# Council Work Session - December 2, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Council · December 2, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6636 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6636?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-12-02 - **Body**: Council - **Last revised**: February 4, 2026 - **Length**: 9,424 words - **Speakers**: Mayor > ⚠️ **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 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council met on December 2, 2025, at 3:00 PM in the Council Chamber on the second floor of the Government Center, with Mayor Linda Gorton presiding. The meeting included 4 agenda items spanning action items and informational presentations. The Council took 5 votes during the session, approving items related to Budget Amendments and New Business. Members of the public had 2 opportunities to provide comment on agenda items, and the Council received 1 presentation on a Website Redesign. ## Attendance All 15 council members were present at the December 2, 2025 Council meeting. No members were absent or late. **Members Present:** Wu, Brown, Ellinger II, Morton, Lynch, LeGris, Curtis, Sheehan, Higgins-Hord, Hale, Beasley, Baxter, Sevigny, Reynolds, and Boone. ## Votes and Decisions All five votes at the December 2, 2025 Council meeting passed by voice vote. No roll call votes were taken, so individual member tallies are not available. - **Approve the amended docket** [timestamp: 0:05]: Moved by Council Member Ellinger, seconded by Council Member Higgins. The motion to approve the amended docket for the meeting passed by voice vote. - **Approve budget amendments as amended** [timestamp: 7:41]: Moved by Council Member Legree, seconded by Council Member Sheehan. The motion to approve the budget amendments, as amended, passed by voice vote. - **Approve new business items** [timestamp: 8:36]: Moved by Council Member Reynolds, seconded by Council Member Savigny. The motion to approve the new business items passed by voice vote. - **Approve communications from the Mayor — Appointments** [timestamp: 28:36]: Moved by Council Member Baxter, seconded by Council Member Curtis. The motion to approve the Mayor's communications regarding appointments passed by voice vote. - **Approve communications from the Mayor — Procurements** [timestamp: 29:15]: Moved by Vice Mayor Wu, seconded by Council Member Savigny. The motion to approve the Mayor's communications regarding procurements passed by voice vote. ## Budget and Financial Actions The Council considered three financial agreements at the December 2, 2025 meeting, covering municipal services, employee wellness, and downtown development. - **Dumpster Bin Refurbishment (L1064-25):** The Council took up an agreement with **Containerpros, LLC** valued at **$12,822.74** for dumpster bin refurbishment services. This contract covers the maintenance and restoration of the city's dumpster bin inventory. - **Wellness Coordinator/Athletic Trainer Services (L1080-25):** A contract with the **University of Kentucky** in the amount of **$100,000** was considered to support a Wellness Coordinator/Athletic Trainer position. This agreement reflects an ongoing partnership with the university to provide professional health and wellness services. - **Downtown Strategic Analysis (L1081-25):** The Council reviewed a Purchase of Service Agreement with the **Downtown Lexington Corporation** for **$15,000** to conduct a strategic analysis. This contract directs funds toward planning and analytical work focused on the downtown area. Combined, the three agreements represent a total financial commitment of **$127,822.74** across vendors in the private services, higher education, and nonprofit/development sectors. ## Public Comment Two members of the public addressed the Council during the public comment period, both focusing on climate-related topics. - **Henry Jackson** [timestamp: 59:19] urged the Council to develop a regional climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation plan, citing accelerating climate change as the impetus for the recommendation. - **Judith Humble** [timestamp: 1:00:57] presented a book on solar energy and spoke to its potential role in addressing climate change. Both speakers centered their remarks on environmental concerns, with Jackson calling for a formal planning process and Humble highlighting solar energy as a relevant tool for the community to consider. ## Appointments The meeting record for December 2, 2025 indicates that appointments were made during this Council meeting; however, the available structured data does not include the specific names of the individuals appointed or the particular bodies or roles to which they were appointed. No further details regarding these appointments are available from the provided source materials. Readers seeking the full details of the appointments made at this meeting — including the names of appointees and the specific boards, commissions, or roles involved — are encouraged to consult the official meeting minutes or recording directly. ## Public Comment - Issues on Agenda [timestamp: 03:43] At this point in the meeting, the Council opened the floor for public comments on agenda items. No members of the public had signed up to speak, and no comments were offered during this portion of the meeting. ## Budget Amendments [timestamp: 06:04] The Council discussed and approved several budget amendments during this portion of the meeting, with the changes covering additional funding allocations for water quality initiatives and grants. Council Member Brown was the key speaker on this agenda item, presenting the proposed amendments to the Council for consideration. The amendments included provisions for increased funds directed toward water quality efforts as well as grant-related expenditures, though specific dollar amounts and grant program names were not detailed in the available record. Following the discussion, the Council approved the budget amendments. ## New Business [timestamp: 08:36] The Council took up several new business items during this portion of the meeting, focusing on agreements related to wellness coordination and strategic analysis. Key speakers during this portion of the meeting included **Council Member Morton** and **Chief Wells**, who presented and discussed the items under consideration. The Council reviewed agreements pertaining to wellness coordination and strategic analysis, though specific contract values, vendor names, or additional details were not provided in the available meeting record. Following discussion, the Council **approved** the new business items presented. ## Website Redesign Presentation [timestamp: 33:39] CIO Liz Rogers presented an overview of the updates and improvements made to the Lexington city website. The presentation highlighted two primary areas of improvement: increased accessibility and greater user satisfaction. This item was informational in nature, with no vote or formal action taken by the Council. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the December 2, 2025 Council Meeting Docket, as amended - **Motion** — passed (0-0): place on the docket for the December 2, 2025 Council Meeting, a resolution authorizing and directing the Mayor, on behalf of the Urban County Government, to accept a grant in the amount of $77,221.00 from the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, for the State Crisis Intervention Program, to further provide any information requested in connection with this Grant Application, to execute any documents necessary for the acceptance of this Grant, and authorizing the Mayor to transfer unencumbered funds within the grant budget - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve the November 18, 2025 Table of Motions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Budget Amendments, as amended - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend the list of budget amendments on Page 5 of the Work Session Packet to add the following budget amendments that were approved after the packet was prepared: Budget Journal 160008 to provide $400,000 for Water Quality for West Hickman/Merrick Trunk remedial measures project; Budget Journals 160010-11 and 160012- 13 in Grants and Special Programs to establish grant budgets for Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) federal and state grant awards; and, Budget Journal 160016 to transfer $7,000 to Human Resources from Waste Management for post-accident and pre-hire testing - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve New Business - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Communications from the Mayor- Appointments - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Communications from the Mayor – Donations - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Communications from the Mayor – Procurements - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Neighborhood Development Funds - **Motion** — passed (0-0): approve Council Capital Projects, as amended - **Motion** — passed (0-0): amend the Council Capital Project list to revise the purpose of the allocation of funds to Chrysalis House, Inc. to instead state: “To support capital improvements involving professional landscaping and the removal of hazardous trees.” - **Motion** — passed (0-0): adjourn at 4:02 p.m --- ## Full transcript so so so do so so so so so it's three o'clock and so I would like to go ahead and call to order the Lexington Fayette Urban County Council work session today is December 2nd 2025 and the first item on our agenda is public comment for issues on the agenda and I do not see anyone signed up for that right now so we'll go ahead and you know people have until 30 minutes after the beginning of the meeting to sign up so we'll go back if anyone comes we do have a docket so I'll entertain a motion to approve thank you council member Ellinger second by council member Higgins ward are there questions additions concerns and this is for the five o'clock docket council member Reynolds thank you mayor I have a walk-on I move to place on the docket for tonight's council meeting under resolutions first reading a resolution authorizing and directing the mayor on behalf of the urban county government to accept a grant in the amount of $77,221 from the Kentucky justice and public safety cabinet for the state crisis intervention program to further provide any information requested in connection with this grant application to execute any documents necessary for the acceptance of this grant and authorizing the mayor to transfer unencumbered funds with the grant budget so is there a second vice mayor Wu seconds are there questions about the motion all right all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes is there anything else for the docket all right all those in favor of the amended docket please say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes thank you very much we do have council work session November 18th table of motions I'll entertain a motion vice mayor Wu second by council member Curtis are there any additions corrections all right all those in favor say aye aye is anyone opposed thank you that passes we do have budget amendments so I'll entertain a motion to approve council member Legree council member Sheehan seconds now uh questions about budget amendments council member Brown thank you mayor I have some motions to amend that page of budget amendments do I do that now yes okay I move to amend the list of budget amendments on page five of the work session packet to add the following budget amendments that were approved after the packet was prepared budget journal one six zero zero zero eight to provide 400,000 for water quality for Wes Hickman Merrick Trump remedial remedial measures project budget journals one six zero zero one zero dash one one and one six zero zero one two dash one three and grants and special programs to establish grant budget budgets for sexual assault nurse examiner federal and state grant awards budget journal one six zero zero one six to transfer seven thousand dollars to human resources from waste management for post-accident and pre-hiring testing so move is there a second council member Ellinger seconds now are there questions all right all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes is there anything else for budget amendments all right all those in favor of the budget amendments as amended please say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes council members you will see there are budget adjustments for your information only and that brings us to new business is there a motion council member Reynolds second by council member Savigny and we do have questions council member Morton thank you I will start with item g so let's leave chief wills so I'm happy to see this item on the docket today in the budget we pushed to expand the crisis response team is this item in line with that and can you talk can you highlight what this funding will be used for welcome chief good afternoon thank you council member Morton for the question so this was when the original this is a part of the cosup grants and when these grants were initially sent out there were unfortunately a few entities that could not fulfill their obligation which for us meant that they turned back in the money making more funds available for us this will mark the continuation of that program it allows us to basically extend that program with grant funds for a longer period of time okay and could that be used also for the expansion of that crisis response that we budgeted in the budget I would presume that there would be a way to to share those funds you know we're talking about the creation of a second team so I would think there's probably not a stipulation on how many teams you have but that will certainly go toward our improving of the service delivered thank you yes sir then let's see I just had a quick a quick question for item e I noticed that on the blue sheet and so and this is um let's see director director martin yeah I just noticed on the blue sheet um it highlights um interest on a loan but it's so it shows the rate is unknown can you talk about that and you know I guess why the rate's unknown for the interest on there when I wrote it the rate was unknown I've since gotten the packet from kia I'm supposed to appear in front of the board on thursday and the rate is 1.75 thank you thank you and then lastly is item d and I know that we're in conversations about the landfill and the possible use for it to be solar I just wondered is this a yearly ongoing cost and how might this work contract and the possible construction of the solar arrays on the landfill interact this is totally different than the solar project this is the upgrades to the existing leachate treatment system that is installed at the landfill to manage the the water that flows through the trash and ultimately is ultimately is collected tested and then treated and tested again to make sure that when it's released to the tributary of north elkhorn creek that it meets permit requirements okay so it won't interact with that