Bitter War! Bitter War! Bitter War! Money and water! Bitter War! I've had the dream Bitter War! Sleeping all along! Thank you! Thank you so very much. We'd like to say a very pleasant good evening to you. We hope that you'll enjoy what we're trying to do for you. As much as we... We have a quorum, so we'll begin the meeting. the first item on the excuse me, let's begin the first item on the agenda is the Man of War truck restrictions and this was put in the committee from former council member Dr. David Stevens, I see Dr. Stevens here we have the pleasure of having Dr. Stevens and Dick DeCamp in the room here and we have a report from the police department so I guess we'd like to hear from the police department if we could. Sir, I'm Lieutenant Pate from the police department. Oh, yes. Could you speak up or bring the microphone a little closer to you? There you go. Thank you. Lieutenant Pate from the police department. There's a memo in your packet that had our findings. Basically, the county attorneys told us that 1844 was enforceable, but we could find no record where he'd ever enforced it in the past. The memorandum explains some of the issues we think would be associated with enforcing it. I guess if you would, would you just kind of give us a summary of what you wrote in this and your considerations here? Basically, what we wrote in here as considerations was that Manowar was constructed and the intersections were reengineered to accommodate truck traffic. enforcement of 1844 would be manpower intensive. Even if we made it no through trucks, it would still be manpower intensive. To be able to site a truck, we'd actually have to follow them entering the traffic way and then exiting the traffic way and show that they didn't have some destination during that trip. There's no signage right now that would tell a truck that they can't drive on that roadway, and for the last 20 years they've been using it. And it would push truck traffic into our highest volume intersections. basically in front of Fayette Mall, which would shove an inordinate amount of traffic through Fayette Mall. So to actually change it to no-through trucks, there is a process you'd have to go through to do a traffic study, which hasn't been done, and our opinion is that enforcing 1844 is essentially making it no-through trucks without doing the traffic management study. So what would your recommendation be then? If you wanted to pursue making it no-through trucks, we suggest it go through that process through traffic engineering, but we would suggest that it not be considered no through trucks. So your final recommendation would be from the police department. I think we have a memo from Chief Bastin on the first part of it. I believe our recommendation is that we would not enforce 1844 as it's written and then the actual ordinance be reconsidered since 1844 was created prior to Manowar existing. We think it would be prudent to readdress the whole ordinance. Are there any questions? Mr. Beeren? Thank you, Chair. The whole purpose of New Circle Road was to keep the trucks out of downtown and Main Street. That's why it was built 40, 50 years ago. This never was the intention for Man of War to be a truck route by any means. It may have been one. It may have become one. And that's one of the reasons why we support Jessamine County link with I-75 is we think that will take a lot of trucks out of the county specifically and give them an opportunity to go through on I-75. But again, as I say, the New Circle Road is supposedly where the truck is supposed to go, and then they make their entry into the city if they need to make their entry into the city on one of the spokes. Otherwise, it's, and for many years, it was called the bypass for just that reason, not necessarily for automobiles, but primarily for trucks at that time. Are there any other questions for the police department? At this time, thank you. I would recognize Dr. Stevens because he initially brought this to the council and asked Dr. Stevens if he'd like to make any comments on this. Yes, a citizen who lives just next to the Manowar approached me with a complaint about noise, particularly during the middle of the night. And that was really the genesis of the complaint. And I think there is a solution to the problem that would be okay with the police, I think, though I can't speak for the police. I wouldn't try. But I remember in the last century, we considered a problem at the New Circle Road and Versailles Road, And the neighbors there complain because the trucks, in leaving New Circle Road to go on to the Versailles ramp, would downshift to break the trucks, which creates a great deal of noise, apparently. I've never driven a semi-truck, and I don't know how they do that. But rather than using brakes, they use downshifting. Apparently that creates the inordinate amount of noise that the citizen living next to Man-O-War notices. He's not against the trucks. He's against the noise. So I would suggest if, and it seemed to work out on Versailles Road, if you could modify the ordinance or whatever is necessary to require trucks to use their brakes and not downshifting and approaching the stoplights. I think there are 9 or 10 stoplights and places for the trucks to stop. If that were done, the police could enforce that more easily because all they'd have to do is notice when a truck did that, and they wouldn't have to follow them all the way from Nicholasville Road to Manowar or to the interstate, wherever they're going. And that should make it a lot easier for the police. And I think that would satisfy the citizens that live alongside that road. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. I think Mr. McCord had a question first. And it's going to you, Lieutenant Pape. I think the last time when you came here, you had mentioned one of the problems we have with Man of War is if you go to pull somebody over, where do you pull them over? And now you've pulled a semi-truck into a neighborhood to make that happen. And so if in this circumstance we had something like that and we're pulling somebody over, we're potentially making the problem worse by having a truck pulled over on Gladman or anywhere else and then firing that back up and so forth. Is that part of what your comment was going to be? It is one of our concerns, but what Dr. Stevens was talking about is what's called a jake break. It uses the engine compression to slow down the truck, which is you hear that large repeating noise out of a truck. That could be part of the noise ordinance, and there's a noise ordinance task force going on here, and I've mentioned it to our members on there, that we would like to see a no-jake break part put into that ordinance, which would solve some of that problem. And that could be enforced countywide. So that would resolve some of that noise issue. Do you want to speak at all to the issues, though, about pulling people over? Or what would happen if they broke the noise ordinance and we were going to pull them over? How do we work through some of that? It would be difficult to conquer, but it is a lesser concern. We can resolve some of that. It is a large concern not to put them into the neighborhoods, but when you're pulling over a vehicle, you're at really the discretion of the driver where he ends up going. If the driver pulls over and stops on Manowar, we can deal with it. It's not a safe situation, but we can deal with it. If they automatically just turn into a neighborhood street, now we've got to deal with getting them back out of there. So if it's just a noise problem, I think the no-jake-break ordinance would solve that problem and be signed. Our problem with Fortune 1844 is we're really taking trucks that have been using the road for 20 years and then just one day start writing them $200 tickets saying you can't use it anymore without letting them know this is a problem. So I think putting it into a noise ordinance would be a better use of our manpower. And with that, do you see kind of the education process of that? I think one of the things that I hear you saying, and I think of another example where we put up a no-left turn sign that just showed up one day, and we started writing tickets right and left, and the iPhone blew up the next three weeks. And so is there a way that you see that we could create this education of, hey, this has changed, please spread the word, this will start being enforced in, you know, and so forth like that? How do you see getting over that hump and letting folks know that this has changed? If it changes as part of the noise ordinance, that entire ordinance will get a lot of publicity. So that will be part of it there. Plus signage will go up to say at all the county lines saying that Fayette County is a no-jake-break county. And truck drivers understand what that means. It's not uncommon for that to be in several cities nationwide. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you. I think Mr. Myers had a question. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I used to want to be a truck driver when I was little. So I understand what a jake-break is. The one thing I don't know about a jake brake, though, is that something that can be turned off? Yes. Okay. That's the question, because I was going to say they're designed with a jake brake. Right. The driver has control of that in the truck. Okay. Okay. That answers the question. But I guess my second question would be then, kind of goes back to what Council Member McCord was saying about putting up a no left turn sign and then writing tickets right after that. How do you advertise to truckers that they can't use a jake brake in Fayette County? Well, again, that will be part of noise ordinance stuff, but it will become just at the county line where you see, like, no STA trucks. You'll see different signage that involve truckers as they enter the county at every road that enters the county, and it will say that Fayette County is a no-jake-break county. So, again, this is not uncommon in several other counties or locations throughout the United States. So we've modeled after something like that. But it involves much more traffic engineering than us. Okay. And then I guess we have to find a budget for putting those signs up. That's a good question. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? At this time, I will entertain. Is there a motion that any council member would like to make? Mr. McCord? I guess the motion then, Mr. Chair, would be that we would include this no-jake breaking into our noise ordinance. And I'm not certain what the time frame is or how we would do that. Council Member Myers, I know you're wanting to second this, but what do you see? I guess the first step would be to find out what the signage would cost and how long it would take to prepare that and get it in place. And then would we give a 60-day moratorium on tickets once the signs went up or something like that? What's the normal protocol? I don't know if there's a normal protocol on that, but that can be addressed as it gets there. I don't know what stage the noise ordinance is in. Lieutenant Lyons is actually serving on that committee for us, but I can get in contact with him and see if he can include this as part of that. Okay. And they can just come out with that report when it's due. Okay. Mr. Chairman, probably the best thing to do is let's go to what Council Member Myers said. If we can just bring those things back to next month's services meeting, then we'll probably just be able to make a motion coming out of there. I would say that again. I'm sorry. Next month's meeting, if they can come back with the costs of signage and things like that. Just ask the people who are working on the noise orange to come back to us. Yeah, and I'll be prepared to make a motion coming out of next month's meeting as we move forward. Once we have some costs and as we get a lot closer to the 2010 budget and things like that, I think that would be a more appropriate time. Okay, we'll just wait for next month. