# Environmental Quality & Public Works (EQPW) Committee - August 18, 2026 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · August 18, 2026 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6855 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6855?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2026-08-18 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: August 19, 2026 - **Length**: 15,454 words - **Speakers**: Chair, Council Member > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed with OpenAI's open-source Whisper large-v3-turbo model, run locally by The Lexington Times. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude. Verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Environmental Quality & Public Works (EQPW) Committee met on August 18, 2026, at 1:00 PM in the Council Chamber at Lexington-Fayette Urban County, 200 E. Main St, Lexington, KY 40507. The committee addressed five agenda items, including approval of the previous meeting's summary and updates on several public works and environmental initiatives. The committee took four votes during the meeting and heard no public comments. Two items were approved: the June 16, 2026 committee summary and the Traffic Engineering Manual Updates. Three additional items were presented for informational purposes: the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP) Update, Traffic Calming - Street Art and Quick Builds, and the Urban Forestry / Street Tree Update. ## Attendance The following members were present at the Committee meeting on August 18, 2026: * Council member Curtis * Council member Beasley * Council member Reynolds * Council member Lynch * Council member Morton * Council member Eblen * Vice Mayor Wu * Council member Sheehan * Council member Elliot-Baxter No members were absent or late. ## Votes and Decisions The Committee held four voice votes during the August 18, 2026 meeting, with all measures passing unanimously. **Approval of June 16, 2026 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee Summary** [timestamp: 0:02:55] The Committee approved the summary from the previous meeting by voice vote. The motion passed. **Approval of the Proposed Traffic Engineering Manual** [timestamp: 1:03:36] The Committee approved the proposed traffic engineering manual by voice vote. The motion passed. **Approval of Revisions to Chapter 17B Related to Street Tree Maintenance** [timestamp: 1:30:34] The Committee approved revisions to Chapter 17B concerning street tree maintenance by voice vote. The motion passed. **Approval of Revised Guidelines for the Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program** [timestamp: 1:30:34] The Committee approved revised guidelines for the Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program by voice vote. The motion passed. ## Approval of June 16, 2026 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee Summary The committee reviewed and approved the summary from its June 16, 2026 meeting. [timestamp: 0:02:55] The summary document (agenda item 0388-25) was presented for formal approval as part of standard meeting procedures. The committee discussed and voted on the accuracy and completeness of the previously recorded meeting summary. **Outcome:** The June 16, 2026 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee Summary was approved. ## Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP) Update [timestamp: 00:03:27] The committee received an informational presentation on the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP) from Makayla Geary. The update focused on traffic calming measures and community engagement strategies being implemented through the program. The presentation covered the NTMP's approach to managing traffic in residential neighborhoods through various calming initiatives and outlined the strategies being used to engage community members in the program's development and implementation. This was an informational agenda item with no formal action required from the committee. ## Traffic Calming - Street Art and Quick Builds [timestamp: 0:26:47] The committee received a presentation on the use of street art and quick builds as traffic calming measures. Brandy Peacher led the discussion on this agenda item (0737-25). The presentation highlighted recent projects and future plans for implementing these innovative approaches to traffic calming. Street art and quick builds represent alternative strategies for slowing vehicle traffic and improving street safety in targeted areas. This was an informational agenda item, with the committee receiving updates on the current status and scope of these traffic calming initiatives. ## Traffic Engineering Manual Updates The committee reviewed updates to the Traffic Engineering Manual during this agenda item (identifier 0707-26), which provides guidelines for developers and contractors [timestamp: 0:52:36]. David presented the manual updates to the committee. The presentation covered revisions to the guidelines that developers and contractors use when undertaking traffic engineering work. The committee approved the Traffic Engineering Manual updates. ## Urban Forestry / Street Tree Update [timestamp: 1:04:38] Heather Wilson presented an update on urban forestry initiatives to the committee. The presentation covered the city's tree planting programs and proposed revisions to ordinances governing street trees and urban forest management. This was an informational presentation with no formal action required. The committee received the update on current urban forestry efforts and related policy considerations. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of June 16, 2026 Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee Summary - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of the proposed traffic engineering manual - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of revisions to Chapter 17B related to street tree maintenance - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of revised guidelines for the Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program --- ## Full transcript Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome everyone. It's one o'clock on the 18th of August and this is the meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee and I'm calling it to order. I want to thank you all for being here. We have quite a few items on the agenda today. There's four of them. But the first item on the agenda is the approval of the June 16, 2026 committee summary. Are there any corrections or additions? I heard a movement and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Like sign. Okay, that passes. The first item on our agenda today is the NTMP management, the program update. and this provides a process for residents to partner with traffic engineering to access and address neighborhood traffic concerns related to vehicle speed and volume. Council Member Sheehan, this and the next are your items. Do you have any opening remarks? Thank you, Chair. Council Members, you know from the Street Safety Task Force, we've been working on traffic calming measures and increasing safety in our traffic network more broadly. And our Neighborhood Traffic Management Program is one of the programs that our offices work with the most that help with those traffic calming measures. So as a part of our Complete Streets Action Plan, there was a call for review of this program specifically. But then it's not unrelated to the Quick Builds program that we've been talking about as well. So the two presentations that you'll have today will give us a status update on the review of our neighborhood traffic management program, but then also how that relates to the quick build program that we have been working on. So I appreciate everyone who is presenting today and the thoughtful discussion that I'm sure we will have. Thanks, Chair. Thank you, and I am going to leave this to you to present, Roger and Michaela. Thank you. Hello, members of the Urban County Council, I'm Roger Mulvaney. I'm a traffic engineer manager with the Division of Traffic Engineering. I manage this section of the signs and markings and NTMP section. Good afternoon. I'm Michaela Gary. I'm the Vision Zero Coordinator and Senior Planner for the Lexington Area MPO. I'm here today because I've been assisting with a review of the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program, or NTMP, which is one of the tasks in the Complete Streets Action Plan. We will provide you with an update on that review and what the next steps are. The NTMP was developed to provide a process for identifying and addressing neighborhood quality of life issues related to speeding motorists, excessive traffic volumes, and safety on local residential streets. Under the program, the NTMP staff in traffic engineering works with residents to identify the types and severity of traffic problems. Residents are encouraged to be involved with the NTMP process by participating through conversations about neighborhood traffic concerns, circulating petitions, attending meetings, and or deliberating traffic calming interventions based on collected traffic data and solutions proposed by the NTMP team. When a traffic calming request is received, the NTMP team conducts a preliminary field review. That leads to either a type 1 or basic traffic engineering intervention like a speed limit sign or escalating the project to a formal NTMP process. That process begins with a petition to circulate in the study area to make neighbors aware that a traffic study could be commenced if there's enough local support for the street or intersection to receive a more thorough evaluation for a traffic calming intervention. The NTMP was created over 25 years ago and was intended to alleviate traffic calming concerns on local residential streets through the use of traffic controls such as signs, pavement markings or more impactful interventions such as speed humps or speed tables. The NTMP is in traffic engineering and was originally its own section in that division until it was merged with the signs and markings section of traffic engineering in 2004 upon on the retirement of a former section manager of that section. The NTMP guide was created along with the NTMP and was last revised in 2016. The NTMP has installed numerous traffic calming interventions over the years. Since the beginning of the NTMP, we've installed 190 speed tables or speed humps across Lexington, 110 radar speed feedback signs, and for the first half of this year, we've installed nine edge line pavement marking projects. Over the years, we've installed many miles of edge lines across the city on city collectors. We've been evaluating the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program by talking with key stakeholders to better understand what works well and what could be improved upon. The discussion started with traffic engineering staff to better understand the nuances of the program. Traffic engineering, the Complete Streets Coordinator, and I have been meeting periodically since February to conduct a thorough internal review of the program. We also met with six council members to learn about their experiences and understand their perspectives on the program. Finally, we met with three constituents who have submitted an NTMP request. We also heard from a fourth constituent who was unable to meet. The constituents we heard from have both successful and unsuccessful requests. Through our conversations with the key stakeholders, we heard some common themes for what works well with the program. The petition and ballot processes are a