# General Government & Planning (GGP) Committee - April 28, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · April 28, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6754 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6754?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-04-28 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: April 28, 2026 - **Length**: 14,160 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Clerk > ⚠️ **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 General Government & Planning (GGP) Committee met on April 28, 2026, at 1:00 P.M., with L. Sheehan presiding. The meeting covered three agenda items, including the approval of a prior committee summary and two informational presentations. Specifically, the committee received a Charter Review Presentation and heard an informational item regarding Landlord and Tenant Advisory Groups, in addition to approving the March 10, 2026 Committee Summary. Over the course of the meeting, four votes were taken, two informational presentations were given, and no public comments were heard. ## Attendance The following 10 members were present at the April 28, 2026 Committee meeting: - L. Sheehan - S. Lynch - D. Wu - J. Brown - C. Ellinger - E. Curtis - D. Sevigny - W. Baxter - J. Reynolds - H. Boone No members were recorded as absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The committee took four votes during the April 28, 2026 meeting, all of which passed by voice vote. - **Approval of the March 10, 2026 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:04]: Moved by Ellinger and seconded by Curtis, the committee approved the summary of its previous meeting. The motion passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 0:04:33] - **Accept civic assembly recommendations and refer proposed amendments to full council** [timestamp: 0:55]: Moved by Wu, the committee voted to accept the recommendations of the civic assembly and refer the proposed amendments to the full council for consideration. The motion passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 0:55:09] - **Remove Planning and Development Study Recommendations 8 and 10 from the items referred list** [timestamp: 1:25]: Moved by Reynolds, the committee voted to remove Planning and Development Study Recommendations 8 and 10 from the items referred list. The motion passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 1:25:07] - **Remove efficiencies in the development process and compliance with HB 443 from the items referred list** [timestamp: 1:25]: Moved by Brown, the committee voted to remove the items related to efficiencies in the development process and compliance with HB 443 from the items referred list. The motion passed by voice vote. [timestamp: 1:25:39] No roll call votes were taken during this meeting. All four motions passed without recorded opposition. ## Contested Items - **Council Compensation and Accountability** [timestamp: N/A]: The committee discussed recommendations put forward by the Civic Assembly regarding council compensation and accountability. The item produced a split vote, indicating that members were not in agreement on the proposed changes. However, the available record does not specify which members voted in favour or against, the precise nature of the dissenting opinions, or the final outcome of the vote. > *Note: Detailed vote counts, individual member positions, and the specific points of disagreement were not captured in the available data for this item.* ## Approval of March 10, 2026 Committee Summary [timestamp: 04:33] The committee took up the approval of the summary from its March 10, 2026 meeting. L. Sheehan was the key speaker during this portion of the meeting. No concerns or substantive debate were recorded in connection with the summary. The committee approved the March 10, 2026 summary. ## Charter Review Presentation [timestamp: 05:38] CivicLEX presented recommendations stemming from Lexington's first Civic Assembly during this agenda item. Key speakers included Vice Mayor Wu, Richard Young, and Kit Anderson. The presentation covered recommendations in several areas, including council compensation, accountability measures, and the establishment of a mandatory charter review process. These recommendations were developed through the Civic Assembly, described as a first-of-its-kind process for Lexington. The item was informational in nature, meaning no vote or formal action was taken by the committee as a result of the presentation. ## Landlord and Tenant Advisory Groups [timestamp: 57:23] Commissioner Charlie Lanter presented an update on the Landlord and Tenant Advisory Groups, covering current challenges and plans for future engagement efforts. The presentation was informational in nature, with Lanter outlining the status of both advisory groups and discussing obstacles the groups have encountered, as well as the direction forward for continued stakeholder involvement. No vote or formal action was taken as a result of this agenda item. *Note: Detailed specifics of the challenges discussed, engagement plans, and any questions or debate from other committee members are not available in the source data for this item.* --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the March 10, 2026 Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Accept recommendations of the civic assembly and refer proposed amendments to full council - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove Planning and Development Study Recommendations 8 and 10 from items referred list - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Remove efficiencies in our development process and compliance with HB 443 from items referred list --- ## Full transcript Thank you for that. Good afternoon, everyone. It is 1 o'clock. Welcome to the April 28th, 2026 General Government and Planning Committee meeting. I am calling our meeting to order. The first item of business on our agenda is the approval of the March 10th, 2026 Committee Summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Move to approve. Okay. Seeing none, I'll take a motion to approve. Second. I have a second. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. The next item on our agenda is our Charter Review Presentation. Vice Mayor Ruiz, since this is your item, I'm going to turn it over to you for the introduction. Thank you, Chair. First, I want to thank CivicLEX for the tremendous amount of work that you all have done in this. It was very thoughtful. It was very collaborative. I also want to extend my gratitude towards the city staff, the councilmembers, both current and past councilmembers that offered up some of their experience and wisdom. And finally, I really want to applaud the efforts of the assembly members themselves, many of whom are here right now, for Lexington's first civic assembly. This is really historic, honestly, and I'm so excited to be part of it. So thank you all so much for participating in this process. And as per a resolution that we passed a couple months ago, I want to reiterate council's commitment to seriously listening to and considering the assembly's recommendations. So with that, I'll hand it over to Richard. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vice Mayor. We are so incredibly grateful to be bringing these recommendations to you all today. Planning this assembly has taken a lot of work. You'll hear a little bit more about the most recent part of the timeline, but this is really the sort of culmination of over three years' worth of work. And I just wanted to say up front how grateful I am that you all have agreed to respond meaningfully to these recommendations. It has been a lot of work for both CivicLEX and for our assembly members. And so we're just grateful for the trust and the time that you all are giving this process. So I'm not going to say too much. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to CivicLEX's Deputy Director, Kit Anderson. Hello, thank you so much for having us. I want to echo the gratitude that Richard just expressed. And we are here to talk to you today about the recommendations and the process of Lexington's first Civic Assembly. So, just to recap, I know you all heard about the assembly last July, and I'm sure you remember every single word of Richard's presentation. But to summarize, a civic assembly is an internationally recognized model of getting everyday residents involved in government and helping really and truly make decisions, it's a model of participatory decision making. It involves getting a group of everyday residents to come together to learn about an issue and learn about it pretty extensively. Deliberate and ultimately pass recommendations on a specific topic. One of the really important aspects of an assembly is the assembly members themselves are both randomly selected through a process called a civic lottery and also more or less demographically representative of the community they are serving. Assemblies can be facilitated either by governments or in our case, the third party organization of CivicLEX. And they really shine on issues that public institutions are having trouble solving for themselves. And we think Charter Review might be an example of that, and we're excited to share what we came up with. So I won't spend a ton of time on the background, but two key things I wanted to highlight with our assembly process. As Richard mentioned, it took three years. You'll notice one of the bullet points on there was about fundraising and grant submissions. I did just want to highlight that this assembly was done completely with grant money from national and international philanthropy. We did not use local government money in this process. And the actual assembly itself only took a month, and it was a complete whirlwind of a month this March. But as Richard mentioned, the planning was almost a three year process. One of the most important aspects of an assembly is who is in the room. And our selection process was incredibly robust. It was informed by professors in the Martin School at the University of Kentucky. I'm not going to touch on every single demographic we used. We actually tracked nine demographics of our assembly members, and I wanted to make sure that the actual representation was on the record for you to see. But suffice to say, the goal pie, the smaller wedge, is based on census data about Lexington-Fayette County. We know that census data isn't an exact, perfect representation of Lexington, but it's the closest, most accurate, most documented reference that we have. And in most cases, we were using ACS data from 2023, but the full methodology is available online. And as I just flip through these, I do just want to emphasize, we were incredibly proud of our selection process. After mailing out 10,000 postcards to 10,000 randomly selected addresses and a couple thousand reminder postcards, we had 387 applicants. And from that, we were able to build, I think, by all cases, an extremely representative panel. And I think that these charts showcase that, so you can see our age breakdown, our race and ethnicity breakdown matching Lexington according to the census very closely. Political registration is a really important one for assemblies, because it's important to have people with different political perspectives in the room. And we were a pretty close match on that. We also made sure to track people who were not registered to a political party and were not typically voters, and had representation for that on our assembly. As you will note, we had at least one person from every council member. 