Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday edition of our General Government and Planning Committee. It is one o'clock, so I'm going to call our meeting to order. The first item on our agenda today is the approval of the June 2nd, 2026 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections? Move to approve. Second. I have a motion to approve and a second. Any discussion on the motion? I see no one signed in. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. The first presentation we have on our agenda today is the annual review of short-term rentals. We have Director Holbrook here to present. Council Member Brown, this is your item in committee. Do you have any remarks for an introduction? No. Thank you, Chair. I'll just say no. I think we've developed this policy, made changes, have worked, put resources around it to make it more convenient and accessible to our neighbors and excited to hear about the updates. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll turn it over to you, Director Holbrook. Thank you, Council Members. I know some of you, Council Member Rembrandt and Council Member Curtis, have submitted some questions that we'll, if we're not addressing them as part of the presentation, we'll take at the end before we take more general questions. But I'm going to let Brad Cruz do the presentation, and then I'll pop in at a couple points. He deals with the short-term rental program on a daily basis, and so can speak to a lot of the finer points of that. So I'll hand it over to Brad. All right, hello. I'm Brad Cruz. I work in revenue regulating short-term rentals. I just want to do a brief overview of the short term rental ordinance. Three years ago this month, you all passed the ordinance regulating short term rentals in Lexington. You allowed a six month grace period for short term rentals to begin the registration process and we started enforcement in January 2024. So we identify, investigate, and enforce all non-compliant short-term rental operators. We also issued an RFP for a rental compliance software suite and Granicus was selected. They created the compliance hotline which launched in 2024. And this past winter, there was the short term rental renewal portal that they built for us as well. And the ordinance was amended in December 2024 to add clarity to density issues. On January 31st of every year, all short term rentals need to be renewed. They're renewed for the calendar year, not for a 12 month period. As I said, we have launched that portal in last December and we'll continue to do that this next year. The short-term rental fees have brought in, for this year, $118,600 in revenue. Our personnel estimate for staff time is about $60,000. Our software cost is just over $58,000. and we spent about $300 in mailing fees. So that's a slight deficit of $283.50, and that's pretty accurate to what we want. These fees need to cover the cost of regulating the short-term rentals and not creating much more of a revenue than that. This is a map of listings over time. They really kind of dropped off once we started the process and have leveled out. Right now we have 787 listings. It was almost 1,300 when the software went live. Since we started regulating, we've had 61 citations issued. 52 of them were for unlicensed, non-registered properties. Nine were for nuisance violations, so parking, noise, trash, occupancy issues. That's $78,125 in total. One of those citations was for $1,000 and was successfully appealed. We have $59,125 in outstanding citations. 19,000 have been paid. It should be noted that 52,400 of those citations are from four individual properties. properties and so we cannot we can get back to how we can go after some of that money later right now four properties are subject to liens and nine properties that we had given citations for had stopped operating as a short-term rental and sold the property before anything else could happen from us only one One property is currently up for citation, and recently only ten properties have been identified and received an initial notice of violation. The licenses are right now at 735. It went up a little bit last year, went down. That could be for a lot of different reasons. Some people chose not to renew, some people sold, and a short term rental didn't take that place from the new property owner. As I said, all renewals need to happen by January 31st. If somebody doesn't renew, they're unable to keep their conditional use permit if they have one. And they'll have to start the process of applying for a short term rental all over again. So before renewal, we sent out two different letters to the mailing address that we have for the owner. We also had Airbnb reach out to the operators in Lexington on our behalf. For those who didn't respond, we contacted them by phone and email in addition to the mailings. So the cost for renewal is $200 a year for the first short-term rental property. If an owner has an additional unit, that's $100 additional. So we had 451 initial properties at the $200 fee for $90,200. 284 additional properties that brought in 28,400 in fees. 735 total properties, so 118,600 in revenue from the special license fee. For the hotline, so we launched that hotline in 2024. It's a 24-7 hotline operated by our third party software. Complaints can be made about any property, whether it's a short term rental, they all come through. They don't verify at that point of contact. We make that determination later. Whether or not the complaint is made by a caller online, they can add pictures, videos, any sort of proof that they have that there's a violation. It'll also contact the emergency contact for the property immediately, and there's an option for the Lexington Police Department to be contacted on the non-emergency line as well. This is what it looks like when a call comes in. We just get a little blurb saying it's this property, this emergency contact has been contacted, the caller wants a call back, any sort of notes from what they sent in. We don't get a lot of calls. It's usually one or two a month, as you can see here. Since July 2025, we've only had 17 calls that were considered valid. So that was 51 calls that weren't valid. That means somebody called about a property that's not a short term rental. We get a lot of just general questions about how do I register my property as a short term rental? how do I complain this way but not an actual giving a complaint. So we take those calls and give them information, but we don't count those as a valid call. So most of them are for unauthorized property that a neighbor calls in about, or parking, trash, nothing too intense. Now, if we send citations and they're not paid, or there's multiple citations in a 12 month period, we are allowed to revoke the license. The director of revenue is able to make that decision himself. Revocations can be appealed to the commissioner of finance. Only two properties have received a revocation. One successfully appealed last year and was reinstated. One did not appeal this year, and after a year they're able to start the application process all over again if they choose. This is our hotline number and the link where people can submit their complaints. And then we'll take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Cruz. Director Hulbrick, did you have anything to add? Yeah, I just wanted to, first I wanted to, before we jump to questions, talk briefly about our renewal and our software that we had set up and went live for this past renewal period. From the get go, it was set up very well to take on new licenses. It takes the application information and creates a profile for each user. And so if you're providing all that information initially, it works very well. When we were trying to transfer our existing licenses into that software, where it didn't have a lot of the application materials, it had quite a few issues