critical component of the NTMP to help foster community buy-in for the projects. The actual mechanics of the petition and ballot were identified as a challenge, but the opportunity provided by them to educate and engage the neighborhood on potential traffic coming interventions were cited as invaluable from the majority of stakeholders that we spoke to. The studies that traffic engineering complete as part of an NTMP request are highly regarded and provided valuable information on the existing conditions of the streets and what interventions, if any, could help reduce speeding on the corridor. Communication with staff and council members was also consistently applauded. Constituents felt that questions were answered promptly and thoroughly once a request began to move through the program. Traffic engineering averages more than 300 traffic coming requests per year, so this is a testament to their administration of the program. Finally, we found that the goals of the NTMP are largely being met as the program exists today. We also heard some common themes on challenges faced when interacting or running the program. As mentioned previously, more than 300 traffic coming requests are received by Traffic Engineering each year, but not all requests are eligible for the NTMP, which is intended to reduce speeds on local residential streets on a block-by-block basis. Through this work, we have also heard concerns on collector streets and other corridors where traffic volumes, street function, or the complexity of the issue fall outside the NTMP framework. In some cases, those locations may require more than a single traffic coming treatment, which has highlighted the need for another pathway. LPUCG is now working to make more clearly define those types of requests, and the next presentation on quick builds will take a closer look at that emerging approach. Oh, I apologize. I went too early. We also heard that there is a strong desire for an easier way to track the status of various NTMP projects. While traffic engineering and council members are very responsive in providing updates, that communication can be burdensome. For most NTMP and traffic coming interventions are new concepts, and it requires a great deal of education and engagement with the neighborhoods to help them understand what is being proposed, how the interventions may benefit them, and what their role in the process is. There's an opportunity to create more educational tools or toolkits that could be provided to neighborhoods as they go through the program. While the ballot and petition processes help foster community buy-in, they can also be onerous in their current form. We heard comments on the challenges experienced with certified mail, the short timelines to return votes, and whether two votes are necessary. There is a desire for a more streamlined and accessible process. The NTMP is a well-known service that traffic engineering provides. Brandy Peacher is presenting on the Quick Build program later, and that program could be added to the traffic engineering umbrella. But most of what traffic engineering provides is outside the NTMP and any future Quick Build program. We're responsible for tens of thousands of traffic signs, hundreds of traffic signals and beacons, coordinating with utility companies for street lighting, handling parking complaints, issuing lane blockage permits, coordinating with streets and roads regarding the placement of pavement markings and yellow curbing, and more. Many traffic safety issues are addressed in our everyday activities through the maintenance of signal timing, placement of curve warning signs, or other traffic engineering solutions that do not need to go through the NTMP or Quick Build program. The NTMP works well for local neighborhood traffic issues. buy-in is a hallmark of the NTMP program. The NTMP process can be streamlined and we're planning to explore opportunities to better educate the public about what the NTMP is and what it can and cannot do, look to better distribute petitions and ballot cards, evaluate our reports to make them more efficient to create and disseminate, and consider new options for how the cost share is implemented for those projects where it may be relevant. We We can explore ways to try to improve renter participation. Finally, Traffic Engineering expects to request a program manager to help manage the workload and facilitate projects to free engineers to allow them to focus more on the engineering evaluations and recommendations. To elaborate more on streamlining the process for constituents and residents, we have already launched an NTMP portal for the public to enter traffic calming requests on our City's traffic engineering webpage. This process is the beginning of a way to better track projects, map project locations, all with the goal of enhancing timelines. Traffic engineering has also heard the comments about making it easier to vote for the proposed Type 2 or higher order traffic calming solutions like speed tables using a yet to be vetted method for secure online voting. There are opportunities to work with others in LFUCG such as the PIE team, MPO or others to help us work with neighborhood leaders and champions for traffic calming solutions and to spread the word about what we do and how we can improve the quality of life in those areas. Some proposed ideas that could help us manage the workload better is to propose submission and funding cycles to try and make delivering projects more predictable in terms of a timeline. Finally, any review of the NTP can include a review of qualifying thresholds or traffic calming criteria. This is included here as data collection. The reason why I said this is because as we have better technology, whether it's using aggregate data from the internet or our own tools, we have more ability to try different things and study traffic. That should conclude it. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. Colleagues please sign in if you have some questions. There's plenty of time for them. Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for your presentation and your work on this. I know that it is a very difficult thing to sometimes manage constituent expectations regards to these types of projects, and I really, really appreciate the effort you've put into modernizing that experience for them. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about what you were hoping to, what methods you might use to pursue increased renter participation. That's something that would need a little bit more research, but one thing we do permit currently already is for our initial petition, when that goes out door to door, it doesn't have to be a property owner to sign a petition. It could be an occupant of that house. It doesn't have to be an owner. So that's one thing we've already done. That's the challenge, though, is to figure out what the next step would be for if we still have a ballot process, because typically that's gone to the property owners. So we need some more time to vet that, but it is something we've heard, and we're going to see what we can come up with. Thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, it's with this type of stuff, the level of participation and time that it can take to go through that petition process. I do think it leads to situations oftentimes where those who are able to actually go through the process and navigate it are folks who are, they have the capacity because they are of a certain socioeconomic status. and renters, people who are working class don't always necessarily have the capacity on a day-to-day basis, but they're no less deserving of these improvements. And so I look forward to continuing the work to make that more accessible for them. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Beasley. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for y'all's presentation. I just have one question. I'm just curious. what the difference between edge line and bike lanes are and how I could tell the difference if I didn't work inside city government. That's a great question, Council Member. Bike lanes will typically have signs that say bike lane and have a little bike logo on the ground so that those are spaced at certain intervals. And they should be fairly well marked, whereas edge lines typically where we've installed them, while they're the same color they won't have the extra signage so that area behind that edge line is wide enough for a parked car where a bike lane isn't so that's maybe the easiest way to answer that question. It does, thank you. I'm just making sure if we're parking in front of our houses that have the edge line that we're not actually parking in a bike lane. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair and thank you for recognizing me because I don't serve on this committee. Thank you all for the presentation. As you know, we in my office have done a lot of working with neighborhoods on this program because one of the biggest thing I think citywide that our constituents care about is speeding in neighborhoods. So this program is extremely important, I feel like, to our constituents. We talked about in the past, There's been some confusion about the different petitioning process and going back and forth and how much does the street owe as opposed to how much the city is going to cover. I know my office helps out from time to time with covering the street's costs. When you say that you want to streamline the process and work on education, evaluate the petition process, and evaluate the neighborhood match, can you give me some more specifics about what you're looking at in those areas? I'll try, but we've not ironed down anything permanently. But we understand we had heard that through the process of talking to the citizens and council members, their own technical staff, it is onerous to have an initial petition and then potentially a follow-up ballot petition? Could those be merged? Could we make those done through an online portal as opposed to pen and paper and ballot cards and certified mail? So those are some of the questions we're asking, and I think maybe the implication is maybe going digital on those. As far as the cost share component, that's something that could be evaluated. Not really given that too much thought, but this whole process could be looked at. So what steps are you taking to continue to look at those, or what are your next steps in evaluating those processes? I think after this meeting and seeing where we fit in with a quick build program and having feedback from you all, and some of the things we've done behind the scenes that we're not quite ready to go public with yet, we're looking to have some sort of future meeting. I don't know if I can promise anything, but we're looking to update this. we're here for a reason and we understand we're going to update the program. So sometime soon. Okay. I would love to hear more about that. And I appreciate looking into merging the two petition parts because I know my constituents have been confused by that. And then sometimes confused by, you know, what they owe versus what the city is going to cover and how that differs from street to street. But once again, I really appreciate you all working on this and trying to look on ways to improve it and thank you Councilmember Sheehan for working on this as well. Thank you. Thank you Councilmember Lynch. Thank you Chair for recognition since I do not serve on this committee. Thank you for the presentation and my question is regarding the slide that talks about clarifying NTMP's function and purpose and you have put on the slide that the program manager is going to organize and facilitate projects. Is that something we're transitioning to? And I was wondering what that's going to look like in comparison to what it looks like now if that was proposed. And having discussions with our director, Jeff Neal, I think the intent for that position would be someone who may or may not be an engineer, but is someone who would be more of a face of the program to work with council members and the public and to support the engineers that make the assignments. a manager, but maybe not necessarily an engineer, to help track in the projects. Does that make sense? It does. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Morton. Thank you. Thank you. So one concern I have that tends to be raised from residents involves the first class mail delivery within that NTMD ballots. And some residents, being that some residents aren't home with first class mail, some residents are working. And then we know that if they're not home, that gets returned to the post office. And we're expecting them to then go to the post office, pick it up, and fill it out. And if they don't pick it up, then it counts as a no vote. So I was wondering what changes can we make moving forward to ensure residents have a meaningful opportunity to receive complete return ballots and not have barriers in place to take part of this program? That was certainly one of the concerns that we heard, is that when someone doesn't pick up that certified mail piece, that it's back at the post office, and if they can't get it, it does get returned back to traffic. And in that case, it becomes a no vote, as you said. I think without promising, I mean, what I'm trying to say is we're looking at doing something digitally, so that shouldn't be a problem. But we don't have anything finalized yet, but we're looking forward to ways of doing that digitally, so that's not an issue anymore. Another concern is kind of tied to the timeline. You know, once you get into these processes, there's strict timelines. And in the cases that I've dealt with as a council member, the only ones that made it over the threshold was due to extensions, due to actually boots on the ground, community involvement, engagement with my office, and organizing with those neighborhoods. So are we looking at that timeline as well, and is there any recommendations for that? That could be evaluated, yes. We're sensitive to timeline because we hear that the whole process takes too long, and then there's areas where we try to cut so we can look at the whole process. That makes sense. And just related to the timeline, you know, in, like I said, the majority of the cases that I have, due to the ballots and those different things, they're just never reaching that threshold. and then you get to open towards a deadline and then it's just almost well when you reach when you go over the deadline you're not gonna get anything so extend the timeline almost only gives for certain cases that there are community engagement taking place gives the opportunity for that those mitigations to be put in place or even to get over the threshold so I think specifically within my experience I have not had one get over the threshold without the extension of a timeline and then in some cases even the extension of a timeline didn't even help with that. So on to that kind of community engagement piece, the ones that have been able to help get over the threshold, we literally had to come up with a community engagement plan. They're having to knock doors, put stuff in people's doors, all these different things. And that can also be a barrier and a challenge to folks that literally just want mitigation. They have speeding on the road and they want to see something done. So is there, and I've actually my office has taken responsibility to help with some of that community engagement. Is there a plan in the future for the NTMP office to help to do any of that community engagement or help support that within getting those ballots filled out or communicating with folks and boots on the ground? Take a step. We imply that that would be a yes. I think the program manager would be a helpful position to maybe help facilitate some of that and working with the PIE team or other resources we have in urban county government to help make these processes more well-known and get the word out. I think that's something we could look at. Okay, so I know that there's a lot of things that's being looked into and possible recommendations that come. Is there a possible timeline of when they will come or is there another update going to come to the committee about the changes and when will that take place? I'd like to get back to you about that. I don't have an answer today. I think it may be contingent on how the quick build process goes and how all this works together. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I just have my own quick question. What's the current backlog? And then how do we engage renters since like 50% of homes, they say, are rented? So how do we actually engage a renter? I'm just curious. The way we engage renters is if basically the main way that a renter could be engaged is if there's an initial petition and someone who's a champion for that project goes door to door, knocks on the door, and they sign the petition. That renter or homeowner signs that either way. After that, renters typically aren't engaged. Most of our neighborhoods that we do these studies in are homes that maybe they're single family or like quads or duplexes. And so ballot cards will go to the property owners for those properties, not necessarily the property itself. The first part, the backlog, just depends on the season. We're just getting into the school year. So any traffic calming complaint we got over the summer is now just getting into field work. So I don't have an answer on that, but I can get back to you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. Next up, we have Quick Build. We have a presentation on that, a street safety approach that allows the project team to evaluate the impact of changes in real time. Council Member Sheehan, do you have anything to add on this one? All right. Then we're going to hear from Randy Peacher, and I appreciate you being here with us today. Hi. Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here after hearing from our colleagues here. You just heard from them about the NCMP program. and also heard them say that there is an identified need for an additional pathway to provide additional projects for our community that exceed what the NTMP program can actually do for us. And so quick builds are the emerging pathway to address some of these needs. So I'm joined here today by David, who will be representing Traffic Engineering, and you'll hear from him shortly. And our goal today is to give you an overview of what is a quick build, why is this approach useful, and what we have learned from High Street, and then how do we use that to then inform a consistent program. So to understand the role of quick builds and how they can play into this, let's first take a look at what gap they fill. So as you heard, NTMP is one of the established pathways for neighborhood traffic calming concerns. Other needs can be addressed through routine traffic engineering and their operations. And other larger improvements are addressed through our capital construction programs. But quick builds provide another pathway when a need calls for a more coordinated response that can be delivered with interim improvements. And what I've been calling that is the missing middle. It's more comprehensive than a routine fix. It's faster and more flexible than a traditional capital construction project, but it's able to address a broader range of safety, mobility, and place-based needs that the others may not be able to do in that fashion. So the important point, though, to make is quick build is not better than any of these other items. It is just another tool in our toolbox to address the community needs. So when we use the term quick build, often people think of it as purely a pilot or a short-term project and that it could go away. That is true, but a quick build is an accelerated way of delivering coordinated street improvements, using materials that are adaptable and generally less costly than permanent construction. So the breadth of projects that it can provide is larger than just a really quick temporary project as well. So it allows us to respond sooner, quicker, and often can, through a traditional capital, quicker than a traditional capital project, and gives us flexibility. So I find that we see these requests coming in two types, the safety response and the opportunity and activation. And a project can be both. So the first, safety. This is when we have a documented safety, access, or mobility need. The quick build is a way for us to act on that need sooner rather than waiting for permanent funding or reconstruction. The improvement may remain in place for several years and can be refined over time. The other category of opportunity and activation deals with projects that may move forward because of a grant, a partnership, an event, or some other timely opportunity to align and get synergy with other projects. They can combine a number of things, transportation improvements, placemaking, programming, or public space and demonstration uses in ways for us to explore how a street could be used in different ways. And it allows us to explore what future investment could be. So both of these take on and involve, could involve, testing and learning. And because of that, the materials and their adaptability, people can experience it on the ground. It's hard for us to see something on paper and understand truly how it will function sometimes. And Quick Builds in and of themselves are a community engagement and testing platform. So it allows us to observe them in real time, refine, and inform what we do in the future. So Quick does not mean we improvise. Quick does not mean that it's done on the fly. And interim does not mean it's insignificant. It is addressing a need. It's just giving us flexibility. We're not new to the quick build opportunity. We've been using it for years. We just haven't always called it quick build. We are not starting from scratch on this, but we have a lot of lessons we've learned over the years. Examples you have on the screen here are Shropshire Avenue, which had a pop-up event during Street Fest last year, which is then ultimately leading to a more permanent installation of asphalt art, which also addresses a traffic safety need there as well. Short Street was installed in the summer and fall of 2015, so some time ago. And that configuration, while it was removed, we learned a lot from that first, one of our first quick build projects that are informing what we're doing today. Harrodsburg Road, as you see on here, shows an interim traffic management installation that quickly addressed some safety concerns on this corridor. And now some of these have lasted longer than some of the short-term ones you've seen here. Bryan Avenue remained in an interim improvement for nearly a decade until it then has now become a permanent installation. And then High Street went in last summer, which after assessing has been retained and will be an interim safety improvement for the time being. So the point is that success does not mean every quick build becomes permanent. It means that every project can be assessed, refined, removed, advanced, whatever is appropriate due to that location. So