project at all no okay cool thank you councilmember sheehan I'm just gonna note my recusal on item b because of my affiliation with university of Kentucky all right thank you um councilmember reynolds I mean I'm sorry councilmember lynch thank you mayor I have a question regarding item c as incorporation regarding the strategic analysis and overview we're downtown hello how are you good how are you I'm well my question is um this sounds very similar to our downtown master plan that is going on right now so how is this different is there overlap there's not overlap they're similar but different as I guess this is the best way the way the downtown master plan study that's going on right now it's more of a planning document what are those requirements this takes a look at how you know we're fortunate that our downtown has done so well over the last decade or so how are we doing that how are other cities maintaining what are other cities doing it's more of a benchmarking of the economic impact than the planning study is actually the two are very complementary of one another and go well to be done at the same time because it helps this study will also help planning you know how and I've talked about this in the past when you to make sure that we're taking a look at all the businesses that might be in the downtown that we're not overlooking something so they they really work well together so it sounds like this the 15,000 for this analysis and overview is it more retail focused rather than broad focus of downtown it will be more business focused I don't want to say just retail because it will encompass all that I also want to you know make sure so this is 15,000 in new funding DLP had ten thousand dollars remaining from fuses grants that were not given out so it's really a $25,000 study which is included in the PSA but this accounts for the 15,000 in new funding okay thank you that clears it up somewhat as long as I don't want us to be funding the same thing in two different places that they're different but complementary okay okay thank you so much thank you mayor thank you councilmember Reynolds thank you mayor director here on I just wanted to ask you about item I to give you a chance to explain that more fully unless oh I'm sorry that's the wrong person sorry wrong person don't listen to me I made that up director carry sorry I just wanted to give you a chance to kind of explain this program I think some folks didn't realize that has been going on and then how this is going to work to kind of expand it sure this is a program that's been in place for many years since before I became director of the division and we contract with new life day center and they provide litter pickups throughout the city and use the panhandlers who we all see at various intersections throughout town so they have a van and they go to the various intersections and recruit folks to come aboard and help pick up litter for the day they are provided ten dollars an hour in payment as well as lunch and they they pick up typically in a typical day anywhere from 60 to 70 bags of trash and it's been a good partnership and helps to keep all of our streets and rights of ways looking better thank you and then how many days a week will this program be going on and what is the expanded amount of money going to help with so in the past the funding is typically allowed the van to run two to three times a week there was a period of time where they didn't have a driver and so funds accrued for a while and weren't being spent but now that they've got a driver in place they are ready to gear up and run five days a week monday through friday they've actually been doing it since september so we know they have the capacity and are able to do it and kind of we were forward thinking when we worked on our budget request for fiscal year 26 and that's why we requested the additional sixty thousand dollars so that they could run five days a week okay thank you and uh in that program do they overlap at all with our office of homelessness prevention and intervention or are there any resources offered to them yes and that is part of the agreement that we have with new life is that they do offer services to the folks who participate in the litter pickups okay thank you very much thank you mayor thank you council member savigny thank you mayor um i've got a question uh on item u mr bens um could you just could you just um for the council kind of because it wasn't included in the packet just describe some of the restrict some of what these restrictions are that we're dealing with on the legacy business park sure i'd be glad to so this is a declaration of covenants conditions and restrictions specific to legacy business park and it's the equivalent of what you would see if you live in an hoa those type of documents some of the restrictions that you might see in there are are adoption by reference of some of the restrictions that were included in the zone change for the site to i-1 there were some specific uses that we disallowed because they either weren't job creators or they were just really obsolete uses you'll also see things like ties to payroll requirements we're tying payroll requirements in the park to the jobs fund which is currently 28 an hour and is reviewed annually each january you'll see a reference to design guidelines in there as well that are adopted by reference so that new development going into the park is compatible not all exactly the same but at least compatible with each other and that sort of thing you'll also see some requirements for construction to commence within two years from the lot purchase and for construction to complete be completed from two years after that commencement so within four years of a lot purchase we'd like to see completed construction on the site and there's just some enforcement mechanisms that are included as well thank you has there been any push back on any of the restrictions yet and do you think it's stopped us from getting people into the park there have not i mean admittedly they're they're newly adopted but they have been through the industrial authority board and in two different hearings and we haven't had any public comment that's been negative great thank you thank you so much and then my next question is for mr harren could you just do this body a favor and kind of explain to us the continuum of care grants and kind of the state of flux that we're in just so that we're aware of what we're applying for and then what we foresee some some issues could be thank you yeah so the continuum of care program through the u.s department of housing and urban development is presently our community's largest single source of permanent housing funds for individuals that are experiencing homelessness last year we applied under what was to be a two-year nofo and we're not expecting to have to operate a competition this year however recently as soon as the federal government shut down ended we received a coc nofo that is going to operate on a compressed timeline and present several significant changes probably the most alarming of those changes is that we are now being told that there is a cap of 30 of our community community's annual renewal demand the amount of funding we apply for each year that can be allocated towards permanent housing programs to give you a frame of reference we currently use about 2.3 million of our funding towards permanent housing and we will need to reduce that down to 764,000 effectively reducing about 1.5 million in permanent housing funding that would include programs such as rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing there is an opportunity for current recipients to potentially transition to another form of program such as transitional housing or supportive services only this would represent a significant cap and it would jeopardize those who are currently in permanent supportive housing if they have been in that program for longer than two years which would be the maximum under a program like transitional housing they may not be able to continue if that program transitions to a transitional housing program so there's definitely going to be a loss of some potential stability for individuals that are in current permanent housing programs we are working with providers to transition as many of them as possible to work under the new parameters but we're going to be looking probably at a loss of over 100 permanent housing beds within our community thank you i appreciate that that's all i have mayor okay thank you council member higgins ward thank you mayor i'd like to recuse myself on item b 1080-25 all right thank you council member brown thank you mayor i have a question for item on item i as well director kerry and it's i thought i knew where that funding came from that that funded the litter pickup van so where all does the monies come from that goes towards that program which fund is it yes ma'am is it is it because i thought it was i thought it was money that came from the feds kind of targeted at litter abatement is that is that no that's we use that state um kentucky pride grant to reimburse our road land and stream cleanup contractors the funding for the panhandler van is out of the water quality management fee okay and so and so is this so is all the funding coming from the state or are we putting general fund money towards towards this initiative as well no general fund money this is just um from our water quality management fee and then we use the state grant to reimburse our contractors that are on the road land and stream cleanup contract when they're doing litter pickups on roadways because there's not not all roadways are appropriate for us to send the panhandlers just summer because of the nature of the speeds of the traffic and things like that we use our contractors for that okay yeah no i think it's a very good program i remember when it was instituted and i know you all have been very responsive to us as council members when we have a need and sending the van out when we first so is it is it our van and our program and they run it for us so it's it we're really funding their their van and their program so we as part of their agreement renewal last year we had a van that was going to be surplused and as part of that agreement worked out a way to transfer that van to them because the van that they had been using had a lot of miles on it and a lot of damage and they were not going to be able to pay for repairs for it okay okay all right now i think it's good that we're looking for ways to expand this program and i think we should just keep continue to do that so thank you thank you the other thing i'll mention about this program too is i wonder i don't think the investment in this program gets captured in what we contribute to the homelessness prevention and intervention but i think this is one of the programs that really that some of the folks had mentioned in the task force meeting last month that really we could build upon and look for other models to enhance this so i just think we just need to i think it's something we need to bring up in the homelessness task force and and really account for this investment then i also have a question on item u kevin atkins is it correct so craig i know we talked a little bit yesterday about some of these cabinets and conditions and i think and you correct me if i'm wrong i think you know we did some modeling on on on some of the payrolls and and kind of square footage and and acreage and and came up with a formula is there is there an opportunity to adjust that based on different industries or are we using a blanket approach and when we're thinking about the land use and and users of the space in the business part and try to make all businesses fit one one formula is there i mean is there an opportunity to talk about talk about making sure that we're maximizing opportunities and so when when we worked on the zone change for this we very intentionally removed specific uses that wouldn't generate many employees so what's what's left there really should should be able to generate the sufficient amount of employees for for what we're proposing and really what what we're talking about here what the industrial authority board has proposed is that that this park generate about a million dollars per acre in payroll where we got that number it's it's directly comparable to the bluegrass business park we looked at their recent numbers and that's exactly what they're generating so we thought that would be a a good baseline to start from we also took a look at just researched other industrial parks and standards for industrial parks and 20 employees per acre is right kind of right in the middle of what you typically see it's between 15 and 25 from what i've seen recently so that's that's where those numbers are coming from and we're we're trying to apply them across the site okay are we gonna oh i'm out of time i'll just i'll call you guys thank you thank you mayor thank you council member lagree thank you mayor um i had a follow-up question on item c um i'm really glad that we've funded this initiative and i see on the the overview with common the work with commonwealth economics um it looks like they're going to generate a report um and i'm curious um if you have a sense of kind of the action items or the next steps available with that report and and what council or our involvement would be with helping to um see some of those recommendations forward so i don't have any preconceived um recommendations coming out of it uh commonwealth does an excellent job and and so i want to keep an open mind on that i think what we have designed is with with the chair's uh support is once the report comes in in early 26 uh it gets presented at the bfed meeting or some or this body either one whichever one the council would prefer and then we take a look at the recommendations and then set up the steps toward implementation of those that that council agrees with okay excellent um well that's helpful i'm i'm interested to see about the outcomes of the report and i know we've had a lot of advocates in our downtown area for something like this and i think the timing is great with our downtown area master plan with this and then with some of our vine and main improvements and engagement as well so thank you so much and alan we're looking forward to it um thank you mayor thank you are there any other questions all right all those in favor of approving new business say aye is anyone opposed all right thank you that passes we do have communications from the mayor first our appointments and i'll entertain a motion thank you councilmember baxter councilmember curtis seconded are there questions all right all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes uh next communications from the mayor are donations could i have a motion to approve councilmember reynolds second by councilmember curtis are there any questions all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right thank you that passes and the final communications is procurements i'll entertain a motion vice mayor woo and second by councilmember