# Environmental Quality & Public Works (EQPW) Committee - March 3, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · March 3, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6706 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6706?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-03-03 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 10, 2026 - **Length**: 12,042 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee met on March 3, 2026, at 1:00 PM, with D. Sevigny presiding. The meeting covered four agenda items spanning administrative, operational, and technical matters. Two items were informational in nature — a Sewer Odor Control Update and an Energy Initiatives Update — constituting the meeting's presentations. The committee also took action on two items, approving both the February 3, 2026 Committee Summary and an Engineering Manuals Update. Across the meeting, five motions and votes were recorded, and no public comments were heard. ## Attendance The following members were present at the March 3, 2026 Committee meeting: - D. Sevigny - T. Morton - J. Brown - T. Eblen - E. Curtis - L. Sheehan - L. Higgins-Hord - J. Hale - A. Beasley - H. Boone - Dan Wu - Shayla Lynch No members were recorded as absent or late. All 12 listed members were in attendance for the meeting. ## Votes and Decisions The following motions were considered and voted on during the March 3, 2026 Committee meeting: - **Approval of February 3, 2026 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:03:09]: Moved by T. Morton and seconded by L. Higgins-Hord. The motion passed unanimously. - **Removal of items from the committee — Haley Pike Solar Project Update, Review of Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants, and Mint Lane Pump Station**: Moved by D. Sevigny and seconded by L. Sheehan. The motion to remove all three items from the committee's agenda passed unanimously. - **Removal of Lextran Services and Environmental Impacts from the committee**: Moved by D. Sevigny and seconded by E. Curtis. The motion passed unanimously. - **Approval of proposed changes to the engineering manuals** [timestamp: 1:12:55]: Approved by voice vote. No mover or seconder is recorded in the meeting data. - **Partial report out of item number four (engineering manual updates) at the March 3rd work session** [timestamp: 1:13:25]: Approved by voice vote. No mover or seconder is recorded in the meeting data. All five motions before the committee passed. Three were decided by unanimous vote and two by voice vote. No nays or abstentions were recorded for any motion. ## Approval of February 3, 2026 Committee Summary [timestamp: 03:09] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its February 3, 2026 meeting. D. Sevigny was the key speaker on this item. No concerns or substantive debate were recorded regarding the contents of the prior meeting's summary. The committee approved the February 3, 2026 summary. ## Sewer Odor Control Update [timestamp: 03:39] The Committee received an informational presentation on ongoing sewer odor control efforts from Director Charles H. Martin, with J. Reynolds also participating as a key speaker. Director Martin provided an update covering two primary areas of focus: - **Infrastructure improvements** aimed at reducing sewer odors in the system - **Chemical testing** being conducted as part of efforts to identify and implement effective odor reduction measures The presentation was informational in nature, and no votes or formal actions were taken as an outcome of the discussion. *Note: Additional details regarding specific infrastructure projects, chemical agents under evaluation, locations affected, timelines, or cost figures were not available in the source data for this item.* ## Energy Initiatives Update [timestamp: 29:01] James Bush presented an update on the city's energy initiatives during this agenda item. The presentation covered the city's ongoing solar projects as well as broader energy efficiency efforts. This item was informational in nature, and no vote or formal action was taken as a result of the presentation. *Note: Additional details regarding specific project names, figures, concerns raised, or debate among committee members are not available in the provided data for this agenda item.* ## Engineering Manuals Update [timestamp: 57:33] Doug Burton presented proposed updates to the engineering manuals during this agenda item. The presentation covered revisions to multiple manuals, including updates to procedures and stormwater manuals, as well as the introduction of a new maintenance manual. The Committee reviewed the proposed changes as presented by Burton. The structured data available for this item does not detail specific concerns raised or debate among Committee members during the discussion. The Committee approved the engineering manuals update. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of February 3, 2026 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove items from the committee: Haley Pike Solar Project Update, Review of Water Quality Management Fee Incentive Grants, and Mint Lane Pump Station - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Lextran Services and Environmental Impacts from the committee - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve the proposed changes to the engineering manuals - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Partial report out of item number four, engineering manual updates at the March 3rd work session --- ## Full transcript Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Show Theme Music Comrades, to this wonderful meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works. I'll call this March 3rd, 2026 meeting to order. Thank you everyone for being here. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the February 3rd committee summary. Are there any corrections or additions? Hearing none, can I have a motion to approve? I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. All right. The first presentation today is we have Director Martin talking to us about sewer odor control. This is a Councilmember Reynolds item, so I want to invite her to say a few things before we start. Thank you, Chair. I really want to thank Director Martin and Mr. Bowman for all of their hard work on this over the past few years. This kind of came out, for those of you that don't know, of a lot of complaints and uptick in smell complaints in the 11th district and the 4th district. A few years ago, I think it was 2023, we had a particularly unusual uptick of complaints. And so I met with Director Martin, and we talked to the administration. And thanks to the administration, they put money towards trying to solve that issue. And so since then, we have had periodic updates to hear about the progress that has been made. And so that is why Director Martin is here today to give us a progress report. I will say, I think there has been improvement, and I think we are moving in the right direction. I did still get quite a bit of complaints. It's usually between the end of summer and during the fall that we have the uptick. And I know it's been a challenge to try to figure out exactly where the odor is coming from and how to treat it. So I think we have some new ideas in this presentation. And I will turn it over to you, Director. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you, Council Member. Your leadership, along with others, have helped us get where we are today. And we're a lot better off than we were in 2023. I do believe that as well. You mentioned Rick, who's back behind me on the back row. I also brought along Webster Environmental Associates staff, Jim Ross and Sharon Worley. They've been a huge help to us. And you've heard me mention Webster numerous times. I thought I'd bring along somebody to put a face to them. It's been an eventful year. But the real focus has been on the design and construction of infrastructure that limits the release of odors. But a new spin has been about testing chemicals that limit the formation of odors before they happen. There's been a lot of effort on that. We can put infrastructure in at the treatment plants and the pump stations. But if we can do it to control it and keep it from releasing before it even happens, that is a huge win for us. So one of the things that happened in the post-2023 time is we needed a plan. And so what we had Webster do is develop two different plans. One for Town Branch Treatment Plan and the other for West Hickman. You see the cover there is the odor testing and modeling report. And it really has become the guidepost for us as far as what we're doing. So one of the tables from that report, this is for the one for Town Branch, you see four different odor control systems that are on the plate that we're working on actively towards resolving them. Odor control system number one has already been completed. Number two is kind of in process. We replaced the carbon units, but we're also counting on the chemical program that I'm going