the most recent being High Street. I'm now going to hand it over to David so he can share a little bit about that. Thank you, Brandy. As Brandy mentioned, I'm David Filiatru. I'm the traffic manager of the new development and construction section. So we also do street lighting and a number of other things. But so, yeah, going to High Street, just as Brandy mentioned, one of our more recent examples of a quick build. About two years ago, I met with Council Member Legree and several community members and discussed this corridor and some of the issues that are occurring on it. So as you come towards downtown, you release after Woodland Avenue. It goes from one lane to two lane. And oftentimes that was people's opportunity to take the extra lane and speed past everyone that was going a bit slower. One of the issues there, aside from just the speeds, was the comfort with walking on the sidewalks. So as you see here, you have about six to eight inches of distance between the street and the sidewalk. And that was something that was expressed as a concern by the neighbors. And so what we like to do is take issues and then kind of distill those down to figure out what our solutions and our options might be. And that could be, and to you to do that, we have the issues described by the neighborhood, but also then the statistics of the roadway. And then that can give us kind of a toolbox of what we can work with. Anyway, the pilot goal was to review some equal speeds and improve corridor safety as well as pedestrian safety or comfort, excuse me. Not just the fact that are there collisions, but do you feel safe walking down there, which can often be two different things. The design strategy was to reduce the residential segment to one lane, which would visually narrow and simplify the roadway. And then with the leftover space, we had enough room for parking and a dedicated bike lane with some degree of protection. So after about, I think Bernie mentioned, we put it in in June of last year. It took six months to identify some of the data that we needed to evaluate the installation. and we compared that with the six months prior and what data we had before. So we have a lot of different data sources that we can use to determine the efficacy of what we decided to put in. So speed, we saw about a five-mile-per-hour drop in average speed, which is pretty incredible given the whole project was about $60,000. Safety, zero post-install crashes. Now that is for the six months proceeding, and then there were six prior to the installation. There's about an eight-and-a-half average travel time increase, And that's per vehicle, and that's an average. So you might have instances where it's 30, 40 seconds more, and there might have instances where there's none. So it's an average across a certain time period. And then access fire described no major issues with having access in any of the streets or the properties along the street. And we also took, instead of just getting qualitative data, we got qualitative data. and 72% of respondents said they felt safer on the street, and 73% of the respondents, the nearby stakeholders, reported retaining it. And then based on the data and matching up with our goals and then the user experience results, it was determined that the implementation could be retained with some minor alterations. But ultimately, it was a quick bill project that we think was successful and was worth retaining going forward. Thank you, David. So High Street not only taught us about that particular corridor, but it also showed us what a successful quick build process requires. And it was one of our first in a long time, and so we used it as a guinea pig. There were some things that worked well and some things that didn't. And so what we did learn is, first, we need a clear intake process that allows us to determine where does a project land within our overall umbrella of our portfolio of programs. Second, these projects require coordination. Traffic engineering is the lead technically on all of this, but we all know that it requires coordination across various internal entities and external partners. Those roles need to be defined early with coordination continuing throughout the process of the project. Especially as one is implemented, it is important to establish clear ownership and maintenance responsibilities to maintain improvements those desired outcomes as well. High Street also reinforced that communications and engagement should begin before installation, but that's not when it ends. Like many traditional projects, you do that in advance of doing construction. We want to do that in this case too, but as I said earlier, the project itself, a quick build, is a form of engagement. So we want to hear back, we want to get feedback, and we want to refine based on that. Evaluation Management also needs to be a planned part from the beginning so that we know what success looks like at the end of the day. And it's not just a fly by the seat of our pants whim that it was a success or not. So using data quantitative and qualitative as David talked about and making sure that we're choosing a right sized approach for that measurement criteria before the installation occurs. And finally, every quick build needs a defined next step. So do we remove it, modify it, retain it, or advance it to permanent installation? All of these are processes that we need to identify for consistency and coordination standpoint, not just to be more bureaucratic. So we do need this in order to establish a standardized, formalized process. And so while the program itself is not fully stood up yet, we are working together across departments and divisions to identify what it takes procedurally with our people and what the data and evidence is that would be needed to support that. So as I've already said from a process, we need consistency from one project to the next. We also need to not only being reactive to the projects that come before us, but looking proactively at where we should be doing these projects as well. So we will explore that in this next phase of work. From the people standpoint, as I said, we will have a lead entity that will be technical experts, but it's going to take that cross-departmental coordination. And so what does that look like from a program manager standpoint and how to standardize who leads, who reviews, who makes decisions, and so forth. And then third is that evidence. So standardizing our approach for defining a problem and assessing its success is very important. So while we're still figuring out where the organizational home will be for this program, what the staff will need to be, what the funding and the partnership capacity will be, we have other projects underway. And those projects are using them not just to be a standalone project, but to in practice explore how we then implement a program in the future. So those projects in this next phase include the ones you see on the screen here. We have the Safe Routes to School program, and this one in particular is going to help us test a more need-based approach to identifying and prioritizing projects. In addition, strengthening our partnerships with community advocacy groups and the school system. We also have MLK Corridor, which is a testing whether demonstration, programming, and other activations can then also inform how you install a quick build in the future and what then that ultimately means. And then we are working with our partners at the state. And so KYTC and their Highway Safety Improvement Program, we're using a data-driven approach to explore how state-maintained streets also play a role and how they could utilize quick builds as well. So across all three, we'll be learning about our teams, our partnerships, our communication, evaluation, maintenance, and capacity. So we're building the projects while we build the process. So bear with us as we do that. So our next steps, much as Roger said with the NTMP, we want to continue to test, learn and refine, and return to you all with a more formalized proposal for how this Quick Build program should be stood up, what it would take in order to achieve that. And so I am not looking for any formal action today, and I will hopefully be back to you early next year, is my hope, that we will have everything kind of figured out, or at least from a framework's perspective, that we could inform anything going forward in the next fiscal year. So with that, I will take any questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. Colleagues, please log in. Council Member Eplin. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much for the presentation. I just wanted to say, the work you did on High Street with Council Member Legree, I've heard a lot of great things about that. It's made it so much safer, and the neighbors around there love it and feel a lot more comfortable. I'm really excited about the MLK and the Safe Routes to School project. So thanks for your hard work, and keep it up. Thank you, and thank you to the full team that is here and not here to make these happen. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Wu. Oh, sorry, Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Petra, Mr. Philatro for the presentation and all this work. I'm interested in a couple things specifically, if you can speak to it a little more. I agree with Council Member Ebelin, the High Street pilot. I thought it was a really successful project, and I think part of that success was the kind of engagement that we did with the neighborhood. Can you speak a little bit about sort of philosophically or practically what our approach is when it comes to talking to the people who are immediately affected by it in the vicinity? David, would you like to speak specifically to High Street? Sure. Yeah. Like I said, it was really the neighborhood that came to us with the problems that we helped solve. And so we had a lot of – it was really nice having them as an ally and helping get the word out. So Robin Mickler, who also owns a business and I guess maybe lives near that corridor, anyway, he offered his place up for the public meeting. They all got the word out, and then myself, Joe, and Roger, and a couple others completed the public meeting. And I think to your point, there's a big difference between commuting and driving through an area and kind of your perspective and living in an area. So if you're commuting and driving, you may not think of any of the things that they are. And it's important to get both perspectives, but I think in our instance, especially early on, We want to see what those who live there think about the issues and what they hope to see solved. So I think that's going to be important as early on, and then try to bring the other perspectives in so maybe you find some degree of balance, but always keeping those who live in the area kind of in the forefront, at least in my perspective. Yeah, I appreciate that. And then I'm also curious, looking at, I think it was slide four, the idea of going from pilot to interim, interim to permanent. Talk me through a little bit about what that process looks like. Who determines if and when a pilot goes to the next phase or interim goes to permanent? You know, looking at Bryan Avenue, the idea that it was piloted 10 years ago and then it became permanent nine years after that. Like, what was that thought process? How do you determine if and when it goes to that? Why did that one take almost 10 years? Well, I think what you're highlighting is the lack of a process. And so I think that Bryan Avenue is an exact example of where success