Today is January 22nd and this is the meeting of Lexington-Fayette-Urban County Government's Planning Commission in Work Session. Our first item on the agenda today is a Comprehensive Plan Implementation Annual Update. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's see, is this on, Rachel? It should be. How do I sound? Not enough? I mean, I guess I can get closer. Normally, I feel like it's like blaring my voice. Okay. All right. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kenzie Gleason, the manager of our Outreach and Strategic Planning section. And the first time I spoke to you all was this time last year. I had been on the job just for a few weeks and I was nominated to give the annual update for all the work that many others had been doing. So at least this year, I feel like I have a bit more ownership in it. But in general, just where has the time gone? I guess the days are long, the years are short. But this is actually a really fun presentation to give because we often get sort of stuck in the mud and churning along two steps forward, one step back, that kind of thing. And I do like sort of the year in review type of activity just because it makes me feel like, okay, yeah, there is inertia and we are making progress and things are changing for the better. So this is definitely a collective presentation, meaning I'm the spokesperson, but I'm neither the expert or necessarily the lead or the participant in any of these activities. So we do, I guess, I'm not sure. I think this trend started back when Chris Woodall was with the comprehensive plan. I do like to try and frame it in the context of the comprehensive plan. There's a lot of things that planning has to do on a day-to-day basis that isn't necessarily directly related to the implementation of the comp plan, but we do like to try and focus on that for this. So I believe the comp plan was adopted in November of 23, so two years and a couple months ago. Last time this year we had, in terms of the implementation tasks, which you doubled between the last comp plan and this comp plan, I noticed, there are about 117 specific action items that are listed within comp plans. Some are more general in nature and some are very specific, but we do at least on an annual basis or really more a couple times a year sit down and take a look at that list, identify what we've been working on, what has stalled, what might be ready to move forward, and this is kind of where we stand in terms of the implementation of all of those different initiatives. So about 14 percent we can call complete, a little over half are in some level of progress, and maybe around 30 percent or so really don't have any specific activity on them just yet. And I would mention, we keep this information on the website now. We would like to build that out a bit more. It just sort of has the list of tasks, but we would like to add some context and some explanation and be able to point to the different things that have been done that work to achieve that specific task. But if you just want to get sort of a snapshot picture of what those action items recommend that we do, they can fall anywhere between making a regulatory change, conducting another study or another plan, some sort of initiative related to outreach. Some of them are outside of planning's purview or require action from some of our community partners or within, in partnership with them. But we did spend a lot of time this year really on focusing on the comprehensive plan itself in terms of how that process works in the future. Hal's going to talk about the LPGMP program just after me, but it was a pretty significant effort and new way of doing things, I suppose, which will allow us to separate the conversation of our growth and the urban service area and whether it should be expanded or not from the comprehensive plan so that we can provide a lot more focus when we are working on the comprehensive plan. So we're pleased with that particular aspect of the program. And we're using, you know, so in between comp plan cycles there will be the five-year growth trend report. That will be something that sort of is a checkpoint and gives us an opportunity to see where we stand in terms of, you know, how things are unfolding on the ground based on the policies that were implemented prior to that. It sort of gives us an opportunity for a course correction or to recommend additional more aggressive strategies if needed. And we'll be using the Imagine Lexington Analytic Research Center, ILARC, which is how I prefer to say it, to do a lot of that. Basically keeping certain data sets live and active and continually updated through the data research center, which was launched in 2025. It adds clarity and transparency and allows us to really have an idea, a snapshot in time where we are at any given time. And then, again, that allows us to focus more on all the different things that the comp plan touches on besides the discussion of the urban growth boundary when we're doing the plan updates. So for the Analytic Research Center, I think you all have received some briefings on that. These are images of some of the data that is currently available there now. We're continuing to build out and expand on those data sets and then also working to provide some context and discussion of those specific data sets, what they mean and what they're telling us, what the trends are. So these are what we're calling lab reports, which is sort of a deeper dive into a particular subject. We've produced two, one on accessory dwelling units and talking about how things changed as the rules regarding accessory dwelling units changed. How many more applications did we get the second time around after we made some changes, that sort of thing. And then just some history of just zoning and residential uses in Fayette County in general. So they're really meant to kind of contextualize data to provide some more depth and explanation of, again, the trends and what they're telling us and helping us to, you know, see how policy changes do in fact impact the built environment. And then again, a number of studies and plans that we've been working on this year. The Urban Growth Master Plan was finished when we started last year, but we focused a lot this year on implementing various aspects of that. So the infrastructure funding plan, that's being managed by our commissioner's office, but planning has been very involved in that effort, looking at what infrastructure is needed, who pays, how it gets built, all that sort of thing. Of course, the Blue Sky Master Plan, you've been receiving updates. It was recommended that we look at that separate from the other greenfield areas in the newly expanded areas. The Urban Growth Master Plan, ZOTA, for lack of a better name, I suppose, there was a round that came through very early before or during the process where we were doing the Urban Growth Master Plan, but there are quite a number of recommendations and regulatory changes that are needed to codify the recommendations from that master plan. And the consultants did a lot of the heavy lifting on that for us. They're pretty specific in terms of how they say what needs to be changed. And our staff has started working on, and our staff, I mean planning, has started working on getting that language into a kind of shape that we can bring it to you and bring it to the public. Same with the Complete Streets. Really, the Complete Streets SRA is going to implement the transportation components of the Growth Master Plan, and the Urban Growth ZOTA will implement the land use aspects of it. Blue Sky, I guess, I think we have, we're looking at maybe a May completion-ish on that, so it's about two-thirds of the way through. I'm sure you'll be getting more updates here in the next couple of months, you know, looking to see how can we better integrate Blue Sky into the new growth areas. Are there improvements we need to make to I-75 to accommodate additional intensity of that site? And are there certain services or things that we can do to enhance the businesses and the employees that already are working and owning and operating businesses there? As well as they will identify if there are changes that we need to make to our industrial zoning, so that would be another potential ZOTA that would come forward as a result of one of these plans. You could say the same for the Downtown Master Plan. They'll be looking at any regulatory recommendations associated with that as well. This one has been a really robust community engagement effort. There's been a lot of interest and a lot of engagement, which we like to see, obviously, but it does take a lot of effort and time to do that. Some of the emerging things that Boyd highlighted for me were, you know, just safety issues, connectivity issues. People want housing that they can afford. They want a downtown that works for everyone, and they want to make sure that we sort of respect the uniqueness in Lexington when we think about how we move forward. I believe that's also sort of on a spring-summer track for completion. One plan that was completed, it was led by our environmental services group, but our transportation planners and our planners had a very – we were very involved in looking at – and, again, the comp plan also certainly recommends that we try to address climate issues and greenhouse gas emissions and so forth and creating sort of a long-range plan for trying to improve upon those metrics. This was required to be a regional plan. I can't remember the exact reason at the moment, but it does include Fayette and all of our surrounding counties. It was completed this year. There's a copy of it on their website there, and then they have something really cool called their emissions dashboard, where you can go in there and test different scenarios, like, well, if we change this policy or if we implemented this program, how would that affect greenhouse gas emissions over time, and the goal being to continue to model that trend line downward. Now, the funding that that plan was going to inform, it was part of a larger grant program, and you needed to have a plan in place and so forth to be eligible for that. The support and the funding for that has sort of collapsed under the current administration, but it's still important to Lexington, and we'll hang on to it for some time in the future when perhaps there is some more opportunities available for those initiatives. And then the Imagine Nicholasville Road Feasibility Study, this was mainly coordinated by our transportation planners, but it was done in partnership with LexTran and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, as well as the city staff, traffic engineers, and engineers. This was really needed to proof out the concepts that were identified in the Imagine Nicholasville Road plan, so this was more of the detailed engineering and modeling that was needed to look at, you know, what trip generation do we have given different land use scenarios, what kinds of transportation improvements could occur within some reasonable amount of money, what impact would they have, and then because BRT was one of the things that we would like to see implemented, is that there are certain programs at the federal level with transit agencies where you have to do certain