to be talking about later to help augment that. Number three is in the design phase with construction money requested as part of FY27. Four will be one we'll have to have more of a conversation on about because it has some challenges with it. There you see the odor control system number one that is under construction right now and should be activated by spring of this year, just in time for odor season. What's unique about this is it's a two stage unit. It's like belt and suspenders. The odor is collected on the one on the left and travels through that through what's called a bioscrubber. And then it discharges out of the top and goes through the one on the right, which is activated carbon, which is a polishing step basically to what we're treating. And the great thing about that is that you can use one or the other if there's a problem with the other. So we've got redundancy that we did not have before. So referencing the West Hickman odor testing and model report, similar format. There are four solutions. One is broken into two different components because they're two separate things, but they're the same process. And so odor control system number one has been completed, the one you heard about a lot last summer. We spent a lot of time waiting on parts. It seems like that's a big part of our world these days. The supply chain still hasn't corrected itself in the wastewater world. 2A and 2B are in the design phase and ready to be bid. Number three is also in the design phase. Number four is also a little bit of a tricky one as well, too, because what we have found through our chemical process is that sometimes feeding chemicals, while it helps treat odors, is it upsets the treatment process. And that's what happened to us here recently. And we'll have to take that into consideration before we try to address item four. There you see a photo of control system number one. Same concept, belt and suspenders. It goes through the scrubber that's on the left and then goes through the activated carbon that's on the right. They can operate independently or they can operate in series in order to try to protect those ash tanks. That's aerated sludge holding tanks that are probably the stinkiest thing that we have there at West Hickman. And so they were a very, very high priority for us. Kind of wrapping up some other wins on the treatment end of things, that we were able to reclad the junction chambers that are in Veterans Park. Times when I've walked through the park and I've talked to people about odors, they always say, yeah, those things there smell the worst. And so not only did we reclad those, but we replaced the lids on them with odor-proof lids basically to control that. The picture in the middle is the carbon inserts that you've heard me talk about before, that we're inserting those in particular manholes where you've got a lot of turbulence. And there's a tendency to be able to release odors at those points. And then the last one, South Elkhorn Activated Carbon Project. In the Palomar area, we have a pump station that's been there since the 1980s. It basically is in the backyards of these people's houses. And it's been a continual problem for them, regular late fall odor complaint that I get. And so we're in the process of putting in an activated carbon unit out there to polish the scrubber, similar to what we did at West Tickman. Big focus area, though, for us was the chemical addition in the collection system. Again, about trying to control odors before they form. If you recall from previous discussions that we've had about, or presentations that we've had, is that we were feeding chemical, but we weren't really knowing whether or not we were getting the output that we wanted. There wasn't any measurements or anything. The Webster team and Rick have done a lot of work on that now. We have a really good understanding of what's happening in the system and what impacts that we have with changing chemicals. So for this summer in particular, we pilot tested different chemicals under different scenarios to try to determine can we get better performance from chemicals, and if so, at what cost. So there's a lot going on on this. You don't have to read all this. The whole idea was the trend of this, is that reading from left to right, you see where odors are spiking. Those are measurements of hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. They're indicators of this. This is from an air release valve right next to Meadowthorpe, right there alongside the railroad tracks. And you can see it's spiking at over 200 parts per million. Our goal is 10. So you've got a serious problem going on there. That pipeline comes from the cold stream area, so it's pumping all the way from the Legacy Trail all the way to Town Branch. And so by the time it gets there, it's ripe is, I guess, the technical term for that. You can see where it kind of goes away. A lot of times that's rain, is that when it rains, then you get fresher water coming into the system and stuff. But I wanted you to see, this is what's happening with our existing chemical. We had pilot tested one in particular in late summer last year. This is a magnesium hydroxide product. Now you see those bumps coming down way lower than it was before. It was averaging 36, and now we're averaging less than 3. And we're peaking at 60 instead of 200. Really, really promising option here for Town Branch that we intend to pursue vigorously in 2026. Hopefully that that individual pilot study will verify what we believe will happen. Good thing about the magnesium hydroxide is the treatment plant loved it. They said that the process was easier for them than it had been before. Unfortunately, when we used it at West Hickman, we had the opposite of that. So we tried a different approach at West Hickman. You see this graph here, again reading from left to right. You see the chemical that we are using, and we see spikes that are up over 100. We turned it off. It spiked a little bit, and then we switched over to this other ETX product. And you see how much it dropped. We rode that out for a little while, and then we switched to a different product by the same vendor, STX. Now we're down below 10 on a regular basis. So the takeaway from the whole of this is that we spent all summer long last year working on this, trying to determine whether we could improve performance. We think we can, and we think we can at a reasonable cost. Part of that is going to be realizing that there's no one-size-fits-all. The testing that Webster and Rick do will be a continuous type of thing to be able to make sure that we're not just throwing money down the sewer and not getting a return on our investment. Even more importantly is having the flow pacing, to make sure that you're feeding at higher rates when you need to, and not be feeding at too high rates at night, maybe, or other things when the flows are low. So in summary, two treatment units have been constructed, one at each plant. Two other treatment plant units are at 90% ready for construction, and one pump station, the one that I mentioned before in Palomar, ready for bid and award. FY27 funding is recommended for the town branch solids building on the chemical edition. We're in the process of bidding that right now, and so chemicals will continue, and that will probably be an update that you get somewhat frequently this fall in the weekly updates that you get from everybody else. Okay. I tried to stay within my ten minutes. Thank you, Director Martin. You did a great job. You are very short and succinct. Thanks so much. Councilmembers, if you have questions on this item, please log in. For the sake of time, I'm going to call on Councilmember Reynolds first, because although she's not on the committee, this is her item, and she has an appointment that she's got to go to. So I would like to recognize Councilmember Reynolds first. Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, Director. I think you all have made huge strides, and I really appreciate the attention to this issue. I know that you personally have a lot of things that you're overseeing, so adding this to your plate has not been easy, and I really appreciate it. I want to make sure that I understand a few different items. With those carbon inserts, you said those were just at West Hickman, not at Town Branch? They're basically all over the place, the carbon inserts. Typically when odors happen is that somehow you've got turbulence inside that manhole. It's oftentimes where a pressurized line comes into it, and it dumps in there, and it starts stripping out the odors, and there are other cases where multiple lines come and join together, such as in Veterans Park, the example I used there because you've got big lines that all come together, and it vents out of the manhole. It vents out of different locations, and so we've used these in the past, a different brand, and it didn't work as well. Now we've found a different brand. We've got a unit price contract in place to where we can put those in and replace them on a frequent basis instead of waiting until people complain. So they're at manholes all over the city, or just in those areas? Manholes all over the city, and it's really, it starts with a complaint and goes from there. Okay, thank you. Obviously, we want to buffer that with that chemical program, though, too, as well, because if we can prevent the release of those odors, then maybe these things become less necessary. Thank you, and I know Chair Savigny and I had mentioned the chemicals a while before. Can you explain exactly when they are mixed with the, like when do they go in, when do the chemicals get added? When do the, I'm sorry? When do the chemicals get added? Okay, the chemicals that we're adding are being added at pump stations. You've got pumps that come on and off and stuff, and so typically the chemical gets injected in the discharge or the release point of the pump. We've also looked at, especially at West Hickman, the line that goes from Palomar all the way to the plant is six miles long. And so feeding it just at the pump station wasn't enough. And so we worked with Jesmond County to create an injection point that was midpoint. That way we can lift it back up again, buffer it back up. because the whole science of this is really is you're trying to provide an oxygen source for the sewage. Because if it attacks the oxygen that's in sewage, it chemically converts things into bad things. So if you introduce more oxygen than it needs, you shouldn't produce odors that way. That makes sense. And then for the budget for odor control, I see the numbers here. But what does it look like for the next year? How much will be put towards it? Just in the capital program alone, I'm doing this off the top of my head. I think our request was nearly $5 million. One for the town branch, and then one, we want to put in an oxygen injection system at East Hickman which goes to West Hickman. When we built that new force main, we intended to do that through grant money, but the grant money wasn't sufficient, but I wanted to make sure that it got replaced. $5 million off the top of my head, but I'll send that to you with a little more detail afterwards. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks again. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Reynolds. Next up is Council Member Hale. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Martin, for your presentation. I just got one question. Is there a cost difference between the ETX and the STX chemicals? And do you know what that is? Well, I'll know better when the bid's open and stuff. I mean, right now, we do have a cost. It was more for the ETX, I believe, than it was. It was obviously more for the one that performed better. But they probably weren't real prices because, number one, we were doing them in a pilot study, so it was a very limited quantity at which that we were using, and it wasn't spread out over a period of time. We're anticipating we're going to get better cost per gallon if we award somebody a contract that is more of a longer-term and broader thing, economy of scale type of thing. But, you know, one of the things we're trying to compare this to, you know, we're spending $2.60 a gallon on a product or have been spending that on a product that wasn't working very well for us. And so if we can find something, even if it costs a little bit more but it gives us a good rate on our return, then I think my recommendation is that we strongly consider using that on long-term. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here, Director Martin, and for all the work that you and your team have put into solving this issue for our constituents. I know that my folks over in the fourth district, especially on the south side in the Veterans Park area, are very appreciative and better off. I just have a couple of questions for you that might seem basic, but I like to remind my neighbors who might be watching this of these things. So as we're talking about shifting the chemicals that we're using for treatment, just for explicit clarity, that does not pose any increased health risk to them because we are including chemicals as part of waste treatment, correct? No health effects that I'm aware of that anybody else is aware of that would be ambient. I mean, obviously, if you're handling chemicals at the location itself, there's a risk associated with that. And some of the stronger stuff, we've had to have containment devices and things like that, but that would be a regulatory requirement. But I don't think they need to worry about us feeding chemicals and them detecting it in any way. Wonderful, thank you so much for that clarification. As we've been talking about some of the infrastructure costs with these projects over time, and you mentioned the supply chain issues and whatnot we've had with that. Are we facing any supply chain issues with regards to access to the chemical component? We've tried to establish unit price contracts for reusable stuff. We've awarded a contract to service our scrubbers. We've awarded a contract to replace carbon. We don't have to go through the bidding process. We've already done it, and so that eliminates the five to six steps that it takes to go through council and stuff. So we're always looking for opportunities to be able to shorten those time frames. But the balance to that is making sure that we have this belt and suspenders thing I talked about before, redundancy that if there is a delay in getting critical parts, that we're not completely shut down. Wonderful, and I appreciate you all taking that into consideration as we're going forward. And the last question that I have is a very basic one, which is if somebody is having issues with odor control, would the best place for them to reach out be to 311? 311, and Rick will be happy to be able to be the one to respond for it. That's one of the great things that he's been able to do. I didn't mention that, is that having Rick, that's what he does. He is our odor control manager, and he's great about going out and dealing with the constituents. So I still do it at night sometimes and stuff, because I've got a relationship with those folks over the years and stuff. But yes, 311, because Rick will contact you. And we've gotten into several situations that didn't have anything to do with us, but it had to do with faulty plumbing that were in restaurants and other facilities. But I think people were appreciative that somebody would come out and help them and give them advice. No, and I really appreciate that, and I really appreciate you highlighting that work that Rick's been doing, because it has made a tangible difference for a lot of folks. And so, yeah, I just want to say again, thank you to you and your team for everything that you've done. And even though I know she had to bounce out really quickly, I wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Reynolds for her legislative championing of this issue, and my constituents are better off for it. So, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Curtis. Next up is Councilmember Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director, for the presentation. I know we've gotten a lot of feedback from constituents across these districts, and I appreciate you being so responsive and coming up with a solution and testing all of the different possibilities. So, thank you for that. I somewhat want to follow up on Councilmember Curtis's question about any health concerns. With any of these treatments, are there any other environmental concerns that we should just be aware of? Knowing this is sanitary sewer, this is sewage already, so. Yeah, the idea is to keep it fully contained and not expose anybody to it and stuff. But, no, I'm not. Like I said, my biggest concern is the impact that the chemicals have on the treatment process itself. Like I said, we were feeding one chemical at West Hickman late in the summer, early fall, and we started failing phosphorus. And while phosphorus is not a chronic type of thing, it's still a violation. We've got it on item D on work session today. And so that is a concern, is we've got to somehow balance the need between trying to make sewage not stink, but at the same time meet our criteria for a receiving stream. But, again, I don't think so. I don't even feel that way with the treatment plant operators that work around it. We provide sufficient PPE, but I didn't see anything that causes me to be more concerned about it than before. In general. Okay. Thank you. That answers my question. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Sheehan. Next up is Councilmember Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Charlie, for your presentation and your work on this. I know that when this item came up, you all moved pretty fast to pivot and try to figure out a solution, so we appreciate that. What did you mention about Palomar? I felt like you said something about the Palomar odor issue. Is there a plan for that? There is a pump station located on Bowman Mill Road just off of Harrodsburg Road that was built back in the 80s. It's been there since I came here in 99. Basically, you can talk to people on their deck behind this pump station. They're right there. We have a scrubber. We rehabbed the scrubber. It got better for a while, and now it's not better. I hear from one lady pretty regularly and stuff like that. Clearly, we needed to do something to upgrade it. It's not the norm. I don't know why that station got built there in the way that it did, but we typically don't operate in people's backyard like this one is. Certainly, it's a mindful moving forward. When we do stuff, particularly in the expansion areas or what have you, odor control will be a conscious part of whatever it is we're doing. Okay. That's something that you're still trying to work through and trying to figure out, or you just think? We're in the design about ready to bid for construction an activated carbon unit that would then be the suspenders part of what comes from the scrubber. We're pulling air out of the wet well, which is where all the sewage collects, sending it through the chemical scrubber. Then the discharge of that chemical scrubber then would go through the activated carbon unit with hopefully polishing it and cleaning up some of those spikes. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for that answer. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I just want to thank you again for the presentation. I just have one question for you. Could you, if you go on those, just one of your charts with the zigzags, just any one of them, doesn't matter. What's kind of like the nose detectable level, like when you're looking at the lines across the charts? The no detect line is the gold that we're going for, which is 10 parts per million. I'm just curious. I think there's a red line on one of those. Is it that red line? The red line is temperature, I believe. Oh, okay. I'm trying to figure out where my pointer is. There's my pointer. 10 is somewhere down here. Okay. All right. So it's way down there. It's down there pretty low. They might be able to find one that is a better scale for you. So that's the undetectable typically? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What we would call the threshold. Yeah. I will say this, detectable. I've met a lot of people that they are amazing smellers. I think it's like any other scent. Some people see better than others. Some people smell differently than others or hear or anything else. Because I've met some folks that I'll be standing on their front porch and they smell it and I don't smell anything. So it just is what it is, I guess. But if we can reliably believe below 10, I think we get the vast majority of folks that are having concerns with odors. Great. Thank you so much, Director Martin, for the presentation. That's all we have. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Next up in the agenda is an update on the city energy initiatives. The energy initiatives section works closely with the divisions across the government to implement the city's energy management plan. The plan was established in 2004 to reduce fuel and utility consumption, promote conservation, achieve cost savings. James Bush is our energy initiatives section manager. And he's going to provide us an update. Welcome, Mr. Bush. Thank you so much for being here. Good afternoon. The introduction covered it well. So this is a regular update on the activities that are funded by the energy improvement funds. We technically have one for each of the broader fund categories, general service, urban service, water quality, and the like. I have one moment. I also have some slides to provide context in the larger picture. The external pressures coming from utility pricing and the impacts of recent rate cases. And at the end, some commentary about my related activities that we do in my section that bleed over to the energy improvement fund. So this is a sum total for year ending last June, fiscal year 25. Just for billing of natural gas, water, and electricity. A little over 22 million. You can see that was slightly up. There was a mid-year increase in our water rates that largely account for that. We had some growth in the expanded water treatment and distribution sector. But for the most part, things were flat outside of the cost of water. Now, in this current fiscal year, in that upper right, so effective in January, we received two rate increases. A very large one with the water company. A blended increase of 20%. And I say blended because we have increases on water rates, on our fire hydrants, and fire suppression systems. They all move at a little different levels. The pie chart, of course, is highlighting the largest category of those, the fire hydrants. These are leased assets, the fire hydrants and street lights. Sewer treatment and distribution in the lower right. And then in the lower left, that's all else. So that is all our utilities to provide operations in the buildings. You sit in the parks and rec, police, fire, etc. So this year, we're seeing about half of the impact from that increase in the Kentucky American rates. And then further, a 9% increase with Kentucky utilities. And the full brunt of those will impact in FY27. So right now, we're trending in approaching 24 million in this fiscal year. And the estimate in 27 could be around 26 million. That includes some buffer for our normal weather variance. But it's a realistic estimate at this point. Could you move a little bit closer to the mic, if you don't mind? Do my best. It's hard to hear you. Projects in this fiscal year for the Energy Improvement Fund. So Police East, it's our newest constructed building near Veterans Park School, corner of Saron and Clearwater. That is under contract at the moment. Perhaps at the end of this last week of this month, early April, should be an installation of a 20 KW array. I have a slide on that to give you a little more detail later. We have an open RFP at Police Sector West for a ballasted system on a new roof. We worked with Parks and Rec to replace the HVAC system in the ballroom. And this was a fuel switch from removing a gas boiler heat system into variable refrigerant technology. We have a small project going on with our folks at Town Branch, adding insulation on a heat exchanger system for their boiler loop. And then I think we still have time to do a third solar project in this fiscal year. Right now the focus is on what we call the gymnasium at Black and Williams. It's that annex building next to the main building. And we are also working with Parks and Rec, who's redoing the roof at Camp Kearney, which is amenable to solar. And we're trying to do just a few things to make that easier for a future project. I wanted to highlight this project. It was completed at the very end of last year. So this is the Fire Station 19 out at Huffman Mill. It's relatively small. It's very much a residential system. But what I'm highlighting here is it was extremely simple, very cost effective. Everything was done on the right side of the building. We were fortunate to have an interconnection point at a sub panel that's pretty much right in the middle of that solar array you see. But I'm emphasizing we're not using the larger, higher roof. That would have complicated the system. It would be larger than what we would necessarily need. Now, the output of that array, trying to give you some feel for solar energy, the output of that array is approximately 26% of what that building consumes or needs for its operations. And fire stations are more energy intensive than a typical home. But still, that array is only about a quarter of what that building uses. The size of it, we'll use about 88% of that energy on site, exporting 12%. That's important because KU largely discourages people being power producers. They compensate you less than if you utilize it yourself. We model these systems over a 25-year life cycle. So the numbers you see up there over time, that's a first-year savings what you see there. So over time, as we anticipate rates going up, as you saw in the preceding slide, that savings grows. So on average, it will be more around $2,400 per year in savings. The output will decrease over time, just normal degradation, approaching more like 15,000 kilowatt hours each year. In terms of this system being very lean, very clean in my regard, by year 12, 94% of the cost of this system will be recouped. And I use year 12 because that's often the warranty point for the major equipment on these systems. Break even on this is year 13. I think that's one of the lowest we've had, unsubsidized. And then by year 25, everything performing, you would expect this to actually save the government $61,000 over the life of the system. So a little contrast then, this is the project that's under contract right now, Police East Sector. It was designed with solar in mind, but not as part of the project. And so in that regard, it was not