savigny all right are there questions about procurements all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes this brings us to continuing business and presentations and first i'll entertain a motion to approve the neighborhood development funds councilmember baxter second by councilmember sheehan are there questions all those in favor say aye is anyone opposed thank you that passes uh council capital projects first i'll entertain a motion to approve and then i believe there might be an amendment uh is there a motion to approve vice mayor woo is there a second councilmember sheehan and i'll now turn to councilmember reynolds i have an amendment to correct the purpose i move to amend the council capital project list to revise the purpose of the allocation of the funds to the chrysalis house inc and to instead slate to support capital improvements involving professional landscaping and the removal of hazardous trees so moving is there a second second councilmember lynch seconds first we'll have discussion on this motion is there any discussion amendment all right all those in favor say aye now is anyone opposed all right that passes are there any other motions about capital projects all right all those in favor of approving as amended please say aye is anyone opposed all right that motion passes thank you next i'll turn to councilmember sheehan for the general gov planning two different reports thank you mayor i have two september report out summaries to give for the general government and planning committee the september 9th committee meeting was called to order at 1 p.m followed by a motion to approve the july 1st 2025 committee summary which was passed unanimously next the committee received a detailed presentation from planning manager hal bailey on the latest draft of the preservation and growth management program the presentation emphasized creating a transparent data-driven framework for managing growth prioritizing infill and redevelopment and incorporating strong public feedback favoring preservation and accountability key updates included removing commercial industrial land from the baseline residential need formula refining the growth trends report process and clarifying the roles of council in the planning commission discussions focused heavily on preservation equity transparent accounting of vacant land and ensuring the special economic development need process includes strict safeguards outstanding issues include addressing the housing backlog and approving unit tracking in mixed-use zones a special meeting for additional input was scheduled for september 16th with the final draft presentation set for december 2nd lastly the committee reassigned two items and removed the mag study review before adjourning at 2 12 p.m or yes 2 12 p.m that ends that report out then i also have the report out for september 16th 2025 the special meeting for the general government and planning committee that was called to order at 6 0 1 p.m how bailey presented the updated draft of the preservation and growth management program after his overview the meeting was open to public comment with eight speakers from six council districts giving their comments or yielding their time to others the meeting closed with reminders to provide additional feedback online and engage lexington and adjourned at 6 39 p.m that concludes my reports all right thank you very much does anyone have any questions for council member sheehan all right thank you all right um finally under presentations i'd like to welcome our cio liz rogers who will give you the website redesign presentation welcome thank you mayor i'm up here so infrequently so i appreciate um you guys carving out a little bit of a time for us to tell this very exciting story our uh redesigned lexington ky.gov website is approaching if you can believe it it's first birthday um so we uh took the leap and threw caution to the wind by going live on friday the 13th on december of last year but it turned out to be our lucky day so just a quick recap of that timeline um our uh project kicked off in earnest in january of that year so it took almost a year to clean house put new design elements in place clear out old content generate new content and launch into the new site but as you'll see on this chart where we are today is not completion we're not at an end point we're actually in the evolve phase where we pursue continuous improvement so that includes you know the site hosting and bug fixes and all the typical things that keep the lights on but also a series of enhancements we meet routinely every two weeks with the vendor to kind of go over you know anything that's not working properly or new ideas that are ripe for implementation and we actually just met with them this morning so that's continued to be a really fruitful relationship if you'll recall some of the drivers behind this initiative were we had pretty high satisfaction that was reported from website visitors during our discovery phase especially as compared to other cities we were doing pretty well serving its purpose it was kind of just okay there were issues with some key functions like accepting payments and things like that our numbers for search efficacy were not where they wanted where we wanted them to be it was about 30 or 40 percent of the time people reported that a search yielded a successful result for them really disproportionate negative experiences reported by users of mobile devices which turns out that's about two-thirds of people that visit our website so we wanted to make sure that our new site was mobile aware and adaptive information wasn't really organized in a way that made sense to visitors you kind of had to understand our org chart to navigate the site successfully and that can be a challenge for those of us who work here so it was really challenging for for people in the community we actually had a lot of just what we've kind of come to call data rot data that was redundant obsolete trivial just stuff that was outdated that we really didn't want to have out there anymore and you can see a couple of the testimonials that we gathered during that initial discovery period you know it's okay it just wasn't really knocking anybody's socks off so the goals for the project were to keep it data driven really make decisions based on the data we collected through multiple venues one example of that we get a lot of requests to put a link on the home page put a link to that on the home page we want to showcase this particular thing but we found that a lot of people don't even look at our home page they find us by search engine so we really invested in search engine optimization and things like that so if you go to google you'll find us you know at the first click we also try to keep things user-centered really make sure that everybody accomplishes the reason for their visit use common language rather than gov speak and again not obligating people to really understand our org chart and able to do business with us successfully and then we wanted to keep things content forward make sure everything there had a purpose not use the website as a as a big document repository and keep it fresh and relevant over time our content liaisons across the government went through dozens of sessions worth of training on fine-tuning content writing stuff that's relevant writing stuff that's engaging so outcomes for that all that time and energy over nearly a year performance-wise we have an and you know this is an average this is average over the first year 100 percent of time with no planned