# January 8 2026 WQFB meeting - January 8, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · January 8, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6650 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6650?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-01-08 - **Last revised**: January 8, 2026 - **Length**: 4,743 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Water Quality Fees Board met on January 8, 2026, at 9:01 a.m. in the North Elkhorn Conference Room at the Tate Building, 125 Industrial Avenue, Suite 180. David Lowe presided over the meeting. The board took three votes during the session and heard no public comments. The meeting included six agenda items, with two requiring votes and four presented for informational purposes. The board elected officers, approved minutes from the October 9, 2025 meeting, and received multiple updates and presentations regarding the Incentive Grant Program, including an overview, resident feedback, and a status update on grant applications. ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the meeting on January 8, 2026: * Donna Fogle * Clay Johnson * David Lowe * Bill Sallee * Audrey Suit No absences or late arrivals were recorded. ## Votes and Decisions The meeting included three motions, all of which passed unanimously. **Election of Chairman and Vice Chairman** [timestamp: 0:02:43] A motion was made by Donna Fogle and seconded by Clay Johnson to elect David Lowe as Chairman and Bill Sallee as Vice Chairman. The motion passed unanimously. **Approval of October 9, 2025, Minutes** [timestamp: 0:04:15] A motion was made by Bill Sallee and seconded by Audrey Suit to approve the minutes from the October 9, 2025, meeting with corrections. The motion passed unanimously. **Adjournment** [timestamp: 0:33:03] A motion was made by Clay Johnson and seconded by Bill Sallee to adjourn the meeting. The motion passed unanimously. ## Appointments The following appointments were made during this meeting: * **David Lowe** was appointed as Water Quality Fees Board Chairman * **Bill Sallee** was appointed as Water Quality Fees Board Vice Chairman ## Election of Officer(s) [timestamp: 00:01:37] The meeting proceeded to the election of officers. David Lowe was nominated and elected as Chairman. Bill Sallee was nominated and elected as Vice Chairman. The election was approved. ## Approval of 10/09/25 Minutes [timestamp: 00:03:13] The meeting minutes from October 9, 2025 were presented for review and approval. David Lowe and Bill Sallee led the discussion on this agenda item. During the review, a correction was identified regarding Mr. Woolwine's term. The minutes were adjusted to accurately reflect this information before final approval. The minutes were approved with the noted corrections. ## Incentive Grant Program Overview and Update Ms. Bailee Young presented an overview of the Stormwater Quality Projects Incentive Grant Program [timestamp: 00:04:49]. The presentation covered the program's history, goals, and funding structure. This agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal debate or decision required. Ms. Young provided the assembled group with details about the program's background, objectives, and how it is funded. The presentation served to brief attendees on the current status and framework of the incentive grant initiative. No specific concerns or objections were documented during this portion of the meeting. ## Comments/Suggestions from Residents About Incentive Grant Program [timestamp: 0:19:12] Frank Mabson opened the floor for residents to provide comments and suggestions regarding the Incentive Grant Program. No comments were received from residents during this portion of the meeting. ## Incentive Grant Status Update Frank Mabson provided a status update on the Stormwater Quality Projects Incentive Grant Program [timestamp: 0:20:28]. The presentation included project dashboards and application history for the program. This agenda item was presented as informational in nature, with no formal action or debate recorded. The update focused on the current state of the incentive grant program and its associated projects. ## Other Matters [timestamp: 30:24] Board and staff members shared comments and updates during this agenda item. Bill Sallee and Bailee Young were the key speakers who contributed to the discussion. An announcement was made regarding the 2026 Bluegrass Watershed Summit. This informational item provided updates to the board and staff on this upcoming event. The outcome of this agenda item was informational in nature, with no formal action or decisions required. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Election of David Lowe as Chairman and Bill Sallee as Vice Chairman - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of October 9, 2025, Minutes with corrections - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Adjournment of the meeting --- ## Full transcript Thank you. All right. We'll call this meeting of the Water Quality Feed Board to order at 9.01. The first item on our agenda is election of officers. And so what we have is we're going to recommend the chairman, since our chairman has just expired in terms of his limits, and so we're going to need the board to vote the chairman and the vice chairman. And so if we have anybody can file a motion on who that should be, feel free. I know we had spoke to Mr. Lowe about interim, you know, just to get our meeting started today, but if anybody wants to lobby, feel free to do so. Otherwise, we would like to have a vote at this time about having the chairman and the vice chairman and the chairman and the chairman. Okay, let's start with the chairman. Do we have any nominations for chairman? I would like to nominate you, David Loder, who would be our chairman. Thank you. All right. One nomination for chair. Any additional nominations? Hearing none, we'll move to... to Vice Chair. Are there any nominations for Vice Chair? I'll nominate Bill as Chair. Okay. Any additional nominations for Vice Chair? I don't hear any further nominations. I'll make a motion to both chair and vice chair will be accepted. Okay, do I have a second? Second. All