analysis on estimating ridership and then the capital and the operating costs to make sure that the numbers work before they give you any federal money to implement those. And really what it did essentially proof out is that in the long term, there really isn't anything that we can do to meaningfully impact traffic congestion on Nicholasville Road unless we have some mode shift or unless we eliminate trips by making things closer to one another, more of a mixed use scenario, even if we, and they looked at some pretty elaborate intersection designs and innovative types of things and all of them are going to be extremely costly and not have a whole lot of impact particularly in the long term. So I think if nothing else, we have confidence in that that is in fact probably what we're looking at in that situation. So the NPO, Lextran, KYTC, everybody's very supportive of continuing to move the different projects forward that are needed both from a vehicular standpoint, multimodal standpoint, and to make BRT more feasible. And we have a state highway plan that they have to sort of move projects into. The NPO has a similar plan and then there are also grant programs that they may apply to. So they're trying to explore all options in terms of implementing the different recommendations from, imagine, Nicholasville Road. All right, moving on to public engagements. It seems we attend at least on average about one community event a week. So we track these metrics. We track not just how many people attended the events, but how many people did we actually talk to and engage with and interact with. So we had some face-to-face contact with 3,600 people out in the community, but there were hundreds, thousands more in the vicinity of many of these different events. The types of audiences and events that we attend, again, community-based events like Street Fest and Reforest the Bluegrass. We also have a lot of interaction with youth in schools. I'm surprised how frequently we're contacted asking if we can come and talk about planning to students or working on a project. They're trying to do some sort of real-world type exercise and learn a little bit about sustainability or planning along the way. So we would like to develop some more specific curriculums for that so that we have it at the ready when those calls come and not just the one person who did it the last time can do it this time. We attend a lot of neighborhood meetings. We're invited to those quite frequently, both by the neighborhoods and by the council members, particularly if there's a development plan in the area or a zone change. And then we're often asked to speak at different events as well and to other boards and commissions. One thing we started doing is what I guess we're calling sort of sentiment tracking. Part of the reason we want to go into the community is because we can't expect people to come to us and tell us what they think. We need to go to them and say, what do you think about this, that, or the other? And if we don't somehow capture what we hear from them and use that to inform planning efforts going forward, it's sort of like, what's the use? So we're documenting, okay, who do we talk to, what were they talking about, what were sort of the concerns that were raised or the things that they were excited about, so that we can continue to use that to inform things moving forward. And then, of course, a lot of our engagement is because we're there to ask input on a specific topic. So, you know, the downtown, the two master plans, the growth management program, several complete streets initiatives, those all involved some very direct and intentional engagement efforts. Neighborhoods, again, we're sort of focusing on those. Quinn Mulholland from my office came and talked about a pilot project that we're trying to do where we go and have some focused conversations with neighborhoods about what their concerns and dreams are for the future of their neighborhoods in the absence of any specific development proposal. And then, of course, digital outreach. We live in the digital age. We have a number of Facebook and Instagram accounts. The NPO manages, too, sort of their agency's formal page, as well as what we call Lex Bike Walk. It has a pretty substantial following. There's a lot of people that are interested in the topic, a little broader than the policy and the planning walks that maybe follow Imagine Lexington or the NPO's website. But here was the most popular post of 2025 from the NPO. You can see they got, you know, 1,700 reactions, like 68 comments for social media for a government agency. That's pretty good engagement. I guess everybody's really disappointed in how much red light running has become pervasive in Fayette County. But, again, it's sort of, well, yeah. Well, there was some public shaming associated with this reel. I mean, you could see the cars go through. I suppose you could have taken a look at their license plate if you wanted to. Right. Yes. And then for Imagine Lexington, surprisingly, well, or maybe not, our most popular post of the year was also related to transportation, and it was when we were advertising the public input meetings for the Northeast New Circle Road Improvement Project, which is a safety project that was born out of our safety action plan and from Imagine New Circle Road. So that has been funded, and the transportation cabinet's been working on the design, and this is sort of us advertising. This is, you know, a chance for you to go and see what's being planned and provide your feedback. And then we also launched a monthly newsletter. We were up to a little over 1,000 subscribers, but our open rate is 52%, which, as I understand, is very high. I thought 30% was considered pretty solid. So at least whether it's a broad audience, it is certainly an engaged and interested audience. I hope that's what that means. And then, you know, sort of like the iLARC, there are a lot of, you know, web-based platforms now that we can use to try and communicate information to people more easily. The MPO has recently launched a project page using sort of a story map format, an ArcGIS format, where you can, you know, pan around, see what's planned, get an update on the project, identify what the scope or funding sources of the project. Again, just to try and make things more accessible, easier to find, and easier to digest. And then looking ahead at 2026, we have the Winchester Road corridor plan. So this would be our third corridor land use and transportation plan. We're looking at that from Midland Avenue to Bahama Road, which is the Greenbrier neighborhood, essentially. So that would also pick up all the frontage along the new expansion areas and the old ones, for that matter. We have advertised and selected a consultant. I think that agreement is making its way through council right now, so they may be able to kick that off here in the next couple of months. And then the parks master plan, this is, of course, being handled by our parks department, but parks are extremely important to us in planning, and any work that they do from a master planning standpoint is very informative and helpful to our efforts as well. It was last updated in 2018. I don't know that they initially planned to update it quite so soon, but then there was the tax referendum that approved funding for, I think, $8 million annually in parks improvement projects, so they're going to have a community engagement and master planning process associated with that. And some of our staff have been involved as well, and I think that contract is also making its way through council now or soon. And then I do think that 2026, I think, I hope, will be perhaps a little heavy year for regulatory changes, because we have all of these plans that we're trying to implement, urban growth master plan, the complete streets design manual. We're working on some changes to our floodplain regulations. Boyd has been here to talk about the landscaping and trees for the phase two of that ZOTA and some of the concerns or issues that we need to try and address with that. Hoping to pick back up parkland dedication ordinance. Maybe that's something that the parks master plan can help provide some support to, but that's also very important for our new green space or greenfield areas that are being developed. And we expect that the downtown master plan and the blue sky will make potentially some recommendations to industrial uses and other downtown zones and tweaks that we may need to do in those realms. And, of course, we hope to ever expand our engagement. We spent a lot of time this year sort of getting our feet under us, getting staffed up, at least my team, and then I think there were some musical chairs. So we're pretty much almost at full staff now, so we're rip-roaring ready to go. We addressed some pressing issues, but now we'd really like to dig into kind of just the basics, revamping all of our forward-facing materials, trying to make planning something that people can understand, deciphering all of our jargon and processes. Certainly want to explore other ways of reaching people. We're tinkering with a podcast right now. Story maps can be very powerful. We've seen the lab reports are a big piece of that. I mentioned curriculums for different ages, different audiences, different depth of understanding. We've talked to everything from kindergartners to graduate students pretty regularly and always looking for ways to engage people in new and different ways. And then finally, just sort of generally what we think some focus areas will be, obviously I mentioned the data research center is going to be a focus of ours, implementing the master plan, complete streets action plan, corridor plans, implementing those as well, whether that's project-based or policy-based, vision zero and safe streets. I'm going to talk about that here in just a minute. And then just place-based type initiatives, quick build projects, place-making projects that help us sort of build some goodwill with the community. And always looking for and expanding on different partnerships. We have a great partnership with CivicLEX that gets us into a lot of schools. We have a great partnership with our environmental quality and public works engagement team that gets us into a lot of avenues and they share our information when we can't be there. So it expands our reach. And that was all I had for you today. Thank you. Yes, certainly. I think we had some conversations previously about what quick builds and demonstration projects are. So I've got one question about do we have anything designated as a quick build demonstration project? And my second one is could you tell us a little bit more about Neighborhood Voices? Okay, so Brandy is here. She's our complete streets coordinator. I invited her for our next presentation. She has been working on both an internal and an external guide for what are quick builds versus demonstration projects versus temporary installations as an interim project to something that is larger and coming in the future. There is some nuance there. But I think an example of a pilot project, quick build project, would be the High Street project. Oh, well, yes. I'm going to touch on that a little bit in the next presentation. I can wait. If I could put a pin in that one. Neighborhood Voices. Tell us about that. Yes, so this was born out of we were consistently, anytime we go through a contentious zone change, it was often that we found that neighborhoods were often saying we don't want this and not expanding upon in any way, shape, or form what the development might actually be able to do to contribute to their neighborhood in a positive way should that development proceed anyways. So what we wanted to do was, A, just build better understanding of what planning is and zoning and the rules and what it can do and what it can't do, but then also have some proactive conversations with the neighborhoods about change that is happening. Change is always happening. And what is most precious to them that they want to see maintained versus what maybe is lacking in their neighborhood that that change and that investment could help bring to the neighborhood. And it's difficult to have those conversations when there's an active case. So we're trying to go into neighborhoods that are feeling development pressure and having those conversations with them earlier rather than later, summarizing that information in a report that we will provide to you all as well as to any developer that actually is exploring doing a development in a particular area to say, here, we've already talked to the neighborhoods. We've done some of the homework and the legwork for you. This is what they said is important to them. We would like you to very seriously consider their perspective. We're trying it out in the Smithtown neighborhood right now because there weren't any active cases, but they're certainly experiencing displacement in the neighborhood and change and pressure. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. Hopefully we'll be back. I think we're planning our community engagement event for that in March is my recollection. So maybe in April or May we'll be back to talk a little bit about how that went. Mr. Wilson? I had the same problem. Mr. Wilson, have you pushed the microphone in on the top? There you go. Testing. Fantastic. I love this. First of all, I applaud your comprehensive plan. I hear you all talk. I mean, this is amazing, the amount of work and energy you put toward this. I was going back to the neighborhood piece itself. There's a delicate balance there between when you listen, and that was a key word that you had in there, and that is listening to the neighborhood, and you've reflected on that again. But at the same time, the question is, how much control does a neighborhood actually have over their own environment? One of the things I'm always trying to be careful about is setting expectations. When I listen, their position is if you don't do what I say, then you haven't listened to me. And that's not the case. But the only way I know to get around that is to develop the trust so when you do say, then they understand that you've gone through the process and whatever, and that's going to be always a tricky thing to do. But the question fundamentally is, how much control does a neighborhood today have over what they want and what they need? I mean, it depends on the circumstance, perhaps the zone, whether a zone change is even involved. I mean, people have to – I mean, we have a set of rules, and if people have followed the rules, you know, they may be entitled to do certain things with their property. But whenever there is contention, my sense is that there is often, maybe not always, a desire to try and have some goodwill with neighborhoods and trying to address a particular concern that they may have. I think part of it is also having that communication with the neighborhood so that they understand the limitations of what can and can't be done. You know, saying no may not stop something that you're not crazy about, but saying no, but I guess if this is going to happen, this is something that would actually improve and contribute to our neighborhood. So at least having some understanding of what those desires are and hopefully communicating to the neighborhoods. In our materials and our conversations with them, we say at the outset, we just want to make it clear there are limitations. This does not mean this will happen. We just know it won't happen without at least having had the conversation. I think that's a fair statement. And one of the challenges that even I have, for example, there's only three reasons legally we can deny a zone change, and those are spelled out in KRS 100. We tell the community that they don't quite understand that element of it, and it goes back to the issue of trust. Now, I can get away with it because they'll say, well, he said it and blah, blah, blah. I'll go get my hair cut and whatever the case may be. But for people who are in deprived senses, they don't trust the government, period. And that trust is something that is going to be, well, it's vital for us to do that. But I applaud the fact that this is an ongoing process, and we'll work with you, especially I'll do whatever I can to help promote that as best I can, as long as I can until they hang me. We're going to keep trying. Not the hanging part. Okay. I mean with the neighborhood. It didn't come out right. How long is the rope? Moving on. Okay. Do we have any other questions for Kenzie on this particular presentation? Yes, sir. I've got one. It just kind of popped in my head, and that's always dangerous. But you've been outlining a lot as to what has occurred and a little bit as to what you're looking forward to. What's going to be your biggest challenge this year? Director, Deputy Director, anyone? I don't know. It's all kind of hard, isn't it? I mean, we'll trudge through it, and some things will turn out the way we hoped and some things won't, but we'll keep coming back and trying. You know, regulatory changes, maybe it's because I don't come from this world. They're awful painful to me, and we have a lot that we want to make, so I suspect that could be part of it. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Neighborhood Voices is an example of a pilot. It's a try. It's an offer to do something different and try to set expectations low at the beginning and see if we can exceed them. That's a start. We often come up with ideas that don't make it out of internal discussions, and that one got out and got going, and I think we'll see if the output of that is something that is replicable. And with the resources that we have, the goal is to not do it with consultants, for it not to be a full small area plan, for it to just be a public engagement report. But when we start talking about these things, our expectations can get ahead of us faster than we can rein them back in. So things like Neighborhood Voices are an attempt to see if we can play fast and respond and reevaluate and try it again. So that's really the type of thing that the new section was set up to be able to do, that when Long Range was doing both these tasks, it was impossible to do, just keeping our heads above water. So a lot of this is just setting new scope for outreach and seeing what internal, with a dedicated team and resources, what we can pull off. I will say we've been very warmly received by the neighborhood, the leadership that we've worked with so far. We were at a community event. People were talking to us, pointing to things on a map, talking about the corner store used to be there. I don't know that the trust is there, but it's not exuding from the people that we've interacted with, fortunately, but we haven't had perhaps the opportunity to potentially disappoint them yet. Just very quickly again, and I appreciate, Chris, your point. It's the expectations and managing. I like the idea of underselling and over-delivering as such, but I just want you to please remember it's not about, from the community's perspective, about policies and rules. It's about relationships, and that's what we've got to work on. I think it's a win that fewer cases come up when we're hearing a zone change hearing and we hear that nobody's talked to the neighborhood yet. So I think we've got lots of potential wins there. Well, another pro that we talked about was it creates a database of contacts in the neighborhood too, and our offer will be when we pass this report off to the developers, we'd be happy to help facilitate some conversations and meetings with these individuals that interfaced with us, because we've at least had some of that groundwork laid too. All right. That's great. If we don't have anything else on this presentation, we will move to item number two, which is also Ms. Gleason, complete streets update. Okay. And I'm going to give the, this is many people, not just the spokesperson speech, to get this one going too. Two of the most critical people that I work with, or all of us have been working with, are Brandy, if you don't mind to wave your hand, our complete streets coordinator for Lexington, and Mikayla, our Vision Zero coordinator with our transportation department. Those were two positions that were created as a result of the complete streets action plan and policy. I wanted to just touch on a few things that have had, you know, some particular progress or action since I spoke to you about this subject, I believe in July. The complete streets design manual, it's coming. I promise. And that's why we're here today, yes, to sort of, to prep, to set the stage, right, for that. Again, this is an engineering manual, essentially, similar to our stormwater manuals and our procedures manuals. It's a technical document, but it's also a design document. It is also replacing our neighborhood traffic management guide. Those two documents are under the purview of council. So engineering manuals are approved by the council, not necessarily by the planning commission. But how we implement a number of those design standards as it relates to new development would fall under your purview and the subdivision regulations. So in terms of what the manual sort of applies to, it applies to private developments, all of our public infrastructure projects, again, our neighborhood traffic calming program, our day-to-day traffic operations and control, how we operate the roadways, and then also how we maintain them as well. So there are a lot of different stakeholders that have been involved along the way. Planning, we're there from the development standpoint, but there's also a lot of consideration and engagement and involvement with our engineering department from a construction and project delivery aspect, our traffic engineering department and how they run their operations and signals and traffic control, our streets and roads department and how they maintain the facilities that we build, and then, of course, public utilities. They're usually in the right-of-way as well, so stormwater systems, sanitary systems, and then private utilities as well, and then private developers. So all the names sort of at the top, we've been continually developing the manual with their ongoing input because they have to review the things that apply to their area and make sure that it makes sense and it's what it needs to say. We engaged with the utility companies and the developers earlier in the process to sort of talk about, you know, what were some of their pain points, and we are ready to go back to talk to them to show