outages and you might recall there were some some global hiccups with bigger technology platforms that we knock wood were somewhat immune to or the vendor at least responded swiftly to it again those search numbers that we were seeing between you know 30 35 40 percent search efficacy is at 89 percent now so 89 percent of the time when someone searches for something on our website they get to the appropriate destination our page load speeds are typically less than one second we've got a decoupled architecture that allows pages to load lightning fast so it's a good experience for anybody who knows what they're looking for and wants to get there quickly just a couple of things on the accessibility front in specific the new site conforms to web content accessibility guidelines at level 2a and i'll tell you why that's important in 2024 the doj updated title 2 of the americans with disabilities act so we are obligated as of april 24th 2026 communities the size of lexington to make sure that we conform to these guidelines so that folks in our community who are experiencing you know different different challenges with using technology mobility site hearing impairments they're not disenfranchised by our online content so happily we kind of knocked that requirement out with this project we also reduce the number of pdfs on the site by 78 percent pdfs by major are sort of less accessible than other types of content so we were glad to remove a lot of that and make it a little more adaptive the new site can also be translated into roughly 105 different languages and we've seen a tenfold increase in utilization of those translations so we're really excited that that effort paid off too just a few bits of community feedback average success of visit has gone up about 17 we're really excited about that but our goal is 100 so you can see the numbers are very equivalent for mobile and desktop we've got just a couple of testimonials up here too we've actually seen a little bit less feedback overall which we perceive as sort of good news a lot of the feedback we were getting previously was this doesn't work this link is broken this site is terrible i can't use it so that's quieted down a little bit fortunately you know we are still able to respond to the occasional hiccup but you'll see here our site visitors reporting successful visitors right around 80 and again our goal is 100 but that's a massive improvement over before uh we also gathered some internal feedback though there are dozens of people across this organization who contributed to this project and continue to contribute content to the website every day so we ran a survey recently to not only get their feedback on what's working and what's a little more challenging but also try to harvest some ideas for enhancement so we we take emails and things like that and throughout the year but the survey was a good opportunity just to check in and say you know tell us tell us something so as you'll see had pretty good 4.24 stars out of five for satisfaction with the new site design and features and just under four stars for the content management system there's always a learning curve when you move from one technology to another so we do plan to bring that number up a little attempt to bring that number up a little bit through some additional training initiatives and things satisfaction with available options you'll see largely either agree or strongly agree i had very few detractors on the satisfaction with design options and then confidence with the cms is just sort of a level of comfort with you know the training everyone received and those got good numbers as well you'll see just pieces of feedback of course praising nick brock we always see high praise for nick he's amazing a couple of things here though recurring events we had a lot of demand for you know there are meetings that occur on the second tuesday of every month and we want to be able to crank those out for you know all of 2026 at one time some things about struggling to find things that i've created and that type of thing so that was very informative we do intend to repeat this exercise to make sure that we're you know continuously checking in with these 60 or 70 or so folks who really rely on this tool every day and that brings us to post-launch enhancements based on that feedback we've put a few cool things in one of the things we did this was a huge effort consolidated a lot of micro sites to make sure they looked and felt like government websites so our imagine lexington sister cities and others they have the unified branding now for the city we also put in new design features like a page preview so if you're working on a page you can kind of look to see what it's going to look like before you go through the rigors of publishing it and getting it approved time and date stamps on news articles was an interesting thing we didn't know we needed until we needed it you don't want to look at old news and perceive it as new news so we made sure all those were stamped accordingly lots of options for events went in over the summer and actually just as recent as last week start in times cost cancellation based on the feedback we collected we put in an option for you know everything i created all events i created to make those kind of a one-click search also the feature for recurring events has just recently gone in which is a good thing because meetings for next year are being scheduled as we speak also have to bring up the ai stuff technology lady doesn't get to give a presentation without at least mentioning it but we do have an ai powered content editor this is not yet released but should be very shortly called magic rewrite sort of a language is a writing assistant rather to improve clarity and structure fix things like spelling and grammar mistakes check for ap style which is required per our style guide for the site and also again checks accessibility so making sure that those web content accessibility guidelines for conformance to the ada are there automatically before publish so that brings us to some show and tell we've received numerous awards nick and stacy are here with the others but we received we are the gold winner for for this year's dot com awards that's the the big heavy one that's actually an international competition so we were really excited about that one but it's voted on by the association of marketing and communications professionals for excellence in web creativity fewer than five local governments worldwide got that one so we were really thrilled with that we also got a i think is this one no the other the smaller one that's the members choice for large city county from the national association of government web professionals um and then this uh the you know public sector we get a frame certificate the center for digital government's uh overall city government experience award for 2025 so i'm really excited to share all of that really really want to thank nick brock and stacy diamond for helping me survive and have a little bit of fun on this project in addition have to recognize derrick terry and brandon dunstan from government communications also amy wallet who's not here with us anymore but who works so tirelessly on this and then again the dozens and dozens of content liaisons across divisions and departments who invested so much time training cleaning through eight thousand some web pages worth of content on the old site and making sure everything was tuned up touched up and ready to go into the new house so with that questions thank you so much liz i want to