was there. And without a formalized and standardized process, it took the champion of the council member in the neighborhood to say, let's make this permanent. I'd like to explore in this next phase of this work of how do we put forth evaluation periods so that we're not waiting for someone to come to us. So I don't have an answer for that today. But I will say from the high street perspective, we did a rigorous review of that project. I have a 20-page report on it if you'd like to see that. But it looked at everything from the data that David mentioned all the way to having interviews with our operations and maintenance folks and businesses and property owners. And you have to weigh those pros and cons of the impact of did you achieve your goals? and if so, then what impact did that have overall across all of these areas, all these sectors? And then there was a small group that then reviewed that and determined from a staff perspective a recommendation to keep that. And so you had a technical review committee that was formed, and I see us standing that up permanently as we do these in the future. And so you'll have an advisory committee and a technical review committee that will then move those suggestions forward as a way to move from pilot to interim, and then hopefully we'll formalize something to go from interim to permanent in the future. Yeah, I appreciate you talking about process. I'm a huge fan of process and kind of building for the future instead of kind of ad hoc project by project. So I appreciate that approach, and I think you all identified it somewhere in the slide deck as well, talking about how very early on you need to figure out how do we determine a success, right? How do we evaluate it and not just wait to kind of prop something up and then potentially forget about it? I think that's a thing that we in government can always do better about. Once we launch something, what's the follow-up look like? What's the assessment look like? And what are the next steps? So I appreciate you all thinking deeply about that. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Sheehan. Thank you, Chair. I want to say thank you again for this work and for everyone who has been working on this. not only this program, but all of the related pieces that are going along with this. Because it's not just about one individual project. We could talk about High Street, or we could talk about Bryant Avenue, or we could talk about Stropshire. But this is about changing the culture of our transportation system. And so even though we might, you know, I heard from some neighbors that commute through High Street, and they were like, everything is so slowed down, but the data don't support that. And so there is a difference between what the data tell us and then what the perception is. And as people get used to seeing these things more often and these instances more often, I think then our thinking and our perception around what transportation is is changing. And that's just a whole cultural shift for our community. And so this is really important slow but long-term work. I just want to acknowledge that because I think it's pushing us in the right direction, and every step that we're taking is getting us there. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you. I just have a few quick questions. The Harrodsburg Road projects took place along Harrodsburg Road to prevent left turns, which people screamed about for a moment. And then, honestly, it's really been, I think, a blessing. Do you foresee when you do these, when you do the pylons that are kind of the breakaway pylons, do you see us going to using that as the test and then basically saying, okay, now we're going to actually do a little bit more of a permanent structure, say it's some sort of something that basically will actually create the separation that we're looking for from that bike lane on High Street, for instance. You know what I mean? And I think you're hitting on the point of where the quick build has this full spectrum of opportunities for you to address a project from just a pop-up of using combs to see if maybe then we use the delineators, as you're talking about, versus someday, as we have available funding to do capital infrastructure, installing a curb and something more robust. I think the hope would be that there is additional means for us to address these more permanently. But, David, have you all explored how you all would approach Harrodsburg Road, for instance? So for Harrodsburg Road, for instance, the state would probably be heavily involved. You would probably look at more of a holistic redesign rather than just something at the intersection. Because right now what's out there works, it functions just as well as a permanent solution. So typically with that, there's not a lot of haste in spending the money on the country. So that's another thing. And so when it's at a state route, it's probably going to be something that we would rely on them to make permanent, especially if we're getting that functional benefit that we're looking for to begin with. One thing I noticed on that is that I know we had someone run over a whole bunch of pylons once on Harrodsburg Road. And so there's also this insurance lack. like you guys have. And I think that can be kind of problematic sometimes. I don't know if you have any comment on that. That's fair, yeah, getting material in for maintenance materials. So over the last decade, we've done more and more of these. If you look at Nicholsville near Reynolds Road, and some of those materials have changed as well, so they're different. And we're trying to unify that as well as with the state because they'll do their own projects. But anyway, there is sometimes a lag in having material available and then being able to maintain those quickly. But the idea, at least going forward, is we're trying to unify that. So we have the same material, and it's in stock, and we can do it, maintain those more quickly and efficiently. Okay. And then lastly, do you feel like, because I feel like at some point this needs to be a budget item, are there typical funds that you would be kind of diverting from something else? Like, so is this map fundable typically? Like, where do you think you're going to pull these funds from? or just that? Typically in the past they've been map fundable. So about a decade ago we had two different pots of money. We had operational spot improvements, which were typically vehicular, and we had pedestrian safety improvements, which obviously was pedestrian and bike related. And that sort of changed last year. The last few years it's been all in one multimodal improvements, and that's still a case. I think the funding has just kind of gotten smaller, so obviously that means less we can do. And I will say there's a difference. Like High Street, we had a lot of public outreach. There was a full design. We have a lot of great in-house designers, actually. We have private engineer firm-level designers that help get this done. And so that's like a pretty big different monster than some of these, you know, the Harrodsburg Road or even the Bryan Avenue type things when you have that public outreach and then a large-scale design. So there's going to be different magnitudes of quick build. Even what Roger did over on Frontane, it's a quick build. It's just the magnitude of how much time and money you're putting into it. Well, I want to thank you for the presentation, and I would encourage councils in the future, I'm hoping that you can come forward with funding requests in the next budget cycle that specifically fund things like this, because I do think most council districts have some sort of little project that really could benefit. So, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Okay, moving right along. We're going good. Good. We've got, don't go too far, Mr. Filiantro. You're here. No, you're already up there. Good. Traffic engineering manual. All right, so we've got a new traffic, we've got a proposed new traffic engineering manual. It's assigned to define the requirements for developers and contractors and engineers and architects and design professionals to follow. It's intended to be an operations manual, and I look forward to your presentation. Absolutely. So, yes, so in contrast with some of the other things you've seen, the Complete Streets Manual, this is decidedly more dry. So the Complete Streets Manual, you get, like, land use context and street widths, things like that. A lot of what we have here is, you know, a handicapped parking spot should be this material, this color. The line should be, you know, four inches in width, things like that. So it's a very engineering-friendly but layperson, maybe boring document. So I want to show you some of the things. I think obviously we have some pictures in here, some of the things we're hoping to prevent going into the future and kind of how we're going to apply it. So the background and purpose, you know, developing coordination with the Police Street's manual, that was sort of the impetus. We had a more minor document that was up on the website that whenever, you know, developers or things come in and they wanted to ask, you know, for example, what do you mean when you say this in your comments? We had that, but it was just a PDF thrown on the website, not necessarily publicized. And, again, it's supposed to work with all the existing manuals and just serve as a companion piece to help those designers with problems or inconsistencies that we see across town. Then facilitate quicker view as well. So we actually, when we completed the manual, it was actually early this year, probably in March, we sent it out. We have a list of about 500 different stakeholders. Most of those will be utility companies, even development attorneys, our own divisions, Lexington Home Builders, commercial, like all those that you see there. and most of the comments we got back were from other traffic engineers. So again, it's a very traffic engineering specific document, so most of the people that are interested are the ones in the field themselves. And we got a lot of good, and if you're interested in what feedback it was and what we incorporated, we have those documented, and we can provide that if necessary. Some of the topics, pavement markings, signage, temporary traffic control. So our division also handles blame blockage permits, and oftentimes we'll get, even larger scales, Sometimes we'll get sketches that are on the back of a napkin. And so we're laying out in a very succinct form the things they need to look at and they look into. The METCD, which governs a lot of that stuff, is like 1,000 pages. So what we're trying to do is simplify some things for the situations we see most often. ADA and handicap accessibility, streetlight designs. We've always done our own streetlight design, but this just kind of lays it out for the public and anybody else to ingest if they'd like. and then some side access and design, most of that is handled in other areas. And then we have about 20 pages of traffic engineering standard drawings so that we could illustrate some of the aspects we show in here, including what a traffic circle would look like, examples of a roundabout and where to find guidance on that. So here's some of the things we're hoping to prevent. As you see here, this was actually something I found just a few weeks ago. I was going to get some paint, and this is a handicapped parking space, and it's obviously they're using the gutter, and even then it's not wide enough. And so really the reason I noticed it was