# Environmental Quality & Public Works (EQPW) Committee - November 18, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · November 18, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6625 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6625?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-11-18 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: February 3, 2026 - **Length**: 18,261 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 Environmental Quality and Public Works (EQPW) Committee met on November 18, 2025, at 1:00 P.M., with Hannah LeGris presiding. The committee addressed a total of four agenda items during the meeting. Two items were brought to a vote and approved: the October 7, 2025 Committee Summary and the Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants. The remaining two items — a Waste Contamination Reduction Update and the Haley Pike Solar Project Update — were presented as informational items, with no votes required. No public comments were received during the meeting. ## Attendance The following members were present at the November 18, 2025 Committee meeting: - Hannah LeGris - James Brown - Tyler Morton - Emma Curtis - Liz Sheehan - Joseph Hale - Amy Beasley - Dave Sevigny - Hil Boone **Absent:** Lisa Higgins-Hord No members were recorded as late. A total of 9 members were in attendance out of 10. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took two votes during the November 18, 2025 meeting, both of which passed by voice vote. - **Approval of the October 7, 2025 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:04]: The committee voted by voice to approve the summary from its October 7, 2025 meeting. The motion passed. No individual mover or seconder was recorded, and no roll call breakdown is available. - **Adoption of Recommendations for Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants** [timestamp: 21:29]: Dave Sevigny moved to adopt the committee's recommendations for the Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants. The motion passed by voice vote. Notably, the adoption included an amendment to extend the timeline for storytelling to December 2026. No seconder was recorded, and no roll call breakdown is available. Both votes were conducted by voice with no recorded ayes, nays, or abstentions by individual member. ## Contested Items - **Haley Pike Solar Project**: The Haley Pike Solar Project generated significant discussion during the meeting, with debate centering on the urgency of the project's timeline and its financial implications, as well as concerns about community benefits. The specific positions of individual members and the outcome of this discussion are not detailed in the available meeting data. ## Approval of October 7, 2025 Committee Summary [timestamp: 04:02] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its October 7, 2025 meeting. Hannah LeGris led this portion of the proceedings. No concerns or objections were raised regarding the contents of the summary, and the item was approved by the committee. ## Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants [timestamp: 04:32] Alyssa McKenzie presented an update on the Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants, focusing on recommendations for improving the application process and increasing accessibility for applicants. McKenzie's presentation covered proposed changes aimed at streamlining how applicants engage with the grant program, with an emphasis on making the process more accessible. Dave Sevigny also participated as a key speaker during this agenda item. The item was approved by the Committee. *Note: Additional details regarding the specific recommendations, any concerns raised during discussion, and the full scope of proposed changes are not available in the provided source materials.* ## Waste Contamination Reduction Update [timestamp: 23:06] Antonio Baldon and Angela Poe presented an update on the committee's ongoing efforts to reduce waste contamination. The presentation covered audit results and outlined future steps in the contamination reduction program. No additional details regarding the specific audit findings, contamination rates, program milestones, concerns raised by committee members, or next steps are available from the provided materials. The item was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken. ## Haley Pike Solar Project Update [timestamp: 55:37] Richard Dugas and Adam Edelen presented an update on the Haley Pike Solar Project to the Committee. The presentation covered the project's timeline, financial implications, and anticipated community benefits. No additional details regarding the specific content of the discussion — including project milestones, cost figures, financing structures, or the nature of the community benefits described — are available from the provided materials. The item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken as a result of the presentation. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the October 7, 2025 committee summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Adoption of recommendations for Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants --- ## Full transcript [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] [(music)] I'll now call to order the meeting of the November 18th, 2025 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. Thank you all for being here. We have a really busy agenda, not only at this meeting, but in all of our subsequent meetings. So we're glad to be moving along together. If you'll go ahead and refer to your agenda, the first order of business is approval of the October 7th, 2025 committee summary. Okay, excellent. Is there any discussion? All right, seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All right, any opposed? Great, that motion passes. Our first presentation today is an update on water quality management fee incentive grants. And Council Member Savigny, as the sponsor of this item, I want to turn it over to you if you have any opening remarks or introductions or context to share. Thank you, Chair. Earlier this year, I put this in committee because I was frustrated with some of the projects coming before us to get approved. And recipients were failing sometimes to get their projects done, either through financial means or whatever. So I wanted to do a more thorough review of the process. And when I spoke to Director Martin, he said it really hadn't been done since we started it, so it was maybe a good idea. And I really appreciate, this summer we had an intern, Jake Barnott, and my aide, Alyssa McKenzie, worked on this. And Alyssa has been finishing it up these last three months. And I'm really excited for you guys to see and hear this. And I look forward to the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Savigny. Ms. McKenzie, welcome. Thank you, Chair LaGre. Alyssa McKenzie attends District AIDS, so I'll be giving the presentation. And to start off, we're going to do a little background about the grants, just because it's been a minute since Director Martin did an overview earlier this year. So this grant program was the result of a task force in 2009. And it was codified to require that a minimum of 10% of the total annual revenue from water quality management fees be allocated to this grant program to improve surface water quality across Fayette County. And grant funds are distributed among residential and non-residential categories. And just a small note about this slide. Please disregard the dollar amounts there. And in place of that, over the past 10 years, the average allocation for these categories of grants has been approximately 17% for Class A, 6% for Class B and 77% for Class B infrastructure. So there are three classes of grants. There's Class A neighborhoods. These are typically neighborhood associations. Apologize for the picture that's missing there. And Class B education. These are usually nonprofits or community organizations that have a K through 12 curriculum. And Class B infrastructure. So these are larger projects. We typically think about the pervious pavement installment. These are capital projects that require a lot more infrastructure. And all of the grant projects within each class are meant to improve water quality and address stormwater concerns and reduce stormwater runoff while also providing public or private education related to these items. And you can see a simplified visual of the application process and see when the applications are usually due. And this is also a reimbursable program. So grant applications are submitted. There's a Q&A. There's a review agreement and gets to readings by council before the final agreement. And then folks are able to spend funds, send in a report and submit invoices and receipts to a grant manager. There's no set schedule with this and it's ongoing. And we really wanted to evaluate that part of the process to see if that was creating any barriers for new applicants or if it was something that could be streamlined to save staff time as well. So as Council Member Savignee said, he put this item in committee in March. And over the summer, we identified some goals with reviewing this grant program and worked with our intern on this but also met with Water Quality and Environmental Services to make sure what we were thinking was aligned with what they were interested in discussing and what could be realistically included in the recommendations. We reviewed past applications, had meetings with past applicants. We looked at the website and learned more about the processes with this grant and also had some conversations about what things could be done down the line past this review. We started with a lot of ideas and distilled them down to the recommendations you'll see in a moment. And some were realistic. Some were limited by charter or ordinance. And so we've left those out. But we also learned that some ideas were already in the works. And some things we were thinking about complemented the work that Environmental Services and Water Quality were moving towards. So we discussed implementation and incorporation of their ideas with our ideas into these recommendations. We came up with four goals. And the first is to grow the applicant pool. There are a lot of really strong applications each year. But many of them are repeat applicants. And so how can we garner more applications and innovative projects? And how can we streamline processes and eliminate barriers to new applications and new projects? And decrease the number of change orders while also improving stormwater quality? And we approached this as laypeople. We are not experts in this. And so we really wanted to get information from the experts and also think about how we could work on the front end with the application and the reporting process at the end to provide information that could potentially achieve these goals. These are our three recommendations. And each has a few components. And you can see here the recommendations with the divisions that would work on them as well as the timeline and some small pictures that show what these items are. So for the first recommendation is improving accessibility and technical support. And the first part of this is creating an online application. And this would be a user-friendly platform or form that has example budgets that have been de-identified. Step-by-step guidance and easy upload tools for different documents because right now the application is a paper document. That would reduce the capacity needed by organizations applying and just make the process a little easier. The other option that we have for a recommendation here is office hours and BMP bingo. So we suggested scheduled times for organizations to meet with the grants manager after the Q&A and to discuss specific projects and proposals with the grants manager to make sure they align with best management practices and measurable water quality outcomes. Another idea that's kind of quirky and creative is BMP bingo. And this is a suggestion from a neighborhood association with long-term grant experience with this program designed to make understanding BMPs more engaging, digestible, and hopefully to garner new applicants who could have impactful projects. But the technical language or technical aspects of the projects and program could be overwhelming. So the next thing we have is a grant toolkit and tips. And we propose expanding the existing website resources to include recommendations and tips that could make the application and reporting process easier. So the LQCG website has a lot of really great tools for potential applicants. But we are recommending distilling them down and putting them on one page on the Stormwater page so that when people go to the grant website they can see all of the things in one place and don't have to go searching for anything. We recommend having photos with the examples that exist under each grant description on the website and including a preparation timeline for how long people can expect to work on this grant or what the lead time should be in preparing a grant application. Also recommending that people consider doing a feasibility grant first to get data and specialized input for a future grant. And