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Lieutenant. Yes, sir. The next item on the agenda is the Alexander Road 1300 block, and this was put in by Councilmember Henson. Ms. Henson. Thank you, Chair. Since I brought this before the Services Committee, Brad Frazier with Traffic Engineering and Keith Gaines with the Police Department and through emails with Shannon Gayhafer. I feel like we've come up with a good plan for Alexandria, and I was going to ask Brad if he would come up and present it. Welcome, Brad. Thank you very much. What I did is I have just a very, very small presentation with just a few slides, basically describing what Ms. Henson was talking about and what it was that we feel like we've come up with to try to take care of all potential issues and problems that could arise from restrictive parking along this block area. This is a schematic of the 1300 block of Alexandria Drive. To the north up there, that large intersection, is Alexandria and Devonport. And then as you go further on down at the bottom of the page, that is Rocky Point Court down there. In between those two intersections, you will see the large apartment complexes that are bound on both sides of Alexandria Drive. This is a blow up of that middle section of the particular area that we're talking about. originally when this came to me it actually came to Commissioner of Public Works and we looked at this and one of the concerns we had is that you do have parking on both sides and one of the things we look at is the mode of travel what actually occurs out there the direction of travel is in both directions of course and they tend to hug the center of the road because of the parking If you remove the parking, that was one of the concerns that we had is that you would have which face the curb, face the curb width out there is 40 feet of pavement. There we go. Look, back up. I'm sorry. Okay. So just in this schematic, I want to give you an example of what that would look like. If I was educated enough to work a mouse. There we go. All I did was just go ahead and remove the parking. It's 40 feet. Typically what we find and what we see and what has actually been verified through studies is the more open area that you have for these pavements, especially when there's no curvature in the road like this, a nice long straight shot, the speeds go up. This area, for those that may not be familiar, this is a high area as far as pedestrians, very, very high. I used to live over in this part of town when I was in school, and even then it was very high with pedestrians, and it still is to this day. So this was one of our concerns that we had, was that if we open it up, what will happen is as they proceed on into the neighborhood to Rocky Point Court, that the speeds may be accelerated, that they would go quicker. One suggestion was to look to see if it would be feasible to go ahead and add a third lane. A third lane with the idea behind it that people would use that center lane to make left turns into the complexes. That, in turn, would then you would lose the parking on the both sides because of the additional width for that center lane. This is a typical example, schematic, of what that would be in that area. Based on regs, you can see where we have the taper that occurs close to the Rocky Point side. That is a requirement by the Federal Highway Administration that we must have a taper because we go from one transition to another. Basically, when you get into the neighborhood, you do have parking on both sides, so that would be a dramatic change. Plus, the concerns of doing this type of scenario is that the pedestrians not only have two lanes of traffic to continue with if they do wish to cross or interact within the roadway area. Now they have three. And the travel lanes are no longer in the center of the road. We have shoved them as close to the sidewalk as much as possible. Working with Officer Gaines and Metro Police Department, and what we found out is there's a common theme of what's going on. Basically, a desire to have the parking just within this block section removed. With some of the information that you have that was provided in your packet, you will see the support of the abutting property owners on both sides, only within that block area. And then the fact that what Metro has noted as problems out there. They really hope with doing this, this can help on the enforcement end and discouragement end of some of those activities going on out there. So basically, what we try to come up with is we want to go ahead, if we do lose the parking, how do we compensate and still maintain those travel lanes, center of the road, try not to include another lane that has to be contended with if you are a pedestrian, and still try to keep those narrow lanes so that it will be slower. So again, this is what it looks like if you lose the parking very wide and how we can possibly compensate for that by just doing some edge line work out there. I'm going ahead and painting, bringing it down, coming about 9 feet off the face of curve on both sides, striking it out, which will reinforce the fact that you cannot park there, and additional paint instead of just a single line will help direct and keep the driver in the center of the road. That's where we want them out there. And we'll keep the road width fairly narrow there. We will go down to an 11-foot lane instead of a 12-foot. This is close to the Devonport side. Same example as we get to Rocky Point, which is the circle down there on the bottom of the page, parking removed and compensated for by doing this. We are able to go ahead and maintain the existing cross-section as you come along Alexandria Drive as though you're going to Cambridge. And through here where it is gone, we still maintain those narrow lanes because that's the desired effect we really want. If you look at a typical width of a vehicle, if you're talking six and a half to eight feet, we're talking about nine feet here. So we're actually making it more narrow within this area. And based on a request from Metro Police Department, they had asked if we would go ahead and provide signage to go ahead and combat some of the problems that they have within this area as far as some of the activities going on. And with that, I'll go ahead and let Officer Gaines come up with the clear unit and talk a little bit further on some of those subject matters. Welcome. Hello. I'm Officer Gaines with Lexington Police Department, clear unit. And I think through the designs that Brad's come up with, this will serve our purpose on this. The center turn lane is not something that was brought up earlier, I think, after we discussed it, that there was some issues on what we were really looking for. And basically what we're looking to do here is crime prevention through environmental design. And what we've had in this specific area is we have cars that park along the edges of the road in front of these apartment complexes that the apartment complexes nor us as a police department really have any jurisdiction over for people loitering for drug sales, prostitution or whatever out there because they are legally sitting there without this and the apartments don't have any control over it and we don't have any because it would be a legal parking spot. So what we're trying to do is get rid of that availability for people to park there for those purposes of loitering and take it away from those apartment areas because they are such a high density area. Also, one of the other issues that the apartment complexes had in that vicinity there was the ability to pull out. When cars are parked along the line there, when they come to exit either one of those complexes, their residents could not see and they were saying it would cause a safety hazard for them to pull out and try to come into the lanes of traffic. Right now at this moment 1340 Alexandria has been condemned and they're working on redoing it so there's nobody. I think they're going to start bringing it back one at a time through the apartment complexes. But that's our main concern was to get that done for that reason. Thank you. I think we got a humming noise going on here. Did anybody hear that? No. Mr. Beard? The sign as it is presented right there has a lot of English verbiage to it. And that is a fairly high Hispanic area. Would we want to reinforce that with the international no parking, the P with a slash through it type of thing? Because they may not know necessarily what standing means. We discussed that, and I'll let Brad answer that. It's a good point, Council Member Beard. The symbol you're talking about is the parking restriction, which basically means no parking here. The police department requested that they didn't want any congregation to occur in the same area as well, so no pulling in and stopping or standing or just being around this area. That's why this sign is the one that I chose to show you all here at this point, because not only was it just a parking restriction, there was other elements that they were wanting to control out there as well. I'm suggesting, Brad, that we do both. Okay. Then we can intermingle the two, as long as that's fine with them. We can intermingle them. We were looking to use about eight of these. So the center ones, I'll go ahead and just use these on the ends to border them up, and then go ahead and use that other sit there. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? Ms. Henson, do you have any motions that you would like to bring forward? We probably could ask traffic engineering to do it without one, but it – In the thinking about this, you can. We would just go ahead and work with the police department, and there would be no action that would be required on this. We don't need to make any formal action here? No, you don't have to. If you choose to do so, that's fine. But, you know, based on how we operate, and it is a residential collector, we can just proceed on and go ahead with that based on this information. Thank you so much for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you all. Do you want to make a motion, or are you satisfied with there? You think I need it. It's not necessary. It can be done, but as he said, it's not necessary, so it's up to you. I think we'll proceed. I'll make a motion to proceed with restricting parking on 1300 block of Alexandria. I don't have the exact addresses, Brad. I know it's 1340. I would say as presented by the traffic engineering. Okay. Second. So moved. We have a motion, second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That passes. Now the third item is the 2003 Public Utilities Task Force Ice Storm Report and recommendations that Ms. Gordon put in. I see Dr. Stevens is here. I think he initially had presented this back in 2000. We have him on retainer, so we're glad that you're here. Ms. Gorton, if you would like to go ahead and discuss this, we'll begin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I put this into committee because I thought it was important, now that we've had another big ice storm, to review the 2003-2004 recommendations. The Public Service Commission made recommendations, and the task force, the Public Utilities Task Force, made recommendations. And I wanted us specifically to look at these recommendations to see what we could do better, what has been accomplished since 2003, what