because I thought everybody was doing a terrible job of parking, but the parking spots weren't wide enough, so there was no way. And then again over here, there's just a lack of designation. This distance here is not quite enough. And so we can find these things prior to them happening and hopefully correct them. And in the instances in the past where we found these after the fact, I will say we have gotten a lot of good participation from most commercial owners. When you lay these things out like this, they typically understand and want to rectify them themselves. So yeah, this is a standard drawing you would see. This is just a parking seat, like I said, four-inch lines, all the fun stuff that you guys would, I'm sure, enjoy seeing as well. Non-conforming signage. So we see some of these. So this is actually, I don't know if you may have seen this if you've gone to Drake's or somewhere, but it's branded. They wanted to brand their parking lot, which is fine. typically we would not want to see a stop sign branded, so it's actually a black and white stop sign. So we're not going to get into commercial signs. We're never going to touch those. It's just the actual signs you would see that controls traffic that we're interested in saying, hey, we need to keep to the red and white stop sign. Some of these other things, these stop signs are supposed to be a certain distance from the ground. We've had instances where new neighborhoods, residential neighborhoods, they install those before we dedicate the streets, and they're supposed to be a minimum five feet if it's a curb and gutter, and sometimes you'll go out there and you can put your arm on it. And so it becomes a hazard when they're not actually done to a specification. And then again, back to kind of another instance where it's just not the right color. Commercial parking lots. I probably could have zoomed this in, but I remember about 10 or 12 years ago when Costco came in, I was driving through the parking lot, and I zipped through this conflict point here, never knowing as I approached it that someone else could be coming the other way. So something as simple as a stop bar, we've been requesting that people add for basically the last decade. And so that just gives a cue to the driver that this is a conflict point. You need to stop and or pay attention. So for me, when it happened to me, I was a little shook up because it could have been very easily a collision. And then Alley Sheba Way. So if you go on Sir Barton Way and you take a left on Alley Sheba, that's actually a private road. And for a number of years, we would get complaints that the markings aren't there. Well, we didn't have much of a mechanism, A, to make them, not make them, but to encourage them to repave or to restripe. And then how they restriped sometimes could be just up to the contractor, and oftentimes they weren't necessarily the best technical lead. So in this instance, I believe Roger and then Stephen Parker helped actually do some of the technical aspects with the layouts. We even got, if you see the difference here, this was a left turn into this gas station, and we turned into a left turn out. So we actually gained ourselves some operational improvement at the intersection as well. And I forgot to mention at the beginning, Stephen Parker's led the charge on this. I want to give him credit. He wasn't able to come over here or come and speak today, but I just want to make sure I give him credit as well. So how will this be applied? We'll see some of these things on the development plans. Some development plans aren't generally minute enough to get into a lot of this information, but whatever some of the items we'll see is either notes or depictions of the development plan. And then really a new construction, construction remodels and paving permits is where a lot of these items will be applied. And so it'll be a guidance for guidance and standards for developers, designers, and engineers working in commercial and industrial projects within LFUCG. There's very little residential. I'm not sure there's any residential items in here at all. But anyway, I don't know if I spoke too quickly, but I'll open it up to you guys. Nice job. All right, council members, sign in. if you have questions about this manual. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the recognition, since I don't serve on the committee. David, thank you for your presentation and for your work on this. I think it is overall a really good idea that we have everything in one place and in writing. I do have some questions about the actual manual sections, if you don't care to dig into some of those. So Section 8.2, commercial entrances and access easements, a little, and we may have already addressed this in other ways and other ZOTAs or other ordinances that we've put forth, But the distances from intersections or lot lines, can you tell me where those came from and what the rationale is? I feel like especially the 150 feet from a signalized intersection, it's like third from the bottom. That just seems really short to me when some of those corner lots, they may not be very wide. The frontage may not be a lot. So I'm just curious. Yeah, so some of these items are actually, I know the first one is actually in the zoning ordinance. And some of these, so the commercial access you mentioned, that's something we found has been a recommendation to help keep traffic, especially the signal is less complicated at the intersection. Now, that being said, we can look at some of these before next month's readout, I guess possibly to make some revisions. But I think the idea is that we try to limit, especially in the older portions where their access points are directly adjacent to the intersection. And we're trying 150 feet. It seems a lot further, I guess, in your mind typically than in reality. But it might be a case that in this instance we could reexamine that particular number and find something maybe a little more determined if we're not just making a lot of nonconformity uses. I think that's probably a good thing at this point. Well, that and not creating unnecessary waivers on development plans and things like that. And like I said, I know that we've had these conversations fairly significantly through the House Bill 443 SOTA and all that. So I just want to make sure, once again, that another manual isn't an impediment to development. And then the 8.3 section, drive-through facilities and drive-up windows, we'll be hearing that in committee next month. And I am just curious if I need, because there may be some changes that aren't, it's not this section of the manual. And also, I'm wondering if at the same time we need to make any potential amendments to this section at that. I'll go back and look. This section is typically just is back to the measurements. So it defines basically what a vehicle will be depicted on the development plan. So you're supposed to have five or six packing spaces, whatever it is. And sometimes we've had instances where people will come in and they'll show the actual vehicle. And actually, if you scale it, it's like the size of a golf cart. And so that was to kind of say, okay, it needs to be this size and so that everybody's working the same playing field. But that being said, if we need to, to your points in September, I think that's coming through, we maybe can excise this in order to just have it in one place, the zoning ordinance. It's something that might could live in one place. But again, this doesn't speak to land use. It just speaks about the stacking area and kind of the dimensions of the vehicles in the stacking area. And there is a decent amount of the measurement part in that other ZODA. I'll have to go back and look. I know that one. Yeah, okay, there is. Yeah, and I think some of that is, and we will have a much more in-depth conversation next month, but, you know, the average length of car, like, there's just the dimensions that we're using. So if you could get me some clarification on where those measurements are coming from, I think that would be really beneficial. That's all I have. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. We have no other questions. At this point, though, I'm going to move that we approve the proposed traffic engineering manual as outlined in today's committee packet. So moved. And what will happen is we will report this out at the next meeting. It'll get reported out at work session for us to adopt it. And if there is any changes, we'll make those changes at that time. Fantastic. Is there any questions on that? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? And that passes. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Okay. Our last presentation. Wow. We're doing good. Annual urban forestry and street trees. We're excited to have you here. This includes some proposed amendments to Chapter 17B related to street tree replacement and maintenance. Street trees typically are located between the sidewalk and the curb. They provide aesthetic, environmental, and socioeconomic benefits that help improve the quality of life on our streets. I now invite Heather Wilson, our urban and community forestry section manager, to enlighten us. So thank you so much for being here. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. As all of you know, probably I can talk to you forever about trees. so I'm going to try to speed this through so you can ask all of your questions. But today, this is just the brief rundown of the topics that I will cover today. Mostly this is program overview, and then again, the updates to our Chapter 17B ordinance regarding street trees. This is just a quick recap of who we are within environmental services in urban and community forestry. Under my group, I have two sections, the public management of trees, which is overseen by my city arborist, Nathan Skinner, and then oversight of street trees and new development, which is overseen by the urban forester Eric Sutherland. Adjacent to us, we work quite closely with natural resource protection and that's section manager Ben Cornette and his environmental enforcement specialist. They work really closely with our urban forester. And then in streets and roads, there's also a group over there that helps to manage trees in the public right-of-way, particularly out on county roads and especially when we have big storms, ice storms, wind storms, rain storms, all those that come through. they are vital to helping us make sure that we have a safe, healthy city. The first program I wanted to give a quick update over is the Private Property Tree Planting Program. For those of you who are not familiar with this, this was the first official year of this program. This program did stem from our Lex Grow Trees Incentive Program, which ended last year. It has been funded to $150,000. We are working with a local contractor, Dave Leonard Tree Specialist, to offer anyone within our community the planting of a tree on their property. Everyone is eligible, including places of faith, businesses, private property owners. Tenants can even apply as long as they have permission from their landlord. Last year, we were able to incorporate 249 participants into this program. Quick note, as soon as we opened this program, we had to close it within 72 hours because all of the funds were already taken. So that's pretty exciting. We do have 201 trees that are already planted, and we have been invoiced for. There are 47 remaining participants that have not yet received their tree. They're in some stage of the process and too high to decline. The next program to