them some concepts and get their reaction to those beginning in February. We think it will take us, you know, two to three months to work through any of those pain points again and then be presenting the draft manual to council and the subdivision rig updates to you all in the spring. So in terms of our sense of what the private developers are going to be most interested in and what we're going to preview with them first are certainly our standard cross-sections, mid-block traffic calming features. This is something we've wanted to incorporate into our new development for some time now that we build those now rather than later when we get a call from the neighborhood who says they're speeding on my street, can I get a speed hump or whatnot, incorporating those into new developments. Intersection design, we had little, well, we had nothing, to my knowledge, regarding circular intersections and roundabouts, which is really the way we're trending here and nationally. I think we've all decided they're actually a really good idea and we wish we would have built more of them from the get-go. So intersection design considerations, utility placements, you know, they certainly have to coordinate with utilities and how those are built and where they're put and so forth, as well as just other simple things like driveway cuts and design curb cuts, what kind of access control different roadways may restrict and so on. Oh, I didn't mean to put that in there twice. So it's really all I wanted to say from the planning commission development side of that, just that we're very close, we're going to go ahead and start those conversations, we don't have to have every detail in the thick manual to share those concepts and things with the development community to begin getting their reactions. And then the flip side of that is just sort of the public infrastructure side is also what's very important to the complete streets design manual. And, of course, we've established a coordinator. Brandy has been working with Smart Growth America and other communities around Kentucky and has asked them to come and provide some technical assistance to us to talk, again, through some pain points and areas where we're struggling to deliver projects or implement them efficiently and or in coordination with all the people that need to be consulted and so forth. And they've done this work in a lot of communities, so they're going to bring hopefully some of that perspective to us, sit down with all of the divisions here and kind of talk through, help us talk through what changes or procedures may need to be put into place, provide us with some sort of pre-made templates and so forth that we can build from, and then also help us with how we talk about complete streets and Vision Zero initiatives. We'd like to get to a place where if we know we have a traffic-related intervention that is proven to improve safety and the public doesn't particularly like that specific treatment, that we've hopefully got the community on board with the fact that if it's in the name of safety, it's not like whether you like it or you don't like it, it's kind of like it's needed and this is something that we need to do as a community. So some of that messaging, trying to build support towards that mentality. And just in case you were curious, this slide was handy to me, I thought I would share. We usually look at traffic data in five-year increments, so this is just sort of a sense of Vision Zero really focuses on serious injuries and fatalities, and serious injuries means often life-altering or it could have caused death, so they're pretty substantial. And those are the ones that we really want to try and, you know, fender benders and things like that and bumping somebody at the red light can happen. We're really trying to address really severe types of crashes, which is one thing that roundabouts are really spectacular at doing. So we have, you know, 35 to 40 fatalities typically a year in Fayette County and pedestrians and bicyclists usually represent about 30% of that, but they're certainly not 30% of the tripmakers, so they're disproportionately represented in that data in part just because of their vulnerability. So some things that happened in 2025, we hired a Vision Zero coordinator. Our MPO has established a safety work group who take our safety action plan that we've developed and look at ways to implement those interventions. They look at something called the High Injury Network, so it's a very data-driven process, something that Michaela is currently working on updating. I guess we probably did that three, four years ago or something, and to make any refreshed changes to the action plan as well. Council also adopted a Vision Zero policy, which is at least a statement towards the importance to them. We also established sort of the theme of Vision Zero, safer people, safer streets, safer speed. Speed management is critical to achieving Vision Zero and safer vehicles, which are more outside of our purview, but looking at quick build projects that we can do to address something, an immediate need, making sure that our capital investments, we're prioritizing our funding for projects that are primarily driven for a safety-based need. And a few high-profile projects are in the works right now. So we mentioned the Imagine New Circle Road. That does include certainly bike and pedestrian facilities, but some speed management strategies, as well as R-Cuts, the reduced conflict turning intersections, similar to what they're working on on Richmond Road right now. New Circle, this section of New Circle was the number one fatal crash corridor in Fayette County, and it's pretty impressive to go from a planning effort to go to a funded project in a short period of time, but it was because it was so needs-based. Hopefully, once Richmond Road, which will be out in front of New Circle, is in place and people sort of get a feel for how it works and recognize, hopefully, that it doesn't actually take them any more time and it flows better and feels safer, we'll have some more support for them and it won't feel like quite such an uphill climb when we present these. At this public meeting that that picture is at, there was concern from residents about how these R-Cuts work and whether it was going to work along this particular corridor. North Broadway was also, I think, the top two or third crash corridor, serious crash corridor in our action plan, and the state and the city are currently working on reviewing the design of that corridor. They did some public engagement that we participated in a couple months ago. And then the council office or council, I think it was five different council members, created a task force last year. Many of us were involved in that process. They were looking at some shorter-term things that could be done that were actionable in the short term. They wanted that information to be able to inform when the budget comes through, what is it that we could do, what would it cost, how can we support that. There was a fund balance discussion that we had in October that the city does regularly, and they allocated about $700,000 for some of those recommendations as part of that, so that money is readily available and being worked on. They've made a draft set of recommendations to the council. They did that in October, and they're making their final presentation in February. They have a website, Engage Lexington, that sort of outlines what those are, but they use kind of the engineering and education enforcement approach to that. And some of the ones that were funded through the fund balance were a roundabout feasibility study, so taking five potential locations to dig deeper into from an engineering perspective as to whether a roundabout would be an appropriate treatment for that intersection. Also, a traffic circle quick build program for neighborhoods. That picture is not of a quick build. That's more of a concrete, but delineator posts and so forth, they allocated some money for those types of projects, in part so that we can do some demonstrations so that people know what these things are and how they work, as well as some signal work that they'd like to do, so they'd be looking at the all red ped crossings, they call it the barn stands, at very high traffic pedestrian locations, as well as doing some changes with signalization that can improve pedestrian safety. There's several different strategies that they can employ. And with that, I am finished with that one. I think I got you back on time. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions on this particular presentation? Yes, sir, Mr. Wilson. Very quickly, several months, maybe it was a year ago, we had a lady that came in and presented something on street art. Yes. Now, her point was that, yeah, it might look pretty, but it had a traffic calming perspective and, therefore, safety. My question is, is the engineering still considering that as a possibility, or are they going to do some experimental things around town to see if it works? Yes. That is Hannah. She works in my office and was in transportation where this sort of project initially came about. They're working on one right now in the Shropshire corridor. The council is very interested in this. She's presented to them as well. She recently presented at the Public Arts Board. I don't know if I have the right name of the group, They oversee a fund that was established based on some rule, X percent of bonded projects or something like that, for public arts that have to be expended on public property. Well, roads happen to be public property, and these murals are very artistic in nature. So they're very excited and interested in continuing that conversation. In addition to, hopefully, having one demo project on the ground, it feels like there's interest in trying to do that on a more broad level. We're working out the kinks, and I hate to get bogged down in process and procedure and permits and all that kind of stuff, but it's a reality that we have to work within. Hon has spent a lot of time over the past year sorting through a lot of that with our traffic engineers and others. One quick follow-up, and that is, why Shropshire? Would you not go into one of those high-critical areas where they have a lot of traffic accidents to see if it, in fact, does produce safety? Well, it started as we have an annual street fest event where we close down a certain street in a certain neighborhood and invite people to come out and just sort of experience the street as a public space to gather. Street fest last year was on Shropshire. So we had a chalk outline of the actual treatment that we were proposing, and kids came and colored in it, and people wrote on a chalkboard about what they love about streets and about their neighborhoods. That's where Shropshire originated from. We took advantage of an existing community event to try and get some input from the neighborhood and see if we could make something of it. All righty. Do we have any other questions? If not, thank you very much. I've got one more. This is simply how to deal with. I actually went to my neighborhood association's annual meeting the other night, and the hot topic was traffic enforcement. All I could suggest at that point was we're going to get a new council