Three long breaths like we did when we were seated. You can also take this other hand and support your hip. Slide down your thigh. Wrap it around your waist. One more breath. And use that side body to help you come up nice and strong. Grabbing my toe. All right, tuck the pelvis. Get that sway of the back out. Reach high with the right ribs. As you sway. Three breaths. And one. And side body pulls you up. Good. Roll the shoulders. Relax. Okay, so now for your balance pose, you want to find a focal point in front of yourself or out on the floor somewhere. Just not straight down your toes. So let's start with your right leg. Nice and strong into the floor. Feel the strength coming up the leg to the side body. We're just going to take it real easy here. Slide that left toe in by your ankle. Oh, I'm wobbling already. Now, find that focal point. As that toe lifts up off the floor, you just want to stay, reconnect. Find the focus point and take five long breaths. Once again, you can be at your kitchen counter holding on to something, a chair. Two more breaths. Awesome. Last one. And relax down. Give that hip that you were balancing on a little knee to chest, something to loosen it up. All right, left foot grounded into the earth. Strong trunk of the tree, which is your leg. Slide your right toe in close to your body. Find that focal point. Do what you can. Five breaths. Find that focal point. Do what you can. Five breaths. Two more. And good one. You did fabulous. All right. You do need to practice those every day. Don't worry about practicing yoga every day, but definitely your balance as we age. Let's go wide in a straddle. If you need to turn on your mat, whatever you need. I want you to softly bend your knees, grab your waist and give it a good squeeze. Now, sending the hips back like we did earlier. Soften the knees. Now, your head is really heavy. We're going to think about pulling with the head down to the earth. Hands are going to wrap up behind the thighs, the calves, the heels, whatever you're feeling, but make sure that head's dangling. Give yourself five little breaths here as you slowly pulse through that straddle. And monkey pose, just like we did earlier. It's the same thing, but your legs are in straddle. So monkey pose, a little shake out of the thighs, the knees. We're going to turn this into a twist. So go ahead and press your right hand into the block. You're going to take your left hand, and you're going to push your right hand into the block. And then you're going to take your left hand and you're going to push your right hand into the block. You're going to take your left elbow up, start to twist. If you need a bend in the knee, it would be the right one, that arm that's touching the floor. Open up that hand to the sky. Add the twist along the waist. One more deep breath with that twist. And awesome. Left hand comes down, shake it out again. Relengthen the spine, which is called wide monkey. Left hand staying down, left knee can bend. Right elbow rises, and maybe it goes all the way up. That's up to you. Good, one more breath there. And perfect. Bring it back down, shake it out. Now to come up, turn your heels in, 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock. Take your hands to your thighs, lift the spine, lift your chest, and then let's sweep all the way up. This is a great stretch. It's called five-point start. Always feels good. Take a big breath. And then goddess pose is a soft bend in the knees Soft bend in the knees and the elbows come back. Give yourself two more of these. Inhale. Deeply. Goddess pose. Exhale completely. Last one, inhale. And exhale. And rise. Now flowing into what we call warrior series. Take your back foot, that's going to be your, well, I don't know on the camera. I'm going to take my right foot and turn it to 10 o'clock. My left foot's going to 12 o'clock. Warrior one, you want to try to get these hips centered and the shoulders will be directly over the hips and then the fingertips come up. So your front knee is bent, your back leg is strong at 2 o'clock. Feel like you're on one of those balance beams. Warrior one. And all we're going to do is open our chest and hips. We call it east and west. As the fingertips stay north and south, your face still gazes at your front middle finger. Shoulders relaxed. We call this warrior two. Nice strong pose. Sink as deep as you can. Into peaceful warrior. The right hand drops back, left arm rises. Reach back there. Feel that awesome stretch. Right in the midsection. And cartwheel just with the forearms on the thigh and your right hand is going by the ear and you should look like a diagonal line. Reach with the