congratulate you and your whole team throughout government this is a wonderful wonderful project and you've obviously been recognized for your good work thank you so much we do have a few questions councilmember reynolds thank you mayor thank you miss rogers i am super excited about the updated website having worked on the old one for several years the changes are really a breath of fresh air and i've heard a lot of positive feedback so thank you for being dedicated to it and your whole team i know that it's not easy to take on a big project like this so thank you i had two questions one i know that like my aide and a few others have said that sometimes it's hard to do internal searches on the website sometimes they have to go to google to find something that's on the website that going to the website it can be challenging is that does that cost a lot of money to upgrade an internal search like that um so that's not so much a cost as it is a level of effort thing is that true that that um the the search optimization internally um is really like a tuning process similar to what we would do with you know an external google search so um just feedback on that yeah uh so we have our new search engine i get a report every two weeks that tells me words and terms that people are searching for that don't yield results or anything um so on the front facing side i make sure that those keywords get added i can create synonym lists and point them in different directions to where to go so that's how we keep uh we keep making the external search better the internal search as far as finding content i will say is a little tricky um you have to be pretty specific with what you're looking for as far as events and things that people are adding to the calendar um just as of two weeks ago all council aides people who are just content contributors can now uh go to an events tab um and search for their specific event filter by um if they authored it or not and uh the date that it is scheduled for so um i need to send out some communication uh about that that was going to come out in our next newsletter from the government communications office so yeah so yeah no fortunately no additional costs unfortunately that's a lot of a lot of specifics and a lot of time investment but yeah i i think just sending those as you come across them um to is it pio at lexingtonky.gov um and these guys knock them out one at a time um so thank you one more thing that i've received feedback on and i think i had mentioned this to you and it it is a little bit easier now to find the council members because they used to be we used to be all of us on the front page with our picture and our contact information which made it easy to say if you can't find us go to the city's you know front page and there we all are so now it's three clicks which um is is still i think better than it was but then um my only i guess suggestion would be from based on the feedback i've heard that it would be nice i think it says like the districts to the side if you press on council is if there were a way that they could look through pictures and it just had all of our content together with a picture easily easily to click on i don't know if that's possible but i've heard feedback from folks that it's a little harder to yeah find us we can follow on that there's a couple of things we can do there and and curiously uh one of the things we discovered like mouse clicks aren't um aren't discouraging to people which was something i kind of assumed if it takes five clicks to get to something someone's going to abandon that that effort um but but yeah i think we may have some opportunities with um shortened urls and things like that um if we did like a you know lexington ky.gov slash district 11 or something something along those lines it may be an easier way for somebody to get directly to a destination yeah i was thinking more like a lot of folks don't know who their council member is but before they're they could just go they could see the mayor and then they could see all the council and they could say oh you know there's that person there's all their contact info that's what they look like it was all in one place so there's a couple things that uh is really cool with the new website you know our lex fine feature that's on the home page um when you type in your address to get information that gives you your council member along with their contact info and a link to that and also here in a couple weeks it will have your photos ah okay and then um another thing that we can do is we've improved uh photo staff directories um if you look at the mayor's administration's page that's like the prime example so we could look into adding something like that onto the main council page that first landing page that you were talking about with your all's names listed on the side because right now um one of the things that i really like about the website is we can embed lex find on any page within um the website and make it specific to that page and so on the council page it says find your council member in the lex find search but we can still have that list of you all with your photos by district down through there my time is up thank you so much thank you thank you vice mayor woo thank you mayor thank you cio rogers and nick and the whole team for the work that you've done on this um i as a user myself have noticed improvements i'm particularly impressed by the um the stat about the translations for the website a tenfold increase is incredible um and it really speaks to us um trying to increase access right um if you can't understand the website you can't access you know your resources um and i've also appreciated um the work that you all are doing with us now with council member lynch and i on the boards and commissions review there's a lot of technology related stuff there um so i really appreciate that we have folks on our team that are always looking to make um everything accessible and more efficient not just for us internally as employees um but also for the public so appreciate it it's nice to have flexible design features because we can have conversations about accommodating accommodating a specific need and something we were sort of locked into before that we've got just a little little more room to grow now so it's good thank you council member lagree thank you mayor thank you cio rogers um it's so nice to have this update and um i agree with the vice mayor the clarity of information the accessibility and even the flexibility um available now with the redesign it's uh really outstanding um i remember before i was on council i was really interested in you know what's going on within government and i remember what you were sharing earlier about that document heavy information thinking wow there's so much information on here but i'm not sure where to start and i think the consistency of design and the way that you all have laid out this information makes it so that um like you said without people knowing our complete org chart they can you know dive into what we're doing and understand it better and have a point of entry that's a lot more manageable um and i will say also um for example i'm on the sister cities commission and um having that website integration where people aren't going to a totally different kind of design for this uh commission's website does make i think a big difference with people understanding oh yeah this is part of government and the work of government so congratulations this is such a huge improvement it's really noticeable and um and congrats