person. I would suggest you go there. But for all of you involved in this, we already have places where there are the signs that tell you how fast you're going and some painted kinds of things. If you had to answer that question in a public meeting, where would you recommend a neighborhood go to get some help? I wish I had it in this slide because I considered it. One thing that the streets group did, they worked very closely with the police department to talk about enforcement specifically. They've started a sort of traffic complaints page where if you're seeing frequent speeding or other bad behaviors along a particular corridor, you can submit that through this page, and the police, which they said they got a lot of feedback really fast, can do some targeted enforcement. The group also explored and found some software that we have funded and have available to us that gives us data on speeding in Lexington based on actual traffic speeds. It will calculate how much they are exceeding that, how frequently, and so forth. They want to use that tool to help also target enforcement because they don't have the resources to do it everywhere, and you don't just want to do squeaky wheel response, right? So it was trying to bring some data to that particular issue. The other thing that they're really pushing hard for, and maybe they're at the legislature now talking about them while they're in session, is trying to change Kentucky laws that prevent us from having speed cameras and red light running cameras, which have been shown to be extraordinarily effective at stopping those behaviors. So there is a lobby, not just in Lexington. Louisville's been pushing this real hard, and I think they're trying to kind of build a coalition to continue to advocate for that. And they've already drafted a no parking in bike lane ordinance and I think they're working on getting through council. That was a bit of a pain point for a number of people in the community too. Any other questions? Okay. All right. Thank you, Ms. Gleason. Next we have Mr. Bailey. I'm going to switch this one out. All right. Get that to my height. Good afternoon. I'm here to give you another update on Lexington's Preservation and Growth Management Program. We've been talking about this quite a bit for the past year, but we are kind of nearing the end with the council's review. So I just wanted to make sure that you had an update prior to this coming back to you for your review. So just to give a reiteration of what we've kind of presented in the past of the purpose of the Lexington Preservation and Growth Management Program. It is really meant to break up the discussion of how we talk about expansion within our community, how we talk about growth, and pull it out of the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is a very robust document, as you heard. 117 action items, not many of those action items, are actually specifically targeted at us talking about the growth of an urban service area or how we're going to talk about that with time. This allows for us to focus in on all those very necessary action items, goals, objectives, and policies that are necessary to achieve the community that has been called for in the public input for the comprehensive plan. It also codifies those longstanding practices that we have put into place over the various different expansions of our urban service area in the past that no one really remembers. Every single time we go through this, the planning staff, the council, the planning commission, have to relearn what the process is. That is not the best solution for us to maintain our urban service area, to adjust it, and then to adjust it responsibly based off of data. That is the underlying current of all of this is that we would like a transparent process that is based off of the data that is coming out of our community rather than a potential knee-jerk reaction or kind of dealing with what is the hottest thing at the time. This is highlighted within the Imagine Lexington Analytic Research Center, I-LARC, which is the nicest way to say about it, which is being built out right now. We are filling in all of the data points that were in the sustainable growth study. They should be on the website within the next month. We are also building out those lab reports, which get into the data, describe it a little bit more, and make some cross-comparative analyses. And then finally, it does provide a clear avenue for review by all of our decision makers within our community. I'm going to quickly go through this process since you all have seen it time and time again. Really, all of this starts with a growth trends report, making sure, and you should have this at your seat right now. This is the ordinance that Council is reviewing that will actually be reviewed later on tonight. It will be situated in the Code of Ordinances, and I've kind of set it up so that each of the sections are also tied into kind of that flow chart that we've gone over several times. But Section 1 really gets into the basis of the growth trends report, how we're going to be looking at the data, how we're going to be making those decisions, and then what's the information that we're going to be bringing to you all every five years for your review so that you can make policy recommendations on how best we can infill in our community, how best we can regulate development, and how best we can meet our needs for residential density within our community. That is laid out in Section 2 of your analysis, in which you would take the presentation from the planning staff, go through those recommendations, and then add policies that you think might be appropriate. Those policies would then be forwarded along to the Urban County Council. If there is no finding of a need for residential development in our community, they would still go through all of the policies and recommendations that the Planning Commission is making in their review, take that into account, and hopefully move that forward with either regulatory or policy change so that, again, we are taking advantage of the land that we currently have and trying to build up, infill, and redevelop to the best of our capabilities. If there is a finding that is found for residential housing or a residential need within our community, then it opens the door for the Urban County Council to have a conversation about whether or not it is time to expand our urban service area. That expansion is not required. That is all part of this review process. The Council will need to review infill and redevelopment policies first, though. That is always going to be the primary move with the Growth Trends Report and within our comprehensive plan. It always has been focused on trying to ensure that we are utilizing our land in the most fiscally, socially, and environmentally sustainable way possible. From there, if there is a finding and the Council determines that we will be expanding our urban service area, it gives some parameters on the amount of land that can be brought in and then sets up the next set of processes in which the Planning Commission would go ahead and establish a subcommittee to review our vacant land throughout our community and say, in some cases, maybe that land, if they are not developing, it might be time for them to be taken out of the urban services area. The subcommittee would make that recommendation to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission would then make the final determination on that. If there is no land that is going to be brought out, then the Planning Commission moves forward with their recommendation of locations for the expansion of an urban service area. That Planning Commission land review would occur, and you would have the opportunity to hear from people who want to develop their land. That is one of the bigger things that we are seeking to ensure, that we are not seeing land just sit for extensive periods of time that won't meet our residential needs for a growing community and won't meet some of the economic needs for us going forward. After you all complete that process, it would move it along to the master planning process, which you have a tremendous amount of experience right now in dealing with, whether that is through the Urban Growth Master Plan, the Downtown Master Plan, or the Blue Sky Small Area Plan. It follows that same procedure in which we would be updating you, working with a consultant to go ahead and get the best available product, so that it can guide future development as we move along. We have talked about this a little bit over the past couple of months, specifically the special economic development need. We found that having this conversation at the same time that we are having a conversation about housing did not fit. It was pulled out of the process and moved to a secondary process, where the Urban County Council would review proposals and see if there was a special economic need that needed that land. I do want to stress that people can do this right now. This council can take into account an economic development outside the urban service area. They would be able to go ahead and initiate its own change with a simple majority and move that forward back to you all for your review, and then ultimately back to them for their final determination. In this case, what it would do, it would provide guardrails on where that would go, the amount of land, and it would require a super majority of the council to agree to move this forward so that you could review it, have a master planning process, and then ultimately move to a zone change process. It establishes a lot more guardrails than are currently available to us when having these conversations about economic development and expansion of our urban service area as it is. In terms of changes, since I have last presented to you all, there have been two primary changes. The first one in section one, this was a clarity issue. We set it up so that we talked about how property must be located within the urban service area and meet the following criteria to be considered vacant. There was a little bit of ambiguity, and while it might be done one way internally, we know this is the process. We have a history of administration of the vacant land review. By adding in the clear determination of or, after we talk about agriculturally zoned or agricultural uses within the urban service area, then going into the urbanized uses. This makes it clear that A is distinct from B and C, and B and C are connected. In terms of section four, relating to the composition of the subcommittee, this gets into just identifying a set of individuals that might be preferable by the planning commission when reviewing the different people, by the planning commission council and the mayor, excuse me, about reviewing some of the subcommittee people that should be part of this process. Highlighting the interests and the professionals that are really going to be able to call out certain characteristics of land that might be, might or should not be brought into the urban service area. And then that brings us to where we are now. Later on tonight, the urban county council will be having their first reading of this ordinance at their public meeting later on. I think it starts at six today. After that, they have a scheduled