middle finger, press through that heel. Big stretch, big stretch, big stretch. And good. Push back off. We're coming back to that straddle and onto the other side. So now it'll be your right foot out in front 12 o'clock. Your back foot 10 o'clock. Try to get those hips turning right into warrior one. Arms over hips, shoulders, fingertips. Everything's in line. Open up towards the TV. Your chest and shoulders, hips sink down. You gaze north and south. Warrior two. Left arm sort of drop behind, right arm sweeps up. Reverse warrior or peaceful warrior. Big stretch back. And good. Cartwheel over diagonal. Fingertips right on the upper arm, right by the ear. Fingertips reach. Press through that heel. And perfect. Come back out. Come back to straddle. Let's fold to the floor. So come back to the fold. Let's get one more straddle fold. Reaching back, down, down, down. Pulsing through, pulsing through. Now to come down, lower the knees. Lower the knees. And then maybe visit child's pose again. So sweep those hips around. Check in, grab your water. We're going to slide our hips to one side. And extend your legs to the top of your mat. All right, so you want this 90 degrees in your body. Before we go into the point, really, really hard. Get these feet, give these feet some love. Ankle circles, point, point, flex, flex. And then do what you want there, point or flex. Reaching up, you're in a 90 degrees. See the 90 degrees? So that means you've got to lift up and tuck in. All we're going to do is keep our arms by our ears, hinge at the hips, and reach till you can't reach anymore. And try to keep the spine super straight. Try not to round. We're looking a totally different stretch here. You should be feeling it right in that waistline. Breathe deep. Good, good. And now just kind of walk yourself back up. I'm going to go ahead and turn center. You can stay wherever you want to on your mat. Butterfly pose, soles of the feet come together. Reach for the top of your toes. Drive those heels in the best you can. So you want either a diamond shape or a closed diamond. Once again, we sit up super duper tall. We take a big inhale, just kind of open the knees to start. And now let's gently work the pose. Reach for your ankles. Take a breath, inhale. And then gently open up the knees. Maybe your spine is folding forward. Maybe you're still sitting up tall. Close your eyes and press with that exhale. Inhale. Release. Exhale, work the pose, gentle stretch, whatever it takes. And good. We're just going to do that once more. Inhale, lift the knees. Exhale, gentle press. And now bringing those knees together. This is called windshield wiper. Just kind of roll on your hips. It usually feels pretty good. I'll turn my mat just forward just a second. Taking our spinal twist. Everyone's great with the spinal twist here. Let's go ahead and extend your left leg out, giving your right knee a good hug. See if you can cross that right leg over. You want to line your knee up with the center of your body by giving it a good hug. And then we're going to take our right arm to the sky and slowly start turning our bodies with the spinal twist. And then the right hand is going to reach behind you. Ah, ease into that twist. Hugging that knee. Good. Slowly unwind. Slowly unwind. And if you want to do something fancy, you can just reach for the bottom of that foot. A little stretch. And I'm going to lay that leg down and bring our left knee in. Sit up super tall. See if you can cross it over. Try to bring the knee right in the center of the body. Reaching up just to add length with the spine. And slowly take the turn. Relaxing your back shoulder. Good. Two more breaths. And unwind. Unwind really slow. Maybe lift the leg up. Maybe not. That's up to you. Alright, we are going to roll to our backs now. Now, don't be afraid to roll on your back. I will show you what I mean here. This is a good way to get us down to our backs. You're just going to crisscross your ankles and give yourself a little massage on your spine. But like I said, if you don't like to do that on your spine, you can just come back. You can roll right to left. Give yourself a little massage there. Alright, let's extend those feet straight up. Bringing our toes towards our shins. Pushing our heels to the sky. You can also take your arms up. Dead bug. Get a good stretch. Once again. And now, I want you to try to tuck like a ball. Bring your knees to your chest. Hands wrap around your shins and head comes to your knees. Give that a try. If not, you can keep your head down. Now, from here, everyone lower their neck and head. We'll go into bridge pose. Feet are going flat by our hips. Palms