12 districts is a lot of districts, and I was worried we wouldn't quite be able to get there, but we did. So we were proud to have at least one representative from every council member. And going through all of the other categories, being within 5% on every single demographic. This is just a quick breakdown of the process. I will highlight that orientation was March 1st, not May 1st. Thank you to Council Member Ellinger for pointing that out. This is just the flow of the sessions. And with that, I want to turn it over to the most important part of this, which is the recommendations themselves. We will be hearing from four assembly members about the recommendations that they produced. There are three distinct recommendations that could potentially lead to three distinct charter amendments. And to start us off, we have Haley Smalls. Thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Haley Small, and I am from Council District 5. I'm here to talk about our first proposal, which deals with council compensation. As an assembly, we came to an 84.6% super majority to increase council compensation to a new cap of $59,987. That is the average annual income in Lexington, so that's where that number comes from. We want that number to continue to increase annually with CPI and to go into effect in 2030. So why did we make this decision? As an assembly, we recognize that the role of a council member has changed in the decades since the charter went into effect in the 70s. We think that the most effective council members are often spending nights and weekends, lots of energy and lots of time innovating, thinking of ways to make Lexington a better place to live for all of us. We also recognize the lack of competition for many council seats. Too many council seats are running unopposed too often. And so we think that increasing compensation will better compensate hardworking council members, but also bring more people into public office, bringing more people from different backgrounds into this room. I think that this proposal represents what we as an assembly want the council to do and to look like. We want council to be more than just a rubber stamp. We want you to be busy, we want you to be active, we want you to be innovative and imaginative. But we also want you to feel what it's like to be like an average citizen in terms of your compensation. And so that's why we tied it all back to the average Lexington income. So with that being said, thank you for your time, and I'm going to pass the mic over to Zofia to talk about recommendation two. Hello, my name is Zofia. I'm a high school student at Lafayette, and I was part of the civic assembly as a youth representative. Our second recommendation was about council accountability, and it largely stemmed from our discussions on compensation. As we talked with many former and current council members and realized that the duties of a council member were not really that well defined legally and that it was largely up to the individual council member how much time they invested in the job. So as a result, we decided to amend the charter to create publicly viewable attendance and accountability expectations, and this will increase transparency for the general election as voters will have more information about the representatives to make informed decisions when they're voting. And it also aligns with a recommendation on compensation as a more informed, sorry, as a council that's better paid will be able to serve our constituents more effectively. And this passed by an 88.8% supermajority, it was really effective. So I will pass the mic to Kat now, who will talk about our third recommendation. Okay, hello. My name is Catherine Zamaron, and I'm here representing district one. Our other recommendation that we made was for a mandatory charter review. I think you all can recognize that if we don't keep our charters regularly reviewed, they can very quickly become out of date and lose relevance. So we thought it was really important to have a regular, fair, public review, and we thought that should be done every eight years. Also done by a group of randomly selected, demographically representative residents. We really liked the way that Civic Lex kind of picked a group, and so that was kind of what we were thinking would be another good idea. That way, I know one of the last times we did a charter review, it ended up being appointed, appointing people who really benefited from the review by people who really benefited from the review. So in order to make sure that it's fair, we thought a random selection representative would be important. We also thought there should be a time limit on the process. As you know, those things can drag on forever if they don't, so we recommended it take no more than 12 months from start to finish. And like I said, the reason why we thought that that was important is so that we can make sure that our charter stays relevant to all of the people living in Lexington. And we agreed with an 88.8% super majority that that was necessary. And I'm going to pass it on now to Bob, who's going to tell, he's going to represent the dissenting voices. Hello, my name is Bob Smith, I'm from five. And like any question, any time you have a question, you're going to have opposing and four. So I'm the opposing, but it's nothing personal. So thank you for giving our team the time to let you know our thoughts behind our one month of deliberation. I'll be giving our dissenting report. We had a lot of very thoughtful conversations and voted on the issues that you charged us with. The first one we'd like to talk to you about is the charter review process. This probably had the shortest amount of time in discussion. It was pretty easy that we came to this conclusion. It had more to do with time in between reviews and what we were allowed to review. We all believe, I believe, thought that there should be more timely reviews of the charter. In particular, I was disappointed we weren't allowed to review council term lengths. We were designated for two particular things, and that's all we could do. And one of the things I really wanted to talk about was term lengths for you people. I really feel like we need to increase it from two to four, so you spend more time doing the people's business instead of running for office. So hopefully in the near future that you guys let us talk, have another, because as we wanted to do the charter review every eight years, we can do one sooner by the bylaws you can have a special one sooner than eight years. And I'm hopefully that this is one of the items that can be brought up. Second, accountability of the council members was discussed and that was mainly based around how to set up guidelines since we all felt there should be more accountability. So it wasn't that we didn't think there should be accountability, just how we came up with those items. And last was compensation, bet you would believe that that had the most discussion. The set was based not wanting to make the position appealing as a lifelong job. We don't need more 50 year councilmen like in Congress. And we really don't want to make this so appealing that you can feel like this can be a lifetime position for you. The founders of our country perceived government positions as a public service. Men would leave their farms or businesses for a short term and then go back home. We felt our view every three to four years would have been more appropriate, keeping the CPI index in place in the meantime. And at the end of three or four years, we thought maybe there should be an extra bump because of the economic things that were at that time that would be appropriate to address that. We also felt that a 50% increase, which is what this is, would have a hard time getting passed in the fall. So thank you for your time. Thank you so much to our four assembly members. I know firsthand how nerve wracking it can be the first time you're talking to this you. And you guys did a wonderful job. So just to close us out and talk about next steps. All three of these recommendations would require a charter amendment to pass. Civic Lex is in the process of working with the Department of Law on what that amendment language should look like. And we also still want to use the opportunity to talk to our assembly members about it. So the language included in this presentation is still very much a draft. And we wanted to go ahead, go on record, let people know what we're thinking about and help you understand what this might look like in the actual charter. The biggest kind of decision and thing to figure out with the amendment language is what exactly would be a charter amendment versus what makes more sense as an ordinance or resolution. And that's still kind of an active question because we learned a lot about how charters are structural documents. They're meant to set out the general kind of process of government, but not dictate specific policy. And we want to make sure we're in line with that, with our recommendations. So with that, these are the drafts that we have. In terms of compensation, the big open question that we have with this is, we know that the spirit of the assembly is to set compensation according to that number $59,987, which is the average annual wage as reported this year. And so