give an update on is our courtesy pruning program. I do want to emphasize that it is a courtesy program. The management of the trees that exist in that easement between the sidewalk and the street are the responsibility of that adjacent property owner. For a number of reasons, people don't always maintain their canopies. There's lots of valid reasons for this. So we recognized years ago that if we could offer assistance, that would be very valuable. So 10 years ago now, 2016, was our first iteration of this program. And since then, we have been able to prune roughly 44,000 trees. We spent roughly $627,000 in this pruning over the past 10 years. And what I want to point out here, too, is that that average cost per tree this past year was $16, roughly. And for any of you that have ever hired someone to come prune your trees, you'll have to recognize how low of a cost that is. Again, we are working on thousands of trees, and it is neighborhood-based. These are not one-off prunings, so that is why we're able to have that really low cost per tree. This is just an example of a map that our contractors receive telling them where our located areas are for each cycle. This past year, we were able to be active within 10 subdivisions around Lexington. And this is just a breakdown of where we've been over the years, the numbers of trees per year that we've been able to assist with. This past year, we were right around 5,300 trees, and we were in five different council districts. The next program to update you all on is our Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program. This past year, we did have 70 homeowners participate in this program. We were able to remove and replace 91 hazardous street trees across Lexington. This is really important, not only for that adjacent property owner, but also for the entirety of our community because we're not only protecting that homeowner, but we're also protecting everyone that uses those sidewalks and those roads as they pass down to trees that are hazardous. It's also a really high cost to everyone that has that kind of tree they have to deal with. So being able to offer this financial assistance is huge and well received in the community. I do want to point out that this is the second year in a row that we've been able to assist someone in all 12 council districts. So that's kind of been a goal of ours for a long time. What this tells me is that we're doing a really good job of getting the word out about this program. Each year we are allocated currently $150,000 budgeted to assist homeowners throughout Lexington. We do kind of have two pockets of the way we spend this fund. We have participants that are eligible for 50% reimbursement, and we have participants that are eligible for 100% reimbursement. And that is all based on where they fall in our income qualifications goal. One of our goals is being able to allocate 25% of the available funds to assist those that need 100% assistance. This past year we were able to do that. What this tells me again is that the people that are really in need of this assistance are receiving that assistance, and that's exciting. Previously, I believe the way the language was worded or the message went out was that people of the lower income bracket didn't feel like they were eligible for this assistance or couldn't navigate all the steps in between. and so we've really tried hard to make sure that it's easily accessible to everyone that's in need. The other thing I do need to point out right now is that we are almost always out of funds by mid-October. Currently, as of yesterday, we've already had $105,000 of these funds spoken for with 50 participants, and we are only mid-August. The funds have been available for a month, so the likelihood that we are out of funds by mid-September is very high. Next, I want to go into our recommendations for revisions to Chapter 17b, which deal directly with street trees. I want to take just a second to step back and mention that, or maybe remind everyone that in 2022, we had data collected and given back to the city about our urban tree canopy coverage in Lexington. At that time, our canopy coverage was roughly 23%. And at that time, we said that what we want for Lexington is that our minimum tree canopy coverage be 30%. Street trees are a vital piece of that. If we don't have healthy streets with healthy trees, we'll never reach that 30% tree canopy goal. Reasons that this is important, communities with tree-covered streets with high urban canopy are healthier than communities that don't have that. Tree-lined streets are typically 20 to 45 degrees cooler than streets not lined with trees. Trees are traffic calming. They also increase our mental and physical health and well-being. They also create community. They encourage people to get outside and walk around in their communities and engage with their neighbors and see what it's like actually out in their communities. So having a healthy tree canopy is vital for a healthy community. So with that, I'll step into what we are requesting for our revisions or suggesting. And you guys can follow along. This is in your packet. This first bullet point speaks to section one in your packet. Really, it's just the redefinition of what a tree planting easement is. We changed the word from minimum to maximum because the way it was written before was just incorrect. The second bullet point speaks to sections three and section eight. With section three being tree removal, we added end replacement into the title of that section. And this came about because as we've been working through this through the years, what we've realized is that as staff, we've always operated under the assumption that when a tree is removed in that easement, it will be replaced. We realize that the wording within the ordinance did not really spell that out clearly, and so our suggestions are to reword that in a way that just also elevates the importance of replacing that tree. And so there's no questions that come up after a tree is removed that it's also required to replace that. In Section 8, which speaks directly to tree maintenance and the removal in particular, currently once trees are not maintained appropriately, again, did not highlight the importance of making sure that a tree is replaced. So again, that language in there is to really highlight that the replacement of the tree is just as important as maintaining as well as removing, if it's not being replaced or maintained appropriately. The third bullet point speaks toward the tree board. Currently, the tree board functions in an advisory function. function. And so what we are recommending is that the tree board also be able to have the authority to promote urban forestry through the distribution of funds, grants, and other incentive programs. This enables them to actually have impact in the community. It also enables them to apply for grant funding from outside entities. And so not always the funding coming from their budget, but also giving them the ability to reach out beyond us and apply for grants that then they can, again, put into our community. And then finally, the last bullet point speaks to section 7. Currently in our ordinance we note that tree topping is illegal, it's unlawful, it's bad practice, and that it's not something that someone can do, but it kind of ends there. So what we are requesting or recommending is that the urban forester has the authority to follow through when a tree has been topped and require them to remove and replace that tree. I'm happy to talk about why that's important, why tree topping is unlawful and bad practice. So if you have questions about that afterward, I'm happy to go deeper into that. So then our other revisions deal directly with the Hazardous Street Tree Cost Share Program. Currently, as it stands, the assistance goes to the removal and replacement of hazardous street trees. Oftentimes, new residents will move into a home that's already had a tree removed, and we have no way to assist them in the replanting. And so we would like to add the ability to cost share just the replanting of a tree or the planting of a tree so you don't have to remove it to have help planting. There's a number of really good things that can come from that, but one of them is an increase in our tree canopy. We also wanted to add the existing stump or missing tree or evidence to be entered into the program. If you've already removed the tree before you knew about the program but you still have a stump, then that brings you into being eligible for the whole program in entirety. And then throughout the document, we're replacing the word his with the word there. And the next set of revisions really has to do with the process. There are a number of steps in the process right now that the urban forester does not currently use. They're repetitive. And so our suggestions are to streamline that process. that makes it clearer for the urban forester themselves, as well as clearer for the recipients of this process. It also outlines the steps more clearly, and it really speaks to the need to follow those steps to be eligible to actually get the reimbursements. As an instance, you can't remove the tree and then apply and get reimbursed for the tree that's already gone because then we don't have any proof that you worked with our approved vendors. So the revisions are to really dial that down and just remove any questions about that process. Then lastly, for the 100% recipients, just making sure to add in that the cost of the stump grinding is 100% covered as well, because that's not currently reflected in the guidelines. Now lastly, I just want to spend a minute on our downtown street trees. Our downtown street trees have been in various states of health and decline for a number of years. In 2024, we did an assessment of the downtown, There was a number of standing dead trees at the time, and there were a number of already missing trees that had been removed because they had been diseased or dying. So currently we have 20 open spots eligible for planting. We are recommending the replacement of only 18 of those. Two of the wells are too small to support a healthy tree. But also currently we still have 18 trees in the downtown corridor along Main Street that are standing dead or in some state of decline. So we are recommending that those 18 trees also be removed over a process and then total once the current ones are also removed there will be 36 to be replanted. We do have this as a schedule so that it's not a complete blow to a loss of trees downtown. This winter we would like to go ahead and move forward with the replacement of 18 of the 20 missing and then the winter of 27-28 remove nine of the currently standing dead and dying and replace those nine and then the following winter remove the last nine and replace those as well. And then I'm going to leave you with this just last slide. This really is just to highlight where your urban and community forestry crew is throughout the city. This is just a snapshot, and this only accounts for acreage. This does not account for numbers of trees, time spent out managing our trees, making sure that we have a healthy, safe urban forest for our entire community, for all of us to enjoy and to benefit from. And with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. Council members, please log in to ask questions. Council member Sheehan. Thank you for this presentation. I have a question about the hazardous street tree program. I get requests from neighbors about the stump or the missing tree situation. Usually they'll notice it on