are down by our hips. You're just going to tuck the pelvis. What that means is bring your hips to your ribs. Press your whole spine down. So, that C-curve that's right underneath that. Above the tailbone. Press that to the floor. Let's do that two more times. Just relax. Take a breath. Inhale. Exhale. Tuck it. Warming up that lower back. It's great to do before you get out of bed. Let's release one more time. A little relax. And then, pelvic tilt. Hips to ribs. Spine flat. Now, you're ready for bridge. We're going to push into the heels. Take both hands and just kind of help yourself lift those hips up. If you don't need help, lay the hands down. Maybe touching the mat. Palms open. That's up to you. Lift your heels in a little more. Lift those hips up a little more. Let's take five breaths while we're here. In through the nose. Exhale through the nose or mouth. Lift a little higher on the inhales. You're working your hips and your hamstrings here. In through the nose. Lift. Exhale. Relax. Just two more. Inhale. Lift. Exhale. Slight lower. And last one. Lift. And slowly lower vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae. One more time. You're going to tuck like a ball. Knees go to the chest. Face to the knees. And good. Lower it down. Let's extend those legs straight back up. Give a massage. Now this is what's called happy baby. Everyone loves this one. You're going to open your feet a little bit and bring your knees down to your shoulders, armpits. If you can reach for the outer foot, awesome. If not, the back of the knee is fine. Happy baby. Just kind of press down. Relax. Good. You can rock here as well. And then we're going to go wide straddle. Just going to keep pushing through the heels. Take your hands to your knees and gently open. You can also ankle circles there or keep pushing through the heels. And good. Let's bring those legs back together. Right leg's going down as we hug left knee in. This is another good stretch to do before you get out of bed in the morning. If the hip flexor feels really tight, bend that right knee. But if not, see if you can extend it and hug your left knee to your shoulder. Let's bring the right knee in. Left leg long. If you can, let the heel drop to the mat. It's up to you. Keep bringing that right shoulder up high as you can. And good. Both knees to the chest. We're going to rock and roll one more time before we spinal twist and then start bringing our body to a quiet rest. Feet flat, close to the hips. Knees together, ankles together. We're going to lift our hips, shoot them to the right a little bit and drop both knees to the left. Now, if you feel like your knees are flying in the air, you can put your block underneath the knees there. You want arms, capital T, arms out if you can. You can also do goalposts, but enjoy that little twist there. Take it slow, maybe five long breaths here. Good. Let's rainbow those knees up. Little shift of the hips to the left first. Knees will slowly drop right. Keeping that left shoulder down the best you can, the opposite shoulder. And relax, five breaths. And good, come center. Before we go into total relaxation, I'll show you one more stretch for the hip. It's called thread the needle. Take your left foot and cross it over your right. You're going to thread your hands through that little diamond shape there, interlacing at the bottom of your thigh there or the top of the thigh, whatever you're feeling, and see if you can bring that right thigh to the chest. Gently draw it in. Take some deep inhales and exhales here. Your left hip might be screaming. It might enjoy this. Everyone stores stress differently. Some of us store it in our hips. But you're stretching your right, your left hip, your left hip, left legs crossed over. Let's take two more long breaths. Inhale, a little relaxed. Exhale, draw in. Inhale, relax. Exhale, draw in. And slowly come out of that. You can give that left knee a little circle, which is actually loosening up the hip. Other direction. And good. Left foot just flat. Right goes over. Gently open that knee. That's also, you could just do option one, just opening the knee. It still gets that hip a little loosened up. Here we go. Thread the needle if you can. Interlace the fingers behind the thigh. Take a deep inhale. Exhale, draw that thigh towards your rib cage. Start to quiet your body. Inhale, relax it. Exhale, gentle press. Inhale, relax. Exhale, gently draw in. Got to exhale completely there. Last time. And draw in. And let's come out of the pose. Left foot goes flat. Hip can go circles. All right. Let's end this in a long relaxation. If you have some fun music you like to put on that you