second reading for February 12th. That will then move this back to you all. There is the planning commission element of all of this, which would push us to have another work session, which I'll get to talk to you about some of these things, and the finalized draft, hopefully a much shorter version of this, at the February 19th meeting. This would then move us along to a schedule of an amendment of the comprehensive plan, bringing this in to talk about what are the final responsibilities of the planning commission in this process. We would advertise that public hearing at the beginning of March and then have a public hearing for the update to the comprehensive plan at the end of March during your zoning public hearing. Now, this is specifically tied to the theme E-Goal 4, as well as the goals and objectives associated with that. As you can see, Theme E being what we were trying to do. This sets up the push to do the process in general. Objectives A through D, over the past year and at the direction of the council, we have conducted all of those objectives. That leaves us with Objective E, which represents the finalization of this process by amending the comprehensive plan. This aligns the policies of the comprehensive plan with the adopted regulations that have been established by the Urban County Council. That is why it must come back to you, and we want to make sure that our comprehensive plan really does align with the push that has been made by the Urban County Council to establish our urban service area in this way. With that, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Commissioner Davis. Thank you, Vice Chair Ivey. I've forgotten your last name temporarily. Thank you, Hal, Mr. Bailey. I have two questions, and maybe you can point me to where they might be in this document. I apologize for not being able to read this much this quickly. How does the University of Kentucky's student population fit into this? Because we've had so many things recently that are part of that. Two, where do Fayette County's most valuable soils come into this process? The first aspect of that, when we calculate population within Fayette County, this is established by the U.S. Census Bureau, we count any student that is not living in a dormitory as a resident of Fayette County, and that's typical. So if they are living in a dorm, or if there is any other institutionalized person, that is the definition that they typically use for the census, they are not counted within our county population. So that is how that would work. If they are living off campus, again, they are residents of our community, and thus we need to plan for them to be in our community. In terms of the soil specialists, or looking at soil, that was some of the language that was added, and I know that some of the planning commission members had some concerns about that when they had their conversations with the vice mayor and the urban county council member, Sheehan, about adding that in. And that allows for a fair amount of robust conversation to occur in the subcommittee phase to look at what are the issues of what's the soil conservation in different areas, how are we going to connect with facilities. These are all a balance that will need to be taken into account should there be an expansion in the future. Thank you. You're welcome. So I've got some questions which are sort of based in some fundamental concerns about this proposal. The fundamental concern number one is in the formula, which some of you all heard some of my concerns, but I want to sort of ask some follow-up questions to those and then also just sort of bring them up in front of everybody. This formula is being proposed today where we've had a few comprehensive plans in a row with relatively low or moderate population growth projections for the city of Lexington in 20 years, and that's what we've been seeing. with various reports that indicate that largely we're able to accommodate this growth with our existing land or with moderate additions. We've seen, though, if we look back 20 years, communities that were Lexington-sized that have experienced much more drought communities that were Lexington-sized that have experienced much more dramatic population growth if we look around at some of our peers 20 years ago. And if we're creating a process to change the zoning ordinance, I do think fundamentally we should look at what that projection is as part of a comprehensive plan, and if something fundamental has changed here, we're experiencing a period like we did when IBM was here or we're experiencing a period like we've seen with some of the peers where you've had dramatic growth in places like Raleigh or Austin or other places that we sort of once considered peers and are now dramatically larger than us. You wouldn't necessarily want to take your five-year previous average and say, yes, we're expecting 100,000 people here. We should use that average to estimate how much land we need. That average might be appropriate as part of the comprehensive plan discussions in a low-to-moderate growth situation, but I don't understand why we would not take that dwelling unit number in the formula from either a comprehensive plan sort of discussion or using it or applying it from a number that we're using in, for example, the growth area master plans or something that's more sort of directly tied to what density we are aspiring to in our goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. And I think the advantage of this being established as an ordinance and us having a little bit of breathing room, especially in a time in which we just added a significant amount of acreage, it gives us a time to do a few of these growth trends reports to get it right. If we are seeing that there is some sort of issues with the growth trends report as we develop them, we can go to council, and the council will be receiving the report itself, and say we're not looking far enough, we're not doing enough, these things need to be amended. I believe that this gives us the best foot forward for right now to establish some guidelines and move that forward. So if you were to use this figure, which I sort of have already expressed some major hesitations to, I just have a couple of sort of follow-up questions. We are looking at dwelling units per acre, and when we look at how that was calculated later, the project that's underway down the street from us on Maxwell Street, that's B1, that's B2, so that's downtown business. Correct. So those don't count, right? Correct. So the project that we're looking at across from Rupp Arena where we're looking to develop that whole area, does any of that count? Currently that's all zone B2B, so that would not count within this calculation. We just last week approved additional dwelling units on an already developed parcel on High Street, also in the downtown area, also would not count. Correct. So by, and then also where we've had proposals for use with the corridor node, we've got another proposal for a form-based B1 coming up. We've had a lot of the higher density proposals that we're seeing are using either these form-based B1 options, downtown zoning, or although it was denied, we've seen one with the new sort of corridor zone. So in that calculation, we're removing the larger density applications that we're seeing come before us, and including the lower density ones. So that doesn't really seem like we're capturing an accurate density per acre figure. So I see definitely with the business zones, the commercial zones, we have some issues with how would you calculate a density per acre on something along those lines. The way that we set up the corridor node zone, once those are established, that is a residential zone, and we categorize that as a residential zone, so that will be included in any calculation moving forward. Okay, and then my final one has to do with the definition of vacant land and sort of interpreting the vacant land as the available land. Without sort of trying too hard, just looking back at the last Thursday, two Thursdays before that, I mean, the redevelopments that we're seeing would not really apply to that vacant land. We just last Thursday approved a waiver for redevelopment that added residential units on land that wouldn't apply for vacant land. Two Thursdays before that, we did the, or I guess last month, we did the one on Woodland Avenue, which was sort of speaking to getting rid of those parking minimums, was adding apartments in what was a parking lot, but that was attached to an existing apartment complex, so it wouldn't have counted as vacant land. So when we did the sustainable growth report, which was done right at the beginning of when I was here, that sort of captured in their data a lot of those impacts of redevelopment possibilities, but when we're just looking at vacant land, those aren't being captured, so I would kind of like you to speak to that, because really we are looking around. It's not really that reflective of the reality of where the new dwelling units are coming into the city. So we are capturing much of the residential new development or the dwelling units that are being infilled on lots. That has been one of the main focuses of creating the inventory, new construction, infill, redevelopment within our community. We've been doing that both from a commercial standpoint and a residential standpoint, and that does impact the dwelling units per acre. However, in terms of the vacant land review, that has been an established metric that we've been doing over the past, since 2007, correct, Jim? So that was established in 2007. We're trying to maintain that as the primary focus because of the complexity of redevelopment projects and because of the complexity of how to calculate that into a number without making assumptions. Much of the calculations in this is trying to be agnostic on the assumption side of things, largely because of a perspective of trust or a perceived perspective of putting our finger on the scale of either we're not developing enough or we're developing too little. That is the one thing that we heard about quite a bit throughout this process, is that we are not trusted. There's a perceived mistrust from both the agricultural preservation community and the development community of we're supporting one and not the other. So by trying to make it as agnostic as possible without any assumptions, this was the best possible solution for right now. Again, we would go forward and say, we can do iterations of this plan to come back and say, what is working, what is not in the future. That's particularly why it's important that we have a little bit of breathing room with our most recent expansion. Can I add to that, please? There's a couple of points. Yeah, and I just had sort of a follow-up with an actual hypothetical with the numbers, how that actually would play out. Let me give you some more specific response to what you asked. In particular, for anything that we may not be capturing in terms of the dwelling units in the commercial zone, you see that as something we're not capturing, but what we are capturing is those infill units in a residential zone, and those are counted into this. So to some degree, as we work through this with the council, some of that washes out. But to your point