for our users in renewing. We worked with them to make sure that they weren't penalized because of our software issues, and now everything should be functioning correctly. Going forward, it should just be clicking a button and you get your renewal, as long as you submit everything that you're supposed to, your number stays and things like that, and your fees. But if we still have issues going into the next cycle, then we'll look at some other options for how to do this going forward. Because we don't want to overly burden our operators who are doing the right thing and just trying to get everything in on time. And I did have a couple questions that were submitted in writing from a couple of our council members. Like a reference, if it's okay, I can just answer those and then. Yeah, why don't you do that and then I will go down the list of folks that are signed in. Okay, perfect. First two came from Council of Revelyn. And so the first one was what is being done to collect 59,000 unpaid citations? So with the larger citations, we are putting liens on the properties and working with the law department for how we get paid back for those. With the other unpaid citations, as long as you have a citation, you can't renew your license if you are licensed. And then also, if you are unlicensed, you cannot get a license or go through the Board of Adjustment to get licensed. So that does create a barrier, and we do continue to cite and may potentially get to the point where we might put a lien on a property. One of the liens that we have is for $22,000 on a single property. So we're reviewing and monitoring those as they go forward and just continuing to pursue them as people are continuing to not be compliant with the ordinance. Another question was related to collection of the transient room tax on short-term rentals. So we have voluntary collection agreements with Airbnb and HomeAway, which encompasses VRBO, Expedia, and a few of those other platforms. And what they do is they remit transient room tax to us on behalf of the operators. We do not get a report of the individual stays, but we do get the room stays from the operators whenever they renew. And those numbers are pretty consistent with what we would expect to see. We collected just through May 2026 for this fiscal year about $1.7 million in transit room tax. And that makes up about 8.5% of the total of transit room tax from July to May. And then from Council Member Curtis, so we did see a drop off from when we initially started. The question was, do we see any reason why we would expect significant shifts in the number going forward? It seems to be pretty stable in that 700 to 800 realm. And I think there are a lot of different factors at play. There's, you know, the real estate market itself. There's competition between the different operators. And so unless something changes in one of those two areas, there just may not be a lot of movement as people try and make the best business decision for themselves. The other question related to how we've held accountable the operators who have not operated in good faith and in compliance with the ordinance and what lessons we might be able to take from that as there's work done related to other landlords. One of the things that's been successful with this program is it has a platform where the listings are made. It's something we can monitor. We do have a fair number of teeth with our ordinance. So those are all things that work well. I don't know if that is something that, you know, in the larger rental market, there may not be a platform, right? And the larger rental market is much larger than what we see with these 700 in short-term rentals. So the scale of the challenge may be just a little bit bigger than we can operate with, you know, say, a couple of staff members. So I don't want to speculate too much, but I would just say that with our ordinance, it's worked well on the subset of the rental market. And it's something that I think we're just very cognizant of how we treat both the renters and also the operators to make sure that the ones who are doing what they're supposed to do by the ordinance are not unfairly punished. Thank you, Director. I'll go to our list of folks that are signed in. We have Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for the presentation, the update. A little surprised to see the number of hotline calls that we have not been receiving. Yes. Can you remind me, are we paying separate for that hotline, or is that part of the software cost? That's part of the software package that we get. So the calls are, they have their own page, but they also are tagged within the licensed properties. So that way we're able to see, or unlicensed properties if it's one that we haven't gotten through our licensure process yet. So it does have that sort of running record of what the concerns are for each property. Okay, thank you. And then my other question is, Brad said that we reached out to Airbnb for them to contact their operators. Do we talk to any other, like HomeAway, do we ask them to do the same thing? Or are we missing a portion of operators somehow? I don't necessarily think so. I think that some operators list on both platforms, and Airbnb is the lion's share of what is operating. So just to use one month's example, there was maybe $150,000 worth of transient room tax collected on Airbnb and $15,000 on HomeAway VRBO. So it is a much smaller subset of what's going on there. Okay. All right. Well, great. thank you all for your for your work thank you chair um council members thank you chair and thank you so much for the presentation um mike i'm just wondering um have the operators pushed back on the january time frame did they and i say that because i would i would think that they're filing a net profits tax in april on their on these you know properties and those transactions And I know in my business when I had to file, it seemed like I would pay my annual fee to you at the same time. So I'm just curious about that. That's not a concern that I've heard. We did make it consistent with most of our other regulated licenses. And the filings for the short-term rental don't necessarily, I mean, you do need to be compliant. You do need to have a net profit filed, but it's not done necessarily at the same time. Are you tracking those two to make sure that there's a, like, are you, are you, are you? Whenever we, whenever we get a renewal, we confirm that they have filed the net profits as they're supposed to. Great. That's all I, that's it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Vice Mayor Boo. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for your work on this. If you go to one of the early slides on, let's see, the program costs. So it looks like if we're only considering the renewal revenues, we're close to break even. Do you all calculate in fees and fines collected as part of the calculus here? We don't, and what we're looking at here is we want to make sure, because legally we can't charge fees and revenues and generate revenues over and above the cost of the regulated activity. The fines themselves are not subject to that same limitation. And so in that way of thinking, we're break even. When you consider all those, we are not necessarily running a deficit for the program, but just on the piece that we do need to have maybe a little bit more control. Okay, gotcha. And then if somebody calls 311 to make a complaint, does that get routed into your sort of complaint database and records? They do eventually make their way to us. We do get some calls through 311. We get some emails to the main revenue email account that we have, revenue at lexitonky.gov. We also have one str at lexitonky.gov. We get complaints from other divisions as they come through. So things may get jammed up along the way, but generally they seem to, the complaints that we find generally seem to make