normally relax to. Now, a little tip. If you have lower back issues, always keep your knees bent, or you could go into a diamond shape. Let's slide our palms right down by our hips. Before you do that, pick your shoulders up. Give your spine a nice, long line. Your palms are right by your hips, and they're opening to receive positive energy. And then starting with your forehead, we're going to scan our bodies. Relax each and every muscle. With that set, your forehead, focus. Try to relax it. Moving that down to our eyes, especially the eye socket, the back of your eyes. Totally relax. Feel that tension releasing. Down to our cheeks, our throat. Unclench your jaw. Let the shoulders relax. Start to dissolve into your mat. Letting that relaxation move through our center of our bodies, our hips, thighs, calves, feet. Feel free to stay there, or if you want to come with me, you can draw your knees to the chest. Let them float to the left. Feel free to hang out there for a while, or help yourself. Come back up to a seated position, in a comfy seated position. Like I said, crisscross doesn't feel good. Don't feel like you have to go there. A few little neck circles, shoulders, any lasting tension you may be storing. And then take that big rainbow sweep up. Take a breath at the top, inhale. Come to heart center with an exhale, and a namaste. Go out and have a great day. I'm Jack Patty, and this is the Senior Minute. Successfully serving seniors. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Senior Minute. I'm Council Member Shayla Lynch, and I'm honored to have Melinda Jameson here from CASA. Hello, and how are you? Wonderful, thank you for having me. Of course. Now tell everyone what is CASA, just in case they don't know. Absolutely. CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates, and we're a non-profit here in Lexington that uses trained and supervised volunteers, known as CASAs, to advocate for child abuse, child neglect victims in the family court system. Wow. How long have you all been around? So the program here in Fayette County has been here since 1986. Oh, wow. And the program became a non-profit in 2003. Initially it was completely under Lexington government, under social services, and now we operate with sort of an umbrella hybrid relationship. Awesome, awesome. So at any point in time, how many children do you all have that you're serving? So every year we serve close to 700 children. Wow. And that is a huge number, Council Member, but the challenge is we're only serving about 20% of the need. Wow, wow. And CASA just doesn't serve Fayette County. It serves multiple counties, correct? You're absolutely correct. So the CASA Lexington program serves seven counties, Fayette, Bourbon, Woodford, Scott, Jasmine, Garrett, and Lincoln. However, CASA is a nationwide program, and it's in 49 of the 50 states. So unless somebody is looking to move to North Dakota, there's a CASA program. That is wonderful. That's wonderful. I know you all use volunteers. What do they do, and how do they help your organization? So the volunteers are the true superheroes, the lifeblood of what we're doing. And to be a volunteer, you don't need any special qualifications, education, or background. You do have to be at least 21 years of age, willing to consent to the background checks, and we'll take care of the cost of those. And you go through a 30-hour training. That 30-hour training is held right here in Lexington in our office. We also have an online version as well as an in-person version. And if somebody is watching and interested, if they reach out, we'll work with them to get them in a class, but we do post the schedules of upcoming trainings on the website. And you go through that training, but then you have the amazing support of a staff person called a volunteer manager that's going to go with you to meet the child or sibling set you're appointed to. That staff person is always going to be at court with you and work with you to guide you through the process. But folks need to be willing to be able to commit to a two-year commitment because we want the same volunteer with that child from case open till case closure because these children get moved from placement to placement and often don't have consistency. So the CASA volunteer gets to be that constant for the child and provide them support. We're also the only party that is there solely for what's in the child's best interest. So the CASA volunteers provide information to help the judges make more informed decisions on behalf of the children to ensure that they get that safe and permanent home. That is awesome. So if someone wants to volunteer, how many...