about the residential units going in commercial zones, just because it's not in the formula doesn't mean it won't be reported in the growth trends report. So staff fully expects to be able to report that information out to you. The problem is trying to set a target of what that number should be, and that's where the planning commission, in their recommendation to the growth trends report, can opine on that in their recommendations to council. Let's say, hypothetically, 20% of our residential units in a given five-year period came in in commercial zones, and the planning commission feels it should be 25% or 30%. That's part of the recommendation that you give will come in recommendations to implement that. So the planning commission has its opportunity to put their thumb on the scale in terms of what they think it should be from a policy standpoint. This formula is meant to be the cut-and-dried things that we can report out without putting an opinion on, and then let you all put your opinion on it every five years through the growth trends report. I hope that helps clarify a little bit. I see how that would, in the residential areas, play back into the dwelling units per acre calculation, but I don't necessarily see how it plays into that report on the needed land. If we have a project that, just using one that's underway, deleted 20 dwelling units and replaces it with 200 or something, let's just do that. That's a net gain of 180 dwelling units, but those 20 dwelling units were there before, so they would not be considered vacant. That would not have been considered vacant land. So when we're looking at how much land we need, we're looking forward only looking at vacant land, if I'm reading this correctly, or am I missing something? Even though we have data and we have projections that we've had consultants do before on given certain population growth and certain market conditions, how much of those conversions we would be expecting to see? Yes. The essential value to that, though, is, to your point of availability, if there is a current land use and a current certificate of occupancy, they can occupy that building as what it is at that point in time. We do not want to opine on whether or not one person should redevelop, when they develop, things like that, because it, frankly, does get us down into the line of urban renewal in a past that planning did not do very well. So I think there is a real focus on what is available from a vacancy perspective. Now, that vacancy perspective and the way that it's lined out here can have policy recommendations in the future that spur development in a greater way and that can infill projects in a more sustainable way, rather than highlighting renewal projects or redevelopment projects that, frankly, we're then making or opining on someone else's property. Well, I hear what you're saying. I guess in sort of closure to my comment would be, I do think there's a difference between saying, you know, this person who has a house on a large lot or this person who is using a lot, let's just use the house, maybe they have one house, they have a house on an acre or three acres. I do think it's different from saying this one person's land should be developed than it is to say, you know, given these market conditions, this is the likely outcome of the acreage overall. And I think that was more what the sustainable growth report was doing rather than taking this one house and saying this house should be converted. It was just saying, given these market conditions and this growth, the odds are that this many houses would be redeveloped in this area. And that's more of a sort of statistical analysis rather than a this person should move. And I absolutely agree with you that that's something that the growth trends report should and will be looking at. It's one of those things that we have not started that data set here locally. And without a history of reviewing that, we don't want to, again, go into making assumptions based off of market forces and comparisons to other communities. We want to make sure that we have those data sets that are reflective of here. Okay. Commissioner Moore. At this point in time, we haven't set that up yet. So I think as we move through this process, if there is something that you would like to see on our analytic research center, if there is a data point or something that the planning commission sees is an important aspect that we should be tracking, that's something that we can look into and add as we go along. Thank you. Mr. McClure, to answer directly about assumptions, the goal and objective that specifically addresses the two previous attempts on this were full of assumptions. And that was part of the problem in getting them over the hump. That was truly the lesson learned in this effort was to try to remove as many assumptions as possible. Assumptions can be made in the realm of the policy recommendations, but to bake them into the actual process itself has proved problematic each time we have tried that. It's not that we don't think that they're important. They are important. They're important in the contextualization of the simple formula and for you all to make recommendations based on assumptions that you all want to see. Again, I come back to the growth trends report will be our data with your recommendations. And so your chance to put importance on assumptions, it's going to be had. It's going to be had in that growth trends report update that you all forward to council. So I don't want to give the impression that the assumptions aren't important. It's just we've got to divorce ourselves from those in the process of giving you good data, and then we can talk about those things when we turn it over to you. Okay. Commissioner Worth and then Commissioner Nichol. My light went off. This is a two-part question. Yes, ma'am. On the additions that you've made, the section one, the fours and the ands. Yes. I feel at a disadvantage here because I have not served on the zoning committee. I'm not as familiar with that as a lot of other people here are. Could you take B and C and give me an example of a piece of property that would fit that category? So not having a principal land use or conditional land use located in an urbanized category, that means that within, let's say, a R1A zone. I'm looking for a concrete example. Can you give me a concrete example? Within a residential zone in our community, if there's no structure there, if they don't have that principal land use, meaning a residential land use, that is considered vacant. And then it goes, and if there's not a certificate of occupancy for the structure that has a current building permit on it. So this gets into a property like a business zone. They have a structure on it, but at some point in time it was deemed unoccupiable or something like that. If it does not have a certificate of occupancy, that would be considered a vacant property as well. Okay, so then tying into that, are we including government-owned property here? We are looking at all property for this. Now, government-owned property, we don't usually have to rely on the zoning ordinance. We have sovereign immunity, and thus if there is a differing land use or there is a land use of some sort, technically parks were not designated within our zoning ordinance as a use for a really long time, but they were the ones that we owned. So if it is a park space or something like that, we are not going to consider that a vacant parcel of land. Okay, I'm thinking of a specific piece of property that now has a use and there's work going on, but it was actually owned by the state other than the city. It at one point had juveniles living, and this was on Newtown Pike, and it sat vacant for years, deteriorating. Hypothetically, if we had a piece of property like that that were owned by the state... So we are actually exempting the state property out of this because, again, because of the state's sovereign immunity over property, they can utilize that any way they feel is necessary. That would be federal as well, I presume. Correct. Yes, I'd like to talk again about the formula for projecting the amount of land needed. I think what I'm seeing is that we're moving towards a data-driven decision, which I think is the important way to do it. We need to be data-driven. We need to have a strict formula that then the data can be run through the formula and presented to us so that we can make decisions. I don't think we need to work on assumptions. I think that's what I'm getting at. I think that this is very important. It's concrete. Everybody knows what's going on, and we need to avoid assumptions at all. At all times is my thought on that. So I like the fact that we're data-driven. I think it's important to have these written out on paper. The data that you all are putting together is the source of truth. So we're relying on you to give us a source of truth, and then we can make decisions using the formula rather than making assumptions from your data itself. We need to treat your data as a source of truth, or we're not dealing with any truth, and we're now once again into subjective decision-making. Okay. Commissioner Whaley. Thank you, Commissioner Barksdale. I have one more question, and I apologize. I don't understand where it says that commercial zones or things like B1 and B2 aren't included into your calculations. And secondly, wouldn't an example of where B and C occurred is if there's an existing neighborhood with a lot that's never been developed? Like on Jessalon Drive, they're building a new house. Would something like that be in your review of vacant land? Yes. To the second part, I'll start with that. If it was a property that did not have anything on it, or a property that was demolished, spent a period of time that did not have anything on it, and then had something built upon it, then it comes off the vacant land use. When we're looking at the dwelling units per acre, this is specifically in the projected land need, we talk a little bit about the growth transport there and the specific calculation. For the five-year average dwelling units per acre, we're specifically looking at residential zones. That says that later on in that section. And that is largely because it is incredibly difficult to get the dwelling units per acre for a business zone. Let's put it a little bit into context. There is a couple of residential dwelling units over top of a shopping center. It's only two dwelling units, but it's across the whole of the shopping centers, all on one lot. That would throw off our calculation for dwelling units per acre, making it a very, very low number of dwelling units per acre. In our analysis, we found that the best way to go about it would be to look just at the residential zones, which occupies, if you... Oh, she just left. Eve Miller completed a nice lab report for staff on residential zoning in our community. If you look at the quantity of residential zoning, it makes up greater than two-thirds of our community. If we're looking just at those permits and that type of count, it covers a lot of information. It gives us a good example of how our community is growing. In the end, I assume we want more dense development, more dwelling units per acre, not fewer. Correct. Therefore, not counting things like the