all the details had been worked out. There was an initial plan where all surfaces of the roof were covered in arrays and things, but it wasn't taken into account. How much does the building use? How much do we not want to export? Things of that nature. In the end, we are only placing the system on the metal roof that's outlined there. There was a little gain, another way of saying it. We had some room for extra capacity from an energy standpoint, but the complexities of putting a ballasted system on a membrane roof and the added components necessary and costs just didn't feel were worth the potential risks or concerns. So we're exclusive clipping on the roof. I think it'll look real good. It'll be streamlined, but it is slightly smaller. We'll use 92% of the energy on site, so 8% on the export. It, too, will be about a quarter of what that building consumes. Long term, we're looking at maybe $4,500 per year over the life of the system and ultimately could save over $100,000 that year 25. Looking at our balance sheet, these are the Energy Improvement Fund balances. The 117 you see there, that is... after the contract for Police East, so the majority of that will be consumed by the Police West project, assuming bids come in in normal expectation, and the Black and Williams will be for practical purposes. We wouldn't have money left over for another project this fiscal year. I wanted to point out the federal government, they had pulled back their energy efficiency and conservation block grant, Lexington was earmarked over $300,000, that did not come in this year, and we've requested then $150,000 in next year to just continue the deployment of these types of systems, but if things proceed as expected, our bank account will be nearly depleted at the end of this fiscal year and then asking for additional resources to continue. There was a line item for a ground mount PV system, I must not have highlighted a previous slide right now, we're focused on a part of land in front of the Raven Run Nature Center, it's not firm yet, but that is where our attention is at the moment for that particular project. Urban service EIF and the sanitary sewer EIF, we're not requesting new funds there, we've had that balance rolling with relatively little use, but just in the last 6-10 months, there's been some renewed interest, more calls about ideas for utilizing that fund, so we're hoping to move some projects there. Comments and conclusions. Continued emphasis on PV is where we are at the moment, and that coordinating with new and re-roofing projects is very important. Continuing with the engineered systems, those membrane roofs, they are not a standard 20-30 year shingle, they're more begin at 30-50 year warranties, so keeping those in force has required a lot of extra attention and detail with who's doing the work that's compatible with these ballasted type systems. Building automation, in my prior presentations, I haven't touched on this as much. It's very germane to energy efficiency in reducing costs in government, it's just we typically don't fund it through the EIF, it's more part of my normal operations, but in the last year, there's been a considerable uptick in both interest and need related to new construction that it warranted its own place on this slide. And I wasn't sure if you were aware to what degree we provide those services in maintaining these front-end platforms, but police headquarters, we just punched a new digital control system for that building, so it's been added to our platforms. Then in process, we have the therapeutic center at Shillito Park, there's a new water quality admin building on New Circle Road, both of which will be added to our front-end systems. Police sector west, that envelope project brought in upgrades to the HVAC systems, such that we're now recommending that be added. It is a capital request in next year. We have the next three, those are existing buildings that could benefit by expansion. Phoenix is probably the best example there, where we have resolution on the major systems in the penthouse, but from the neck down, we don't see any of the minor equipment throughout the building, so that digital platform could be extended there. And lastly, the new government center, it too would have a building automation and be brought into our platforms. So for context, where we have 15, 16 buildings at the moment in these platforms, we're looking at adding three to four more, that that is, you know, it's a significant increase in the time and effort that's coming out of my section, more than a single person can handle. We're up to, we have two full-time staff at present, but even that doesn't have a backup for normal activities. Last bullet, we still lack a policy on targets for building energy efficiency or solar, and I want this to overlay with some of the systems I was describing earlier, that if we're trying to put solar on after the fact, and that building hasn't, didn't go through consideration for having it, sometimes it's difficult, if not impossible, think a building that's not oriented properly or shaded, or at a minimum just inhibited, not knowing if we have enough capacity in the electrical system, or can we get to it, do we reserve space on the walls, things of that nature. I'm going to interrupt you, Rick, we're at time, and it seems like you're at the end. I am. Last slide. All right. So, having that ingrained in our normal design process would be extremely helpful, and then the last bullet, not knowing how that new government center was to be procured, new construction, rehab, renovation, what, it was kind of a moving target on to what degree we could push energy efficiency or renewables, so lacking those policies on the front end made those conversations and negotiations harder. Thank you so much, Mr. Bush. Colleagues, please sign up to ask questions. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this presentation. I always look forward to the updates, and I think you have really been trying to push us in this energy efficiency, towards more energy efficiency, but then also adapting alternative energies in our government spaces, so I appreciate that. I do want to let the committee know, related to the last bullet point that you had on the no targets for building energy efficiencies and setting a standard, is that I did ask our environmental commission to make a recommendation to us for building standards, and so I have a meeting set up with them to go over their recommendations next week so that I can bring them to council, so that discussion is in progress, and a couple other council members have been involved in that discussion as well, so thank you again for your work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Sheehan. Next up is Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Bush, for the presentation, and I'll go on and say thank you to Council Member Sheehan and my other colleagues who are engaged in that conversation, and I look forward to seeing what recommendations come forward so we can continue moving in that direction. One of the questions that I had, again, was we touched on in this presentation regarding the specific loss of that $330,000 from the federal grants, I was wondering if you could speak to that at greater length, and what difficulties you're facing as we navigate that shift in policy prioritization from the federal government, and how they allocate funds towards alternative energies or renewables. Things largely went completely silent on our contacts with the federal government. We had submitted the application under their deadline. We're told this is a lock, and they were, I think, candidly, they were muzzled, and they did not issue further statements, and the entire website was removed shortly after the new administration took over. So we had no means of even entering to see status of application, things of that nature. I think at that point, even though we are a direct allocation, it would take a, some states were pursuing a legal route to acquire those funds, and I believe that is still in the court system, but to my knowledge, we nor the state of Kentucky were party to those. And when it comes to the tangible impact on the work that we're doing with the loss of those funds, how do you anticipate managing to continue this work in that environment? As, yes, governments change and what not, but this administration, it's fair to anticipate, is it going to at least be around for a couple more years, and we're going to continue to do work in that time. The, it shifts, obviously, the funding to the local government, and that was, I don't have a chart on that, but what happened was we were requesting annual appropriations, and then we pulled back on anticipation of the federal, so there's a one or two year gap in the funding. And in our process, we're often looking back, saying, how much did you use the year before? So that's where there's a wrinkle in that particular budget line, because if you look back, there was no request, oh, well then you don't need it the coming year, but that was only in anticipation of supplemental funding. So in terms of deployment, staff wise, we're, project size, I think we could approach 200 a year, so the 150's just a little bit in between. Another difficulty is these projects aren't chopped up like in $10,000 allocation, you know, you've got a couple larger. I think our average systems, they're probably coming in around 40,000. Not having, this is the importance of not having a policy that if our focus is simply on energy, we can go bigger, but we're sizing them for economic reasons, undersizing so they don't export. So hopefully that's getting through as well. If the message is we want more renewable power, we can make these things bigger, but they lose their cost efficiency the larger they get. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to seeing how we continue to navigate that. And I hope that you'll know that you have an ally here and in my office to continue supporting the work of shifting towards renewables and alternative energy sources. And I hope that my colleagues around the horseshoe and within the administration, as we're looking at a slimmer budget for any number of reasons, I hope that we continue to prioritize this shift. It's much needed, it's much, I like having a habitable planet to live on, speaking for myself at the very least. So I hope that we can continue doing this work, and I'll continue to push for us to. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Curtis. Next up, we have Council Member Brown. All right, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Bush, for your presentation. My question is, you mentioned something about Raven Run. Raven Run is outside of the urban surface boundary. What scale of array are you talking about? Where would it fall under our categorizations of solar fields? Yes, I was keeping an eye on the ZOTA for that. That was another reason, not a strong one, but that project has been a little more on the side. So there at the bottom of the list, our next anticipated project, the focus on Black & Williams Gymnasium for a third installation. The ground mount has a kind of a dedicated funding stream. But to answer your question, the size of that will be under the 2,500 square foot criteria in the new ZOTA rules. So a agricultural land is eligible with, what do they call that? Conditional use permit. So it would be done, if we follow all our rules, we do that as conditional use permit on the land as zoned, but it's in the smallest category. Okay, and I'm almost ashamed to say it, I've never been to Raven Run. Is there any reason why that's- Run what? I've been past the sign, but I haven't went over yet. Is there any reason why that location is, you chose that location, can you speak to that? Sure, Parks obviously has a lot of available land for ground mount. Key consideration for any solar project is adjacency to a load. That's where things get a little fuzzier. You could put these systems anywhere, but you need to connect them to something. So looking for a site that has a load nearby, consistent pattern, something we can plug into. And we're always looking for that tangential benefit of public education. So we're looking for areas that would not be subject to vandalism, yet have public visibility opportunities. So if we had an aerial photo, there's a nice walking trail in front of the nature center. And we found an area kind of up against the tree line, but facing south. So it has sun exposure that visitors would be able to enjoy the benefits of the park. And also see the city's commitment on using more renewable energy. The staff members were excited about that potential possibility of the educational component it would add. And at the same time, not detract from the natural environment. So we're trying to make it of scale in that regard, and not right in front of you, but off to the side. Okay, all right, well that's interesting, I have a few thoughts about it. The other question I was going to ask, it was the no targets for building energy efficiency and solar. And council member, who did you say was going to, that you reached out to to make recommendations on that? Our environmental commission. Okay, and then the, and this is for, and these would be recommendations that would speak to all of our existing buildings and any future projects. Okay, and so those recommendations would come back to, who would they come to and how would that process work? We would, I haven't put the item in committee because I wanted to talk with them first, but it would go in as an item in committee. Likely for this committee, and because it could go in GDP as well, so we could look at the schedule to see when it would be able to have a presentation, but it would come to council through the committee process. Okay, so the only reason I was asking is just because I would almost think general services would need to be involved in that conversation, but I think that could get, just because what recommendations may come forward and what is realistic and feasible may be challenges. If it's a process that it's going to go through, I think that, I think it's, that could still get addressed. Yeah, okay. All right, thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you again for the presentation. I have just, I've got one question. I was actually going to go down the same line of questioning about Raven Run as Council Member Brown, so I appreciate him bringing that up. Hey, irrigation, is our water, in our water bill, do we irrigate places? Yes. Yes, the primary is golf courses. Okay. And do we use automation on those, and I say this because I live in a condo community, and there's always, like there's so many great tools that they have to even, they have tools now that forecast, hey, you're going to have a rain within 24 hours, so you don't need to be watering. And I'm just kind of curious if we're using tools like that. Limited use, I would have to defer to the enterprise group for more detail, more elaborate. I would just kind of be interested in that, because it's unbelievable, like that number can change drastically, depending on what tools you're using, if you're using rain sensors, and all that kind of jazz. The corollary to that, and we found is as important, is to use those tools as leak detection. With these severe colds, you break a line and don't know about it until someone calls. Absolutely, it's definitely an issue. Well, thank you so much for the presentation. Welcome, thank you all. Okay, last but not least, our final presentation, we have the engineering manuals update. We have our director of engineering, Doug Burton, to provide us some information on this. Thank you so much for being with us. Good afternoon. Doug Burton, director of engineering, also with me today. Bailey Young, who's our MS4 coordinator in the Division of Water Quality. And Abby Terry, who's with Tetra Tech, who's the engineering consultant that's helped us develop a lot of these manuals over the last 20 years. So today I'm here to talk to you about, just a quick outline of what we're going to discuss. There's three different manuals that we're going to discuss, both procedures manual and the storm water manual. Those are just updates and amendments to existing manuals. While the maintenance manual for post-construction storm water controls is a brand new manual. So I'll get more into the details, but that's a general of what we're talking about. The purpose of these proposed updates is to update technical requirements to reflect engineering standard practice. Engineering is not a static field, it changes as time does. And we like to adapt to new technologies, adapt to field conditions. And when we see things that require changes to the manuals, we make those. So that's what we're doing with the procedures manual and the storm water manual. The maintenance manual for post-construction storm water controls is a brand new manual. It's existing, as you'll see later, it's a policy that we have. But policies are harder to enforce, whereas manuals are gospel. So because of changing times that we see in post-construction storm water controls, we thought it best to, let's get an official manual for that so that we can have something that gives people better guidance on what they're doing. Because more often than not, these are on private property owners who are maintaining these, so they don't know what they have. More often than not, so they look to us to provide that guidance, and that's what this new manual will do. So first, the procedures manual. What is the procedures manual? The procedures manual really describes how we build roads, bridges, sanitary sewers, pump stations, storm water facilities in developing areas. The reason being is that the item one you see there is that all those eventually become our property. So we want to make sure that we're giving the development community good guidance on what they have to do in order. So at the end of the day, they hand over