still needs to be done in terms of the recommendations. And I think somewhere along the line we'll probably have another discussion about underground utilities. So with that, Mr. Chair, I give it back to you. Thank you. Dr. Stevens, if you would briefly, I guess, go back and give us an overview of what the recommendations were back in the – your committee did back in 2003 after the first ice storm. And also we have David Fryberg here with KU that will probably talk about what happened in 03 and then also the response here in 09. And with that, Dr. Stevens, welcome again. Thank you. I'm glad to know I'm on a retainer. Where do I get that check? It's that volunteer retainer. Yeah. Well, I don't know what's coming up next week on Tuesday, but maybe I'll be here, maybe I won't. but the public utilities task force was formed back in the 90s in an effort to improve communications with the utilities that served Lexington and to work out partnerships to solve some of the problems that were identified. For example, one of the problems was the streets and roads were repaving streets, And then next week, the water company and the gas company and everybody would come along and start making new cuts in the road almost before the asphalt was dry and those kind of problems. Of course, in 203, we had the worst ice storm ever recorded in Lexington. There was two and a half inches of ice on trees. And according to the Weather Bureau, they never seen anything like that in this part of the state. There were 140,000 customers without electricity in Fayette County, which is a large number. The government opened its operations center, emergency operations center, and partnered with utilities and other agencies to try and overcome this, but it took us a couple weeks to get out of it almost like it was this time, perhaps a little worse. the following the ice storm the public utilities task force which is as the members listed on your in your packet reviewed the ice storm response at hearings and invited the utilities to come which they did and present their reports as council member gorton remarked that also was done at the Public Service Commission, which is the state agency, as you know, that oversees them. And we came up with several recommendations. We thought that the call centers that the utilities operated needed to have better information because when people would call to find out when their electricity was going to be turned back on or some other service, the call centers, which were in remote locations, didn't always have the information they needed. And so responding to individual requests was a problem we had back then. We also, and I see that David Fribert is probably going to tell you about the breakaway system for electric utilities. In certain areas, the homeowner was required to get an electrical contractor to come by and repair part of their electrical intake into the house. And then they had to get a city inspector to come by and certify that it was okay. Well, this led to delay. The people didn't know they were supposed to get it. And there is a type of connection which can be put on a house that doesn't require that. And so that was the recommendation also. So we also recommended to the urban county government that a permanent call center be provided, and that's been an ongoing issue, as you know, and right now it's still under study. We had some trouble with emergency shelters in staffing them. I know that I am a pathologist. I'm a retired orthopedic surgeon and a pathologist, and I made rounds in several of these emergency centers to tend to the people who were there. And I think there are better doctors to get for that kind of thing than me or the pathologists. And so we asked the medical society to set up a call system so that they can respond to the shelters and take care of the people with the appropriate skills. We need to have the public understand what the disaster plan is. That requires constant reiteration and education. One of the major things we recommended was that the public utility, particularly the electric utility, be more diligent in tree trimming. that they had been somewhat put off by homeowners in the urban county area because when the homeowner would say, please don't, Woodman, cut my tree, they wouldn't, and they would leave. Some of the other electric utilities we dealt with said they only did that when the homeowner brought his shotgun out and told him to get away. but so the electric utilities have a problem with their customers being willing to let the trees be trimmed the way they should be to avoid the kind of thing that happened a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what resources our electric utility uses now to do that, and Mr. Frabert can tell you about that and what their present plans are. I think it also relates, and this is something that has been an ongoing problem since I was on the council before I came and after, and I guess it still is, and that's street trees. Most communities, I think, have a program to take care of street trees. There are divisions of forestry, have the manpower and the resources to, in many cities, to plant trees, to nourish and nurture them, to take them down when they need to be taken down or prune them, and it's not a direct responsibility to the homeowner, which it is here in Lexington. Cincinnati has a very good plan where they charge about five cents a front foot, and they were able to do all their tree work with that. We need something like that here in Lexington, And I think if we have a good street tree program, those trees that are subject to falling over and interrupting the electric lines could be dealt with before the storm happens. And that kind of summarizes our report. There was one other thing, and this is on page. I have a little trouble reading it, but I think it's on 38 and 39. 39, I believe. There are two numbers on there. One was from the report and one from your packet. Many citizens thought that when they were out of service for two weeks, that KU should pay them for that and not have to pay their electric bill for when they didn't have service, and that was not resolved. to my knowledge. Thank you, Dr. Stevens, for your work on that back in 2003, and thank you for coming back here. At this time, I think we have Commissioner Webb here. Would you like to comment on what happened in 2003 to 2009, or would you rather Mr. Fryberg come speak? Because I guess we'd like to see what we learned from 2003 to see how we benefited our use here in 2009. I really can't comment on what KU, the differences between 2003 and the one we just had. I wasn't here then, and not in this capacity. I was in private industry, but I can comment on streets, roads, and forestry. Why don't you handle that, and then we'll have Mr. Freiber talk about KU and their responses from 2003 and 2009? One of the things that I recognized right away that there was a lot of learning that took place in 2003 for streets, roads, and forestry, there's a core group of people there that was there in 2003 that immediately recognized what we were going to be faced with over a long period as the ice storm started to evolve. When the trees started to fall, they had a good feel for what it was going to take to get the right-of-ways cleared. And we were able to address those things immediately. We still had tools left. I know I've mentioned maps that GIS had prepared for 2003 that we used this time, so we didn't have to take a lot of time. We took a look at what forces we had on hand and divided them up geographically, the urban services area, and were able to go right to work, probably had that stuff in our hands within eight hours of when we started to see a number of trees fall. So we were able to address things very quickly in this ice storm. we also I think based on what happened in 2003 they understood the need to have eyes out in the urban services area and out in the county to start estimating how much work was there and we did that with a group of folks from engineering who went out and first estimated how many trees we had to cut so we had a good idea how long that might take and how we might have to build our forces up. We were asking for employees from parks, from environmental quality, from traffic engineering equipment. So there was a good understanding of what kind of work was out there, and we were able to balance our workforce between cutting and trimming trees and clearing roadways. then the entire issue of debris that remained out to be picked up there was a good understanding this go around that that could not be managed within the workforce that we had that we needed a contractor so immediately as soon as we got out of the business of trimming trees and clearing roadways we got into the business of trying to get a contractor on board that would do collection for us on the private streets, private pickup streets. And through the help of purchasing, and Brian Markham specifically, we were able to get that contract out on the street quickly and within the guidelines that are provided for those types of contracts, get a contract in place with a very good contractor that we've been very pleased with and get that work started. I didn't bring a calendar with me, but I don't think that whole process took but two weeks or two and a half weeks to get going once we got started. Had it been the normal process that we went through, we would not have started that contractor until this past Monday. So we were able to speed all that up, recognizing the impact of the tree debris laying in the right-of-way and the need to get it up. So we're way ahead of the ballgame. If you take a look back to 2003, and when I say way ahead of the ballgame, I don't think it's fair to say that there's as much for us, as much debris down as there was in 2003. but we were able to get started on each phase very quickly with a workforce proportional to the work that was out there. So the things that we have done better is in the learning and recognition of how much work's out there and being able to address it very quickly. Thank you. Any questions for Commissioner Webb? I got one. You might not know the answers, but I'm going to ask you anyway. In the report from 2003, they made a statement that said debris was estimated to be 150 million pounds, and it would create a mound of debris three-foot wide and three-foot high stretching from Lexington to Knoxville. I was curious, when you did your estimates here, what was your estimates for this ice storm? We really didn't estimate what was in the entire urban service area. The estimate that we did was for the contractor through streets and roads, and the engineering did that for us. we estimated for our first pass that we would pick up 45,000 cubic yards. We didn't estimate it in pounds because that's the way we're paying for it in cubic yards. Now, because we took those contractors, I think we entered our first pass somewhere around 40,000, so we were very close on what the first pass was. since our first pass was complete, those contractors have gone over to the city pickup areas to help get those picked up. We got them back Monday, and they're starting their second pass on the private collection streets. But as a total for what just the contractor has done, as of Sunday, they had done 79, almost 80,000 cubic yards. And if you took UK's football field end zone to end zone, sideline to sideline, that 80,000 cubic yards would be stacked just over 37 feet high on that entire football field. That does not include everything. Solid waste actually started picking up two weeks before we did. They have worked nonstop seven days a week since they started. streets and roads have been picking up in the county that entire length of time also. So I don't have an estimate, but as we get towards the end of this, we will provide estimates for what our city employees have done. But I think the key here is it's quite a bit. It's not as much as we had in 2003, though. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Lane. If any of the constituents in the county have debris, they should just leave it on the curb, and then you'll pick it up as soon as possible. There's no penalty for sending it out there. We have already done quite a bit of the county, not all the county. But, yes, if they put it out and we haven't been there, if they've seen their neighbors get picked up, then they probably need to make some other arrangements for that. but we can't continually keep picking it up. When I'm at county, we're a merge government inside the urban service area. Inside the urban service area, we're making two passes on everything. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Commissioner. At this time, I'd call David Fryberg, who is representative of Kentucky Utilities, and welcome him. He was here in 2003 and back here in 2009. Thank you, sir. I was here in 03. I know several of you all were and have been through a couple of these with us now. I know there are several new members that have had their first go around in terms of ICE and their utilities. As you might imagine, as we did coming out of 2003, Kentucky Utilities and LG&E, our sister company in Louisville, are doing an internal critical self-assessment of how things went, what we did well, what we did less well than we would like in developing lessons learned, how we'll do things differently in the future. And we'll also be working with the Public Service Commission, our regulator, on a statewide version of that review. and you are welcome to have access to those reports when they're available and I'll make sure that if you'd like, I'm happy to deliver those or they'll be available on the PSC website. In 2003, Dr. Stevens and his committee did a lot of work and have a lot of information, a lot of detail here. Rather than attempting to wade through all of that, I would begin, if you would allow me, just by focusing or making a comment or two on each of the recommendations the task force made and then hitting the highlights on two or three key areas that I expect will be of interest to you, interest to the Public Service Commission. They are certainly of interest to our customers, and those are things like communications, tree trimming, and underground utilities. And if that is acceptable, I'll head that direction. Would that work for you? Sounds great. Great. In terms of the recommendations from the task force, they were to review location and operation of call centers. And we made an offer to council members in 2003 and 4 and 5, and I'd renew it for those of you that have not been just a couple of blocks behind here to the KU building. And after 2003, Kentucky Utilities moved its distribution dispatch center. It's kind of our disaster recovery operation from Stone Road to the fourth floor of our one quality street building. So they're now in there with the management team, and they work all that process from right there. It is worth seeing, just as a citizen, it's worth seeing as a member of council how that process works. You'll see screens that look a lot like what you would see in your 911 center in terms of the geographical location of customers for us, citizens for you. It is an interesting place to spend 20 minutes. Also on that same floor is one of our three integrated call centers. We have one in Lexington, one in Louisville, one in Pineville, and they all work off of the same platform, the same information. It doesn't matter where they are. They all have access to the same customer data, the same GIS information, the same account history, the same maps. So if a tornado hit Louisville, we could dispatch and take all their calls from here with all the same information and the same from Pineville and vice versa. But they are operations that are worth seeing. The call center, for example, took 700,000 calls in the two weeks immediately around the ice storm this time. And I'll kind of begin and end on communications because it is one of the areas where we've made great strides since 2003, yet it is one of those areas where we have a lot of hard work left to do and we'll be working on that. Second recommendation was to evaluate, Dr. Stevens mentioned the design of a service mast and a weather head. And the electric industry is kind of different where some things progress very slowly. such as the meter on your house for the most part is a design that was created 70, 80, 90 years ago. Those masts, those connections to your house are standard old designs as well. There are a lot of new cutting-edge things, such as the dispatch system that we put together coming out of the ice storm last time and spent $30 million on a lot of high-tech stuff. But some of the things we use are standard old technology, and that service connection, that mast, is one of those. And Dr. Stevens mentioned some kind of tear-away applications, and there are a number of factors we weigh when we look at equipment and facilities. One of them is reliability. Others are how do they handle weather, how quickly can you restore power. But first and foremost with all of our calculations is safety, and that is why we remain. We have done some study on alternative service connections, and we actually have an internal work group that is looking again at some newer versions of those that are considering that and other ways to harden facilities. But at this time, we remain most comfortable from a safety standpoint with the service connections that are there. It may add a day to someone's inconvenience down the road, but we have to factor safety in before anything else in how we do those operations. One of the other recommendations was for the city to establish its permanent EOC, and we think that's a great idea. We had, KU had staff 24 hours a day the entire time the Lexington EOC was open from the time it opened to the time it closed. The next item was publicize the disaster plans. I'll come to that in a moment, but that is one thing that we have made improvements on where it is something we created a little four or five slide example that shows how we go about it, the protocol we use in establishing or in choosing which customers come first, hospitals and schools and things like that first, and then down the priority ranking. and communicated that with our customers since 2003 to today through our bill stuffers and other media internal to our company, but also during the ice storm, Cliff Feltham and others did that education through the media and other communications channels. The briefings that were established in 2003 and continued in 2009 are of great value. We, again, KU, had a representative presence to take advantage from our perspective of those communications channels to our customers to give them the latest and most up-to-date information and find those of great value to us. Second to last recommendation was regarding tree trimming. And that may be, again, traditional utility stuff. A lot of things remain the same. We have the same tree trimming cycles. It is one of the areas where we've made some significant changes, and I'll share those with you in a minute in terms of reliability-based trimming, not just is it time for this circuit to be trained, but also doing some study into each circuit, which ones, for whatever reason, seem to have reliability problems, and do they need different treatment or more frequent treatment than the cycle would suggest. And you all know, many of you know Nelson Maynard, and that's one of the areas that he now oversees. And Dr. Stephen mentioned the final recommendation was to compensate customers for loss of service, and that is one that we have not made much advancement on. We are, as you might know, prohibited by law from providing free service to customers or a group of customers. It is a time of great inconvenience, a time of frustration to be without power. and in the midst of the recovery efforts, we were over at One Quality and thinking about nothing but getting lines back in the air and getting lights back on, and still customers would troop into our office to pay their bills or to ask for certain regular customer requests. And you'd look at these folks and you'd know odds are pretty strong that some of these people are coming in to pay a bill and they're going to go back home to a house that doesn't have power. And we can imagine how frustrating that may be and understand the interest in some compensatory outcome of a storm. They don't get charged, obviously, for usage when their electricity is off. That's no compensation. But it is something that we don't see a clear way to providing any relief on. And if there are any questions on those recommendations, I'm happy to answer or move on to the two or three key areas of interest. Ms. Gorton. David, welcome. Thank you, ma'am. I think there are two of us, council members, who were here for the 03 storm. And remember your hard work back then. I think you're going to address trees in more depth, right? So I won't ask my tree questions yet. But back on number two, recommendation about implementing a new mechanism and the discussion about the breakaway system. You'll recall that in 2003 ice storm, there was a home in the fourth district, which I represented, which did burn down because the mast broke off. and it was a bad situation. And I guess my question is, this storm, are you aware of any mast heads that were taken out? Because I know a lot of them were replaced after the 03 ice storm. I think we all learned a little bit in 2003 that Kentucky Utilities did. I think maybe the inspectors who follow through in a process like that learned some things in all of that. I am not aware of an incident in this area, in the Lexington or Fayette County area. I don't know about statewide, but it may be that there are a number of factors that could be involved. It could be that we were better able to identify damaged facilities, because one of the things that happened last time was people that didn't know they had damage and never lost service, even though a limb had come down, hit their service line, and done some damage to their service, did nothing, saw no need to do anything. And when service was returned to their street, they powered up, and the damage only then became evident in the form of a spark or a fire. We did not have that happen in Lexington, as far as I know, either because we were more vigilant in identifying problems. I know we walked every circuit in Lexington a couple of times. There's nothing like a tragedy like that to refocus your efforts. During this storm? During this storm. You walked every circuit? Yes, ma'am. Everyone that had damage. And maybe we coordinated better with, we're at an area where I don't know enough about without doing research and asking our folks, but maybe we coordinated better with the inspectors to identify those problems. Well, and I think we, as a citizen body, learned a lot. You know, the masthead. Yes, ma'am. the picture was in the paper more than once, and I think all of us learned a lot about that mechanism that we didn't know before. Well, you'll recall that you saw that before. You saw that at the end of the 2003 storm, and it was one of the things that we did this time that was born from the 2003 storm. There are a couple more that I'll get to in a moment, but that was an obvious example of a lesson learned and how it played into our communications efforts. On number five, it talks about the recommendation to publish disaster plan and provide adequate public education. And you mentioned that you've had bill stuffers and that you've gone to the media. Have you done a – each year when we go into winter, And I don't know the history of our ice storms whether they all come in January and February Or you know whether some have come in December But have you considered at the beginning of January having a Press conference, press release and major publication Of something such as in the event of an ice storm So that you do the education piece in a big way right as the season begins. I will ask Cliff whether we do a January, February kind of ice storm preparedness media blitz. We do do seasonal efforts that come with thunderstorms in the summertime, high winds and other things in spring that are timed to traditional peaks and valleys with the weather. But I'll find out. I expect we do do winter storm kind of rollouts, But I'll confirm that we do one with ICE, and if we don't, then we would certainly be willing to add that to the calendar of when we push those things out and make as much noise as we can. Well, I think now that we've had two in six years, we might expect to have another one sometimes. So, I mean, I would hope we wouldn't, but if you could look at that, because I think people would be, people are more receptive when it's a possibility the next day or soon. And then I have several questions about the tree trimming, but I'll wait since you're going to cover that. Hopefully I'll cover them, and if not, you're welcome to probe. Thank you. Ms. Lawless? This might be better to wait until he finishes, and it's about communication. Okay, that's fine. Sure. Any other questions at this point? Go ahead, David. Thanks. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Lane? Thank you, Mr. Frobert, for coming in. Before I ask my question, I'd just like to say that I appreciated your KU's response. There were a couple of constituents in the 12th District who had health problems, And when that came to our attention, we called your offices and your people responded. And I just really appreciated it for the extra effort to help those people out. My question is on item number two, the new mechanism for connecting electrical service. Has that been codified in our billing code? Is that a standard or is that just a recommendation? I don't know. I know that we have industry standards that we follow. I can find that out. I do not know. Whether you're recommending, help me understand the question. Do we have our processes codified or is your request codified? Well, you know, you're showing the breakaway electrical system. That looks like a really good idea. It looks like it wouldn't be that expensive. But if we had it in our building code, then we could start adding that in all new construction and maybe it would save a fire in the future that way too without any major cost. So I'm just thinking maybe we could put it into our building code. And one of the things that may be either help or hindrance, but I expect to be part of a public discussion, is the Public Service Commission will do a statewide look at a lot of these things and may make recommendations to the legislature on state building codes and not just municipality by municipality. So that may be a... That would be even better. Thank you very much. Appreciate all you're doing. Thank you. Ms. Feigl? Thank you, Mr. Chair. It just occurred to me that you might be able to communicate better if we work with the TV stations and the radio stations when they do the weather reports, because everybody watches for the weather report. And if there could just be something on the – if we could get them to either mention to call 311 or if you had a special website with instructions on what to do for a storm. because in the mailer, those little things that you put in the mailer, I typically throw those out when I pay my bills and don't even read them. But we have so many people that are paying their bills online that they're not likely to see that. So since people do watch the weather report when they know bad weather is coming, that seems to be the best way to communicate what we do under those circumstances. Great ideas. And I know that we would love to have more folks paying bills online. It's an easier way to do it. And I think on our website somewhere there are similar messages, but I haven't looked recently. But we do do a couple of cooperative things with the TV stations. Hopefully you noticed some of the safety crawls that come across the bottom. But we can look at other ways to take advantage of those both. So thank you. Any other questions? Mr. McCord? Thank you, Mr. Chair. One other suggestion that had come forward actually from the police department, which I thought was a fantastic idea, is looking at taking out the space inside the front cover of a phone book as a place to communicate, here's our action plan, both as the government along with USKU, and we may partner with that opportunity in that, you know, online goes down when that power goes down, and so do TVs and other things like that. But generally speaking, we have 5,000 phone books that appear on our driveway throughout the year, so I don't know which phone book we get into. The real one. Yeah, the real one. The bottom line is looking for places like that that are going to reach everybody and it's kind of an easy go-to, this is what I do, here's where I call type thing. Just a suggestion I'd like to pass along that I thought was really good. It's a good idea because one of the, I don't know if it's frustrating or ironic things when I know Cliff is standing there in front of a TV camera and doing all the right things that we want to have done and getting the information to customers that they need to make decisions and not knowing who has a TV set on at home and who has the ability to receive that signal. So any channels are worth pursuing. Any other questions at this point? Okay, Ms. Lawless. She couldn't resist. Go ahead. We as council members were encouraged to ask constituents to call 311. And I know I got a lot of calls during the storm. However, a week or so after the ice storm, there was a big windstorm, I guess, in a large portion of the city, including my house. We were without power. I was without power for 15, 16 hours. So I called 311, and they didn't have any information. And I'm wondering if there's a big event like that where a large grid goes out. if somebody from KU could communicate to our 311 so that they would have that information? It's a good question, and it's something that is supposed to happen, and I'll check in to see why it didn't happen to the extent that it made your call successful. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that when customers lose power, your constituents or anybody else's, the first call they need to make is to 1-800-981-0600 to make sure that we know that their power is out, And then they're welcome to take advantage of the services and the benefits that 311 offers. But they need to make sure that we know that they're out. And odds are, in situations not like the one a month ago when we had half a million customers out, they will most often have access to information that is specific to their situation in their area. But they're welcome to access the 311, but they need to make sure that we know. Sure. Yeah, and I knew that you all knew. Okay, great. et cetera, but it would be nice if we're encouraging people to call 311 if, like I say, not if two houses are out. But I think it was quite a large area that was without power. Thank you. Ms. Gordon? I have another non-tree trimming question. On recommendation number eight from the task force about compensating customers, I don't pay the bills at my house anymore, so I don't know the answer to this question. Is there a basic charge from KU before the electrical usage charge? There are several components to the bill. The basic charge is a meter charge, where it is the facilities that are attached to your house and their cost to buy, to maintain, and to operate over a period of time. And everybody pays that charge. Yes. Whether they receive electricity or not. I don't know if that's the case. I can find out, though. Well, that was my question is if you were – I realize that it might be a little complicated to do this, but I think what people might be looking for in that recommendation is because they're not going to pay for electricity if their electricity is out. Sure. So we know that. So if there's a basic charge, maybe they're looking at some sort of prorating. If they're out for two weeks, like many of us were in 2003, that's half of a month. And perhaps that's what would satisfy customers more is if they had the time, and it would take documentation. And I realize this is more complicated than what's on the surface. But perhaps that would be a way to look at compensating customers. If you could document you were out of power for two weeks, then you could prorate that basic charge. And I can raise the issue, and frankly you all may, at a proceeding of ours at the PSC. I know the city is often a party to those cases. My initial reaction would be the thing that is tied to usage, The thing that is tied to how much of the product you use is the energy portion of the bill. The fact that you are or are not on or whether there was a storm or not has little to do with the overall cost of that investment that was made on your behalf or the equipment that either sits on the Ohio River and generates the electricity or sits on your house and distributes the electricity through your house. Those hard costs or sunk costs are there, but we can certainly talk about it further. Thank you. Any others? I see none. Go ahead, David. An issue that was in front of mind for us coming into this storm and coming out of 2003 and now looking at our self-assessment and things in the future is communications. And I would kind of, in my mind, organize it in four or five different buckets where there's communications to our customers as a whole. There's communications to our customers individually. There's communications with governmental bodies such as the council and the state hierarchy, communication to our regulator, the Public Service Commission. All those are important channels that factor into a broad and often reviewed and refined communication plan that we have that was in place before the storm started that was reviewed in the two or three or four days leading up to it because we all watched the weather, did National Weather Service teleconferences with those folks and other utilities and the state to get ready for what was coming. So the plan was in place. It was fresh. It was as good as we could make it at that time. It was battle-tested for two weeks. We now have the opportunity to go back and improve it. But there are a couple of observations I'd make on communications in general and then get to the very end and talk about one that we still have to struggle with, which is the direct individual communication with customers regarding what their expectations should be when their power will be back on in these massive events. In a normal event, our system does it. In these catastrophic events, no one has one yet that we have been able to find through peer review and through research that does all the things we'd like it to do, but that peer review is ongoing. During the opening stages of the storm, you may or may not know that we engaged your dean, Pat Duggar, and her folks the day or two before getting those communications channels open. We did initial, you know, at the front end briefings of the media, what we expected, where we were kind of staging resources. As soon