right, we have a second. Anyone in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, okay, that motion passes. Thank you. Okay. We have our chair and vice chair. The next item on our agenda is the approval of the last minutes. Did they ever have a chance to review those? Yes, Denise, thank you for your usual good job on those minutes. Okay. I'd be glad to make a motion to approve them as drafted. Okay. I did notice in the piece about George. I think that's 2014. I'm sorry. I think we were mentioning his two terms. He filled the design of our previous chair, and so that term, it counted, but it wasn't part of his two full terms, so yeah, I'll make that correction. Okay, March 24th. Yeah. Yeah, and I did the math and he was the chair of this board for 71% of its existence Any other comments or corrections with minutes Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion carries. Thank you. On to number four, incentive group program, excuse me, incentive grant program overview and update. Okay. Bailey. Okay. Okay. We're not doing a programmatic changes memo this meeting because we're going to have because we're shifting to online applications and so our energy has been focused on that. So we decided to waive the program IQs memo and I'm just going to do a brief overview and orientation for our new members. And then Frank is going to do an overview of grants. So as a result of the consent decree in April 2009, a task force recommended creation of the water quality management fee and development of the incentive grant program. And so you can find that with a section of the Fees Board and how the Fees Board relates to both of those things in Section 16-408 of the ordinance. And so the Fees Board activities are to review denials by the Director of Revenue and the Commissioner of Finance on request for sanitary sewer user fee adjustments, and also decisions by the DWQ Director and Commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works for adjustments to the water quality management fee. And they also, which is their primary role, is, or I think the role that picks up the greatest percentage of time, is reviewing recommendations by the VQ for approval or denial of applications for incentive grants. And how it works is there's a water quality management fee, and incentive grants are 10% of that fee by ordinance. and so class a properties are single family and farm properties which you will see probably on your home bills they get a flat fee of five dollars and ninety five cents per parcel class b properties are any other parcel or commercial properties and so they get 5.95 per 2,500 square feet of impervious area so if you're a big business like if you're uk or if you're us all your impervious area adds up to a high monthly fee. So some of our monthly fees are up to $40,000. And so all of that is put into this, like the total revenue for water quality management fee, which right now is around $18 million a year. So $1.8 million of that would be to incentive grants per year, like just given round numbers. So the goals of the incentive grant program is to reduce stormwater runoff. property to improve water quality or to public like educate people on storm water quality they also we also have targeted areas of flooding non-flooding and there's three main types there's class a neighborhood class b education class b infrastructure so for class a neighborhood that has to be an association applying it can't be individual property owners for education and infrastructure those are anything commercial all non-farm commercial industrial multi-family etc and you can see the different funding limits we do allow feasibility only grants and so those are judged in their own pot per type and so that allows design studies to not just be thrown out because they're not installing a BMP. And I wanted y'all to see the timeline because there's lots of moving parts. So class A and B education applications are due in May. The infrastructure are due in July. But the process, I did it so that you could see this top row is class A and B education. The bottom is infrastructure. so applications are due, they are reviewed internally and the director provides recommendations around June and September respectively. These are the important meetings where you all are making decisions. With that, we do need a quorum at those meetings, so if you're unable to make it, we can ship them, but just communicate ahead of time to us and we'll move accordingly. And then after you all meet, we start working and drafting agreements and then they're signed by the grantee. They go to council for two readings and so that takes some time, especially just waiting for grantee signatures takes some time too. And then after that there's the final notice to proceed. So you can see there's typically a six month lag period between receiving applications and then allowing them to go. So here, which is what I just talked about, is sort of like a year in review for you all. So typically, today, we would be doing programmatic changes. We would be revising score sheets and application documents, and you all would be allowing or naysaying that. And then April 9th, we typically do like a site tour and general updates and then oh I put the 14 day we do a allow 14 days before the meeting we do deliver your all's packets which is what I gave you all so then let's see July 23rd is a big meeting and then following the meeting. Now David will sign those agreements. And then September 24th, we'd be delivering our else packets, and then October 8th is the big infrastructure meeting. And then following that meeting, David will stay and sign those grant determination forms. And sometimes there's tweaks. So that happens like a week later, and you all say, please revise this. We revise it, and then he signs. And then I asterisked the meetings that quorum is necessary for. And then this is typically what your packet looks like, and so I will put that a little bit with y'all. You can see the gray one is the score sheet, and they're all different, but they emphasize just the goals of the program. So BMP size, drainage area size, audience, stuff like that. And