their way to us. That's good. And then if you go to the, go forward a couple pages to where, yeah, that one. Can you say a little bit more about these four individual properties that seem to be, what, two-thirds of our total violations? Yeah, and one of those is there's one large citation for $22,000 that's in there. So what we try and do is we go through and we'll identify stays. Because we're able to identify when stays happen. We do have a little bit of difficulty identifying the number of days that people stay there, just based on the data that can be scrubbed from websites. And so what we'll do is we will issue a citation based on number of stays and then check back in. And with that citation, we say, you know, you need to, because these are unregistered. So we'll send a notice and say you need to take your listing down or turn it to 30 days, and you'll be subject to further citations if you continue to operate in violation. And then we go and just check back in. And what we find, unfortunately, with these four is they just kept going. After we'd issued a couple of smaller citations, circled back around, and they had something like 44 documented stays. So probably the citation could have been higher if we'd been able to identify the number of days. And that did get people's attention, unfortunately. It had to get to that point. Well, I was going to ask how do you continue, excuse me, how to kind of continue pursuing these, the fines that aren't getting paid, this, you know, the bulk of it, the $59,000 still isn't. Like, what are, are there any sort of steps that escalate beyond just continually adding fines? So we have been working to put liens on the properties whenever we've gotten to that point. We haven't moved beyond that with the law department, but there are probably some other, I mean, I defer to Evan, but there may be some other steps we might be able to take to cure those. I don't know if we would necessarily want to go beyond putting the liens on the property, since that is a pretty hefty step for a lot of people. Okay. And then just kind of generally overall, do you feel like the implementation of these regs are working as we've hopefully designed them, and in what areas can we make improvements? I think they're working well. Well, I think in just some conversations that we had in the first part of the year, I think it's an example that other communities are looking at. I think we've had some conversations at the state level where this fits in, I think what is a nice balance between making sure that you protect neighborhoods and citizens, but also you do provide some protection for the operators from being sort of unlawfully targeted or unnecessarily targeted. So I think it's at a good place right now, financially it's a good place. I think we're just, there's probably not much based on the way the ordinance is set up currently that we could make too many adjustments to and have it operate much better. I think a lot of the concerns that we've seen from the community, not the operator community, but just the community at large about the number of issues that they'll have or how many properties there are. We've seen properties decrease. We haven't seen a lot of issues we've been able to validate, and so I think it's in a very good place right now. And hopefully, the status quo might be good for some time. All right, thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. I'm hopeful that things are moving more smoothly than they did in the beginning and that we're all getting the hang of this and having the ordinance. I know it's a change for people in the community as well. Circling back to the hotline, when I look at the website, it looks like the only time that it pops up is under community resources. And the landing page for STRs, it's not on that page. And at the bottom of the page, it says file a complaint. And it has that online form that you mentioned, but it doesn't have the number there. And I wonder if we could add the number on the landing page, maybe under file a complaint so that it's not just under community resources, because it also doesn't show up on the licensure and permitting requirements page. And maybe we can make it more visible so that more folks know it's available. We can look at that. We did do some restructuring of the page when we had the website conversion. and so it may not be as prevalent as we want it to be and so that's something we can go through and work with communications on. I think that would be great. Even stating on the page that it is on exactly what it's for, I feel like it's a little bit downplayed. That's my two cents, take it or leave it. That's fine. I just wanted to share. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Councilmember Reynolds, for bringing that up about adding that to the landing page. I think that would be a resource. But I wonder if that's one of the reasons why we don't have a lot of calls to the hotline. When we were working on developing the policy, we had concerns about integrating complaints and calls on short-term rentals. From the police department to code enforcement, Are there any efforts to aggregate those calls and keep them either in the database from the hotline or somewhere so we can keep track of those? When they make it through the police department, because those are generally going to be somebody who might have a party or a noise violation or something like that, those make their way to being citations. We've had several instances from the police department where they've gone to a call, and it turns out it's a short-term rental that we didn't have licensed. When there's a party, we generally get those. We've also had some come through just our general revenue line or even people just calling our general revenue number. So those are, when they get to that point, they have been more consistently valid calls, not the general concerns, but more of what we can verify as being an issue. So we haven't necessarily, you know, we're talking about the hotline, and I understand your question. You want maybe a larger look at the total number of calls, but they do make their way to being citations maybe more frequently than some of the hotline calls do. Okay, well that kind of answers my question. I guess in my mind I was thinking if we can pay out all the calls pertaining to short term rentals somewhere, then we would have a true accountability of it. But if they're calling the police and it's turning into citations and we're addressing them that way, then I think that they are being accounted for. Mm-hm. The next thing is the last couple years of the state session, short term rentals comes up. And I think they're looking at policy for the state statewide. Have we heard anything from folks at the state or do we know of any concerns that we need to be considering to our own policy? So if they do pass a statewide policy, we may get exempt from it or just prevent getting preempted altogether. I think in some conversations that we've had with some legislators, Our policy seems to fit within what their overall goal is. For some people it may be a little too heavy handed, for some people not enough. But we try and be pretty measured. We do talk about our efforts to make sure that if somebody, we do identify an unlicensed property, we just don't immediately go and cite them. We start to walk them through the process. We send them a letter and give them 30 days to comply. And then send them another letter to give them 15 more days as a final notice and then begin citation. So we're not just coming in blazing and trying to cite people. And so I think what we're doing is very balanced and I think that the legislators that we've talked to recognize that. But there's a larger legislative body that has a lot of opinions about what this may be. So I think the best thing we can do is just continue to advocate for what we view as a good policy and talk about some of the successes that we've seen, both for the larger community and then also our short-term rental operators. Okay. Yeah, I know you've been advocating at that level, and I appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. um director as you are potentially making changes to the short-term rental web page could you maybe um look at how the public might search on our landing page because the majority of the community doesn't call them short-term rentals and so like i just typed in airbnb complaint and it was nowhere i mean it might be on page like 33 of the search results but But there may be some keywords that we could add into the search to make that page easier to find as well. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Director Holbrook and Mr. Cruz. I don't see anybody else signed in, so I appreciate your presentation and taking time to answer all of our questions. Thank you all. Colleagues, next on our agenda is a presentation on the Blue Sky Small Area Plan. We have senior planner and project manager Eve Miller with us, along with Sam Castro from TSW. Council Member Boone, I know this is your sponsor of this item, along with Council Member Hale. I'll turn it over to you for an introduction. Thank you, Chair, and welcome and thank you, Ms. Miller and Ms. Castro. As many as you know, Council Member Hale and I had the pleasure of serving on the committee. Especially I want to commend Ms. Miller and Ms. Castro and the leadership team behind the advisory committee for their dedication to outreach and public engagement throughout the entire process. I believe they've produced a thoughtful long-term plan with clear zoning considerations and actionable recommendations. So thank you both for being here and the rest of the team. And thank you again. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Councilmembers. My name is Eve Miller. I'm a senior planner with the divisional planning, long-range planning team. And I had the pleasure of being the project manager for this small area plan project. which we're really excited to be able to bring and talk to you all about this afternoon. The Blue Sky Small Area Plan establishes a comprehensive long-range framework for the 301-acre industrial site off of Athens-Boonsboro Road. And over the last year, our team, in partnership with our lead consultant, TSW, has conducted extensive research and community outreach to map out the future of this site and providing recommendations targeting infrastructure land use environmental resources and economic development on june 11th the planning commission passed this small area plan unanimously adopting it as part of our comprehensive plan making it our first small area plan in a decade which is really exciting and i would be remiss to mention that this milestone would not have been possible without our advisory committee members so a huge thank you to council members boone and hale for participating in that as well as planning commission member bruce nickel ashley simpson from finance chris sevilla with the mpo todd johnson from the building industry association andy johnson with commerce lexington blake reichenbach from striker kenny keener with elliot services and luke conacher and brett halen representing edessa and carvana and i also want to extend a thank you to my colleague quinn maholland for helping us with outreach as well So with that, I will pass it over to Sam Castro from TSW, who will dive into recommendations and findings of the plan. Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. I am Sam Castro from Tenelle Swengler Walsh and Associates. And I had the privilege of getting to basically move from the urban growth master plan directly into this Blue Sky Small Area Plan. So for those of you that might not have been out there, which I think is probably more people on the dais than not. It's, Blue Sky's kind of tucked away and it's grown up as a really successful light industrial site that's kind of grown up in this ad hoc nature. starting in around the 70s and 80s. And they really reached full build out pretty quickly. Like Eve said, it's around 300 acres, and so that's why it was not included in the original urban growth master plan. Because the rest of the master plan was about green field development, and this is already a developed site. So that's why we looked at it as its own small area plan. It's anchored by several large companies, Adessa Carvana being one, Elliott and their sort of associated companies that are out there. And then it's also important to note that we're seeing some recent growth in the area. As many of you know, Lexington Sporting Club built the stadium out there. Care Athletics is continuing to improve their site. And so this is coming at a good time to really start talking about this area around the interchange. The majority of the study area is zoned I-1, so that's our light industrial zone. We've got a little bit of B-3, which is the highway service business zone, although very little of that is actually designed as what we would consider a traditional B3. And then the vast majority of the site right now is bordered by AR, our agricultural rural zone. But clearly this area has a lot to do with right now what is sort of the retail and hospitality at that interchange that's happening. The site is incredibly hilly when you get out there. There's a change of around 130 feet from where you are on Athens Boonesboro down to sort of that low spot that we can see. Let's see if it'll let me, in sort of bisecting the back of the property. Which is also part of the reason why you can't really see much of blue sky even when you're traveling along Athens Boonesboro Road. because it pretty quickly starts to dive down. So it's kind of hidden back in there. But those same topographic challenges are the reason that the site itself isn't necessarily appropriate for what we would call sort of the bigger shovel-ready industry that we're seeing in places like Coldstream or on Citation. It's because there really isn't that much land that's out there that's good and flat for big-scale buildings. So what's happening out there is a lot of smaller shops of specialty trade, which are really what help keep industry thriving within Lexington. So we had planning and the team did a very robust engagement process, which was everything from going business to business and getting feedback, as well as we hosted two barbecues, a fall and a spring, to have not only we wanted to hear from the property owners and the businesses, but we also wanted to definitely hear from the employees that are out there. It was really important for us to hear from everyone that's using the site and knowing how and what sort of improvements they wanted to see. We also hosted a survey, we talked to focus groups, and we also met with the old Richmond Road Neighborhood Association. One of the really kind of fun ways that we engaged with the site is we gave folks blue sky bucks that they got to use to vote on some of the elements that they really wanted to see the most out there. Resoundingly, food hall or some sort of food options was really high up there. For those of you that have been out there, there's really just McDonald's, Dairy Queen, some things in the convenience stores that are out there. But that's really challenging for a lot of folks that work out there because if you get a half hour for lunch, there's no way to make it either in town or up or down to another exit on the highway to get food. So it's really a food desert out there at the moment. The other thing that we heard a lot was the need for a reliable power network. And when we say reliable power network, what we're really talking about is redundant services. So typically in in-town neighborhoods, if power goes out in one area because a tree goes down or something, you have redundant service so that you don't lose