as the ice started and the things began to fall, those safety crawls, hopefully, for those of you that still had television service, We're coming across the bottom of the TV station broadcasts. Same for radio stations. And we established links with a number of different components of the city government. We placed a tremendously high priority on, at the very beginning, when we had a sense of the scale of the problem, not just in Lexington, but on a statewide basis, of giving customers the critical information at the front end to make decisions they'd have to make for their families for the next two weeks. And we knew, I don't know, 18 hours, 20 hours into it, that this was going to be a far worse ice storm than we had in Lexington five, six years ago, that because of the statewide nature of it, that meant all of our customers would be affected, and the fact that it was beyond that. it was regional, and it froze in place all of those extra crews that would come to us once the storm finished. Those companies couldn't let those people go until they knew for sure the storm was over and that they were okay. They had to hold them in place. We knew with those factors that we were looking at two weeks in a lot of places for all of our customers to come back on. And so at the very beginning, the expectation we attempted to set and took every opportunity to was to let customers know that some of them would be without power for up to two weeks. It turns out we got most of the majority of them back in three or four days, but there were folks here that were out 11, 12, 13 days. And setting that expectation at the front end was a critical factor for us. We used a lot of the lessons we learned in 2003. In your packet, the little packet I think that you found already, Council Member Gorton, you see that masthead design that was developed in the 2003 storm. The next little item will be familiar to those of you here then as well, which is an attempt to show our customers how our distribution system is set up vis-à-vis the city's street map. We don't follow the street map. We have an engineering driver that dictates where facilities go, how certain areas are fed, and they don't line up with a street schematic. So when there are KU crews working in the area where they've not had power and they see their neighbor's lights come on and theirs don't, they wonder what happened. This is an attempt to address those concerns to say you're fed by a different tap line or your whole area is fed by a different circuit. And it, too, is being worked on, but it is not the one you see being worked on in front of you. Again, lessons learned from 2003. The next one is I mentioned the disaster plan. Here's a little four- or five-slide PowerPoint that we have used in various iterations in Bill Stuffers and elsewhere, and Cliff Feltham used in briefings with the media to familiarize folks with, okay, this big storm happens. What is the process that the company goes through and the city goes through for restoring power, starting with critical customers, hospitals, water treatment facilities? and we work closely with your disaster folks, Dean and others, in identifying the right priorities and when things go back off during a restoration process to let us know that a nursing home here went off or that that facility went back off so we can redirect resources to those folks. A new tool that was born of this statewide event is the next item, which is a county-by-county listing. This is well on in the restoration effort, seven days into it, and it shows probably just 25 or six counties. The next map was something that was developed here on a statewide basis and elsewhere coming into this, I guess, the last year or so. How can we help customers get a perspective on where the damage is, where our resources are, what's broken, and where are the guys working on it? And this map hopes to show areas of damage by severity, by zip code, and where company resources are currently located working on those. There is another one of those behind that map that is focused on western Kentucky. And those are both from the same time and same date. And you'll see the darker colors indicating remaining larger pockets of customers still out in the west. The next map, again, these were shared with the news media, with the Public Service Commission, on our website, on the PSC website, carried to meetings like this so that people could, trying to use every medium we could use, not knowing which medium a particular customer could use, given their circumstances. That next map is a state map, again, coded by the number of outages. The story in the western part of the state, and thank goodness it was not the story here, was that for the first three or four days, everything was off. I think 96% of our distribution circuits had no power from our transmission grid because it was laying on the ground in western Kentucky. From Dix Dam in Mercer County all the way west to the Mississippi River, our transmission grid was virtually non-energized. It got to the point where we had to shut down our Green River generating plant because there was no outlet for the power it was producing. Significant event for us. The next map shows, you know, three or four days later, the rebuilding process of that transmission system, even before you could begin to bring back on residential areas, major employers, big customers. You had to get the backbone rebuilt before they could begin to see the progress we saw here in day two, three, and four. Whole different level of damage, whole different perspective west of I-65. It was extraordinary. The final little graphic just shows the 25 or 26 states that sent us help. I know we much prefer to be in the position of sending them help, but these folks came to our aid this time, and we appreciate them. We were in lockstep with the regulator, with the Kentucky Public Service Commission. We did twice daily briefings with them, 9 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, and gave them updated information on number of outages by geographic area, the number of resources we had working, the safety updates, because, again, none of it's worth it if people are injured or killed doing this work. And that was actually the first item on every meeting agenda. And they would then use their website to complement or augment ours as access to this information. We coordinated with not just your local emergency management folks but also the state folks on a regular basis. We are members of all these emergency management groups, and our folks go through a lot of training, as yours do. It is worth it. It is worth it to us, and it's worth it to the benefit and the relationships that are built are beneficial to us all. On a statewide basis, we had management personnel assigned to virtually every EOC or county, especially in the west. Here in the east, it's a little easier because eastern Kentucky was untouched. Central Kentucky was beat up pretty good, but in the west, it was devastating. Council Member Beard, you asked earlier and last time about some of the raw numbers on what was broken and all that, And we gave the PSC an update every day on the number of broken poles, 1,500 of them. And we and every other utility in the region was asking the same suppliers for poles. And we made it through. But there was a couple of days when we weren't sure shipments would get to where they needed to be on time. But those kind of things you have to worry about. 20,000 lines, individual spans of line down. But these aren't just Lexington numbers. This is statewide, and we'll hopefully cull those out in a way that's more of greater interest to you after we do the PSC report. But the numbers of broken equipment and material was staggering. And 6,000 restoration workers, we had tent cities set up in five or six places in the state where we had to house and feed and shower these guys from all over the U.S. And they slept on cots, and they took cold showers for several days and were loud about that. But they were great, and we were glad to have them. But the amount of damage was amazing. And I'll leave any other communication issues for questions you all may have. And please be aware that it is central to our own internal assessment. It is certainly going to be central to what our regulator has us investigating and looking at and looking at piers, Duke Energy may have a couple of things that they do or system enhancements that we may be able to buy or model. The second issue I mentioned was vegetation management, and I'll try to be a little more brief on the next two. Those of you here in 2003 know we talked about trimming circuits at certain intervals because of either where they are, whether they're rural or urban, whether they're 12 kV or 4 kV. In Dr. Stevens' report, there are a number of details on those things. I would characterize our tree trimming program coming out of 2003 as reinvigorated and more aggressive. The cycles have not changed, but I expect there was a window of about eight months or a year where customers were not resistant or not as resistant as historical measures in letting us onto the property to do the work. But we have since then, while not changing the cycles, 3.5 to 3.9 years per circuit, we have been more aggressive in the trimming we do. We have gotten more every time we go in. We trim things we didn't always trim. The last time I was here, somebody asked about the fence line behind Fayette Mall and Shiltoe Park that had been left alone for years and years and years. Those kind of things, we now just, the honeysuckle and the bramble, we just take out unless there's a big reason not to. But the cycles remain similar. The levels of trimming is greater, and we've layered on something that we call kind of reliability-based clearing or trimming, and that is to do pretty intricate and pretty exhaustive studies of the performance of each of our circuits, you know, 300 or 400 circuits around the state, and see which ones perform well, which ones perform poorly, and then get into the weeds on why they perform poorly. And a lot of it comes down to vegetation management or trees, and those circuits get additional looks, attention, resources that have them being addressed even when they're not in cycle, when those things are not up on the regular cycle to be trimmed. and it is the one big difference that we have in tree trimming. And the same details we had for your report, Dr. Stevens, remain the same in terms of how our folks are trained. All our arborists are trained and certified. We use five different contracting companies, Asplend and others, Townsend, to do the trimming, but they're overseen by our folks, by our trained arborists, and I'm happy to provide any detail or go back and get any detail you all would like on that. Another area of great interest here and elsewhere is overhead versus underground utilities. And we have been glad to entertain individual requests for information and studies at Ashland Park and other discrete areas within the city. And I know that we work with Harold Tate and his group, and we're working with the mayor on some of their projects on what would it take to take these existing facilities and put them underground as part of either a standalone project or as part of this other larger road project or whatever. We're happy to continue to do those things. It is a big issue, and we're pleased that I think the PSC is going to take a statewide look at this. We'll be heavily involved as the state's biggest utility, but looking at it on a statewide basis will make us more effective and efficient in the work we do and all that. And it gives a better sense of a broad scale of what does something like