those products to us, then we're getting a good product that doesn't require a lot of maintenance, at least initially. Also, what the procedures manual does, which is relevant to the later manual, is it talks about the storm water controls, how they're to be built, again, on that private property, so that they meet that post-construction storm water management requirements that are in the storm manual. And a lot of that's driven by the MS4 permit requirements. So what are the key changes in the procedures manual? First, the composite drainage plan was added, and we'll talk about a little later when we get to the storm water manual what that is. But that was an amendment we did back several years ago to the storm water manual, so we just made that incorporated into the procedures manual. Also, updated land use definitions to get in line with what's currently listed in the zoning ordinance. Obviously, those are also not static and have changed over the years, so we make sure we update those to comply. And then again, add to this new manual that we'll talk about shortly. Other changes, some of those storm water controls, we clarified that those have to meet the post-storm water control maintenance requirements that we're setting forth in the new manual. And that that maintenance is transferable with sale of property. A lot of times, if commercial is less of an issue, because they tend to know what they're getting. But if there's a sale on residential, then it's not as always defined that that's now your responsibility. And then you see there, the House Bill 443, we incorporated that to this manual and the storm water manual. The language in those previously was a little looser that frankly gave me a little more leeway to special requirements. We saw a field condition that was required it. House Bill 443 kind of took that away, so we just aligned with the language to make that a strict ministerial application. Another change in the procedures manual is sureties are what the developers give to us if they're not able to build all the public infrastructure components up front. And what that does is that it's money that they give us to ensure that if they walk away, then we can build it. One of the things we added to this procedures manual was plantings that are associated with some of those green infrastructure components. Again, if those aren't planted, which often those aren't planted initially because it's time of season. But adding those to the surety allows us to plant them if they're not planted eventually. Next, the storm water updates, and you'll see different dates on the 2016 was procedures and 2020 it's the storm water manual. Since I've been here the last ten years, procedure manual tends to require fewer updates. That's why it's been ten years, because it really just tells you how. Whereas storm water manual gets into the weeds on more how we're doing that specific storm water design. So we did a pretty substantial update in 16 to storm water manual, again in 2020, and now we're doing another one in 2026. So what are those 2026 manual updates? First, what is that manual? Again, that manual describes the old water storm water management policies for us. And again, the ultimate goal is, first of all, to get infrastructure that we want to have because it meets our standards. But secondly, to also protect the public, both from a quantity and quality issue. So that we comply with the MS4 permit, and a lot of that's driven by the quality. Whereas a lot of the storm water management design that we see from our consultants drives the quantity. So it also makes sure we comply with the National Flood Insurance Program requirements. And that's, again, the general purpose of the manual. So what are we changing with the latest changes? First, House Bill 443 again. Again, just copy pasting that language that we are allowed to make changes if we see clear threat to public health, safety, or welfare. Whereas before it was maybe a little more ambiguous and not as ministerial. Then the storm water controls that we're changing, a lot of those are related to regional basins. First, if there isn't a regional basin downstream that you're planning to feed to, you need to make sure there's temporary controls in place. If there is a basin that you're going to be using, a regional basin downstream you're going to be using, you basically have to clearly identify that on development plans. Next, the composite drainage plans that I talked a little bit about during the procedures manual. What that was is we had a, in the new development areas, you may have a block of ten houses back to back, so 20 houses total. That could be 20 different builders sometimes. And so what the builder downstream is doing can really negatively affect the builder eventually upstream. And what we're seeing is flooding in backyards as that building progressed uphill. So we developed a composite drainage plan that basically gave elevations to the builders so that they wouldn't create that flooding. That was done via an amendment back in 2020, and now what we're doing is incorporating that amendment into the new manual. Next, culverts and bridges. We have a structures manual, but it's frankly a little out of date. So rather than trying to keep updating that manual, what we're looking at doing is just incorporating the latest state and federal manuals for that. Because the state and the KYTC and FHWA manuals do a really good job at that. There's no point in us reinventing the wheel and creating a manual. It would affect, it would be copy-paste anyway. Next, the stormwater pipe and specifications and inspections was updated. We updated the material specs, again, just to stay with the latest and greatest. We also clarified and improved some of the CCTV procedures. The developers are required to basically send a camera through the pipes to make sure there's no defects. Sometimes they were sending those through a little quickly and not pausing enough for us to see what the true defects were. So we clarified what we really expect. That way if a defect is found, we can see the severity of it and know what needs to be done, if anything. Next, stream bank restoration and stabilization. As Charlie described during his presentation, phosphorus is very bad. So we want to make sure that there's no phosphorus in the fertilizer when they're doing a stream restoration project. And then again, make sure they follow the latest KYTC, the state standards, and come back and make sure that that stabilization is actually took. If not, then make improvements to make sure it has. Lastly, this is the one thing that probably generated the most conversation because it was the biggest change. And that for plantings in these post storm water construction controls, like wetlands and greenways and such. Frankly, before, and I am an engineer, so I can talk bad about us engineers who are doing some of that design that probably should have been done. Well, definitely, in our opinion, should have been done by a landscape architect, wetland scientist, or someone who's pre-qualified by KYTC to frankly do so. because engineers doing, I mean, I've got a nice garden, but you don't want to trust me to specify what's in the wetlands. So we clarify what that, and again, are meeting that national US Army Corps of Engineers National Wetland Plant List so that we have an easy basis for them to work off of. Next, our manufacturing treatment devices, and again, that's so that we reduce the number of pollutants that go into our waterways. Those change, those national standards change semi-regularly, so we're just meeting those. And then one local thing that we've added is that, because you have to get into those and inspect them and clean them out. We set a lid requirement of 200 pounds or less on that, just so frankly, someone can be able to get the lid off to look inside it. Finally, wetlands, we set minimum watershed drainage area requirements for those. Again, just complying with national and state standards that we see, and in the same with the liner requirement. Next is a brand new manual. This is, again, for those post stormwater construction controls. Those are wetlands, detention basins, things that, again, where we're trying to slow down the water before it enters our streams so we can treat it and remove some of those solids. So this is a completely new manual, and it gives those maintenance requirements on private property. Because again, sometimes an HOA is initially set up by the developer, and then it's handed over to the people who are in that neighborhood, and they have no idea what they've got and no idea how to maintain it. So this manual will help clarify that, so at least they know the expectations. If we do an inspection, we say you need to clean out X, Y, and Z, they know what it's expected. And again, previously this was a policy that we had, that DWQ had in house, but now we're moving out onto a manual just because it makes it easier. Again, it gives it more ministerial control that