that would be something that they could talk to the grants manager about in office hours or one-on-one meetings from the first recommendation. And also having examples and pictures that emphasize pollutant removal and making sure that people fully understand what that looks like. This toolkit would also clearly define key terms like the BMPs with a link to the Stormwater manual that is currently on the website but again putting everything together in one place where it's cohesive. And we recommend a visual timeline for the application to reporting phase and recommend adding a 7-10% budget buffer for inflation and cost increases. When attending meetings we saw that the cost of materials and labor was going up 5-10% and so kind of as a general rule or tip to include in a grant toolkit on the website is to have that 7-10% as a buffer to make sure that people are prepared for those increased costs. And really emphasize that while this is a labor intensive grant process, it can be manageable with the resources that are available for people in one place. And our goal with this recommendation is to really help translate the technical aspects of this program. The next recommendation is storytelling and marketing. So we talked a lot with environmental services about how we could share existing educational resources, curriculum, and materials to ensure consistent language and messaging around this program. And for those who are doing K-12 education that the curriculum they're using could be modeled after or be curriculum that is already developed. We also recommend creating videos with interviews from past applicants and have them accessible on the website so people can see a visual representation of what the projects look like as well as the sustainability and what the long-term impact may be. And again including visuals on the Stormwater website to be a little more digestible. And then the third component of our recommendations is the reporting process. So right now it is a paper process through email and we recommend moving it online to save time for both awardee and grant management staff. And we're finding communication and expectation about the reporting process to be clearer and more efficient for both grantees. So they have expectations about what the feedback may be on a report and how long it may take to get feedback in order to shorten the time between reporting and disbursement of checks. The final thing within this is connecting with grantees at the end of grant cycles for either phone, teams, or in-person conversations about their experience. And also connecting with past applicants who maybe haven't applied in a few years and seeing what works well for them, what could be improved, and why maybe they didn't apply again. And so these are all of our recommendations with the timelines, all of them to be completed by the end of calendar year 2026. And again we talked to Environmental Services and Water Quality about the realistic nature of these timelines and items. So ideally they should be fairly manageable if adopted. So next steps are consideration of these recommendations by this committee and if adopted an annual update next November with subsequent annual updates on an as needed basis. And I just want to say thank you for your time and if you have any questions about the review process specifically I'm happy to answer those. And if you'd like to know more about the grant program or potential implementation of any recommendations and what that could look like, there are folks from both Water Quality and Environmental Services here to answer those. So thank you. Thank you. Excellent work. Colleagues, now's the time to sign in if you have any questions. Council Member Savigny. It was so thoroughly covered that we don't have any questions it looks like. I want to thank Alyssa McKenzie for working on this. One thing I'll let you know that I've done, I think in your former career you've applied for a stormwater grant through Living Arts and Science Center. I've done about four or five. So honestly we had a lot of experience just ourselves on things that frustrated us. So it's kind of cool to be people that have used this system. And I do think some of the automation tools that we want to put out there really will help get more applicants. It will be a little easier to apply and probably a little easier to apply for your money because it's a reimbursement style grant. So I don't necessarily know that we need to take action. But if you want to adopt the recommendations, I think it will help that organization start to put in place the things that we have recommended. And they pretty much agree are the right way to go. Thank you, Council Member. Just in case if you do have questions, I'll say a few remarks. I think that you all are doing a really great job refining this program so that not only can people understand the impact that the successful applications are making via storytelling and visuals, but you're also increasing accessibility for people who are interested. We want groups to apply for these grants. They make a huge impact, and we want it to be a manageable process no matter how much grant writing background people may come into this process with. So thank you all for working through this. I guess I do have a question. When you said committee action or we want to adopt, is there a motion or is there a process that you'd like to pursue? I think she has it. Okay. Excellent. Well then, Council Member Sheehan. I appreciate the recommendations, and I want to support them. Does any budgetary ask come directly from the water quality fee, or is that a separate funding that we would need to provide? Because I could see putting something like an application online might require a software license or making videos or doing brochures and signage printing. Those kinds of things come with a cost. So where does the funding come from? I see someone coming up to the podium. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm Bailey, the MS4 section manager. And so we do have funding currently to make the online applications. So we already have that budgeted to shift to that platform. I'm not sure about some of the other funding. And we are tied for the 10% to go to grants and not to go towards boosting the program. Okay. So there might be some fee associated. There might be an eventual need for that. I think we can manage. I think the timing of all that work is somewhat flexible. And I think we could do it in a regular budget ask during the regular budget season. Okay. I'm looking particularly at the storytelling, marketing stuff that's going to happen by the end of this fiscal year. So then we would have to support that before we have our next budget. I was actually back there. Storytelling is time-consuming. It's important. It's impactful. That is the deadline that made me a little nervous with June of 2026. Probably for that particular piece, December might be a little more realistic, especially since storytelling involves collaborating with our grant recipients and getting with their schedules. And we want to show things in different seasons and all that sort of thing. So that may be a budget ask that comes up at some point. Okay. Great. Yeah. And I like the community outreach and education pieces of this because I do want to see wider and more diverse applications. And I know some of my neighborhoods have pursued these. But I think it is hard for the just general neighborhood association to put these applications in. So I think these education pieces and office hours will be really helpful. Thank you for working on this. Yes. Council Member Svigny, do you have a motion or an action? Yeah, I have a motion to adopt the recommendations from the report. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Are there any amendments or changes, comments? Okay. May I make an amendment to speak toward the point that was just made about the timeline? Would you be willing to shift the timeline for the storytelling to that December deadline that was just mentioned? Yeah. Sorry, this is a little... If I may, the toolkits in the storytelling are the two things that are going to take some time to create. So if we could push that to the end at least of the calendar year, that would be amazing. That friendly amendment is accepted. Well, I need a... So I have an amendment, so I would need... I'll second it. Thank you. All right. So we have an amendment, a second. Any additional comments? Okay. All in favor of the motion as amended, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Now we're on to... I guess that's it. All right. Now we're on to our next item, unless there's anything else. Okay. Excellent. Next we have an update on our plan to reduce waste contamination. Council Member Savigny, you're also the sponsor of this item. Would you like to provide a brief background on this item and make any introductions? Yes, sure. Thank you. I just wanted to... This item, for the folks that are new to Council this year, this actually came up... This is an item that was from the original Waste Digester Task Force that met over about 18 months and finished their work last year before you started. One of the things that we want to... The Waste Digester Task Force had a series of things to get us to the point where our waste streams were cleaner, that we could start doing commercial-based composting and then eventually residential-based composting. And the first course of action was our contamination rates were way off of the norm. So the first thing that we have to do is work on the contamination rate. Before you can teach people something new to do, we have to kind of perfect the current system. So this is a result of the Waste Digester Task Force work, and it's the first report on the first piece of it. And I'm very excited to have you both here to present. Welcome. We'll have two presenters. Director of Waste Management Division, Paul Dunn. And PIE Manager, Poe. Welcome. Hi. Yes, I want to say we're also very excited to be able to tackle this in a focused way. It has been an ongoing issue for a long time. All right. So we're going to talk about the magnitude of the issue, the impacts, like why does it matter that we have this huge contamination issue? What are the causes? How are we looking at solving and addressing those causes? It should be initial, not internal, audit results. Apologies for that typo. What are our next steps? And how might that impact the budget requests that we have next year moving forward? So, again, as Council Member Savigne just alluded to, we started off with the Digester Task Force looking to divert more material from the landfill. Well, part of the issue of diverting additional material from the landfill is the stuff that we're trying to currently divert sometimes ends up there because of these high contamination rates. So we've got about 30% to 35% recycling contamination is where we started. Antonio and his team have already gotten that down some. And then about 50% to 60% yard waste contamination. So that's a huge impact. Why does that matter? From a recycling standpoint, first and foremost, it's a safety issue. If you've visited the Recycle Center, you know that we've got people. It's an equipment and personnel-based sorting system. So there are people there that are interacting with this material. And if there are things like needles or anything that would have like IV and fluids and that sort of stuff, that is a safety concern. There are batteries and things that go through that can cause fires and have caused fires and do cause fires. It also harms our equipment. We are constantly trying to keep the equipment up and running. We don't have redundancies. So if we're down, we're down. There's not a second line that we can focus on. And so having contaminants that wrap around the equipment is a huge issue. What happens, particularly for high-concern items like medical waste, is they have to stop the line, clear everything off the line, and all of that material that was in process when they caught something like a needle has to go to the landfill. So we end up sending a lot of stuff to the landfill that could have been recycled if we hadn't had it mixed in with these problem materials. It's inefficient from a transportation standpoint. So we're picking it up. We're taking it to the Recycle Center. Oops, that's not where it belongs. And then we have to put it on another truck, and it ends up being transported into the landfill process. And then if you remember the days of when we had the paper, when we weren't taking paper for a little while, one of the issues is potential issues with commodity buyers. If we get enough contamination in our materials and it makes it through the end of the line and is part of the bail, and we're sending low-quality bails to the people who buy from us to turn it into something else, they can say, we don't want your stuff anymore. And then what do we do? We have to have somewhere to send this, to sell this, in order to have a recycling program. So those are the recycling issues. That probably makes a lot more sense for those of you who have visited the Recycling Center. If you haven't, I invite you to come out. We are happy to schedule a tour with