someone else's property and want that replaced. so whether that might be affirmed by the property owner or not. But with the way that the funds are already depleted so quickly, could you talk a little bit more about how many requests of this you think you would get? Because if we're already running out of the funds in a month or two, sometimes three, it feels like adding additional things that would qualify would deplete them faster. So could you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So I think there's a couple of different ways that that can play out. But I think that the cost of just stump grinding is minimal compared to the cost of a removal. And the cost of a planting is actually minimal as well compared to the cost of a removal. And so I do hear that concern about the inability to address the hazardous trees as well. I think pushing toward our goal of making sure that we have tree canopy coverage from trees that come down in, let's say, storms or any of those other incidences, and people not having the ability to replace, I feel like having that small amount of funding available to replace the tree is still important, even though there are still standing dead and hazardous trees potentially out there. and that will continue. Every forest has trees that will cycle in and out. So we'll never get it in a static state regardless. And then just maybe to put it in reference, a stump grinding can typically be like $150 or so, $200. And a tree planting done by a professional entity can be, let's say, $700. And so if we're doing half of either of those, it's a really small pocket of that funding. So yeah, I don't, I guess I hadn't really thought about too deeply, about how much that takes away from the bigger picture. I think of our hazardous tree tree program as also a safety program, so taking down the trees and having the funding to take down hazardous trees is important, whereas sometimes we do have other programs like the new tree planting program that might be able to be used to replace trees from another funding pot, so that's just the balance I'm thinking about. But I do hear you on the part where replacing a missing tree is a lot less expensive than taking down a hazardous tree and replacing it. So I get that. But I just worry about the pressure on the funds that's already being allocated so fast. Yes. And I guess what I'll just add is that that $150 for the planting was gone in 72 hours. So the likelihood that that can help that right now is low. And then also the safety aspect, 100%. The other side of that safety aspect is having trees in the community that provide shade and absorb thousands of gallons of water. And so there's two very different sides of safety. And it's probably valid to say that bringing down a hazardous tree is higher on that level of need. But also making sure that we have those healthy long-term communities. And one of the things I think what we're running into is, again, like new homeowners are moving into houses where the previous owner removed a tree with or without telling us as they're supposed to. And so they're looking for funds to assist. And I support putting funds in the Hazardous Street Tree Program. I support putting it into new trees, missing trees. I'm just wondering of the balance of how those funds are allocated. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. Heather, thank you for this update. I think it's really important. I'm going to piggyback off one of your last comments about a new homeowner coming in and not knowing that they're responsible for putting a tree back in. So I'm looking at Section 17B-8, the tree maintenance public right-of-way or designated tree planting easement section. There's a lot that's been added. You know, we've got, I'm thinking in my district in particular, and we've had this conversation a little bit too, you know, we have neighborhoods that were built without street trees, period. We have neighborhoods that developers put street trees in that are species that should have never been planted in a right-of-way. Okay. So what is the education component that we would be looking at for this specific section? And how do we, I don't want to say justify, but that's a lot to put on a new homeowner of, hey, oh, and by the way, the previous owner cut down three of your street trees and you're going to have to go back and put them back in. So what's the level, what's the balance between our ordinance, the education of the community, and, you know, not really, I don't want to say penalizing, but it could be a lot and there's no money. So what's that balance and what does our education or outreach look like to make sure that everybody understands, you know, what we actually do have on the books? I think to start with the education piece is something we'll be working with our PI team to really push out and so the maintenance piece has always existed we're just buffering, making more robust that language and so part of that like you said is making sure that we are reaching out into the community to make sure that people understand that that tree is their responsibility because every day there are people that email saying this tree has lost a limb, it's in this space I'm just letting you know so you can come clean it up so across the board, many people throughout our community just don't understand that that tree is their responsibility and because not every community is that way so it's completely valid, so making sure that we are continuing to educate our constituents that it is your responsibility, that we are here to help you if we can and that's where part of this money or additional Hazard Street Tree Cost Share Program like ability to just plant a tree could help support that because they could apply for funding to just plant that tree. I think part of this too is that we do not actually go out and look for missing trees. This typically comes to us from neighbors that are reporting that a tree has been cut down or that this neighborhood is missing or like an HOA, like I think in one of your cases, they went around and did an assessment and wanted to have some guidance on how to best manage that. I will also say that we have steps in place. We have a timeline when we do this. We are also always very flexible. And as long as homeowners are working with us to get those trees replanted, we are capable of extending timelines and offering assistance that way. I don't think our intention is ever to be heavy-handed. And if you have three trees that are missing, to say, you have to do all three right away. I do believe it's just a matter of conversation. I feel like there's another piece of your question that I did not address yet. No, I just want to make sure that we're not, that this isn't another thing that is burdensome. Yeah, that's making homeownership harder. You know, we all know that our tree canopy is very important. We want our community to be beautiful and safe and everything. But, you know, if somebody is aware that they may be sighted, you know, as soon as they move into a property, I just don't want it to be a barrier at all. So I just wanted to put that out there in the universe, but I appreciate your work on this. Thank you. You're welcome. And I appreciate that. And I would love ultimately for us to just take over the management of street trees one day. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And I just have a few quick ones. I really do appreciate your presentation. I have the same concerns as Councilmember Sheehan. I kind of feel like our street tree program next year, I would probably ask for more money, and hopefully this body would give you more money for it, but you might want to separate it out, because I do think we could get so many more new trees in for those instances that there's trees actually missing versus the cost of removal of trees. So I would hope that you would maybe split the funds in some form or fashion so that you were addressing both items. I'm also curious, have you thought about doing something kind of like Solarize Lexington where it's like, hey, and here are some street trees or even like the sidewalk providers. Here's some contractors that will install. This is a standard caliber street tree that we've negotiated a price of $125 for an install. Have you thought about doing something like that? Because I do think that could take off a little bit. I think that there's potential for creating those pathways. As it stands now, the way we function is we can only work with our certified vendors. And we would welcome more vendors to become certified. And it's a matter of going through that. process, also being ISA certified to make sure that trees are planted properly, because that is a real challenge. We welcome more vendors to be part of that. We have worked in the past with groups like Trees Lexington or other nonprofits that we can connect and do those community plantings. We are also always open to homeowners who reach out to us that want to plant a tree on their own, even if it doesn't meet our requirement in the ordinance of a standard, I can't remember what it is, two and a quarter, one and three quarters, two and a half inch caliper. We do have the ability to waive some of those standards and permit smaller plantings based off of costs and things like that. So I do think that there are paths forward for that. I think there's probably a lot more that would have to be done to codify them, to make them official, so that there are standards that we're making sure we're following. But I do appreciate that, because I think that's a great way forward, and I think that's actually probably a key piece of actually reaching our tree canopy coverage goals, particularly when it comes to street trees. And I do appreciate the question about separate fund pots. Thank you. And just to add a little bit to that, as part of the first iteration of our private property planting program, our vendor, Dave Leonard Tree Specialists, did agree to extend the price that they were charging us per tree to anyone who signed up for the program who wanted to purchase on their own additional trees. So I feel like we do sort of have something in place, but it could certainly be expanded appropriately and strictly just focus on street trees if that's what we thought would be a good way to move that forward. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't see any other questions. Council members, this item is going to require two motions. The first one is to approve the Chapter 17B in the Code and Ordinances related to street tree replacement and maintenance as outlined in today's packet. So I'm going to move that. Second. I've got a second. Any discussion about that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed like sign? Okay, that passes. The second motion is to approve the revised guidelines for the hazard street tree program or the cost share program as outlined in today's packet. I get so moved. Got a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? There we go. That passes. Thank you all very much. Thank you. We have done so expeditiously. We're going to have 30 minutes between this and our work session. Next month in September, we have several items coming to us. We have Council Member Reynolds has an item for coordination of maintenance for projects, and I think you're good with that one, she told me. We've got traffic control using data analytics, an item that came out of the Street Safety Task Force, and we have the Complete Streets and Vision Zero updates. If there are no objections, it is 229, and I am calling this meeting adjourned.