then we give you a summary sheet, which is the bottom, smaller one. showing how much money we have, where the money is going to for that cycle. And then that is an example of the grant determination form, showing what they're proposing, what the grant amount is, match amount, what the score is, and any stipulations. So we do spend some time trying to figure out what stipulations should be required so that it's effective. So we already touched on this program goals are improved water quality, reduce stormwater runoff, educate on water quality or stormwater related issues, address a known flooding issue. And then when you go to score, or not you all aren't scoring, but approve, there is, like we get into the weeds on grants cannot be used to meet regulatory requirements. And so that sometimes is tricky if it's not well documented. and so an example of that or it's not an example like one other tricky thing is we don't pay the full price of permeable pavers if it's new installation we pay the delta of the difference between the new pavers in a conventional parking lot but if you have like a parking lot and you want to replace it and make it permeable we would pay that because you're reducing impervious area So there are some tricky nuances. We don't pay for like solely pipe repair modifications because that's not reducing runoff or enhancing quality. So examples of class A neighborhood grants are repairing and buffer enhancements, street cleaning, tree canopy installation, rain garden installation, tree planting. We do have a canopy coverage amount in our scoring sheet and so the area of canopy coverage gets more points. We have Class B education which would be water quality education program support, rain garden installation, and we have a project right now that's doing sampling training. Class B infrastructure is typically stream restoration, wetlands, tree canopy installation, permeable papers, and rainwater harvesting. So in 2025 the Programmatic Changes memo hit on adding a research and monitoring component for innovation and experimentation. We also did, we incentivized impaired stream segments and we've tried to target E.coli. Our 2026 initiatives are, like I said before, doing an online application which we're working with DES to do. So Victoria is here with DES and has been working with us on that. We're also trying to do a a lot more marketing and we're also, Frank and I are holding office hours so that people, like new grantees can come meet with us and be like, we don't know how to fill out the proposal and we'll set hours where we're available for them to come in and talk. And so just our goals are to work with folks to exceed stormwater regulations. We do want to allow the public to have input for programmatic changes, and so that opportunity is available every January. And we do want to reduce the timeframe between project selection and notice to proceed. This is an update provided to EQPW on November 18th. And it is a little blurry. a little blurry we don't have it in PDF form so I just scanned it but it emphasizes the same things that I just talked about like online applications doing a longer story form of marketing and tracking the individual grantee as a person and like what they did and also working on the website just to make it more accessible to folks who aren't in this field. Yeah, so the focus has been a lot on marketing and accessibility. Victoria, is there anything else you would say on that? I don't think so. Okay, I thought you covered it. I was going to let Mr. Loeb, the chairman, know that those were some of the recommendations from the 10th district that you mentioned. Okay. And so in this you can see we, like, the total applications we've been receiving has been declining. And so we do have available money that we would love people to be accessing. And then I just wanted to quickly go over some examples of incentive grants that have been installed just to give you all, like, a flavor for what has gone on in the past. This is a HOA project, so a neighborhood grant that had some flooding issues and so they re-graded and installed a rain garden. This one is another neighborhood grant. They had flooding issues along the road and so I think this is pretty cool. They installed some rain gardens that alleviated some of that ponding. This one is a development, it's a class B infrastructure where they retrofitted an existing parking lot of permeable pavers and they also did some other BMPs. This one is North Lexington Holdings. They did like really cool things with the swale, with their roof runoff. What else did they have? Water feature. Yeah, the water feature. Permeable pavers. Yeah, a couple water features where it's capturing the roof runoff and what I mean. Didn't this one award? Yeah. Yeah, this one was an architectural award. Okay. And then I did want to show you all links in case you haven't accessed them yet. We have the maps. Well, let's see. This is our interactive map where you can go to a parcel that has incentive grants and then see what BMPs are installed there. So here's permeable pavers on Loudoun Avenue. And you can flip through these arrows to see what other information. And then I did want to show where we put the applications. Since they do change, you would go to each type and right here we normally have links and PDFs or Word documents of where the applications are. But since these are not current, we don't have them linked. And so we should have our online applications here when they're up, which should be in March. And then I did want you all to be able to access Granica so you could see what old meetings have looked like. If you wanted to see how the score... Is that too much? Yeah, that's good. So you all can see those meetings where you all sign and approve. But you would go to here, you would go to 2025, and then again October and July are those meetings. And that I think is it for me. Let's see. But do you all have any questions on that? We can talk offline, too. Sounds great. Thank you, Ms. Blake. I like that a lot. Thanks for putting that together. And also appreciate the update. We appreciate Council Members of the News Office and