we need to make sure this is done properly. It includes the planting guidelines, seeding and sodding guidelines, and then, again, those inspection checklists. So when they're doing those inspections, they can make sure they're meeting the requirements. This will be a new manual, so it has to be incorporated by ordinance, which you'll see at the work session today. And this is just the language that, this is existing sections of chapter 16, which references engineering manuals. You can see there in red, just add a line that adds that new manual to the list. So with that, any questions? Great job, Director Burton. Thank you for your presentation. Council members, does anyone want to sign in for questions? You have flabbergasted them all. I'm running away now. You haven't flabbergasted me, though, so I'm good. I just want to ask you a question. First of all, I know when you were leading up to this, you wanted to get, you kind of had a little bit of a feedback loop. So why don't you kind of explain to us kind of what you used for a feedback loop. So all manual changes, these are not developing a vacuum with us going into a dark room and the engineering and division water quality and coming up with things. First, it's reacting to what we see in the field. From both, not just the engineering community, the public, but also developers. Things that are and are not working for them. So that's where we get a lot of this initial feedback on what changes we need to make. And then we do discuss it internally and talk about what changes need to be made. A lot of these were presented two times to the stormwater stakeholder advisory committee. So that was a chance, and a lot of the engineers for the development community are a part of that, so they were involved. And had a lot of comments, especially about some of how we're doing the plantings, etc. Because again, before they were doing that, now it's a new requirement where they won't be. But we also send out blast emails. We have a thousands and thousands list of email of a lot of folks in the development community. Everything from builders to the developers and everyone in between and all their engineers. Allow for that back and forth feedback to give us any comments, because again, we're not perfect. We're not doing this in a vacuum, so we want that input from those folks who are boots on the ground doing it and designing it. And we think we've gotten that over the, not just this set of manual updates, but all of them. We've had this process going for probably the last 20 years, but the last ten since I've been here. And then I have one more, because I do have a lot of HOAs that seem to, they were developer owned, developer kind of, in a lot of cases put in. Maybe storm water controls that might have been great 20 years ago, but weren't really good once the whole neighborhood got built out or something like that. What kind of, is there anything in this for that transfer of ownership to a homeowner's association? What should they expect? Is there a tab that they're going to have to pick up to do something proactively? because I know in my geography, it's like we're doing some projects to fix storm water issues and it's on us to do those. I'm just, I'm trying to figure out where the line, the demarcation line is between what's a homeowner's association responsibility and ours. Well, because it's on private property and it's owned by them, at the end of the day, the responsibility is theirs. I think the biggest problem we've had in the past is there's been HOAs that didn't even know it was there. Until via an inspection or a notice of violation, they said, hey, this isn't being maintained, you need to work on that. So if nothing else, this will give them the guidance to where they can look. The developer, when they develop the HOA, should be transferring that knowledge. That doesn't always happen. There's turnover on HOAs. We understand that, which is why, frankly, this manual is probably one of the more important ones in that. It at least gives someone who's never looked at anything an opportunity to sit down and look at it and go, okay, these are the expectations. They will, because it's like anything else, a maintenance item, they'll have to roll that into their cost so that it doesn't end up. What we don't want, which you've probably seen in the past, is that an orphan where a HOA disappears and it doesn't belong to anybody, that can unfortunately become our problem as the government, because it does need to be something from a stormwater standpoint that needs to be maintained. Great, thank you. And then my thought is once we approve this, we probably should be somewhat proactive as a council to get that out to our district HOAs. So they're at least aware of- Absolutely. We have this new manual. Absolutely. All right, seeing nobody else signed up to talk to you, this topic is over. And I'm going to make a motion because we're going to put this on today's work session. So I move to approve the proposed changes to the engineering manuals as presented to the committee and as set forth in this committee packet. So moved. Second. So it's motioned and seconded. Do we have any conversation about that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That carries. And then because we want to do it today, I move to do a partial report out of item number four, engineering manual updates at the March 3rd work session. Second. It's been moved and seconded. We have a question from Jane Brown. It's not a motion. What? It's an opportunity. Okay, it's an opportunity. It's a motion. Okay, any questions on that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Like sign. That carries. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll see you in a little bit. But it is for this. It is for this. Yeah, Council Member Brown actually has a question for you. Director Burton. Sometimes he can be a little late to the game, but it's good that he's here. No. Thank you, Director, you gave us a lot of information and obviously you've done a lot of work. My question, and I probably should have asked it earlier, is how often do these manuals need to be updated? So it's fluid. It's not a set number of years, but like I said, we updated in 16. That was a pretty substantial one. Most of that legwork was done before I came on board, but transitioned to me as I came on board. Another one in 2020 and then now. So every four to six years is kind of where we're sitting at now. And again, there are amendments along the way. For House Bill 443, that was an amendment that we did. The composite drainage plan was an amendment that we did. So if there's a critical issue that we think the manuals need to be updated now, we can do that via the amendment process. And then we tend to, what tends to happen over the course of four to six years, we compile a group of smaller changes that aren't as critical timeline-wise, then we'll compile into these more substantial updates that you're seeing every four to six years. Okay. Well, that helps me think about it. And I was just wondering if there's general language that you put in these manuals that if standards change at the state or federal level, that we don't have to go in and make changes to our local manuals. The language maybe speaks to if these standards change across. Yeah. Often we refer to the latest version of a state or federal standard. So if the minor changes they make there, or if even they make a major change, if we were in agreement with it, we wouldn't necessarily have to. But again, if we saw something that was more critical, we could do it via an amendment even if that wasn't the case. Okay. And then we've made some, we just came up with those objective standards based off of House Bill 443 for some policies over in planning. If we went in and reviewed and made changes to any of those objective standards, would we have to come back and maybe modify or make some amendments to these engineering manuals? Potentially, but a lot of the House Bill 443 language was really, it was a ministerial issue that, and we don't, to be good and bad as engineering doesn't have, it's fairly straightforward. It's a thou shalt and there's no ambiguity. The couple spots where we had that ambiguity, we eliminated with the amendment in this latest update. So I don't think there would be, but without seeing the specific case, I wouldn't be able to answer yes or no. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything, is there anything for the needs of the group that you guys want to share about any of your items? Okay. The time is 2.15 on March 3rd. We've concluded our business for today's committee meeting. The next committee meeting, we skip a month, is on May 12th, 2026 at 1 p.m. And the topics we plan to discuss are the consent decree and remedial measures plan, an annual update. We've got parking citations during winter weather emergencies from council member Curtis and we have the annual pavement management program. There's no objections. Okay. Thank you.