we know that the spirit of the assembly is to set that benchmark now, and by the time 2031 rolls around and it's implemented, the CPI will have adjusted accordingly. But we're just not sure, to be completely transparent on the ballot, what the best way to talk about that is, because we don't know exactly what that number will be. So I'll just acknowledge, may I take one more minute to finish out the recommendations? Let's do two. Two more minutes, even better, thank you. So that is the primary question to answer with the compensation, although we know the exact spirit of the recommendation, it's more about the phrasing. The second amendment around council accountability would be added on to section 4.07, which is the rules and procedures article. The main thing to know about this is that ultimately, it's up to council to set your own standards of accountability. That is what makes sense in the charter. There's kind of a separation of powers question there. So this is more about just requiring council to create an ordinance around accountability. It doesn't specify exactly what would be in there. I will say there are several things that I think assembly members feel extremely strongly should be in the ordinance, and who would be happy to engage throughout that process. The number one thing that we heard throughout the entire assembly was more transparency around attendance and attendance records. And also, just more understanding of what the actual job description of a council member is. So those, I think, are two things that assembly members feel strongly should be included, but ultimately, that would be a council ordinance. And the final potential amendment is around charter review. Again, I'll flag this as one where we're figuring out what makes sense to be an ordinance versus what makes sense to be a charter amendment. I think Kat did a great job of explaining what the assembly feels are the most important parts. And one thing I will flag with this is we think process-wise, perhaps the best way to make this happen would be to have a standing board or commission on charter review. That would be a smaller board or commission that might include council members or committee chiefs, to kind of keep a running list of potential topics for charter review and organize the review that would happen every eight years, potentially. So with that, I just want to say thank you so much to the true village that it took to pull this assembly off. We have many in the room. We have a handful of other assembly members in the room, Richard and Lily and Haley and the CivicLEX team. This was the largest project we've ever done. We're incredibly proud of it, and we're curious to see what you guys think. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, for all the presenters. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in if you have comments or questions. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I just wanted to take an opportunity to thank you all for your work on this, all the folks, the community members that volunteered and took time and participated. I think it was a great exercise in civic engagement and look forward to the conversation about the recommendations and how they move forward. The one thing I will ask, I know you all were awarded grants and didn't use any local public money to fund this activity, but what was the total cost so far that y'all spent on this effort? Yes, the total budget from the grants was $220,000 to run this assembly. That included, for the most part, included civic-like staff time, although it's possible we went a little over on that with the hours we worked. So do you foresee if this was something that we instituted and did on a regular basis permanently, that's what it would cost to do the whole exercise? And would you recommend doing it the same way that y'all did this? That's a really good question. I think that if the city was going to be conducting a charter review every eight years with a randomly selected group of residents, there would be a lot of elements of this assembly that I think we think would work really well for that. I don't think every single piece of it needs to. Cost-wise, I think there's various parts of it that would actually make a lot of sense for the city to do. The mailing of 10,000 postcards to 10,000 randomly selected addresses. The city could do that, I think, much better than even we did. I think there are costs with venue, things like that. I also think because the topic would be set as charter from the beginning, the organization of it would be simpler. And I think the exact model is based on what you think is best, what the assembly members weigh in on. But I see it as not, as a kind of a hybrid model of what we just did versus like a traditional board or commission. Yeah, no, I appreciate that answer. But I think to some of that, we as government could have some efficiencies. And I think the way that you all kind of separated this from coming down here and having the conversation and having that, and making those decisions kind of leave what could be perceived as an influence on the process and the outcome. Well, and I do have another question. So today is just an update. It sounds like you still have some questions to be answered. So we're not being asked to make any decisions or take any actions today. That is correct, yes. Councilman Sheen, would you? We know we will need to bring the full amendment language and also the ballot language that will need to be voted on by council, whether or not it will be placed on the ballot. And it seems likely that the June 2nd work session will be when we will be sharing that out. Okay, well you said something and brought up another question. So is the council vote to put it on the ballot the only path forward? Do you also have a petition process potential for these initiatives as well? Yes, so in the charter it said that there are two ways for a question, an amendment question, or any referendum question to end up on the ballot. It either has to be passed by a three-fifths majority of council members or by a petition with the number of signatures that is equal to 10% of the voter turnout in the most recent mayoral election. I believe, do not quote me on that. We are starting, CivicLEX decided that going through council made sense because charter review was in committee. And that is the path we're currently planning to take. Okay, all right, thank you for your work on this. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair. Well, I want to especially thank CivicLEX for taking this on. I know it was a lot of work and a lot of years of work. And then I want to thank all of the members of the assembly. I think it's super exciting that you all were able to catch a cross-section of Lexington, a cross-section that we don't usually see here in chambers, a cross-section that we don't usually interact with. And really be able to civically engage the average Lexitonian, and I think that's really important. So I'm really thankful that you all did this. And I was also surprised and pretty happy on my end with what you all came up with. I think you all were super thoughtful. You went through a lot of different scenarios, and I appreciate what you brought to us. I just have a few questions. About the council compensation, can you explain the rationale why you decided to wait until 2020, I'm sorry, 2031 to implement it? Yes, so there is in article four of the charter, there is kind of a specific provision about how compensation can be changed. And also the requirement that it cannot be changed by council members for the term that they are in. So essentially, because we knew this would be going on the ballot potentially this November, a new council will be elected in January. If that new council is the one to pass the ordinance that will set the new level, we have to wait four years after that for at large council members, which puts us at 2031 for implementation. Okay, that was not my understanding of that. That's interesting. And what happens if some of the council members that are here now happen to still be on council then? My, and I will defer to Mr. Cravens, my understanding is it's just about the term. But the term that the ordinance to change compensation is made, it just can't take effect during that sitting term. Gotcha, so because we're in the middle of a term right now. Correct, yes. Thank you. And then for the council accountability part, can you help explain, you said that we would have to set it up, right, because we set our own standards. So before this could go on the ballot, we would need to set up our standard? Is that, or what would go on the ballot? Yes, so the language would be based, the ballot language would be based on the amendment. And the amendment is essentially requiring council to create an ordinance with accountability standards after the amendment is passed. So that would be essentially a new mandate to create an ordinance that would then be created if it was passed. Okay, and the idea behind it, the main reason was just folks wanting to be able to see our attendance records more easily. I think the big picture idea was a lot of assembly members, just as kind of the conversation was evolving, there was a lot of interest in increasing compensation, but also a feeling that from the council members, we heard from directly in the sessions and from public input and research. Feeling like if a compensation will be increased, the assembly was interested in increasing accountability alongside that. So really those two things go together quite closely. And this was kind of the best way using the charter to increase accountability standards. So just saying, we would like council to come up with some sort of transparency about the work that they do. Maybe it being focused around attendance or what other roles that we hold. Exactly, yes. Because we heard a lot about how the ultimate accountability of council members is, of course, elections. But wanting to have more transparency around that for informed voters to make decisions. That makes sense. Thank you. And then the last thing. So the charter review, I think that made sense. And I like the recommendation that we set something up that's ongoing. So the hope from what you just said to Council Member Brown is that by the June 2nd meeting, we would have formalized language that we are voting yes or no on. To place on the ballot. Whether or not to place on the