Isaiah, Alison McKenzie performing that analysis and making those recommendations, and I'm happy to see them incorporated into our 2026 calendar. So thank you for that. Next on the agenda is comments and suggestions from residents. Do we have any folks in the audience who would like to speak? Yes, typically we would have the programmatic changes memo just to start the conversation, but we're open to this for comments from our residents, from our citizens or staff, or citizens or staff, anybody who wants to make a comment and move that memo, just give them the opportunity. I think we're good on that. Okay, so moving into incentive grant status update. Okay, for this I'm going to just show a quick little slideshow, really quick about today. This is just what I'm going to cover just our dashboard, just give you some of the stats and some of our application awards history, including the expiring projects, the cancer projects, as well as our incentive grant status update that I provided for you. And in lieu of going through each one, if you have a specific project that you want to elaborate on in terms of the update, then we're happy to do that. But starting out here, this just shows you our dashboard, how we need grants, applications we've had, completed projects, and if there were any cancellations. And this just kind of shows your running tab that we've had a total of 268 total. We've tried to keep our cancellations to a minimum. Of course, during the pandemic, we suffered a couple cancellations because of economic challenges. But we seem to be back on track and trying to keep those at bay. I ask a question about the cancellations. I see it's about 10% of the total approximately. Are the majority of those applicant driven or? Yes. I know the pandemic. Yes, the pandemic had economic challenges. Some have been due to staffing changes, especially when you talk about class A associations, they have leadership changes that have a different perspective on what their issues are and what not. But most of them are due to economic challenges where cost share has been a problem. Male Speaker 2, Jr.: Or they run into a problem that's strained with the funding. Male Speaker 2, Jr.: That makes perfect sense. Male Speaker 2, Jr.: Thank you. Male Speaker 2, Jr.: And this is sort of the same thing maybe we were showing you earlier, but it shows you our total awards and dollars applications received in our total grants awarded today. It's just kind of a tap of that. And as you can see, as she mentioned, awards totals have kind of decreased because our applications have diminished a little bit so that's why we're trying to push for more marketing what have you. We'd really like the Fed Mall to get involved here. They've got plenty of a lot for us to retrofit. I can remember the question on the last time, but does it seem like maybe there's like a recession indicator in here? So like 2012, maybe we start getting light in 2014. So I don't know if that's a real thing, but that's sort of the picture in my mind. You see like a little bit of the post-COVID decline in 2014. I don't know if I could. Maybe, of course, yeah. That's just like an overview of that. So if anybody has any questions about that, or if you think there's something, feel free to eat on us. I think that's what we're all trying to figure out. Why? Why does it seem to be dropping off? And is it something we are doing or we can modify to try to keep the interest out? Here we just showed you a list of the recently completed projects, or council projects in the case of our. number five there. But these are ones that we're trying to give you an update on which ones. As you can see, one of them is from back in 2021. And the grantee in that case, they just kind of lagged on getting us those final documents, but the project had to get it. So sometimes we've got to just give them a little show. We're proud of these projects. There's one of my friends of Dogwood Park over there. And they're friends of the park that's the organization, but they did upgrades to the spring area, and we actually coupled that with the capital projects that helped extend the pipe out there to make sure all of that debris and sediment was getting out towards the creek. But these are our completed projects. There's one over at Huber Real Estate, which is off 7th Street. There was a sinkhole over that area. So if you guys want to ride through these projects, we're happy to send you the addresses So you can go through them seeing yourself if you wanted to. One thousand dollar, there was a feasibility project, but that project is actually getting off the ground with design and construction, I believe. They did a big kick off not too long ago, but this is the feasibility portion that turned into the actual design construction project that you all wanted last year. So we're happy about that. And unfortunately, we had a cancellation with Sealy. They just had some changes to their organization. They do plan on putting in a 2027 cycle application. They just wanted to reset. They just didn't want to hold the funds hostage in the process of the change. Here are expiring grants that are, some of them are clearly expiring, but most of these are actually set to go ahead and get finalized here. For example, Lexington Center Corporation is completed. you know, Tanner Branch is finished. We're just trying to find another attachment to document Fair County Public Schools. That's, I believe that's coming to an end shortly too. That's the one over there off Versailles Road in the Mason-Heatley area. Waterford II. This was part of the design portion of that project. This is the one where they're turning the pollen that they had out there in Waterford back into a natural spring, a natural, what do you call it? the spring area. Bluegrass Rainforest, they normally try to wrap up one grant before they go into the next, and this is just they're trying to wrap up their FY24 activities before they start on their FY25 grant. So that was moving forward. And so are the rest of the President's Book Fund. I think I'm waiting on the final document from Camp Cook any day now. Mediocre is a feasibility study that's