two developments on Maxwell, which will have dense development, get thrown out of the mix, which I gather is what Commissioner Mickler's concern is. Absolutely. We're hoping to look at this as this trends report evolves over time. Really getting this into place and establishing something is probably the most important thing so that we have the best system by the time we next have to talk about expansion. There's one other point. For properties that aren't included in the calculation, we'll be getting updated population projections from the State Data Center. If we see population booming in non-residential zones, it's going to change one of the first-line calculations, which is population projections. If we see a boom in population coming in our non-residential zones, we will see that reflected in our State Data Center population projections going forward, which will, again, reset the whole thing. None of these things by themselves are a silver bullet for predicting the exact number of acres or the exact number of units we need. It's going to be a moving target every single year based off of market forces changing, economic conditions changing, labor forces changing, materials inputs. All of those things are going to impact these things. We're talking about over a 20-year timeline. How many years do we get over 20 years with an annual refresh of most of this data, including our population projections? As we started to try to build the perfect mathematical formula and realized it had holes in it that were not solvable, we backed it up to something simpler to get to a place that would just serve as a baseline of information for decision makers. That's it. There is no perfect formula for this. Each one puts gaps and problems into play that we then don't have a solution to answer for. That helped tremendously. Owen? No, you go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Hal. A couple of things. I appreciate Robin here, but I'm going to back up just a little bit. Early in this, it's making reference to group. You're excluding group quarters. Define group quarters for me. That's dormitories and institutionalized individuals. Institutionalized. Does that mean senior living like I'm going to be doing very soon? No. Generally, that's an older term that's associated with individuals that are incarcerated or those who have been committed. Disabilities, right? Yes. Are they counted in the population data? There is a secondary calculation that counts them in, but they are not considered residents within the community. Okay. During all of this, there's been language to say if certain property isn't developed, then there's a possibility. There's a possibility now with this subcommittee and so forth of taking it out. I think there's been some changes and reiterations through that process to identify some of that, but is there lawsuit possibilities there? I would say there's lawsuit possibility in most everything we do. That's easy. I think we are working with our law department and the council's office to make sure that, should anything occur, we're doing it in the best way possible. Okay. Special economic development needs and so forth. I think with our latest expansion, infrastructure costs are still being talked about and trying to be determined and so forth. If this comes forward, are they going to be looking at that cost and how it's going to be paid for early on? Our real focus right now with the infrastructure funding plan is to establish a baseline of how we would look at these things over time. That is always something that the planning commission, once that study is completed, could request information on. I'm sure they will be continuing to update that work through that, but they're still in the middle of that process. I guess probably finally, much as what's been discussed here and so forth, I heard something just... I'm not going to say back and forth, but it was back and forth. But good information. I think we're looking down the road to what I deem more mixed use, more residential in a business zone. I think we're going to have to find a way to count those residential units and not discount them or just not count them. That goes into as we evolve this, I think we will have to be looking at those as time goes on. It was just a few years ago that you heard from every developer that came in here that said mixed use doesn't work in our community. Now you're seeing some differing perspectives on that. I think we're going to have to see where things change over time. I'll leave it at this. It may be a bad example, but when I hear business and commercial with residential on top, I go over to South Broadway where The Walking Man is. There's a small amount of business or commercial on the first floor, but there's a lot of residential on top. It's something that we do need to consider. Thank you. You're welcome. Those would be counted in the population, wouldn't they? Yes, they would. Yeah, so it does get factored in. Yes, it does. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Okay. I apologize for the one more, Just coming back with one more thought in regards specifically to setting this formula up with the five-year average dwelling units per acre and then using that instead of a figure from a comprehensive plan or an intentional figure of what we want to see. And I hear from you all, and I have no doubt that this is true, that the intention would be to explain and put in context through the growth trends report and other sort of reporting what outcomes you would like to see. But when I think about it, in reality, I think about how people interpret the traffic impact reports. And, you know, every time we have a development that causes a low letter grade on that intersection, you all can explain all you want that that D or an F is actually okay, but that doesn't get heard that way. And so I do fear that without actually putting in our goal that we, thinking about that traffic impact and the way that those are heard in the public, that we're setting that same scenario up. And I think that's something to review as we look at the next iterations of comprehensive plans and growth trends reports in the future. Just real quick. You're going to be providing on an annual basis a growth trends report, is that correct? No, no. So the growth trends report will only be done the year after a comprehensive plan. However, we will be updating all the metrics that would be going into a growth trends report as frequently as we can. Right now we're working on getting all the sustainable growth numbers and data up onto our website. We'll be updating the vacant land calculation here in the next couple of weeks, making sure that's available for the public to see, and then updating all the other metrics that outline the five-year growth, dwelling unit counts, our population change, all those things that go into this calculation. But the growth trends report will only be provided the year following a comprehensive plan. Okay. But you're building out a database, and the metrics that make up that data point are available for the public to look at, and you can easily – what I'm getting at is we want to make sure that that data is usable and acts as a source of truth. We don't want to get in a position where we're – and it looks like we're not going to get in that position, but the concern would be you're three years into a growth plan and some things have happened and you need to revise it. But what we're saying is, no, we're going to be updating a database, and on an annual basis we will have new data that can then be run through the formula to provide us better insights. Some data will be updated monthly. Some data will be updated quarterly. Some data will be updated annually. So we'll be tracking that on our website. Good, because we don't want to end up with a situation like a comprehensive plan with that metric comes out in 19, then we have COVID in 20, then things change and we look up it's 2023 and we don't know what the hell is going on. So this way we'll have data provided. I think it's important for us to understand that this – the data that these guys are putting together is really important. It's going to provide us the ability to rely on a source of truth and provide decisions based on truth, which I think is important for us. Go ahead. This is not a question. You're off the hook. All right. It's just a statement. I just would like to congratulate you all. This has gotten better, I think, in my opinion, every time we've looked at it. I think you've plugged some of the holes that some of us raised with the Vice Mayor and Liz Sheehan, and it's not perfect, but we've got to have a place to start, and this looks like a good place to start. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is that it? All right. Mr. Duncan. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. As I was walking over here from a meeting at the Government Center, I made a point of looking up at that beautiful, clear, blue sky and just trying to imagine what's over here and what's coming. So thinking about all of you and hoping that everyone stays safe in the coming days and keeps heat and keeps electricity and everything that you need. Looking forward to seeing you all again next Thursday for our zoning hearing, and I hope everything is cleared up by then. In the meantime, I wanted to give you all just a little bit of a personnel update. Some of you may have met Rael last week at the subdivision meeting, Rael Browning back here. She is our new planner in the Planning Services section. She succeeded James, who moved over to the Transportation section, and Rael is getting very, very quickly oriented to our work. You will be seeing her. The Board of Adjustment will be seeing her, so we're looking forward to Rael's work with us. And then just starting this week is Ben Walford over here. Ben is succeeding how quickly we forget. Ben is our new admin specialist with a focus on zoning, so you all will be seeing him on the four Thursdays of the month and at committees, and we're very happy to have Ben here. I'll admit we have not done a good job of getting Ben a place to sit, so he's a bit of a nomad right now, so you may have trouble reaching him if you're trying to get to him for the next few days, either by phone or computer, but we will get him settled in, and he'll be working with you all soon. So just to let you all know, and I know we don't ordinarily trouble you all with our personnel issues, but we are at 97 percent full right now, and we've only got one vacancy, and that is the new position that the council gave to us in this fiscal year to address all of the work associated with House Bill 443, to ensure that we're able to process waivers in a timely manner, review the plans in a timely manner. So we're looking forward, and we are in the process of filling this position. We've got it advertised, and we're out. So we're looking forward to getting this position in, and this will be a person who will be working with you all, particularly the subdivision committee and subdivision meeting, so we'll keep you all apprised of that. Okay. Madam Chair, that's all I have. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Any other business? Well, this meeting is adjourned. Yeah, everybody was waiting for the gavel.