ballot, yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation and all this great work. I was especially impressed, if you go back to some early slides with the demographics. I was especially impressed with how this group almost overlaid nearly perfectly on most measures with folks in Lexington. And I think that's one of the things that we're always looking for when we're thinking about public engagement and input is. Are the people in the room actually representative of the whole city? Or is it just the people who are tuned in, who have the time and energy to show up all the time, right? So that's really impressive, and I'm so happy that you all were very conscientious about that. One of the things that I love about doing new stuff in Lexington is a certain level of bragging rights. So I know that civic assemblies are not very common here in the United States yet, and we're going to be sort of on the tip of the spear of trying it, so I think that's really great. Question about the, let's see, charter review piece. The second piece of that amendment language talks about creating a standing charter review board. And you had mentioned that it could be council members. Just so I'm clear, this body would meet on a regular basis between that, in the middle of that eight year cycle, and basically say, hey, here are some topics that you should look at. And then from there, we take our hands off of it, and then the assembly happens in the assembly process, and then folks can choose to tackle those specific issues. Is that the intent? Yes, the intent is that the actual charter review is commissioned of a randomly and representatively selected group of residents, and that this standing board is keeping a running list of topics, and potentially helping facilitate that commissioned review, which would be on the 12 month timeline. Thank you for that. There was some conversation about the idea of potentially combining recommendations one and two into one ballot. Can you speak to a little bit of what the assembly was thinking on that, and why they're separate versus together? Yeah, Richard, do you want to speak to that a little more? Yeah, that's a tough one. Thanks, Kit. Yeah, so both of those amendments really, I think, were sort of tied together. Kit talked about this earlier, that many assembly members thought that compensation shouldn't be increased unless there is also an additional level of expectations around council member accountability and attendance. And I think that there were many people on the assembly that would not have voted for the compensation increase if there weren't also this accountability piece. I think there are a number of reasons on this sort of non-legal side, I guess I would say, for why those could be combined or separated. But I think ultimately, we decided that the simplest thing to do in terms of getting them on the ballot for clarity for voters was to have them be two separate amendments. But I think this is another great situation to defer to the city's Department of Law on what would be the most appropriate. All right, thank you for that. And I can see the arguments for both. Also, it's kind of a proven fact that when there are too many ballot measures on one particular ballot, they don't always do well, people kind of skip it. And looking at this year's sample ballot in November, it's going to be a long one, right? We've got national, we've got state, we've got all 15 council seats, we've got mayor. So who knows what page the ballot initiatives will be on, but they'll be at the end. Speaking to these three, this draft amendment language, it's my understanding that what you want from council in sort of finalizing and crafting these amendments is to follow the spirit of what the assembly is setting out to do. And I feel like we're relatively clear on that. So the language that you're giving us today is nowhere near final language, right? We're going to work with law, we're going to work with you all and the assembly to kind of figure out what makes sense. The question of when things start, what that eight years looks like, right? Yeah. And the other piece, too, that I'm thinking about is both with the review and the accountability language. You're basically charging us with creating those structures. You're not telling us what those structures are necessarily. Correct, yeah, we wanted to build the overall structure with the amendment language and then allow the sort of specifics to be determined by council. I think our assembly members have a lot of thoughts that they would like to share with you all about what those specific requirements would be, what would go into ordinance and resolution. But in terms of actually putting that on the ballot and in the charter, in our conversations with the Department of Law, it seemed that restricting what is in the amendment to the sort of macro structural pieces is what would be most in keeping with the tradition of the charter. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to CivicLEX for doing this. This was huge. I'm just very excited that it was super successful. Thank you to all the assembly members for volunteering your time and your expertise. And thanks to the volunteers and everyone that made this assembly happen. I'm just excited that it's gone so well. And thank you for the recommendations you've put before us. My questions are about the demographic information. You all did an outstanding job of getting a great cross section of folks in our city. I think should all of this move forward, I would love for us to continue to work with you all to see how you all did this. So that we can replicate it for not only the Charter Review Board or Commission, but in other ways throughout government. Because as you know, Vice Mayor and I are working on making sure that all city boards and commissions are equitable and representative of the true population. So I would love to get the formula and do a deep dive with that. So I look forward to working with you on that in the future. But my two questions are on the housing status. There's 7% of the group were other, and I just was curious what other was. Was that unhoused or marginally housed or? Yeah, so I believe that it's living with family or friends between living situations, things like that, which is not tracked in the census. And actually, housing status is not really in the census either. So we just went with the rate of owned occupants and rented occupants, rented units in Lexington, that was our benchmark number. But that's what that other is referring to, is just alternative housing statuses. I think we had somebody apply who lived in a personage, and so they wrote that in, just things like that. Thank you. And then my last question is regarding the political registration. On the goal pie, there was a gray section that wasn't represented in the actual. Yes, I believe that is other parties, like a combination of green party, things like that, and that was something we just did not have applicants to. So that was, yeah, a little off. Thank you. Kudos to you all. Thank you so much for all of your work. This is awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council members, I'm going to call on committee members first, and then I'll go to non-committee members. So Council Member Sabegna, you're next. Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you all for spending your time working on this. It's really cool to have a group of people who really, some of this is your first brush with being asked some of these questions. You probably had to come up to speed, which I think is great. So thank you for all that. My questions are around a couple of things. One is, I generally believe that the questions that are at the end of the ballot are the hardest to get to. And to be honest with you, they take a huge initiative by some organization to get people to actually vote on them or even think about them, okay? I mean, I don't know who, we certainly wouldn't do that. I'm kind of curious as to if you thought about things like that. And then the other thing that I wanted to talk to is, I kind of feel like if we took the accountability measures and we did an ordinance of our own by talking with you about accountability measures. And then we put them into place prior to putting something on the ballot. Like we should be able to check a box that says, hey, this is, we are doing some self-accountability and we're making it a very public dashboard for you. We've agreed that this is important. I don't necessarily know that all of them need to be a ballot initiative. I absolutely know that the income salary one has to be, but the other ones, I think if we show good stewardship and if we put those out there in an ordinance form, it can become part of our policy. So let me just ask you, did you think about that even deeper or what? Yes, so to answer your second question first, and once again, I will always defer to law. No civic-like staff or lawyers, and at many times in this process, I wished one of us was. But as far as I know, I don't see any reason why council couldn't adopt accountability measures in advance of the ballot initiative. And I do think many people might see that as a gesture of good faith. I will say, I think the assembly was interested in mandating that council produce an ordinance on accountability as that's kind of an extra level of chops, and potentially for future councils. That's one of the things we talked a lot about. This isn't just for Lexington now, this is for Lexington in 20, 30, 40 years. I think that is why the assembly was interested in having that being mandated in the charter. And then to the question of the ballot question and campaign, it's a really good question. And as each of you know, CivicLEX does not advocate for issues, and we are not going to start on this. I think we, as you know, cover local elections and can certainly cover what will be on the ballot. And I think, slash hope, that some of the assembly members might be interested in helping inform people about these and potentially campaigning on. Our assembly members are not CivicLEX staff. And we have one assembly member who is committed to campaigning against the issues, which is also great. That's what we're here to do. I would think we would have both. Yes, indeed. And so I think that is, CivicLEX, I mean, we're committed to educating about what will be on the ballot. But beyond that, we will not be running a campaign. All right, I have one more thing was, and I did speak with Richard before this, so I kind of was trying to get. in their head about the, I know you picked the current average, I don't believe the way this reads. Like, I think you picked a number, and in five years, that number, if you look at just a 2% CPI, it's going to be about $6,000 short. And to me, that doesn't seem fair. Like it seems if I was going for a ballot initiative that would start, I just, I like to start with something that's fair. And I think we're already putting people at a disadvantage, and I don't particularly like that. So tell me kind of how you got to this, if you don't mind. And I only have about 30 seconds, I don't have another question, but just keep it succinct, thanks. Yeah, I mean, I think I will say we are actively trying to figure out how to put that on the ballot. And we also do not want to be misleading, and also legally cannot be misleading. There's been a recent Marcy's Law case about misleading ballot language, and we do not want to stray in that direction. What I can say is we know the spirit of the assembly was to set the new baseline at that $59,987 and to adjust it according to rubber dollar every year from then on out, which is how it is right now. You'll notice in the actual charter, it says council salary is $6,000. So we're still figuring out a way to frame that that is not misleading, but we do know that is the spirit of the recommendation. Thank you very much. That's all I have, Chair. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Kit and Richard, and all of the participants and everybody involved for being here today and for the work that you've put into this civic assembly. I do think it is a remarkable thing when we're able to make our, inform our decisions through more democratic means, and that is at the core of what y'all are doing. And it's very much appreciated from my perspective. I don't have questions for y'all. I just have to take a second and just express my appreciation for being willing to dive into these thorny subjects, because they are oftentimes ones where, were we to get into discussions about them solely on our own accord in this legislative body. There would be a question, I think, at least with the ones that y'all explored this go around, hopefully the first of many, that would raise questions about conflicts of interest, our ability to hold ourselves accountable, and as we've seen over the past several years, you cannot always trust council members to hold themselves accountable. So increasing any sort of accountability, public trust is a tangible good, and we're lucky to have you all here. I'm looking forward to working with you all in supporting whatever language comes forward. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Morton. Thank you. I also want to give my sincere appreciation and gratitude to Civic Lex for hosting and spearheading this civic assembly to the civic assembly members and to all that have been involved. I know that there was a list of the thank yous, so I'll give my gratitude to everyone that's been involved with this process. And yes, I can just put it back up there that- It's an important list. It's a huge list, and thank you to anyone that listened to anyone that's in the crowd that took part in it. So just regarding, and I don't have any questions either, I'll just speak, it's kind of my thoughts, regarding council compensation. Me specifically, I'm a firm believer that no matter what position you're in, you should be paid your worth. That's just what I believe, period. And on the other hand, these council positions are pretty broad positions. It's based on the philosophy of the council member, based on discretion, and based on just kind of what we decide, what we want to do, how much time we want to spend. And we know that a lot of us spend a lot of time, full time, on some of these, on this work. So I'm interested in, I guess, pushing it to the ballot and seeing what the constituents say. because they know they're council members, they are represented by council members, and they know the work that has been put in recently, but then also in the past. So they get to make that decision, and I'm interested in seeing the decision they make. I won't speak personally, I was a legislative aide, so I actually worked in the first district and made double, almost, of what I'm making right now. So I totally understand the divide, and I understand both sides of that topic. Regarding council accountability, I'm also a strong believer in transparency and accountability. And I think, well, with me specifically, I'll speak for myself again, that when I ran, one of my number one principles was accessible leadership, so being attentive, available, responsive, but then also showing up. That meant showing up in the community, that meant showing up to council meetings, and showing up to boards, and all these different things that we're tasked to be on. So I think some of that information is already available, it's just not plastered out there. And I don't think there should be nothing wrong with showing attendance of council members, showing what we're doing. I think it's even a step further, maybe going to show the legislative items that we're working on, showing the other commitments that we have in the community, in our district. because then, as you stated, it goes back into that number one recommendation to show, well, you've increased this pay, what work are they actually doing? How much time are they actually putting in? So I don't think there's ever an issue, for me specifically, when it comes to transparency or accountability for this role. And then lastly, also, I would support review of charter. I think there's nothing wrong, and it can only benefit the city to ensure that there's regular opportunities to reflect and evaluate and make thoughtful updates to meet our involving needs of our community. So I just look forward to seeing this move through the process, and I look forward to the residents getting to be the ones that make the decision, hopefully. So, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Evelyn. Thank you, Chair. My questions have already been answered by the questions from my colleagues. I just wanted to thank you all for this process. I came into this role as a big fan of Civic Lex, but I just think the way it was thought out, the way the commission members really put a lot of effort into this, and I thought your recommendations were outstanding. So I just really want to thank you for the work, and I'm just really impressed by all that went into it, and especially what came out of it. So, thank you. Thank you. I want to take a couple moments to share my thoughts and comments, and then I'm going to turn it over to Vice Mayor Wu to wrap things up. But again, I extend my thanks to everyone who has been involved in this. I'm really excited about the level of engagement that we have gotten from the community on this. So, you heard a couple of us already say, we tend to hear from the same people over and over again. And while it's great and we want to hear from them, we also want to hear from the broader community. And so, I'm interested to kind of do maybe like a year from now or where are they now on our civic assembly members to say, did you stay engaged? Or how did you get involved in local government in other ways? Did we get you into a border commission, or participate in some other way with our local government? But I would also be interested to see if there's a way for us to engage the over 300 other people who returned their postcard. That said they would be willing to give of their time in this way, because we definitely want that broader caption. Like Vice Mayor Wu was talking about the pie charts and how well represented the assembly was based on the data that we have about our community. And my researcher heart was like, yes, I'd love to see it. But I would like to see that in all of our issues that come before council when we get feedback from the community. I want to see the data that looks like that when we're looking at the demographics. So, I applaud you on that effort, because I know it was not small. But I would also like to see how we can keep people engaged that spent all of this time learning about government. How we can kind of keep them involved. And then I will be interested to see how the conversation and definition around attendance goes on the accountability piece. Because certainly we have our standing committee meetings, we have our council meetings, we have our work sessions that are fixed. We have our budget link meetings that are fixed. But quite often we also serve in council member seats on boards and commissions. So will that be a part of the attendance reporting? How will we define that piece? I will follow along, because I think that's very interesting. I do think if we're going to talk about this at the June 2nd work session, that we will need to discuss how this moves from committee to work session. So I'm going to turn the mic over to Vice Mayor Wu to discuss what actions we may need to take. Thank you, Chair. I want to say, just adding to Chair Sheehan's comments about participation, I feel like we have activated 30 something potential community champions for Lexington. So I hope this is not the last time you'll show up in council chambers. Would love for you all to get on boards and commissions. We have 70 boards and commissions in the city, so literally anything that you're interested or passionate about, there's probably a board out there for you. And you're always welcome to contact me or the rest of council on questions and kind of how to move in that direction. I want to address one comment that Council Member Savigny made about the accountability piece of it, like could we not just kind of do our own thing in terms of creating our own ordinances and resolutions. I like the idea of putting something on the ballot that gives us a level of flexibility, but also holds us to account. Because changing the ballot is much, much harder than overturning an ordinance that this council did. If the next council comes in and has different priorities, it can be undone fairly easily. As opposed to a ballot initiative, if we didn't like that particular item in the ballot, hopefully in eight years somebody will make a different kind of recommendation. So I like things being codified that way. Before I make my motion, Ms. Anderson, can you talk us through, if this item moves out of committee today, can you give us a quick timeline all the way to election day in November? Yes, so working backwards, election day is in November. The deadline for questions to end up on the ballot is in the first week of August. I believe this year it's August 3rd or 4th. And that is when the language has to be turned over to the county clerk to end up on the ballot. So council would just need to make their final vote to meet that deadline. In terms of crafting the language, I think that we are still interested. This is really the first time we've convened the assembly since our final session. And we are certainly also still willing to help work on the language, but that would be the ultimate timeline. Okay, I appreciate that. I think with that timeline, if it is the intent of this council to potentially put things on the ballot, my recommendation would be that we do it before summer break, because we're not back the first week of August into session. So with that in mind, I move to accept the recommendations of the civic assembly regarding council compensation, council accountability, and charter review as set forth in today's presentation, and refer the proposed amendments regarding the same to the full council at work session on June 2nd. Second. Do we have a motion? We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Council Member Brown. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So just to be clear, this isn't accepting the recommendations as presented. This is just moving it forward to the full council to consider. That is correct. All right, thank you. Can we clarify, because in your motion, you do say I move to accept the recommendation. So, is that? Maybe it's- I think, I mean, I think ultimately, this committee can't make a final vote on putting things on the ballot. So, I'm okay with that language, if it is the understanding of council that we're moving it out of GGP into full work session for that discussion on whether or not we want to move these potential ballot measures forward. And then to be clear, the June 2nd report out, we might have changes to the language that could be presented to the full council during that report out discussion. And then June 4th and 9th would be first and second reading if it passes on June 2nd. Mr. Gravens. Yes, I think accepted in this context means you're receiving their recommendations. You're not actually approving their recommendations, you're accepting them. And then, just so you're aware, what I would like to do to facilitate your conversation on June 2nd is have a draft ordinance with the changes that we worked on with CivicLEX to kind of capture as best we can and resolve some of the discussion points we've talked about today. So that we're not just talking in a vacuum on June 2nd, we have something we can actually act upon, or you can act upon, so. Thank you for that clarification on the language. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Thank you everyone. And I just want to add one quick thanks as well to Lex TV, because I know that they worked very hard on live streaming and making the sessions available to folks outside of the meeting, so thank you. Okay, our next item on our agenda is a landlord and tenant advisory group's presentation on how this initiative is going. This is Council Member Lynch's item and committee. I'm going to turn it over to Director Lanthier, and then Council Member Lynch will give us some closing remarks towards the end, so. Take it away, Director, or Commissioner, sorry. Commissioner. Commissioner. Did you want to do an introduction? Okay, great. I will begin with a presentation that is significantly less interesting than the charter, so. Appreciate you all having us out to talk about this. The landlord-tenant advisory group, this is pretty straightforward. You may recall it's something we've been working on in our office, really since the inception of the office almost four years ago. And that is just to make sure that we are building feedback loops into the divisions so that the work they do is informed by both of these groups, because those are the two groups that their work impacts the most, and also that we are hearing from them what their needs are in the community. And so, like I said, starting in 23, we originally had this as a very formal thing. It was not an official appointed commission or board, but it was a more informal committee of the commissioner's office, and they met quarterly. The landlord and tenant groups each met quarterly. It started when we had some requests for more tenant representation on boards and commissions, which itself is a complex issue that we can talk about, that we've been working on. But the biggest barrier to that often is that membership on boards and commissions, as all of us know, can be very time consuming. And it can require a lot of meetings, and it's not always conducive to people's personal and family schedules. And so we have tried to make this as simple and easy for these folks as we can to be heard and to influence our policy as an office. Again, not formally appointed, and they just review and advise our office. Tiffany Mazden in my division staffs this group, and the agenda is fed by the division. So they feed up into the commissioner's office, and then back down from the meeting, the feedback that we get from the two groups. Just taking a look at the landlord advisory group, this one started out with a group of 12, and we worked really hard to try and choose the different sort of sectors of the market to make sure that the different types of landlord were represented. The issues that a corporate owner with 400 units faces are significantly, significantly different than a mom and pop who own two or three rental units. And we were successful at building a group that represented all of them. These are some of the topics that the group has looked at. Basically, everything you can think of, we have spent some time on with both the landlord and the tenant groups. Theirs, you can see, is much more focused on building and property maintenance, things like code enforcement. They, code's there every time, talking to them. We've had other divisions come in, planning has come in and talked to them about the urban growth management and so on. And so it's just a great way to reach that group without having to do it so informally. More recently, we're looking to kind of revitalize this group. As you can imagine, they can be difficult to get together. We have tried different meeting times. We feed them, we buy them lunch. We get good attendance from certain groups, not so good attendance from others. What I have tried to do is branch out. And so for the groups that we're not seeing, which tends to be the larger ones, the more corporate entities that don't come in, I'm going to them. And so we recently joined the Central Kentucky Apartment Association's Advisory Committee for Public Advocacy. I sit in on all those meetings just to hear what their issues are and bring those back to the group. So we may not always be able to meet with everyone in the group, but we're still hearing them. And we're going to revitalize that membership, because some of our folks have fallen off, and we're replacing them with some new groups, and we'll probably get that new group kicked off this summer. Probably healthy, to be honest with you, that we do flesh out the membership every so often. Sorry, flesh out probably wasn't the best word. Just turn over, transition the membership, just for the fresh ideas and the new perspectives. The tenant advisory group, we took the exact same approach. We wanted to represent as many different groups as possible within the subset of renters. So you've got families with children, but you've also got people who had experienced homelessness, seniors, people who live in a housing authority property. We tried to account for every possible angle for a renter, which can be difficult. And you can imagine that we had our biggest attendance challenges with this group. We have tried offering night meetings, food, child care. We have offered everything you can offer, and we tend to get about 50 to 30% attendance on a good day. So that was extremely challenging. We had one meeting that we went to, and none of the members showed up for the meeting, none. So that was very frustrating. So we stepped back more recently, about six months back, and kind of reconstituted it. And what we did was we went to organizations that work with those tenants and say, can you either give us people or give us your staff to come talk about these issues? I don't love it. It's not as pure as a true tenant advisory group is, because it's largely organizations. Although we have added some folks that are more grassroots as we've encountered them. We have very low barrier to you joining us in this group. It's very informal, but we do at least get people to come. And so we are getting some productive conversations out of those. Our last one was actually quite good. And we're going to continue to work with that group to bring in more actual tenants and make sure that the tenants they work with, because each of these represents organizations that work with tenants, to make sure that all of them are represented. They've met now five times. This is the newly reconstituted group, and have also looked at all the things you can imagine. We've walked through what the city does for homelessness. We've walked through how the grants and assistance programs work, and they have done a great job of giving us some feedback on those things. So that is a gist of kind of where we stand. Both groups are still meeting. Both fell off at different points along the way and had to be kind of picked up and rejuvenated. And we're still in that process with one of them. The landlord group. Although we are very much still in communications with those members. So happy to take questions, but that is where we stand as of today. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in if you'd like to comment or give a question. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. Was today's presentation just FYI, just to kind of let us know your efforts and the makeup of the- Kind of an update on how it's been going, yeah. Okay, Commissioner, what do you think moving forward? Do you think these groups need to be codified in some form of an official board or commission to maybe give recommendations to you, to council, to the administration? I would caution against that, actually. I think we're having a hard enough time pulling it together in a more informal basis. Formalizing it could make that more difficult. And then it also now creates an obligation for the office that if the group doesn't meet, now I've got to go find them and pull them together and reschedule it and have a meeting in order to meet the ordinance requirement. I think the informal nature of it allows it to be more flexible with membership, with topics, with all of the things. Because so far, we have not been able to get either of these groups into enough of a routine that I would be comfortable saying that if you codified this, I could promise you in two years it'll be running like a train. Because it's just the two groups themselves are not super engaged with the government. You kind of have to really massage that to get it. So what I'm hearing, and you tell me if I'm hearing it right. So you'd rather leave these as kind of unofficial ad hoc groups that you just bring together and have the opportunity to bounce off ideas and policies off of and get feedback and see if it's something that you can grow. That's worked well for us so far. Let me ask this in regards to, because it sounds like you're really having a hard time, more of a hard time convening the tenant group. And you tried everything as far as bringing them here. Have you tried going out to them, like having the tenant meeting in a public accessible space? We have, and we actually do that. I didn't add it to this presentation, but I know you all are aware. We have our landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities forums that take place throughout the districts. Those have been enormously successful. And they serve a similar function in that we're still engaging with those populations, and we're presenting programs to them, and we're hearing feedback from them. I get way better attendance at those than I do at the formal committees and groups. Part of that is because we're going out in the community, but we tried that with the tenant group. We held that out in the community, and that was the meeting no one showed up for. So I think a lot of it's about how you're engaging with them. I think if you say, do you want to be on our big formal government committee? People may not be as they can come be heard on housing. That seems to have more appeal. Okay, I can see where folks are being invited to be this, be a partuation. I think that's a lot of what it is. Their experience as a tenant and the things they would want to talk about in a group setting with your finances, your medical history sometimes, things that you may not want to openly share about. Okay, what my colleagues say, but I do appreciate you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner Lanter, for all of your work on this, and Council Member Lynch as well. I've been very impressed by the flexibility you all have shown in here. I did have a quick question for you, Commissioner, on something, which was you talked about the importance of having not just property managers showing up to the landlord group. Could you speak to the significance of that and the changes that come as a result of that? Yeah, that's actually a really good point, because those are two very different constituencies. In some cases, with a very small property, the owner may be the property manager. But in most cases, the average citizen, when they're renting, they're dealing with a property manager. They might not even know who the owner is. They never know who the owner is. And so what we really like to do is engage with whoever's the person that the tenant is a whole different ball game. There's a lot of changes in that industry right now that are making it very difficult. They're very short-staffed, they're underfunded, it's had a really good experience working with very collaborative and- That, speaking as a renter myself, I can tell you that I have interacted with my property manager. Average citizen, when they're renting, they're dealing with a property manager. They might not even know who the owner is. And so what we really like to do is engage with whoever's the person that the tenant is the owner, great. If it's not, the property manager. Property management is a whole different ball game. There's a lot of chain cult. They're very short-staffed, they're underfunded, and so a lot of times just getting their time can be difficult, too. But we've had a really good experience working with the Central Kentucky Apartment Association. They've been very collaborative, and so we're getting a lot of good feedback from them. That, speaking as a renter myself, I can tell you that I have interacted with my property manager. I want to add that when we're having these conversations about tenants showing of money but of time and of it. I don't want any legislative body to mistake the difficulties with attendance for that group as a lack of need or lack of interest from tenants in the community. Not to put words in y'all's mouth, but I'm sure that you would say that we're considering that. Absolutely, and one thing, I think it was clear, but I want to make sure and reiterate. The two groups are very separate and distinct, and it's for that very reason. We did not want to put the two in the room together and say, okay, I'll fight it out. That just wasn't going to work well, so we keep them very separate. Thank you, and I appreciate your dedication to this work, Commissioner, because we're better for it. Thank you, Chair, that's all. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, excuse me. I really appreciate your willingness to try to make this work in one way or another and to include the voices of both the landlords and the tenants. I'll echo, I feel like over my time on council, one of my greatest challenges has been communicating with tenants. It's really hard because sometimes you don't have access to leaving flyers at their door. You don't have access to gathering people from an apartment complex. It's just, it's really challenging on a lot of levels. I see a little bit of your goals in here with the groups, but do you have a specific goal and mission that maybe, or maybe is there a way to incorporate that a little bit more firmly that would make people feel like they really have a buy-in, both on the tenant and landlord side? Yeah, I think it's actually good you brought that up. One of the things that Tiffany and I talked about as we reconstituted and tried to kind of bring some life back into the groups was specifically that. And I think groups work best when that comes from them. So our first agenda item with each one, and the landlord one we haven't done this with yet, but is what do you want to know and what do you want to talk about? What do we want to discuss? I will put things on there that I know we need to hear from and feedback, but we try to make sure that it's driven by what are the issues that the tenants themselves are facing. Often what that ends up looking like in the meeting is very specific complaints. No tenants talking about I had this issue or I had this issue because it's really difficult for an individual to step back and have that as like a policy conversation when their water heater doesn't work. Or their AC doesn't work. And so what I'm trying to do is work through that context to say, okay, you're telling me your water heater doesn't work and that there's mold in your apartment. But I think what we're hearing for the purpose of this meeting is the property manager's not responsive. So let's start talking about how do we work on responsiveness of property managers as opposed to how do I fix your water heater? because that's not something that we personally can do, although we do try to help when we can. I think that makes a lot of sense, but I also think that when we're asking people to have a buy in, whether it's a time, an hour, four times a year, or whatever that is. If they don't have a clear understanding from the very beginning of what their time and energy is going to help with or change, or I think it could include time where you talk about what are their needs. But just something that catches their attention to even be a part of it, then I often see that that doesn't work. Because oftentimes neighborhood associations, you can say, come to this neighborhood association meeting, and we'll have pizza, we'll have childcare, whatever. But why are they coming? They don't know why going to the neighborhood association meeting, why taking their time, what that's going to do to make a difference in their everyday lives, and these people are busy. These people are working a lot of hours, and they need to know their why. Why should I be there specifically? In addition to having a chance to talk about whatever you feel like is a concern. So that's just a suggestion that I have, because I think people want to do good things, but we're all so busy and tired that unless there's a specific reason, we might not be willing to buy into whatever that is, so. I think you're absolutely right, and I think I understand what you're saying. Because there's a big difference between asking someone to just generally come to a government committee meeting about housing. If you reframe that exact same ask as, hey, would you like to come tell me about all the problems you're having as a renter and with your landlord. You're giving them a chance to discuss something specific they can connect with, but I think what you're saying is there has to be an outcome. There has to be an outcome, there has to be a goal. Yeah. It can't just be a general come tell us how to make things better. I think that is part of the issue, is we said, hey, do you want to be on our feedback group? And without them knowing what that group's going to talk about, there's less interest. Exactly, yep. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor Wood. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for all of this work. In the list of the organizations for tenant advisory group, you said there are 12 organizations, I count nine here. Kentucky Tenants is a part of this advisory group? They have been, they have not participated regularly once it got going. But they're invited. Yeah, and then thinking about kind of your role in sort of facilitating both these groups who have obviously a lot of friction and conflict kind of inherently. Have you been able to or do you feel like it's your role at all to not necessarily mediate but to convey the complaints or challenges or issues that one group has sort of like citing the other, because I know landlords obviously will complain about their tenants as well for all these reasons and vice versa. Have you felt like that's a part of your role? Should it be a part of your role? Are you able to do that? It's a really excellent question, because we've dabbled in that with these two groups. And it doesn't always go well. If tenants are giving me a consistent theme of something that they're complaining about and I go to landlords and say, hey, tenants are saying you guys are doing this, X, Y, Z. They just immediately go into a defensive mode of either no, we're not, or the tenants aren't telling you all the facts. And the reverse is true as well. Like if I go to the tenants and say, well, the landlords are saying you guys destroyed their units, whatever, they give me the exact same thing. So I think there's such a divide between those two that just trying to, the government office trying to mediate two big esoteric groups is really too hard. I think we've had more success when we try to do that in a smaller, more one-on-one, two-on-one kind of setting. What I can say is that we've had conversations emerge from the groups that led to that. But probably what I would say is one of the things we've learned not to do is that, because it has led to some hurt feelings. To build on what Council Member Reynolds was saying, I feel like you were speaking to kind of what is the purpose or mission of these groups. Have there been any concrete recommendations from either of these groups kind of towards LFUCG or our policies, things like that? A good example would be the Housing Stability Services Program, actually, that I'll be presenting on next week, that is in the budget. This is the legal aid program that provides access to council. While that program was essentially designed with these two groups. So as that program was originally built, both groups gave feedback on the program design as it was built. Both groups have things in there that they asked for. Both groups have things they asked for that are not in there. And I think that's been an enormously successful program. So one could argue that one of the reasons that it's been successful is it was informed by the two groups that it impacts the most. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thinking also, coming off the heels of the assembly and kind of the work that they did, they bring a recommendation to us, we kind of decide what to do with it. I was thinking about that too, would there be a process, formal or informal, that if members of a group or the majority of the landlords or the tenants say, hey, you know what really needs to change is blank. Something that we could effectuate, I'd be interested to see, is there a kind of a process for that? Is that just you bringing a recommendation to council saying, hey, we've heard a lot about this particular issue. I think there's some tweaks we could make to, I don't know, code enforcement regulations, whatever it is. I'd be interested to kind of see that, because I would hate for your time being used as just sort of a person receiving complaints from one group or the other. I'd definitely take your point about these complaints that do lead to you thinking about either widespread issues or common issues with either group. I just want to make sure that your time is used well and the folks in these groups are not just using it as a venting session that may or may not be productive. And that's a serious risk, it happened. We actually, in one of the groups, had some of the members complain about some of the other members who were saying that they would just come in and use it to vent all their grievances with the government. And that's true, and that's part of the reason we're doing some adjusting with some of the membership, just to be more productive. But just to give you an example, there's sort of two ways that things come out of this. Most of it is incidental, it's real quick things that we can fix. They're saying, the process for getting a new Herbie is this, and it's slightly too cumbersome. Before the end of the day, I've already called waste management, adjusted whatever it was they were complaining about, and we fixed it, because it was just some minor miscommunication. There's a lot of that that emerges from both of these groups, where we can make tweaks here and there, and just make their lives easier, or respond to incidents. And then, what I try to do is, over the course of those conversations, that's where I look for the larger policy recommendations. I think the process that you're speaking to, that we'll have to watch for, is those two groups are very rarely going to agree. And so, I think if you have a policy exit strategy, you've got to make sure it's going to account for the fact that the two of them are saying, hey, we've reviewed this, and we have two very different opinions about it. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's very challenging work, but I appreciate you doing it. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks so much for the presentation. I've got just a few ideas, and I appreciate what you're doing. One thought is, have you done anything virtually? Have you done virtual a lot, too, or not really? Not with these groups, and that's something that we have considered. Okay, so that's one thing. And then, have you guys thought, landlord registration concept is kind of, it doesn't get a lot of excitement in general. Have you thought of a tenant registration system that would strictly be optional, that we could push, and you could push, to gain tenant information, so that you have a tenant pool, but they tell you then who the property manager is, like where they live, who the property manager is, and how to contact that property manager, and then if they know the owner. Or if we can find the owner from the address through a cross-reference. I'm just kind of wondering if we enter it from that level, like say you had a pool of, say a thousand tenants signed up, all right? You'd at least have a pool of people that you might say, hey, I'm curious on the large landlord concept, you might have a survey for them. There might be something to fill out the survey, you entered into a $50 gift card. I'm just thinking of things to get, to try to drive it from the other direction, to get the tenants with an easy opt-in. A quick response process. Yeah, kind of a quick response process, and then you have a way to kind of at least pump, hey, I would like to know if the tenants are feeling X. And you send it out, and you see what kind of response you get. It's just an idea. It seems super simple. I mean, I kind of feel like crowdsourcing of, I think crowdsourcing any type of information. I mean, we all, unfortunately we have next door, and we all, like we can kind of look at that. So it's just another crowdsourcing concept. And you might even do it as a bulletin board as well. You might crowdsource it and then have bulletin boards. Yeah, we just want to make sure we have all the technological pieces in place to make everyone comfortable as far as personal identity and that kind of stuff. Yeah, just thoughts. And they can just use a first, like they can just say a name. Like, they don't even have to give a last name if they don't want to, you know what I mean? So just a thought, I just think it would help you get some tenants, and you might be able to get some information. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member, that sounds similar to what we do with Engage Lexington, right? So we can post feedback opportunities, people register and give us some of their information. And then they can respond to different particular inquiries for feedback. I think when you say registry, sometimes it feels bigger than that. because when we talk about short-term rental registry or any kind of long-term rental registry, it's a much bigger program. But I can see what you're saying there. Just to give you an example of how these two groups differ, that in very distinct incidences, the tenant group has very strongly asked for a rental registry. Which of course, we know there's some legal questions around. And the landlord group has simultaneously insisted that we never do a rental registry. So you basically have two groups that are constantly saying, don't do what the other one says. It's interesting. Yeah, thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation. But I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Lynch, who had some remarks to wrap this up. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Lanter. Thank you, Ms. Madsen, for taking this on and working with both advisory groups. Thank you for staying the course as well, because as my colleagues have said, both groups' voices are important and need to be heard at this government level. So thank you so much for the facilitation of these two groups. And Chair, I'm going to keep this item in committee for our annual update. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, the last thing on our agenda is items referred to committee. Does anybody have any comments they would like to make about an item or remove an item? Council Member Reynolds, you're up first. Yes, because we already discussed these items, they've been seen in committee. I would like to remove Planning and Development Study Recommendation 8 and Recommendation 10, it looks like it's items 3 and 4 on the items referred list, so moved. Second. So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Okay, seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion carries. Is that all for yours, Council Member Reynolds? Yes. Okay, Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Since we just recently discussed the efficiencies in our development process and the compliance with the House Bill 443, I'm comfortable with removing that item. Just if we need to get some updates, I think we can always put this item back in committee. So I move to remove it. Second. Okay, I have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, and that passes as well. I don't see anyone else signed in. I'm going to say my window for items discussion is closing. It is closed? Okay, thank you everyone. Now that we're at the end of our agenda, I am going to adjourn our meeting.