you. Yard waste. Again, we're collecting yard waste, but a lot of that is ending up in the landfill. Again, you've got the transportation efficiencies. And I want to point out one of the reasons that the contamination rate for yard waste is so high is there's no sorting equipment out at the landfill pad. And so if they open up a truck and it looks like there's a whole bunch of bags and things in there that don't belong, they just tell it to go away and head to the landfill instead. And so it's a huge issue for those many, many residents who are trying to do the right thing and participate in these programs that we offer, that we have these mixed loads that are causing problems and kind of undermining those efforts. Internal causes. I'm going to let Antonio speak to this. So many of our internal causes for contamination, it actually starts at 6, 7, 5 bird thermos sometimes. So that's one reason why you find these mixed loads. It's a thing where we actually operate a fully automated truck system collection. And what that means is that's the truck that will go down the street that operates at one individual, and that truck is actually grabbing the container from the side. Well, they don't know what's in that container, so you have that problem. But then also when you have the rear loader, which is the semi-automated trucks, one of the problems that you find is that there is a misbehavior, if you will, that allows for two commodities possibly to be thrown in at that time. So one of the things that we found in that mixed load and that inability to see in the cart for the fully automated truck, and this is for both of them, is that more staff tours. So we needed to educate our staff a lot more than what we were doing. And back to Angela's point at the beginning of this presentation, we were at 30 to 35 percent. We're hovering since August right at 22 percent. That puts us a few steps away from the national average for contamination. So that is, hats off to the transfer station identifying this stuff, the MRF identifying and their team, as well as our people, the men and women that actually work these trucks, being more alert and receptive to what we're trying to teach them. Also, improve staff training, as I've said, but also accountability. So when you mix a load and we can identify it and prove it, we're holding our drivers and our groundsmen accountable. Accountability is key. When we're changing the work culture out at Bird Thurman, that's what we're doing. It's all about accountability, and we will stand strong on that as a leadership. Potential changes to supervisor structure. What that is is right now, and brief as I can give this, our supervisors, we have six collection supervisors. Those six collection supervisors actually have what we call in the industry books. So they have garbage, probably four garbage routes, four yard waste routes, four recycling routes, and they're responsible just for that. What we will potentially move to in the coming year is that we will have supervisors that will oversee commodities. So this will actually help us decrease contamination because now I don't tell Angela to go help John Blow over here, and she's in recycling and he's doing yard waste, right? What we'll do now is if Angela and I are the supervisors, that's all we have is garbage. That's all we have is recycling our yard waste. Then also the last one here is the color change for yard waste. What we are looking at and have found is that there is a difficulty when you are trying to look at a container early in the morning because we do have collection staff that are out before the sunrise actually gets up. So we will potentially move to a yellow lid for our yard waste. Also, external causes. These external causes are improper use of recycling carts as well as the yard waste carts, but also a lack of knowledge. And having that lack of knowledge actually hurts us in the long run. But then you have that wish cycling. And I can let, because I think there's going to probably be some questions on this, so I'm going to throw it back to you, Angela, because I think that this is one that can better throw out of what is wish cycling and what are we trying to prevent from this. Yeah. So, again, we've just got the kind of first bullet is like I don't care. It's a can and they'll make it go away. I'll put in it what I want to put in it, what I need to go away from my house. The second bullet is people just not knowing. A lot of people still think if it has a recycle symbol, it can go in your cart. That's not true. It's way more complicated than that, unfortunately. Wish cycling is people who are like, okay, I know this isn't on our list, but I'm sure that if I put it in here, those magical folks at the recycle center will find a way to do something with it that isn't send it to the landfill. And so those are people who really want to do the right thing, and they don't understand the impact sometimes of doing that wishful thinking. We are external solutions, increased outreach. We have sent out a flyer to every household. We found that mailings, while kind of old-fashioned, is a really effective outreach tool for us. And so everybody that gets waste service receives a flyer in the mail that had recycling information. We also talk a lot about it in our newsletter that we send out twice a year. We do use traditional mass media, so TV, radio, anything that we can get our hands on for correct recycling information. We have a lot of ads out right now that are about holiday-specific waste, because this is a very, very busy time at the recycle center and at yard waste. And so we want people to know the right thing to do. And then just getting out there and talking to people, not only our staff and waste management staff, but we're actually pious in the process of training volunteers to go out and table on our behalf and take our materials out there for them. So people who, for example, who have done our community environmental academy. The audits is a new tool that we just launched as a result of this conversation that we have been having. And the audits are great because we just look in somebody's cart and we have door hangers and they get personalized feedback about what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. And that is so, so powerful. We have done two weeks' worth of audits in the same neighborhood. We're going to go back for a third time in the first week in December. And it's great because people will see us out and they'll come out and they'll talk to us. And so that's been just a really, really great tool to use. Engaging our partners more and having them help share this. That goes to the CEA thing that I talked about earlier, engaging volunteers, but also possibly working with things like our green check businesses and other partners. And then at the very bottom, the very last thing to do is if you consistently misuse your cart, if we see trash in it all the time and we go back and we've told you, like, please, you cannot do this. This causes these problems. You're going to lose your cart if you're consistently using it the wrong way. So that is a three strike system. They will get personalized feedback on this. But three red tickets in a 12-month period clearly demonstrates they are not big recycling advocates. And you know what? That's okay. If you don't want to recycle right, we'll take your cart and we will take your trash away when you put it in the trash cart. So we did do those. We've done two weeks of initial audits. And I'm going to let Antonio speak to the results that we got for that. So on this slide here, you're going to see, one, the collection days that we did and also the areas. And from seeing those areas and then also the detailed piece of where we were actually at in that area, along with the household count for each one of these areas. Now, on this slide here, this is for our recycling for the first two rounds of what we've done. So if you look at these numbers and just kind of looking at the top of it from neighborhood to date, but then you see the Mis-U recycling. So we had 70 in Clay's Mill, but we still had a 54% participation rate. But then when you look at taking that out of there from the non-Mis-U's, we had 54 green, and that was basically you did well. You did great, and you get a gold star. And then we moved to what percentage that is. And that was a 66% for that particular portion of Clay's Mill. When you also look at it from the Y, or the yellow recycling, that is we only had 14, and it also gave us a small percentage number of participating people that did that, and that was right at 17%. And then the red, which Angela spoke about, are the individuals that we have tagged, a red tag for the first time, and then also potentially for a second time when we went through. So when you look at these four neighborhoods, these neighborhoods were chosen for various reasons, also demographic makeup, also participation rates of what we know, and then also where our MRF leadership has identified some potential contamination coming from. So we wanted to kind of get a wide range on both of these when we're looking at recycling. And then when we kind of turn the page and then look at it from the yard waste, the yard waste you're seeing a good uptick, but we will probably see a larger uptick at our next update of this because we're just now getting into yard waste season. So we will probably see either more contamination, or we potentially could see great participation in this where people have been doing it great, and that's what we want to see. But a lot of this is just the education, continually, continually putting it in there. Newsletters, talking, HOA meetings, anything that we can get in front of, we're going to make sure that our PI team and our waste management team is in front of. And then the internal audit results, one of the things that we noticed was it was heavily with bags. And these are the little small Kroger bags that you'll find in recycling material. Also wrapping. So I don't know if you all are familiar with like the Gatorade packs that you buy from Sam's or Kroger's, and then you still have that plastic film that's over those. Well, a lot of times people just toss the whole thing in without removing the plastic. So those are those education pieces that we are not ready for, but potentially in 26 we will be ready for. Excuse me. You all have run out of time within 15 minutes, and I'm curious how much longer. Excuse me. It's the last slide. Three more minutes. About three more minutes. I'll make it happen. I don't want to rush you. It's coming. Now I'm spit firing. Y'all got to get ready. So next steps, just kind of going through these. As Angela already talked about, December 1st will be that. We will also work on some general messaging. She's already kind of spoke to that. And then revamping that door hanger. And you can kind of see from those bullet points what we're looking at in revamping that. But then plan to incorporate contamination tags into the waste management operation. What that will be is letting our drivers control it. Right? We want to give them the hangers. We want to make sure they're actively involved. When we got staff participation, we see great things happening. Then also continuous training. As Angela already alluded to, we want to welcome anyone to come to the MERFOR tour. We even have Julie Hatterher for sign-up sheets. Also, plan to address multifamily units. This is a national problem in recycling. I don't care what city you go to, this is always a major Achilles heel. And then the new neighborhoods when we identify them. Anticipated 2020, excuse me, 2027 impacts. And we kind of just peruse through these real quick. Update campaign with expanded placement. Updated print material. And the Living Art and Society Center Partnership for Discovery Room and Exhibit. And then also a refreshing of our material recovery facility for educational purposes. Last week, I had the opportunity to go to ARCON, which is the Solid Waste Association of North America. And I had a chance to go into the Rumpke facility MERF tour. And when I say they have an education room there that is built for the generations to come, that's what it is. And we want to make sure what we have here in Lexington Fayette is either equal to that or either better. And that will kind of close us out. For questions, I hope I wrapped it far too quick. You had a minute to spare. You did a great job. I told you. Thank you. I told you I was going to spit it. Excellent work. Thank you so much. Colleagues, if you have questions or comments, now is the time to sign in. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. These audits have focused primarily on residential waste. So do you have similar problems with waste that comes from businesses like restaurants or anything like that? And do you have a plan to audit those? So when it comes to multifamily businesses, you will find it. So one of the things that we will move to in the next phase of this, in probably Q1 of 26, is that we will start kind of looking at our affiliates. And because those are the ones that's bringing in that material in from either outside of Fayette or from the businesses that are within Fayette County. But we will also do a little bit of a push for our front load drivers that are actually collecting recycling. But that's a small percentage. But we do see contamination. To answer your question, there is that potential for contamination. But having the partnerships with the affiliates and allowing those outside counties that bring that material into us to know what we can accept is very key. But I hope that answered a little bit of your question. And if it didn't, then we have Ms. Julie Hatter here. We also have Sean Duffy here with Resource Recycling Systems, RRS, which is a partner with us in this endeavor. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for the presentation. I just have a few questions. You mentioned the decrease from 34%, 35% down to 22%. Are you looking at that as the incoming stream or is that in the product that goes out the door? Because my guess is if you're on a recycling line, people are pulling stuff off because they just know that that's a plastic, that's a five, not a one. Does that make sense? I'm just curious if the staff training also includes the guys on the line. Yes, it is with what's going out. So we are pulling off and taking that contamination off of the line as it goes through those conveyors. But also I'm going to have Julie come up and kind of give you a little bit more in-depth for that particular question. Okay, thank you. So we're pulling these materials off the line, but we're also seeing things that are coming in the trucks, so we're pulling that stuff out of the trucks at the tipping floor also. Okay, great. And then could I ask, because when I travel and go to different communities, like some of them will take one through five plastics, and the number for an old guy is not the easiest thing to see on there, so my wish cycling takes place. Is it because their markets accept more things, or do we not have a market for all the different levels of plastics? So there's a lot to that. Okay. I think it is what our markets accept, and it's also about what we can accept at the facility. We're very limited on space in bunkers. Once we have the upgrade next year with the polypropylene, we will be out of bunker space. We will be unable to accept another commodity at that time unless we drop another commodity, because we simply don't have the space anymore. And is there some sort of capital improvement ask at some point to have more space? Well, we're still in the early stages of all of this. So right now we have not, but there is always room, and we will look at every option possible when that does kind of really get to us full throttle. We'll kind of see what we need to do to expand, right? I think that's what we want to do. We want to keep the momentum going, and we'll do our best to make sure that we present something that is something that can last for the generations to come. Yeah. I had a constituent give me an idea one time about the concept of being able to, if there was an app or something that was automatic that you could take a picture of the thing and just say, yes, LFUCG accepts this or not. They thought it was a good idea. And I was like, yeah, that's actually a pretty cool idea. You know, it's funny you say that because there is technology out there now. You have stuff like Recycling Coach that is linked into what your particular city or MRF is taking. And we are looking at those options, and we do believe that probably in this next quarter that we will continue to look and see what is the best place for us, right? I always said, I said to this group once before, all garbage is local and all recycling is local. So what works for us here in Lexington-Fayette might not be the best thing in Brunswick, New Jersey, but we do know that where we're moving to right now is something that's going to push us down the line in the future. Thank you, and thank you for working so hard on this issue. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you for recognizing me, Chair, because I do not serve on this committee. Can you all hear me? It sounds like it's not. We can hear you. Okay. I want to thank you all for doing this audit. It was something that we really wanted coming out of the task force, and I know it's a lot of work, so thank you. And I really appreciate the creative ideas that you've come up with to help solve some of these issues with contamination. Ms. Poe, I wanted to ask you a question. I think you know what I'm going to ask you. The neighborhood in my district that was participating in the audit, I got some feedback from some folks about different things, mainly that there were yard signs placed either in their lawn or in the right-of-way in front of their lawn. And I know some folks were not big fans of that. Can you address that? I think the attention was really good, but it wasn't always received with the same attention. Right. And so we did actually make some changes between week one and week two regarding the yard signs. So the point of the yard signs is to kind of celebrate those who are doing the right thing and also identify some experts in the neighborhood like, well, so-and-so, you know, Joe next door got one of those green signs. Maybe I can ask him if this is acceptable or this isn't. The concerns that you shared with us were kind of two-fold. One, we were placing the yard signs in the utility strip and not in the yard where there is an ordinance that says there are not supposed to be yard signs in the utility strip. So that's some training for those of us who are working the audits in placing the yard signs. So we are still working on that. I noticed that from week two it still wasn't perfect. Week three is going to be it for that, for placement. The other thing was people were like, these are really expensive. Why are they spending money on this? This is silly. And the intent is to reuse those yard signs. We haven't necessarily clearly communicated with the yard sign, and so we ordered stickers that we're putting on the yard signs now that says we will be back for this. We will collect it sometime next week, and we plan to reuse it. If you don't want to display it, just stick it out by your cart on your collection day. You don't have to leave it out all week if you don't want it, but please don't throw it away. We are going to reuse it. So that's how we tried to address it. The stickers take a long time to print, and so we didn't really get those until midway through the second week of the audit, but we do have them in stock now. So by week three, every sign that gets placed will also have that sticker that is like, here's what's going on. If you don't like this, you don't have to display it, but leave it out for us to collect. Thank you so much for responding to that and for the shift. I appreciate that and the stickers. I would just ask that if we were to get other feedback, that we'd also be attentive to that and shift again if needed. Happy to. I also did get some positive feedback. I have some friends who are like, people are like flexing. They're posting pictures of their green sign. So it's not all bad, but we're happy to do what we can to make it better for those who did not have a positive experience. Well, thank you for being responsive, and thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. And I will just say thank you all for your work with the audit process, with the personalized feedback, with all the educational initiatives involved. I know it's really labor-intensive, but all those points of connection really make a big difference, and we appreciate that because we know this is part of an even bigger picture in terms of not only best practices in our city and reducing contamination, but moving us forward in the direction of citywide composting and other innovations. I was curious about the Discovery Room and anything that you all would want to share about that. I think having a space for curiosity for kids and families around recycling and local waste management can be really fun, and I'm curious what you're thinking. Yeah, so Living Arts and Science Center has been a partner with us for the Art by Nature program for several years now, and we have our education team that goes into the K-12 programs, and we are working with them on utilizing the Living Arts and Science Center as a field trip site that complements those units of study to help get students more excited and kind of solidify that information that they've learned, give them tons of neurons to connect the information they've learned to. Since fiscal year 27 is going to just be a huge waste management year for Lexington in that we have the new recycling information that will go live sometime early in the fiscal year, plus we're really pushing this contamination reduction thing hard, and hopefully we'll be hitting our stride with, like, what does this look like and how does it happen on a regular basis? And next year we had a conversation with LASC about they have a discovery room if you've been there. They've got this room that they every school year kind of revamp and have a different topic, and so we asked if they'd be willing to focus on waste management and waste topics for next year, and so that's really exciting for us because, one, that ties in really well with the work that Danny and his team are doing in that K-12 outreach and we have units of study on waste management for every single grade, K-12, and so having lots of students and being able to take them to a space that is designed to complement those messages that we are saying are important for our youth and their families to know is awesome. And the other piece of that, oh, and we love having hands-on tabling materials, but those are hard to come by and hard to develop in a way that stands up to time, but once they're done with those materials, then we can have them and take them out for tabling, so it's like a double win there. And the other piece actually came from one of Director Baldwin's staff. Mason suggested that we do some sort of, I don't know if anybody here is a making it fan, or the art craft competition, so they would have repurposed or reclaimed materials and they would make things out of it, and so we kind of want to do that where we're looking at creating things from either repurposed or reclaimed or found materials that would otherwise end up in the landfill. And so we're working with them on potentially developing an exhibition that would focus on that and some programming to help just get people in the community doing that themselves and also featuring our local artists who do really cool things already, that kind of bringing them all together and showing off their work as part of that. So that's what that is. Well, I love it, and it sounds like there are some great ideas about the classroom at the MRF, and I would say if you haven't taken a tour of the center, it's pretty incredible and puts things into perspective. So thank you all. Thank you, Councilmember Savigny, and we look forward to future updates. And colleagues, we are on to our final presentation, which is an update on the Haley Pike Solar Study. Colleagues, as you know, this is a new business item on work session today, and Commissioner Albright has requested this presentation to address any questions or concerns as much as possible ahead of today's work session. Richard Dugas, Administrative Officer Senior in the Commissioner's Office, is here to present. Welcome. Thank you, Chairman. I am Richard Dugas. I'm with the Environmental Quality and Public Works Commissioner's Office. I'm going to go through a couple slides real quick, and I'm not going to go over the details of the RFP proposal that was submitted. The founder and CEO of Edelen Renewables, Adam Edelen, will present the second half of it. He'll actually go through the details of their proposal. What I want to do is kind of give you an update on the timeline. So the general status is this is an RFP. We received an unsolicited proposal from Edelen Renewables and per KRS. We were required to allow for other solicitors to submit, and then we also went one step further and we issued another request for proposal. The response to that was Edelen Renewables. We've been in negotiation for about six weeks with them. We're really close. The item N on tonight's agenda is a letter of intent. It is a non-binding letter of intent that will allow Edelen Renewables to begin more formal communications with the regulatory entities here in the city as well as those in Frankfurt, as well as also reach out to financial institutions to begin the next step on that, and as well as, again, discussion with interconnection partners, KU or EKPC, whichever they choose to move forward with. So that's what's going to go on for the rest of this month. November, December, finalized negotiations. We are very close. The only things that are left, there's a few items on the fiscal items, and we will not be able to respond to those. If you ask questions about the detailed fiscal items today, we won't respond to those, and we won't respond to those later, and that's why the item that's up for the agenda tonight is a non-binding letter of intent. Just so you know, when we do finalize those negotiations, that's where we're talking about the December 25 or the January