power. Well, that's not what's happening in Blue Sky. So it could be a lovely day out, and they will lose power for a day or two. And that's crushing when you're a small business. Some other things that we heard a lot about were a lot of folks take that time, and they just want to get out of the office, and they're walking on Blue Sky Parkway, which doesn't have a sidewalk and has a lot of industrial trucks that are out there. But they really want that time outdoors or they're moving between different buildings within their businesses. And so it's the idea of options for recreation and even options for respite to sit and just relax for a little bit. We got a lot of great feedback. And like I said, another surprising thing that we heard that was really interesting is that It's really challenging when there's snow or ice because that area does not get plowed. And so if you think about it, if you're driving a large cement truck and it's an icy slope down 130 feet, it becomes very dangerous back there. And oftentimes people will get stuck back at their businesses and they'll have to walk out to Athens Boonesboro to have a friend pick them up. So it's hearing little things like that that we think are things that could be fixed over time. So when we talk about the sort of vision that we use to form the frameworks, one thing that we thought was really interesting was this movement that we're seeing, not just in blue sky, but across the country for what we're calling an executive industrial campus. So it's this move towards having your sort of C-suite offices, your executives, wanting to be close to and next to where the warehousing, manufacturing, distribution of their goods and services are occurring, rather than being separate from them. And so a company like Elliott is a great example of, they're almost creating what they call a campus out there. So that they can have the executives and the administrative facilities right next to the folks that are going out in the trucks day to day. Like I said, there's a desire for walkability and for green spaces. Obviously, there's a need for improvement and safer access, especially along Athens Boonesboro. For those of you that have attended a meeting out in Athens, you know that as soon as you go over the bridge and the interchange right there at 75, it narrows down pretty quickly, but they're still driving like they've just come off Richmond Road or off the highway. So there is this greater need for improved safety. But that all being said, we still need to acknowledge that we need to maintain the industrial character out there. So it was really important also to think about how Blue Sky was situated in relation to the rest of the Urban Growth Master Plan. Because right now it feels very much like an island, but in reality if the number of dwelling units or the flex space ever comes on board in the next 10, 20 years, And all of a sudden, Blue Sky is very much situated to be an employment center that can be very close to residential. So in that way, we also need to think a lot about how can we provide alternatives of how people move from their residences, from their recreation, to where they are working. So the expansion of the bicycle pedestrian network all the way along 8th and Spoonsboro, all the way out to reach Blue Sky. the potential connection of Cane Break up to Todd's Road. These are all things that were at the forefront when we were designing. So we thought of this really in two phases. There's sort of the low hanging fruit, what can we impact at the local government area. And so very simple things like that are the sort of promotion of this executive industrial campus like we're talking about, and then the enhancement of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure throughout Blue Sky. And really all that means is the addition of sidewalks and side paths along the length of Blue Sky so that people can walk safely at their lunch break or walk safely between buildings. There's also, the city owns a property in the back But we feel like it could be used as a more enhanced stormwater amenity. Obviously, all of the water is flowing back, sheet flowing back to that area. And if you've been out there, you know it's a giant sea of pavement. So we think that there's a way to slow and treat some of that water before it gets into our larger creek system. But also making that a more functional amenity for folks. This is sort of an example that we're using of how we think the street section of Blue Sky can be improved. And what's sort of interesting with this is this is not covered under the Complete Street Design Manual that you all got to hear, I think, at your last meeting. It doesn't cover really an industrial road section. So what we really wanted to hit in here is that the vehicular lanes still stay what is needed for larger trucks that are out there. We're still acknowledging it's an industrial site. But at the moment, the right-of-way, we think in most places is wide enough to have a five-foot sidewalk on one side and a ten-foot side path for more people to walk side by side or eventually for bicycles to go along the outer edge of blue sky. And also the inclusion of street trees. And we heard a lot about street lighting being important out there. There's no street lighting out there, so it is pitch black out there at night. In the second phase, what we started to look at was that there's a really large, almost what we call a mega block in the middle. That is where the Edessa Carvana site is. And not to say that they're not using that site as it is right now, but we know that the ever-changing nature of markets, we need to be aware of this. And a long-term vision could potentially be the idea of putting a central spine right up through the middle, which would allow for additional frontage of the depth and width of these sort of shops of specialty trade that is already prolific out there. So we're just kind of continuing along that idea and really setting it up so that the eastern half of Blue Sky Parkway becomes this executive industrial campus, while the western half of Blue Sky Parkway stays very much the workhorse that's carrying the cement trucks and the big rigs back to where they need to get to. Some other things that, oh no, that we're, yes, sorry. You have about 15 more slides. How much time do you think you need to get through the rest? I can talk very quickly and get through them in three minutes. Yeah, I just want to make sure we have enough time for discussion and questions. Thank you. Yeah. So a couple key things, talking about the use of a roundabout and some narrowing down along Athens-Spoonsboro, again that's for safety. We looked at, Gresham Smith helped us look at the I-75 interchange and improvements that we could do there. So again, thinking about a diverging diamond, so similar to Harrodsburg Road, that would allow for bicycle and pedestrian safety, but still maintaining the width of that bridge section so it's not a huge extra cost when the time comes. And that's to get people and bicycles out to Blue Sky. So the catalytic sites, like we talked about, there's the stormwater amenity. And we think that could include a boardwalk, a walking loop, a place for food trucks in the interim until we can get some brick and mortar stores out there. We did a sort of proof of concept test of what this new internal road could look like. And also really re-envisioning what the gateway to Blue Sky could be along Athens Boonesboro. With this idea of really pushing mixed use commercial so that you have the opportunity for restaurants, your day to day retail or anything else that you might need if you work out there. As part of this, we did do an industrial zoning language update. It was mostly a clean up and a lot of that had to do with, we have nested zoning within our industrial language that talks about what you can do in this zone, then you can do in this zone, which then you can do in this zone. So think of like a nesting doll of all of that. But what becomes difficult then is you don't understand the unintended consequences that happen when you change one zone across the others. We also wanted to focus on impact classification. So really focusing on how the land is being used for its impacts rather than what we're manufacturing. So what is the noise? What is the vibration? What is the dust that is being produced? used rather than classifying it by the type of manufacturing. And then talking about new technologies and business models. So for instance, co-locating a coffee roastery with a place that, a cafe where you could then taste that coffee is not currently allowed in our industrial zone. There, I got through it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in for any comments or questions that you may have. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation. I have a quick question about, because we just talked about infrastructure funding in our last presentation through finance. And since this is already built out, I don't know what the infrastructure requirements are, like sewer-wise and storm-wise. I don't know if that was built out in this master plan. So we did look at that, and because the area is built out, really any sort of redevelopment would be essentially, for the most part, we think a one-for-one replacement. So currently, all of that infrastructure already exists out there. Now that, of course, changes drastically if the areas further in on Athens-Brunsboro start to become developed. and then you do start to put a burden on the existing stormwater and sewer infrastructure out there. So it's sort of a domino effect. So there is sanitary sewer out there? Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. And I just didn't, like, yeah, my questions kind of go to I just don't know if they're going to play a part in our infrastructure funding piece or if that's going to be separate. and that might be someone from planning telling me that. Good afternoon. Hal Bailey, Division of Planning. So that would be a separate conversation. So because these facilities are already there, we're talking about enhancements. It would likely be a partnership with those businesses there, or as new development comes online, or it would be a government-led project. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what happens out there. That's all I have, Chair. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation. It was very informative, learned a lot. I just have one question, which is that one of the recurring themes from public engagement on this was the need for reliable power and Internet infrastructure. So I was just wondering if you could speak to, given the recent moratorium on data center development and the draft ZODA released by planning, how do the infrastructure investments contemplated in this plan interact with the potential impact of that development? And how do we ensure that those investments are also benefiting existing businesses in the area? Sure. Sure. Well, and I think, I sort of mentioned it earlier, but it's not necessarily that the businesses out there need additional power for what they're doing. What they want to see is that redundancy in power. So I think when we're thinking about it like that, it's not so much, it definitely wasn't a data center question, it was a how do we just make sure that our power doesn't go out question. thank you so much yeah council member baxter thank you chair um samantha i'm going to take it once that question one step further so um as we talk about power and fiber have we had any conversations with those service providers like i'm assuming that that would fall to be their responsibility not necessarily government responsibility correct that is a wonderful question councilmember baxter we have reached out to ku metronet spectrum windstream and we have been informed that metronet will be extending their services out into the industrial area which the businesses are excited beyond measure so they have told us they're hoping that build out will actually start this fall so that's a very exciting news when it comes to internet as far as power because the area does not currently have street lights that takes a bit of capital investment that either the local government can contribute to or hopefully if an industrial authority of some sort was created can can contribute to that effort so essentially once they put the street lights in then they could create that redundancy that's our hope is that what okay i just want to make sure i understand it thank you thank you chair um i have one question that might actually be more for planning staff. But I wanted to talk about the zone change recommendations and the timeline for that. So I know we had originally talked about, you know, the recommendations coming out of this process where that we needed to modernize some of our zoning ordinances, including our industrial zones and maybe some of the business zones. And some of the conversation around that did have to do, was related to data center ordinances. So now we have pulled the data center part out, but we still need to move forward with the industrial zone updates as well. So could you give all of us a little bit of an update and an update for the public of the timeline for those two processes and where they are? Yes, I will let Director Duncan speak to the data center zoning ordinance text amendment process. But for the Blue Sky Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment, We are hoping to initiate that process later this summer, and that ZODA would focus on the I1, I2, and B4 zones. So just three zones that we're looking to update. And I've mentioned previously in previous meetings that we have not touched those zones until we created them, I believe, in 1983. So a lot of the industries that we define and mention, we don't have anymore. And we also have industries that now exist that we need to define. So that will be beginning later this summer and will be coming to you all hopefully in the fall. Okay, thank you. I see Director Duncan coming up. Thank you, Madam Chair. The data center ZODA is in draft form now, and that will be considered at a public hearing on July the 30th with the Planning Commission at 1.30 in this room. And then once the Planning Commission makes their recommendation, it will be returned to the council, and then you all can take action from that point. Okay. Thank you for that. And just, colleagues, so you know, these are now moving as separate processes because we initiated the ZODA for data centers separately, so they won't be moving together now. The data center one will come to us first, and then the rest of the industrial code updates will come to us after that. So thank you. I don't see anyone else signed in, so I appreciate everyone's work on this. Thank you. Okay, colleagues, our last presentation today is on a sense of place. Sierra Coleman, our opportunity officer in the mayor's office, is going to do this presentation. Council Member Brown, this is your item as well, so do you have any remarks? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Chair, and I'll just say that since Councilmember Plowman and Tiffany Brown started this initiative several years ago with those persons both departing LFUCG, Sierra has stepped up to take over this initiative. Myself and Councilmember Hale are now part of this as well. So I'm excited about what direction this initiative is going in the future of it. So with that, I'll turn it over. Turn it back to you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Coleman. Go ahead with your presentation. Good afternoon. Sierra Coleman, Opportunity Officer in the Mayor's Office. Thank you all for the opportunity to come and present this update on a sense of place. Our mission is to remember and celebrate the history of Fayette County's rural black hamlets, and this is just a picture here of students outside of the school in Cadentown. So just a brief introduction, as Council Member Brown mentioned, And in April of 2022, former 12th District Councilmember Kathy Plowman put the topic of Hamlets into the Planning and Public Safety Committee for further research and dialogue. As a next step, a steering committee was formed to educate and inform council and the public about the history of Hamlets in our rural communities in order to remember and celebrate their heritage. And this is just some pictures of the most current and active steering committee meetings. This is a great example of public-private partnership, a good co-governance model. We all work together, local government, community members, to make decisions. So just a brief timeline of some key events. Three hamlets were founded before the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Kentucky, Fort Spring, Athens, and Coldtown. Following the emancipation, there were several more settlements founded, including Bracktown, Maddoxtown, and Gemtown. These were thriving communities with schools, churches, and businesses. In the 1950s, desegregation efforts and urban development led to the gradual dissolution of many rural black settlements. And if we fast forward to the 1990s, the Cadentown Neighborhood Association worked to save the Rosenwald School at 705 Cadent Lane. In 2022, a Sense of Place initiative was established. We started phase one of school renovations and improvements in March of 2025. Those wrapped up in June of 2025. And this year we're starting phase two of our church renovations. And I'll talk more about that a little later. So this is just a list of the identified rural settlements in Hamlets and Fayette County. Many of these are no longer rural, although they were at the time, and many have since been developed. developed. So these communities had distinct characteristics and they were rich in tradition, culture and heritage. Just about every Hamlet had their own school, either a free school or a Rosenwald school. They all had cemeteries, either dedicated cemeteries or cemeteries on the properties of their homes. We hear about religious traditions in Fort Springs like church, Creek Baptism, so we know that churches were the anchors of these communities and they also had their own economies. They had local grocery and convenience stores that all were a part of helping these communities to thrive. So the Cadentown community serves somewhat as the headquarters for the work of A Sense of Place. I think mainly because the Rosenwald School is still standing there on the property. Conservation efforts began with the Cadentown Neighborhood Association in the 1990s. The neighborhood worked with state historical offices to obtain grants to buy and preserve the property, and it was acquired by LFUCG in 2005. Our plan is for the entire property, the church, the school, cemetery to become a dedicated cultural heritage hub. the houses, the history and legacy of all of the hamlets in Fayette County. Which brings us to our project updates. So we started with the schoolhouse improvements and repairs. So the wood siding and exterior building envelope was repaired and improved. We had windows repaired and applied fresh exterior paint. We added an HVAC system to improve functionality and year-round use. and the ADA accessible ramp was upgraded to enhance accessibility for all visitors. These pictures here just kind of show us the progression of these improvements over the years. We had a ribbon cutting to unveil the renovations of the school at our 2025 Juneteenth celebration. Another project was our cemetery cleanup and site identification. We wanted to identify potential unmarked graves on the property. there's a cemetery located directly behind the school. And so we started with dead and invasive vegetation removal, and there are still treatments that are ongoing. We had a comprehensive cemetery survey completed using geophysical, metal detecting, pedestrian, and ground penetrating radar methods to identify potential unmarked burials. 63 potential graves were identified, including 46 unmarked graves. And survey findings indicate additional unmarked graves may still be present. So this just highlights the importance of continued work and preservation and documentation efforts. Thanks to the work of one of our steering committee meetings, Ms. Yvonne Giles, we were able to identify some individuals that may be buried on that property. And we had a temporary marker installed in November of 2025 to recognize and commemorate the work that's been done there. We hope to have the permanent one up soon. So we wanted to determine if the school or the church should, which would be the right place to hold and exhibit or hold artifacts. And so we had a feasibility study completed in March of 2025 by Travis Robinson to determine our options. It was proposed in the feasibility study that the old Canantown Baptist Church be the place that would house and exhibit. and that the school remain its own standalone artifact. The study also recommended a traveling exhibit and educational exhibits on Rosenwald and local history, which we have already started to curate. It also recommended site enhancements such as interpretive signage, cemetery access improvements, exterior lighting, artifact preservation planning, and the continued restoration of the historic structures on the property. which brings us to our current project. Stephen Albert and Associates completed a cost estimate for improvements recommended in the feasibility study. Phase one is what we're focused on right now and that will be the exterior of the church, repairs and enhancements as well as an ADA accessible pathway connecting the schoolhouse to the church. And we plan to start bidding for the project this summer. Our hope is that these initial improvements will help us generate some buzz to help our fundraising efforts so that we can continue to raise money needed to complete the bathroom in the interior of the church renovation. And we're looking at this project costing us over $800,000 to complete. So fundraising. Our initial goal for fundraising for the church and school cemetery was $500,000. Thanks to our generous donors and sponsors, we have well exceeded that. So our current total raised is over $721,000, with a total expended of a little over $200,000. We have a current balance of $520,429, and this balance is distributed across several accounts, including parks, cemetery maintenance, and our BGCF account. We have a spendable BGCF balance, but we also have a BGCF endowment, which is restricted, but we receive a small payout at the beginning of each year to our spendable account. In total, we have been awarded five grants, and we currently have five that are pending that we're waiting to hear back from. Community engagement. As I mentioned in the beginning, we have an established steering committee composed of community members, including representatives that live in these hamlets. We have hosted multiple community engagement meetings, including oral history sessions and artifact collection efforts. Our annual Juneteenth celebration continues to serve as a key opportunity to connect with residents, to share history, strengthen community relationships, and to build trust. and we really want our ongoing engagement efforts to ensure that the community voice remains central to planning and preservation efforts. These are just a few photos from our most recent Juneteenth celebration in Fort Spring. Many of you were able to attend. We worked hand-in-hand with New Vine Baptist Church to make this event a success, and they added their special touch to it. We had a great turnout and we look forward to bringing this celebration to different Hamlets in the years to come. So the Sense of Place Historical