pretty much wrapped up. So the next time we these will be off off the board the next time we see y'all in April hopefully. But that is unless you are expiring. And I spoke about the status update that you have. I know it's a little small, but if you see something in there at ProCAP that you want more information on, feel free to reach out and we'll give you some additional information on that. But instead of going line by line, this is a lot of plans, I figured I'd just provide you with a copy of that. But that's what that list is and that's what this screen here slide speaks to. And then we're taking any questions from the board or the staff or anybody that has one at this time before we close that. Back to you. Any questions? I have one. This might be a little unusual. Scott, I'm going to ask you a question. We're here for most of our meetings. does the run through of these on an individual basis, is that a help to you and the other professionals or is it just stuff you already know and there's really no need to do that? Generally speaking, the grant managers that we work with are staying in touch with on kind of a regular basis in terms of where that status lies. One of the projects that was listed there was about ready to expire as one of ours, which is a windswept. We just did the final walkthrough with the grant manager yesterday. Sorry, I'm trying to think of what the day is. So we're on track to kind of close those. So I think we're in good communication. I think it's good to have an overview of them just to kind of keep abreast of where they stand. But from our standpoints, professionals, we're usually in contact with either Grant Manager or Frank or Bailey on that process. Gotcha. So for us as a board making this change and not reviewing them individually at each meeting, that's not a real problem for you because you've got this good communication. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I know we're dealing with some of the neighborhood associations. One of the issues Scott deals with is he has to wait until their next board meeting to get an answer on, you know, how they want to move or to give them an update as a group in a group setting. So a lot of times that causes a delay when it comes to those class A grants. This is a list of those. If I may add, especially with neighborhood associations, a lot of times their terms are for a year. These projects can easily stretch three board terms. I mean, and that's, you know, taking into account when the application is applied for by the time that the project is completed. So it's not typical to have three or four cycles of boards that you would go through on a Class A. I'm a part of one such board and do you find, is there a difference, because that turnover can be harmful for project continuity. Yes. Do you find that they appoint like a PM that sticks throughout the term or do they just turn over naturally and you kind of throw it all to the wind? We have dealt with both. If one of the items from a grant management standpoint is a board member is the one that needs to sign the documents, and so even though they may have a project manager for the project, it ultimately has to go back to somebody that's on the board to sign. And that's where we get into some delay in terms of bringing those individuals up to speed before they feel comfortable to sign those documents. I just wonder whether to set the expectation with the neighborhood associations, you know, you operate on one-year terms, this is a three-year effort. Just kind of maybe a point of board members is going to stick around for a few terms. And we typically will have those conversations up front, yes. Anything else? Okay, we'll move on to other matters. Do we have anything from staff or members? The staff don't have any other matters. I'd just like to say, as still a fairly new board member, I think I've been on maybe two years, I've kind of gotten my feet wet with this project and what this board does. I'm just so impressed with the staff and this program. I worked for the local government for over 30 years, and it's just been a real pleasure being on this board and part of something that's important and something that works as well as this does. And so I just say thank you from my perspective as a board member to everyone involved. It's a pleasure serving on this board and to see all the good results. Thank you. Thank you. We've got a lot of, I think, positive, the orientation. I really appreciate it. I think we've made some good efficiency for that. I want to make, I forgot to mention the packets. Oh, okay. Well, and also I want to let you all know that Denise did send a link for that same information. If you all want to access that, just to go back through some of the applications just just as we approach our new cycle, feel free to do that so you kind of be able to speak in terms of what you're getting or not. We just want to make that link it accessible. I did that last night. It was very easy to access. Thank you. Thanks, guys. I have one small announcement. Bluegrass Watershed Summit is hosting another summit in April. I think they have a tentative date set, and I don't know it. I think it's April 11th, if that's a Saturday. but they're like trying to plug incentive grants they're trying to plug water quality countywide so I can keep you all posted of when that will be but I think that will attract a lot of different groups like whether it be UK or like Hickman Creek Conservancy folks like lots of different water quality minds come together and stuff like that. I'll be there. The 11th is this Saturday. I would recommend it to everybody on the board. There are a lot of really active nonprofits. And we have, of course, Ken's group, but Waterway Selects I think were, they're a really great upstart group, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they do this year. Alright. We can move toward adjournment if there's Nothing else? Do we have a motion? A motion to adjourn. All right, we've got a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second. And we've got a second. All in favor? Aye. All right. We are adjourned at 9.33. Thank you. Thank you.