request. We would then have a we would submit the negotiated lease. The final lease would come to council for approval. So you would have all those details, and the reason I say December on there, folks, there is a very small chance that we could finalize negotiations and meet the submission deadline of the 21st this Friday. It's probably unlikely, but we are pushing hard for that, because otherwise then we have to wait until the second reading would be at the end of January, which that's about a seven or eight week time frame off. So we are trying to push pretty hard for that. January, the next items up would be January 26 through May. You're looking at the project development that's going to focus real heavily on the renewables, folks, going through all those regulatory hurdles, the Kentucky PSC, as well as some of those others. They've got to get all those submissions. That's why it's so important to do the letter of intent now, because it allows them to start getting on those agendas, because the PSC doesn't meet every week. So they've got to get on those agendas, and having that letter of intent allows them. It tells that other governmental body that there is a legitimate, that even though we don't have all the T's crossed, the I's dotted, that we are close, and it is a good proposal moving forward, and it's not going to be a waste of their time to put an item like that on the agenda. Late spring, early summer, that's when hopefully they would make it through all the regulatory process, get all of their financial documents in order, have their interconnection agreements done, and they would actually start construction. That's probably looking at the May-June time frame. And why is that important? And here is the elephant in the room. So why does it seem like we are pushing so hard, and why this seems so important? And that is, if you remember back in, I believe it was April or May, during the budget process, we asked for money to do a phase two study. After we, and you gracefully granted us that funding, we had planned on doing this process over about a two-year, 30-month phrase. But the federal government passed the one big, beautiful bill that completely threw that timeline out the window. They sunsetted the 30% investment tax credit for renewable energy projects. And what that means is that if a project does not begin by July 4th of 2026, if it starts by that time frame, they have four years to complete. If they miss starting construction by that time frame, then construction has to be completed by December 31st of 2027. A project of this scale is at least 18 months of construction, and that's working really fast, more like 24 or even longer to get a project of this scale up. So there is essentially no time left on the table. If this project is going to move forward and take advantage of the renewable energy investment tax credit, it has to move forward on this time frame. And why does that matter? Because the economics of this, and Mr. Edelen will discuss that in more detail, the economics of it is it's simple. It's going to cost 40% more. And if it costs them 40% more, that's 40% less that's going to be offered to us in terms of a lease. Simple mathematics. There's no way around that. So you may have been approached by others. Development on a landfill is significantly more expensive and significantly riskier than development on prime farmland. Prime farmland is flat. It's easy to get to. You can drive piles in. It's cheap. You don't have to worry about hitting gas pockets or dealing with any of that stuff or dealing with anything. So the finances on a redevelopment project like this on a landfill are absolutely razor thin. There is no room for, there's not much margin for error financially. And so while we do have a very, very tight window, I do think that we're real close and I think that we can work successfully with the renewables and meet the One Big Beautiful Bill Act deadlines. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Edelen and let him give you some of the details on their actual proposal. Again, less those financial details. Okay. So I'm Adam Edelen, founder and CEO of Edelen Renewables. Wasn't too much bothered by the commute over here today. It's good to be right across the street from you. As an over 30-year resident of Lexington, I've always felt that this city ought to aspire to be amongst the cleanest, greenest, and most sustainable in the United States. And Madam Chair, it's been an honor to sit here and listen to the good work that's being done in the recycling and sustainability space. This presents you as leaders of this community with an opportunity to establish Lexington as a national leader in this space. We believe that this would be among the largest landfill to solar projects in the United States. It ought to be reflective of the ambition to be truly green here in this community. But it can't be pulled off by a name alone. So let me introduce my team that I have with me. My chief development officer is David Absher, who joins Edelen Renewables about a year ago after a 30-year career at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, where he led sustainability and energy procurement for the entire North American franchise of Toyota. To his right is Brad Clark, who is our vice president of social impact, who manages local stakeholder engagement and our community benefit planning processes. And to his right is Amy Samples, who is our chief development officer, who has the difficult job of making sure all the trains run on time. At the end of this, you're more than welcome to ask any of them any questions, as well as myself. So what you see on this picture here is a layout of a 67-megawatt solar array on the Haley's Pike solar site. The two different colors are the nature of the panels. The red are tracker panels that will track the sun. The black ones are built on the cap. We'll use a weight and ballast system to be able to produce photovoltaic radiation so we can produce the electrons we want to advance. Our partner here is in a utility partners envision is LG and EKU. We have been in conversation with them for months. I need you to understand that there were months of work that went into this process, both in terms of evaluation, financial modeling, and site design, long before we approached this local government with an unsolicited proposal. A little bit of a back story is that Mr. Absher, in his prior career at Toyota, has had his eye on this site since 2011 and has been studying it for solar capability. When we hired him, this was high on his list of things that we needed to view in our own backyard here in this community. We will implement a bankable community benefit plan. There will be lease income directed to the city for decades at no depreciation. We also think this demonstrates the best practice of land use, that is using brownfields for solar development. This is a space that we have helped pioneer. I hope you're familiar with the good work we've done in Appalachia, putting coal miners back to work in energy communities that have been, frankly, had a really tough time since the disappearance of the coal economy. Our current development footprint stretches from Pennsylvania to majority-minority communities of the Deep South in places like Georgia to tribal communities of the American West, all focused on an approach to development that we call social impact solar. This is a phrase that we have trademarked. What it means is we leverage these enormous private capital investments to leave a legacy economic, social benefit to the communities where we develop. So it may mean a hiring preference. It could mean training and skills credentials that are earned, that are portable and stackable at the expense of the developer rather than the worker. It could mean making investments in cultural attributes in a given community. It often means all of the above. But this social impact solar approach is central to who we are as developers and how we advance these projects. We have set records for the amount that we often pay in the terms of the pilot, which is the payment in lieu of taxes. We have had extensive conversations already with your own economic development authority about the industrial revenue bond. We have done our homework. We have dotted our I's. We have crossed our T's. But there is a real need for urgency. If it had not been for the big, beautiful bill, we could have taken a lot of time. But now we don't have that time left. So if we're going to pull this project off for the next number of years, certainly we have to begin now, which is why we ask you to approve at your later meeting the LOI for this. That just simply enables us to formalize the conversations that we've had with regulatory authorities already, with policymakers, with financiers, and with other important stakeholders in this process. Next slide. Community benefit planning is at the core of what we do. Much of our work, particularly in coal country, was used to inspire the incentives that were passed under the Inflation Reduction Act. And it's totally consistent with our belief that these projects, the green energy revolution writ large, ought to be leveraged to benefit local communities and to expand and diversify the winner's circle. This is work that Brad Clark leads for us. We're already in this process. We've already put together a group of students in the Fayette County Public Schools who are advising us on helping vision this process. But we would look forward to a multilevel win-win that would engage every layer of stakeholder in this community, every part of this community to come together to help pull this off, but also to celebrate and learn from the outcome. And that's incredibly important work. We can get into this more deeply through our question period after this. But we don't do projects anywhere that don't involve community benefit planning or a direct engagement with the community to develop a plan that leaves a legacy economic, social, and benefit. We have never done a project that didn't include that. We never will. Next slide. Make sure two minutes. So compliance is really important. This is incredibly complicated and much more difficult to develop a brownfield site than it is prime farmland somewhere. This is going to involve the engagement of lots of numerous oversight authorities inside the Department of Natural Resources. We have already begun those conversations. We have talked to the governor's office. We've spoken with members of the Public Service Commission about the need to make sure that government moves as efficiently as it possibly can, particularly against the backdrop of a shifting economic landscape that was presented by the one beautiful bill. Put another way, as fast as we're asking you to consider moving here, we're putting twice that pressure on Frankfurt. And Frankfurt is well aware in a state that literally now has billions of dollars of planned private capital investment in the renewable energy space, there is a recognition in Frankfurt that we have to make our regulatory processes go more quickly in order to enable that economic growth. And be certain that green energy in a community that demonstrates a friendliness to it, that is a precursor for modern economic development. There's not a company in the Fortune 500 that doesn't have a sustainability commitment. There's not a company in the Fortune 500 that isn't actively pursuing green-powered electrons because they know they've got to have it in a world where the country that produces the most electrons wins. So we're going to be using all the experience. I'm not unfamiliar with Frankfurt. I do have a body of work there. We're going to be utilizing all of that to make sure that this project gets moved along quickly and isn't held up by the regulatory process unnecessarily. But we will respect the process. We will answer the difficult questions. Other things that I know are important to you, vegetation management, erosion control, we have done heavy thinking about all of that. We're absolutely happy to answer those questions. Sir, I see you have a few more slides left. Just a couple. What would be sufficient? About three minutes. Three minutes, excellent. Keep me from filibustering. Okay. Go ahead. We could get more deeply into this. Panels that will be utilized will be a panel that is not made in China. They will be panels that we intend to commit to seeing recycled at the end of their usable life. For the record, 95% of the components that go into a panel are recyclable. Through the research we've done, you actually have vendors here in our community who have the ability to drive that recycling process. Next slide. Also to be noted, we have to post a reclamation bond as part of the process of going through the state siting board of the Public Service Commission. Every project approved in Kentucky has to go through that process. This will be no different. That means at the end of the usable life of this, 35 to 40 years from now, if there isn't a new contract that re-ups using this facility for solar, then we have posted a bond sufficient to cover the cost of returning that land to its original state. We've talked about timelines. Certainly, I think you understand the importance of the investment tax credit to this project. If we miss this window, I think our best hope is to wait a few years and wait for the energy markets to sort themselves out. I will tell you, just as policy makers, the one thing you're going to be thinking a lot about over the next 10 years is the affordability of power. To put it to you plainly, the era of cheap power is over. How folks on fixed incomes and local governments that are running on tight budgets are going to afford that, I don't really have a great answer for, but I know that renewable energy is a key element of that. We are working closely with the local utility in the form of LG and EKU. We believe that we can produce power at the levelized cost of energy. That is the cost that wouldn't inure more cost to the local rate payers. We think we can hit that so long as we have the ITC that we can secure. I think I've covered decommissioning and bonds. Thank you for your time. I know this is difficult work, but this is incredibly important. Not often is a city afforded the opportunity, I think, to do something big, bold, and historic. I think this certainly fits the bill. Madam Chairman, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Colleagues, if you plan to ask questions or make comments, now is the time to sign in. Thank you. Council Member Beasley. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Adelman, for your presentation. I only have one question, and I ask everyone who comes here. I know that you're normally very labor-friendly, union labor-friendly. I'm just curious if you plan to use union labor for this bill. We will absolutely afford the labor unions the opportunity to bid on the work. They're an important stakeholder in our workforce development initiatives. For instance, when we have a jobs fair, Council Member Beasley, we will certainly involve the labor union in that process. One of the great opportunities here is that because we're the sole developer, we get to make those decisions. But I have got to make sure this project penses. That's the big challenge. But we've always had a good working relationship with labor, and I anticipate their involvement in this project. If not as the EPC, then certainly as a subcontractor. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I know we have some of the details of this in our packet, but just for the public discussion, I wanted to talk a little bit about the proposal overall. So you showed us the site map. Can you talk about, based on your proposed design, how much of the – we kind of talk about this whole Haley Pike landfill area, but there's some that's capped landfill and there's some that's vacant land. So what is the acreage that you plan to use of the capped landfill in this proposal versus the rest? So I don't have that breakdown right here. It was in previously. The total landfill is 687 acres, and we proposed to lease to them 357 of those acres. And then as a subset of that is the two capped landfills, which I'd have to give you those exact totals. I don't have them with me. So the whole site is 650? 687 acres is the whole Haley Pike landfill. 357 acres is what we would be leasing to them, or just a little bit over half of it. But I guess my question is, is all of that landfill, like actually used landfill area? Probably about 100 acres or about 125 acres of the – oh, she's got it right here. So areas A and B, which are the two capped landfills, would be 158 of those 357 acres. And are the rest of those acres vacant at this time? The rest of the acreage that they would be developing is vacant at this time. And all of that? All of that except for the Lexington Model Airplane Club. One of the parcels, sub-parcels, is currently occupied by the Lexington Model Airplane Club, and they have a $0 lease for that. And while I understand there are some special considerations for zoning because this is government land, is that land currently zoned AR? The entire landfill is zoned AR, but at per KRS 100, local entities – this is our property, it's LFUCG property, so it is exempt from zoning. And that is going to be a decision that goes to the Planning Commission? That is KRS 100. And I'll let Ms. Wade, if she wants to come down, but it won't go before planning because we're exempt from it. But I thought the Planning Commission had to make a vote on the public utility use. The public facility's review, so a development plan, we will submit a development plan, which basically shows what we're doing, to staff, and then staff will review it. And then they have their comments, but they don't vote on it because it is a public facility review. It's a non-binding – basically they can put comments out there. And the intent, like any other public project that LFUCG does on their own property, we always intend to try to comply as closely as possible, but then we use the greater good. Sometimes we can't build a pump station that meets every little bit of zoning in the neighborhood that it's in, so sometimes we don't meet it. Okay, and then in the proposal, are there any agrivoltaic – you mentioned vegetative cover, but is there other agrivoltaic use proposed at this time? There's no real what I would call agrivoltaic-type proposals in the typical sense. What we intend to do is introduce various types of vegetation for pollinator attraction and those types of things. We would like to further explore the option of some sort of cash crop, for example, lavender on the site and work within the community to determine what the best fit might be and who might be interested in participating with the city's support, obviously, and involvement, and try to build a model, really. And I think we can build a model at this site. I've been looking at it for a long time, and I do believe there's a lot of opportunity here to really build something beyond just the thought of agrivoltaics, given what we're working with here, and make a model for the environment, for the education, and for the economics involved for the city and for that use. Okay. And I think everyone knows that we have a working group that's discussing large-scale solar in our AR zones right now, based on the zoning ordinance text amendment that we had previously discussed earlier this year. So one of the things that I am looking for in this proposal is that we're consistent with the things that we talked about wanting to see if we allowed large-scale solar in other areas. So part of that is the agrivoltaic piece. Councilmember, first let me applaud the excellent work that you and Councilman Sigvigny have done in this space. There are key differences about the ability to adopt at large-scale agrivoltaics on a brownfield site. It's easy to run sheep on prime farmland. You could, in theory, run them on a landfill, but the animals would have to be destroyed at the end of their useful life, rather than be harvested as an agricultural product. It's hard for me to jive that with social impact solar, but there are key differences. But there are also areas of real commonality, from pollinators to certain species that don't hurt the liner on the landfill, that I think we can completely get there in spirit and consistent with the good work that the work group has been doing now for some months. And my time is out, but I just want to say in closing that I understand that on the capped landfill areas, but a significant portion of this project is also on vacant land, and I do think that we should be exploring what can be done there in terms of agrivoltaics. So thank you. We'll consider it. Thank you. Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Edelen, for this presentation and for the entire team for being here. I know that this is something that's fairly intensive, and you all have been hard at work on it for a long time. So as part of the conversations we had around large-scale solar in rural areas earlier this year, something that I learned a lot about and something you touched on in your presentation briefly is the relationship that our local government has or in some cases doesn't always have with the PSC. And so I was wondering if you could speak to a little more the experience that Edelen Renewables has with initiating things before the PSC and the siting board and how that experience might impact this project. We have moved six projects through the Public Service Commission, either as the lead developer or as a co-developer. We have provided information to the Public Service Commission. We follow it closely. We are currently working with the Public Service Commission supporting an intervener in the tariff case that's in front of them with the LG&E KU rate case. So our interaction with the Public Service Commission is certainly, if not every week, every other week. And I will applaud the Beshear administration and the governor's appointees of the Public Service Commission who do have a keen understanding that because of the uncertainty created by the poorly named Big Beautiful Bill, that we are in a hurry to secure this private capital investment that's been planned for the state. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that knowledge. I know it gives me some peace of mind, and I'm sure it does some other folks as well. Another thing that we talked about earlier this year and continues to be sort of my north star when considering these sorts of renewable energy projects is that we have our net zero carbon emissions goal. And so I was wondering if you could speak to how this proposal would help us reach that net zero goal. Well, it's one of the things that will come out in the negotiations that we've had with the city. But we certainly are comfortable committing to language that would provide for the city right of first refusal in terms of buying the renewable energy certificates that are produced by virtue of this site. And so what a renewable energy certificate is, or a REC, is the coin of the realm. It is what an institution, whether a public or a private one, uses to quantify their success in meeting their net zero goal. And so you may recall that 80 or 90 miles up the road under the Cranley administration in Cincinnati, they actually built a solar array about 80 miles outside of the town where the city claimed the RECs, and it was able to offset the carbon footprint of the entire city government of the city of Cincinnati. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, and I just want to explicitly clarify on this. So we're talking about this project having a quantifiable metric by which we can judge our impact on carbon emissions? Absolutely. Wonderful. It's quite literally, Council Member Curtis, a greening of the grid as a result of an initiative like this. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you both for the presentation. I've got a few questions for Mr. Dugas to begin with. This was an unsolicited proposal that kind of turned around into a bid pretty quickly and then with kind of a tight window. Did we actually seek a variety of vendors to respond to this, or what did we do in that process? I'm just curious. So per the KRS for receiving an unsolicited proposal, we had to advertise publicly that we had received an unsolicited proposal to allow any other potential vendors to submit a competing proposal. We met that threshold, and then we went one step further. We could have just moved forward with the single because no one else submitted during that time frame. But in review with our procurement folks and legal, we said just to be 100% sure, we then actually drafted a request for proposal because we wanted to make sure that some of the key items that were in the ZOTA were addressed. So we actually put another formal request for proposal out following all of our purchasing protocols and procedures that had all of the requirements that we wanted to see in that. So we received the unsolicited, and that basically kicked us over to, and then we followed our normal protocol. So any vendor had an opportunity to bid on it. Did we use any sort of consultant to help us in that field that kind of knows all the vendors in that field? We used a consultant to help us draft that, and we just advertised it on our IonWave for our standard purchasing protocols. Okay, thanks. My next question is really about on the landfill itself. Once again, I think it's 234 agricultural acres that are non-capped that we're using. And I guess my question is probably for Mr. Edelen. What typically makes a project pencil out? Like is there a typical sweet spot for a number of acres, or the bigger the better? Absolutely. So economies of scale kick in at about 50 megawatts. So a project lower than that, your cost of capital is more expensive because it really doesn't take, it takes almost the same amount of time and effort and overhead commitment, Council Member, to build a 10-megawatt project as it does a 100-megawatt project. So 50 is sort of a sweet spot where you begin to realize economies of scale. And cost of capital is, I don't have to tell you, is a really important part of being an entrepreneur and putting together the capital stack. So a good rule of thumb is about 5 acres per megawatt. So 50 megawatts is 250 acres. Because we're on a brownfield, oftentimes you need more land. In the cold of solar space, for instance, you need closer to 7 to 8 acres because of the geotechnical challenges. But there is a sweet spot. Getting projects to 50 megawatts or over is really important. And if and when you approve the LOI and we're able to formalize the study work that we're doing with the utility and we were to find out that this site would only support a 20-megawatt project, that would be unlikely to pencil. Three other things that you're looking for generally, in addition to adequate acreage, is flat or gently sloping land to 12 degrees or less normally. Quality infrastructure, whether it be road or rail in the area. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, is access to transmission infrastructure with adequate capacity, which is why this corridor, let's call it the Winchester Road Corridor, is such a hot spot for development because it's one of the few places where on the grid you have sufficient space to handle the power that we can generate at the site. Okay. I've got one more question. I'm going to have to come back to it because I lost it in there. I'll come back on another one. Thanks. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. I'll start off with the administration. So just in our last working group, this was kind of highlighted. So would you agree that the main financial benefit to LFUCG is through the lease of this property? It's co, but yes. It appears like at the end of the day that the cash flow would come greater from the lease than from the offsetting of mowing. Okay. So the lease would be our main financial benefit. Yes. According to the previous Taylor Pike study, the recommended lease was estimated at about $500 per acre. Is that correct? That was in there, and that was a desktop study, and it was based off from numbers in 2001 and the energy market changes daily. So those numbers were only valid in 2001. Right. And I think it's fair to say that also land market rate changes as well over time as well. Correct. Thank you. Let's see. Is it fair to say all properties are charged water quality fees in general? I'm not the expert on the water quality management fee. They were here, and I think they've all – I'm going to ask you actually. We have the perfect person here to answer this question. Could you repeat the question for us? Just water quality fees. Is it fair to say that most properties are charged that? Yes. Thank you. Let's see. With this current proposal, there is no direct energy from the proposed project that is going towards lowering the bills, energy bills of residents or any government buildings as of right now, correct? Regrettably, if this seems like a scathing indictment of Kentucky politics, it's because it is. We have a prohibition on third-party generation in Kentucky, which means the power that we've produced here could not be utilized to bring down the power bills of, for instance, our lowest-income residences. In fact, I'm on a high horse here. My firm was just awarded a $50 million community solar project in East St. Louis, Illinois, a community that is 95 percent African American, has a median household income of $30,000 a year. And because Illinois has an aggressive community solar law, we're going to be able to lower the power bills for folks in that community by about $1,500 a year. The difference between Illinois and Kentucky isn't landscape. It is accent, but it's also political approach. And so as we're thinking about the future of power and we're thinking about the future of affordability, the lack of a community solar law in this state is artificially raising the price of power in every community in Kentucky. Sounds good. Is that something y'all are actively lobbying at the state legislature? As you can imagine, I may not be the most popular guy with the Kentucky legislature, but, yes, we're using our voice to make sure that we're heard. Thank you. This question, I think, is for Commissioner Barber. And so being that the landfill is property of LFUCG, we have the right to negotiate broad benefits, including the lease, the scale of wrecks, and even direct benefits to our community residents, correct? Yes, sir. Thank you. If something goes wrong with the cap due to the solar array operations, which entity would be responsible for environmental reparations? Well, excuse me, which entity would be responsible for fixing it, LFUCG or the developer? We're trying to build protections into the lease so that we would not be the ones responsible. That would be part of the lease agreement. Thank you. Can we go to the community benefits plan slide? Okay. Can you tell me what funds first the lease would go into? What fund would that go into? And that could be whoever. For the lease agreement, what fund would that go into? What source would that go into? So because of the location and the funds that were used to acquire the landfill, the lease payments themselves would go back into that fund. Anything else that you all or that we can get out of this agreement would not necessarily have to be tied to that fund. Okay. And being that just the first question, that the lease is our main financial juggernaut, where we get benefits off of, that lease, those dollars have to go directly to the waste management fund, which means they cannot be spent out of the general fund. That's right. You could make a decision to offset them, but from a legal standpoint, you'd have to put them into that fund. Of course. Okay. And then taxes, is there an average, like do we have about an average per year that we think we're going to get off of taxes on this project? Is that estimated? I think they're looking for tax relief, so I don't – oh, as far as like occupational license fee type taxes? Yeah. It says in the number six it highlights increase in tax revenue. I don't know if we can cancel that out, but from a property tax standpoint, I think that they want to go through the process to obtain relief so they pay little or no on the property tax. So number six, I guess what would that allude to then? You don't currently pay tax on that site. So I'm not clear on – I don't think they're going to have a lot of permanent jobs created out of this. I believe at the onset, my understanding is there will be quite a few jobs that are involved in the construction of the project, and we would benefit financially tax-wise from that, but I don't think they have a significant number of like permanent additional employees going forward after that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Boone. Thank you, sir, for your presentation. And I just wanted to – more of a comment more or less is kind of applaud you for your efforts kind of putting into this project, and I do believe it's a great way to use some brownfield sites that we have in our community, and at the same time, we're kind of bringing solar in at the same time. So I wish you good luck with it, and thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation. My question really is about the non-binding letter of intent. I know it's non-binding, but I'm really curious about the terms. I would love to read it. What's contained in this non-binding letter of intent? Like how much, I guess, authorization are we giving Eden Renewables to negotiate on our behalf? Like how much is the government's neck on the line in this non-binding letter of intent? The letter of intent is item N on the agenda on the docket for tonight. The full letter of intent is in the packet, is tonight's packet. The full? Letter N of new business on the 3 o'clock session. Yes, I'm aware of that. I would love to read it. Basically, it's non-binding for us to do anything. It's basically just saying that we are close to an agreement, but it doesn't bind LFUCD to anything. But we're giving authorization for them to negotiate on our behalf? We're giving them authorization to negotiate based on they're going to be doing something on property that they would be leasing from us. We will not be part of the operations of the solar landfill. We will just be leasing them the ground, and then they will be responsible for all of the operations, maintenance, interconnection, and everything that has to do with the solar array moving forward. That's the stuff. But in order for them to move forward with dealing with the regulatory entities such as the PSC and the banks, they need to essentially, they need that letter from us to say, we don't really have a lease yet, but we're really, really close. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. I'll start with Mr. Edelen. How long do you anticipate construction once you break ground? So we have two windows. The first is to meet the federal definition. Treasury guidance of construction would mean beginning some civil work. It would mean procuring the equipment, some of the key equipment necessary to construct the process. It means having a contract in place with the engineering, procurement, and construction firm that would build it. So the first window would be July of 26 next year, which is pushing it. That's a very aggressive timetable. And while I'm confident of our ability to pull off the project if we all work together, I want to level set with you, Vice Mayor, that that is an aggressive timetable, which tells us the next gating option would be 12-31-27. So to get to the bottom line, we think we could have this built after permitting, after we've gone through all the regulatory hurdles and met our key milestones. We think, functionally, construction would last nine to 11 months. Okay. So looking at this timeline, you either begin by July 4th and you have four years to complete it, you have a bigger window, or you have two. So if you miss that timeline, if you begin construction, let's say, by July 10th, you have essentially a little bit under 18 months. And that's just how arbitrary the dates are. You're correct. So I understand. So kind of given that math and given you talking about kind of the principal construction taking, and say that again, 11-12 months? Excuse me, nine to 11 months. Nine to 11 months. So we're still looking at potentially, if you were to start, let's say, hypothetically, July 10th, that's an 18-month window. Correct. I just want to make sure that we're talking about kind of realistically about expediting a process versus what is realistic. So to me, it seems like if we were to be able to or want to ask more questions about this process and kind of not rush it the way that some of us feel like this is being rushed a little bit, I think we're still well within the window of being able to hit that. Well, Vice Mayor, the one thing I would say is to think of this less as a race where the umpire fires a starting pistol and more like a domino. And so if that first domino doesn't fall, it delays the sequential process significantly. And what we want to make sure we don't do is get ourselves put another way. No developer's financier will permit them to dedicate this much capital. And I want to be clear to the council, we're certainly talking about, as planned, north of $80 million of private capital investment at the site. And I appreciate that. I know you do. And thank you for that. Mr. Douglas, I have a couple questions for you regarding the RFP process. I've been a part of an RFP committee where the normal course of how we do things is we kind of come up with a goal or a plan or what we're trying to do. We write an RFP and then we kind of put it out into the community and say who can kind of hit these benchmarks and fulfill these goals for us, right? When you get an unsolicited proposal and then you kind of work things almost in a backwards way, in my mind, then creating the RFP, how are you not influenced by the current proposal that you have in hand when you craft that RFP for potential other applicants? And I'll address that specifically for this. Since we had already started the process earlier in the budget process, we knew what our RFP, we knew those big items, we knew the five or six critical categories that were going to be in our RFP already because that was part of our budget. We knew that was going to be there. That's why we requested the money to do the study. So we knew those four or five bullets that we had to answer. And when the unsolicited proposal came in, it didn't answer all five of those questions, which was really one of the reasons why it tripped us over and we said no. In order for us to be comfortable moving forward, that's why. So we did not write the RFP based off from the unsolicited proposal. We wrote the RFP basically off the draft from the documents that we had submitted on the budget. So we had the five or six questions, big questions that needed to be answered, and that's why if you were to take and put the unsolicited proposal next to the RFP, they are apples and oranges. They are completely different documents. I'm going to try to squeeze in one more question before my time runs out. Thinking about the idea of this urgency that you all are kind of pushing into this deadline, do you have an opinion about why Edelen was the only firm that submitted after you all rolled out the RFP? We did receive a letter from Silicon Ranch, and I don't recall the exact wording, but one of their comments in there, I believe, and I'll share that with you. I believe it was distributed. I think all the council members got it. They objected to the water quality management fee was one of their items, which we have gone back. In the original proposal, the RFP went out. We said we thought the water quality management fee would be applicable, and since the time the RFP is closed up until the current procedure, we have gone back. We engaged the water quality management folks. We engaged legal, and we've gone back and reviewed our statutes, and it is crystal clear that the water quality management fee will apply to any utility scale solar that takes place in Fayette County because it is very clear in the ordinance that that meets the definition of requiring that fee. So anybody who was offered to do it? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and I'm going to try to make the best of my five minutes. I think that I hear you want an IRB for this. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So have you started that? You must be working with economic development team to try to get that. We're on that board. I haven't seen anything come up yet. We've had two or three conversations about it, most recently a meeting, Amy, last Monday, somewhere last week. Now typically someone wouldn't do that on public property because they're trying to. One of the reasons they do it is to lower their tax burden, but we don't really have a tax burden. Certainly we do. This will be because even though it's public property, it's private capital investment on it. So I wish that were correct. Okay. Okay. So you're trying to. And we would also be removing the net profits tax from you with that. Correct. And in return we would be negotiating a payment in lieu of taxes that would, at the very least, make the local government whole for the abatement that we would see on the real property tax invested at the site. My thinking is by you having to pay the water quality fee, though, that's money coming to us, but that also just lowers the amount that you can give us on a lease. Absolutely correct. It's kind of a net zero. Absolutely correct. Okay. I've got a question. It may be for you, Mr. Dugas, or it may be for the commissioner. Since I chaired the EQVW, I know we spend a ton of money on, right now, we have an increased cost of transferring to a landfill. So I don't know if the administration has done any work on the concept of the cash benefit of solar on this property versus it's like what's the best use of the property, and is it a better long-term use and lower cost for us to be using that property that's available? We still have a cell, I think, available. Is that correct? Because I think over 20 years that's going to become a very, like we're making a commitment with this land for 20 years, and it's going to become a little bit more of a problem. I think your question is, is it more beneficial economically to us to lease for solar or to open up and start operating a landfill again? Yeah. I believe the answer is going to be it's more expensive to open a landfill. So it would be much more expensive to us. Because transport is the biggest cost. We have that in our back pocket, and we'd like to keep it as a potential use in the future, but at this time it would be expensive and time-consuming to reopen those cells. So it's not something we've actively pursued recently. So I don't have a good cost number to look at. All right. It's just something because we're making a 20-year commitment. Right. And that's why we want to keep the option there of we could undo the lease and go back if we needed to. Okay. And then my question, my next thing is, like what's the typical structure of a deal like this? Is there an upfront payment that comes to LFUCG, and then there's a lease? And by us giving this, I'm concerned. I want to make sure that this is a non-exclusive thing that we're giving them. Because once we give them something like this, I feel like we have given the complete negotiation over to the vendor. So without getting into the financial details of the lease payment, we're looking at essentially a 20- to 21-year initial term, and then there would be subsequent terms after that that would be on both parties would have to agree to those terms. So there would be, again, so essentially we would only be locked into roughly about a 20-21-year initial term, and then after that, any subsequent terms would be negotiated. So there's not an automatic escalation, or is there an automatic escalation per year? Correct. Those are the finite details we're still continuing to work through. Okay. Because those are important. I'm kind of into this non-exclusivity thing, and I didn't get an answer for that. And I'm out of time. I have one second. Oh, I'm done. I mean, obviously for the period of the lease terms, it would be exclusive to them because they would have put their infrastructure on there. At the end of the second term, we could put it back out. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. I just want to follow up on a point. So the water quality management fee does not replace or supplement from the lease, right? At this time, I don't think it's appropriate to get into the financial. That's getting into the financial details because it's part of the larger financial package that's being negotiated. Where we're at in the negotiations is we're looking at all of the financial dollars that would be coming into LFUCG leveraged against the cost of operating. So that is one of the items that is being negotiated. Okay. And they have two separate funds. Correct. Water quality management fund is separate from the landfill, which is the solid waste fund. And you can't answer if it could supplement or replace the lease funding? The water quality management fee will be applied to this. One of the reasons we wanted to very much look at the details of this is because we wanted to make sure this will set the precedence. And we have reviewed that. The water quality management fee will be applied per ordinance. And so that will not be part of the lease. That is simply going to be applied as though they were going to go out and build pickleball courts. If they were going to go out and build pickleball courts, they would be assessed the water quality management fee because they've created an impervious surface. Okay. So it doesn't matter whether it's a solar or what, and it's going to be treated according to that ordinance. So those funds are basically they will come in because the activity qualifies for that fund. They will be charged that fund, and it will go through the revenue stream according to that fund. But philosophy-wise, we're not looking at it as supplementing the lease? To answer your question, it's not two revenue streams to the city. It's three. It's the lease, the water management fee, and a funded community benefit plan. Okay. So I guess the question was, so we have lease payments. You have water quality management fee payments, whatever you want to call it. When we're negotiating, when we're looking at that financial return, we're not looking at saying, well, the lease should be less because we have a water quality management fee is the question. Right. Can I answer that? That's a financial consideration. That will certainly be discussed in the lease. Thank you. So with that, you know, the last proposal tied to solar was also on a time crunch, and we made the decision to wait, to do more work, to do our new dealings, to create that solar working group. And I feel that there may be some hypocrisy there here to move through this, you know, with a full-paced process and not do full dealings. That's just my thoughts. But then also tied to that, knowing that it is on a time crunch, I would just push for the administration. I hope that we're negotiating a fair, realistic community benefit agreement that serves our constituents directly and or our residents that get direct benefits from the millions in savings. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Okay. Thank you, Chair. I just want to correct some information. We did get a letter from Silicon Ranch about this RFP on September 24th. They did not mention anything about the water quality fee in that letter that we received. They did say that they reviewed the proposal, the request for proposals, that they had in previous conversations had asked about that, the Hanley Pike landfill, and that we were told that it was not available. But they mentioned constraints on their interconnection queue position for the grid and not wanting to lose their place in line. They mentioned the cost that is likely going to be assumed by a developer to construct a substation and potential transmission lines to connect with KU. They mentioned the two-week response window because they felt that they weren't able to complete a thorough review of this site and give a firm proposal within that allotted time frame. But they did not mention water quality fee in the letter, in the thing that they sent to us. So I'm not sure if you had separate conversations with them about that, but I do want to be clear about the concerns that they had raised to council about why they did not submit at that time. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Edelen, real quick, you had mentioned a couple of times about how brownfield and infill solar is costly, more difficult, have a lot more issues than using agricultural land. Have you all investigated the feasibility of large-scale solar on ag land? With the understanding, of course, right now that that is not a permitted use, but you obviously have plenty of experience lobbying both in Frankfurt and other places to get either regulations or legislation towards certain things. So I just wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit about how you think about that. So we are not developers of prime farmland, nor will we ever be. Another developer mentioned they're a top-flight developer. We have very different approaches. We are in the space. The niche we have built for ourselves is repurposing brownfields and industrial sites, be it Appalachian coal country, be it landfills. And so we happen to believe and live our values. We actually have a partnership in place where we're the exclusive developer for the Farmers Powering Communities Initiative with the American Farmland Trust. Vice Mayor Wu is the largest farmland preservation organization in the country. And so we just fundamentally believe that it's a false dichotomy to make communities or their elected officials choose between solar development and farmland preservation. Frankly, the notion that you can't do that is lazy beyond the pale to me. We have a million acres of reclaimed mountaintop removal sites in central Appalachia alone. Every urban area in America, including this one, is riddled with brownfields that can be repurposed. There will be a time and a place where our grandchildren come back and want to know why the rooftop of Rupp Arena isn't covered in solar panels. These are all very good questions, but we fundamentally disagree as a development approach with our peers in the development community who say you can only affordably develop on farmland. That's not true. And it demonstrates a lack of curiosity and innovation that we embrace at Edlin Renewables. Thank you for that. The solar working group is getting underway. Is there any impact to your project in terms of what recommendations and things that might come out of that working group? So ultimately how you decide to treat the land use of this, we have followed the really good work of that working group for some months now, and we would try to make sure that we included both the spirit and the letter of the findings that have come out of that group for inclusion in this important brownfield project. Okay. Thank you for that. I'll echo my colleague, Council Member Morton's comments about the speed at which things move. I think there are still plenty of questions. I have plenty of questions that I wasn't able to get to. And based on Mr. Edlin's sketch out of the timeline in terms of the construction time that's required, to me fits fully into still hitting that December 31, 2027 deadline. And I very much appreciate the way you put it about the cascading effect of all the different permissions and things. So I understand. It sounds like either way this is not necessarily the easiest of projects to get through, both in terms of timing and all the logistics and all that. So I do appreciate all of that, but I am inclined to take a little more time to look at this project. Thank you so much. Thanks, Chair. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And thank you, colleagues, for your engagement, for your questions, and for this robust discussion this afternoon. These are all really important topics. I want to draw your attention. In your packet you have, for information only, your Division of Water Quality Projects information. So that's our Division of Water Quality Stormwater Priority Projects. So please take some time to review those. And I want to say thank you all so much to everybody who participated in this meeting. We appreciate your interest and your attendance. Having completed the business of today's meeting, this meeting stands adjourned. Thank you, colleagues.