on all the awards good work who doesn't love a statuette are there any other questions all right cio rogers thank you thank you to your team appreciate you now um it is time for council reports council member baxter thank you mayor um this evening uh i will be voting in support of the new government building project um i'll be supporting this because we've been working on and planning this project for a number of years and have responsibly set money aside over the past few years to fund it at the same time i am very sensitive to the needs of our community and think it's important that we be positioned to act when the mayor's homelessness task force brings forward recommendations when their work is complete after discussion with each of you colleagues and hearing the concerns of our community i will be bringing forth a motion at our council meeting this evening to reappropriate the remaining unallocated fund balance dollars to support the upcoming recommendations from the mayor's task force on homelessness i just want to give everybody a heads up thank you thank you council member reynolds thank you mayor have two announcements first um this friday the 5th at global x from 6 30 to 8 30 is the korean culture day so i hope everybody will come out uh for that if you are looking for something to do on friday night i know that that's going to be a good event uh and then meadowthorpe neighborhood association is having their holiday potluck from four to seven on sunday at the community center in meadowthorpe park and then i wanted to take a moment of privilege to thank um our chief chief colvin for his three-year anniversary at lfucg we were going to recognize him last month but then he was not able to be at the rest of the meeting so i just wanted to take a moment and say how grateful i am for his leadership that our community corrections looked very different before he arrived and i remember many of us being nervous about what the future held and he has come in and really built an amazing team around him and turned things completely around and so i just wanted to say thank you to for your three years of service and everything that you've done for for us as a city that's all okay thank you councilmember brown thank you mayor and and happy anniversary uh chief coven um i have two items that i want to put in a beef ed committee just so we can have presentations on them in the first of 2026 the first item is the infrastructure funding plan i know we had a conversation about that in a presentation in our last cal meeting committee of the whole so i'm gonna put that in b fed and then also the arts master plan uh we tasked and funded lex arts to contract with sound diplomacy to do that study and it's complete and they're ready to present so we're going to look to have that in 2026 so i'm putting both of those items and be fed very good thank you thank you mayor does anyone else have a council report all right um we do have a couple of people who would like to speak for public comment for issues not on the agenda when i call your name if you'll come to the podium please and then you will need to restate your name and say your council district and then you'll have three minutes and the buzzer will go off when your time is finished so first is henry jackson followed by judith humble welcome thank you mayor my voice is just a little hoarse it's really just allergies it's not anything severe uh regarding the proposed growth management plan i recommend reconsideration of my alternative approach that i suggested in an op-ed on may 25th and which i delivered to each council member yesterday personally if my proposed pause in the current growth plan is unsatisfactory perhaps an alternative would be to develop a quote what if scope of work and cost estimate to conduct a regional climate vulnerability assessment and a corresponding climate adaptation plan it's hard to phantom what might happen in 5 10 25 years out but based on my 19 years of following global warming climate change appears to be accelerating at the same time lexington appears to be a climate haven that could attract an astounding in migration of climate refugees in search of safer climbs far beyond the forecast population growth in the current plans thank you for your consideration my suggestion i'm available for any questions or i can do it offline thank you very much thank you thank you next is judith humble welcome thank you mayor gorton and council members i'm judy humble i'm from the fifth district and i'm here with two colleagues uh kathy clement and henry jackson we are from the bluegrass sierra club and the bluegrass climate action team and we're here to give everybody on council a very special book this afternoon the book is entitled here comes the sun is by renowned climate journalist and activist bill mckibben and this book looks at the exciting role that solar can play in preventing the worst developments of climate change while giving all of us a better energy future we thought this book was timely because our city is just now beginning to grapple with the challenges of bringing large-scale solar into the community whether to do it or not how to do it we live in kind of an isolated pocket where we haven't seen lots of advances in solar development we've seen some but we like this book because we think it's timely now and we also found it to be a book of hope it is very well documented and mckibben in this book takes us on a tour of worldwide developments so we see not just what's happening here but we see communities where they have really put the accelerator down and done amazing things with solar part of the driver is that solar is now the cheapest form of energy on earth and there are multiple developments that are making it cheaper by the day so there's lots of incentive to bring this energy forward and i enjoyed reading about these developments my favorite was a solar array in pakistan the community could not afford ground mounts for the solar panels so they laid them directly on the ground and they got a working solar array so thinking outside of the box is part of what's getting us to this exciting new time i know we face some challenges and one has been land use so i think there's a visionary aspect to this book there's also a practical aspect and he walks us through the major challenges that solar faces in communities like ours and one is can we afford it two is are there enough materials on earth for the makeup of solar panels three do we have enough land and do we want to use it for solar and then four is nimbyism it's people who don't want to look at a solar panel array who think it's ugly and protest it for aesthetic reasons so there's an interesting chapter on each one of these his conclusion when we think about climate change and how it might develop is that we are better off bringing in solar arrays large and small regardless of whether or not they have defects or they are imperfect because that's better than dealing with the worst aspects of climate change will bring to our world and the scientists say we have until 2030 to cut our emissions by half and this can be a very effective way to do that so we hope you enjoy the book we also brought copies of the climate book by Greta Thunberg for everybody who didn't get them in January of 74 thank you we look forward to hearing your thoughts and working with you thank you very much all right council members that brings us to adjournment is there a motion all those in favor say aye we are adjourned and at five o'clock we'll re-adjourn for our council meeting miles