Marker Program aims to support the installation of historic markets in our Hamlet communities. The program framework for this program is still being developed. That includes application process, review committee, research, and the guidelines for the program. We already have the funds set aside to pay for the fabrication of the markers that will be installed. We're just awaiting final program structure and approval guidelines from the Department of Historical Preservation to ensure alignment and consistency. So we're really excited and we hope to get this out this year. So these are just a few of our long term and short term goals. We want to continue our community engagement process to gather input from the residents and preservation experts on the unique needs and priorities of these communities. We want to conduct a comprehensive inventory and assessment of the historic black resources and landmarks within these hamlets, including building structures and cultural landscapes for future opportunities to educate and preserve the history. We want to invest in capacity building initiatives and economic development strategies to support the long-term vibrancy and self-determination of these communities. We want to establish a clear organizational structure and develop long-term plans for the Canentown Historic Site and the Ascent to Place program. These are just a few of our sponsors, which we are very thankful and grateful for. and hopefully we'll be able to add a few more on that list soon. And happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ms. Coleman, for the presentation. Colleagues, go ahead and sign in for any comments or questions. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Sierra, for the presentation. I just want to say that some of the things, if it wasn't explicit in the presentation in regards to the next capital improvements that we're looking to make at Caden Town are going to be site improvements to make the site more accessible in regards to ADA accessibility to both structures and then also access to the cemetery area that's being preserved right now. And then I'd just also like to thank our folks and our partners in the park, Parks and Recreation, that have stepped up every time we've asked them, and then also General Services, specifically Lisa Grover who has been working with us on this project. Another thing that Sierra had pointed out is we have started having conversations with the law department about the long-term future organizational structure of this initiative. It started off as a project, and there's an advisory committee that puts in a lot of hours, but we think that it's important and are still trying to explore what's the best structure for this organization moving forward to make sure that it continues to have government support and then also input and leadership from the communities. We think that's very important. So I just wanted to kind of add that as commentary to the presentation. Thank you. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Coleman, for the presentation. I definitely want to commend the steering committee and your office for the Juneteenth celebration that was planned. It was excellent. That was my first time going to Fort Springs. And it was an amazing, amazing experience. I look forward to going back and attending church there. It was a very special place, so great job on the Juneteenth Festival there. My question is about the Rosenwald School in Catentown. I received a letter from a former steering committee member that expressed concern about the Catentown Neighborhood Association having access to the school to do kind of the programming that they used to do years ago. So I didn't know if you had any updates about that relationship. Does the Neighborhood Association, do they have representation on the committee? Or are they kept aware of what's going on? And do they or do they not have access to that building and kind of a status update with that? I'm just curious. You want to? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member, for bringing that up. That's, we've been in contact, and I see somebody from parks coming up. But we've been in contact not recently, not since the letter's been sent, but we've talked to the person that sent that letter in previous discussions. I think we are open and are willing to talk to them about working out an agreement to allow access. They do have representation on the committee and have from the very beginning. I think it's just about how do we, I think the access that they had before, I think it's going to be challenging to have that level of access going forward without making sure that the building is taken care of and liability is addressed. But I think we're willing and do plan to reach back out and have further communication about how we can partner with the neighborhood association. Deputy, do you want to add anything else? Good afternoon, committee members. Adrienne Tocler, Deputy Director for Recreation. There was a long history with a neighborhood member providing tours and talks in the school leading up to the pandemic. And that access was pretty fluid. And as we have started to activate the space ourselves, we have been in continual conversations about how, as Council Member Brown has indicated, how to continue that as well as made ourselves available to open it in the event in conjunction with a sense of place if they want to continue to use it for talks or tours. Thank you for the update. Thank you. I don't see anyone else signed in. I have one question. It's kind of building on what you said previously, Council Member Brown, about having a more formal structure. Or does that look like maybe having a board or commission that's specific to this like we have for some of our other community centers? Yes, ma'am. I think that's what that looks like. The two examples I think that law gave us as examples is the Lyric Theater Board. They're their own entity. We own the building just like we own Cadentown as a city. The board itself appoints members to their board of directors and then the city, the mayor's office also appoints members. So I think it's going to be a structure similar to that. I can't remember the other agency that law had referenced that we might want to take a look at their structure. But it's two examples that currently exist that could be a guiding force for how we set this up. Yeah, I don't recall the other one either, but. Okay, let's see. Thank you. I don't see anyone else signed in. Thank you for the presentation and for all your work. Thank you all. That brings us to our last agenda item for today. Please sign in if you have any updates or changes to any items on the referral list. Council Member Brown. So, Chair, I'll just ask a question. And the short-term rentals has been in committee for annual update. Do you think we still need to keep that in committee as an annual update item or remove it and put it back as issues may arise? Do you have any thoughts? I think that at this point, now that things have kind of evened out and the ordinance is working and we have the more formalized process, I feel there's less change, right, that we might expect. So I think it would be appropriate to potentially remove that. And then if something does change where we feel like we need an update, then we could put it back in committee for any kind of review that we need. Okay. So, yeah, with that, I'll just make a motion to remove short-term rentals from committee. So move. Okay. I have a motion and a second. Any item or any discussion on the motion? Okay. Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Any other items to be discussed today for our referrals? Okay, I don't see any. Seeing as no one else has any changes, we have reached the end of our agenda. Our next meeting is on September 8th. I'm calling our meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.