that cost, what are the potential benefits, and allow the state, the city, other interest groups to make informed decisions on how important it is to them based on what they might receive and what it would cost. In our system, it's still about 80-20, overhead being 80%, 20 being underground. But for the last 10 or 15 years within KU service territory, 65% to 70% of the new line extensions or the new customers we bring on choose underground. So that, you know, well over half of the new additions to our system are going underground. but still it's going to take a while to eat into that 80-20 differential from 100 years of having standard overhead service. So things are heading the right direction, and most developers choose that option when they develop a neighborhood these days. But there's a difference, a big difference, between putting in new underground service in a green field and going back in a city application or even in a rural area and putting existing overhead stuff underground. But those are all things that we're happy to talk about and look forward to talking about on a broad scale with the PSC. With those things said, I am happy to take any questions. All those things lead up to the point that we're looking again at how we operate, and we invite you to give feedback to us through this group and me or through the Public Service Commission, who will be looking at all of our operations and those of all the other utilities that serve the state. And I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Ms. Gorton, I had you on the list first here. Okay. Mr. Beard. Thank you, Chair. David, thank you so much for coming and imparting a whole bunch of information to us. Just one comment. It was not casual interest in asking you to enumerate all those various and sundry items that you all had to purchase and install and such. It was to help the public understand and maybe be more understanding about whether they wanted a rebate on their bill or not. Two questions. If a citizen recognizes or sees the potential for a problem with trees, can they call and you come out and selectively hit one home or two homes in a neighborhood? Absolutely. And they can, I guess the same number applies. And our arborist will take a look and determine what the best course of action is. and we'll resist being a free tree trimming service. I mean, there are folks that do that, but if there are things that potentially impact reliability of service to that customer and others in the area, then absolutely we'll take a look and do whatever needs to be done. You'll find sometimes that the lines in question may belong to Windstream or the cable company, and we're probably less inclined to trim those limbs, but they're welcome to call and we'll take a look at it. And I guess the second thing on this question of underground, you and I had that discussion some years ago. You said there were also some problems in relationship to how much voltage is being carried on the line and what better goes underground and what doesn't, and also in detection of where there's a break, if you don't mind going into that a little bit. Sure, and they're the tradeoffs. Those are the things that have to be weighed against one another. Virtually anything can be done, I guess, with a price and with an understanding of the consequences. Generally speaking, distribution lines, the lower voltage lines, are better candidates for undergrounding simply because of the sheer size and complexity of putting transmission lines underground. They're big anyway, and hanging up in the air, they are cooled naturally. To put them in the ground in a conduit, they're in a confined space, and you have to make them much bigger to be able to do the same thing and therefore much more expensive and much more intrusive in terms of whoever's property you're putting these big vaults in. But the distribution lines, they all work fine. The benefit you get is there's less likely to be interruptions caused by trees or lightning or things like that. However, so you have a lower frequency for outages, and we measure that with SAFE, the frequency of outages. SADI, another industry term, is for the duration of outages, and that is going to go up for those lines that are underground because it's kind of common sense. Our guys go drive down a neighborhood street looking for the cause of an outage and there see a tree in a line and say, well, you know, if this isn't all of it, this is certainly a place to start work. And they've identified the problem or a problem. Those same guys driving along my neighborhood or another one where there are underground facilities don't have such a luxury. They have to have to it takes longer to find those outages. And in fact, it costs more to address them because you've got to find them, dig them up, make the repairs and then do all the restoration work. And it's those are things you have to weigh against one another. There is no no free lunch, but but there are benefits and you get to choose what's important to you. Thank you very much. Miss Gordon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to see Mr. Bob Starkweather has joined us. He was our point person on utilities for several years. Good to see you here. You mentioned, David, first on the tree trimming, that you've kept your same goal, which in the report says you have a cycle, a trim cycle of 3.5 to 3.9 years, basically. It also said in this utility task force report that KU stated that it does not track or budget tree trimming on a county-by-county basis. How do you budget it? We budget in a way that matches the rest of how our organization is set up. That's why one of the challenges we have in giving you restoration numbers for Fayette County is that we have our facility at Stone Road that is the hub of our Lexington Operations Center. And it's called Lexington, and most of the customers served out of there are Lexington, but it also includes Woodford County and Midway and parts of Scott County and others. So our system and our operations don't fit neatly with geopolitical or geographical boundaries. So do you have a pot of money that goes toward tree trimming in your service area? We do. Is that how that works? On these five different companies that you contract with to provide the tree trimming, are there standards set by you, by KU, that all of those companies must follow? There are standards and there is training, not just safety training, but certainly including that, but also how we operate, how they will operate as contractors of ours. Because even though it may say another name on their truck, they are representing us, and customers will rightly believe that they're an extension of us, and we're held accountable for their actions. So when there are complaints, and there are from time to time, there are opportunities to correct either behavior or add more information that will allow them to do a better job or a job that a customer may find more acceptable. And each company has an arborist, a trained arborist? I don't know whether or not that's the case. I know that we have trained arborists that oversee all of these contract crews and manage their work. Okay. I assume that some of them have their own, but I don't know that that is true. Okay. Now, it seems to me that in regard to the trees, and I realize we have old sections of Lexington that are already built out and grown up with trees, But the problem is trees under lines. So if a person is going to plant a tree and the lines run across the backyards, is there anything to prevent that homeowner from planting a tree directly under your line? Well, if there's a line running there, there may well be a right-of-way on either side of that line, and they may not be able to plant anything. However, we are on our website. We have, I think, a spot where it suggests the types of trees that do well in coexistence with our facilities that we won't have to come out and remove at some point. And that is why every year for as long as I can remember, KU has given away red buds and dogwoods and things that grow 15, 18, 20 feet tall, but not the white pines, which we all love, but grow big enough and are soft enough that they cause havoc to our facilities, whether they're in the right-of-way or just nearby. It seems like there wouldn't be any way to really know if people are, if it's a backyard, if people are planting a big tree under a line. And not using common sense. No, there's not. And we don't investigate things like that. No one looks at that. But we sure would encourage everybody to plant trees that will be able to stay there forever and ever and be beautiful and provide either color or a screen, whatever they're seeking, that we won't have to come out and remove. About the underground utilities, I noticed in the task force report, there was a section on page 34 that talked about Altel. And it said that telephone companies and other communication providers in many areas of the country are taking the lead in burying facilities, even though there's a negative cost differential in underground versus aerial construction. this was in the telephone portion and the Alltel portion. And I wondered, I would presume that those utilities that are doing that are just passing the charge on to the customer. Is there any way to do that for sure? You know, I don't know that I can speak to what practices Alltel has chosen to adopt. I do know that it makes more sense, and it makes more sense from a managing the job kind of perspective, also from a paying the check for the job perspective to coordinate all of those aerial utilities and have them working together, not Altel doing it and then KU doing it, or having them working together so you dig one trench, you do all this at one time. And I know we're working with Mike Webb on a number of these kind of issues in the Streetscape program, so you don't have four different cost centers. you've got one larger one, but it's coordinated and ultimately will have a lower overall price tag. What would KU's response be if a neighborhood, a large area, came to KU and said, we want to put some money into burying the lines? Has that occurred in Lessington? Absolutely. And our response is and will be, we're happy to figure it all out and give you whatever experience we have, find additional information that will allow you to make an informed decision. We've done it in Ashland Park. We've done it in smaller subgroupings through Harold's facilitation where, and frankly, former Council Member Farmer explored the option of special taxing districts or some funding mechanism that could deal with the cost of these kind of things. And those are all things that we're happy to participate in. We have some expertise in some of those areas. There are other areas where we'd have to send a customer or a group somewhere else, perhaps. But we're happy to have those conversations and happy to build and maintain underground facilities. Did the Ashland Park folks pay for it? Or how did the funding come? They have not made a determination, I don't think. There were two different groups. There was the larger group, and there was just the South Ashland Avenue group as a discreet group. One of the things that gives them pause, back to the idea of no free lunch, And even if you've decided that I'm going to write the check for this, either you or your group, there are still consequences for opening these big trenches in front yards. And some of the consequences impact those same trees that we're trying to highlight and save. Because if you can imagine the canopy above ground, there's a similar structure underground that we or some contractor or some other utility is going to bore through and damage roots. And some of those trees are going to die, even as you seek to free up all the others. So there are tradeoffs that have to be considered. I know the Corridors Committee has done a pretty good job of now when they place the trees on the arterials, they're placing them away from under the lines. And I think that's a good idea. Well, I understand the expense of the underground utilities and some of the problems. I know the government for I don't know how many years, Bob would probably know, put general fund dollars into burying the lines downtown. Over the years, we've spent quite a few hundred thousands of dollars doing that. And I don't know, did downtown, where that's been done, did downtown lose power this time? There are fewer trees down here. The circuits come in from somewhere overhead from transmission, but I don't recall there being a lot of issues downtown. It would be interesting to see, you probably don't have time for this right now, but a study in Lexington, we have new development where lines are buried. And to just someday, when there's someone who has time to do it, look at the areas that have underground lines as opposed to those with overhead lines where the ice storm hits everybody and who lost power. That may not be as difficult to get to as you might think. Next time you and Nelson Maynard and I are together somewhere, it will be soon, let's talk to him about the stats he already keeps because he tracks those circuits and they'll differentiate between overhead and underground. And maybe we just have to kind of cull through some existing research that he's got. Well, and I just only say that because there's a huge cost to the storm damage. And I know you all have looked at that because some of that was in this report. but over a period of years, the next 25, 30, we've got to look way out on the years, we might be better off to spend the money on the underground. Sure, and one of the add-ons that the PSC may look at is, in addition to damage to facilities and disruption in our lives, what is the economic impact of employers not being able to open and people not being able to go to work or get around or go to a grocery store or whatever? What is the broader economic impact? And somehow that has to factor into the process as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ms. Feigel? Thank you, Chair. And thank you, David, for being so patient and answering all of our questions. First, I just wanted to clarify a point that I made earlier when I suggested that people watch for information about emergency pickup on their TV. Obviously, if they don't have power, they don't have TV. But I was actually referring to when we have a forecast where we're going to have a really bad weather pattern because you see everybody flock to the grocery store and everybody anticipates what's going to occur when they know the weather is coming at us. But secondly, in the tree trimming area, and I think I asked you this question once before, and I don't recall what the answer was or maybe you weren't sure, but there are power lines going along the back property lines where generally people have fences and that type thing. Do you trim vegetation and trees on back property lines? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I don't think where things are matter as much as what it is and what kind of clearances we need. It may be that those are the customers that really don't like to see us coming because we may have to take equipment back into their backyard. But those lines are no different to us in our system than those running along the street. And when you do that, is there notice given to the property owners? And on occasion we miss somebody or notice is not given properly, and we get calls and have a chance to reorient and improve our processes. Okay. Another comment that you made is that, and I don't recall the percentage, but you said maybe 65% of new development chooses to put the power lines underground. Yes. Is that about right? That is a KU statewide number. I expect the number in Lexington is closer to 80%, but the 65% reflects all of KU's service territory. Well, one of my questions was, is there not an ordinance that requires new development to put that out in the ground? There is not one in Lexington. We've had kind of the preliminary discussion a couple times about that here. I know that there are a couple of municipalities in the state that have that, and if that conversation is going to be had, we'd love to be part of it because some of the ways you can do it don't inhibit our reliability or our ability to provide service. Some ways could impact our operations. But whether it's overhead or underground, we don't have an internal bias. Well, I would like to suggest that we consider an ordinance, and I'm not sure what committee that would go into, but consider an ordinance for requiring underground utilities. Don't know the process for doing that. In services, do I need to make a motion to do that? I'm doing it at work. Do it at work session. Okay. Make a motion. All right, I have another question. When I go out and talk to neighborhood associations and they inquire about having the utilities placed underground, they say things like, well, the cable is already underground, gas lines are already underground. If you would just speak to that for a second, can you go back and put the utility lines underground alongside other lines, other utility lines? I would have to beg off and say I don't know enough about the actual process of that, but I would suggest that other utilities probably don't want us digging near their existing underground facilities, mapping being what it is and the imprecise nature of some of these locations. But gas, just so you know, is one thing that is treated differently from an overhead utility standpoint. we can lie in the same conduit with cable and with telephone. I don't think that that's necessarily the case in all places with gas. Okay. That was my question. Hey, Bob, you want to answer that question? Because you might have a response to that. Mr. Starkweather, would you like to participate in this discussion? Is that a yes or no? Why don't you come to the mic? You might be able to give some light on this issue. Chair, why don't you ask him that again? May I have the question again, please? Yes, sir. Some of the neighborhoods have asked why we couldn't get their utility lines buried in the same trenching where the other utilities are already present, you know, in the same general area. Well, David was right. the gas companies are very much opposed to having common trench in new development areas. It is not unusual that you have what is called common trench, and that is telephone, electric, and cable. All three go in the same hole in the ground. Now, there is... But in separate conduits? Now they can go in the same trench, but there is a clearance between power and what is it, David? It varies on the voltage. They have to be a certain distance away from the other facilities to not interrupt the – to not impact the liability of any of them. To repeat what he said, there has to be a certain distance depending on the voltage. And that's set forth, I believe, by the FCC and the NECs. Okay, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you for your insight, and welcome back from retirement to help out today. I'm not back for long. Okay, well, you go back to Dad. You're back in retirement again. I know the Ashland Neighborhood Association has looked at underground lines and are considering them currently. And one of the difficulties that they are beginning to realize is that the cost is extremely expensive. And unless you get 100 percent participation from everybody on the street, it makes it very difficult for the other folks, you know, to cover the costs of those who don't want to participate. So I know that's one of the things they're struggling with. And another quick question, and I'm not sure this really has a lot to do with you, but I was very disheartened to learn that we didn't bury the lines on our new Newtown Pike extension. And, you know, that was a great opportunity to get some lines underground that we didn't take advantage of. It was, and it's one of those things where I think it was a state highway project, and it's how much can you get or what do you give, what do you lose by doing a little more for each foot or each mile. And it's a tough call. But you're exactly right. It was an opportunity to make a big difference along one of our, you know, featured approaches or exits from the city and the games. And that has to be a concern with whatever happens with some of the stimulus dollars are going to come and there's going to be an urge to spend them wisely, hopefully, and quickly, and those kind of tradeoffs would need to be looked at. And before I leave that topic of the stimulus package and whatever it may translate into for Kentucky or Fayette County, from the utility company standpoint, we'd love to be involved in any planning as early as we can be for all that because a lot of the road projects and other projects that the city will want to do or the state will want to do will require us to move facilities. and we want to be as helpful and proactive as we can be and not be the thing standing between the city and the completion of this project just because we'll be doing it in, you know, 90 counties in the state. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we have one more person that would like to ask some questions. Ms. Henson? Thank you, Chair. David, one complaint. I'm going to go back to communication. One big complaint that I got was that individuals that were without their electric, they couldn't plan. So they didn't know if it was going to be short-term or long-term. And I was just wondering if there was some way we could possibly map it out or if that's something that's been addressed. It is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and working on. and let me back up and then go forward. The system that we have in place is extraordinarily good at a number of things, and those things include locating customers that are out, taking the information we get from those customers and identifying the most likely piece of equipment that has been damaged or has a tree on or has failed, and then moving our resources to the right area, and then that same information is put back into the system so our call center attendants and workers have the same access to what the problem is, what an estimated time of restoration is, so that when customers call, we can, if we've had several calls already, we can say, yes, we know you're out at XYZ Street. We expect to have you return to service in four hours. Those kind of things our system does well in more normal storm situations where, you know, the things that are less catastrophic. We have not found a system that will help us tell 400,000 customers when your service will be back because virtually everything is laying on the ground and those crews are rebuilding it. However, with that said, we are looking into, through a work group, what other people are doing and what new technology is available that will allow us to do. one of the most important things that we haven't found the answer to, which is to give our customers a reasonable estimate of what they should expect and how they can plan their lives around that. We haven't found it yet, but we are working to find it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I see none. Thank you so much, Mr. Freymer, for your being here and going through all these questions. At this point, do I have a motion to adjourn? I move. Second? I move. Alright, all those in favor say aye. All those opposed.